On Episode Seven Of Christine & Ted Talk To Directors At Sundance ’09, Lee Daniels speaks of the need to turn water into champagne, Alan Cumming talks about sharing passion, and Jeff Lipsky about protection and not knowing:
Author: Ted Hope
Episode Six of The Christine & Ted Talk To Directors At Sundance ’09 Show, Jeff does just that. And he discusses “triangulation of trust” as a bonus:
We have a guest post today from Anita Tovich.
I am Chair of the producing dept. at the New York Film Academy. In reading TFF’s recent transmedia storytelling post I realized this is it! This is it! This is a far reaching piece of the puzzle for my producing students and I sent the article to all current students and some former.
The onus is always on me to make some prophetic statements and decisions based on the research available to me for the students. But I’m no prophet. So I scour the internet day in & day out for some morsel of food to feed the sparrows. Some twig of hope to feather the nest. And every day, we, as a group fly hard against the prevailing winds.
My students are scared. One of them called me for an emergency meeting when his mother wouldn’t stop crying and telling him he was going to live under a bridge some day if he didn’t give up his dream to be a producer. He’s a working producer in Germany right now btw. Another told me yesterday she had a dream she was hit by a truck and screamed at the EMT to get her to her final pitching sessions here and not take her to the hospital. We had a good laugh, but it was ominous indeed.
Transmedia storytelling is a way out of the doldrums. I have these Failure Is Not An Option panels for and with my students. I bring in very disparate members of the community. Jeff Gomez who was mentioned in the blog was kind enough to attend. This man is a gem. He feels that young directors and producers do not necessarily understand what he does. Maybe they regard it as too lofty and/or cognitive. But his filmic universes can be the bread and butter for the newbiest of our community. As the blog stated, it’s not for every film but we should examine it before we abandon it.
I tell my students that if you want to get rich you have probably chosen the wrong profession. Wall Street is a hop, skip, and jump away-go there. Or maybe dental hygiene is in your future. But if you want to align yourself with the Jeff Gomezes of the world who enjoy giving a soul to inanimate objects-those things that wouldn’t have a soul if left to those corporations whose name(s) we dare not say. We don’t need to abandon art or character or humanity or heart or spirit.
I told a former student of mine this morning that a documentary she’s currently pitching has a lot of monetary upside, especially if she configures a new world for her characters. I know her characters from a short doc she did about them and I wouldn’t mind a bit abandoning myself to their world. She maintains this is not necessarily appropriate for a documentary. We are now at the stage where we agree to disagree. But I’m right. J
Help us fly against the wind. If there are enough of us, the wind doesn’t stand a chance.
Anita Tovich
Chair/Director
Producing Dept.
Director
Industry Speaker Series
Director
Intern and Mentorship
New York Film Academy
The transmedia / cross-platform storytelling discussion continues, both here on TFF and over at The Chutry Experiment.
Was it the semi-narrative, the accusatory question (How does it feel?!), the multiple meanings of the chorus, the propulsive rave up, or just the great tune over all, but how many songs manage not to just stick for decades but rise to the pinnacle of great rock songs? And then to get the namesake and the creator together in their fifties still rockin’ it before multiple cameras and a giant swarm of fans loving every minute.
It’s definitely entertainment:
(hat tip to Amos Poe for this one!)
On Episode Five of Christine & Ted Talk To Directors At Sundance ’09, Lee Daniels, director of Precious, talks about how talking as a producer, is much different that talking as a director:
Okay, this is also about talking these days too, but I didn’t know how to put that into the headline.
I was interviewed on Wednesday by Aaron Aradilis for his BlogTalkRadio show “Back By Midnight” on the occasion of the DVD release of ADVENTURELAND. Martin Starr precedes me so that give you ample reason to tune in, but if you need more Anthony quizzed me on the big questions like why I wanted to make me movies in the first place. We cover Hal Hartley’s early films, and the current state of indie film of course. We go into why it was obvious that Michel Gondry, Todd Field, and Puccini & Berman were obvious artists to back for their first narrative features. We even hit the state of film criticism and the crisis in print media. I guess we go on for awhile.. but of course you get to enjoy my nasal honk for most of it (and a couple good tunes off the Adventureland soundtrack).
Please visit our concession stand.
(Thanks to Jan McLaughlin for the tip!)
