After months of planning and long hours of ground work securing needed sponsor support, Team Summit Productions pulled off a totally unique and wildly successful event on Oct. 11.
The first-ever Reno Snowmobile Film Festival was a hit with fans, sponsors and with the venue host, the Grand Sierra Resort & Casino in Reno, NV.
Show organizer and Team Summit rider Jeff Schauer, along with Jeff Aiello from Team Summit, put together a one-night event that showcased two of the top snowmobile films released this season, Boondockers Alive by Dan Gardiner Films and Elevation 4 by Team Summit Productions. This was the first "snowmobile film-specific" festival ever held and also featured clips from several other new films including Thunderstruck 7, 509 Films' Evolution and Extreme Velocity: SledHeads 4.
The event was promoted on local Reno radio stations, thanks to money put up by Arctic Cat, while Team Summit blanketed northern California, Nevada, Utah and Oregon with posters and flyers. The result? Nearly 1000 people packed the Grand Sierra Theater and enjoyed on-stage displays with the newest sleds provided by Sierra Sport & Marine in Reno, Arctic Cat and Cope & McPheters Marine.
A charity raffle was also held during the event, raising more than $3,000. Team Summit split the proceeds, sending checks to the Blair Morgan Family Trust to help the champion snowmobile racer's recovery after being paralyzed in a motocross accident and the CNSA (California-Nevada Snowmobile Association) to help outfit its new safety trailer.
"The turnout caught us all by surprise," Aiello, owner of Team Summit Productions and producer of the Elevation sled-film series, said. "Jeff [Schauer] is a great promoter and works like a madman. He did a great job getting sponsors and the venue on board. Reno is a perfect place for an event like this and it showed with the incredible response we got."
Festival goers traveled from as far away as Seattle and Salt Lake City to enjoy the night and mingle with sled-film celebs like Dan Gardiner, Mark Mesenbrink, Dan Bush, Anthony Oberti, Phatty Dyer and Ryan Nelson.
Due to the success of the inaugural event, plans are now underway to expand the film festival into a two-day snowmobile expo next year at the Grand Sierra Resort, featuring more film titles and vendor displays.
For more information on how to become a part of the Reno Snowmobile Film Festival 2009, visit www.teamsummit.net.