Month: March 2009

Categories
These Are Those Things

Making A Movie… the right way with the right people

Isn’t it nice how sometimes everything seems to go right?

Years back, we were given a script by a director whose work we admired. He was committed to getting it right and luckily we all worked well together. He kept making the script better and better. Yet, times are always tough and a period youth movie is never high on buyers must -have list. Still, we were prepared to make the film at any budget even if you needed more than a little just to license the period songs that punctuated every page of the script. One of his TV buddies then offered him a gig on a flick without any stars, making it seem like a Direct-To-DVD assignment. But it wasn’t — not even close.

By the time Greg Mottola was done with that little film, it was SUPERBAD, and now he wanted to make some more changes to what now felt like our script. Summer was almost over and our project had to shoot when it still looked looked hot & sweaty. With a month or so left in the season, we went out with the script, and found financing partners who believed in our vision and wanted to go right away, happy to cast whom we wanted.

We assembled a great team to make the movie, some old friends, others that became new friends. Everyone was talented. Everyone had a good attitude. Everyone worked really hard and had a good time in the process. The prep was short, the hours longs, but it still was a great time. Kinda like the film we made, but with less drama and less ball taps.

Our partners gave us enough money, encouraged to keep making things better, and when we were done, they worked incredibly hard and with tremendous passion to promote the film to the fullest. Even more, they believed that whomever saw it would dig it just as much, and they’ve been willing to screen it over and over just to get the word out.  Fortunately, the reviews do everyone’s efforts proud.

So this Friday night, our good fortune and everyone’s hard work is offered up to you, albeit for the price of a movie ticket.

Check out the website: http://www.adventurelandthefilm.com/
Michael Phillip’s Chicago Trib 4 Star Review
Harry Knowles’ rave: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/40374
David Edelstien’s New York Mag rave.
Oh, and Matt Dentler threw five questions at me about the film, sucky jobs, social networks, and first features.  Check it out here.
Categories
Truly Free Film

Pricing DIY DVDs & Other Fetish Items

Adam Chapnick twittered about NeoFlix’s  DIYFlix blog posting about most popular pricing techniques for their clients.  It ran counter to my instincts as I would have thought more gravitated to the high and low end, but by far the most popular price point is $15-$20.  The DIYFlix blog itself has a pile of good advice & food for thought, so check it out.

Some of the best advice in this category comes from the example of HELVETICA.  As Scott Kirsner points out in his indispensable right-of-the-moment guide to building an audience (Fans, Friends, & Followers) “Selling just one thing is old hat”.  
Multiple versions and merchandising is the way to go.  So much more can be done with this.  By all means there should be multiple versions of all films, with different additional content, commentary, even cuts.  Why is that we only get the dvd with the film, and maybe a t-shirt or action figure?  If fans want to show their appreciation for a work there should be something more substantial.  One of my favorite pieces of film fetish paraphernalia is this: Brendan Dawes’ Cinema Redux print of Kubrick’s 2001 The film is reduced to one image from every second of the film in high resolution.  Each row has sixty frames in it.  
Why can’t we have more beautiful works derived from the films we love?
Categories
Bowl Of Noses

The Evolution Of Life

Is it the mayfly that has shortest life cycle?  I think in 24 hours they are born, live, mate, grow old, and die.  Maybe I am wrong.  Yet in the history of time, humankind is like a blink of the eye, kind of like a mayfly’s life.

SEED magazine offered up this 60 second overview of life as we know it; that is, not human kind, but what it took to get us here, and how short our journey has been, comparatively speaking.

The Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds is an experiment in scale: By condensing 4.6 billion years of history into a minute, the video is a self-contained timepiece. Like a specialized clock, it gives one a sense of perspective. Everything — from the formation of the Earth, to the Cambrian Explosion, to the evolution of mice and squirrels — is proportionate to everything else, displaying humankind as a blip, almost indiscernible in the layered course of history.

Each event in the Evolution of Life fades gradually over the course of the minute, leaving typographic traces that echo all the way to the present day. Just as our blood still bears the salt water of our most ancient evolutionary ancestors.

Categories
Bowl Of Noses

Robo Roundup: Reallife RoboCop & Iron Giant.

This robo throws a net at robbers.  The RoboCops are coming; don’t mess with them.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, remember how at the end of Iron Giant, the pieces started to put themselves together again?  Well, we just got one step closer to that future too.

