Category: Truly Free Film

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

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Truly Free Film

Producing For The Emerging New Film Ecosystem

This week I am presenting a new talk “How To Produce In The Emerging New Film Ecosystem”.  This is not part of my “book tour” but really back to my gospel on the pulpit — my push to help drive us forward. I launched this new talk on Monday at AFM (sans any slides), and will follow it up today (Wednesday) in Napa (in an abbreviated format) and then off to Vancouver for Merging Media to really kick it home. I should have it down pretty well come end of the week I hope. I spoke a bit about this new rant to PlaybackDaily/StreamDaily and you can read about it here.

As both artist and entrepreneurs, we filmmaking types are stuck in legacy practices that have little applicability to the way the world is. We are holding back both the advancement of our craft and our culture, the cash and the capital. It is time to

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Truly Free Film

A First Time Writer/Director’s Trial by Fire, Part #3: The “Final Draft” Facade, Is It Ever Really Done?

HFF Blog 3 ImageI am the fucking greatest! Ah, the wave of pride and misguided sense of accomplishment that one can ride having “finished” a script. Especially script number one. The real one, not the others before it, shat out only to be abandoned too late out of sentiment and denial. Don’t get me wrong; completing a script is hard work. The act itself is something to be proud of. What happened after I typed those last words wasn’t what I expected. A colossus weight lifted. For a day I felt serene. Then that wave of anarchic emotion that I’d expected kicked in and I felt complete…but was the script?

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Truly Free Film

Why All Film Folk MUST Read My Book

Granted, Hope For Film is a good read if you are a film fan too, or really a creatively minded person, but it is all of us in the film business (or those that want to be) that my book is geared to.  I’ve shared with you the reasons why I wrote it, and many have shared with you excerpts from it. Yes, there are many good reviews out there too to tell you that it is worth your time too, but none of that yet tells you how you will directly benefit from reading the book, does it?

Fortunately, Film Courage came to the rescue.  They have released three prior interview segments to date, and this latest one lays out four key takeaways from my book.  You’ll have to read the book of course to get the nuance and all the secrets, but if you want more details, watch the video.  However, if you want a good idea of what’s in store for the read, here are my observations on my book:

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Truly Free Film

The Dilemma And Contradiction Of Taking Time

Where does good work come from? Just because you can say something, doesn’t mean that you should. Stewing on an idea does not mean that it will have more flavor.  We are told to go, go, go, but when is slow actually the fastest route?

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Truly Free Film

Inside the Writers’ Room: Post #14: The Revolution is Loading

Unknown-1A few weeks ago HBO and then CBS announced that they would launch stand-alone online services in U.S. in 2015. Before that, Netflix had made known that it would start producing features, crushing theatrical release windows once and for all, after it had contributed to the change of the patterns of attention and the way TV series are made by releasing its House of Cards episodes all at once, as a 13-hour movie. ‘Now the real shakeout begins’, wrote Ted Hope in Hollywood Reporter. ‘We are witnessing the march from once lucrative legacy practices built around titles to a new focus on community.’ Michael Wolff, writing also in the Hollywood Reporter, disagrees: ‘Streaming services from the two networks don’t signal television’s capitulation to Netflix and the web; it’s actually the opposite, as the medium expands yet again to gobble up more revenue.’ And in that sense, he says, it will hurt Netflix and all other digital competitors.

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Truly Free Film

Get Drunk Together And Other Recommendations For Building A Good Collaboration

Film Independent had me pull together some of our top indie producers and probe the secrets to collaborating well with directors. This panel reinforced what became clear writing my book: There is no template for a successful collaboration. There are certainly best practices to be observed but each film and each director requires a custom fit. Albert Berger, Lisa Cortes, and Lynette Howell rocked the stage with me at the Filmmaker Forum.  Check it out some video highlights here:

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Truly Free Film

What Do We Sacrifice When We Give Up Time?

FilmCourage interviewed me and asked “How do you know when your movie is ready to shoot?”. In the conversation, I simplify things into three steps:

  1. Discovery: the process of defining what matters;
  2. Prioritization: organizing complexity and weighting the options and opportunities;
  3. Engineering serendipity: you build the bottle that can hold the magic elixir.  How can we reach higher? How can we accomplish more than we planned for and manufacture magnificence?

The film business as of late has been cutting budgets to the bare bones and filmmakers are rising to the occasion.  We prep our movies in less and less time.  It’s mission impossible but we deliver it.  But what get’s lost in the process?

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