Category: Truly Free Film

We are on the verge of a new film culture and infrastructure.

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Truly Free Film

My New Home Means…

Today is my first post on IndieWire. I think it is going to be a great home, and like any home most of the value comes from opening it up to guests. As we now reside on a platform dedicated to expanding its reach, our collective voice just got a whole lot louder. It’s time to expand our community.

I got into the habit of defining HopeForFilm/TrulyFreeFilm as part of my experiment in social media. When I got started blogging, the media mattered a great deal more to me than the social. As I begin my experiment v2.0 the social matters more to me than the media.

There were a lot of reasons why I felt I needed to step forward and begin blogging. Business has been bad in the film world for several years, but opportunity still remains great. The potential to have a sustainable culture and community dedicated to diverse and ambitious voices, free from mass market dictates, grows daily — what I define as Truly Free Film. Social media is second only to the film community’s desire in terms of being the necessary foundation . The community still lacks leaders with experience dedicated to an open and transparent film culture that embraces the audience and the artist alike. In fact, the majority of participants in our film culture remain dedicated first and foremost to their own individual work rather than the health of the community at large. I remain committed to the belief that we all benefit when our focus moves away from ourselves and towards true unity. Independent is the antithesis of what I hope non-corporate filmmaking can become. Artist-driven for sure, but community-centered.

I have always been a generative sort. I have enjoyed having an outlet that encourages community but doesn’t require perfection. Blogging has exposed me to new ideas, new processes, and new friends. It has given me a front row seat to an ever expanding community of Brave Thinkers and committed artists. My greatest rewards have come from contact with other bloggers and offering up this platform to the community at large. The conversation we have here and the diverse ideas and methods we have are truly the initial steps towards building it better together.

The strength of a society can be seen in the culture it creates. Corporate filmmaking, driven by profit only, rarely any more gives rise to the sort of movies that inspired me, helped me empathize with people from all walks of life, connected me to individuals and communities of ambition for a better world, or exposed me to the expansive and transformative nature of the human spirit. Independent film — as we can build it to be — will never die out, but it desperately still needs our help to gain the foothold that can allow it to really flourish. Those days are before us, but it takes more than just lending a hand. We determine the culture we have. It requires stepping up and giving voice.

It is my sincere wish that HopeForFilmv2.0 continues to expand well beyond my own musings. I am easy to find. Let me know what needs to be said and say it. This will not be my blog. I want it to be ours.

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Truly Free Film

Come Spend Some Time With Brian & Me

Three months ago, Vimeo reached out to me & Brian Newman, inviting us to have a conversation offering our perspectives on the state of the film business. Brian is a smart and engaging guy. Me, on the other hand…. Well, if you have an hour come join us here. If you just have ten minutes, you can check out Vimeo’s view of the highlights below:

Making it Happen (Highlights) from Vimeo Festival on Vimeo.

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Truly Free Film

The New Model Of Indie Film Finance, v2011.1 Domestic Value & Funding

This was once going to be a single post.  Today is part three.  There will be at least two more to come.  I started it here. And then yesterday we tried to determine the factors for accessing foreign value.  Today, let’s look stateside.

Until the double whammy of Toronto 2010 & Sundance 2011, it looked like the US acquistion market for feature content had fully collapsed.  No reasonable P&L would have shown more than a modest six figures for US acquisitions.  Hybrid & DIY models have not been developed yet to consistently deliver returns in excess of this amount (or even at these figures).  Perhaps this is now changing, but it would still be foolish for any filmmaker or investor to expect this and we can’t budget for such expectation.

How many of the 7500 films produce in the US annually return 20% of their negative cost from US licenses?  Although it puts emerging filmmakers at a great disadvantage, I think the surest determining factor for predicting US acquisition potential is

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Truly Free Film

If We Speak With Honesty, Will People Listen & Respond?

Today’s guest post is from filmmaker Matthew Porterfield. Matt’s contributed before, and his feature PUTTY HILL opens tomorrow. We had the good fortune to screen it recently at our screening series and had a packed house that all stayed for the Q&A. Matt blends a variety of techniques, from documentary and observational camera, to the more experimental. A portrait of a small town but through a Nan Goldin-ish eye, it is not one to miss.

