Thank You, Austin: The People Keeping This Film Fed, Cold, and Honest

Two days out from Day One, here is a truth about independent film: the budget line that says "community" is the one that actually gets you to camera.

Start with the cold. John Zamora and King Daddy Ice are icing this production every single shoot day, and his Music Water is stacked and waiting for a thirsty crew. That story deserved its own post, and it got one.

Then the partners who are the reason this film can exist at all. Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center and Trinity Center are opening real, working facilities to us and helping members of their communities appear in the film as paid background artists. They are not letting us borrow their world. They are in the film's corner, and the film is in theirs.

We have also been in ongoing conversation with ECHO, the coordinating backbone of homeless services in Austin. Their view of how this city's systems actually connect has sharpened how the script treats those systems, and we are grateful for every hour of it.

And then there are the doors that just opened. A South Austin shop and a quiet neighborhood volunteered by people who believe in the movie enough to hand over their own keys. A cast member offering up his living room as a set. A real pawn shop out by Lake Travis letting a film crew in among the guitars. None of that shows up on a poster. All of it shows up on screen.

If you run an Austin business and any of this sounds like your kind of thing, the door is open. This production runs on in-kind support, coffee and tacos and gear and goodwill, traded for real credit on a film made in and about this city. Reach us through the contact page on this site.

Monday, we roll. Austin got us here.