The banner headline on the film's website reads: "BRATS: Our Journey Home, a Donna Musil film featuring narration and music by Kris Kristofferson." For writer/director Musil, the journey was a seven-year filmmaking odyssey fueled by relentless passion. Being passionate about the subject matter is what kick-started this feature-length documentary about "growing up military," and being relentless is what ultimately got the film made, financed and delivered to an audience.

After film-funding agencies and broadcasters had raved about the project and made promises when Musil first pitched it to them, they failed to come through with funding. Undeterred, Musil dug deep into her own pockets and began shooting. An Army brat herself, she set up a website for the project and connected with her subjects by e-mailing brat groups everywhere. Response was overwhelming, and Musil spent two years collecting interview material, including talking heads of celebrity brats like Norman Schwarzkopf, Robert Duval and Kris Kristofferson.

Worried about money going out and not coming in, Musil set up an educational non-profit corporation, Brats without Borders. Donations ranging from $1 to $1000 poured in from the military community. Offers of B roll included brats' 8mm home movies and stock footage from military archives, broadcasters and even Disney.

Brat collaborators, advisors and crew came on board as well, either working for a fraction of their day rates or waiving their fees altogether (as did Kristofferson). Military brat and Hollywood veteran Timothy Wurtz offered his services as co-producer. He says it was the "concept-testing" mentality and limited vision of potential funding partners that ultimately propelled Musil and company towards taking BRATS on a four-walling road trip.

"They told us appeal for the movie was going to be limited. But they weren't thinking about its built-in market - the fifteen million American military brats all over the world," said Wurtz.

The documentary managed to gain entry into small festivals, but it wasn't reaching that built-in audience. Tired of Thursday afternoon festival screenings in venues where few people showed and nobody cared, Musil and her band of collaborators took BRATS on the road. First they built an e-mail database to book venues on military bases and organized their first tour to the 26 communities where the largest contingent of military brats lived. They hired a publicist to generate a buzz about the BRATS road show in the national press, while Wurtz himself contacted the regional media, often creating local headlines announcing that BRATS: Our Journey Home was "coming to a theatre very near you."

At every stop, BRATS played to packed halls, churches and theatres. Sometimes as many as four hundred exhilarated military personnel and their families turned out to watch their own stories unfold on the screen.

BRATS sales aren't of Billy Jack proportions, but they are impressive. The screenings are usually free or sometimes $5 to help pay for the venue rental, but after every show ten to fifty percent of the audience buys the DVD at $24.95 each.

At last count BRATS' marketing numbers look something like this:

• Website hits: 3.4 million
• Magazine articles: 55
• Radio and TV stories: 11
• Screenings: 100 (and counting)
• Revenues: mid six-figures in the black

While Wurtz is selling BRATS DVDs in the lobby, Musil is usually up on stage handling what often turns out to be an emotional Q & A session for both filmmaker and audience. The fledgling documentary maker admits the journey has been life-changing, and that the making and subsequent four-walling of BRATS has indeed brought her home. In a telephone interview from Denver, she reflected on the experience: "I will no longer say I'm going to make a film because I think it will do well. I want to make films that tell stories about which I am passionate."

Just like the itinerant movie showmen of yesteryear, Musil and Wurtz keep on rolling, bringing their road show to audiences in venues from Helen, GA, to San Diego, CA, and beyond. Through their non-profit corporation, they are planning to produce educational sequels and DVD companions.

Ryan Bruce Levey is president of international distributor, Vagrant Films Releasing, in Toronto. When asked in a telephone interview about do-it-yourselfers finding screens for their films, Levey waxed nostalgically but respectfully about movie shlockmeister William Castle. The renegade producer from the 1950s used promotional gimmicks such as "fright insurance" policies and flying inflatable skeletons to pull audiences into his B-movie horror flicks. Hokey? Yes. But Castle knew his audience.

Levey claims he knows within about thirty minutes into a film who the audience is, "and if there's an angle, I can usually see a marketing plan unfolding."

What makes a film worthy of a sales campaign? "A worthy film challenges you; it makes you think," says Levey. "So, make the film you want, but sell it."

His advice to DIY filmmakers goes something like this: Don't make a theatrical release the only prong of your sales strategy, but rather integrate finding a screen for your movie into other marketing activities. For starters, make sure you get your film reviewed and start a viral campaign.

"It's all one big sales thing," says Levey. "Be prepared for unreturned phone calls and chasing down reviewers and bookers who tell you ‘I lost the DVD.'" But, when you score your four walls, he urges, "You've got to make it an event."

Peter Biesterfeld is a documentary maker, freelance writer and professor of Documentary Production.