I hope this won’t sound like those chatty Christmas letters that reprise family doings and accomplishments of the year past.
Still, I have to brag a little about the Reel as we roll into our fourth year of putting you into the loop of Chicago film production.
In 2005, the Reel’s readership surged mightily to a subscriber base of around 20,000! That puts our readership higher than any other regional publication, print or virtual.
Most of our readers live in the Chicago area, which attests to the large (and under-reported) number of area filmmakers. Many readers are located in Los Angeles (lots of former Chicagoans there), and in other film markets where they want to know what’s going on in Chicago.
We’re also very proud of our editor Ed Koziarski. Besides being an excellent writer and chronicler of indie films, his filmmaking skills were publicly acclaimed this year.
“Homesick Blues,” the trailer Ed and his wife Junko produced for a proposed feature, won three top festival prizes this fall.
Which brings us to surprising Indie Nation, a.k.a. Chicago’s independent film community. Ed’s roundup story (above) reveals more activity in independent film production than any other production sector?although not in dollars.
Also noted in the year past: The emergence of several new companies formed to basically serve indie needs, many more national reality TV shows coming out of Chicago, and more post houses incorporating other services based on the Digital Kitchen model.
If you want to get a fuller picture of the year past, the 1,000 stories we published in 2005 repose in Archives, one of our best-read features.
And that brings me to a extra special thanks to our advertisers; to talented Webmaster Rachel Benoit; to Maria Kluchenek, advertising sales rep and good friend; to Nancy Lasch, our indispensable administrator and angel; and to all of our readers.
Here’s wishing you a Merry Christmas and the most Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year ever!
