By Kellie Ann Benz
It’s what fills our daydreams.
The Duplass Brothers, Lynn Shelton, JC Chandor, Katherine Bigelow and Benh Zeitlin, Steven Soderbergh, before he started threatening to retire on an annual basis. Robert Rodriguez, before he started making kids movies.
These are the names that rotate through our filmie craniums.
But the main reason that all of us fill our daydreams of indie film mega-success is because of one man: Quentin Tarantino.
“A Field In England” – The whole team behind Ben Wheatley’s movie deserves a big shout out. They did something truly different and structured their business to do so from the start. Day and Date? check. Transparency? check. Enhanced value beyond the feature film product? check. Sharing of knowledge for community benefit? check. Social media engagement? check. Revenue sharing? check. Read all about this truly innovative strategy here, courtesy of BFI (see below). I look forward to seeing how you apply it to your own practice.
The British Film Institute (BFI) – This institution makes the list of individuals not because I think corporations are at all like people (Repeal Citizens United!), but because they are taking the lead in heeding the call for greater transparency in film revenue reporting. We will not be able to build a sustainable global indie film culture or enterprise without such facts. The BFI’s GREAT listing of films & case studies of how distribs are using new ways of reaching audiences, such as using new marketing techniques, new distribution platforms or innovative exhibition models is a must read for anyone interested in finding a way to support themselves or others by making films and taking responsibility for them. bit.ly/18p4i8M
Shane Carruth – Shane probably should make this list just for making another one of his movies.
It’s a bit hard thinking through what actually constitutes “good” within an industry. A lot of our “job” is to make things better, to introduce people, to facilitate deals and stronger projects. Generosity is about going that extra step — doing the thing that is not expected and that truly helps.
It’s Thanksgiving here in America. It’s an odd holiday and even if it’s origins are not the greatest, I still dig the spirit. Today I try to examine those that helped me when they did not need to, or whose help was beyond the call of duty
By Jim Cummings
The amount of digital piracy in a country is correlated to the average internet speed. It would be very time consuming to download Avatar on a dial-up modem, so many in El Salvador will have to buy a hard copy, but Americans often watch movies online for free simply by googling the movie’s title followed by the word “streaming”. As if this isn’t already easy enough, advancements in internet speeds will only make watching movies for free easier, or in my opinion, ubiquitous.
In 2010, a filmmaker friend of mine raised
By Colin Brown
Think you’ve got problems getting your films financed and seen by audiences? Well, you are in shockingly good company. In recent weeks, everyone from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to Steven Soderbergh, John Travolta, Mike Figgis, David Lynch and Lynda Obst have all bemoaned the near-impossibility of getting their own pet projects onto the big screen. Taken together, their published comments are a scathing indictment of a film establishment that is only obsessed with pre-assembled projects that pander to the planet’s widest common denominators.
Perhaps this blog is now obsolete (now wouldn’t that be excellent!). Or maybe blogging just doesn’t work the way I hope it would (man, that would be a real shame!). Perhaps change in the film business just about impossible. I am growing afraid it might well be — at least the kind that comes from positive and strategic influence as opposed to spontaneous or reactionary disruption (that kind of change that always is constant). So what is the next step? And why the bleep do I have to ask?
What is going on in this world when everyone agrees that something is totally f*cked but no one with power appears to be doing anything substantial to improve it? Are there secret plansof a new cultural infrastructure hatching and
