Wassamatta U?

Ted Hope has a great post today by guest blogger/filmmaker Jamie Stuart. I am going to pick at the post's carcass a bit, but there's plenty here to chew on throughout the weekend so go read the entire thing:

Now, however, the paradigm has shifted to a situation where filmmakers are making small, dirt-cheap movies for niches and their friends; the debut film isn't as important so much as slowly building a track record. In this model, indie film has essentially become regional folk art. I think we need to return to the prior model, but there are some things holding that up. Like:

Yes, it has shifted away from the bottleneck of just a few festival darlings making their way past the gatekeepers and out into the Elysian fields of the distribution marketplace. In the regional folk art metaphor you propose, you neglect to mention that now more people can participate from wherever they are at, instead of having to be in Los Angeles or New York or other large urban center. The bottleneck has widened (for good and for bad).

I think we need to re-think how movies are made. Micro-features and DIY productions use crews in a much different manner than movies made for 7-8 figures, and I think producers need to study what people like myself are doing...

Not that I expect larger budgeted productions to use the exact method I did (they wouldn't have to if they had money), but there's got to be something that can be learned and adapted from what I and others have done.

Absolutely! And how does one most effectively share these ideas, paradigms and innovations? Why through the internet of course!

Now, if you combine all of the above, you get another problem. It used to be that aspiring filmmakers started with a small budget, either on a short or a small feature, and that was used as a calling card to get a larger budget. The issue here is that due to the drop in budgets based on prosumer cameras and editing, producers don't seem to take those projects as seriously. What they mistake, however, is that you're getting an equivalent production value as before, only it costs a fraction of the amount. But producers aren't saying: "Wow! Look at what so-and-so did for so little. Imagine what they could do with a larger budget? I want to work with him!" Instead, they seem to be looking at the budget, and on that basis alone, writing it off: "Let me know when you've moved on to bigger things, but for now, you're a small fry."

I would agree that this is ture in the United States, but there is a growing movement of production and distribution professionals in the UK that are embracing these micro-budget productions and filmmakers with financing and expertise. We cannot count that out.

The internet is great for sales and marketing, but it's a lousy delivery method. The quality is terrible. I've never looked at the internet as anything other than a means to get exposure and establish myself -- so I can get OFF the internet and make real features.

People understand the quality loss. They measure it against the convenience and are just fine with it. Excuse me but exactly what is "a real feature?"

I think a lot of the indie community still believes in the film festival model: If you're a serious filmmaker, you need to submit to festivals. They seem almost fundamentalist in this regard. And it's holding up progress.

Yes, it is. The indie filmmakers have become the establishment they rebelled against in the 80's and early 90's.

All of that said, I'm still of the belief that the biggest problem in indie film right now is simply the product. When indie film was booming in the '80s/'90s, young people like myself were drawn to it because it seemed to be the most creative arena in filmmaking. Not now. Young people look to big FX blockbusters as the most creative arena. People now equate indie film with poor production values, cheap-looking handheld photography, amateurish acting, etc. They look at it as a joke. I approached the prospect of DIY filmmaking from the view that ambitious films could now be made inexpensively -- I've always used tripods, dollies, cranes, special FX. But DIY filmmaking on the whole went in the opposite direction -- small, handheld slices of life. And while that aesthetic certainly has its place, it's never going to find a larger audience, in my opinion. Until we shift out of this phase and DIY filmmakers start creating ambitious pictures at dirt prices, the movement will remain derided. And until the bigger people start lifting up the small, there's going to remain a major class divide.

(emphasis mine)

Absolutely. I double that for web series that rely on the backbone of being parodies of existing material. If I see another 20-something wannabe comedy web series set in an office, apartment complex or similar locale - I am going to get violent. Ditto for the trope of directly addressing the camera or the simply allowing the "action" to unfold without camera movement or editorial. It's lame.

Dr. Horrible (which I loved) has been a hit on the web NOT because it was entirely original, but because everything else up to that point was lame. The web audience deserves better. They want better and yes, they will pay for it.

I am writing a movie now, that while not entirely original (what film is?) is geared to push the boundaries in terms of production value, energy and fun. A creative new look at some old tropes in genre film. That's what we - the pulp filmmaking community - needs.

As well as effective ways of getting that new pulp out there so people can embrace it...at their convenience.

Add This to Your Pulp Film Philosophy

From Fast, Cheap Movie Thoughts' interview with Mark Stolaroff:

What lessons can a No Budget filmmaker take away from today's Hollywood?

MARK: Wow! That's a hard one. I spend a good deal of time teaching what I call The Alternate Universe of Filmmaking (coined by Peter Broderick), whereby the rules of Independent Low-Budget Filmmaking are exactly the opposite of studio filmmaking.

And as far as storytelling for independents, I'm a big believer in hitting them where they ain't. If you try to compete with Hollywood on their own turf, (like making a conventional romantic comedy), you're going to get clobbered. Hollywood seems to be teaching us that if you throw a lot of money at a problem, you'll succeed. That you don't need to be unique, you just need recognizable elements to sell a film.


I guess if I can come up with one thing, it would be that there's a core audience for every film. And the definition of a Core Audience is the audience who doesn't give a shit how good your film is. Studios have been making bad films that appeal to core audiences--large core audiences--for years. They may be 15-year-old boys or 15-year-old girls, but they can be very passionate, even about the worst films. Independents need to realize that there are core audiences for their films too.

And since making a good film is so damn hard--nearly impossible, especially on a no-budget--it is vital that filmmakers work hard to discover who that core audience is and figure out cost effective ways to reach them. And since these no-budget films won't have big stars in them or be based on comic book heroes, these core audiences will be small. They'll be niche audiences, not defined by demographics like "males 18-49". If a filmmaker can properly court the core audience for their film, they'll succeed even if they don't make a perfect film.

Don't compete with Hollywood, find a niche they aren't serving well and make it yours.

(But I disagree with the notion you can't make a film with "comic book heroes" in it for no budget)

Budgetary Considerations

Filospinato commented on a post regarding budgetary considerations and how they affect the final product - your movie. He supposed that the lack of budget really hindered the look and quality of his short film.

You are always going to run into money problems on a film. It happens even to the big guys. I was one of the many "soldiers" in the electric department of Die Hard With A Vengeance. That was an $80M film and it had problems with the budget.

Because you are an Indie filmmaker/writer you have to "solve" those problems creatively. You don't have any money to waste. The way you do that is by:

1. Mastering all of the tools at your disposal.
2. Preparation and design.
3. Experience.


Mastering the tools:

The best way to learn the capabilities of your equipment is to do it yourself. You should be shooting a lot of footage on your own. Experimenting with lighting, composition, settings etc... What look are you going for? How can you achieve it with the tools at your disposal?

The more you know about the tools, the more creative choices you have. It also allows you to bypass the standard thinking and come up with something creative to achieve the same effect. I was working on a movie called Ripe back in 1995/96 and we were shooting a scene from the woods out onto a roadway at night. In the rain. At the end of the road we had a crane with a 12K lamp shining down onto the scene. The problem was that the camera could see the crane in the frame. We didn't want to move the crane (that would have eaten up time and light) and we didn't want to move camera (again, time and we wouldn't have been able to get the shot we needed). So what to do?

The Producer suggested we wrap the lower half of the crane in black plastic to hide it. The DP said we could try it, and as the prop and scene crew went to do it, I raised my voice and said, "No!"

(Now understand, I was an electrician on this show. This really wasn't my call to make. But I've never really been shy when it comes to film)

I went over to the DP and the Producer and took a small leafy branch with me. I held the branch out on camera right and asked the DP to look through the lens. The small branch, up close to the camera like that, covered up the crane that was far away.

The DP smiled, looked at the Director and nodded. We could get her shot the way she wanted.

If I hadn't known about foreground, mid-ground and background, I wouldn't have been able to suggest the solution to the problem.

