ABBY SINGER the Movie 2007 Official BLOG: 2007

ABBY SINGER JOURNEY
Timeline Of Events

• 2002 Sundance Film Festival: Ryan Williams, Clint Palmer and the movie’s lead actors infiltrated the festival by posing as volunteers during the awards ceremony. During its progression, they shook off their disguises to pursue the search for celebrities. They ended up walking away with cameo segments from: Roger Ebert, Stockard Channing, Mike Schank, Lloyd Kauffman, Mark Borchardt and others.

• May 2002 - December 2002:ABBY SINGER was still in the process of being made. Palmer, Williams and Jonathan M Black all lived together even through the midst of a Tongan gang attack, along with several other unfortunate misshapes, causing the trio to bounce from place to place. In December the decision came to move to California.

• 2003 Golden Globes After Party: Williams, Black, Palmer and Kamell Clauson snuck past secret security gaining access to the hotel as well as various exclusively hosted after parties. It was at one of these parties that the group ran into the freelance writer, Tim Cooper, who became intrigued by their story and was interested in doing an article on them.

• February 2003 –
“Operation Nighthawk”: The idea of Operation Nighthawk came when Black realized the ease of walking onto the Paramount lot for dinner after dropping ABBY SINGER off to the Slamdance Film Festival Office. For Black, it became a huge potential marketing opportunity. After several months of sneaking onto the studio lots for reconnaissance, Black, Clauson, Williams and Palmer, along with Tim Cooper and photographer, hit each studio with an Abby Singer press pack and a trailer. (Please refer to 20th Century Foxed articles.)

• 2003 Independent Spirit Awards: Williams, Black, Palmer and Wendy Buss, posed as volunteers, which gained them access to the event. Once in, the cameo search resumed. Their venture was successful, nabbing cameos with: Jill Hennessy, Jake Gyllenhaal, Don Cheadle and others.

• June 2003 – August 2003: The ABBY SINGER four-some broke apart (Williams, Black, Palmer & Clauson), each going different directions, doing whatever they could to survive. The efforts to get ABBY SINGER out in the public eye was still the main focus, but the work was divided up and each individual worked on their own.

• 2003 New Orleans Media Experience: ABBY SINGER’s film festival premier. When all was said and done, the film walked away with two fleur de lis awards: ‘Best Independent Film’ and ‘Best Feature Film’. Needless to say, this was a very welcomed reward for everyone’s hard work up to this point.

• November – December 2004 – ‘Operation Altitude’: Black and Clauson made their way to Salt Lake City, UT to organize another publicity stunt. Operation Altitude was a publicity blitz to gain the Sundance Film Festival crowd and industry executives attention. Over 1,500 people viewed ABBY SINGER in the course of the week through private screenings outside of Sundance. In addition, the group launched a fake Comedy Central crew to go out and start the hype of the film to encourage more people to see it. All the while, a documentary entitled, ‘The Misbehavers’, of the whole process was being filmed.

• February 2004 to October 2004: ABBY SINGER sort of fizzled out. Although Black was working on setting up distribution, because of the celebrity footage not being signed off on at that time, any such deal seemed close to impossible.

• October 2004: Williams sells his share of the company and it’s assets to Palmer.

• October 2004 - 2005: The releases were obtained from all the celebrities within ABBY SINGER and finally succeeds opening up a new door of opportunities for the film. Also, during this time, the film underwent a major revision and got a new soundtrack.

• 2005 - 2006: ABBY SINGER was submitted and screened at several film festivals. Along the way a slew of various awards were won, adding to the depth of the film’s background. Black and Palmer work together during this time to make the most out of guerilla marketing and publicity efforts.

With the film’s beginning in 2001, it has taken six pain-staking years to complete with the journey wrought with countless phone calls, party crashing, several attempted marketing campaigns mixed with the stress of playing Hollywood roulette in order to gain celebrity releases. But now, all of the hard work seems to have been worth it.

Even through the darkest hour, ABBY SINGER has proven to endure even the most demanding circumstances. And throughout all of the filmmaker’s trials, it proved if you just have a little hope, a little faith and a lot of patience and persistence, anything is possible even when standing in the face of the impossible.

Be looking for a major update. Thanks for all the support!