Day: December 10, 2008

Categories
Truly Free Film

Who Do You Really Need To Meet At Film Festivals?

Film Festivals are a bit like conventions or auto shows.   The bigger ones get the entire industry and they transform from a cultural celebration to one big networking showdown.   The energy is driven by the potential more than the reality: will your film be discovered and you be given a pot of gold and the keys to Hollywood?  Many try to adjust to reality and just hope to meet some agents and distributors that they can follow up with later?   The ambitious dream of meeting financiers or movie stars.

For years, I have recommended that filmmakers concentrate on just meeting other filmmakers that feel simpatico with, folks that they can share information with, that can become their de facto support group.  Forget about the distributors.  Forget about the agents.  I mean they each can be very helpful — but mostly for a select few filmmakers.  And I still think that’s good advice, but now there is another class of individual to add to the list of whom you should really want to meet.
Sundance 2009 will be remembered (among other things) for the year that the programmer and booker became rock stars.  Now more than ever, we need curators.  We need people who can filter the stream of films that come begging for our attention.  With more and more filmmakers not just recognizing the need for, but embracing, filmmaker-driven distribution, filmmakers need direct interaction with these bookers and programmers.
How great would it be to have a party or something at Sundance where filmmakers and curators could actually get to meet each other face to face?  Great for the curators.  Great for the creators.
Now’s the time for filmmakers to build their checklist and try to meet the bookers who truly love art film, indie film, truly free film.  Seventy independent theaters are getting together in Salt Lake in the days prior to the Sundance festival to figure out how to make all this work better.  The Art House Convergence is a promising program; you can’t tell the players without a program.  Imagine if your sales agent and rep could introduce you to these bookers, instead of just buyers who might offer you tens of thousands for a twenty year license.  Then they’d really be working for their percentage.
Categories
These Are Those Things

Other ways to tell stories

A couple months back, I read about a novel from the ’60’s that wasn’t bound as a book but as individual chapters that could be read in any order.  The novel was about memory and as such the form mirrored the content’s non-linear nature.  The playfulness of form has stayed in my mind (and on my agenda).

Part of technology’s promise is that we will find new ways to express ourselves.  I definitely like some of what Jonathan Harris is doing, which is quite a bit.

Thanks Geralyn!


Here’s another experiment in telling stories, but now in One Sentence.  It’s a good way to practice your pitches, you screenwriters you.
Categories
Truly Free Film

Hope For The Future pt. 3: The List #’s 9-13

9. Plenty of DVD manufacture & Fullfillment places (see sidebar).

10. Plenty of places to place your content online for eyeballs to find (anyone want to generate a comprehensive list to share?).

11. Things like Netflix and Blockbuster.com make it possible for anyone with a mailing address to see any movie he or she wants. A lot of viewers who haven’t had access to theaters or even video stores that stock smaller films can now get them if they know about them. (thanks Semi!)

12. The Major Media Corporations retreat from the “Indie” film business. This will open up distribution possibilities for entities not required to produce high profit margins or only handle films that have huge “crossover” potential and necessitate large marketing budgets.

13. A new turn-key apparatus is evolving for filmmakers who want to “Do it with others” in that they can hire bookers, publicists, marketers – all schooled in the DIY manner of working. Instead of hoping for a Prince Charming to arrive and distribute their film, TFFilmakers are seeking out the best and the brightest collaborators to bring their film to the audiences.