Tag: Michael Tully

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Truly Free Film

Filmmakers Must Champion The More Disadvantaged Filmmakers, So….

I am not going to go to Sundance this year.  I need a break.  Consider it an experiment: what will I do if I skip that convention this year?  It long ago stopped being a film festival for me.  I only got to spend about 20% of my time seeing movies when I went.  I ended up doing meetings after meetings.

But that was when I was addicted to producing films. Now that I have kicked that habit, maybe I could return and just be there to enjoy the bounty.  But I don’t think so.  

If I attended Sundance, I would feel too tempted to “develop opportunities” (aka take meetings) and catch up with old friends and cohorts. And as a result I would probably miss the films I would most love.  As it is, that happens far too much at festivals now; I often get caught up with the buzz and see the popular films — and those aren’t what I personally love most. How do we make sure the undersung films get seen more?

One of the big failures I see in #IndieFilm these days is the lack of real peer review and support.  There are some nice exceptions, like Paul Thomas Anderson’s support of BREAKFASTS WITH CURTIS. But more of us need to champion the work we love of others.  We are in this all together and we have to reach beyond our personal boundaries. I want to help change that. So…

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These Are Those Things

Another Great Poster

If you have been reading the TFF post on the sale of Septien, you know that IFC bought it for Sundance Selects.  What you may not know is that it is up on VOD now but it’s only on the market until February 24th, though it will be VOD-able later in the year once it gets a theatrical release and has a (hopefully) healthy spring/summer festival run.

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Truly Free Film

Sundance Sales Dissection: Septien (Part Two)

Today’s guest post is from George Rush, producers rep and attorney.  Yesterday George started telling us about how he engineered the sale of Michael Tully’s Sundance At Midnight hit, SEPTIEN.  Today’s post concludes the dissection.

I had been to Sundance before with Midnight films and know it can be difficult to get good buzz.  Sundance audiences are not reflective of real audiences.  It is a mixture of film nerds, rich party people, and earnest do gooders seeking some culture.  I’ve found most people want to see the buzzed about stereotypical Sundance films—The Are All Right, Winter’s Bone.  These tickets are hard to come by.  However, midnight screening tickets are easier to come by and thus people get stuck with them.  They come in hoping for some culture and get blood and guts and farts.

I’ve seen packed houses at Midnight screenings pretty empty by the time the lights came up.  Because Michael’s film, SEPTIEN,  is so different, I felt a good number of the audience and some critics would dismiss it outright because it did not fit their expectation of what a Sundance film should be.  It sort of reminds me of a friend of mine who hates Wes Anderson movies because he expects Bill Murray to always play the Bill Murray of Ghostbusters.

Those who stayed, who bought in, would be massively rewarded by SEPTIEN, but there would be some naysayers.  So my feeling was Sundance was going to be a wildcard, with champions and detractors.

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Truly Free Film

Sundance Sale Dissection: Septien

Today’s guest post is from attorney and sales rep George Rush.  It is part one of two. George handled the sale of Michael Tully’s Septian to IFC’s Sundance Selects.

I have worked as a lawyer or a producer’s rep on hundreds of films over the years, and this experience has made me quite skeptical about the business model for independent producers.  The business is worse than it has been historically, but it is still the same very basic model.  You produce a film, a distributor exploits those rights.  You are good at creating content, they are good at marketing.  Hopefully those two things come together to benefit both parties.

I’m a hyper skeptic of producers essentially acting as their own distributors because generally they aren’t strong in both skill sets, and thus something usually suffers.  So I usually assume a producer is good at producing, and try to leave it at that.

Most of what I work on is low budget films with few if any stars.  Ten years ago, I considered a low budget film under two million dollars.  Today, I consider it under $500,000 and believe if you do something for a larger budget without a truly bankable cast, you are being reckless with your budget.

The distribution business has become tougher and they are paying less for content, and thus budgets go down correspondingly.  So how can you make something quality for under $500K—most people fail at this effort and there is a glut of so so films that just can’t compete with larger budgeted film—they are clearly inferior.  Indeed, most festival films in this budget range will never see the light of day beyond the festivals.  However, I don’t know how, but some people do.  It takes an extremely resourceful producer and director who is willing to take some chances to pull it off.

Enter Michael Tully’s Septien.  

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Issues and Actions

Talk Back To “The Take-Back”

Although there is certainly a lot of “truth in the jest”, HammerToNail’s Tully’s plea to end all the blah-blah-blah of film panels on how-to-social-media-ize-your-film-to-glory and Stop-the-sky-from-falling-by-old-white-guys (I am on one this week!) is still written as humor: no one really needs another manifesto (and I live to write a manifesto each week). Yet…

The Take-Back has gotten a good deal of Talk Back. I think many of us fall on both side of the fence: tired of the same old, same old, and desiring to figure out some way to get the conversation started. Let’s face it: we need to figure out how to get people to talk about culture in a more meaningful way. Still though, Tully’s started a lot of good dialogue on film panels and their relevance. Now Brian Geldin of The Film Panel Notetaker has chimed in. Check out his post and lend your voice to the discussion.

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Truly Free Film

The TAKE-BACK Manifesto

I wish I had published this earlier.  It comes from Michael Tully, our editor over at HammerToNail. It was originally published on his blog, Boredom At It’s Boredest, on Indiewire. It takes a much different tact than most of what we’ve been discussing here.  I totally get it; discussion and strategy about reaching audiences, is exhausting.  For some, it will never create better films, or even bring them to audiences.  Yet, courtesy of HTN, I have come in contact with a plethora of good films that are not being seen by audiences.  I love the spirit of this manifesto, but….

The Take-Back Maifesto

By signing the following petition, we film lovers of all types—critics, reviewers, screenwriters, directors, producers, production assistants, grandparents, art history snobs, coach potatoes, Multiplex squatters, etc.—believe the following to be true:

— We realize that bringing any film into fruition, however great or small the budget, is an outrageously difficult task. We realize this, and yet we don’t care. The final product is all that matters.

— A production’s back-story only becomes relevant after—not before—one has watched the film on a screen. Once we see your film and like (or dislike) it, that is when we will decide if we want to learn more about how it came to be. Not everyone can be Werner Herzog.

— We know that making thought provoking, ambitious, challenging, adventurous films is complicated by the fact that cinema is such an expensive art form. We know this, and yet we say so what. Everyone is a martyr for their art.

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