-------------------

Preparation and Design:

Many people are under the mistaken impression that low budget filmmaking means shooting on the fly, when the exact opposite is true:

The script is written for the budget and the tools available (location, actors, costumes, props).
It is developed and simplified.
All so that you can make a cool movie that can be marketed.

--------------------

Experience:

Like I said above, you should be shooting a lot of footage, playing with your equipment and learning how to do this thing called filmmaking. You shouldn't make one or two short films and expect to go off and make a full blown feature and expect to sell it.

You need experience. If your first films look crappy, then ask yourself, "Why?" Learn from your mistakes so that next time you don't repeat them.

I made a lot of crappy short films ("Effugium") and was involved as a crew person in a lot of low budget pictures ( Freakshow, Hellblock 13, Head Cheerleader / Dead Cheerleader, An Occaisional Hell) as well as a ton of commercials (Adluh Flour, Addams bookstore, Icee, Sports South, St. Patty's Day Parade, Linde Praxair, ad infinitum...) . My mistakes were onscreen for all to see (and they still are for that matter).

So what?

They say it takes ten years to become an overnight success. They say that everyone has one good script in them, but it's blocked by about fifteen crappy scripts. Go get some experience and don't worry about what other people think.
-----------------------------

You will find that putting these three concepts together - mastering the tools, preparation & design, and experience - you will be able to overcome any budget and any situation and create entertainment. Don't blame the budget (or lack thereof) - that's a cop out.

The Only (Pulp) Filmmaking Advice You'll Ever Need

Occasionally good buddy Jim Henshaw will send me an email... well, that's not quite right.  It's not quite mail. It's more like a signpost pointing the way to something good, or a simple question that usually takes me several paragraphs to answer fully.  There's often no "How ya doin?" No Chatty Cathy aspect to his email - just the pulp. 

He cuts straight to the bone that Mr. Henshaw - yes, he does.

So when I get an email from Jim - I know it's something important, useful and often profound in its elegant simplicity.  The following hit my Inbox a few minutes ago and the article linked pretty much sums up my philosophy of indie/pulp/low budget film making - hell, media making - and is...

The only film making advice you really need

Print it.

Learn it.

Live it.

Edit to add:  I almost missed this portion of the web page scrolling through the comments. The author of the article - Matt - sums it all up quite nicely as to why he wrote this article in the first place:

 So why do I really post this information? Mostly because I get really aggravated working for people who don’t know this stuff already. I get alot of jobs from people who go on and on about nebulous “film theory” concepts. Those are usually the jobs that turn into 18 hour days, go over budget, run out of money, and I get short changed.

Those are the jobs where the AD and Script Supervisor stop the whole production for 4 hours because they aren’t sure that the layout of the beer bottles on the table matches the last scene .

Those are the people who feel like a $1000 leather coat is the only way to express the lead characters personality (but sorry, we had to blow the catering budget for the next two days to buy it).
Those people are the “noise” you are talking about…it’s the noise I’m trying to get rid of.

I probably have half a dozen films that I can’t put on my resume. They’ve never been finished. They’ve all went so over budget, they went into post and never came out.

On the other hand….television and commercial are a dream to work with. They always finish the project. Maybe there is a hard shadow on the wall in a shot or two, or the lighting color temp is a little off. But at the end of the day there is a finished product.

For digital filmmakers on low budgets, thinking like a “filmmaker” when it comes to production is only going to lead to failure. My goal is to get people to think more like a commercial producer. Do the best you can, but nothing is sacred except the budget and the deadline.

The Frugal Filmmaker

There's a lot of things I'd like to cover in our "Make Your Own Media" mandate here at Pulp 2.0.  It's fun pointing people to 'news you can use' to make your own films, comics, books and so forth, and hopefully inspire you to get off your sofa and put your imagination to work.

 (Hmmm.. "Put your Imagination to Work" -- I like that. It goes on a t-shirt)

Unfortunately there are only so many hours in the day - and I do have to keep the Pulp HQ here stocked in whiskey and cigars - so I can't cover everything I'd like. Despite what you may have heard, I'm only human.

(Though I do have powers...) 

One of those areas that I can't cover in too much depth is DIY filmmaking tools and technique...but fortunately for you there's Scott Eggleston aka The Frugal Filmmaker.

Scott goes through a whole assortment of DIY filmmaking tricks and hacks that keep your budget low and your creativity high. For example from his last weekly Facebook newsletter:

Scott EgglestonMay 23, 2010 at 8:03pm

Subject: Weekly Recap Link List 5-23-10

Sorry I'm a little late with the list this week. Thanks to all who have been inviting their friends to this group. Now up to 229 members! Yes!

Creating DIY sand bags for your light stands
http://www.facebook.com/l/4c41d;www.instructables.com/id/Creating-DIY-sandbags-for-your-light-stands/

Guerilla filmmaker's backpack
http://www.facebook.com/l/4c41d;blog.anvilpictures.com/?p=538

DIY Stedicam
http://www.facebook.com/l/4c41d;rjwilx.blogspot.com/2010/05/diy-steadicam.html

Ripley, my handheld rig
http://www.facebook.com/l/4c41d;www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?p=1992210#post1992210

The Frugal Filmmaker, Episode 8: 3 Point Lighting
http://www.facebook.com/l/4c41d;www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5uybmobdFY

Build your own lenses
http://www.facebook.com/l/4c41d;www.diyphotography.net/build-your-own-lenses

Microbudget filmmaking sucks because you are doing it wrong!
http://www.facebook.com/l/4c41d;d2dvd.blogspot.com/2010/05/microbudget-filmmaking-sucks-because.html

Felicia Day on building an internet audience
http://www.facebook.com/l/4c41d;www.youtube.com/watch?v=id23nVuO5U0

How to pitch investors
http://www.facebook.com/l/4c41d;trulyfreefilm.hopeforfilm.com/2010/05/how-to-pitch-investors.html

Cops nearly shoot actor playing convenience store robber
http://www.facebook.com/l/4c41d;gothamist.com/2010/05/05/cops_nearly_shoot_actor_playing_con.php

Scott goes through and finds the sort of stuff you need to succeed at making your own movies.  Hopefully you'll learn so much you'll be able to contribute back to The Frugal Filmmaker . In any case, go over and join the group (and tell him a bastard sent ya!)

Microbudget Filmmaking Sucks Because You Are Doing it Wrong!

Recently, there was a list by filmmaker Mynette Louie that has made the rounds of the film web called "Why Microbudget Filmmaking Sucks" . The list is one where Louie recounts all of the disadvantages and advantages of microbudget filmmaking.  Many of those  disadvantages are also listed as advantages in the list so really it's a matter of attitude and approach that seems to make the difference...

And that seems to be a problem for some people.  They can't redefine 'film' to fit their own needs and wants or the needs and wants of the audience. In many filmmakers' heads, film exists only at the local theater where someone has to pay 8-10 dollars or more to see and experience it.  If media history has taught us anything it's that film is far more flexible than we give it credit. If film were as inflexible as many would make it seem then we would never have had the TV movie, the Direct-2-Video or the DVD Premiere.

Film is fluid. It fits into the glass you place it in... and just like beer or soda you can sell a lot of it.

But again, short-sighted filmmakers are putting up a huge cover charge at the door when they seek theatrical only.  I call "ego at work." It's not good business sense.  It's not good marketing.  It's outdated - especially for microbudget filmmaking.

True story:  When we launched SCARECROW it was with the idea that we were going to make most of the money back because it was A) made inexpensively ($100K +/-);  B) we were staying as far away from theatrical as possible, and C) we were going to sell it internationally prior to its having any sort of domestic DVD release.

No festivals. No reviews. No retailer support.  We had a great concept, a great poster, a good trailer and a movie that was still in post-production. Our goal was to get half the production budget back at AFM, and then the rest at Cannes...

On Day Two of AFM,  I got a call at my office telling me to start work on a sequel idea.  We were 3/4 financed and had more people interested for other territories.  By the end of the market, we were in the black and had many people interested in a sequel.

