Author: Ted Hope

Categories
These Are Those Things

The Best Museum EVER!


Well, okay, maybe that’s an over statement, but I have always wanted to live in a museum. Maybe it comes from reading books as a child and letting them corrupt me. Maybe it’s because I can’t afford art. Maybe because I still have fond memories of my college dorm room where I glued table settings and furniture to the ceiling and built a cave to sleep in just in case it all came tumbling down.

Awhile back when the Whitney had the Winograd show up, I became instantly jealous of Ronnie Bernstien. I went to see the show with Vanessa and Hope The Younger, and Mr. Frownland was using the locale as an office and rehearsing with one of his actors (I can’t wait to see his followup!). But still, exchanging the price of membership to hang out in a museum is still not the same as living in one. After all you are not permitted to make a mess like you would if is your own home.
John Waters home should be a landmark — both his place in Baltimore (particularly) and his apartment in New York are virtually museums that he lives in, able to make whatever sort of mess he likes. You get a bit of an overview of it here, but I think you’ll have to find us money for FRUITCAKE if you want the full tour.
Without John Waters I never would have had the courage to make movies, to believe I could tell the stories I wanted to, or understood what a shrimp job was.
Categories
Truly Free Film

TIFF IFF Discussion: DIY, DIWO, But Just Do It

Eugene at Indiewire caught the essence of the public conversation I had with Thomas Mai of Festival Darlings to kick off the IFF at TIFF the other day. I particularly like the photo, so check it out here.

In a nutshell it came down to the fact that we seem to be fighting for the role of Nero as our culture burns down around us. The audience were producers with great projects, maybe 50 or 75 were there (invite only). Only one of them had a blog. Only one of them curated a film series. Only one of them had a project priced at under $1.5M. Maybe 10 were on Twitter. About 25 were on a social network.
It’s kind of shocking how the film biz is such a luddite culture. Innovation has been the key to my survival and it’s never been because of things I invented, just utilized.
THE WEDDING BANQUET is often said to have been the first narrative feature cut on an Avid. Granted it meant working on AVR Level 3 and having as a result 8 out of focus shots in it, but that didn’t stop it from winning the Golden Bear in Berlin.
LOVE GOD was one of the first films originated on video and output to film, and although it never secured distribution, it never would have made it to Sundance and beyond without Sony & Apple both granting us free tools and processes to make the film.
Good Machine may have been the first American-based producer-driven international sales company, but regardless of whether it was or not, it capitalized on the obvious (that our full film’s cost could come from overseas) at a time when the status quo was something else, and ultimately gave us something to sell beyond the films themselves.
I got some of my initial breaks because I had built a budget program when they weren’t yet commercially available, explored product placement prior to agency involvement, and other early adoptions that were available to anyone with their eyes open.
I have been a beneficiary of others’ slack behavior. I got full advantage of an inefficient, lazy, inbred, elitist system. I have gotten to make over 60 films in 20 years. It gets much harder from here. I am doing what I can to help and there are some others that are out there doing the same, even a few doing more, but it is not enough. We have work harder to increase the reach of our web, to shrink the holes in our net. We have to get our comrades to adopt and utilize the tools before them.
Categories
Truly Free Film

Wanted: Email Invite List Management Software

Okay, so now you’ve decided you want to start a film club. First you need to invite people. Which means you need a bunch of emails. I was fortunate in that I waited 15 years to start such a club. Which meant I knew a lot of indie film fans in my town to invite. You’d think that would solve the problem, right?

Even when you have the email addresses, it is not so easy to just send out the invites. Bulk emails often get stopped by spam filters. I don’t even know if my emails get through, other than by the folks who write back or rsvp. Further, for some reason my ISP or email program only allows me to send 50 or less emails per batch. To send to 800 people (which is how many I have on my list) requires 16 emails. That’s a lot of cut and pasting. And updating the lists and sorting it, tagging people, etc. is a real pain in the butt. There’s got to be a better way.
Since we can’t afford to hire an IT person to solve this, I turn to you, the community; surely you know a way to make this all a whole lot simpler. What do you suggest?
Categories
These Are Those Things

Married To The Eiffel Tower

I’ve been finding it harder and harder to keep up with my blogging. I have been resorting much more to the easy posting of Twitter and Facebook. But sometimes things require more than 140 characters to discuss.

