Every filmmaker hopes to not only make a quality film, but also to get that film to the widest audience possible. Having secured distribution on Amazon.com, Netflix and Blockbuster, you could say that Collins College film professor Ryan Noble succeeded on both counts.
Set in Arizona, Noble's film, "Border Wars" tackles the ever-present immigration issue, using three misguided patriots who believe that patrolling the borders for illegal immigrants is their civic duty.
Released on DVD last Tuesday, "Border Wars" has already picked up steam on the Amazon charts, very much credited to Noble's success as a writer and a director.
Recently, Noble spoke with College Times about making the film, and what it took to get it on the map.
College Times: How did the film come together?
Ryan Noble: I was creating a documentary series […] about immigration issues. It ended up not getting picked up. But I was really still interested in the topic. The timing was right to do this. I had an idea, so I wrote the script. Because of my connection with Collins, I was able to put this together.
What was shooting like?
We shot it in the fall of 2006. So it's been a couple of years. It was essentially a 14-day shoot. So we had a lot of 12 to 16 hour days. It was late September, early October so it was pretty hot. We shot it out on the west side of town Tonopah, Avondale – it was pretty crazy.
What can you say about casting the film?
The main three actors – two of them were graduates of Collins that had acted in some student films. I knew that they could do it. But this was they're first big film project. Most of the other parts were filled by local well-known actors around here. Shane Black, who plays the father, is pretty much in every independent film around here. [But] most were first-timers.
What do you hope people will take away from this movie?
Honestly, my entire intention was to bring awareness to the dangers of using rhetoric that is borderline hate and even crosses the line into hate speech. I think here's a lot of talk show hosts that use the political issue of immigration to spread hate speech. That can be dangerous – obviously we're demonstrating a danger that is much more palpable and physical.
How did you go about getting distribution for this film?
We played at some film festivals last fall. And then we just started putting the word out to potential distributors. We went through various iterations of interest and non-interest until we settled on York Distributors. They're really good mass distributors and they specialize in distributing directly to DVD. Of course the brick and mortar stores pick and choose based on the internet sales. […] On Amazon, we jumped up 59,000 spots and we're hoping that maybe we can crack the top 1,000.
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