Where does passion come in and skills fall short when it comes to how to make a movie or film. You can be an actor, cinematographer (DP), director or anything you want on the set if you have one thing and it's not skills!
Skills can be bought or learned
Skills can deteriorate
Skills are too competitive
This is where passion comes inFollow me on Posterous: http://omarel.posterous.com
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Sometimes I wish I bought the 5DII or 7D, but have to start somewhere right? Now if I can only be as good as my friend Matt Brue of Capture Studios, a Minneapolis-based low cost filmmaker... Time to learn Final Cut Pro.
Filmmakers Arin Crumley and Kieran Masterton have raised $12,000+ on Kickstarter.com, which enables them to launch OpenIndie.com on the 1st of March 2010. The website promises to deliver the following features -
Arin Crumley and Kieran Masterton continue to raise money to build more features on the website. They are still asking filmmakers to donate $100 in exchange for site membership and 1 hour free consulting.
Kickstarter.com is a crowd funding tool that helps you raise the capital required for a new project or enterprise by appealing to large networks of ordinary people for small donations.Audiences can discover films they want to see, request a screening in their area, put on a screening of any film on the website and share revenue with the filmmaker. Both independent filmmaker and audience now have the ability to measure the demand of any film in any area.
We've seen the model work for Four Eyed Monsters in 2005. We've seen the model work wonderfully for Paranormal Activity in 2009. OpenIndie will make the model accessible to all filmmakers in 2010. Development of the website will take place over time; depending on the success of the filmmakers' Kickstarter campaign.
Arin Crumley and Kieran Masteron are asking filmmakers to donate $100 in exchange for site membership and 1 hour free consulting. There's an opportunity here for independent filmmakers to take advantage of Crumley's experience with alternative media and self-distribution.Open Indie has the potential to change the way independent filmmakers distribute their films and make independent film production a sustainable enterprise. It's an attempt to reinvent the traditional distribution model with alternative media that pays filmmakers first.
If you haven't yet learned about machinima filmmaking, here's a wonderful free tool to get you started.
Speaking at the Power to the Pixel forum (see 'Power to the Pixel: Making Sense of Cross-media'), at this month’s Times BFI London Film Festival, the former CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute exploded many of the myths of traditional film distribution. To audience cheers, Newman revealed how indie directors can actually make more money by releasing their work for ‘free’. The first thing to understand, says Newman, is that traditional distributors’ advances for indie movies are very small: $15,000 is average, rising to $50,000 for a Sundance award-winner. The second is that most demand rights in perpetuity. Adapting an article by Wired magazine co-founder Kevin Kelly to the movie industry, Newman proposed eight ways for film-makers to be ‘Better than free’. Read more..jawbone.tv
Eugene Hernandez: DIY v. DIWO
by Eugene Hernandez (September 14, 2009)
Ted Hope yesterday at the Toronto International Film Festival. Photo by Eugene Hernandez/indieWIREToronto, Canada, September 14, 2009—How many of you have blogs? How many of you are on Twitter, on Facebook, or are curating a film series? Those are the questions that indie producer Ted Hope asked yesterday at a film financing conference here at the Toronto International Film Festival. He’s certain that web 2.0 tools and social media can bolster audience building and networking that are crucial to the survival of the sort of micro movies being made (and released) by independent filmmakers today.
Even more importantly, they may be crucial to the survival of film culture.
PREVIOUS WEEKLY COLUMNS:
09.08.09: SPC v. IFC | 08.30.09: Cinema | 08.23.09: Nadie Sabe Nada | 08.16.09: Movies, Now More Than Ever | 08.09.09: It Came From The 80s
Hope is a self-described recent convert to blogs, social networking and transmedia who said yesterday that he may not have all the answers yet, but he’s certain that if other filmmakers, producers and aficionados don’t take action now, we may lose our film culture. In his mind, it all starts with connecting with other “elitist film snobs” supporting the movies that we all care about.
According to Ted, we need to be watching, talking about and Tweeting about the movies that mean something to us.
“As much as I love making films and seeing films, I love talking about films even more,” Ted Hope said yesterday. To that end, he and business parter Anne Carey curate a regular series of screenings in New York City and they host a small reception after the showing. This week’s they’ll be showing Tze Chun’s “Children of Invention” at the Goldcrest Screening Room in Manhattan.
