By Jenny Abel – This post will begin with a brief disclaimer: I have made only one film. I had no idea what I was doing when I started working on this film. I’m not even sure if I’ll ever make another film because I’ve been working on the same film for ten years. If there is a New Breed geriatric ward, perhaps I should be wheeled over there immediately. So why am I here?

Well, I found out that doing things the hard way can sometimes lead to fruitful results. It also helps if you have a partner in crime, even if he/she is equally new to the filmmaking process. If you’re a patient and persistent person without any money, working on a project that you care deeply about, and continual rejections do not phase you, then you might be curious to read more about the story behind ABEL RAISES CAIN.

First of all, I’m an only child born to two eccentric parents. I was raised in Westport, CT, an affluent town about an hour north of New York City. The Abels living in Westport was like ‘Sanford and Son’ meets ‘Dynasty.’ Let’s just say, we always stuck out like sore thumbs. But even though we were outsiders, I felt pretty lucky to have two funny and interesting role models as parents.

I started a career in music when I was very young and by the time I got to college, I was burnt by all the rehearsing and performing. So I eventually dropped music altogether, switched majors and transferred to Emerson College in Boston, where I studied TV and Video Production. My ‘real’ education started when I moved to LA and got a job working in the film industry at a company that made killer octopus, shoot-’em-up and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. After 5 years of shipping weird and sometimes dangerous props to Bulgaria and bending over backwards for ’stars’ like Steven Segal, I grew tired of working on other people’s films. Time was ticking and I wanted to focus on my own creative project. So I left my job and went to work full time on my film.

ABEL RAISES CAIN is a documentary about growing up with my lovable yet slightly demented father, Alan Abel, who is known for his elaborate and outrageous media stunts – such as Euthanasia Cruises, Omar’s School for Beggars, The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, promoting a KKK Symphony Orchestra, marrying Idi Amin to a WASP, etc. While humorous on the surface, his pranks poke fun at larger social and political issues while playing on the media’s gullibility and weakness for sensational stories.

Since this was our first film, Jeff and I learned by doing. (Jeff, by the way, is my co-director and boyfriend, who my dad set me up with on a blind date 7 years ago.) We immersed ourselves in the project and tried not to become overwhelmed by the amount of archival material that we had to sift through. There were hundreds of hours of radio shows, TV appearances, old films, and thousands of newspaper clippings, letters and photographs. It was pretty crazy for two people to handle this looming mass by themselves. We’re talking six decades or more worth of stuff. My parent’s storage unit was busting at the seams, there was so much memorabilia. Plus we had shot over a hundred hours of modern day footage with my parents over the course of several years.

After wading through the seemingly endless archive, we began breaking the story down into essential topics. Jeff was integral to the whittling-down process since he has a background in news editing. Because I was so close to the subject matter, his input was invaluable at this stage – he provided the objectivity that I lacked. I logged, organized and did a preliminary assessment of the materials, then Jeff made his selects. We could not have completed post-production on the film without managing our time wisely, chipping away at different tasks simultaneously, and balancing creativity with organization. It really helped that our team had one anal retentive person and one creative mind. You’ll have to guess which one is which.

We had a pretty good idea that the tone of the piece should mimic my father’s unpredictable nature. We began building a storyline around a dozen of my father’s pranks that we would use as a means to guide the story along. Jeff and I did not want to create a dry, conventional, biographical documentary told in a chronological fashion. It wouldn’t do justice to the subject matter! Instead, our goal was to create an interesting, quirky portrait of an obscure underground prankster whom nobody had ever really heard of before. And rather than a boring documentary full of analysis, it would be a personal story told from my point of view, with gently planted subtext about the media and other sub-themes woven throughout. It took us close to a year just to write the script. But we didn’t grow impatient because we knew how crucial it would be to create a compelling story.

Although we were aiming to complete the fine cut in time to submit to Sundance and Slamdance, we tried not to feel rushed. I definitely do not advocate rushing a delivery – it will inevitably lead to mistakes, no matter how much of a perfectionist you are. But at the same time, I do believe in setting time frames, or else the project will drag on forever and never get completed. Sounds a little ridiculous coming from someone who has worked on the same movie for 10 years, I know.

So where are we now with ABEL RAISES CAIN and where are we going? Well, ever since our premiere at Slamdance ‘05, we have been promoting, marketing and self-distributing the movie. Self-distribution is kind of a misnomer because we’re not doing EVERYthing ourselves. We’re employing a hybrid strategy inspired by Peter Broderick, a DIY-friendly distribution consultant. We split up the rights in such a way that we control 100% of our US DVD sales while Films We Like, Ron Mann’s company based out of Toronto, handles our distribution throughout Canada (non-theatrical, TV and DVD).

When we first started out, Jeff and I were able to close a few major foreign deals on our own, but we realized there was only so much we could do by ourselves. Now we’re working with a foreign sales agent (Ewa Bigio of Smiley Film Sales) who is continuing to pitch our documentary to additional territories as well as develop a narrative based on my dad’s life story. Without a doubt, participating in the From Here to Awesome showcase this past year led to some pretty cool opportunities. Indieflix and Heretic Films are now delivering our movie across a variety of digital platforms in the US, including Amazon Unbox, Caachi and Netflix. These outlets have really opened up a whole new audience for us and we’re pretty excited about it.

In retrospect, I am glad that we didn’t sign an all-encompassing deal with one entity back when we were touring the film fest circuit. We wouldn’t have had the freedom that we’ve enjoyed these past few years, doing whatever we please with the film. The downside is that we’ve remained somewhat obscure and it’s been difficult reaching a wider audience. Right now I’m working on connecting the movie with my dad’s underground fan base and exploring different ways to get the word out about the film. Some ideas I have are merging the film’s site with my father’s website, and helping my dad set up a video blog where he can rant freely.

Now that we’re nearing the end of this crazy journey, if I could go back in time and do it all over again, I would definitely do one thing differently…I would keep a better record of our fans, begin building a mailing list early on, getting people to sign up at screenings, and maintaining it religiously throughout the entire project. Staying in touch with everyone and sending out pertinent and timely updates, (making sure NOT to pester, only inform) is something I will treat as a priority on our next film.

I joke that I could easily spend the rest of my life promoting ABEL RAISES CAIN, but the truth is, we are winding down now and Jeff and I are on creative hiatus while we work production jobs to pay the bills that have piled up since we began working on the movie together in 2003.

Even though we won’t be actively engaging in a collective new work just yet, we’ll certainly continue brainstorming ideas for our next film…a project that may or may not feature my ‘crazy’ parents.

Want to read more stories from the front lines visit the NEW BREED site.

Jenny Abel initially began a career in music, having studied the viola since the age of 8 and receiving a scholarship to attend music school. But she decided to take a completely different path in life and transferred to Emerson College in Boston, graduating with a degree in video and television production. Jenny moved to Los Angeles shortly thereafter and began coordinating overseas productions for Nu Image and Millennium Films. Over the course of four years, she helped the company produce twenty-six pictures. In 2003, she left her job so that she could focus on finishing her own project, “Abel Raises Cain,” her first feature documentary.