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Truly Free Film

Slated: Fighting Gender Bias With Data

By Colin Brown

Jane Campion remains the only woman director ever to get a hand on the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival when her film The Piano shared the Palme d’Or with Farewell My Concubine back in 1993. This week, the same New Zealand-born filmmaker notched up another Cannes milestone of sorts by becoming the first woman other than an actress to serve as the festival’s Jury President. But even if her jury ends up bestowing laurels on one of the two solitary women filmmakers in competition this year, Campion herself remains unimpressed by such belated dents on the celluloid ceiling. “You’d have to say there’s some inherent sexism in the industry,” she lamented at Wednesday’s news conference on the Croisette. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” Campion then added, looking across at some of her fellow jurors sitting alongside her, “but the guys are eating all the cake.”

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Truly Free Film

Inside the Writers’ Room: Post #2: So What Exactly Happens in the Room?

By Christina Kallas

O_70682The prevailing idea is that film, like any other art form, is made by a single genius. TV drama is, however, more often than not the result of collaboration between many writers and minds. How is that possible, and what does it mean?

Writers’ rooms already existed back in the 1950s, when three or four of the old comic legends would hang out and try out their jokes and material. The writers’ room concept has evolved through time. In the 1980s and 1990s the rooms grew bigger, you went from having three or four writers in a room to 15 writers. Today, due to budget limitations, the rooms have started getting smaller again.

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Truly Free Film

BondIt: The Introduction of a New Financing Service in the Entertainment Space

By Matthew Helderman, & Luke Taylor

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The smoke & mirrors of the entertainment business

The entertainment business has long been known for its less then above board dealings. Sharky agents, ridiculous financing structures, limited transparency and faulty business models.

That hasn’t stopped an influx of great content, great talent and hard work to get done — it’s just a reality of the territory. But does it have to be? With technology enabling scalability of information and transparency through widespread communication abilities — the entertainment business stands to benefit greatly at the bottom line level.

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Truly Free Film

Diary of a Film Start-Up: Post #49: 7 Sins That Make Money Movies

KNLOGOBy Roger Jackson

Previously: What You Must Know About Amazon CreateSpace

Ransom Notes

“I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes.” So said legendary Madison Avenue ad executive Phil Dusenberry. I think of that quip when I’m asked “What  movie subject will make the most money on VOD?” What type of film can you write & shoot quite cheaply – and which can pay out thousands of dollars a month, every month, way into the future? The answer: documentary films that are directly and intensively reflective of the American populace — addressing topics that touch almost everyone.

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Truly Free Film

Trust Is The Key To Collaboration

By Sean Durkin

Xcannes2005_08I started writing this post to ask for help with a kickstarter campaign for our new film, “James White,” but what I began to explore became much more personal to me.  I started to reflect on the past 10 years and how my partners and I got to this point. Josh, Antonio and I started Borderline Films in 2003 while students at NYU. Our goal was bold, but simple – we would all be directors and we would each make our first feature films exactly the way we wanted to. And so the journey began with us only knowing one thing for sure: that we couldn’t do it alone.

It was a blind, naive ambition, and 10 years later, almost to the day, we were in principal photography on Josh Mond’s film ‘James White’, our third first feature, following ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’, ’Afterschool’ before that.

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Truly Free Film

BondIt: Progressive Financial Ventures In the Film Business

By Matthew Helderman, & Luke Taylor

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History of the film business & financial industries

The film business and financial industry have forever gone hand in hand — even though wide spread public knowledge long viewed a separation between the two structures for many years. Regardless of how far the business of Hollywood, the independent sectors and the newly emerging platform may seem, even in the earliest days of Studio production – financing still came from Wall Street.

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Truly Free Film

Always Read The Label! — 7 Questions You Should Ask Your Filmschool Before Applying

By Carl Schoenfeld, Program Leader Raindance Postgraduate Film Degree.

littleraindanceWhat is the point of film school?

There are quite a few filmmakers who suggest that emerging talent should put their money towards making a film and presenting this at festivals instead of investing in a degree.

Ask any festival programmer: they see a lot of films that have been made by filmmakers who’ve not attended film school long before their festival starts. Submission numbers to the Sundance film festival have more than tripled since 1999 when films like The Blair Witch Project shaped the mould and gave rise to that question above. This year, more than 12,000 films competed for less than 200 screening slots, from which about a third may find a buyer, and so a future audience.

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