Categories
Truly Free Film

Prepping Your Film For Distribution

Jason Brubaker has “Prepping Your Film For Distribution” in current edition of The Independent.  It’s all good advice and the equal attention paid to self-distribution demonstrates the reality-check that has finally seeped through the layers of denial most indie filmmakers have held on to for too long.  I wonder why “getting pick up” is even looked at on even ground with the DIY approach.  Let’s face it, the odds are practically 1 in 400 that your film will be picked up by a major distributor.  The time to start to prep for self-distribution is now, not later.

I recognize how getting your film made is an all consuming task.  Yet, I am struck time and time again how filmmakers don’t recognize that  “prepping your film for distribution”, reaching out to your audience, and marketing your film BEFORE you shoot, all significantly increases your odds of getting picked up.  It’s like wearing the right clothes before you go to the bar.  It shows that you are serious.  It shows that you are going to do everything possible for people to see your film, that you will give your all to get your investors money back.
Back in the Good Machine days, and every day since then, we have approached delivery like production.  If you arrive at a film festival having done the due diligence that Jason discusses, your chances have acquisition are improved.  Every distributor has had the nightmare of the unclearable  or undeliverable film — and they will avoid the repeat like the plague.
We have had our films bought or financed because we showed how the film could be marketed, where the audience was and what they responded to previously.  We didn’t wait until the movie had screened to address this. We thought long and hard about this before we shot anything.  Waiting until your movie is done to approach these issues is going to hurt your prospects.
I am also of the firm belief that thinking about these aspects, whether they are marketing, legal, or delivery issues, makes your film better.  It focuses the thought.  It requires choices to be made.  There is no excuse not to do everything that is raised in The Independent BEFORE you even approach investors.  Take Jason’s advice to heart, but do it sooner, much much much sooner.
Categories
Bowl Of Noses

Inside all of us….

some wild thing.  

We are hesitant to post trailers in our bowl, but we have been waiting too long for this film and it seems like they may have done everything right!  We are going to get our time machine working this weekend and hop on over to Oct. 17th.  Unfortunately, when we return our memory is always wiped clean so we won’t be able to tell you how great it is quite yet.  Luckily we can enjoy this right here and now.
Categories
Truly Free Film

The Chaos Scenario

I found Bob Garfield’s AdAge article “The Chaos Scenario” filled with clear and precise observations — an effective summation of this media biz moment.  Although it is ultimately geared for the ad biz, it speaks to the prospects of mass media in general.  Itmight has well have been subtitled “The Sky Is Falling, Part Two”, yet, as may be my way, I find it ultimately hopeful.

As ad revenue has supported both our culture and the drivers to our culture, and since the days of ads having any sort of mass impact are over, the old way of the media biz is over.  We have witnessed the colossal drop of stock value across all forms of media companies (well, I guess except Netflix).  They will soon be all changing dramatically.  It is going to be a long haul before the new model is found and grows stable.  It is the end of the world as we know it (which happens to be one of my son’s favorite songs of the moment — another sign of the happy apocalypse fantasy…)
It’s well worth reading and pondering.  Among it’s many great quips:
The future is bright. But the present is apocalyptic. Any hope for a seamless transition — or any transition at all — from mass media and marketing to micro media and marketing are absurd.

Mass media thrived on the economics of scarcity. The internet represents an economy of unending abundance.

The audience doesn’t imagine that all cars want to be free, or that all toasters want to be free, or that all paper towels want to be free, but it somehow believes that all content wants to be free.

Wenda Harris Millard, co-CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia: “Advertising simply cannot support all the media that’s out there.”

The average price of reaching 1,000 households with a 30-second spot in prime time, according to Media Dynamics, has jumped from $8.28 in 1986 to $22.65 in 2008 — but effectively more like $32, because between 150 and 200 of those 1000 households use DVRs to skip past the ads.

Glenn Britt, CEO of Time Warner Cable: “People are saying, ‘All I need is broadband. I don’t need video (aka “cable”).'”

Rothenberg,president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, details, “Today the average 14-year-old can create a global television network with applications that are built into her laptop. So from a very strict Econ 101 basis, you have the ability to create virtually unlimited supply against what has been historically relatively stable demand.” — So the biggest online publishers, with all their vast overhead, have no more access to audience than Courtney the eighth-grader.