Poke said:
Long time no see Hutch ... Looks interesting.
Why don't you tell everyone here how you made this film.
Poke
Poke, great to hear from you. It has been a while. Hope things are well on your end.
We just received our first run of 1000 units and have already received an incredible number of pre-orders with Cast and Crew screening and general release of the DVD still over a month away. It's been an incredible 1 year journey from concept to completion of our fourth project (number 5 is currently in production.) We had a cast of over 50 and many more extras. We shot 6 day weeks for 4 weeks straight this past summer - 24 long days, in over 8 locations.
We cast the bulk of it here in Atlanta off of actorsphere.com and the rest from previous relationships. We shot it on a DVX100 and edited it with Adobe Premiere 6.5. We will be screening it for Cast and Crew in a 300+ seat theater in December and then it officially goes on sale. We just placed a major ad in two publications specific to our target market with a combined total of over one million total households subscribing and only a 3% cross-over between the two publications.
My wife wrote the story and I had the pleasure of directing it. I made a strategic decision not to score it - even though that is one of my true passions. We licensed 5 popular Christian tunes from 4 well known Christian Artists including Plus One, Stacie Orrico, and ZOEgirl. We believe this has significantly increased the production value and appeal to our target audience. Our marketing strategy included providing an additional feature on the DVD. We developed an interactive Bible-study tied to the story with Cast and Crew members posing the questions. That has drawn a great deal of attention and assisted in expanding our opportunities. Quite frankly, this entire production was first and foremost a ministry for my wife and I. It was second a commercial venture - obviously with the hopes that we are empowered to do another one. As we are already receiving nation wide sales by only word of mouth (our ads have not yet hit the streets) we are excited about the prospect.
I would not want to disclose budget specifics, but it was very managable. Our biggest ticket item was licensing the music. Fortunately, even that is done on a somewhat "pay as you go" basis with a basic amount of upfront money required. We had an incredible cast and crew and we secured some locations that our critics said we would never be able to obtain. It's a real testimony to persistence tossed in with a lot of passion. Well, that's probably more than you wanted to hear... How about catching me up on your adventures? I must confess I spend most of what little free time I have on the atlantafilms.com board since it's more specific to our local scene down here in Atlanta. So I haven't done a good job of keeping up with you guys!
Regards,
Hutch
