This Savage Art

Like death and taxes there is another certainty in life, technology and the hunger for it will never cease, ever. Recently, there is a lot of hub-bub over the simultaneous release of films theatrically and on DVD. Add cable to the mix like in the case of Steven Soderbergh’s Bubble, his new experimental film under the Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner banner 2929 Productions, and you have a three-pronged approach that might produce some serious returns. Cuban and Wagner also own HDNet and Landmark Theaters. Soderbergh is signed to direct two more features for 2929. The argument is that the industry will eventually cannibalize itself by utilizing this business model. It has yet to be seen.

photo credit courtesy of Donald Weber for the New York Times

I got a glimpse of how this might play out by seeing a banner ad on IMDB recently for Carlito’s Way:Rise To Power, the prequel to the Brian DePalma film starring Al Pacino. That DVD is to be released 9/27 with a theatrical release 9/30. That is an example of how a built in audience might actually go the extra mile and buy the DVD if they walk out of the theater satisfied. Take this one step further. I went to see A History of Violence on Friday night (more on that later) and Saturday my girlfriend and I started talking about the whole DVD distribution thing. Yeah, she’s good like that. What if they offered the DVD in the theater? As an impulse buy, if you were that into that film would you buy the DVD on the way out? I think you would. If Lord of the Rings offered a DVD at the door after ever film do ya think fans would have walked out empty handed? I don’t think so.

For some more thoughts on distribution check out CinemaTech and Blog Maverick and a New York Times article on Soderbergh’s approach to Bubble.

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Michael Lombardi as Michael Silletti aka “Probie” on Rescue Me

So this was the day of introductions. “Hi, my name is Monkey Brains and I am a hack writer/director who needs to be weighted down with an anvil long enough to finish anything due to this affliction called ADD that I wholly blame on the internet”. Around the circle, this is my name and this is my project. You get the picture. Like I mentioned before, I’m the new guy. The probie if you’re into Rescue Me. About a dozen or so in the Thursday night workshop. When it got to me I freaked out. I had a total meltdown. Maybe it was not being in this kind of vunerable situation for such a long time. Maybe just the usual fears of being a fraud. I felt sick to my stomach. So what occured next will be no suprise. Two tables joined together with tables all around I was centered outside the gap between them. I couldn’t keep it together and when it was my turn to speak up I just gagged and well, without going into too much detail, released. Let’s just say I was totally mortified and will not be returning next week or the week after that.

Gotcha! It didn’t go down like that but maybe one day it will. Everyone went through the projects they will be working on. I’m working on a short and The Face of the Earth. I have committed to reading a draft of the short on October 20th. I’ll make sure I don’t eat anything before class.

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I know, you’re looking at my progress bar for The Face of the Earth and you’re seeing nothin’. Nothing! I’ll be workshopping that but before you think I’m a total lazy slob I’ve been working on a short script that hopefully will become my next short film. There. Now I’m responsible. First draft, coming up!

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Using Google as a research tool is nothing new but to strengthen it’s power you might want to incorporate it’s e-mail alerts feature. Google Alerts will send you e-mail alerts when you set up the criteria you need and where you need it to come from. Comes in handy when you have to know the newest, latest.

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Here is the wrap-up I promised for RESFEST: Something I did this year that I didn’t last year was the Studio Tour ( photo of the studio Honest ). Departing from the Tribeca Arts Center we took a tour of five Manhattan based studios. All different sizes and levels. Just a little view of the process of going from concept to finished product, ya know, in the big city. Throw in a little swag. Loves me that swag! Bus driven, check. A/C, check. No lunch, blech. For $75 a pop, you think they could spring for a pastrami sandwich over at Katz’s. I walked over at the end of the tour from Rivington to help myself. I loves me some pastrami. Very cool overall to see how these studio operate. I have my own editing studio and was curious to see how the big boys do it.

I attended two short film programs, 1 and 3. What stood out from both? Flesh was the obvious attention grabber from the first program proving that art sometimes has to shock to grab your attention. It did. Images of planes flying into a pornographic Manhattan skyline screening only a few blocks from that actual reality four years prior almost to the day left some people taken back. Not speechless though. An audience member who had a brother lost in the falling of the towers spoke up and was outraged. I guess that’s the price of art.

Shorts Program 3 consisted of the more surreal. The latest from Chris Cunningham called Rubber Johnny proved to be as disturbing on the big screen as the little. Another excellent short that I found just as unsettling was Le Régulateur, an animated piece about child adoption in the future.

On the tech side I checked out some of the latest and greatest from Panasonic and Canon. They both marched out their new cameras. The HVX-200 Panasonic’s tapeless HD camera looked promising as did the XL-H1 from Canon. Observations of both cameras can be seen at zeroes and ones, my editorial blog.

All around good fun and a chance to see some cutting edge filmmaking. Check the tour schedule, there’s a good chance it will be coming through to a city nearby.

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I don’t know what got me here but after some snooping around IMDB and various name searches I finally found it, this short film that’s been haunting me. It’s called Whatever We Do and it’s an excellent slice-of life short about how you can’t say no to your fucked-up friends. You can feel the weight of these characters and that’s the reward you get when working with this kind of cast. It is superbly directed by Kevin Connolly better know for his portrayal of Eric Murphy on the HBO show, Entourage. There is some very recognizable, top-shelf talent in front of and behind the camera here. I’m glad I found it and hopefully so will you.

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To say David Cronenberg is a deep thinker is an understatement. He is responsible for some of the most disturbing images of the human psyche manifested into the mutated human form in film history. His work has been described as “venereal”.There is an excellent article in the Times that gets to the core of this filmmaker, one whom I’ve admired for many years. Truly in a class all his own, he is getting ready to release maybe his most accessible film to date, A History of Violence. I’m still pissed I got shut out of actually hearing him speak at the Museum of the Moving Image screening of the film. Oh well, another time, another place, Mr. Cronenberg.

photo credited to George Duncan and The New York Times

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It’s not breaking news that podcasting is becoming big. I heard about it around six months ago. It’s a great way to get your info out there and have a personal connection with an audience. How funny is that? Technology advances at the speed of light and podcasting brings us back full circle to the early days of radio which is now essentially dying as we speak. Gotta love it.

Anyway, I came across this one podcast that I’ve been listening to called the 2B Pictures Filmmaking Podcast produced by independent filmmakers Michael & Michele Bekemeyer. I just got done listening to the most recent one that illustrates the job and responsibility of the director. They could probably do about twenty podcasts on this subject alone. Go check it out for tips, thoughts and techniques on independent filmmaking. It also mentions this savage art… and my short, The Face of the Earth which is always nice.

A couple of other podcasts on the block are Filmmakers Pod and Creative Screenwriting Magazines Podcast. Both cover different areas in the filmmaking process but do it equally well with much to learn all around.

To add, there is a new section on the sidebar for podcasts that will probably grow over time. You can download these podcasts via the site or if you have the most recent version of iTunes there’s a whole section on podcasting. For more info on podcasting in general go here.

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