In response to the LOVELY BY SURPRISE post the other day, filmmaker Ashley Meyers wrote in with this suggestion: What Indie Film Blogs will cover undistributed films? Please help us build this list. Let us know which ones you know about. Or better yet, make a whole list and send it in and get the gold star of the day!
Like most folks out there, I get excited with every new list. MovieMaker has put together their 50 Best Websites For MovieMakers. It’s a good list and will provide something fresh for virtually everyone out there.
Periodically I send out email blasts to various film folk and some actual film enthusiasts. I resort to the blast because there still is a certain breed of people that don’t seem to do much web surfing. They want their news delivered and they haven’t mastered RSS feeds or Feed Burner subscriptions (I know, I know, no one likes to enter their email address, but…). It usually is a recap of much of what I have previously written here, perhaps with a few Twitter posts thrown in. Since many are industry types, I need to stir them up a bit. I sent the following out yesterday afternoon. Here it is for your reading pleasure.
I have been asked why I stopped doing these email blasts; was it that everything is now okay in Indieland or was it that good movies stopped coming out? Did the lack of blasts = no news to report? I am happy (okay, sort of happy, sort of really really frustrated) to report that none of that is the case.
The good news is a week doesn’t go by now when I don’t see at least one film that really impresses me (Goodbye Solo, Treeless Mountain, Star Trek, The Exploding Girl, We Live In Public, Made In China, Humpday, The Yes Men Fix The World, Sugar, In A Dream, Tulpan, Hunger), but the unfortunate flip side is that it is rarely in a commercial theater that I see these films anymore. It’s bad that it has become increasingly hard to read about such films (please check out HammerToNail) as papers and magazines fire critics and give less space to ambitious work. The really horrible reality is the trickle down is going to reduce & effect the films you see for years to come completely altering the movies that get made and find their way to your eyeballs.
The next few years’ culture dose is corroding rapidly away as I type and your diet is about to get really limited and hyper-specific. Trust me, as someone who has tried this with other such essentials like food — even if it is delivered right to your door, you don’t want the same meal on a regular basis, particularly when they can’t source or afford the best and most unique ingrediants. Filmmaking is going on a horribly bland diet that is not good for anyone.
Now if I was really good, I would tell you how we can all solve this by working together. But I am not. I need your help for that — and that is a hard thing to both get and then to use.
I stopped doing email blasts as I thought the blogging would give more people access and thus I would get more input, but I am now not believing that is the case. On TrulyFreeFilm, I have spent the year speaking of solutions for Indieville, but what I always find people prefer to hear about the problems. On TheseAreThoseThings, I have attempted to curate a little corner of pop culture, but it’s hard to get people to participate. On TheNextGoodIdea, I’ve hoped to publicize the things that are making this world a better place step by step. I lost steam at InfoWantsToBeFree hoping to highlight the issues that shaped our media-mindscape, as I was encouraged to build it and others would join, but that just wasn’t so. And yes, there is the one I do with my son, for the young ‘uns too: BowlOfNoses. I would love it if you chose to subscribe to these blogs so I could believe they were valuable to you — or maybe I need to recognize the opposite.
So today, I blast out with a statement of the obvious: Art FIlm culture will dwindle down further to a bloody flatline unless you start to act to preserve it. Everyone sees it, but what are we going to do about it? This is urgent. Really urgent. More good films are going undistributed than ever before.
Mainstream news media has started reporting on Indie’s presumed death. This is the first time that in twenty years I think that MainstreamMedia looked at Indie without naming it Weinstien, Sloss, or Sundance or that wasn’t during the Oscar season I believe (okay, so I exaggerate for the sake of emphasis, but you know what I am saying). In prepping for what was my first live broadcast appearance (what? you didn’t yet look at that earlier link? just click on it now), I tried to consider what were the problems facing Indie film, and in less time than it took to write with this email, I came up with 38 Problems. Thirty Eight. And that was easy. Read them. Ponder. Link. Distribute. Add to the list. To kill the beast, we must name the beast.
But the situation is worse than what I just wrote. If you missed it Hollywood Reporter did an article how even the A-list auteurs’ star-filled agency-backed packages are failing to find US buyers at Cannes on Sunday:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3ibd965fb07c296111fd0b189f8ac38b39
And that’s not the only one. Foreign sales acquisitions have fallen. Festival funding is drying up. Places to push the message out, like newspapers and magazines, are folding. And is anything taking their place? I have been twittering similar stuff for a long time. What? You are not on Twitter yet? Forget about what others have said; Twitter is a great filter, a curating tool. I have found a film project through it, music to listen too, art to see, books to read, and issues to respond to. Forget the folks who Twit about what they… eat. Follow the ones I follow. Heck, follow me. It’s simple and free and I dig it.
It’s funny. I wrote this blast for a clear reason. The title still sticks, even if the answer never made it to print. I have now gone on too long to burden you with such further details. That will have to be another blast. Or blog post (where you will miss it if you don’t subscribe). I am sure you have some ideas for solutions, or evidence to the contrary. Let me know them. I will blast about them. Or I would be happy to have you post on any of the blogs. Let me know.
But don’t despair. Trauma generally breeds action. As a species, we’ve generally demonstrated we don’t act until the pain of the present becomes greater than the fear of the future and the unknown. I think we are there — maybe not at the bottom, but with a little imagination we can now see the bottom or at least guess the depth. And there are reasons to look up (many of which have been chronicled on TFF): as has been said by others “The theatrical market is healthy; the economic model is not healthy.”. A better delivery system has been found, albeit by the bootleggers, but hopefully someone — and someone with a commitment for equal access and equal opportunity — will learn how to monetize it.
In the meantime, please go see some films. Tell your friends, family, fans, and followers why you liked them. Tell them to see them. Curate. Facebook about them. Take culture into your hands. Bring people together. Tell the media you care about culture and want it covered.
