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 (pt5): Introduction To TopSpin

I gave a seminar for our interns a while back on where I saw current job opportunities in Indie Film.  One of our former interns, Chris Stetson, shot and cut it up into digestible morsels for your consumption.  We’ve been posting them here throughout the year here.

If you are a regular reader of this blog then you are probably aware of the hope I have for the Top Spin suite of Creator to Community (aka Direct To Fan) tools to help usher in the Era of the Artist Entrepreneur.  Eddie Burns just utilized their tools for all such work on “Nice Guy Johnny”.

By now, I hope that working with the Top Spin suite is second nature to any film school grad and all festival circuit films have integrated their tools into their website.  Granted I still haven’t, but I think that is just because I am old and slow to pick up on things.

My first exposure to Top Spin was via David Byrne and Brian Eno, and I touch upon that in the video below.

Some Job Opportunities in Indie Film with Ted Hope (part 5) from Hope for Film on Vimeo.

Seminar vids part 5 from Hope for Film on Vimeo.

Check out the other parts of “Some Job Opportunities In Indie Film” here:

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four.

Thanks again to Chris Stetson for shooting, editing, posting this.
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Truly Free Film

Hey NYC & LA Filmmakers!! Your Personal Invite (& DISCOUNT) To Distribution U!

Today’s guest post is letter to YOU from Peter Broderick. Okay, it is to me, but only so I can forward it to you.  This is a can’t-miss-event.

Dear Ted,

We would like to invite your colleagues and readers  to Distribution U and offer them a special discount (see end of post).  It is a unique event that will give them the latest information about new distribution models and connect them to many of the people who are pioneering cutting edge strategies. The event is being presented by me,  Peter Broderick, a leading strategist and pioneer of new distribution models, and cutting-edge author and tech analyst Scott Kirsner.

This one-day crash course on the New Rules of Crowd Funding, Audience Building & Distribution is being held Saturday, November 13th in New York at NYU and the following Saturday, November 20th in Los Angeles, where it is co-sponsored by UCLA’s School of Film, Theater, and Television.

We are very excited about the stellar roster of resource people who have already committed to participate. They are pioneers who are creating and implementing the latest distribution models and strategies.

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Truly Free Film

Can We Make Discovery A More Integral Part Of Process?

The volume & density of NOISE seem to have been the dominant parts of the discovery process for some time now. We choose what we choose generally based on how often we hear ourselves being told to make that specific choice.

Everything becomes about level of spend and placement when it is all about how much noise you can generate.. And when it is about noise, everything really stops being about choice, but something much closer to just impulse.  But what would happen if we started valuing certain voices over others?  What would happen, if we committed ourselves to choices, and worked to reduce our impulses?

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Truly Free Film

Exclusivity is OUT. Connectivity is IN!

Guest post by Nelson Carvajal, digital filmmaker and writer. Nelson is one of the key figures behind Cinefile.com (http://cinefile.com/), an intuitive new online platform aimed at connecting and promoting independent artists in the digital movie industry.

After I graduated from college in 2007, I was ready to take the movie industry by storm. Suffice it to say, I did not find myself not making tomorrow’s great movie overnight and a big, broad reason for this was due to my being overwhelmed with the fervent dissonance among my peers. Every time I worked as a production assistant on a movie set, it seemed that most of the other PAs were dead set on staying put in the big studio totem pole, so long as they could associate themselves with a “real movie”. I would usually respond by asking, “Yes, but don’t you want to make your own movies?”

After some time it became clear that

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Truly Free Film

The Audience Is Out There: Cinema is Alive & Well, in New Jersey?

Guest post by  filmmaker Joseph Infantolino. His first feature HELENA FROM THE WEDDING opens in NYC on Nov 12th.

That’s right. Everyone knows despite the dire commentary of the prognosticators that cinema is alive in well in NYC (cinema meaning films created as artistic expression sans commercial calculation). But I was astounded to discover that cinema is alive and well in, yes, my home state of New Jersey.

In advance of my film HELENA FROM THE WEDDING’s release by Film Movement on November 12 at the Quad Cinema in NYC, I did three screenings at multiplexes in shopping malls in the Garden State last week, two for the Filmmaker’s Symposium on Monday (Mountainside, NJ) and Tuesday (Eatontown, NJ) and one for the NY Film Critics on Wednesday (Morristown, NJ). I admit, I was a little skeptical. I have a film coming out in NYC, why am I doing 3 screenings in a row in NJ?

The skepticism lasted until

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Truly Free Film

If We All Love Sex, Why Don’t We Have More Of It (On Screens)?

Guest post by Mel Agace, producer of ‘Destricted’, a collection of shorts that brings together sex and art in a series of films created by some of the world’s most provocative artists and directors. ‘Destricted’ has been on the verge of being distributed in the USA for 4 years, and finally its coming … Destricted was released on DVD and VOD on the 2nd Nov on Amazon.com and netflix.com < http://bit.ly/c5Dfes>

www.destrictedfilms.com

Trailer link  http://destrictedfilms.com/us/trailer.php

So what is Destricted? our dictionary definition is – 1. To unlimit restriction. 2. To deconstruct within bounds, to unconfine. We wanted to create a platform for films and ideas without restriction. An alternative view.

The platform was curatorial and experimental, i.e. high risk, rather than traditional film development and production with a clear commercial product! We invited international artists such as Gaspar Noe, Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, Larry Clark, Sam Taylor-Wood, Marco Brambilla and Richard Prince to explore the topics of Sex, Pornography and Art in a series of short films.

Why do a project like this? I guess it started from

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Truly Free Film

A SMALL ACT – The Little Things Count

Guest post by filmmaker Jennifer Arnold.

How much do the little things count when it comes to staying visible?

My first documentary feature, A SMALL ACT (www.asmallact.com ), opens at the Quad Cinema in New York today. I started the film three and a half years ago with very few resources. DIY filmmaking is hard. We all know that. You have small budgets. You have small crews.

So how can you stand out when you have very little? The biggest lesson I learned while making this film is

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