This Savage Art

No, not the 1991 Nicolas Roeg film. Here is the brutal reality of making the small, personal low-budget digital film, Puccini For Beginners.

It begs the question, why do you need a production company at all?

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CinemaTech has some great coverage of a filmmaker panel, Creative Independence at Sundance. Names like Ted Hope, Christine Vachon and Todd Haynes speak of the importance of final cut, why digital is giving us more choice then we know what to do with and why simultaneous release will do more harm than good for the rising independent filmmaker.

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Sundance Film Festival 2006 winners announced.

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Today is the memorable day. It marks the release of the Steven Soderbergh film, Bubble. It’s being released in theater, on cable with DVD to follow in a couple of days. Do I think Bubble is going to shake the rafters? Probably not. It’s a small experimental film BUT it will set a precedence.

Cinematical has an interview with Mark Cuban and his thoughts on this. Keep in mind when reading this that Cuban is a theater owner. So if the creation and distribution of smaller, more challenging films is something you want to see, participate in this experiment by supporting this film and films like it.

Oh yeah, also released today, Big Momma’s House 2. You could go see that too.

Some more thoughts from Cinema Tech.

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In my attempt to include more blog entries related to the craft of acting I came across this article via the Association for Psychological Science. It reveals how actors train themselves to memorize entire scripts effortlessly.

Anyone with links to interesting sites about the craft of acting please leave links in your comment.

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This one took me off guard. Usually cast as the heavy in almost 60 films, Penn turned in solid performances in Reservoir Dogs, At Close Range, Short Cuts and what I think was a totally underappreciated one in The Funeral.

Chris Penn‘s cause of death is unkown.

Related from Cinematical.

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Yesterday, IFC Entertainment announced that it was going to release a group of at least 24 films theatrically and on demand — day and date — this year under the new distribution banner First Take. Later this week 2929 Entertainment will be launching Steven Soderbergh’s Bubble in the theater and on DVD along with screenings on HDNet.

With this being the week that cracks the present distribution model in half, let’s add one more log to the fire. Withoutabox, the online film festival submission service, announced the launch of The Distribution Lab,

“a new program that will offer a suite of services to support filmmakers who plan to release their films themselves in various ways, including theatrical, DVD and on demand distribution. As part of the new program, participants will have access to ticketing, catalog management, accounting and online social networking and marketing solutions. A plan to offer DVD fulfillment and download distribution is also in the works.”

I have used Withoutabox and if these future services are up to par with it’s bread and butter service it could be a good thing for filmmakers around the world.

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Sundance Film Festival 2006 begins today. Here’s some early coverage from around the net:

Cinematical
The Reeler
IndieWIRE
The New York Times
Wired

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From MovieMaker Magazine, a nice collection of interviews from all positions of filmmaking. Worth a look.

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A more detailed look at the features of Celtx can be found here. The more I read about and play with it the more excited I get about using this application. The future looks bright for this self-contained friend of the independent filmmaker.

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