Then we used the response to promote the film stateside. We made these great folders with screener discs in them and sent them to the retail buyers.  There was discussion of trying a screening but in looking at the expenses we nixed it.  Too expensive.

Then we got a deal at Wal-Mart. It was a tight squeeze on the profitability (they strike a hard bargain) but the order was huge. We shipped a ton of discs to Walmarts around the country, and the discs were placed on the shelf at a price of $8.99. Fangoria ran an article on the movie, surely the fans would rush the shelves.

But the DVDs?  They sat there. Some went off the shelf to be sure, but overall we were looking at some big returns.

Then WalMart had a bright idea.  They placed Scarecrow in the bargain bin at $4.99.

And people picked it up... a lot.

WalMart was happy - they were making a profit on their purchase. We were happy - we were making a profit on their order.  Fans were happy - they got their film and took it home where they could enjoy it (with a six-pack)...

They were so happy that WalMart renewed their order and asked about the sequel which by this time we were promoting domestically and internationally. We also discussed making it a trilogy (which I didn't contribute to except for some artwork direction)

By the time it was all over with the distributor had made over $1,000,000 on a $300k investment that never went theatrical. These movies were also shown on the SciFi Channel as a double feature which inspired us to release them again as a 'Double Creature'  (though I was overruled on that bit of title business and they were released as a 'Double Feature') which made some more money for the company.


Bottom line to all of this is: Don't think that there's only one way to write, produce, distribute and screen your film. Rules were made to be broken and if you're insightful and entrepreneurial about it - the opportunities are endless.  If I were to make a microbudget movie tomorrow, I would never think of a theatrical release until way after the film has been released elsewhere - like torrents, IPad, IPhone, Playstation Network, VOD, Netflix, Amazon, MSN, Hulu or elsewhere (or all at once). 

That's where the audience is growing, evolving, and business-wise it makes cents... which is more than you'd make if you did it the old way because at internet speed those pennies add up quickly.

Stand By For Retro-Adventure!

Here is my interview with Richard Lowry, director of the fantastically fun retro-adventures Monarch of the Moon and Destination Mars! This double-feature will be coming out in December from Image Entertainment and Dark Horse.

Both movies were made with a lot of creativity, planning and perspiration. Money was not a factor (or maybe it was since they didn't really have any). Richard and his brother Tor took what they had and made it work for them... but let Richard tell their story:

Origins:

Where are you guys from?

Tor and I grew up in Bettendorf, Iowa and dabbled in filmmaking when our father bought us a Super 8 camera. Over the next few years we made countless shorts, culminating with HAWK JONES. HAWK was an all-child cops-&-robbers movie that Tor wrote and I directed. It enjoyed a modestly successful video release and sparked my drive to become a movie director.


What were your influences growing up?

As my interest in films grew, my father introduced me to many of his favorite directors; Hitchcock, Capra, Wilder and more. Their work greatly influenced me. I also became excited by the contemporaries of the time, which were Carpenter, DePalma, Spielberg and Lucas.


How long have you been in Los Angeles?

Before moving to Los Angeles, I spent four years in Portland, Oregon writing music for a commercial company, while also pursuing my interest in filmmaking. Though I was successful writing music, my real passion was making films. Unfortunately, there was little opportunity in Oregon. During those four years I did manage to make my second feature, JESSICA for a few thousand dollars. It was subsequently released by Omega Pictures and Image Entertainment.

Los Angeles has been my home for nearly 15 years. In that time I've managed to produce and direct five more features and a few shorts. The last feature,MONARCH OF THE MOON, is my highest profile project to date and has established a working relationship with Dark Horse Comics, who executive produced the movie.


What is your style?

I don't have a particular style, I tend to emulate other director's techniques. I always employ a style that's appropriate for the subject matter. It creates a nice diversity in my work. Someone can watch "Destination Mars", "Don't Feed the Animals", then "The Looking Glass" and not have a clue that they're made by the same director.


Destination Mars!

How did you decide to make homage to 50’s sci-fi?

Tor was the mastermind behind MARS. It was during his bout with chicken pox that he endured PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE every day for a month. On the 31st day he sat down and wrote the screenplay. When he sent it to me, I was impressed with how well he
captured the Ed Wood flavor.


How long did it take to make?

With the script in hand, I attempted to raise funding. I secured a very unusual cast -- Carl
Anthony, Dolores Fuller, Conrad Brooks, Kenneth Tobey, Warren Stevens, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Brink Stevens and even Charlie Callas as the nutty scientist. With this cast signed on, I was sure I could get a hundred thousand or so to make the film. I struck out, getting rejections from Tim Burton's company and even Sam Raimi's, among more.

After a year of struggling, Tor finally showed up to Los Angeles with a few thousand in his pocket. He asked if we could make a movie for $7,000. I said yeah, let's do MARS on MINI-DV. Tor was skeptical, but somehow, we put it together and movie got finished
two years later.


What was involved in the production process? Who contributed ?

The movie's producer, Chris Patton, donated his Cannon XL1 to the project and introduced us to Adobe Premiere. Also, he acquired a filmlooking software that was amazing. We built sets in a Burbank warehouse and shot the principal photography in 14 days. Casting was done through Backstage West and our cast was perfect. Having no-names in the movie helped sell it as a lost film. At the OJAI film festival, when the movie was finished, audience members were
convinced that it really was fifty years old.


Cost?

During post for MARS, Tor mastered the most valuable software tool for the project: Adobe After Effects. Within months he was a skilled compositor. In the end, our $7,000 movie had over three hundred visual effects that Tor single handedly pulled off.


What did you learn making DM?


MARS received acclaim from many noted people, including Leonard Maltin and Harry Knowles. Harry loved it so much, he put it on his 2002 favorite movies list. What did I learn from this experience? That with the tools, a filmmaker could make an entertaining, quality movie for very little money, as long as he or she is smart about the execution.


Monarch of the Moon:

Is this a sequel to Destination Mars!?

While we were in post on MARS, we discussed other potential lost film ideas. I had always enjoyed the serials, and suggested the idea. It was one of many good ideas we all had, and when Dark Horse Comics approached us to do another lost film, we decided to go with the serial idea.


How did this picture come about?

Mike Richardson of Dark Horse orchestrated our deal with Image Entertainment. It was Image that requested another MARS-type film, on the condition that we make this one in color. The fact that MARS was in black and white hindered its distribution for almost five years.


Did your budget affect how you wrote it?

Chris and I wrote the screenplay for Monarch, always keeping our limitations in mind. Image was only giving us $85,000, so we had to be careful not to bury ourselves with a script that was too ambitious. We discussed every scene carefully and how we could pull off the effects. Chris had a vast knowledge of the effects softwares, so nothing we wrote couldn't be done. Consequently, MONARCH (many of which you can see in this trailer) ended up with nearly 900 visual effect shots. We're sure we set a record for a film of this budget.


How was it working with green screen? Especially on a low budget.

Well over a third of the movie required green screen photography. Our initial approach was fatal. We shot a good portion of the green screen with a diffusion filter. This caused glows around the actors, and it was nearly impossible to key out. Chris had to turn to his friends at Filmworks in Santa Monica to save us, and the clean up work they did was amazing.

We were also limited on lights, so the green screen was never really adequately lit. This resulted in countless rotoscope jobs. Also, our costume designer would show up with outfits containing bright green and blue colors. One of the actors wore a headpiece that had greenish-blue feathers. Another keying nightmare.

The complications in post added a year to the film's completion. Image was gracious enough to
allows us this time, and they are extremely pleased with the results. MONARCH and MARS will be released as a double-pack DVD set on December 5th.

Equipment you used?

MONARCH was shot with the Panasonic DVX100a. The image it produced was fantastic. To date, few people who've seen the movie have questioned the format. The clarity, color saturation and 24p motion prove that this camera is a must for independent filmmakers.


Advice for filmmakers wanting to do this themselves?

