The Creation Of ShadowRing (Video)

Free Mind Films’ New Feature-Length Documentary

Author James Perloff and Free Mind Films producer Chris Emery join James on this week’s Real Politik to discuss ShadowRing, Free Mind Films’ most ambitious project to date. The full-scale historical overview of the world’s power elite is scheduled for release June 6th on DVD and June 11th via pay-per-view. Perloff and Emery explain their roles and experience in the film financing, production and marketing.

Directed by Austin Green (A Noble Lie, State of Mind) ShadowRing provides a broad-ranging history charting the hidden influence of the transnational power elite on American foreign and economic policies over the past century. The film’s script was written by Perloff, based on his books, The Shadows of Power (1988) and Truth is a Lonely Warrior (2014), and narrated by Hollywood producer and actor Kevin Sorbo.

ShadowRing features interviews with Perloff, G. Edward Griffin, Rosa Koire, Ben Swann, Jim Marrs, Gerald Celente, Joyce Riley, Katherine Albrecht, Aaron Dykes, Adam Kokesh, Jack Blood, and many more.

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Interview Highlights

Free Mind Films co-founder and producer Chris Emery explains that the financial resources available to produce his company’s third film were abundant because of the impressive return on investment from the previous two projects. The new film will also be distributed over a wider array of platforms. “You try to establish as broad a base as possible,” he notes. “DVD sales were paramount with the first two films. We were very fortunate to be on board with some very strong radio show hosts. Even when we got the third film funded we had a lot of different platforms available–video-on-demand and DVD, and then some independent distribution; we had an agent signed in LA. We also made a short list of who we wanted to narrate this film. Kevin [Sorbo] was on that short list. There were some other notable actors who were tacitly interested. They had projects out of country–Barbados, Mexico, Finland. We just couldn’t get them on board and there’s no way we could match the fee they were getting.”

In this regard securing an established agent was key. “You have to get in with an agent that knows the business and that’s been in the business for a while,” Emery explains. This was how they eventually landed Sorbo to do ShadowRing’s narration, after which they signed the person on as the company’s full time publicist and agent. “We’re in to 14 different secular, faith-based and liberty-based market shares that we never knew existed when we got the film funded.”

James Perloff had already done some scriptwriting back in the 1990s.

I had a bit of background in screenwriting formatting, but I just basically took the content I had put in to the first seven chapters of Truth is a Lonely Warrior. Those actually emerged from a PowerPoint talk I’d been giving in public arenas on the shadow government. So actually the presentation I had been giving which became the first chapters were already geared toward a visual format … What I was aiming to do with this film is to give people a primer–something you can share with people who aren’t knowledgeable, have not immersed themselves in the alternative media as we have done. Basically we cover things like shadow government, Council on Foreign Relations, Federal Reserve, false flags, and media control.

Emery explains that he has learned a tremendous amount about film financing and promotion since working on Free Mind Films first production, A Noble Lie. “We have a much better, stronger, and more broad distribution structure. Let me put a posit out there for any filmmakers that are considering getting in to the business,” he continues.

You can have an outstanding film–the best ever made. But, if you don’t have the distribution set up it’s going to die on the vine and you won’t recoup your costs. So you really have to be cognizant [that if] you’re going to make a good film be sure you have people out there, and not just within the circle of your friends or Facebook contacts. Have somebody professional come on board, even if you have to give them financial interest in the project. Make sure they’re on board from day one so you know you have that to fall back on once that film’s ready to be released.

ShadowRing covers terrain that most conventional journalists and academic researchers won’t examine. The fact that the documentary mainly features interviewees from the alternative media distinguishes it from many others relying on well-known pundits and similarly established “experts.” “I look at ourselves as being like attorneys in a courtroom appealing to a jury,” Perloff observes.

Perhaps we’re to prosecutors in this case, and we’re making the case that crimes have been committed against the American people, and the defense attorneys are the mainstream media. What we’re trying to show is that our case is far more compelling and far more rational than the other side’s case, which is really founded on lies and CIA funding. The truth has a way of appealing to people’s minds.

We’re counting on the viewers of htis film to be like good jurors, and to view this without bias. They love to throw “bias” and character assassination at the alternative media. They say, “You guys don’t have the academic degrees.” But if you look at what’s happened in academia, they’re been funded by this oligarchy’s foundations. Money talks. SO what you mostly get is the establishment’s viewpoint–the approved viewpoint. So we’re counting on people to see that our view of history is one that makes sense.

Alongside Perloff’s aforementioned book, Truth is a Lonely Warrior, the ShadowRing documentary highlights the media’s role in convincing the American people that they live in a functioning democracy. “The two most commonly mistaken concepts,” Perloff notes,

are, Number One, Our government would never do that to us and, Number Two, If it did it would tell us about it on television news. Here’s the thing: The people at the top have trillions of dollars. They use that money [for influence]. This can be documented. Ferdinand Lundbergh’s very impressive book, Sixty Families (1937) where he talks about this oligarchy in America hiding behind the trappings of democracy. He has a chapter in there on newspapers and it’s fascinating to go back 80 years to see how he documents it. He goes form coast to coast, and he shows how every major newspaper in America was under the control of what he called the 60 richest families in America.

They have always known that the key to advancing their agenda is to control what the public thinks. If they want to get people to vote for their candidates, you’ve got to own the newspapers and hire the writers, who are going to make them vote for those candidates. You’ve got to own the newspapers to build up support for wars, and to make people think that the false flag was a credible event. Owning the media is part and parcel of their plan. And that’s why alternative media is so vital for people to be in touch with.

Professor James F. Tracy is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University. James Tracy’s work on media history, politics and culture has appeared in a wide variety of academic journals, edited volumes, and alternative news and opinion outlets. James is editor of Union for Democratic Communication’s Journal Democratic Communiqué and a contributor to Project Censored’s forthcoming publication Censored 2013: The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2011-2012. Additional writings and information are accessible at memoryholeblog.com.