Tag: Hal Hartley

Categories
My Films

If The Art Of The Samurai Is Not Having To Draw One’s Sword…

IMG_9072Gary Meyer’s blog EatDrinkFilms captures three of life’s great pleasures in a single dose. I am very pleased to have one of my favorite tales from my book excerpted there now.

Picture this: it is the first film you’ve financed yourself. You and your team are in a foreign land. Your money has been cut off and your financier picks you up, refusing to speak, and takes you up into the mountains where you are required to disrobe.

“One trait that helps producers is an imagination that can take you to the worst-case scenario, so that you can guard against it. I am prone to many dark thoughts, but I hadn’t anticipated this.”

Continue reading “If The Art Of The Samurai Is Not Having To Draw One’s Sword…”

Categories
Truly Free Film

10 Ways Technology Altered My Filmmaking Process

I am not sure cell phones have really helped because I used to be able to always be on set.  When cell phones came along, the producer was always on the phone.  Sure schedules used to be done by hand.  Nothing was wireless.  But what was it that helped make movies more efficiently or creatively?  What were the big advances that I can recall?  Did they all actually help? Did some hurt?

Continue reading “10 Ways Technology Altered My Filmmaking Process”

Categories
Issues and Actions

Fund The Culture You Love With The Gift Of Crowdfunding

How do we make it better?  How do we make our indie film infrastructure work for more filmmakers and more diverse audiences?

How do we improve things as individuals as well as a community?

This is the season of giving and that’s not a bad place for us to start.  I have always liked the idea of buying local, of buying direct — be it from the farmers, artisans, or owner/operators.  I have lamented the loss of more intimate connection that all of our innovation delivers.  I have always hated shopping and have enjoyed how the internet kept me out of stores, but there have been some stores, notably book stores, video stores, and record shops, that I enjoyed and now miss dearly.  The only online phenomenon that gives me the same rush I got when I discovered from those “stores of old” something I did not know about and simply needed to have is… crowdfunding sites.  

There is such a unique pleasure in making something happen.  It is an even greater pleasure when you give  to an artist that you admire.  

This gift giving season I am going to give to twelve artists via their crowdfunding campaigns.  I hope

Continue reading “Fund The Culture You Love With The Gift Of Crowdfunding”

Categories
Truly Free Film

Who Did What For Me When: Sharing Knowledge

I want to give thanks.  I want to show gratitude.  I want to encourage others to do likewise.  But most of all I want to share what I have learned so that others can utilize it to.  All of it is one big” thank you”.  This blog (not just this blog post) is a big thank you informed by those who gave to me when I still had so little. 

This post is a shout out to those who taught me the process and business of film.

Continue reading “Who Did What For Me When: Sharing Knowledge”

Categories
Truly Free Film

Who Did What For Me When: Introductions

None of us would ever get anywhere if our friends didn’t look out for us.  Our lives are not of our own making.

Milton Berle said “If opportunity does not knock, build a door.”  But the reality is you need some tools to be able to build; your bare hands won’t suffice.  Certain tasks too really are to big to tackle on your own. Someone sometimes has to hand you that hammer.  Fortunately, I have had some generous people in my life, who have helped me to connect the dots.

This is a time for giving thanks. Perspective comes with offering gratitude.  We need to be reminded of our good fortune.  We did not make it on our own.  Our lives are complicated habitrails, where others build our ramps, rooms, and wonderballs.

I have hesititated in my life fearing that if I displayed thanks, I would inevitably make a mistake and leave people out.  Like me, this is a work-in-progress.  I will make a mistake.  I will leave people out. But we have gratefully left that analogue world of completion and perfection, and here in the land of digital, everything is constantly evolving.  We are free to fuck up. So….

Thanks (in alphabetical order by the introducer’s first name):

Ann Goulder put me in touch with

Continue reading “Who Did What For Me When: Introductions”

Categories
Truly Free Film

How Many Ways Can We Collaborate Around A Single Film?

We will work together to build it better.  We will use the tools we have, but not let them restrain us. Let’s turn our limitations — financial & otherwise — into assets (may our chains set us free).  We will not let ego drive us away from an ambitious and interesting cinema.  Let’s acknowledge that defining a true author in cinema is hard, and the act of creation is rarely original. Everything is a remix.In an era of Grand Abundance, it is best practice to be even more generative, but less authorial.  And if all that is where we are, where does it leave us?

I am always looking for new methods of collaboration and new ideas of how someone else might riff off of one artist’s work.  Multiple authors have multiple arms and louder voices; their success is everyone’s & their failure no one’s.  If we

Continue reading “How Many Ways Can We Collaborate Around A Single Film?”

Categories
Truly Free Film

There’s Nothing More Important Than The Third Act

By Scott Meek

On this coming Sunday, forty years ago, Scott Meek took his first job in the film business.  I recently asked him if he had any lessons or advice he could share.

There is nothing more important than the third act as it’s the third act that carries the momentum of everything that preceded it, that allows the sum to be greater than the parts, creates the meaning and offers the truest emotion.

If I have learned that films work this way and I still believe in the truest possibility of film and of art, then I should also have learned that all of us have three acts too, and that there we have a great responsibility to ourselves to make the third act meaningful by making it truly ours.

It’s the act that is entirely owned by character.

Continue reading “There’s Nothing More Important Than The Third Act”