My advice to independent filmmakers is to avoid the high cost of film. With good execution, a camera like the DVX100 can produce an image equal to good 16mm. By saving costs this way, your shooting ratio can increase and schedule be extended. You can focus on quality rather then attempting principal photography in ten days because the Arriflex is due back. And unless there is an understanding of effects software and its limitations, don't attempt a visual effects extravaganza. Only do so if you have experienced artists at your disposal.

Above all, spend time on a good script and use only good actors. Don't let your brother Biff or Aunt Tildie play major roles. Independent films suffer most from this. There are many serious, professional actors willing to do independent films as long as the script is good.

Any questions can be addressed to myself or Tor via our website, http://lowrybrothers.com

Hope Offers Hope: "There is no Indie Crisis"

Veteran Indie Producer Ted Hope (The Savages, American Splendor, 21 Grams, Lovely & Amazing, Happiness) delivered a stirring speech at the Film Independent's Filmmaker Forum that counters Mark Gill's controversial speech.

I am reproducing the speech below taken from Anne Thompson's Hollywood Blog for Variety. It's a great speech and indicative of my own philosophy of moviemaking. To wit - there are greater rewards to be had by creating, producing and owning your own material even if you don't have a multi-million dollar budget or huge audience. It's about being creative and entrepreneurial and responsible. Filmmaking today is more than just producing the movie.

I have bolded appropriate lines that should probably be tattooed on everyone's eyelids so we don't forget.

A THOUSAND PHOENIX RISING
How The New Truly Free Filmmaking Community Will Rise From Indie's Ashes

I can't talk about the "crisis" of the indie film industry. There is no crisis. The country is in crisis. The economy is in crisis. We, the filmmakers, aren't in crisis. The business is changing, but for us -- us who are called Indie Filmmakers -- that's good that the business is changing. Filmmaking is an incredible priviledge and we need to accept it as such -- and accept the full responsibility that comes with that priviledge.
The proclamations of Indie Film's demise are grossly exaggerated. How can there be a "Death Of Indie" when Indie -- real Indie, True Indie -- has yet to even live?

Yes, there's a profound paradigm shift, and that shift is the coming of true independence. The hope of this new independence is being threatened even before it has arrived. Are we going to fight for our independence and can we even shoulder the responsibility that independence requires? That is: will we band together and work for our communal needs? Are we ready to leave dreams of stardom and wealth behind us?

When someone says "Indie is dead," they are talking about the state of the 'Indie Film Business,' as opposed to what are actually the films themselves. They can say "The sky is falling" because for the last fifteen years, the existing power base in the film industry has focused on films fit for the existing business model, as opposed to ever truly concentrating on creating a business model for the films that filmmakers want to make.

This is where we are right now: on the verge of a TRULY FREE FILM CULTURE, one that is driven by both the creators and the audiences, pulled down by the audience and not pushed onto them by those that control the apparatus and the supply. We now have the power and the tool for something different, but will we fight to preserve the Internet, the tool that offers us our new freedom? Can we banish the dream of golden distribution deals, and move away from asking others to distribute and market it for us? Can we accept that being a filmmaker means taking responsibility for your films, the primary responsibility, all the way through the process? That is independence and that is freedom.

Indie, True Indie, is in its infancy. The popular term "Indie" is a distortion, growing out of our communal laziness and complacency -- our willingness to be marketed blandly and not specifically. Our culture is vast and diverse, and we need to celebrate these differences, not diminish them. It's time to put that term "Indie" to rest.
Independence is within our reach, but we have to do what we have never done before: we have to choose.

It's a lot like the [U.S.] Presidential election. And it's also a lot like the way psychotherapy works: we have to ask ourselves if the pain we are experiencing presently is enough to motivate us to overcome the fear inherent in change itself.

We have to change our behavior and make that choice. We have to choose the type of culture we want. We have to choose the type of films we want available to us. We have to choose whether the Internet is ours or the corporations. We have to choose whether we decide for ourselves whether a film is worthwhile or whether we let those same corporations decide. We have to choose who our audiences are and how we are to reach them. We have to choose how we can all best contribute to this new system.

And as we act on those choices, we have to get others to make a choice too. For the last fifteen years our community has made huge strides at demystifying the production process and providing access to the financing and distribution gatekeepers. Some call this "democratization," but it is not. This demystification of production was a great first step, but it is not the whole shebang. In some ways, understanding the great behemoth that is production is also a distraction. It has distracted us from making really good films. And as it has distracted us from gaining the knowledge and seizing the power that is available to us.

We have learned how to make films and how to bring them to market. We now have to demystify how to market and distribute films, and to do it in a way truly suited to the films we are making and desire to make. Don't get me wrong the last fifteen years have been great. The Indie Period -- as I suspect history will call it -- has brought us a far more diverse array of films than we had previously. It got better; we got more - but that is still not freedom. We are still in a damn similar place to the way it was back when cinema was invented 100 years ago. And it's time we moved to a new term, to the period of a Truly Free Film Culture.

If we want the freedom to tell the stories we want to tell, we all have to start to contribute to build the infrastructure that can support them. We need to step back from the glamour of making all these films, and instead help each other build the links, articulate the message, make the commitments, that will turn us truly into a 'Truly Free Film' community. We have to stop making so many films. The work before us is a major readjustment that will require many sacrifices. We must redesign the business structure for what the films actually are.

We have to recognize that a Truly Free Film Culture is quite different from studio films and even different from the prestige films that the specialized distributors make. But look at what we gain: we will stop self-censoring our work to fit a business model that was appropriated from Hollywood and their mass market films to begin with. We will reach out to the audiences that are hungry for something new, for something truthful, for something about the world they experience, for something that is as complex as the emotions they feel. We can let them guide us because for the first time we can have real access and contact with them.

Presently, we are divided and conquered by a system that preys upon our dreams of success, encouraging us to squander collective progress on false hopes on personal enrichment. We follow the herd and only lead reluctantly. If we want Truly Free Films we have to stop dreaming of wealth, and take the job of building the community and support system. For the last decade and a half, we have been myopically focused on production. Using Sundance submissions as a barometer, our production ability has increased eight and half times over -- 850% -- from 400 to 3600 films in fifteen years.

C'mon! What are we doing? Wasting a tremendous amount of energy, talent, and brainpower - that much is clear. If the average budget of Sundance submissions is $500K, that means the aggregate production costs are $1.8 billion dollars a year. That's a hell of a lot of money to lose annually. And you can bet the Indie World isn't going to get a government bail out like Wall Street and the banking industry have. We need to recognize the responsibility of telling unique stories in unique ways. We are frequently innovators and groundbreakers, but that brings additional responsibilities.

Working at the intersection of art and commerce, requires consideration for those that come after us. It is our responsibility to do all within our power to deliver a positive financial return. If we lose money, it will be a lot harder for those that follow us. With a debt of $1.8 billion per annum you can bet it will be a lot harder for a lot of people. And it should be - but it didn't need to be. We don't get better films or build audiences by picking up cameras. Despite this huge boom in production, the number of truly talented uniquely voiced auteurs produced annually remains unchanged. What's happened instead is the infrastructure has rusted, the industry has failed to innovate, and we are standing on a precipice begging the giant to banish us into oblivion.

There is a silver lining to this dark cloud of over production that they like to call The Glut. As a young man I never found peace until I moved to New York City; the calm I found in New York, is explained by a line of Woody Allen's: "In New York, you always know what you are missing." What's great about a surplus of options - and we have that now, and not just from movies, but from the web, from books, from shows - what's great is that you have to make a choice. You have to commit. And you have to commit in advance. The business model of the current entertainment industry is predicated on consumers not making choices but acting on impulses.

