Author: Ted Hope

This Is Transmedia

I am producing Lance Weiler‘s HOPE IS MISSING (with Anne Carey). It’s hard to call it just another feature film when Lance does so much more to expand the story world. In the past, I have encouraged filmmakers to make a short to demonstrate their skills or help clarify the world they want to create. Yes, Lance made a short for HopeIsMissing (aka H.i.M.), and you can watch it at the bottom of this post, but that’s just a tip of the iceberg.

When I speak about it to studio execs, most still don’t know what I mean when I say it is a transmedia project. Hopefully that will never be the case again once we make the feature. One would think that this would have already changed though by what has been done already.

Perhaps you were at Sundance and encountered the PANDEMIC. It was an installation at New Frontier. It was an online experience. It was location-based ARG. It was story R&D. Lance explains:

How I Learned to Start a Pandemic from Turnstyle Video on Vimeo.

Tags ARG, cross platform, Lance Weiler, Pandemic11, transmedia

Truly Free Film

Edgar Wright Shows Us How To Event-ize Cinema

Post author By Ted Hope
Post date February 5, 2011
1 Comment on Edgar Wright Shows Us How To Event-ize Cinema

Edgar shows us how it is done.

Tags curation, curators, Edgar Wright, event-ize

Bowl Of Noses

Disney’s 50 Animated Features

Post author By Ted Hope
Post date February 5, 2011

Thanks Empire Magazine for this complete history of Disney’s Animated Features.

Tags animation, Disney, Mickey Mouse, movies

These Are Those Things

Another Great Poster

If you have been reading the TFF post on the sale of Septien, you know that IFC bought it for Sundance Selects. What you may not know is that it is up on VOD now but it’s only on the market until February 24th, though it will be VOD-able later in the year once it gets a theatrical release and has a (hopefully) healthy spring/summer festival run.

Tags IFC, Michael Tully, movie posters, Septien, Sundance Selects, VOD

Truly Free Film

Sundance Sales Dissection: Septien (Part Two)

Post author By Ted Hope
Post date February 4, 2011
42 Comments on Sundance Sales Dissection: Septien (Part Two)

Today’s guest post is from George Rush, producers rep and attorney. Yesterday George started telling us about how he engineered the sale of Michael Tully’s Sundance At Midnight hit, SEPTIEN. Today’s post concludes the dissection.

I had been to Sundance before with Midnight films and know it can be difficult to get good buzz. Sundance audiences are not reflective of real audiences. It is a mixture of film nerds, rich party people, and earnest do gooders seeking some culture. I’ve found most people want to see the buzzed about stereotypical Sundance films—The Are All Right, Winter’s Bone. These tickets are hard to come by. However, midnight screening tickets are easier to come by and thus people get stuck with them. They come in hoping for some culture and get blood and guts and farts.

I’ve seen packed houses at Midnight screenings pretty empty by the time the lights came up. Because Michael’s film, SEPTIEN, is so different, I felt a good number of the audience and some critics would dismiss it outright because it did not fit their expectation of what a Sundance film should be. It sort of reminds me of a friend of mine who hates Wes Anderson movies because he expects Bill Murray to always play the Bill Murray of Ghostbusters.

Those who stayed, who bought in, would be massively rewarded by SEPTIEN, but there would be some naysayers. So my feeling was Sundance was going to be a wildcard, with champions and detractors.