Author: Ted Hope

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Truly Free Film

Crowdfunding: Getting Beyond your Family and Friends

Crowdfunding: Getting Beyond your Family and Friends

By Antonia Opiah

Recently, we at the Beneath the Earth Film Festival hosted a panel discussion on financing film through crowdfunding.  It was the first talk in our “Film 2.0: the Digital (R)evolution” series, which takes a look at the Internet’s impact on the film industry.

With all of the filmmakers on the panel confirming that much of their pledges came from their family and friends, I wondered:  Does a successful Kickstarter campaign mean that a film has a built-in audience or just a really supportive network?

For our panelists it was a mixture of both but each was able to go beyond their family and friends.  Here are some of the ways they did so:

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Truly Free Film

Will the internet free motion pictures from the old ways of telling stories?

By Randy Finch

In 1958 the most influential film critic of his day, André Bazin, wrote that the 19th century invention of photography had brought with it “a great spiritual and technical crisis” that profoundly affected other arts – in particular painting.

After the invention of the camera, the burden of what Bazin called “duplicating the world outside” was snatched away from painters and handed to photographers.

Here’s how Bazin describes what happened next: Photography “freed Western painting, once and for all, from its obsession with realism.”

In other words, André Bazin argued that modern painting – with its emphasis on abstraction – would not have existed without photography.

While some painters saw opportunity and pursued non- representational art in the late 1800s, many Old World painters were not happy. Similarly, these days many established professionals are not happy that their accustomed role in motion picture storytelling is being usurped by cellphone-wielding “amateurs.”

But (then as now) the Old Guard’s contempt has never stopped tech- savvy entrepreneurs from coming up with better ways to serve fundamental human needs (like storytelling)…

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Truly Free Film

16+ Thoughts On Picking A Producer’s Rep

Toronto, Sundance, SXSW, Cannes, Berlin, Venice, or any small town -- it's all 1 Festival!
Toronto, Sundance, SXSW, Cannes, Berlin, Venice, or any small town — it’s all 1 Festival!

You’ve made your movie.  You’ve even applied to some great film festivals, and maybe they’ve been encouraging.  Now people are calling you, asking to see it, and offering to license it on your behalf.  How do you determine whom to collaborate with?  What questions need to be asked BEFORE you make a deal?

The best thing you can ever do is talk to other filmmakers who have worked with the rep — and not just the ones that the rep recommends.  Make those calls.  The second best thing you can do is to have a face to face meeting with the proposed rep.  The personal approach matters.  Look them in the eye.  Connect.  Have a beer or a cup of coffee.  Ask yourself if you’d like to have dinner with them a year for now.

Now start to ask some questions, ask for some help, and gain a better understanding of both the process and the individual or company you are considering.

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Truly Free Film

Why Our (Film) Elites Stink

I haven’t yet read Christopher Hayes’ book “Twilight of The Elites“, but I did recently read David Brooks counter-arrgument “Why Our Elites Stink” in the New York Times.

The film business suffers from a similar ill to our government and banking industries.  There’s no question that the current structure only allows for those of privilege to rise more readily than anyone else.  And there’s no question, that those in power do not reveal any evidence that they think anything is wrong with this picture.

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Truly Free Film

It All Begins Somewhere

I went to NYU Film Undergrad with the idea I was going to be a director. I got a scholarship, and the school encouraged me, but I felt that my destiny as a director was to be but a hack. I could get things going, but I was just regurgitating others’ ideas (ah, if only that was enough to stop most…). Sure, imitation is a path to learning, but I was impatient too. If I couldn’t be brilliant, I at least wanted to be around brilliance. I pivoted.

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Let's Make Better Films

Movie Cliches 101: Plagiarizing Yourself

If there are only six good stories — or is it twelve? twenty-three? forty-two? — how many good lines are there?  Clearly Aaron Sorkin thinks there is a limited supply.  Write something good once, might as well write it again, right?  

It’s been out and around for awhile but I still find “Sorkinisms — A Supercut” kind of remarkable.  

 

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Truly Free Film

Film Society of Lincoln Center and Hope for Film presents : Indie Night Screening Series – FRANCINE – Wednesday August

Hello again Film Friends,

American Indie film is often too dialogue-heavy — especially when that dialogue comes at the expense of other cinematic elements like performance, image, sound, time, and process. I have always been drawn to filmmakers who are willing to challenge themselves, and the audience by setting limits to what they provide, helping all of us to learn and grow in the process. With very few words ever spoken, Filmmakers Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky do just that with their deeply moving and highly disciplined first film FRANCINE.

Okay, some may say that when you have Melissa Leo to rest your camera on how can you go wrong. And granted it is rare to witness an actor as committed to her role as Ms. Leo is in Francine. But

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