‘The world of an independent filmmaker is a world with no edge, with many long and winding roads, in which anything out of the blue can just emerge before you and make you ill, cry and give you this excruciating pain, too strong for you to believe it will ease. But the only weapon you possess is your passion, vision, determination, your strong belief in yourself and that crazy and exciting dream that gives you strength and something to look forward to. Even if deep down you know how hard it is to achieve it, you hold on to hard work, prayers, and hope.’

It’s extremely hard for any indie filmmaker to secure finance for their film, and it is even harder to get that first feature film off the ground with almost no money. So what are you going to do?

You have no choice but to find some rather unusual ways to get it done.
Eva’s Diamond is the perfect example of those many unusual ways. It has taken us more than two years of extremely hard work to get here. I now look ten years older since the beginning of Eva’s Diamond, my hair has turned grey, I’ve gone almost bold, with a few panic attacks in the way, a constant mental exhaustion and I almost broke up with my dearest partner because of Eva’s Diamond film. There are many more I will share with you when I’m in the mood:-) But this is life, huh? You don’t take risks, you have nothing.

I’m so very happy right now, just from the fact that the movie Eva’s Diamond is already in one piece, a story you can follow from the beginning ’til the end, and the trailers and many more things are on their way to be seen. I don’t know where it’ll go from now, but my hopes are that people watch it and love it and share it with friends and family until it goes as far as the other end of the world and that it somehow helps and inspires someone.

With a very little money, there’s only so much you can do. But when I watch Eva’s Diamond today, I ask myself, “How did I do it? Where did I get the money.” Then I look around me and see: my great God, friends, families, credit cards, loans, wonderful actors, crew, my partners in crime: Leo Baron and Roby Meola, and my youngest motivators Cody Spinks, and Dante Aris Niccolo, then it all makes sense. That’s how I did it, yeah!

I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for doing this to me:-) Whether you helped with an advice, a word, a hand, your time, your prayers, your house, location or looked after my beautiful demanding baby for a day or two, I’m forever grateful for this.

Thank you for joining me on this venture, this unusual way of making movies. One day I’d relate all the details to those who don’t yet know and together we’ll all laugh and/or cry about it:-)

Thank you for making everything possible.

Ice Neal xxx 2012