Wow. Truly effective use of celebrity star power, good writing, and the internet. Send this video to everyone you know. I think I laughed out loud at least five times.
Day: October 1, 2008
Categories
Come To Woodstock!
I am on the jury and will be be doing another panel up at the Woodstock Film Festival this weekend. I am completely impressed with the films in competition. They’ve done a great job curating. And they’ve done a great job programming too.
I am on a panel on the current state of what is still mistakingly referred to as the “Indie” film world. Woodstock’s assembled a stellar and diverse group for it: John Sloss, Mark Duplass, & Ryan Werner — all of us moderated by Variety’s Dade Hayes. It is on at 2P Saturday. Here’s the description:
IS IT SAFE? With the closure of many of the studio specialty divisions and the reported financial troubles of many of the independents, has “indie film distribution” come to an end, or is this just the end of the world, as we know it? What does the “falling sky” really signify for the independent film sector? Were these companies right to turn their backs or were they just spending too much? Should you make films these days without some form of distribution? And most importantly, who, what or where is the great future hope for indies (and is it all online?)?
Join this esteemed panel of experts straight from the front lines of indie distribution and learn where the light is at the end of the tunnel.
I wonder what I am going to say? Hmmmm…. We need to move the dialogue beyond my “1000 Phoenix Rising” and certainly beyond “The Sky Is Falling”.
Thanks to all the great response I got from my Keynote Speech at Film Independent last weekend, I’ve started this blog to try to lay out some of the work that can be done to build the Truly Free Film Culture that I ranted about.
I will also try to cover some of the issues that are effecting the emerging new paradigm. Let me know if you want to help out. You know where to find me. You can certainly start by commenting to the upcoming posts and subscribing to this blog’s feed. Stay tuned…
We interrupt our discussion on the films themselves, for a brief journey into the business of it all. Here at LMBFilms I (and I want that to be a “we”) want to focus on the movies and not the industry, but until I (hopefully “we”) launch the better business site, please pardon the interruption…
We started Hammer To Nail because we found it hard to get go analysis of what Truly Free films that were out there were truly worth watching. The mainstream critics had stopped covering the smaller films.
Ad Age is now running an article on the effect of all the firings of the established critics on the specialized film business. The loss of established voices has brought a serious drop at the box office.
“It’s the consistent relationship [with a critic] that gets people to go to these movies,” said Mr. Bernard. “[Editors] felt they should get critics that connect to that younger audience that’s getting its news online, but they’re not looking at how the box office is affected when the critic changes.”
Of course, the loss of these critics had no effect on the revenues of all the interesting and great films that weren’t getting the theaters or coverage in the first place. For those films, just go to Hammer To Nail.
And to keep a vast and diversified culture alive, vote with your dollars, and go out to see a movie today. Seriously. We will lose it otherwise.
There’s a great new program in NYC that bumps the film experience up a notch with direct contact with the filmmakers and a post screening celebration. It also confronts head-on the over emphasis the exhibition biz puts on the first weekend revenues.
Credit the IFP and Michelle Byrd with putting their money where their mouth is an truly supporting both Independent and Truly Free films with their new First Weekend series (all done without corporate backing — c’mon you sponsors, follow suit!). Read about here.
And guess what their inaugural film is? BALLAST! Did I tell you how much I admire this film? How great it is? How much I like it? I think I have. Go see it.
Jon Taplin is always thoughtful. And he’s an excellent curator; his front page photo here can’t be beat. I have to say the ideas he proposes here make good sense to me:
- Fannie and Freddie should aggressively go into the market buying mortgages, TODAY.
- The FDIC should raise the guarantee on bank deposits to $250,000 per account, TODAY.
- The Fed should suspend for six months the mark to market accounting rule on mortgage securities or create some other rule that would allow banks to keep frozen mortgage paper segregated on their balance sheets.
- FDIC should force every bank to deliver an audited statement of all of their holdings including Credit Default Swaps withing 30 days. Transparency is the soul of confidence.
Thanks Dan!
BoingBoing reveals how in suing RealNetworks, the MPAA has tried to keep their efforts hush, hush — and journalists complied! The report was first published on the Wired blog which outlines the whole case.
If you hadn’t heard, RealNetworks released RealDVD, which allows consumers to copy the DVDs they own using their computers. The Studios are demanding that a judge block the sale on grounds that copying is akin to theft. RealNetworks says that they are stifling technological developments.
“We are disappointed that the movie industry is following in the footsteps of the music industry and trying to shut down advances in technology, rather than embracing changes that provide consumers with more value and flexibility for their purchases,” RealNetworks said.
This is such a tricky situation. I think with all the hysteria to prevent the film business from falling into the crapper like the music industry, the efforts are coming close to making it inevitable. It’s not a war against the consumer and advancement that the Studios seem to think is the case.
Wired boils this case (and another one) down at the end of the article:
The lawsuits beg the question of whether it is legal to copy an encrypted DVD for personal use. The courts have not squarely decided the issue as applied to CDs or DVDs, although the music and movie industry oppose copying.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which the MPAA claims RealDVD and Kaleidescape are breaking, says descrambling or circumventing encryption is a violation carrying a penalty of up to $2,500 per DVD.
RealDVD and Kaleidescape allow users to copy DVDs in their original encrypted form. Those companies, and other similar services, say their wares prevent the movies from being uploaded to torrent trackers.
Lawyers for the MPAA, in a teleconference with reporters, said Kaleidesape and RealDVD are circumventing “technology designed to prevent copying.”
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More Junkbots!
And these ones are for sale. All are made from thrift store items. Looks like they are making a tidy profit as they are going for north of onefiddy a pop! Pretty nice work though if do say so myself. Check it out. They go by the name Nerdbots. Thanks Coudal!
