[3] On August 9, 2014 Hotline won First Prize for Best Feature Documentary at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.
Additionally, the telephone volunteers at the Anti-Violence Project are profiled, as are Alan Ross of the Samaritans in New York, crisis counselor Jamie Blaine of Nashville, Pastor Brent Furlong of Go Time Ministries in Pennsylvania, and Tonya Jone Miller of the Bay City Blues sex-line in Portland, Oregon.
Shaff, a former telephone psychic and suicide prevention hotline volunteer as well as reality television producer and director, shot the film at various locations across the United States.
"The jumping off point for working on the score for Hotline came after I listened to a Radiolab piece about phone phreaking that featured a blind boy with a difficult school and home life who said that he found comfort in the sound of a telephone dial tone," Shaff explains.
On August 9, 2014, Hotline won First Prize for Best Feature Documentary at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.