It’s been a long and winding road, but this week PUTTY HILL opens theatrically in New York City.

PUTTY HILL spent the last year touring festivals and was picked up along the way by Cinema Guild, who will handle all U.S. rights, beginning with a theatrical rollout on February 18th at Cinema Village. We’re very happy to be in such strong hands and feel confident that our timing is right: if Sundance is a barometer for the state of indie film, audiences are embracing stories about America outside the mainstream.

That said, it’s hard for a little film to get noticed without substantial buzz. I remember back five years, when my first feature, HAMILTON (2006), opened at Anthology Film Archives the same day HALF NELSON hit theatres. I went around the LES with my wheat paste and posters trying desperately to find some free space beside the ubiquitous Ryan Gosling, hoping to share some of that limelight. Or, I think of Stockholm, when HAMILTON played right after a sold- out screening of OLD JOY and I thought, this is good: a perfect double feature until OLD JOY ended and everyone left the theatre but me and 11 people (one of them Ryan Fleck). Point is: I like these movies and I think audiences that like these movies will like my movies.

So how do I connect with them?

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Truly Free Film

The New Model Of Indie Film Finance, v2011.1, Foreign Value

Today continues my efforts to try to define the takeaway from the two most recent and robust US acquisition markets of Sundance & Toronto.  I (and hopefully we) will try to extrapolate from them where we are today.  How can we use our most recent experiences to determine the reality of our filmed dreams today?  How can we move to a more realistic model of indie film finance?

Foreign estimates still set the initial value for films, and it is CAST that is the predominate determinator for this value.  Before a film is shot, there are three types of actors that mean something to foreign buyers:

  • 1) stars that have been in big hits in the relevant territories;
  • 2) stars that have been in popular television shows in those territories;
  • 3) stars that can be expected to generate a great deal of publicity everywhere.

Other than stars, there are a few other aspects of a film that create foreign value.  Stars are another entity altogether from cast or actors — and it is really the stars that determine foreign value.

Are there any other factors that help shape what your project is determined to be worth overseas? Fortunately, yes!  

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Truly Free Film

The New Model Of Indie Film Finance, v2011.1

I recently had one of the top sales agents explain to me that the only indie film that gets made or sold these days are those projects that make absolute sense.  Okay, granted what he was referring to was only within the mainstream indie business — the type of films that he and his cohorts commission — but it is worthy of our time to delve a bit deeper into this.  What indie film project makes absolute sense?

The agent said there was no room for guess work in today’s mainstream indie business.  If you want to get your film made, you have to have to make it for a price that all concerned feel it will certainly recoup at.  “Absolute sense” is this regard is a film that will inevitably make back what it cost.  “Absolute sense” can also mean a project that a company feels it has to have, usually due to the people involved or the timeliness of the concept, but those “packages”  are frankly even harder to come by than those that seem to be inevitably recoupable.  You are looking for  the needle in the haystack with either, and need to build it yourself if you want to hope to come close.

My last few projects all were designed to remove any guess work for financiers.  Between foreign sales estimates, tax credit rebates, and the undisputed value or attraction of the stars, if you want to be sure your film will get made, your project needs to read that the value of the work will exceed the cost of creating it.  Value in this regard, is strictly business related, and not cultural (sorry art-for-art’s-sake fans, this isn’t going to be one of those posts).  As much we can understand or even accept, those words though, what is the math that adds up to this formula? And where do the numbers even get their value anyway?

Even with 39 or 40 (and still rising)  films selling at Sundance this year, the first take away from it is

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Truly Free Film

Wondering Why Music Licensing Is The Way It Is

The NYTimes has a nice article on Matt Porterfield’s truly free film PUTTY HILL. I got to moderate a discussion around the film last year after its Berlin premiere and again this year for our screening series at Goldcrest — yet the movie had a significant change during the time that passed. The Times piece touches upon it: The Rolling Stones wouldn’t even enter into discussions about licensing “Wild Horses” to Matt and his team.

Why is it if you are an artist whose art is singing other people’s songs, our culture has worked it out in the most frictionless way manageable? But if you are an artist whose art is filming artists whose art is singing other people’s songs, you have to go to herculean tasks to gain permission?  

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