I will never forget the night when, as a festival programmer, I first unleashed Calvin Lee Reeder’s short film The Rambler onto a paying audience. There was squirming in seats, nervous laughter, outright confusion, revulsion, shock and outbursts of spontaneous applause. It was perfect. Exactly what you want to do to a midnight audience. And I knew – or at least hoped an awful lot – that we’d be seeing more from Reeder in the coming years.
-Todd Brown, TwitchFilm
As we told you here, acclaimed indie short, The Rambler by Calvin Lee Reeder has achieved both raves and a strong fan following since its first film festival rounds back in 2008.
Now set to yield a full-length feature adaptation, The Rambler is currently in production right here in New Mexico.
Lindsay Pulsipher retains her starring role, as seen in the original “blood-soaked mini-classic”, pictured above right in Reeder’s, The Oregonian.
Universally adored actor Dermot Mulroney has been added to the cast, and has not been camera shy in the fledgling days of The Rambler shoot.
See Mulroney pictured above with homegrown actor, comedian, producer Steven Michael Quezada (Breaking Bad, Warrior Woman, Duke City) and New Mexico producer/actor, film industry vet, Chris Ranney.
The production got underway in Roswell, NM over the weekend. A casting call for (volunteer) background extras was issued last week, details here.
The New Mexico Tourism Department has unveiled this multi-media video, now airing on television in Colorado Springs, CO; Tucson, AZ; El Paso, Lubbock, Midland, Odessa and Amarillo, TX, and unleashed on NM’s Own revamped NM Tourism website, here.
In addition to the video, print ads from the campaign will be placed in Southwest Airlines’ Spirit in-flight magazine, Texas Monthly, Budget Travel and in NM Tourism’s own publication, New Mexico Magazine.
The entire project from bid to post-production has drawn criticism, including our own here, here, here, here and here.
As part of the launch of the much maligned production, New Mexico Tourism Director Monique Jacobson is back in the justification and explanation seat, offering the following translation of the campaign’s target and intent.
NM Tourism Director, Monique Jacobson to The Albuquerque Journal:
The campaign is designed to appeal to a “psychographic” group — “people with an adventurous spirit and thirst for authenticity”
NM Tourism Director, Monique Jacobson to The Santa Fe New Mexican:
“A hard sell wouldn’t work with this audience…This particular target tends to be higher income…They are people who will choose to spend money on travel.”
Despite assertions by Jacobson below, that “this is just the first of many spots”, Veronica Valencia, director of marketing for the Tourism Department breaks down how the bulk of $2M budget has already been spent:
Vendor Inc. cost $275,000 in fees.
Production of all the ads cost $350,000. Production is a broad term that applies to everything from scouting sites, hiring talent and filming the ads to producing the music that goes along with the ads as well as drawing up the print and billboard ads, according to Valencia.
More than $1.2 million went toward purchasing media buys on TV, print, digital and billboards in the targeted communities.
