For those beer enthusiasts that haven’t heard or seen the trailer for the, to be released, Michigan Beer Film. You’re in store for something that is sure to excite you and possibly make you crave a libation. I recently had the opportunity to ask a few question of the Director, Kevin Romeo of Rhino Media Productions in Kalamazoo, Michigan, about the film and what viewers should expect.

Where did the idea come from for The Michigan Beer Film?
The idea came from a meeting with Habitat for Humanity of Kalamazoo where one of the individuals in the meeting commented that Rhino Media should interview Bell’s. After stewing on it for a day or two, I asked myself how do I do this? After talking about it we decided that why not expand from our client videos and let’s make our own short film.

What is the film about?
The film is about the Artistic and Economic aspects of the craft beer industry in Michigan.

Why did you choose to pursue the Artistic and Economic direction verses “I just want to talk about how people love beer”?
There is always some sort of mystery or something films are trying to answer or uncover. Such as Food Inc trying to answer “what’s in our food?” and that’s what we wanted to do with this film as well. We also didn’t want to make just an hour long promo video saying “Beers great and Michigan is awesome come see it.”

Additionally one conflict point that has started to emerge in the story, driving the economic part of the story, is how the breweries are being challenged with their large scale growth and the brewers are being thrust into needing to lead their company and their employees faster than they ever thought they would have to.

Speaking about leading breweries. In all your brewery visits for the film did you come across brewers who wished to be a Bell’s?
Non of the brewers wish to be someone else. They respect Bell’s, but they want to be different. However, the cool part is that they all pay homage to Bells. In every interview we did, someone brought up Larry Bell saying things like “oh Larry Bell, we wouldn’t be here without Larry Bell just like no musician would be here without Bob Dylan.”

What breweries have you visited so far?
So far we have filmed at about six major breweries Greenbush, Bells, North Peak, Paw Paw Brew Co, Dark Horse and Founders. Ideally we want to cover as many breweries across the state as we can, but we obviously can’t cover them all.

It was a great pleasure interviewing Kevin and he definitely is very passionate about his beer and Michigan. I hope you all have a chance to watch the trailer and get as excited as I am to see the film later this year. Also be sure to Like The Michigan Beer Film on Facebook and Follow what is happening with the film on Twitter.

[iframe]<iframe src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/57173343?portrait=0″ width=”500″ height=”281″ frameborder=”0″ webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe> <p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/57173343″>The Michigan Beer Film Teaser – Rhino Media Productions</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/rhinomediaproductions”>Rhino Media Productions</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>[/iframe]