Our coming-of-age rebellion story fueled by Riot Grrrl music, a dysfunctional family, and LSD has had quite the journey so far and your additional support will help us get our film out into the world for all to enjoy! After successfully fundraising our incredible 21 days of production and our Covid-impacted post-production, the film is being represented by Glen Reynolds of Circus Road Films and we are pursuing our distribution options to bring Acid Test to the general public on digital platforms by the end of 2022!  .

Acid Test has been an incredible learning experience for my debut feature film, the first feature for many of my amazing team as well as for the Houston Community College students who earned college credit for working on the set. Knowing production and watching friends go through their own feature films, we approached Acid Test with a “work smarter not harder” fiscally conservative mentality to stay under budget and on schedule. This final phase of festivals and distribution is its own learning curve, and we are discovering that distribution costs money. 

Even with the success of our Austin Film Festival premiere, the current landscape of distribution on streaming and other digital platforms presents a “textbook” selection of offers for our small indie film: little-to-no upfront money and no marketing support.

So...we are now looking to raise at least $10,000 to maximize our ability to reach our audience through distribution.

Your donation is tax-deductible, please contribute today! We are asking for donations above $500, but any amount is always appreciated

This reality has been eye-opening, and we are not alone in this reality. I recently equated it to pregnancy and labor – how everyone is always so supportive and enthusiastic while you’re pregnant and when discussing labor everyone glosses over any horrors as “worth it” and offers any cautions in the gentlest way. Then, after you go through labor and experience the horrors and aftermath, you turn to everyone and say “no one prepared me for THAT!” and everyone just nods their heads and offers their own raw horror stories.

So where does this leave us?

In order to pursue a distribution offer to deliver Acid Test to iTunes, Amazon, and to pitch to streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Showtime, Starz...etc, we need to reach the audience beyond our wonderful supporters like you, which means marketing $ to let them know it's there! 

• Bunker15 is a highly recommended service that focuses on attaining reviews that count towards a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score as well as other PR, starting at $2,000.
• A publicist will send out an updated Press Release to promote our release and seek out other promotional opportunities and reviews at $5,000.
• Any additional marketing services, like social media ads and campaigns can be anywhere from $5,000 - $10,000. With the algorithms changing to limit the reach “boosted” ads that I can do individually and other spam-reducing efforts, hiring a company to do this will maximize our outreach.
• We also need to purchase Errors & Omissions Insurance (E&O) to cover any copyright claims or other legal issues once its released to the public, which will cost $3,000.

In total, we are looking to raise at least $10,000 in your charitable donations to bring Acid Test to the world, to maximize its impact and find the audience that needs this film! The response from people seeing the film at festivals has been so encouraging. People see themselves on screen and come up to me to thank me and marvel at how I captured their story – and this comes from people of all ages and genders who find identification with “Jenny” and nuance in the complex, flawed, and simply human characters of the film.

And it’s not over yet!

Once we are available to the public, we will need you pre-register for the movie, rent it, buy it, even if you already have the link, because the numbers will help us when pitching to the streamers like Netflix. We need to prove there is the audience in order to get picked up. It seems like an oxymoron (and it is!) but that is the way of this industry and others like publishing.

Acid Test has been a labor of love and I’ve felt your support throughout the entire process. We’re in the final stages of pushing this baby out. Thank you so much for your continued support!

This is me after my first child was born - quite the visceral experience!!! And yet doesn't stop us from doing it again. I can't wait to make my NEXT FILM!!!

Based on the award-winning short film of the same name that screened in festivals nationwide, Acid Test follows Jenny as she turns 18 and grapples with what it means to be an adult in the early 90’s. Steeped in the aesthetic of punk music, we watch Jenny discover a new aggressively feminist perspective inspired by the Riot Grrrl – girls in punk – movement. Along the way, she experiments with LSD and begins to question all of the rules and truths she’s lived by her whole life. Set against the backdrop of the 1992 Presidential Election and themes of civic engagement, Jenny launches a rebellion against her family, against the patriarchy her father represents, and tumbles into a new sense of self. Watch the short film proof-of-concept streaming on Seed&Spark here!

Donations over $1,000 will receive an Associate Producer credit and will be invited to the friends and family screening and receive a secret link to the film while it’s in festival submission. We are following Producer’s Guild of America guidelines for Executive Producer credit, and awarding that to donors who give at least $25,000.

Of course, ANY amount is much appreciated! Donations over $50 will receive a link to the final film. 

Please look into whether your company participates in a matching grant program. Large corporations and even smaller companies will often match an employee’s donation to a 501c3 100% or sometimes even 200%!

Please join us in rebellion by becoming Acid Test’s Donor. You are helping to change the way we make movies and the movies we make!

Thank you.

Please check out acidtestfilm.com for more info or contact us at [email protected] for more information. ​