I was on the radio in New Zealand in support of Big Screen Symposium a couple of weeks back. It was a very good interview, if I do say so myself. The interviewer knew his stuff and I had enough coffee to be pretty sharp.
Month: September 2012
Two years ago today, after having the first sale of the Toronto International Film Festival (at a far higher amount than I had hoped for) and my business partner having the #1 film at the US Box Office, I shut the doors on my production office for good. As an Indie Film Producer, I could not afford the high rents of NYC. Today I confess: my productivity went down as a result. Further, I lost the ability to naturally collaborate with the other producers and filmmakers I shared office space with. It sucks not to have an office (although I did love having lunch regularly with my wife).
I am thrilled that the San Francisco Film Society has confronted this problem head on (office space — not lunches), offering filmmakers free office space in a wonderfully collaborative work space. Seriously, how many reasons am I going to have to give you to move Indie Film to The Bay Area? Is funding and work space not enough for you? How about a great film culture? Well, there is still more coming…
The 22nd Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards will take place this year again at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City, on Monday, November 26th. The first award show of the season, the Gotham Independent Film Awards honor independently distributed American feature films made with an economy of means and celebrate the authentic voices behind and in front of the camera in the year’s best independent films. Submissions are now being accepted in five of the competitive categories, including: Best Feature,Best Documentary, Breakthrough Actor, Breakthrough Director and Best Ensemble Performance. The deadline for submissions is 5pm EST on September 14, 2012. Applications, along with full criteria, are available here.
By Scott Meek
On this coming Sunday, forty years ago, Scott Meek took his first job in the film business. I recently asked him if he had any lessons or advice he could share.
There is nothing more important than the third act as it’s the third act that carries the momentum of everything that preceded it, that allows the sum to be greater than the parts, creates the meaning and offers the truest emotion.
If I have learned that films work this way and I still believe in the truest possibility of film and of art, then I should also have learned that all of us have three acts too, and that there we have a great responsibility to ourselves to make the third act meaningful by making it truly ours.
It’s the act that is entirely owned by character.
I wouldn’t have been so excited to become the Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society if it didn’t have the support from Kenneth Rainin Foundation.
The SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grants support feature narrative films that through plot, character, theme or setting explore human and civil rights, antidiscrimination, gender and sexual identity and other social issues of our time. This is NOT a documentary grant.
Here’s the deal: you help the Flyaway Film Festival & I help you and your project. Okay, it’s not quite that simple, but it is still a great bargain. I really enjoyed my time visiting the Flyaway Film Festival and I want it thrive. They just had a very successful crowd funding campaign; it’s nice to see my affection is matched by many.
To help them raise money, I donated a one hour consultation session. I will also add in free the time it takes to read your script and make some notes. This often goes for quite significant amounts. Flyaway has it listed for bargain rates.
Check it out here:
Categories
Traditional Indies Vs Truly Free
When I was in Australia & New Zealand recently, I was asked by Screen Hub journalist Andrew Einspruch to explain what I meant as the difference between Traditional Indie Film and my favorite phrase “Truly Free Film”:
I think it is one of consistent evolution and transformation to some degree. I come from America, and that’s my perspective. In America, the process of indie film creation has always been, essentially, to write for the market, whether people really think it through or not. I think it interferes, or at least enters and influences, their work process.
We don’t have any state funding in America for cinema; there’s no subsidised system. So when a film is produced, it is often made with the intent that it will be sold to a buyer/distributor, and ideally one of the studio-controlled specialised division.
Even in a film that is 100% private equity financed, those that create it tend to self-censor to some degree in an effort to make sure the film can sell to one of these well-capitalised entities.
