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Our films are aimed at a different target. We want to reach the person who would have trouble relating to an overt faith-based approach. We want to create films that deal in an artful and truthful way with struggles and moral dilemmas, and hopefully we will leave the audience considering answers that point gently toward forgiveness, healing, and life-affirmation. We're trying to reach an audience that is willing to ponder difficult questions, but doesn't want to be led by the hand—an audience that will, if we're successful, accept the invitation and begin the search themselves.

And apparently that strategy has a hard time finding an audience, right?

McLaughlin: Right. It leaves us between a rock and hard place, practically speaking, in terms of getting our work out there. The commercial film industry is leery of our kind of films, because it doesn't have a history of a "safe sell" in the marketplace. And much of the Christian market is leery as well, because the stories don't hit the nail directly on the head, and present gritty characters and situations or language that would be considered unacceptable. Commercial viability today is not associated with the genre of "drama" anyway; studios and big distributors tend to avoid it, even when that drama won top prizes at Cannes or Sundance. So one could say we're either masochistic for going down this path, or devoid of business sense, or perhaps just out of our minds. But those are the kinds of films we feel called to make.

Still, our experience with our first film, The Sensation of Sight, has been encouraging; at many screenings the feedback has been promising, as have been the user reviews that appear on sites like Amazon, Netflix, and IMDb. The film isn't for everyone, but we often hear people—Christians and non-believers alike—saying that they've never experienced a film quite like it, that it was a profound experience and stayed with them for days or weeks, and helped them with struggles in their lives. This lets us know that what we've set out to do hasn't been in vain, and provides much of the motivation to make our next film.

The Sensation of Sight (rated R for some language) is available here on DVD.

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