Categories
Truly Free Film

How Many Ways Can We Collaborate Around A Single Film?

We will work together to build it better.  We will use the tools we have, but not let them restrain us. Let’s turn our limitations — financial & otherwise — into assets (may our chains set us free).  We will not let ego drive us away from an ambitious and interesting cinema.  Let’s acknowledge that defining a true author in cinema is hard, and the act of creation is rarely original. Everything is a remix.In an era of Grand Abundance, it is best practice to be even more generative, but less authorial.  And if all that is where we are, where does it leave us?

I am always looking for new methods of collaboration and new ideas of how someone else might riff off of one artist’s work.  Multiple authors have multiple arms and louder voices; their success is everyone’s & their failure no one’s.  If we

Categories
Truly Free Film

Why I Felt I Must Not Focus On Project-Specific Producing At This Time

AKA ” Why I Want To Be Part Of The San Francisco Film Society”.

Last Wednesday, Oct 3rd, I gave my first address to the membership of The San Francisco Film Society as part of our Annual Funding Campaign Drive.  We had a good turn out; I like to think it was for me and the organization, but the food and wine were both enticing too.  I did my best to explain why I left NYC and headed to San Francisco.  It required that I explain why I love cinema and what it means to me, as well as some of the issues facing filmmakers today and why we need the support of organizations like SFFS.

San Francisco Film Society E.D. Ted Hope from k9sound on Vimeo.

Thanks to Raqcoon Hayop who was there to shoot it and post it for prosperity’s sake.

Categories
Truly Free Film

Diary of a Film Start-Up Part 7: New Mantra: Do More, Faster

By Roger Jackson

Previously: Late Nights and Early Breakthroughs

 

Latest & Greatest

Lots more great films submitted to our Private Beta launch this week. The quality and diversity of the filmmaking is impressive. Every time we watch one of the trailers we’re reminded of why we’re building KinoNation — to make it simple for movies like these to actually get released, exhibited and watched “on-demand” by the global audience that undoubtedly exists for them. I talked to Marianne Hettinger, director of the delightful Mango Tango. Marianne submitted her award-winning film to KinoNation at least partly because — unlike traditional distributors — we’re not seeking a “lock-up” commitment of 10+ years. In fact, there’s no lock-up at all, beyond what is required by any VoD platform that selects a KinoNation movie. Meanwhile,

Categories
Truly Free Film

Do We Know What We Learned From Our Film Experiences?

I have been doing a fair amount of interviewing lately.  I need to staff up as part of my new mission.  Team building is an art, but it’s been awhile since I had to put one together that would last.  It’s a bit different when you staff up for a film.  Sure a feature is a long distance run, but it is not a marathon.  I would like to find the folks I will be with for a very long time in San Francisco.  Luckily for me, there is a pretty great group already in place, but there are still some vacancies.

Interviews have become a sort of standard fodder for humor in film.  Perhaps that is a legacy from TRAINSPOTTING…  As a result every time I ask one of those standard issue questions I feel like I am mocking myself.  Still though they are useful.  But the real hypocrisy is that I probably can not answer them myself.  I do think each movie I have made so far has changed me, but I am not sure if I can name how.

It strikes me that we would all be better filmmakers if we tried to name what we learned from each of our movies.

Categories
The Next Good Idea

“If We Can Build This, We Can Build Anything”

The Invisible Bike Helmet means that a sustainable indie film biz & culture that benefits the creators & appreciators is 1000% possible.

What about that logic do you fail to understand?

Categories
These Are Those Things

Punk Rock’s Cranky Old Man Speaks The Truth

I saw Black Flag live for the first time around 1984 and they blew my mind, full throttle.  To see Henry Rollins powered by the band’s onslaught was to see rage and force and commitment unleashed.  It was scary fun and is forever seared onto my DNA. I owe a debt to that band (among others).  That must be why I find it so much fun to see him now tell it like it is, in his “cranky old man” guise — but he really gets it right, and you don’t have to be a “young person” to need to be reminded of this advise.  It is not fair, but so what?  Be stronger and don’t let their good fortune or bad ways get in the way of what you know must be done.

But oh man was he anything  but that back when:

 And check out this show too when it really was just people in a garage letting loose.

Categories
Bowl Of Noses

Total Awesomeness: HexaFlexagons

Math is fun.  It may look like magic but it is not.

Thanks to Dan McGuire and iO9 for the tips.