Review from fellow filmmaker at S.N.O.B. Jill Wisoff

Review from fellow filmmaker at S.N.O.B. Jill Wisoff. Jill's film CREATING KARMA was a wacky comedy, Winner of the Broad Humor Film Festival. Thanks, Jill!

RACING DAYLIGHT, the kickoff film which I talked about in my first post, was a flawless indie dramatic feature offering. Directed by Nicole Quinn who hails from Ulster County, NY, the film is a romance and ghost story told from the point of view of different characters and jumps in time from the Civil War period to the present. Fascinating, clever, amusing and well crafted dialogue, acceptable production values with thoughtful choices of staging to take advantage of the HD medium, and excellent editing make this a not miss on the indie circuit and, as well, the film will be released worldwide through Vanguard. To boot, the film is entertaining with a fantastic performance by David Strathairn (who I notice is a darling of indies lately...the last film I saw him in was the short "The Shovel" but this film is a SMORGASBORD of David in a feature as the romantic lead...what a fascinating and fun actor to watch). Melissa Leo plays the complicated "haunted" woman. Sarah Plant "dressed" this film with her amazing and unique music score. The ensemble of actors were professional and effective all around (and indeed though this was an indie Nicole apparently asked and got not only Hollywood stars like David, but amazing tech on this from talent that wanted to work on the film after reading the script). I look forward to Nicole's next feature and offer congratulations to all production and cast members who were smart enough to work on this project, putting aside perhaps their usual fees, because they wanted to help realize this intelligent script.

BEST FEATURE, S.N.O.B. FILM FESTIVAL

Thanks to Felicia Menard and the rest of the board of the S.N.O.B. Film Festival in Concord New Hampshire for inviting us to participate, for making us feel so welcome ,and for awarding our film on top of it all.

The audiences were smart and with it. The questions delightful. All in all a wonderful time. Grass roots growing strong!

RACING DAYLIGHT OPENS S.N.O.B. FESTIVAL!

Thanks for inviting us!

S.N.O.B. Invited us to become friends and to submit our film through MYSPACE. It proves it works, this self-promoter friendly medium, the internet.

As independent filmmakers, with product to sell, niche markets to woo, we're always looking for event screens. We don't have a P&A budget, which we will have the next time around, enough at least for a stockpile of screeners and niche festival entry fees.

That's been our great revelation. If you're not married to the traditional model of theatrical release, and then on to ancillary markets, and are clear about where and who you think your audience is, (especially if your film straddles genres) you can drive your film towards that audience, see if it flies, sort of test drive it for potential distributors.

Straight to DVD is not the failure it once was. It used to be 'actors' wouldn't do tv, it was seen as a a comedown. Now some of the best work is on tv. The advent of cable as a player forced a more competitive market. If theatrical is only the commercial (taking into account the blockbuster exceptions and Hollywood accounting), the independent filmmaker only inflates the cost of the film by venturing there, and yet needs the exposure in order compete for viewers. So much product, so many choices.

The internet and its social interacting networks have become clear avenues of distributing information to niche consumers.

Grass roots audience building for us. And until the walls of restricted access are built, one can still pioneer in cyberspace.