Officially, my book “Hope for Film” comes out today. It’s been many years in the making though. Started and stopped, started and stopped. It was hard to get done and I feel fortunate to have found all the help I needed to get it done. I hope you like it.
But why did I write it? Here are ten reasons.
It’s a pretty rare thing that a director has the opportunity to watch other directors at work. As a crew-member, I had a front row seat to almost every aspect of the job, pre-production through post. I never worked on a film that didn’t teach me something—whether it fell in the “to emulate” or “to avoid at all costs” column. These lessons helped me direct actors, assemble good crews, communicate effectively, have realistic expectations, and generally feel at home on a film set.
Schuyler Moore appears to think so. The title of his recent Forbes post “Netflix Will Rip The Heart Out of Presale Financing” says it all. Or at least his view of it. There is certainly a lot more to the picture than just the reach of Netflix.
Check it out:
“Ted Hope’s new book “Hope for Film” is part memoir, part manual, part manifesto”
Don’t get me wrong, it is still hard. How do you know what festival to play when? That remains to be answered, but just knowing what festivals are approaching is great gift — and now you can quite easily.
Copyright law, net neutrality, media consolidation, fair use, antitrust, DMCA — you have to not just know these, but know how you can influence the rules that influence you. Ultimately, it’s not just the laws that set the rules; it’s also the technology. The good news is that history has shown that the community, particularly when they find the right leaders, can truly make change happen.
This episode of ReInvent Hollywood has it all:
Theatrical is a profoundly different experience than most home viewing and fears of cannibalization are grossly over rated. So many titles are generated each year that there is no shortage of titles that could be theatrically released, and although there are not so many titles that will ever appeal to all audiences, there are certainly enough to address the niches on a grand scale.
