Category: Truly Free Film

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

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Truly Free Film

Job Ops In IndieLand (pt.6): Move Beyond A Single Product

Most industries and practices get stuck in a rut of doing things the way they’ve always been done.  The film world is a stellar example of this phenomenon.  Most practices are designed around the way the world used to be, not how it is now.  The film world and it’s economy used to be based around scarcity, but now we live in a world of abundance.  Adapting to this change will bring new opportunities.  The first step is acknowledging that change.

Some Job Opportunities in Indie Film with Ted Hope (part 6) from Hope for Film on Vimeo.

If you missed the prior posts on Job Opportunities in Indie Film, watch them here:
Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Seven.

Special thanks to Chris Stetson for shooting, editing, and posting this.

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Truly Free Film

Top Ten Tips For A GREEN Indie Production (Pt. 3 of 3)

The last two days film producer/director Miranda Bailey has guest posted sharing her trials and tribulations at trying to make indie film green.  Today she shares her tips.

Miranda’s Ten Tips for Greening Your Film.

1.) Take a deep breath and realize you will not be able to be completely green. Acknowledge what you can green – Trash, Catering, Water Bottles – and go from there.

2.) Make sure there is a recycling bin next to EVERY GARBAGE CAN.  EVERY SINGLE ONE.

3.) Give everyone a reusable water bottle and show them where they can fill it up instead of using plastic disposable ones. As soon as they lose them, which should be with in the first 48hours of giving them out, give them another one and use the money you saved by not buying water bottles on buying a gazillion Sigg bottles.

Continue reading “Top Ten Tips For A GREEN Indie Production (Pt. 3 of 3)”
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Truly Free Film

Film Finance Overwhelm

Guest post from Film Specific’s Stacey Parks.

As I’m unwinding from AFM last week, it occurs to me that while many of you are experiencing Distribution Overwhelm, even more of you are experiencing Finance Overwhelm. Why? Because unless you have 100% cash in bank to make your film, what can you do to get your project off the ground?

The way I see it is we’ve entered a time where ‘cobbling together’ different forms of film financing is necessary to make the whole. Sure, private equity (or cash) still plays a role in this new model, but there’s also other methods that need to be explored and implemented to finance your film

Case in point – many filmmakers today are using private equity or cash for development funds, tax incentives and pre-sales for production funds, and crowd funding for finishing funds. Is that too many financing components? Let me put it to you this way….

Ignore a diversified approach to film financing at your peril!

So how and where do you begin on this journey then to cobble together financing for your film?

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Truly Free Film

Green Indie? It’s A Hard Road (Pt. 2 of 3)

This is the second guest post from producer Miranda Bailey.  Part One ran here yesterday.

A lot of people want to be green on set, but the cost associated with it rises. I had heard that being green saves you money and that makes sense theoretically, but even something as simple as recycling has its costs.

First off you need more trash bins. Secondly, you really need to have someone there to make sure people put the right stuff in the right bin. You would think that a simple sign would work. Recycling goes here, other stuff goes in there right? But sadly, it doesn’t work like that.

I have now tried to “Green” three films. On the last film I produced (with Ted Hope), SUPER, we had

Continue reading “Green Indie? It’s A Hard Road (Pt. 2 of 3)”

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Truly Free Film

Can An Indie Film Really Be “Green”? (Pt. 1 of 3)

Guest post from producer Miranda Bailey.

Even though I have been working in indie films for the last 10 years I never thought about the waste my company or my industry was creating and outputting each time we went into production on a movie; that is until my company Ambush Entertainment got involved on a film called The River Why. As with all indie films there are struggles along the way in making any movie and most of them revolve around money. There is never enough. So when I heard the producer of The River Why wanted to make the film “green” right after a discussion concerning the fact that we were actually going to try put the film in the can with out the completion funds in place, I thought everyone who was up for this idea might have gone mad.

What did that even mean? GREEN? And how much was that going to cost?

Continue reading “Can An Indie Film Really Be “Green”? (Pt. 1 of 3)”

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Truly Free Film

GREAT EXPECTATIONS: Not Just a Dickens Novel.

What do Filmmakers want from film markets and what they can realistically get?

“Discerning the difference between a film that can actually sell well enough to justify having a third party sales agent and going to markets vs a film that is best served by DIY methods that should be planned and employed BEFORE the film’s first exhibition”

Guest post from Orly Ravid, Founder of The Film Collaborative (TFC)

We get questioned all the time by members and others about which markets should filmmakers attend and which sales agents should they go with. Having unrealistic expectations is dangerous. It sets people up to do nothing on their own but wait for some third party to make their dreams come true.

Continue reading “GREAT EXPECTATIONS: Not Just a Dickens Novel.”

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Truly Free Film

Sometimes: Think Small And Find Success

There is a better mousetrap.

One of the problems with the old way of making a film — with the belief that someone would buy it — is that the apparatus only applied to a few select films aimed at the widest audiences.  Yes, occasionally a filmmaker hit the lottery and everything aligned perfectly to engineer a sale, but by now we see that clearly as the exception and not the rule.  Some of the beauty that is being revealed during The-Collapse-Of-The-World-As-We-Once-Knew-It (COTWAWOKI), is that new experiments bring a wider selection of work to a wider selection of community.

Reading the NY Times recent article on how music labels are taking they DIY approach that they had for bands, are applying it to films too, frankly warmed my heart — or whatever that is when you get the warm wave from the top of your head down through your toes.

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