“If you are not bringing people to see the movies you love, if you are not spending time every day, there won’t be a culture that’s aiming for anything other than crass commercial explotiation,” Hope reiterated.
Ted’s comments come at a time when filmmakers are being asked to do more and more to get their movies seen. He’s saying that not only do individual filmmakers need to build an audience for themselves but they also need to find ways to contribute to a richer community that will embrace indie, foreign, and documentary films overall.
It’s not about “Do It Yourself” anymore. It’s about “Do It With Others” (to adopt a phrase being pushed by website IndieGogo).
Listening to Ted Hope advocate for elitist movies made me think of food activist Alice Waters, who last weekend at the Telluride Film Festival was speaking out in support of Slow Food, locally sourced ingredients and sustainable farming. Chatting with her, she emphasized a need for pooling resources and working together to support each others efforts.
When we consume movies (and food), we have to make choices. And, in order to create a sustainable business for producers and creators, we must spread the word about our tastes. On blogs. On Twitter. On Facebook. Etc.
At panel discussions and in conversations with filmmakers and friends I often advocate basic entrepreneurial approaches. To start with, filmmakers should not only have a blog or basic website, but be reachable via Facebook, Linked In or MySpace. It’s crucial to strategically curate a fan base.
Who are the fans of you and your work? Can they easily find you online? Are you engaged in a regular dialogue with them? The same advice applies to film critics, journalists, programmers and members of the industry.
Many of my own crucial filters for films and information are friends whose opinions I value and advice I trust, enhanced by their presence on Facebook, Twitter or individual blogs. Opinionated filmmakers with exceptional taste in movies, festival programmers who write passionate reviews, industry folks who blog consistently about film and technology. You get the idea.
It sounds rather basic, but many folks are still making sense of how to use Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other sites or tools. I am too.
At indieWIRE, or in general, how can we use these tools, and others, to bolster our community of creators, executives and fans?
Ideas?
Eugene Hernandez is the Editor-in-Chief & Co-Founder of indieWIRE and can be reached on his blog, through Facebook or via Twitter: @eug.
Comments
The actor Sharlto Copley (Wikus in District 9) makes a great appearance in here too. You can absolutely see how the concept built out in this short 6:30 piece was just born to be created into something bigger.
There's a political message in here too. The footage of South African locals talking about aliens was actually footage of director Neill Blomkamp interviewing Soweto residents about other Zimbabwean and Nigerian migrants.
Kind of an obvious allegory going on here-- aliens being a stand in for the 'other,' even among South Africans who suffered under apartheid.
District 9 was mind blowingly awesome. Can you even believe this is Neill Blomkamp's first feature film? I'm blown away, impressed and inspired.
As a 15-year user of Final Draft, I’m fairly accustomed to the program’s quirks and subtleties. I wasn’t really looking for an upgrade. But even I appreciated some of version 8’s feature refurbs and flourishes. For example, users who take advantage of Final Draft’s ScriptNote feature to give and get feedback from other writers will appreciate the readily accessible ScriptNote navigation controls, transplanted to the toolbar at the top of the main screen.
Similarly, newbies no longer have to search the drop-down menus to update their title pages; a button on the toolbar makes it quick and easy. Likewise, the Split Panels controls, which make it easier to view your Index Card outline and actual script pages simultaneously in parallel panels, have been relocated to this same prime real estate.
Final Draft 8 is also a lot easier on the eyes—literally. The once frail and marginally legible onscreen Courier font has gotten a collagen injection, making it plumper and easier to read. And the Zoom feature now boasts twice the range (75 percent to 300 percent) of its predecessor, facilitating a better user experience with today's large widescreen monitors.
Final Draft’s Index Card feature also gets a usability boost in version 8. The virtual index cards that are used for outlining and notes are now double-sided—one side displays scene notes and the other displays corresponding scene dialogue and description. Unfortunately, flipping the cards is a little clunky, as you have to select the appropriate Index Cards state in the View menu, which then flips all cards simultaneously. Though I really enjoyed the double-sided interface, I found myself wishing that I could just flip individual cards with a mouse click.
Also useful for story planning and evaluation is the newly added Scene View feature, which strips your script to its bare bones, displaying only slug lines, a little description, and page numbers. Most importantly, it lets you add a title to each scene, like “Hero Finds Amulet.” The resulting view essentially becomes a high-level skeletal outline of your story--very handy.
