A locally written and produced movie
Director Nicholas DiBella grew up in Greece and graduated from Cardinal Mooney High School. After high school he pursued a career in engineering and began working at Eastman Kodak as an Optical Technician for camera lenses. In this field, Nick began to develop his passion for photography and shooting short movies, which then became his hobby.
When Kodak offered employees a program called the “Camera Club,” the employees were invited to borrow different cameras from Kodak for use in personal projects. This is when Nick’s interest really took off. He recalls borrowing the Super 8 camera to shoot short films with on his weekends. It wasn’t long before one of his films ended up on Showtime as a filler piece between movies. This really fueled Nick’s passion for filmmaking.
In the early 90’s Kodak offered buy-out plans to their employees as an effort to scale back on their workforce. Nick and his wife agreed that was a good time for him to leave and begin to turn his passion into a career. This was a risky venture but Nick devoted a lot of his heart, time and energy into learning how to write screen plays.
Seven years after Nick left Kodak, he began selling his scripts. They were initially sold to production companies for cable films, but the landmark moment was when Warner Bros. purchased one of Nick’s films. “That sort of changed everything. It was a validation and it made me believe that I could write on that level,” DiBella says. Warner Bros. then hired Nick to write another screenplay, which led to more screen writing work for him.
Nick’s first full length movie was “Kings Faith,” released in 2013. The movie was the first production under Faith Street Films, which consists of local investors with the aim to produce inspirational entertainment. Nick wrote and directed the movie and it was produced with Pastor Kirk Dueker of Hope Lutheran Church on Vintage Lane in Greece. When Pastor Kirk was asked how he got involved with this project, he said it was “divine intersection.” Both Pastor Kirk and Nick felt this movie was a great way to reach an audience that isn’t typically reached in Christian themed movies, with a message of hope and inspiration. “King’s Faith” became a great success reaching two million viewers.
After “King’s Faith” was completed, Nick began working on Public Service Announcements for Bivona, a local Child Advocacy Center. Here, Nick worked on a PSA about the sexual abuse of children. This led Nick to learn all about the staggering statistics of this horrible crime. “I felt that perhaps we could shine a light on this very important subject through our movie and maybe in the process we can impact a few lives. No one should have their freedom stolen like that; or their joy,” DiBella says.
This is where the seed of “Wildflower” was planted. “Wildflower” is the second film of Faith Street Films. It is written and directed by Nick and produced by Pastor Kirk and Jim Pavone.
Nick wrote “Wildflower” to be an “inspirational thriller,” a phrase Nick coined himself. “I wanted to come up with a story that challenged the genre a bit. Faith films are usually very safe and predictable, our goal with Wildflower is to engage the audience in a different way. So “Wildflower” started from that place. I was going to have our main character, Chloe, suffer from PTSD, which she does, but after writing a bit I felt we needed to go a little deeper, to have her a bit more broken and hiding a secret,” DiBella says.
“Wildflower” is about a gifted, resilient and spirited college student (Chloe) who finds solace from a difficult childhood in her art. Terrifying dreams begin to haunt Chloe, which leads her to believe that these dreams may be from a suppressed memory about the strange disappearance of a teenage girl 12 years ago. Chloe’s search to find the answers sends her on a journey that forces her to confront her own past traumas. The message in “Wildflower” is created to be universal and uplifting to the spirit through difficult times.
The entire movie was shot locally using the charm of the local towns such as Spencerport, Brockport, Clarkson, Holley, Greece and Fairport. When Nick was asked what made him choose these towns, he said, “It all started with the bridge. The bridge was a key set piece to the movie. I started thinking about the canal and the canal bridges. A lot of those bridges are one lane with so much character. Then I drove all along the canal from Lyons to Brockport. I felt the Spencerport Trimmer Road and Martha Street bridges had exactly what the movie needed.
Brockport felt like a college town, which was perfect for our story. The bridges of Spencerport merged nicely with that. We also shot in Fairport at an amazing church there (the First Baptist Church of Fairport) and used it as one of the other major sets to our film.”
Other locations included downtown Brockport and many of its businesses, a home in Clarkson, a home in Holley, the Sheriff substation, Unity Hospital in Greece, as well as Roberts Wesleyan College. Even local law enforcement appeared in some of the scenes, including Greece and Brockport Police officers and a Monroe County Sheriff’s Deputy.
Although the main actors and actresses are from Los Angeles, California, the community from Hope Lutheran Church and other town residents and business owners helped immensely to make this production run as smoothly as it did. The main stars often commented to the director and producers on how incredibly warm and welcoming the community was while they were here filming. Members of Hope Lutheran Church helped with man power, food service, set up and transportation. Nick remarked that the generosity of the Hope Lutheran Church was pivotal. “We couldn’t have made it without this church,” Nick says.
“Wildflower” had its theatrical release at Pittsford Cinema on February 5. It will be released to the public on DVD on April 5. There is a DVD release party at Alpha & Omega Christian store in Greece on Tuesday, April 5 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Nick DiBella will be there along with the other producers. The movie will be available at retailers such as Walmart and Amazon. In May it will be released digitally and can be purchased on ITunes or Digital TV. It will also be released internationally and will show in over 200 theaters in Latin America. In June, “Wildflower” will run on cable’s Lifetime Network and it is also expected to appear on Netflix by the end of 2016 or early in 2017.
For more information on the movie “Wildflower,” visit www.wildflowerthemovie.com.
