Tag: producing

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Truly Free Film

Producing For The Emerging New Film Ecosystem

This week I am presenting a new talk “How To Produce In The Emerging New Film Ecosystem”.  This is not part of my “book tour” but really back to my gospel on the pulpit — my push to help drive us forward. I launched this new talk on Monday at AFM (sans any slides), and will follow it up today (Wednesday) in Napa (in an abbreviated format) and then off to Vancouver for Merging Media to really kick it home. I should have it down pretty well come end of the week I hope. I spoke a bit about this new rant to PlaybackDaily/StreamDaily and you can read about it here.

As both artist and entrepreneurs, we filmmaking types are stuck in legacy practices that have little applicability to the way the world is. We are holding back both the advancement of our craft and our culture, the cash and the capital. It is time to

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Truly Free Film

Why All Film Folk MUST Read My Book

Granted, Hope For Film is a good read if you are a film fan too, or really a creatively minded person, but it is all of us in the film business (or those that want to be) that my book is geared to.  I’ve shared with you the reasons why I wrote it, and many have shared with you excerpts from it. Yes, there are many good reviews out there too to tell you that it is worth your time too, but none of that yet tells you how you will directly benefit from reading the book, does it?

Fortunately, Film Courage came to the rescue.  They have released three prior interview segments to date, and this latest one lays out four key takeaways from my book.  You’ll have to read the book of course to get the nuance and all the secrets, but if you want more details, watch the video.  However, if you want a good idea of what’s in store for the read, here are my observations on my book:

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Truly Free Film

The Dilemma And Contradiction Of Taking Time

Where does good work come from? Just because you can say something, doesn’t mean that you should. Stewing on an idea does not mean that it will have more flavor.  We are told to go, go, go, but when is slow actually the fastest route?

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Truly Free Film

Get Drunk Together And Other Recommendations For Building A Good Collaboration

Film Independent had me pull together some of our top indie producers and probe the secrets to collaborating well with directors. This panel reinforced what became clear writing my book: There is no template for a successful collaboration. There are certainly best practices to be observed but each film and each director requires a custom fit. Albert Berger, Lisa Cortes, and Lynette Howell rocked the stage with me at the Filmmaker Forum.  Check it out some video highlights here:

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Truly Free Film

What Do We Sacrifice When We Give Up Time?

FilmCourage interviewed me and asked “How do you know when your movie is ready to shoot?”. In the conversation, I simplify things into three steps:

  1. Discovery: the process of defining what matters;
  2. Prioritization: organizing complexity and weighting the options and opportunities;
  3. Engineering serendipity: you build the bottle that can hold the magic elixir.  How can we reach higher? How can we accomplish more than we planned for and manufacture magnificence?

The film business as of late has been cutting budgets to the bare bones and filmmakers are rising to the occasion.  We prep our movies in less and less time.  It’s mission impossible but we deliver it.  But what get’s lost in the process?

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Truly Free Film

The Priorities Of Producing Today

Our goal producing today should be to get our movies MADE well, SEEN widely, and COMPENSATED fairly.

We need to support all four legs: Artists, Audiences, Industry, and Investors.

The best thing we can do is to make sure that investors receive a risk appropriate return.

Check out all the details in this video (never mind the pretty flowers):

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Truly Free Film

What I Learned Producing Ang Lee’s 1st Breakout Hit

The Wedding BanquetOne of the pleasures of writing my book “Hope For Film” was examining many of my films for the lessons I’ve learned. The book is structured around ten core lessons although most of them include many different films.  I learned a lot more than I could ever fit in one book. In going back and looking at my notes I realize of all my films, I might have learned most from Ang Lee’s 2nd film “The Wedding Banquet”.

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