Final Draft 8’s Scene Navigator is a big improvement over previous versions’ Navigator function. First off, it’s now a floating palette, so you can leave it open all the time when you’re writing and use it to quickly navigate to portions of your script in progress. In addition, it now provides a variety of scene information in table format, including scene start pages, scene page count, and color coding. How is this useful? Well, one might color-code scenes according to whether they represent the adventure A-story, the romance B-story, or the humorous C-story. Thanks to color coding in the Scene Navigator, a single glance helps you identify improperly interwoven stretches of story.
Also new to Final Draft 8 is the Scene Properties Inspector floating palette. Here you can add and edit additional scene information, including notes and scene titles, as well as more color coding. Personally, I use it as a mini “grocery list” to make sure that I don’t forget any key ingredients of the scene when I’m writing.
Perhaps Final Draft 8’s most substantial change is its new XML-based .fdx file format, which allows Final Draft scripts to work seamlessly with a variety of third-party story planning, budgeting, scheduling, and storyboarding applications. The bad news: Previous versions of Final Draft are unable to open this new format. This could make it a little more complicated to script-swap with others who have not yet made the upgrade—which might irritate some users whose main reason for purchasing Final Draft was its universal, cross-platform compatibility.
The good news: Saving a script in the legacy .fdr format couldn’t be easier. But be forewarned that page count and pagination can vary when bouncing between Final Draft 7 and Final Draft 8 formats, and that can be irksome when your lean 110-page comedy puts on a few pages.
Overall, I was very impressed by the stability and formatting consistency of Final Draft 8. It does what it’s supposed to do, and it does it well. Veteran Final Draft users contemplating an upgrade can rest assured that all the bugs that plagued the release of version 7 didn’t show up for the picnic this time around. During 10 days of testing, I experienced nary a crash or freeze.
Also welcome was Final Draft’s continued commitment to multi-tiered customer support. In addition to e-mail support and live chat, Final Draft still provides 24/7 phone support, the first 20 minutes of which are free. Subsequent minutes will set you back a hefty $2.50 apiece, but when it’s 3 a.m. and your deadline is first thing in the morning, it seems like a bargain.
Final Draft 8 is simpler than ever for beginning users; subtle feature fixes, bountiful script templates, and top-notch support for the production rewrite process ensure that an aspiring A-list writer won’t quickly outgrow the software. But for existing users, the decision to upgrade may have less to do with new features than an increasing pressure to switch to the .fdx file format, which may follow in the footsteps of the .fdr format to become a new de facto industry standard.
This was a real pleasure to listen to re: the convergence between the industries and those who are leading the charge
It seems as if every day, a new deal is announced to turn a graphic novel into a high-profile feature like "300," "Watchmen" or "Wanted."
Development executives love the books, since they give a visual sense of what a film and its characters may end up looking like on the bigscreen.
But filmmakers are now hoping the launch of new comics will help promote properties moviegoers may not necessarily be familiar with before films bow at the megaplex.
Paradox Entertainment, the company that's developing a reboot of the "Conan the Barbarian" film franchise, inked a deal last week with Dark Horse Comics that will launch books for characters, created by pulp writer Robert E. Howard, that the shingle wants to turn into film franchises.
While Conan may be familiar among the masses, Dark Agnes, El Borak, Cormac Mac Art and James Allison are more obscure characters.
Earlier this year, Paradox and Dark Horse began publishing a series of Solomon Kane books to promote the shingle's upcoming actioner, based on the character played byJames Purefoy.
"Although it's a legacy character, a new generation had never heard of him," says Paradox president and CEO Fredrik Malmberg, who hopes the books help introduce the 16th-century swordsman to audiences, while turning into a viable publishing biz for the shingle.
Comicbooks like "Solomon Kane" often serve as prequels and establish characters, flesh out backstories and the overall world or storyline that will drive the pic's plot. The goal is to interest a new generation of fans who will recommend the film to others through a flurry of Internet chatter.
This summer, comicbook prequels were published to hype Paramount's reboot of "Star Trek" and Warner and Sony's "Terminator Salvation." A new series of books was handed out at last week's Comic-Con to tubthump Par's "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra."
In fact, the interest in comicbooks has grown so much in Hollywood that publishing one to help drive a pic has become a standard piece of a film's marketing campaign -- especially for major tentpoles.
