Topic: Success Story?

Hello everyone. I have spent 12 year making movies. Almost entirely documentaries. I am also a screenplay write that has had no success with my screenplays. Not because they are not good, but because I have not been able to get them in front of the right people.

In 2010 my family and I were in a terrible car accident. Myself and one of my daughters ended up in the hospital for an extended period of time. So long,in fact, that I ended up losing my job and had no real prospects for a new job. While I was laid up, I was going through a bunch of stuff in my basement and I found a script that I had written about 5-6 years ago. It was a script that I had always loved.

I decided in 2011 that I was going to go ahead and make the movie, whatever it took. I worked my butt off to try to secure funding for the film and I zero, I repeat, zero success. Didn't raise dollar one. After 6 months of trying everything I could, I decided to go ahead and do it anyway and I funded the movie entirely out of my pocket. We shot of weekends, and a day here and a day there, and we ended up making a pretty good movie. It wasn't everything that I had hoped for, had we had additional funding, but it was pretty good.

I shipped it out to a number of distributors that said they were interested, but they all said "No Thanks". I was a little discouraged, but I kept sending it out. I finally got an offer from a small distribution company that liked the film. There was no advance and a very small return to me, if the film had any success. For some reason I kept putting off signing the deal.

I took one last shot at something that was somewhat far fetched, and I reached out to a company that I thought I had no shot at. Within a week I heard back from them and they were interested. Within two more days we had negotiated a deal with an advance equal to ten times the production budget. Now we are about to sign a deal wo have the movie made available at a level I never even dreamed of.

Point of the story, if you believe in what you have and have Faith in it and in the reasons that you made it, don't jump at the first thing to come your way. Exhaust all of your efforts to find the right fit. I also have a documentary that is going to be distributed at a high level, but that is a story for another day.

Also, I have to say this. This film that we produced is a Christian/Faith Based film and we put a lot of Faith in God that this movie would happen. He saw it through and made it happen. That is part of the Faith that I was referring to.

Wow great story, my second to last feature feature was a faith based film so I understand where your coming from

Great story, thanks for sharing