Director, Producer and co-writer: Brett Ray

Brett has years of experience in the TV and film industry. He has worked with such actors as Nick Nolte, Michael J Fox, Burt Reynolds and many more. From TV series like B.L. Stryker to movies like Doc Hollywood, along with many national commercials. Although he was always very artistic and loved to film, write and draw, some years ago Brett decided to walk away from Hollywood to pursue his other passion, motorcycle racing. After many successful years racing it was time to retire and focus on something he still had a love for, art, writing and movies. Brett has worked on many video projects in the last few years getting his groove back such as commercials, music videos and yes, even wedding videos. But has also shot a couple of features for some other companies which has all lead to this. His own personal project. By wearing many hats and being a producer, director, DP, co-writer and editor along with owning all of his own cameras and production equipment it has made the thought of taking on a project this big much easier and really cut the cost of production.  But it’s still a big project and we are going to need much more help.

 Our two leading men.

Garrett Skillings                                                                                                John Mitchell Jr.

This film only came about and is happening with the help and belief of many, many people. It originally started as a music video for the song “Dixie’s Still Holdin’ On” written by Denny Dardeen which lead into another song and video.  But as we got into making the videos and started meeting the people involved with the re-enactments, we knew we wanted to do more. We were inspired by all the people that use their time, spend their own money and work so hard to share our nations history with the people attending these events.  History is too important and can’t be lost, so Letters Home was born. Denny and Brett set out to write a short film based on the characters Denny had created.  Now having many great locations acquired, many props like a dozen canons, guns, costumes, wagons, carriages, many horses and 100’s of re-enactors from infantry to cavalry getting involved we decided why not, let’s make a feature. Also, we have the entire film score, all original music written by Denny for the film. Our ultimate goal with this is to create a series. It would be based around the “Pen” and we could follow it as it moves from hand to hand and documents many historical events though the history of the United States. We could go both forward and backward in time to tell stories.  Did I mention we have a fort?

The story is about two young men, cousins, that make a promise when they are kids to go on an adventure when the get older.  That adventure leads them from Southern Illinois in the spring on 1861 to Charleston South Carolina where they witness the battle at Fort Sumter. That initiates a radical change in the country and it’s people. On their way back home they see the country prepping for war and the conflict erupting between friends, neighbors and even family over where their loyalty lies. Not knowing that the road they are on themselves will lead them to war. All the while Garrett documents their trip with his pen his momma gave him before they left. With the promise to his mother that he will keep her informed, he carefully writes her every chance he gets and gives us a glimpse of the country at war, in his “Letters Home”. 

We are so lucky to have the best cast you could ask for. And we have some real “characters” too. They have and amazing look, work hard and are happily willing to put in all the time we ask for so far. 

This is where all you out there really come into play. Whereas the $75,000 goal we have in place will get us across the finish line with having the rest of our meals, wardrobe, props, insurance, along with some pay covered. More will just help us finish the movie faster and help make it even better. Let’s say we can raise $150,000, that will allow us to hire more crew, shoot faster and through the week instead of just on weekends when everyone is available. Meaning we can pay them. We could afford to put cast and crew up in nearby hotels instead of sending everyone home. Which in some cases my be two hours or more away. We could get caterers and save the time of some of our crew in preparing meals and snacks for everyone. As you know, there are so many things that extra money can do to help production. Let’s say we can do even better, maybe $300,000 or more. If we hit that goal or higher, we can even get some new equipment to help. And as mentioned above, we will go straight into the next film in a series. So hopefully we have sparked an interest and made a compelling enough case (or good enough rewards) that you will get behind us and bring this amazing collaboration of people and places to the finish line.  Really it’s all up to you now. We are asking for your help to help us make this movie.

Thank you!

  Letters Home is a Titan-Entertainment production.