Choice comes from research, from knowledge, and from tastes. Speak to someone from Netflix, and they will tell you that the longer someone is a member, the more their tastes move to auteurs, to quality film. Once we all wake up and realize that with films, as frankly with everything, we have to be thoughtful. We have to make it a choice - a choice for, and not an impulse. We are now in a cultural war and not just the red state/blue state, participate vs. obey kind, not just the kind of cultural war that politicians seem to want to break this country down to. We are in a culture war in terms of what we get to see, enjoy and make. The lovers of cinema have been losing this war because the makers have invested in a dream of "Prince Charming," content to have him sweep down, pick us up and sing that rags to riches refrain even if it comes but once a year to one lucky filmmaker out of 3,600.

So what is this TRULY FREE FILM CULTURE I am proposing? It is one that utilizes first and foremost the remarkable tool that is the Internet. It is the Internet that transforms the culture business from a business that is based around limited supply and the rule of gatekeepers to a business that around the fulfillment of all audience desire, and not just the desire of mass audiences, but also of the niches. We have never had this sort of opportunity before and the great tragedy is that just as we are learning what it means, forces are vying to take it away from us.

The principal that all information, all creators, all audiences should be treated equally within the structure that is the Internet is popularly referred to as Net Neutrality. The Telecos, the cable companies, and their great ally, the Hollywood motion picture studios and the MPAA are now trying to end that equality. And with it you will lose the opportunity to be TRULY FREE FILMMAKERS. But they are not going to succeed because we are going to band together and organize, we are going to save the Internet, and keep equal access for all.

A TRULY FREE FILM CULTURE will respect the audience's needs and desires as much as it currently respects the filmmakers.

A TRULY FREE FILM CULTURE recognizes film as a dialogue and recognizes that a dialogue requires a community. Participants in a TRULY FREE FILM CULTURE work to participate in that community, work to get others to participate in that community. We work to get others to make a choice, to make a choice about what they want to do, what they want to see. We all become curators. We all promote the films we love. We reach out and mobilize others to vote with their feet, vote with their eyes, and vote with their dollars, to not act on impulses, but on knowledge and experience.

A TRULY FREE FILMMAKER -- be they producer or director -- recognizes their responsibility is not just to find a good script, not just to find a good cast, a good package. A TRULY FREE FILMMAKER recognizes that they must do more than find the funding, and even more than justifying that funding. The TRULY FREE FILMMAKER now recognizes their responsibility to also find the audience, grow the audience, expand the audience, and then also to move the audience, not just emotionally, but also literally: to move them onwards further to other things. Whether it is by direct contact, email blasts, or blogging, whatever it is, express what you want our culture to be.

The TRULY FREE FILMMAKER also recognizes that knowledge is power, and not ownership. The TRULY FREE FILMMAKER recognizes that others, as many others as possible, sharing in that knowledge will make everything better: the films, the apparatus, the business, and the just plain pleasure of participating. We are walking into new territory and we best map it out together.

The TRULY FREE FILMMAKER is no longer bound to just the 5 or 6 reel length. The TRULY FREE FILMMAKER is no longer bound to projection as the primary audience platform and is not stuck on the one film one theater one week type of release.

The TRULY FREE FILMMAKER recognizes that just because there is no user term, no audience term, no consumer term for the cohesive cross-platform immersive experience, does not mean that we don't want that. A child understands that when you say "Pokemon" you mean not just the films, or TV shows, but also the cards, the games, the figures, the books. And a child understands that when you say "Brand Management" or "Franchise" you are just looking for ways to separate you from your wallet. We need to define that term to help the audience recognize what it is they want, what it is that we now can create, own, and distribute independently.

It is this thing that we once called the "Independent Community" that is the sector that truly innovates. The lower cost of our creations allows for greater risks. It is what we used to call "indies" that have innovated on a technical level, on a content level, on a story telling approach, and it is this - the TRULY FREE FILM CULTURE - that will innovate still further in the future of distribution.

With the passion that produces 3600 films a year, with just a portion of those resources, we can build a new infrastructure that opens up new audiences, new models, new revenue streams that can build a true alternative to the mainstream culture that has been force fed us for years. We are on the verge of truly opening up what can be told, how it is told, to whom it is told, and where it is told.

We can seize it, but it requires that we embrace the full responsibility of what independence means. Independence requires knowing your film inside and out. Knowing not just what you are choosing to do, but what you have chosen not to do. Independence comes with knowing that you have fully considered all your options. It is knowing your audience - knowing how to reach them - and not abstractly, but concretely.

Let's make the next ten years about seizing our independence, killing "indie" film, and bringing forth a Truly Free Film Culture.

Thank you.

----- Ted Hope 9/27/08

Automatons for the People

As I promised long ago, I have an interview here with James Felix McKenney, the writer-director of AUTOMATONS. Jim is a friend and an example of a guy doing it his way, and making a name for himself as a filmmaker.

What was the genesis for AUTOMATONS?

I worry that I've told this story too many times, but it's the truth. When I was about five years old, I was watching TV with my uncle. I have no idea what we were watching, it could have been FORBIDDEN PLANET or an episode of “Lost in Space”, I have no idea. I just remember that there were robots. I asked my uncle what we were watching and he told me that this was an entire genre of its own. Obviously, he was referring to science fiction, but I took him as meaning that there were all kinds of movies out there with robot movies battling one another, like cowboys and Indians or armies in war films. I searched for these films on TV for years. I was crushed when I got older, home video came along and I found out that they films didn’t exist. So I vowed to change that.

After many years of planning, I managed to talk Larry Fessenden into letting me make it as part of the ScareFlix series. He was hesitant at first, because it's more of a science fiction film than horror. I felt that the idea of a never-ending war and being trapped alone in a bunker was pretty horrifying, but I knew what he meant -- where are the scares? So I added the element that The Girl's robot companions could turn on her at any moment and attack her in her sleep. He was happy with that and I fell it added few moments of much-need action to the film. So I got to make my robot movie-- a dream come true.

How did you achieve so much unique production design for your movie - the bunker, the video screens, the robots?

I didn't put too much thought into it really. I had spent enough time in my life imagining what everything should look like in a robot movie that it was just a matter of plucking the sets and things out of my memory and building them in real life. I was just looking at my sketchbook and there are only eight drawings in there that were used for AUTOMATONS -- sets, robot suits, props, everything, eight rough sketches. The rest just came down to verbal descriptions and the imaginations of the people putting stuff together.

Also, in many situations, the materials that we had dictated the design. Don Wood and I found these sheets of Styrofoam that are used as forms to pour concrete into at Home Depot. They had such a great shape, that we began calling it "sci-fi foam." Don used it for the wall around the airlock and the girl's planter to give the thing a classic science fiction look and at the same time the clean lines provide a contrast to the piles of junk everywhere to indicate that at one time the society used futuristic materials before everything fell apart.

As we were shooting, a need for certain props would come up: weapons, a crude wrist communicator -- and Laree Love and Don would just dig through all of the junk lying around and cobble something together. Most of the people in our regular crew have day jobs at contractors, particularly electricians, so most of the set decoration is scrap left over from jobs they did. We also got a lot of TV sets from yard sales and thrift stores and took them apart.

A local artist named Jeanine Gerding built the full size robots. She builds all kinds of crazy things for the big shop windows in midtown Manhattan. She found out about the project and insisted that she built our robots. I was kind of shy about it at first. I couldn't pay her anything and didn't want to impose, but she refused to take no for an answer. I gave her a couple of drawings and she built us fourteen beautiful robot suits.

The miniature ones were made from motorized toys that I took apart and then Laree Love, with minimal assistance from me, customized them to resemble their full-size counterparts.

Why shoot on B&W film? What aesthetic were you trying to achieve with it?

I hate things that look to glossy or clean. I need some sort of atmosphere or texture to latch onto. I also like things to be slightly obscure. My ideal image is one that looks like it was beamed in from somewhere in deep space many many years ago. That was what I was going for. I'd shoot everything in B&W super-8, bury it in the ground for ten years and then dig it up and process it, if my producers would let me.

How hard was it to light the movie?

