Month: July 2013

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Truly Free Film

Words Of Advice For The 80%: Getting To That SECOND Film

By Jennifer Phang

When Ted and I spoke about a possible post here, he mentioned that 80% of feature film directors never get to make a second feature.  Why is that?

One reason is that it’s difficult to sustain the momentum of a crew. You are creating a whole village around a project which has an indefinite, but definitely finite, lifetime. Morale starts high, because the act of creation is invigorating, and then people get exhausted, because it’s a gigantic process, and along the way the money runs out, because the village grows and every new villager brings new skills and also new needs. And somehow you have to sustain the discipline to find the beauty in every shot, but also the momentum to finish the film.

The first time is not exactly traumatizing, but it can feel catastrophic, especially if you set out with high ambitions. It’s possibly your one chance to

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Truly Free Film

Making Money Under the Education Kanopy

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.

The heretical statement came from Andrew Pike, MD of Ronin Films during a session called “Education Rights – Ensuring Profitability & Sustainability”. At the Australian International Documentary conference, dedicated primarily to making docos for television, Pike compared making TV doc to an extreme sport. “Like whitewater rafting, it is full of pitfalls. It is full of people shouting opinions at you about which direction you should go and how you should manage your affairs. It’s an area with a high adrenalin rush, and a lot of exhilaration. There’s high emotion when you get a pre-sale, and high emotion, despair, and doom when you get knocked back.”

By contrast, Pike called the education market the “unglamourous area of the film industry,” devoid of red carpets, billboards, bright lights, or posters with your name plastered all of them. “It is an area for worker bees,” he said. But worker bees can turn a profit.

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These Are Those Things

How Do We Use Beauty?

 

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These Are Those Things

Cine-essay: Zizek On Vertigo, Fantasy Realized

If you have not seen A Pervert’s Guide To Cinema, you are missing out.  Here’s a taste:

 

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Truly Free Film

They Found A Way To Kill Indie… But….

Was it for Independence Day specifically that Hollywood wanted to find a way to kill indie? Or is it just a symptom of a greater dis-ease?

Hollywood once was a city of dreams, but they have been making a different bed for some time now — and everyone knows it is draped in spreadsheets.  Yet, as evidenced by some recent statements, they too can still dream, and sometimes even of slaying the beast and recognizing what they really want.

Conspiracies are such a pleasure, because

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Truly Free Film

Keeping the Pirates at Bay

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.

It comes down to money.

Ultimately, money is the reason most people steal (or “pirate”, “borrow”, “find”, “preview” – call it what you will) digital content, although other factors can come into it, like not wanting to wait for something to become available legally.

And money is the reason there is a problem with those people who are doing it, since it represents potential lost revenue to the content creator. “Piracy takes distribution out of your hands,” said Lori Flekser, from the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia. “You can’t control how you distribute it or how you monetise it. That is the worst thing about piracy to me.”

Flekser cited research from the Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation, who anonymously surveyed 16,000 people over 18, saying the the myth that “everybody does it” is just not true. While the survey missed the crucial under-18‘s demographic, it still showed that only 73% of those surveyed said they had pirated material. Of the 27% who do pirate, the vast majority (86%) said they do it because it is free. The bad news is that of those who regularly pirate, they would still do it even if a paid option were easily available.

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