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Truly Free Film

BondIt: The Difficulties & Realities of Producing Films at $1M & Below

By Luke Taylor & Matthew Helderman
 
UploadAs every facet of the film industry has experienced, the digital era has drastically shifted the economics of how films are produced, marketed, and distributed. Camera technology has reached a level that provides filmmakers at any stage of their career the ability to produce content with the potential of landing a fruitful distribution deal as the world has witnessed with films such as Beast of The Southern Wild, Like Crazy, Another Earth, and Martha Marcy May Marlene – all produced at 1M or under and distributed theatrically through studios. 
  
The financial ease of production that has developed over the past decade has increased the volume of films produced on an annual basis from 2,000-8,000 – creating a financial ripple effect in the production industry as labor rates, rental rates, and talent salaries continue to decline.

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Truly Free Film

Wake up! Don’t wait for the Sale!

by Jen Sall

Rapid advances in technology make it significantly easier and much less expensive to make a film today. A record 12,218 films were submitted for the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, 72 more films than the 2013 festival. Of the 4,057-plus feature films submitted, 121 were selected. Of those approximately 15 were purchased by the close of the festival. A few more have been bought in the past few months, not many.

Perhaps you beats the odds (you have around a 4% chance of your film premiering at a major festival and then 10% of distribution deal once it makes the festival) your film premieres at Sundance, Tribeca, Toronto, SXSW or a festival with a track record of sales.  Lightening strikes a second time and your film is bought. You are in the minority and you can stop reading this article.  If you are one of the thousands of other films premiering at a festival with no distribution deal or buyer in sight, a film that has never screened in a festival, or you developing a film keep reading.

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Truly Free Film

Diary of a Film Start-Up: Post #47: Quality Control or Why Films Fail

KNLOGOBy Roger Jackson

Previously:  Why We’re Different

Quality Control

At Kinonation we’ve automated much of what has traditionally been manual. Films are uploaded to us instead of shipped on hard drives. Digital movie assets are stored in the cloud instead of locally at our office. Transcoding and metadata authoring is triggered automatically and happens in the cloud, replacing the existing process of “guy in a room for a day” — which is expensive and error-prone — with cloud computers that rarely make mistakes. But one very much human element we retain is QC — quality control.

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Truly Free Film

BondIt: The Rise of Entertainment Union Deposits/Bonds & A New Solution to the Protocol

Ted’s notes: Today begins the 3rd in our offerings of detailed glimpses at how filmmakers are now looking beyond themselves to find solutions for all of us (the others being the Kinonation and IndieStreet columns). I spoke with the BondIt team and was very impressed with what they are offering and the path they’ve taken to launch it.  We will all benefit and learn from their efforts. We can build it better together ( (and now ARE).
 
By Matthew Helderman & Luke Taylor
 
UploadThe shifting of the global economy in 2008 changed the film business in obvious ways — budgets were slashed across the board, distribution outlets faltered internationally and multi-national conglomerates that owned and operated studios no longer saw a viable risk in the intimate, quirky and character centric independent films of the 1990’s and early 2000’s.
  
As the recovering economy slowly progressed towards the “new economy”, the film business saw smaller productions at the $500,000 and below range begin sprouting up intensely. From a few thousand films produced per year in the early 2000’s to nearly eight thousand feature films produced in 2013 — there was a major increase in content creation and with it a slew of production issues.

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Truly Free Film

IndieStreet Post #12: Making a Film? – Why?

By Jay Webb 

Screen shot 2013-08-19 at 4.51.06 PM

Previously: The Rebirth of the Indie Video Store Experience — Why Human Curation Will Never Die

Being honest about your motives is the first step toward a successful film, and it’s a healthy habit for anyone entering a new life-consuming project; starting a new company, getting married, or in this case, shooting a film.

Screen shot 2014-03-25 at 12.01.31 PMDo you want your film to change the world?  Do you want to make money so you can make your next film?  Do you have something to prove to yourself?  An honest answer in the early stages can do wonders for a filmmaker in finding a workable distribution path, uncovering a forthright story, and figuring out an appropriate amount of money and energy to expend on the project.  (Please note: An answer like “I am creative and want to express myself” misses the scope. This is a reflective question for professionals or budding professionals who live in the reality of scarce resources and time who will express themselves creatively regardless of their path).

Human beings are motivated by different factors, but when I was only 19 years young, a drunk man who I was serving steak to explained to me that motivation could be broken down into the ‘4 Fs’.

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Truly Free Film

Nobody Knows Anything #10: The Hare Hypothesis

By Charles Peirce

The Hare Hypothesis by Iain Spence is an interesting piece of pop-culture analysis which tries to link trends in youth movements to a larger pattern operating throughout history. It’s easy to understand the appeal — as anyone with a bit of historical perspective might start to notice the repetition of certain cultural trends. For Spence, whose background is in writing about music and youth in the UK, those repetitions are cycling in a four-stage pattern which he connects with his own, specific reading of the Life Scripts concept of Transactional Analysis.

Nobody10-420

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Truly Free Film

Nobody Knows Anything #9: Deep Metaphors

By Charles Peirce 

Nobody9-300Deep Metaphors are a concept from Harvard Professor, marketer, and researcher Gerald Zaltman that find their obvious use in marketing but have many possible applications for communication of all kinds. They are similar to Archetypes and Archetype Theory in that they represent a base symbolic language which communicates via the subconscious. But whereas Archetype Theory is based upon Jungian psychoanalysis, Deep Metaphors come primarily from the study of cognitive science, neuro-imaging, and linguistics. While not a substitute for Archetype Theory (nor a replacement), they are a useful tool in dealing with many issues of marketing, not least among them market segmentation and niche audiences.