Not hard at all. The whole thing was done on a closed set with no natural light sources at all. So we could just place lights wherever we wanted. Our DP is really great with lighting, so I just stayed out of the way and our AC Jeremiah Kipp just made sure he didn't take too long. But as good as he is with the lighting, he isn't the best camera operator and a huge chunk of the film was underexposed in the camera. That broke my heart, as the stuff that was shot at the correct exposure was beautiful. I spent days in post trying to brighten the thing up without washing out the blacks.

You had two "stars" for your movie - Angus Scrimm and John Levene - how'd you get them?

I had done films with both of them before. I wrote a part in THE OFF SEASON with Angus in mind. Never really thought about actually getting him, he's just who I imagined in the part. When we were doing preproduction for the film, I came across and ad somewhere for a convention here on the East Coast that Angus would be appearing at during the week that we were going to shoot. The producer, Larry Fessenden, took that as a sign and suggested that we should try and get him, as he would be in the neighborhood anyway. Tony Timpone at Fangoria put me in touch with Angus' agent and we got him! He's the sweetest man in the world. I want to work with him over and over again.

John lived near me back when I lived in Burbank, CA. He used to come into the copy shop that I worked at. I asked him to be in CANNIBALLISTIC! and he said "sure". He's a really fun guy and great to work with, so I wanted to bring him back for my next film, SATAN HATES YOU, to play the same character that he was in CANNIBALLISTIC!

When I was in LA shooting Angus' scenes for AUTOMATONS, I figured I could get a jump on things and shoot John's stuff for SATAN HATES YOU while I was out there. Suddenly it occurred to me that here I was making a robot movie that was strongly influenced by Doctor Who and I had one of the original series' cast members in front of me and I wasn't using him! What a missed opportunity! So I quickly wrote a few lines for him, gave him one of Angus' costumes and shot the cameo. I would have killed myself if I had let that slip by.

(Editor's note: I was pissed that Jim came to town and I had to hear about all this after the fact. I would have worked for free. )

How long was the shoot?

Four hours in LA for Angus. Fourteen days in Brooklyn for the bulk of the film and then maybe a week or two's worth of weekends and evenings for the puppets and effects.

How long was pre-production? Post-production?

I have to confess that I always break the cardinal rule of low-budget filmmaking: I do very little pre-production. I can do this mainly because I do most of the work myself, so there's no need for 15 meeting every time a decision needs to be made. Also, I like to try things out on the set. With a very small crew of people that you work with all the time, we can do that without wasting time. If everything were mapped out ahead of time, I probably wouldn't be interested in the actual shoot. It would already be done and the joy of discovering things during the shooting process would be lost. I don't recommend this method for anybody, but it works for me.

Postproduction was probably a couple of months working nights and weekends to get he cut and rough sound design, and then another week or so for effects. All of that I did myself. Then Graham Reznick did some more sound work on it and did the final mix over a couple of weeks while he was working on several other projects, including his own film I CAN SEE YOU.
For a movie filled with effects, it took a lot less time to finish than my other film that had only practical ones. I'd say that was due to the rough aesthetic of the film. It gave me a lot more wiggle room. Everything didn't have to be perfect. If it was perfect, then it wouldn't match the style of the film.

How did your budget dictate how you wrote the script?

Well, because this was meant to look low budget, not as much as it would usually. I was only wanted two indoor locations and a miniature landscape set, so I didn't have to scale back the amount of locations as one would normally. I also didn't worry about not having enough actors to play various bit parts, as I would force members of the crew to do it. Which is exactly what happened.

How were all the robot FX achieved?

As I mentioned earlier, they were the guts of toys stuck inside our own custom bodies. After we were done shooting the "big people". We built a landscape, put the robots on it and started blowing them up with little explosives Noah DeFilippis and Laree Love made by taking the powder out of fireworks.

All of the marching and close ups were done in my apartment on a smaller landscape that I made with a green screen backdrop. Those robots were puppets that Laree worked from below, two at a time. I then layered them digitally to make it look like and army was on the move. I also added the laser blasts and additional explosions and effects digitally, not by altering the actual film as some reviewers have suggested.

What's your involvement with Scareflix?

ScareFlix is something that Larry Fessenden always wanted to do. He's a horror director, but his own disposition makes him lean toward making more "art horror". But he loves the more traditional genre stuff, especially monster movies. It's just not in him to direct one, but he always wanted to start a line of films where he could do so vicariously through other filmmakers.
I showed him CANNIBALLISTIC! and he challenged me to make something else. I dug out an old script and made THE OFF SEASON for him and ScareFlix was born.

Ti West's THE ROOST followed, then AUTOMATONS, Ti West's TRIGGER MAN, which is premiering at SxSW this year and features a cameo by yours truly. The newest is Graham Reznick's I CAN SEE YOU, which is in post. Next up is Glenn McQuaid's I SELL THE DEAD with Larry, Dominic (LOST) Monaghan and Ron Perlman.

I'm usually credited as Associate Producer on these films. I used to run the office, take care of a lot of general support duties and be heavily involved in distribution. I'm spending less time in the office these days, so I'm starting to move away from all of that.

What do you do when you're not making movies?

Do you mean "What's my day job?" I work for Fessenden's Glass Eye Pix, mainly in the capacity I just mentioned. It's great since he's also the producer on my last two films; I was able to make some of the duller business aspects of getting my films made part of my regular workday. Lately, I'm not doing any administrative stuff, mostly design, copy-writing and web stuff, which is more fun to me. Filmmaking has become a huge part of my life. When I'm not working on one of my film's, or Larry's or one of the ScareFlix, I'm watching tons of films. The weirder the better.

Then I tell people about them on my silly little blog:
monsterpantsupdates.com, also known as hotaslove.com. named for Reggie Bannister's line in PHANTASM.

How many scripts have you written? What is your process?

God, I have no idea! I used to write a lot of spec scripts that pretty much went nowhere. I've done some work-for-hire projects and some polishing and rewrites on other people's scripts. I've learned that co-writing doesn't really work for me, as I tend to just let things fly out of me very quickly and the whole back and forth thing kills me. I would call the GIRLS WTH GUNS thing that I did for you an exception, because you allowed me to just burn out a first draft and hand it over to you for you to work on your own. That's ideal. It's the meeting and the rewrites that kill me.

( A long time ago, I was looking to put a project together with two female leads who take on a gang of ruthless bank robbers who stole one of the women's child during a heist. I didn't have time to write it as my day job at Omega Entertainment was gearing up for pre-production on .COM FOR MURDER. I hired Jim for the princely sum of $500 to crank out a first draft of GIRLS WITH GUNS based on my 10 pages of story notes and some pictures I had of girls with tattoos and guns. I have recently been taking a look at Jim's draft and making a new outline...)

I generally get an idea and walk around with it for a long time, so that when I sit down to put it on paper it all happens very quickly. I rarely write for the sake of writing. Nowadays I just write when it's time to make a movie. I just finished the full script for SATAN HATES YOU, segment of which I had already filmed two years ago! I've been walking around with that one for five years.

What do you count as among your influences?

Watching movies late at night on a tiny black & white TV with a coat hanger for an antenna; THE BIRDS, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, INVADERS FROM MARS, GODZILLA movies Universal and Hammer horror, and great TV shows like "The Prisoner", "Thunderbirds" and "Doctor Who". When I got older, it was having a video rental shop open in my town with a cult movie section. I rented every film in that section. I think I was the only one. I love David Lynch, John Waters, George Romero, Don Coscarelli.

Of course comic books are a huge influence. Huge.

You've also written and directed CANNIBALLISTIC and THE OFF SEASON. Give us some background on those movies and how they prepared you for AUTOMATONS.

CANNIBALLISTIC I made when I got tired of people turning down my spec scripts. I had just spent a year doing rewrites and going to meetings for this script that my friend Rich and I had written that had been optioned by an independent producer and nothing came of it. I was fed up and decided to make my own movie. I made it with all of my old friends who I used to do theatre with in Boston. We shot it with $8,000 I earned working for the Census Bureau and some borrowed equipment at my parent's house in Maine. That was how I learned to make a movie.

