8/30/2007

Civil War movies - anyone can make them

We noted here recently that a Civil War movie you never heard of, "Strike the Tent," had reached the 3,590th sales position among all Amazon DVD orders.

With the recent release of the big-budget, major-studio "Seraphim Falls," we would do well to keep our eyes also on the premier of "Firetrail" in Aiken, SC., a follow-up to a film called "Battle of Aiken." Get this:
"I think the film turned out really good," said [director] Forbes. "I was very happy with our adaptation of Lydia's book. The book is a sprawling, epic, 500-page tome of the Civil War, and I think we did justice to it."
He did justice to it in three hours. Three-hour big-screen Civil War epics with no stars, small budgets, and limited theatrical release to sustain them. That is a working economic model folks, sustained by DVD sales to ACW buffs.

Makes me wonder if authors shouldn't just read their nonfiction facing a video recorder and then sell DVDs instead of books.