No Budget? It's All Good (Machine)

Ted Hope just published a list that circulated around the offices of his former production company Good Machine back in the day.  It's worth reading and modifying for your own needs as it contains nuggets of wisdom lost on most of today's filmmakers...

1. Write to direct. A screenplay, especially a no-budget screenplay is a very loose blueprint for a film – ultimately every choice you make will compromise something else.

2. Write for what you know and for what you can obtain. This goes for actors, locations, animals, and major propping or set dressing. If your friend owns something, anything, write it into the film.

3. Remain flexible. Recognize the essential element in a scene and allow it to take place in a variety of locations or circumstances.

I can't say I agree 100% with everything he says here - I'll let you figure out where my sticking points are - but this is a pretty comprehensive list.  

Production Plummets in Los Angeles in 2009

From The Los Angeles Times:
 

Overall, on-location filming on the streets of Los Angeles plummeted 19% last year, falling to the lowest level on record, according to data from FilmL.A. Inc, the nonprofit group that handles film permits for much of the L.A. area.

The production sector, a major employer and key facet of L.A.'s signature entertainment industry, was buffeted on several fronts: by a deep recession, which caused studios to release fewer movies and advertisers to curtail spending on commercials; a protracted contract dispute earlier in the year with the Screen Actors Guild; and the continued outflow of film and TV work from Southern California.

Hardest hit was feature-film production, which had been steadily falling over much of the last decade as L.A. lost jobs to Canada and, increasingly, other states such as New Mexico, Louisiana and Michigan that offer lucrative tax credits and rebates to filmmakers.

California's newly adopted film tax credit program helped to blunt the downturn, with production activity increasing by double digits in the second half of the year. About 50 productions have qualified to receive about $100 million in tax credits since the state program debuted this summer.

Nonetheless, the uptick wasn't enough to keep features from falling 30% for the year overall. Feature films accounted for 4,976 permitted production days (defined as a crew's permission to film a single project at a single location over a 24-hour period), the lowest level since 2003 and less than half what it was a decade ago.

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Lesson(s) to be learned - just because the money is being made by the studio in term of box office return it doesn't  mean that the people working (below-the-line)  on those films are making money.  That cripples infrastructure, talent pools, and ancillary industries.

This means that people go elsewhere to make their movies / TV / etc...

So what's called for are further tax incentives to stimulate production; more "smaller" movies and perhaps "mini-series special event programming" ; a complete sense of cooperation between all the unions and the studios and an overhaul of the old California First program for indie film and mediamaking.  We also need to build infrastructure for these new media distribution and production channels - more shows on the web.

And again, that's not the whole of the solution, but certainly it's a step in the right direction: More media making (finance, development and production) and more avenues to distribute that media.  Removal of the systems that are inefficient and strategies to build for the future.

Oh boy, we have a lot of work ahead of us... 

About The Pulp Legion ElectroGram

Someone shot me an IM an hour ago asking what sort of stuff is going to be in the Pulp Legion ElectroGram (title pending) because they were sort of "on the fence" about signing up.

I'm hard at work fleshing out an article on a film production scenario that, while not paying you millions of dollars, ensures a profitable return on your investment... very similar to the "Report from Them that's Doin'" feature that used to run in the old Mother Earth News.

Some links to production documents you need to use if you want to deliver a professional film and get paid.

A few (insert film crew position here) Help Wanted Ads (well, one anyway) - and yes, you can send me ads to place relevant to comics, pulp, movie production, marketing.

Offers from [redacted] regarding [redacted]...

Some cool pulp style graphics and other goodness I can cobble together and design using my rudimentary, all-thumbs HTML skill.

Links pointing you toward cool free stuff that you can use to make your pulp movies, books, comics and whatever else with...

Announcements that will be of interest - and boy do I have a doozy!

So if you haven't signed up - do so. If you have signed up - tell a friend. The Electrogram is limited to 1000 pulpsters.