THE OFF SEASON was a reworking of one of those old spec scripts. It was originally called "The Rainy Season" and set in LA. We shot it in Maine and it was a hellish shoot. We fell so far behind; I cut twenty-two scenes out of the script while we were shooting. It's too traumatic to go into detail, but it was just a bad shoot. In hindsight, I wish I had written something new instead of trying to rework a ghost story that I had written six years previously, before films like RING had flooded the market with similar, less quirky and restrained films.

Angus would argue with me, he LOVES that film and there are other people who do as well, but they're in the minority. Anyway, THE OFF SEASON was the one where I learned from my mistakes.

Please mention all of the folks involved in the production you feel deserve it and any and all interesting anecdotes which show the perils of low budget films.

Well, Noah DeFilippis and Laree Love are our workhorses. Like me, they're from Maine. They're the grips, gaffers, drivers, carpenters, sometimes actors and everything else during filming.

Here's a story about Laree: When he was a kid, about eight years old, his mom and uncle took him to the drive-in to see Phantasm. At one point the adults got so scared that they would not stop screaming and eventually Laree's uncle peed his pants! No lie. It really faked out little Laree and he had nightmares about the Tall Man for years.

Twenty years or so later, we're shooting THE OFF SEASON in Maine and Angus' flight is coming in at around 10:30pm. I of course, send Larry to pick him up ALONE. He then had to drive the source of his nightmares through the dark woods of Maine for about a half an hour. One again, he was freaked out. But he said it helped that Angus is such a nice guy. They're friends now.

Noah also did all of the music for THE OFF SEASON, most of the music for CANNIBALLISTIC! and some stuff for AUTOMATONS. He probably would have scored more for AUTOMATONS, but he and his wife had a baby during postproduction.

David Hale, who was the DP on all three films, also recently had a kid. I worry about their involvement in future MonsterPants projects, as it's really hard to keep the kind of schedule that low-budget filmmaking requires while being fair to and feeding a family. So I've begun putting stuff in Laree Love and Don Wood's food to make sure that they are never able to breed.

I've known Don for twenty years. He's a good actor who I also depend on to get a lot of work done behind the scenes. If you've seen him on "Colonial House" or "In a Fix", you'll know he's also a carpenter and that really comes in handy. He's been there to talk me down more than once when things are going wrong and I begin to lose it. That's extremely valuable, because if the captain begins veering off course, the whole thing is sunk.

Any distribution info you may have to relate - how you got your flick in front of people's eyes so they could spread the word? What worked PR wise and what didn't?

It's hard to say what works and what doesn't. As you know, the distribution world is constantly changing and with, even more so now with everybody and their dog making digital features. The days of selling a movie on a poster are long gone.
I sold CANNIBALLISTIC! in 2001 just by carrying around a trailer at the AFM and showing it to anybody who would look at it. I also got ripped off. The company who bought it put out one of the shoddiest DVD releases I've ever seen and then vanished from the face of the earth without paying me a cent. But still, I was happy that my little $8,000 first shot at filmmaking got any sort of a release, not to mention rave reviews in both Rue Morgue and Shock Cinema!

I don't recall doing too much to get THE OFF SEASON out there. It got a lot of early press because Larry and Angus were attached to it and we started getting inquiries. I never submitted it to any festivals or anything. It was picked up by an acquisitions company and released on DVD by Lionsgate in no time. The lesson here is the value of having a name in your film, specifically a genre name. Fangoria gave us all kinds of press before we had even finished shooting and it wasn't because of anything I was doing. Yeah, I sent them press releases, but those releases had the names Fessenden and Scrimm in them.

Who knows what'll happen with AUTOMATONS? It's been in a few festivals, has had theatrical runs in both New York City and Chicago, and has received some amazing reviews. When the New York Times review came out, we received all sorts of requests from distributors who wanted to see it. And then they saw it and had no idea what to do with the film. The truth is, despite the critical success, AUTOMATONS is a hard movie to sell. It's an odd little film, aimed at a very specific audience. The thing that really kills it is that it's in black & white. Not a good thing if you want to sell a film to Blockbuster.

We're about to launch our first push to sell to a DVD distributor. It seems right now that our first targets should be art labels (who are going to say it's too quirky) and cult film labels (who are going to say it looks too cheap). Neither type of label is going to shell out tons of money, but that's okay, as the film didn't cost very much to make! We'll see...

Danny Boyle on Pulp Filmmaking...

From Anne Thompson's interview in Variety:

"The more money I take that is not restricted, which technically gives you freedom, equipment and more days, the more the spirit of the film dies, falls flat," he says.

After "The Beach," Boyle says he decided "not to do huge-budget films anymore." He returned to making tiny British TV movies and felt the excitement again: "This is what I should do."

It's not that the Brit helmer hates Hollywood studios. They've been very good to him, he says, especially 20th Century Fox and its specialty division Searchlight, which backed the low-budget pics "Sunshine," "Millions" and "28 Days Later," and is releasing "Slumdog" in partnership with Warner Bros.

And Boyle wishes he could make films like "The Dark Knight," he says, "but I realize I am not very good at it."

Boyle was tempted by, but turned down, an f/x-crammed David Benioff script. "James Cameron, David Fincher and Ridley Scott do battles with the studios," Boyle says. "You have to be difficult to do that. On those huge movies it's like Aztec sacrifices, where the cameraman gets sacked by the third leading actor."

But restrict and limit Boyle's options, and his spirit flies.

"That's where I come from," he says. "Where you make the best with what you've got. That's what I am. I've never done commercials or big videos where they throw money at you. I am a bit difficult, but I like harmony. I like a smaller group of people all pulling in the same direction toward the same thing. I get rid of them if they're not."

----------------------------------

Boyle's challenge -- one happily embraced -- was to make $15 million look like a whole lot more.

"I like that tension," he says. "I don't want to make a dirty indie film struggling with paltry resources. I want to make a film that looks like it cost $50 million or $60 million."

To do that, Boyle jumped into a 12-week shoot on crazy Mumbai locations that changed overnight, deploying a nimble cameraman with a hard drive in a backpack and a gyro with an attached camera lens in his hand.

"It's a different way of grabbing reality and it has an intensity to it," he says. "It lets the mind float off places."

Boyle, who had earlier used mini-DV on "28 Days Later," says the technique allowed his crew and second unit on "Slumdog" to act instinctively and grab shots wherever they could.

But amid all the roaming, Boyle followed a strict rule: Cover the script.

"These instincts you have when filming sometimes are often indulgent bullshit. You feel like a spoiled prince with a hundred people asking you what you want."

Boyle's touchstone: "A heightened realism," he says. "If it doesn't feel real to me, then I don't do it."

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Go see Boyle's latest pulp movie, SLUMDOG MILIONAIRE ( an English-Hindi hybrid shot mostly with handheld digital cameras on location in Mumbai for $15 million) at theaters near you.

Ten Principles of Hybrid Distribution

From Peter Broderick via Indiewire:

(I'll run the list down - go to the source for the details - MPB)

1. Design a custom distribution strategy.
2. Split distribution rights
3. Choose effective distribution partners
4. Circumscribe rights
5. Craft win-win deals
6. Retain direct sales rights
7. Assemble a distribution team
8. Partner with non-profits and online communities
9. Maximize direct revenues
10. Grow and nurture audiences

While hybrid distribution is the state-of-the-art model for the New World, it is not the best approach for all independent films. Some movies are better served by an Old World all-rights deal with an experienced distributor. The best distributors have resources, relationships, and expertise, which can be essential to a wide theatrical release. They may also have advantageous deals in place for VOD, DVD, and digital rights. If filmmakers do due diligence (by speaking with other filmmakers involved with the distributor they are considering) and are able to negotiate a fair deal, their best choice may be an all-rights deal. Higher budget, more mainstream features are better suited for an Old World approach.

