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Her next question was even more unexpected: "Did your church fund you?" I assured her that all our capitalization had come from private equity investors. She warned that there would be considerable hostility from the press, and that we should be careful not to mention anything about our faith or why we founded the company.

That must have been a surprising revelation to you.

McLaughlin: Up until that moment, both of us had been blissfully unaware that a sizeable portion of the secular media would be hostile to any production company bold enough to state what they're trying to accomplish on the spiritual plane. Our assumption while making The Sensation of Sight was that the work would be assessed on its own terms, on the basis of quality and artistic merit. Like most film companies, we'd employed the best talent possible, from actors (including Strathairn, an Academy Award nominee for Best Actor in Good Night, and Good Luck) to cinematographer to key crew; most of them were not religious, and had come on board simply because they wanted to work and liked the material.

As it turned out, our London PR person was right. This is something that we've learned to live with since. In some venues where the film has screened, there hasn't been a problem at all, with everyone seeming to judge the film on its own terms. At others we can sense the resistance, and sometimes wonder how the film even managed to slip into the festival. Of course, this brings up the issue of the gatekeepers and the power they wield in accepting or rejecting films.

Who are these "gatekeepers"?

McLaughlin: The person who makes the final choice about whether to accept a film or reject it. With film festivals, it's usually the Artistic Director or the Program Director; with distributors, it's the Vice President of Acquisitions. Of course, before a film gets to that person, it has gone through a gauntlet of "slush readers" and selection committees, as the hundreds or thousands of submissions get narrowed down to a manageable few. So the gatekeeper syndrome really begins with the readers who first set eyes on submissions.

Can't anyone make any movie they want?

McLaughlin: Yes, but the issue is getting it into the marketplace. The Internet is helping filmmakers find new ways to control their own distribution, but in the end there are simply too many movies coming out for them all to be widely distributed. Some kind of stringent narrowing is inevitable.

Strathairn, McLaughlin and Wiederspahn at the wrap party

What does getting into a festival, or getting a distributor, do for a movie?

McLaughlin: For an independent filmmaker, the festival circuit is the best way to build a film's reputation, in terms of press, critical reviews, and industry buzz. Some festivals are more important than others, since they're "market" festivals (Cannes, Sundance, Toronto and Berlin, for example), while others offer prestige and/or exposure. And a distributor is the middleman who adopts your film and gets it into the domestic and international marketplace—releasing it theatrically, on DVD, TV, cable, pay-per-view, on the Internet—anywhere it has a chance of finding an audience. There are big distributors, with lots of clout and money, and small distributors (like ours) with not much of either. Do-it-yourself distribution is a growing phenomenon, but it is a tremendous amount of work.

What would you say about overtly Christian film projects like Facing the Giants or Fireproof? Do those filmmakers have a different aim than yours?

McLaughlin: I have nothing but admiration for the producers of Facing the Giants. They set out to make a small budget film for a specific audience, and succeeded beyond everyone's wildest expectations. They went after their audience with skill and all engines firing, and did very well. But it seems to me that Facing the Giants and Fireproof are not so much cracking open the culture as preaching to the choir. I don't mean that in a negative sense, but rather that they know their target audience, and are successfully making movies aimed at them.

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