“Married To The Eiffel Tower” is a television doc on Objective Sexuals, individuals who derive physical pleasure from inatimate objects. The two whom the doc primarily focused on go for buildings, bridges, and fences. Also musical instruments and weapons. They share some loves.
I have always been fascinated with film’s power to make us sympathize with those whom we seem to have nothing in common with. In my tweets & facebooking I called the doc “heartbreaking”. It’s also inspiring how much its subjects have shed themselves of any shame. What on the surface is truly bizarre becomes truly human when given a voice.
Categories
Bowl Of Noses

Beauty Takes Many Forms

When you get up to get dressed, you put on what you think looks cool or pretty, right? Well so do the people of The Omo Valley.

Frankly, I think this make up and stuff might make a better Halloween costume than the Commander from Halo.
Categories
These Are Those Things

Weird & Wonderful: The 5000 Fingers Of Dr. T

A while back I waxed wondering why no one or no place has set up “The Festival Of The Weird & Wonderful”. I would be there in a heartbeat (not as an exhibit mind you, but just as an audience member). We still need some help programming the first edition but I imagine that “The 5000 Fingers Of Dr. T” would screen, even if it is now up for free on Crackle.

Categories
Truly Free Film

Ten Steps (Plus One) For How To Survive The Current Indie Producer Hell

I was talking to a comrade in the field a bit back, and mapped out this survival strategy for the exceedingly tough times that producing indie film is these days. See it’s simple, right? Just do these ten things (and then a little more) and you got it made (if you don’t have to actually earn a living that is!):

1) Cut all your budgets by 60% — but recognize your fee is going down by an even greater percentage;
2) Meet all the marketing, distribution, publicity, social network, widget & app designers, web strategy, & transmedia story world builders you can possibly meet, because “producing the marketing and distribution” of all your films under $4M has become part of the producer’s job description — but recognize that is going to be a major time-suck on your schedule;
3)Aggregate viable projects under $500K to build a new media distribution apparatus, recognizing the lack of fees and time suck involved — but that the low budget is required to experiment with new platforms with unproven financial models and a multitude is necessary to learn;
4)Continue to try to get one of 10 or so available slots for prestige specialized film budget over $10M so you can actually earn a fee, but recognize the odds are really really low that yours will be the one out of 500 or so that are competing with you;
5)Do everything you can to get a studio picture and/or television series since they are the only ways to legitimize yourself in the industry’s eyes, the quickest ways to promote your brand to potential new fans, and the most likely ways to earn enough money to sustain yourself;
6)Spend some time every day building your own audience and deepen their level of commitment to you by you giving back to them regularly — so that ultimately they will follow you and help promote your work, because you aren’t going to be doing it alone;
7) Find some other way to earn money on a regular basis since the film industry will remain unstable for a very long time and we all need to pay the bills;
8) Fight for affordable health care and education because if you have to go into substantial debt to pay for what should be available to all then you will never be able to consider a career in the arts to begin with or ever again;
9) Try to give back to a younger generation who are much different than you (other than their interest in film) because if things don’t make some substantial changes soon, their won’t be a film industry for you to work in either (i.e. we’ve all done the same things for too long and the system is broken and we don’t seem to know how to fix it) and besides, maybe you will learn something;
10) Keep your overhead as low as possible forever and ever and ever, as you will need to remain very flexible in the days and months to come.
Did I get the list right? What did I leave out? I mean, other than the obvious one of having a large fortune to squander. You do know that this is a quiz, right? I mean, I did leave some things off the list just because the internet likes top ten lists best. And of course because I want to test you. But really there was one, that I thought was obvious and is really why I have an energy to do any blogging or social networking whatsoever. It’s the most crucial if Indie Film will live:
If Indie Film is going to truly survive — and once again flourish –we all have to do everything we can to organize our community, to encourage participation, to share information.
Choose the culture you want.
Get on the bus. Please.
Thank you.