Year: 2010

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The Next Good Idea Truly Free Film

Invest in Artists, Not Art; in Individuals, Not Projects

MCN tipped me to this article in Barrons on Creative Capital’s practice of investing in the artist, and not the project.

BRENT GREEN WAS 25 AND ABOUT to relinquish his dream of becoming a filmmaker when he discovered Creative Capital.

Green had been looking high and low for a $14,000 grant to finish an animated film. Creative Capital, a nonprofit based in New York, sized him up and offered something entirely different: $43,000 to help support his career over the next three years. It would go toward everything from equipment to transportation to the cost of a publicist. In return, Green would give Creative Capital a small cut of any profits.

In the five years since then, Green’s work has been shown at the Sundance Festival and a number of museums and film festivals in North America and Europe. He has even found himself turning down galleries eager to represent his work.

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Bowl Of Noses

The Taj Mahal: Perhaps Better Than The Lego Model

The Lego version has already made it into the bowl, so why not the virtual tour now?

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Truly Free Film

Thoughts on The New Festival Model

I love that the Tribeca Film Festival has facilitated an immediate VOD launch for some of the films premiering there this year.  This is a key step in freeing festivals from their geographic limitations.  With the collapse of print and the firing of local film critics, festivals have become our most vital curatorial voice.  Whether we like this or not, it is the time we are living in, and it requires festivals to aggregate their audiences and expand their base; that is if they really want to help film culture grow and deepen, which I thought was their mandate (maybe that no longer is what it about; maybe it is now, like everything else, primarily financially motivated).

Unfortunately though the VOD experiment as currently structured (or at least as I understand it) is not the distribution or marketing solution for filmmakers that is necessary.  I worry that the lack of prior promotion,non-existant window, and filmmaker-led marketing will lead Tribeca’s bold step forward to mirror the popular (and negative) wisdom that came from the Sundance YouTube experiment (i.e. Fail!).  This is totally avoidable.  We already have better answers.

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These Are Those Things

MUTO a wall-painted animation by blu

I probably have posted this before, but what can I say?  Blu has been one of my favorite filmmakers since stumbling across his work in a Chelsea Gallery.  Do yourself a favor and dig around here for more of his work.

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Truly Free Film

Make Your Microbudget Film An Event: The Waiting List

Today’s guest post is from Mike Vogel.

I recently premiered my first microbudget feature The Waiting List in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. I’ve read a lot of blogs and tweets about how important it is to turn your screening into an event. There are many well thought-out reasons for this, but the only true reason is that no one wants to see your crappy indie film. Or my crappy indie film. I’m not saying yours–or mine–is actually a crappy film, but since it didn’t get into Sundance and doesn’t have any recognizable stars from Entertainment Weekly, it must be plotless, poorly acted and guaranteed to be boring. Like a foreign movie or something. I assume that’s the mindset of 95% of the people I’m trying to convince to watch my movie–let alone pay to watch it. So the amazing opportunity to see my movie at an out-of-the-way theater on a weekday evening has got to be pretty compelling. Here are a few small things I did to make it interesting for someone who has never heard of me or my movie.

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Truly Free Film

How We Solve Problems Today (and a whole lot more…)

Bruce Sterling has a great post in Wired on “Atemporality for the Creative Artist”.It speaks accurately of the present, and offers a great prescriptive for what comes next.  What’s “Atemporality”?  Look at how problems are dealt with these days.  I know I come fairly close to what Sterling lays out here, and it goes a long way to answering that first question:

‘Step one – write problem in a search engine, see if somebody else has solved it already.

Step two – write problem in my blog; study the commentory cross-linked to other guys.

Step three – write my problem in Twitter in a hundred and forty characters. See if I can get it that small. See if it gets retweeted.

Step four – open source the problem; supply some instructables to get me as far as I’ve been able to get, see if the community takes it any further.

Step five – start a Ning social network about my problem, name the network after my problem, see if anybody accumulates around my problem.

Step six – make a video of my problem. Youtube my video, see if it spreads virally, see if any media convergence accumulates around my problem.

Step seven – create a design fiction that pretends that my problem has already been solved. Create some gadget or application or product that has some relevance to my problem and see if anybody builds it.

Step eight – exacerbate or intensify my problem with a work of interventionist tactical media. And step nine – find some kind of pretty illustrations from the Flickr ‘Looking into the Past’ photo pool.’

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Bowl Of Noses

Best Places To Sled In NYC

Time Out just posted a great list of where to sled in these them hills round here.  Um. Okay, so that’s not real good English, but we liked how it sounded anyway.  But the list is good.  For all five boroughs go the list.

For Manhattan:
Cedar Hill, Central Park
Thrill-seekers need not apply: A less-crowded alternative to Pilgrim Hill, Cedar makes a good starter slide for beginners. Fifth Ave between 76th and 79th Sts. Subway: 6 to 77th St (centralparknyc.org)

East River Park
Though this long, narrow park isn’t known for its steep tundra, it’s a great option for downtown kiddos to get their sledding fix. Since it’s located right on the river, parents can enjoy the scenic view while their tots play. Montgomery St to E 12th. Subway: F, J, M, Z to Essex St—Delancy St. (nycgovparks.org)

Inwood HIll Park
While this spot is great for hiking and biking in the summertime, the expansive space and sloping terrain offer some nice sledding opportunities when the snow hits. Dyckman St at the Hudson River. Subway: A to Dyckman St. (nycgovparks.org)

Pilgrim Hill, Central Park
The grande dame of NYC sledding institutions—and rightly so, with its perfect steepness and gentle denouement (that’s sledspeak for a smooth finish). This spot gets crowded, so prepare to slalom around a few human obstacles. Enter at 72nd St and Fifth Ave. Subway: 6 to 68th St.

Morningside Park
This is where the Columbia crew hangs out, using dining hall trays, cardboard boxes and snowboards. Take a cue from the undergrads and tote along a household item to use as a makeshift (read: cheap) sled. Morningside Dr at 115th St (nycgovparks.org). Subway: B, C to 116th St.

Riverside Park
There are some gentler slopes between 92nd and 103rd Streets, but the hard-core head to Hippo Playground, where you can catch a glimpse of the Hudson as you dodge trees on your way out—er, down. Hay bales at the bottom prevent impalement on the fence beyond. Grab whatever gear you’ll need at C&S Hardware (788 Amsterdam Ave at 98th St; 212-222-8720, csgroupny.com). 91st St at Riverside Dr (nycgovparks.org). Subway: 1, 2, 3 to 96th St.

91st Street
For a quick fix, slip down 91st Street’s pedestrian-only zone. This is urban sledding in its purest form; just watch out for unsuspecting pups! 91st St between Second and Third Aves. Subway: 4, 5, 6 to 86th St.