Tag: live events

Categories
Truly Free Film

Discovery and Appreciation: What Drives Them? A.S.A.C.A.

I think I look for a lot of the same features in apps as I do in live events.  I like things that take me to new things  that I appreciate.  Things.  Granted they are but a small piece of what I look for but things are a good start. Not being a material sort, my things might be different than yours.  My things are generally events, live or not.  Beyond those my eternal search often breaks down.  Why? The problem is that “I contain multitudes”.  No algorithm can  suss out what I really want. They fall far short of my identity, be it public or private. This true, thankfully, for most people — even if those motivated by the sale wish it weren’t so.

Curators struggle with it too.  But I go to festivals with the same hope I have when I look at twitter: show me that thing I did not yet know of that I will later cushion softly with fond nostalgia and invigorate later with aspiration for the future.  Can those qualities be defined? Yup. At least a bit.  They are the qualities we look for and hope to discover.  They are the qualities we appreciate and keep us coming back for more.  They are the qualities you want to have in your work, the presentation of it, the marketing.

Continue reading “Discovery and Appreciation: What Drives Them? A.S.A.C.A.”

Categories
Truly Free Film

How Big Brand Sponsorship Saved Our Indie Film (pt 2 of 2)

Guest Post by Amy Lo.  Yesterday Amy started the tale of Planet B-boy‘s march into brand sponsorship and how they teamed up with Samsung.  Today she concludes with how it was a win/win and some thoughts towards the future.

Taking the long view
We were relieved that our immediate need for post production funds was met, but our proposal also kept the door open for a much bigger fish to fry: distribution. Our initial strategy was the typical indie film non-strategy of keeping the film under wraps, doing a big premiere at a festival and waiting for any offers to come along. With Samsung unexpectedly involved at an early stage, we started thinking about how we could partner with them to bring the film out, either with or without a traditional distributor. We came up with a plan for live dance events combined with the film screenings, a 25-city tour presented by Samsung.

In the meantime, we finished the film and got it into competition at the Tribeca Film Festival. We had a magical outdoor premiere on the riverfront with Fab 5 Freddy as emcee, live performances, and breakdancing lessons before the movie. More than eight thousand people turned out. We’d made it an event. We knew we could be on to something.

We pushed Samsung and came so close – with no less than the Chief Marketing Officer for North America behind us – but internal politics and timing ultimately thwarted further P&A support. Planet B-boy still had a great run with distributor Elephant Eye Films, held over in NY theaters for 10 weeks and spreading to about 50 other cities. We threw some fantastic events, too.

Working towards the future
I’m convinced there’s a still lot further to go with sponsorship and indie film, particularly for distribution and the hard work of getting finished films to audiences.

Continue reading “How Big Brand Sponsorship Saved Our Indie Film (pt 2 of 2)”
Categories
Truly Free Film

How Big Brand Sponsorship Saved Our Indie Film (pt. 1 of 2)

Guest Post by Amy Lo

Behind every finished film, there are 1,001 war stories.

This is just one small part of how we willed into being a film called Planet B-boy , and maybe it’s a rare, lucky case. But when it mattered most, it was a big-time brand that 1) came to our rescue with cold, hard cash; 2) allowed us to keep complete creative control; and 3) gave us greater ownership of our own film to boot. They didn’t even realize how crucial it was to us, but the truth is, Samsung saved our indie film.

Continue reading “How Big Brand Sponsorship Saved Our Indie Film (pt. 1 of 2)”

Categories
Truly Free Film

Old Problems, New Solutions: Film Fest Rock & Blues

Today’s guest post is by director Allison Anders (Mi Vida Loca, Grace Of My Heart), co-founder of the “Don’t Knock The Rock” Film Festival”
Seven years ago I was given one of the greatest opportunities of my opportunity-rich life — a tenured post at UCSB as a distinguished professor in the Film And Media Department at UC Santa Barbara, where I remain on faculty, teaching one quarter each year. My first quarter I created a class on rock ‘n’ roll films since this had long been my private passion, and called the course “Don’t Knock The Rock”, named for the 1956 Alan Freed, Sam Arkoff, Columbia film of the same name. I loved the experience of sharing these music rich movies so much I didn’t want it to end.

With the help of producer Elizabeth Stanley who was at that time at the DGA, and who connected me to festival producer Gianna Chacere (now with The Hamptons Film Festival) , I began to lay out plans for a festival in Los Angeles showcasing rock ‘n’ roll movies. My musician daughter Tiffany Anders was returning to Los Angeles, after living in Brooklyn for a good chunk of her 20s, so I immediately welcomed her home and enlisted her to curate live music for my hair-brained idea. The first year she delivered Sonic Youth, J Mascis, The Tyde, Dead Meadow, Wayne Kramer, and Ariel Pink before I even knew he had been born!

We are now launching our 6th annual (we took one year off) DKTR Fest July 8th and will run every Thursday of July and August at The Silent Movie Theater, Los Angeles. From our first Don’t Knock The Rock Film And Music Festival, our agenda was, and remains, the same: to showcase music films and live music performances for die-hard fans and music nerds and to get the word out to them. We are dedicated to that agenda, even though the struggles of the niche film festival like ours are many, well actually, money; the struggle is always money.

Continue reading “Old Problems, New Solutions: Film Fest Rock & Blues”
Categories
Truly Free Film

Make Your Microbudget Film An Event: The Waiting List

Today’s guest post is from Mike Vogel.

I recently premiered my first microbudget feature The Waiting List in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. I’ve read a lot of blogs and tweets about how important it is to turn your screening into an event. There are many well thought-out reasons for this, but the only true reason is that no one wants to see your crappy indie film. Or my crappy indie film. I’m not saying yours–or mine–is actually a crappy film, but since it didn’t get into Sundance and doesn’t have any recognizable stars from Entertainment Weekly, it must be plotless, poorly acted and guaranteed to be boring. Like a foreign movie or something. I assume that’s the mindset of 95% of the people I’m trying to convince to watch my movie–let alone pay to watch it. So the amazing opportunity to see my movie at an out-of-the-way theater on a weekday evening has got to be pretty compelling. Here are a few small things I did to make it interesting for someone who has never heard of me or my movie.

Continue reading “Make Your Microbudget Film An Event: The Waiting List”
Categories
Truly Free Film

Jon Reiss on The New Way To Think Of Theatrical

I wasn’t at DIY Days. If I had been, perhaps I could have saved some time that I just spent brainstorming and writing it all down. Dang.

Jon puts a lot of good stuff out there. With most of the new crop of Sundance films having gotten their golden tickets this week, their makers would do well to listen up to the words that Mr. Reiss speaks. Is that you?

And if you look at the list of To Dos that I served up on that last post, you would do wise to heed his advice and fire your DP and hire a Producer of Distribution & Marketing. Open your ears:

And here’s a nice round up of Jon’s talk from Sheri Candler.