This Savage Art

While some sites are dicking around with reviews of Kung Fu Panda [I kid, I kid] there’s an avalanche of good stuff on the interweb today:

• A massive film resource database is here for all to enjoy. The Moving Image Source. Well…enjoy! [via The Reeler.]
• Writer/director/one of the reasons I pray to the film gods Paul Schrader and cinematographer extraordinaire Ed Lachman speak at BAM. [Video clips.]
• More Schrader. Notes from Kevin B. Lee on the underappreciated Light Sleeper.
• Steven Boone crashes Antoine Fuqua’s Brooklyn block party.
• How dare you disrespect Abel Ferrara!!!

Popularity: 25% [?]

Technology has upended everything from the music industry to shopping to how we get our news. Why should film festivals be any different? Scott Kirsner has a post announcing the first feature film, The Cult Of Sincerity, to debut on YouTube. That’s quite a feat and definitely raises some serious questions for any filmmaker creating content nowadays. New rules, more options, different workflows.

The film’s producers chose to just bypass the whole accept/reject process of the film festival and offer it up to whoever wants it for free. As compensation they will earn money if viewers sign up for a music service for a fee in order to watch the film online. It’s not the first film to set up this kind of structure but it’s obvious the distribution model is going in a different direction. One of the key questions that comes up is; will your film play better on the internet? Meaning, will it find its audience from online viewers versus a theatrical release? If you have a twenty-something post-college comedy [far from a new concept] like this one, your demographic is already sitting in the theater, their laptops. If you have an oddly sweeping, landscaped epic shot with anamorphic lenses on 35mm, maybe not.

Either way it seems that this new process of cutting out the festival middle man might have a serious trickle down effect. There are so many festivals right now, too many to even count [Okay, I'll look it up. Around 4,000 worldwide. Source: FilmFestivals.com.] Will online festivals and distribution put a crimp in real world film festival attendance? It seems that if festivals aren’t programming important, relevant films that need that exposure to push them into the stratosphere you might have an answer sooner than later.

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Like I promised, here are my notes from the IFP Conference. I’ve attended the Conference in the past and I have to say this was one of the better ones. I’m still not sure if it’s because I’m a little older, a little wiser or the IFP just started tuning in and listening to the attendees more. Some things can improve, they always can. One thought that kept rolling through my mind is here you have a room full of writers, directors and producers with projects in the works or looking for someone to help them get from A to B. It would be a great feature of the Conference if the IFP could arrange some sort of matchmaking scenario for these participants in the future. Another observation was that the average age of attendees seemed to be older where I remember a few years back the age was about twenty-something.

Overall I felt that there is one consistent feeling for the filmmaker attending the Conference — you’re always walking the line of optimism/pessimism. Being wrapped in the climate of this independent world feels empowering. Hearing people speak about projects, running into colleagues. It’s an energy boost for the individual who feels tapped out, disconnected or just temporarily lacking in creative drive. Its a place for intelligent swapping of ideas and an open dialogue.

The downside, we’re all broke. We’re all in the same boat, pushing our projects, saving our pennies and jonesing to make the next or first film. Now with more product, choice and options for exhibition the real estate for new films is harder and harder to attain. Fighting through the clutter has become more of a challenge. It’s a long haul. The obvious thought on everyone’s mind is the validity of internet and how is it going to serve us.

So these are some fast and loose notes regarding the panels I attended. You can refer to the Conference link above for more information on each panel. The panelists listed on the site aren’t all accurate, some speakers were subbed out for others. Like the title says Filmmaker Conference, the following information deals with the world of producing films independently. That word has many different meanings but I think one theme that everyone who attended this Conference agrees upon is we are the driving force, the inertia that will get our films made. Do It Yourself.

There’s a lot of information here and I encourage those who are reading this post and/or attended the Conference to leave comments about what these speakers had to say and/or how it reflects your own experience as a filmmaker. Also, go to the Filmmaker Magazine Blog and CinemaTech and search for more coverage of this event. Read more »

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In his wife’s 1991 documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, Francis Ford Coppola speaks of the madness of making Apocalypse Now. He also has this to say:

To me the great hope is that now these little video recorders are around and people who normally wouldn’t make movies are going to be making them. And suddenly, one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her father’s camcorder and for once, the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed, forever, and it will really become an art form.

The funny thing about this quote is I was going to use it in an entry about the future of filmmaking but I put it on the backburner. For some reason it seems so much more appropriate now with this story. I could be wrong, it might go better with this. Ahhh, order is restored.

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It seems like a lot of attention is being brought to downloadable content via cell phone, iPod, whatever device you chose. After directing my first paying director gig on Monday for a mobile phone “show” all this information about the next wave is flooding my way. Like blogging and podcasting a couple of years ago, this content is going to be crammed down our throats whether we like it or not. Everyone has a cell phone and in five years everyone will have a new one with a larger screen and capabilities to download. That’s a big slot to fill with content. So as I edit this little piece in a workflow that veers from the norm [I framed shots and edited with the intention that it will be on a screen the size of a saltine cracker, sometimes smaller] I’m seeing the possibilities. New ways to promote your work. Posting trailers and clips from your film to gain momentum for its release or screening. The bigger question is am I feeding the same machine that is taking the attention away from the film viewing audience that I want to capture?

Popularity: 9% [?]