Ice in May: Welcome, King Daddy Ice and Music Water

Some sponsorships are about logos. This one is about survival.

We shoot ODIE across fifteen days of Austin heat starting May 18, with a lead actor in every scene and most of the movie outdoors. On that kind of schedule, ice is not a nice-to-have. Ice is infrastructure.

Enter John Zamora. John runs King Daddy Ice out of East Austin, and he is also the man behind Music Water bottled water. Starting Day One, King Daddy Ice is supplying ice for every shoot day of the production, straight from the East Austin freezer. Music Water is landing on set by the case, enough to keep an entire crew hydrated through the run. And beyond the cold stuff, John is doing the quieter thing good Austin business people do: making introductions, opening doors, pointing us toward vendors and locations we would not have found on our own.

In return, John Zamora takes an "Associate Producer" credit in the film's end titles, and both King Daddy Ice and Music Water receive their own "Special Thanks" credits in the end crawl, logos included. You will also spot Music Water on screen where it fits the world of the film, and you will see both brands tagged in our behind-the-scenes posts as the shoot rolls.

One more thing, and it is our favorite part of this deal. John's youngest auditioned for the production like everybody else and won a role in the film. We will let you discover which one in the theater.

This is how an independent film actually gets made in this town. Not one giant check. A couple bags of ice every morning, cases of water on a truck, and a family that decided to show up for a story about their city.

Welcome aboard, King Daddy.