Maybe come here me talk about all this stuff. I am doing an event 5/28 for NY Foundation For The Arts. Please come.
Thanks for reading. And watching. But don’t fiddle. Our culture is burning.
Ted
This past summer I was a mentor at Sundance’s first Creative Producing Lab. I was completely impressed. In regards to Jane’s earlier post today, this is that program. Granted it can only be accessed by a very limited number of participants (there were 4 fellows last year), but it was a comprehensive and intensive program that I would advise for everyone.
The Sundance Creative Producing Initiative much more than just the summer lab though (from Sundance’s own literature):
it is a year-long creative and strategic fellowship program for emerging American producers with their next project.
The program was conceived to develop and support the next generation of American independent producers. For over 27 years, the Sundance Institute has offered in-depth year-round programs for feature screenwriters and directors. In an increasingly competitive and complex marketplace, the health and excellence of the independent film movement hinge on sophisticated creative and strategic producers with whom these directors and writers can collaborate.
The initiative focuses on the holistic producer, who identifies, options, develops and pitches material, champions and challenges the writer/director creatively, raises financing, leads the casting/packaging process, hires and inspires crew, and navigates the sales, distribution, and marketing arenas. The program is designed to hone emerging producers’ creative instincts in the scripting and editing stages and to evolve their communicating and problem-solving skills at all stages of realizing a project.
Five producers will be selected for a one-year fellowship and participate in the following:
Creative Producing Lab (described below)
Producers Conference attendance
Sundance Film Festival attendance (screenings, networking opportunities)
$5,000 living stipend; $5,000 pre-production grant
Year-round mentorship from 2 industry advisors
Community building among producing fellows
Year-round support from Sundance staff
SUNDANCE CREATIVE PRODUCING LABFellows will attend a 5-day lab focused on creatively strengthening their projects from script to screen. The idea is to give producers the chance to explore their own creative take on material and to give them skills and experience in evaluating and developing this material at script stage and beyond. Scripts will be discussed in one-on-one sessions with advisors, as well as in a collective notes process with the group. Case studies will be used to explore creative issues in the production and editing processes, while techniques in communicating with writer/directors and potential production partners will also be addressed.
ELIGIBILITY
Candidates must have produced at least one short or feature-length narrative or documentary film (no more than 2 narrative features total).
Producers must have a completed, legally-optioned, scripted narrative project in hand with a director attached to the project.
Candidates may not be writer or director of submitted project.
Candidates must be based in the U.S., although submitted project does not need to be English language nor filmed in the U.S.
Sundance Institute strongly believes in strength in diversity and actively encourages applications from women, people of color, differently abled people, and all persons who support the Institute’s mission.
I should also add on another front, it is also deadline time for IFP’s Independent Filmmaker Labs. I just blogged about it on Let’sMakeBetterFilms over on HammerToNail. Check it out too. Get those applications in the mail! These are great programs that we are fortunate to have.
In a post entitled “Issues Of Sustainability” on the Filmmaker Mag Blog, Lance Weiler talks about how we as filmmakers can produce for today’s evolving audiences. In talking to filmmakers, I still find they often don’t yet fully conceive what it means to adopt a “transmedia” approach to storytelling and marketing. On the other side of the spectrum though is what made Wired’s recent post on “Why Hollywood Needs a New Model For Storytelling” such a gas — they’ve got it and got it good. Check it out. We may not need to build the ARGs and seed the story so heavily on blogs and elsewhere as Scott Brown writes about, but we do need to give serious thought about how the hell to build audiences for our stories.
We have had a nice brief stay over here in Blogger town, but Let’sMakeBetterFilms is going to join on comrades at Hammer To Nail. We will be posting more regularly over there. For the next few weeks we will be listing and describing the qualities that in my humble opinion “make better film”. Please give us a visit as we build our new home.
My goal was to provide my friends, collaborators, and co-conspirators 52 Reasons Not To Feel Glum About The State Of Film Culture, and precisely that sector of independent art film culture I call Truly Free Film. I figured with the economy in the toilet, traditional media stepping into the grave, and a business leader or politician being revealed as a crook daily, we didn’t need more gloom poured on.
14. We have seen a perfect distribution model and its success: the Obama social network was nothing short of a thing of beauty. Its methods should be an inspiration for all truly free filmmakers. People had a reason to visit the site, to supply information, to reach out and connect to others. They were supplied the tools and a mission. Now go out and find someone to vote for the culture you want.
15. The DIY/Do It With Others model is now recognized as a real alternative to traditional make-it-and-pray-that-others-will-pay-to-distribute-it-for-you. Filmmakers are planning for it as a possibility from the start of production. This preparation becomes the key to success.
16.Filmmakers are recognizing the need to define their platform at early stage AND make it on-going. Be they producers like Bill Horberg or Jane Kosek , directors like Raymond DeFelitta and Jon Reiss ,or writers like John August and Dennis Cooper, creative filmmakers are taking upon themselves to find and unite their audiences at an earlier stage in the process. Okay, maybe it isn’t so Machavellian; maybe they just want to talk to people. Either way, it is going to lead to more people seeing better films.
17. A curatorial culture is starting to emerge. Creative communities need filters. Every year I have as many “want to see” films on my list as I do “best of”. It’s not that there is too much as some like to claim, but it’s that there is still too little discussion on what is best and why. We started Hammer To Nail (soon to debut in a new & improved form!) for this reason, but we are not alone. Although they tread in much different waters, popular email blasts/broadcasts like Daily Candy and Very Short List, these sites work as much as filters as they do identifiers. Social Networks most popular features are members “favorites” in their profiles. We are all being trained as curators, but are only now starting to share it publicly.
