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Truly Free Film

IndieStreet Post #10: Sundance 2014 — a Microcosm of a Greater Divide

By Jay Webb 

Screen shot 2013-08-19 at 4.51.06 PM

Previously: A 2014 Resolution 4 Independent Artists — Separate Your Egos

Screen shot 2014-01-28 at 12.44.50 PMWalking down Main Street of the Sundance film festival this year, it felt like there was an ever-growing gap between the east and the west side of the street.   Hollywood and Independent seem to be growing further and further apart, making the Sundance film festival, and other L.A. hyped festivals like it, such an increasingly awkward phenomena.  You have a festival director who wants to keep the slate as Independent, fresh, and intriguing as possible, an audience that attends who has come to expect way more “accessible” stories, and big biz owned media companies like Variety claiming the festival “suffered from too much Brooklyn” and squawking at 2 million dollar advance tags for indie films in today’s market.  We feel for you Mr. Redford, we do…but you created this monster, and now it ‘s become a near perfect representation of the dichotomy within the film Industry.   

The divide:  

This is not an East vs. West thing, but more of a continued divide in mentality and approach to film.  It is exclusivity, public relations, and celebrity versus collaboration, community building, and storytelling.   Old Hollywood versus new thinkers.  Creatives vs. creative exploiters.  I think there is some ancient adage about a poor old man with a paint brush who grew frightened he may never be able to buy paint again if something were to happen to his even older brother who convinces the village people that the old man’s art is worth money.  If there is no adage, then now there is.  The artist and the thinker are inherently self-critical and the Hollywood older brother is inherently opportunistic.

Categories
Truly Free Film

The Case for Widescreen Key Art

by Bill Cunningham

Ted invited me to expand on a comment I made here on how the case can be made for rethinking the design standard for movie poster artwork in order to maximize the visual value to today’s audience, considering a film will likely be discovered online.  What I’m proposing is taking  the movie poster and turning it on its side, filling our view on the screen and our heads with storytelling potential. Not so much a radical rethink of key art design, but the next step in what has been an evolutionary process tied to distribution. People do judge a movie by its poster, and if independent filmmakers and distributors are to maximize their resources without maximizing costs, then the role and design of key art is definitely in order.

THE ROLE OF THE MOVIE POSTER

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a (good) movie poster ignites a thousand ideas – an expression of both art and commercial intent, selling the movie to the audience. It does this through craft, style, technique and marketing – ballyhoo made manifest.  This is why key art is important, especially to the indie, because if it makes a positive impression, it means the potential for financial as well as artistic success.  The better your key art, the lower the sales resistance.

THE TRADITIONAL MOVIE POSTER / KEY ART

1It’s important that we understand the basics of what we call the movie poster.  The standard movie poster has become a vertical 27” x 40” design originally made to fit inside a theater’s display.  [This ignores  lobby cards, window cards, the insert, the half-sheet, and the 3 and 6-sheets as well as the European and Asian anomalies.