Month: July 2013

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Truly Free Film

The Discovery Of Good Movies Is A Job For The Community

If you make films, it is your responsibility to help others discover what is good to watch.  If you love films — or a particular type of film — it is your responsibility to help others learn to appreciate those films too.  “Discovery” is not something you can expect others to EVER do unless you yourself embrace the practice first.  “Spreading the word” is part of a filmmaker’s job description, albeit sincerely & authentically.

HopePinterest

Independent filmmaking must be a community activity if it is to survive.  You can’t leave good films alone. You have to make it your battle to get those movies seen.  If you don’t accept this as your mission, you are helping to hand indie it’s death sentence.

I love

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Truly Free Film

How to Make Money in the Age of Abundance, Part 1

Part One: The Stuggles You Are Facing and How You Can Cope

By Jon Reiss

Since the collapse of the traditional distribution for filmmakers in 2007 we as a community have been struggling to figure out new solutions of how to monetize our work – in other words:  how to make money from our content and create a sustainable living.  In this two part series I will reformulate and address some of the problems we are facing – but also present some potential solutions for independent filmmakers.   These thoughts come from a creating a series of new presentations on Artistic Entrepreneurship over the past year that I presented at the recent SFFS A2E Workshop (http://www.sffs.org/Filmmaker360/A2E-Artist-to-Entrepreneur.aspx) and this spring’s IFP Filmmaker Labs (http://www.ifp.org/programs/labs/).   I welcome your comments!

While there were a number of factors that caused an upheaval of the distribution landscape in 2007 and while there have been many positive signs of improvement, filmmakers and all artists still face an enormously changed market for content.

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Truly Free Film

Walk Off the Land After the Harvest

by Andrew Einspruch

Filmmaker Andrew Einspruch recently attended the Australian International Documentary Conference and wrote a series of articles for the event, which he’s graciously allowed us to reprint here. These articles originally appeared in Screen Hub, the daily online newspaper for Australian film and television professionals.

A discussion of ethics in documentary making is a bi-annual tradition at the Australian International Documentary Conference. Screen Hub’s Andrew Einspruch reports on the session chaired by Screen Hub Editor, David Tiley.

Documentary is a hands-on affair. The filmmaker goes into a situation, observes, harvests the story, then moves on. In some cases, like a constructed reality show, participants are put in situations that cause them to undergo a change – or not. In any case, people’s lives are affected, for good or ill. And the documentary maker is faces with responsibilities both before and after their work goes to air.

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These Are Those Things

The Beauty Of Space

“It’s eight years of time and 200,000 images compressed into 4 minutes of video. An awesome way to experience Cassini’s tour of Saturn.” It’s also incredibly beautiful. Take a trip to space.

Around Saturn from fabio di donato on Vimeo.

Via EarthSky.org

Categories
Issues and Actions

Infographic: Film Biz Has MASSIVE Financial Impact

In 2011 the US FilmBiz supported 1.9M Jobs, $1.4B in wages, & 108K businesses. This infographic the MPAA prepared shows the MASSIVE financial impact film creates.  You’d think we’d want to incentivize even more of it!
http://www.mpaa.org/Resources/ea7f8d13-12cd-4416-8a25-62d711e955f1.pdf
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Truly Free Film

A New Era Requires A New Pitch, Pt.2

Yesterday, I tried to provide context as to why we must change the manner we pitch our stories, films, and storyworlds.  Today I am pondering what a pitch for today might be?

The question though is much bigger than that.  We have to ask what is the creative process — particularly the one that can hope to have a financial payoff of some sort in the end — when we have to look in so many directions and dimensions?

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Truly Free Film

A New Era Requires A New Pitch, Part 1

If you’ve been reading this blog you probably already recognize the old indie filmmaking model is obsolete. You’ve been trying to figure out how to shift from a focus on mass-market storytelling to one of niche audience world-building. You recognize that you need to build extensions, collaborations, and expansive discovery nodes into you storyworld architecture. And of course you know that the only logical response to this world of inexpensive high-production value abundance of content is to be more prolific, more ubiquitous, and thus radically collaborative. We recognize that the analogue era was about perfection and completion, but the digital one is about iterations and evolutions. You know all of this. You live it and you breathe it — but have you allowed it to truly alter your creative practice?

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