"Studios have come to the realization that having a presence out there and the ability to build interest is valuable to a film," says Dark Horse prexy Mike Richardson. "We reach the same demographic the studios are trying to reach," namely 16- 30-year-old males.
Because of that demo, Malmberg sees comicbooks as "one component of a character or franchise launch."
But it's a strategy that needs to follow a set of rules in order to strike a chord.
"You have to do the book for the love of the game and not as a crass marketing play," says one studio marketing maven.
While that's easier said than done, it's why Paradox turned to Dark Horse -- the company is producing films (its recent credits include the "Hellboy" films and "30 Days of Night"), but publishing comicbooks is Dark Horse's core business.
"We tap into their editorial knowledge, so we're not just Hollywood types wishing for comicbook sales," Malmberg says. "You can't fool the readers. If it's not a comicbook, they don't want to read; they're not going to buy it. And if they don't buy it, they don't help your movie."
Dark Horse prefers publishing prequels that end right where the movie begins.
"We're happy to do the straight adaptations, but those are less fulfilling," Richardson says. "You're just retelling the story you'll see in the theater."
It's too early to tell whether comicbooks can serve as an effective marketing tool.
In the overall comicbook market, DC and Marvel overwhelmingly dominate the charts each month with their lineup of superheroes, creating little room for movie-based books to break through. And like other media, the comics biz is struggling, with a 10% decline in sales this year.
Yet TV networks have launched successful books to promote "Fringe" and "CSI," and keep older ones like "Angel" alive with fans. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" moves around 100,000 copies per run for Dark Horse. Even videogame companies have launched books for "World of Warcraft," "Mirror's Edge" and, soon, "Mass Effect" among others, to promote titles.
For a book to be considered successful, it needs to move 20,000 units per issue. Generally, trade paperback collections wind up breaking even or generating profits sincethey have a longer shelf life, carry higher pricetags and are sold at large bookstores.Books for "Star Trek," "Star Wars" or "Transformers" have been successful "because the fanbase is so rabid," says one senior comicbook agent. "The material sells no matter what."
A prequel setting up the first "Transformers" pic in 2007 was expected to sell a strong 50,000 copies overall, but wound up moving more than 1 million books for IDW Publishing. Another prequel book for this summer's sequel has also sold well.
Sales like that are usually unreachable for more unknown titles. Most wind up losing money.
Summit Entertainment sold only around 20,000 copies for a six-issue series, published by DC Comics' Wildstorm division, to promote its sci-fi actioner "Push." The run ended in February.
Paradox has done better with "Solomon Kane," so far. Its first five books have sold more than 57,000 copies.
"Comicbooks do a better job at helping set up a movie or TV show at a studio," says an agent who reps comicbook publishers and clients looking to adapt them or launch their own. "That's where you're going to make the most money. More obscure properties aren't going to sell enough to warrant attention."
Yet even if the books aren't successful, studios aren't risking too much by publishing them, at far less than $1 million for a run."We view comicbook publishing as a viable business that stands on its own," Malmberg says. "It's a profitable and growing business for us. You have to see the comicbook as one piece of a much broader launch so that the film becomes the big tentpole and all the other things can support it. This is a town of hype, so any buzz for a project is positive."
They say that the web will be overcrowded with bad filmmakers, because we can all make a film for nothing now. I don’t think that will happen to the exstent we think, with regards to feature films anyway. Why?
Making the film is easy (It’s tough) but compared to wearing the biz and marketing hat of self distribution, the vast majority of solely creative filmmakers won’t be able to handle the amount of work it takes. Or won’t be able to use one half of their head for creative, and other for biz.
I think we are in a GREAT time. The question is never “How do we distribute, deliver our content to consumers” That’s easy with so many platforms now. The question is how do we beat “Obscurity” To me, that the real challange!
filmmakers have to make themselves social media savvy (And that means “Social” two way, not plugging your film 24/7) We have to connect with potential fanbases. Take the time to cultivate them, give back. Its not just about “marketing”, that won’t work.
The other way in my opinion is “affiliate partnering” Finding our precise niche markets via all sorts of online businesses, organisations, groups. Things are certainly changing, but I see a lot of great opportunties ahead. Filmmakers are going to have to work REALLY hard now.
If you can call what you love doing work!