Hybrid strategies are ideal for most documentaries. Lower budget, more distinctive features, like “Good Dick,” may also be better off splitting up their rights in the New World. Features with strong core audiences can also do well implementing a hybrid model. “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” used a theatrical service deal to gross over $241 million domestically.

Just as the development of digital filmmaking tools in the ‘90s meant that no one could stop determined independents from making movies, the evolution of hybrid distribution in this decade means that no one can stop tenacious filmmakers from bringing their films into the world.

John August weighs in here.

SEX MACHINE IS OUT THERE

And no, I'm not talking about Britney's va-jay-jay, although I'm sure that comment has already been made somewhere by more "informed" gentlemen than I.

What I'm talking about is the ultra cool, ultra slick, ultra low budget pulp masterpiece by my friend and colleague Christopher Sharpe and his crew. This piece of pulp filmmaking is available TODAY at finer rental and retail outlets! We have been talking about this one for awhile and later today I will be posting a sneak preview of the opening scene and credits in order to tease and tantalize you folks on-the-fence about low budget sinema!

So put it in your Netflix que, hop over to the local Mom & Pop videostore or go here to order it direct (and while you're there, pick up their DVD of FRANKENHOOKER - a great companion piece to SEX MACHINE).

.

And here's that taste:

Enjoy!

Aaargh!

Getting pulled in a dozen different directions as the end of the year approaches...I'm disappointing a couple of people as I put off things I committed to earlier (sorry, Ariana!) so I'm going to concentrate on work this weekend and clean the old plate.

Couple of things:

HUSTLE (featuring my future paramour Jaime Murray) is shooting in Hollywood this week two blocks from the pad. My roommate is working for them as an American thug. I told him to swipe...er liberate a script from production so we can see how they do it over there...er, here.

I said this to Phil Morton the other day in the course of a very cool chat where yours truly pontificated a bit about low budget filmmaking (not that my ranting made it a cool chat). Out of that, I observed the one thing that would elevate the quality of many of the pulp movies we're seeing on the shelves these days. That is:

The lower the budget, the more a film has to be designed.

That includes the script, the lighting, the production design, the camera work and especially the sound.

More on this later as I plug this into my mad pulp bastard manifesto.

Pulp Filmmaking: Tech is no Excuse. The Answer Lies in Perspective

The only thing separating a bad production from a good production is the level of commitment from the filmmaker. It is not dependent on the budget. The availability of the technology and the knowledge is equal.

Example below: 





So when someone sends me a link, or a screener and says, "Well, we didn't have access to this or that," or "We couldn't fit it into our budget," I have to be a bit skeptical, especially since they are so many really skilled people across the world sharing their experience.

So, since the tech and knowledge base is equal -  the difference has to be with the story you're telling, and the POV you're using to tell it. Work on those aspects. Hone it down to the bone so you've crafted something that's both immediately familiar, yet unique.  A good example would be Dr. Horrible - a melodramatic superhero story told from the perspective of the supervillain.

From the feature film side - I would say the upcoming Splice is a good example of a movie that takes a familiar, accessible premise and gives it a new perspective.  Frankenstein by any other name...

But that POV has to also extend to how you distribute the film. It has to be unique as well, so it has the best chance to reach its intended audience.  With more and more people purchasing Ipads, Iphones, PSPs, PS3s and so on, the opportunities to get your film directly to your audience has never been greater.

So if you want people to respond to your work, step back and give it a new perspective. Then go out and research all of the FREE tools you can use to realize it. 

They're out there.

(video found via Pleasure for the Empire)

A Grand Old Time

I've been trading a few comments with the guys over at 1000 dollar Spielberg about low budget filmmaking. If their other posts get as good as this one where they talk about making your low-no budget movie look like a million, I'll be linking it up permanently to the sidebar.

(That makes me wonder - do they serve drinks at the sidebar?)

My Theory of More - A Discussion for the D2DVD Film School

I rewritten five pages of THE SKULL this morning so I'm doing rather well considering I got a late start of it, and I've been skooting around the web for awhile, dropping a few grenades here and there. As I've been rewriting the script, an informal rule seem to be applying itself to the process. Everyone who reads this blog knows of my desire for simplicity in writing, design, characterization, etc... it all falls under the umbrella of "pulp."

But as I've been editing this morning, It's becoming apparent (to me) that it's not about less...
It's about more and how those two things go hand in hand when it comes to low budget filmmaking.

With many of these low budget films you have a (very) limited amount of time and resources (money, crew, cast, locations) to produce the movie. You have less and are expected to produce more. Production value is the term.

But that's wrong isn't it?

The problem with this line of thinking is that More doesn't always equal Better. If you try to pile on MORE but have too few resources to do the job properly, then it's like slapping a glossy coat of paint on a house infested with termites. The holes show through and are even amplified by the paint.

More will equal worse -- Martin Amis

The process then, from script through post, is not to get MORE, but to strengthen what you already have going for you - your core concept. In essence, you not only want the audience to feel satisfied by what they've been given, but to also bring something of themselves into the process. You give them LESS so they access it and are able to bring the MORE. It's very much like impressionism.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Director Val Lewton is known for his film, CAT PEOPLE where there is not a killing that occurs onscreen. It's all done with mood and shadow, because if he were to actually show the creature then people wouldn't be half as frightened.

*** To learn more about Lewton, read about the new DVD collection here:

http://www.fangoria.com/ghastly_review.php ***

Film Noir lighting came about as a quick means to light sets, and to hide their deficiencies. Shadow became as important as light. Simple sets became places where evil men hide. Anything could happen in the dark, which ratchets up the tension level considerably.

Japanese manga is known for simple "moving" artwork (simple design indicating motion, limited backgrounds) featuring characters that deal with complex, adult issues.

Remember when you were a kid and your church or neighborhood had a potluck dinner? One or two families would set up the tables and get things organized, and everyone else brought their family's specialty dishes to the dinner - roast this, barbeque that, deep fried whatnot (I'm from the South. There's always a lot of deep-fried whatnot) . It allowed for a much richer, tastier experience then if you had laid out only what your family cooks. In fact, you couldn't have fed all those people yourself as it would have been too expensive.

In each of these examples, the audience fills in the blanks and brings their experience to the work, making it interactive. They bring the MORE to the equation.

Our job then, as D2DVD screenwriters is to make the characters and story accessible, show a little not a lot and allow the audience to bring the MORE. We can't afford to do it any other way.

A really good example of this is ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, John Carpenter's remake of RIO BRAVO set in an LA precinct overrun by gangs. That's a great concept isn't it?

A precinct overrun by gangs...

Except there were never that many gang members onscreen! You never saw more than four or five at a time, and yet you felt the characters inside the precinct were completely surrounded at all times. The audience brought the MORE. Carpenter crafted the movie so the audience would buy into the story and think there were dozens of bloodthirsty gang members out there.

In PSYCHO, everyone thinks they see Janet Leigh being stabbed while in the shower. If you look at it closely however, you see that at no time did a knife touch flesh. The audience fills in the blanks.

Something similar happened after SCARECROW. A kid emailed me saying he really liked the scene where the Scarecrow pulled the Sheriff's entrails out and danced around with them at the pool. I didn't have the heart to tell the kid that scene isn't in the movie. How do you break it to a kid there's no entrail dance when clearly he thinks there was one? (There was a sickle to the chest if I remember correctly)

The answer is you don't, because it may not have been in the movie we made, but it was in his movie. The movie he saw in his imagination. The movie that had plenty of MORE with it.

So by design, you can get the same effect in the audience's mind as if you had pulled out the Mac computer and went with full-on CGI. The problem with CGI is that it takes time, and the longer you dwell on it, the more artificial it becomes (not to mention it's expensive!).

Remember: Nothing beats an audience's imagination.

So that's the beginning of my Theory of More. Show (better yet, imply) just enough so that the audience brings their imagination to the table you've set, and then have a good potluck dinner.

After that, leave them wanting more. (which is a whole other post)

The smoking lamp is lit. Let's discuss it.