Earlier this year, we...Shooters Productions...were invited to New York as possible candidates to be featured on a new TV reality series produced by Peter Billingsly (Ralphie from "A Christmas Story"), actor Vince Vaughn, and TV and radio host Glenn Beck. The show is called, "Pursuit of the Truth" and the idea was that we would be featured and followed over the course of a few months as we were trying to produce our documentary. The documentary we pitched was our own Betty Zane project, and we had to pass through several eliminations in order to be one of the final 100 that got the New York invite. While in New York, Shooter's own Joe Monahan was tasked with doing a 5 minute pitch on camera in front of a panel of judges, one of them being Billingsly himself, as to why our documentary should be produced. If we were chosen, we would then compete with 5 other finalists in a series of tasks that would be broadcast nationally on Glenn Beck's "The Blaze" network. The prize for winning the contest would be full production and distribution of the Betty Zane documentary.
Well, Joe gave his best 5 minute pitch...one of the judges even remarked that they were blown away by Betty's story, and even bothered to Google the subject after he left the room. In the end, out of 4000 applicants across the nation, Shooters made it down to the final 25 candidates before being eliminated. The final reason was that the perceived budget of the documentary we were trying to produce was more than was being offered as the grand prize, largely due to the fact that one of the contest stipulations was that Wild West Entertainment out of California would actually be doing the production, and the guys from Shooters would direct. Now, for the budget that was offered, Shooters could have pulled it off, as most of the work would be handled directly. For a California production company... they would have used up the budget before we got to the first location, so for them, it made sense to eliminate us in favor of a doc that was perceived to be less expensive.
We told them we would send them a copy when we got it done...their loss :) We would have loved the exposure, but in the end we did want to produce it ourselves, so we chalked it up to one wild ride, a great experience, and likely a blessing in disguise. If nothing else, the fact that we made it that far in a national contest, along with all the positive feedback we received simply strengthened our resolve. We walked away knowing that we had done our best. Onward and upward!
