When Bloomington residents supported a group of students making a film about an amateur bike race, Tom Miller said he received undeniable Hoosier hospitality.
With support from the town and his crew, Kirsten Powell, Peter Stevenson and Ryan Black, Miller sought to document the 2013 and 2014 Little 500 races from the riders’ perspectives in his film “One Day in April.”
After years of planning, fundraising and shooting, “One Day in April” premiered last April to a sold-out audience at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.
Miller, an IU alumnus, is taking his film on the road to coincide with its digital release. His first stop is Friday at the IU Fine Arts Theater.
Miller and his team intentionally waited to digitally release the film closer to this year’s Little 500, Miller said.
“It’s kind of like a Christmas movie,” he said. “We could’ve put it out in November or something, but it makes way more sense to put it out around the race when people are excited about it.”
“One Day in April” follows two men’s and two women’s bike teams as they prepare both physically and mentally for the upcoming races.
“We wanted the film to be gender-equal,” he said. “I can’t think of another sports film that spends equal time on both men and women.”
Miller said he and his team didn’t have a clear plan of what to film at first, but they knew they wanted to capture the perspective of the riders.
Before they could do that, he said they needed to earn the trust of the riders.
He and his team spent at least six hours a day filming the riders training, he said.
“You really have to be there every day and get people to accept you and put some faith in that you’re capturing stuff,” he said. “That way, they don’t have to be putting up walls, so they can really be themselves.”
Once the riders felt more comfortable around Miller’s small film crew, he said the riders began to open up.
He said the crew began to notice narratives develop during the months of shooting.
“The beauty of the Little 500 is that from the team that places first to the team that places 33rd, there’s a really interesting reason behind why somebody would dedicate so much time and energy to something like Little 500,” he said.
Miller said the team had to use crowd-funding websites to finance the film.
Members of the community were excited about the film once they saw the first trailer, and the film started receiving donations, he said.
“There are all these people who care about the Little 500, who are willing to invest in the idea of the film,” he said. “There was no actual film at the time. It was just us working hard in a basement. I think that made a huge impact on us from a morale standpoint.”
Because Little 500 isn’t run by the NCAA, Miller said they had easy access to the riders.
The IU Student Foundation, which runs the races, was supportive of the film from the beginning, he said.
“The Little 500 is not some giant business,” he said. “It’s a tradition we all know about, but at the end of the day, it’s college kids getting on a bicycle and riding around a track.”
Since its theatrical release, “One Day in April” has screened at the Heartland Film Festival, the Indy Film Festival and the Cinequest Film Festival.
Miller said they would like to screen the film anywhere there are Hoosiers who want to see it.
Regardless of where the film goes, Miller said he is proud of his team for how far they’ve come with it.
“The real payoff, for me, was being able to say at the end of the day that I made the film I wanted to make,” he said. “That was all I cared about. I’ve always felt it’s better to try and fail at the thing you really want to do than spending your time doing something you don’t really believe in.”
