Over the weekend I was having a conversation about the new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum that’s been announced. Specifically we were talking about the interactive exhibits. My companion expressed disgust at that kind of thing for a museum ostensibly about an art form.
I countered that people don’t appreciate what goes into something as complicated as filmmaking until they get some hands on experience with it themselves. Film lighting, in particular, is underestimated by pretty much everyone who hasn’t tried to make a video look halfway decent.
So you can imagine how delighted I was when BoingBoing’s Rob Beschizza posted this teaser for an upcoming music video today. Here’s the power of light, kids.
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The first “prosumer” grade video cameras were hailed as the arrival of a filmmaking revolution. Igniting that revolution has proven to be a bit more complicated than grabbing a camera from Best Buy.
The cost of production equipment has been driven down, and the rise of digital distribution — both theatrical and on-demand — has radically reduced certain costs on the exhibition side. However, the core issues that face any filmmaker, how to fund their film and find an audience for it, feel as if they have only grown more acute.
For filmmakers, crowdfunding has been the next big part of a continuing revolution.
“I believe that it has only begun to disrupt the film funding space,” said Emily Best, founder of the crowdfunding/distribution hybrid Seed & Spark. “And that’s a big claim when Kickstarter raised over $30 million for independent film in the past three years. That’s a tremendous feat.”
At this year’s South By Southwest Festival, it became apparent that a new ecosystem that goes far beyond crowdfunding is emerging. One that could, in theory, shepherd a film through all the phases of its life apart from production: development, financing, distribution and exhibition. Perhaps the last obstacle remaining is the lack of a map to help navigate them all.
What follows is an attempt to illustrate some of these choices. A snapshot of the terrain as viewed from the vantage point coming out of SXSW.
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In yesterday’s Hangout we talked a lot about Tugg, Inc., the Austin based film start-up that brings classic and new films to theaters on an on-demand basis. As Miss Dial filmmaker @DavidHSteinberg mentioned, the service came out of beta this week and have upgraded their website.
Tugg, Inc. is proudly touting a film library of over 1,100 films–which, sadly, cannot fit in anyone’s pocket– that can be screened in hundreds of cities around the United States. We’ll be catching up with Tugg co-founder Nicolas Gonda at SXSW next week.
The complete press release trumpeting their one-year anniversary is included after the jump.
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Los Angeles is the film capital of the world, no doubt about it, and the city treats it’s biggest cultural export with the all the respect, pomp and circumstance that a cultural capital can muster.
LA’s biggest art institution, the LACMA, is no exception to that rule. Saturday night will be the 12th annual Young Directors Night, an event put on by the museum’s Muse division that celebrates rising directors by screening their short films. From the press release:
As one of LACMA Muse’s most popular annual events, Young Directors Night is dedicated to cultivating and celebrating the best in local film. Join LACMA Muse as it presents the Art of Film Award to the best in show. Following the award presentation, guests are invited to celebrate with the filmmakers at a wine reception where LACMA’s special exhibition, Stanley Kubrick will be open for exclusive access.
Seven short films will be presented during the program, which starts at 8PM and is followed by a Q & A session with the directors and hosts. The award presentation and a reception– which includes late night access to the museum’s Stanley Kubrick exhibit follows the Q & A and runs till midnight.
The logistical details after the jump… (more…)
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It’s a familiar scene to many filmmakers: they budget out their film, calling in favors left and right, then they launch their crowdfunding campaign and someone sends them an email that says, “Hey, I don’t have any money to give, but I’d love to help.” Invariably, that help can lower the budget. Maybe they have a location you can use for free. Or extra lenses they can loan you. Or they can edit the film for you. Suddenly, you don’t need $X.
Only, you still do.
Kickstarter doesn’t care that you suddenly found an editor that can knock a chunk off your budget. The target goal won’t change.
Enter Seed & Spark, a (very) new entrant in the crowdfunding space. I met up with them at Sundance, via mutual friends. (more…)
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YouTube’s biggest network is hosting a hybrid Film Festival: online and at one of LA’s hottest galleries.
How hot was the ticket to last week’s opening of the Machinima Interactive Film Festival at LA’s iam8bit gallery? Try around the block line, no parking in Echo Park hot.
That’s okay, because the gallery installation is just half of the equation. Machinima and iam8bit have collaborated to put on the MIFF, which features videos in six categories (with the sixth category rolling out today) all of which are somehow steeped in gamer culture. (more…)
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When I hear the term “stretch goals”, two things immediately come to mind. The first is of the cat when he’s just woken up. The other is of a filmmaker who’s somehow hit their goal earlier and is panicking to try and get more money and backers. Neither is all that accurate, but at least the one of the cat is cute.
Which is a lot to say that I’m more or less skeptical of just how effective stretch goals are.
Despite what you might assume, they aren’t a new phenomenon. Any campaign that’s hit the goal prior to the deadline has at least flirted with the idea of stretch goals. Sometimes it’s something as simple as “if we raise another $500, I’ll shave my head”. Other times it’s a lot more structured.
So let’s look at a campaign that did stretch goals effectively and see what we can dig up. (more…)
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Formerly our man in NYC, film writer Jonathan Poritsky is now our man in Austin, Texas. This is the story of how and why.
The end of July was weird for me. I quit my job, bought a car, left New York City and hit the road for Austin, Texas. My girlfriend, Kristyn, is getting her PhD at the University of Texas and, since I wasn’t in the market for a new girlfriend, I decided to join her on this adventure. By no means was it a simple decision.
It wasn’t easy to find my footing in New York, and I had gotten quite comfortable. I had a good day job in post production, landed a good deal for a large-ish apartment on the Upper West Side and was on all the invite lists for indie press screenings, local film fests, etc. Why start all over in a new town?
For one, I like Austin. I have attended the SXSW Film Festival and Conference since 2010, and every year I had a blast in this town. More than that though, I could feel how seriously the town takes its artists, and how supportive it is of them. (more…)
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Amanda Mae Meyncke on Thursday, Aug. 30th
This week film journalist and filmmaker Amanda Mae Meyncke takes a look at the uphill battle women directors face in Hollywood through the lens of the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women and her own personal experience. In the third of three parts, Meyncke shares her own experiences as a director. [Read the first part of this series here.]
I never wanted to direct. Like many women I loved movies from a young age yet rarely saw films that spoke to my experiences. Which is fine, not every action film or romantic comedy speaks directly to our own personal experiences, but they often resonate because of some elements of truth that are shared by all stories. (more…)
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Amanda Mae Meyncke on Tuesday, Aug. 28th
This week film journalist and filmmaker Amanda Mae Meyncke takes a look at the uphill battle women directors face in Hollywood through the lens of the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women and her own personal experience. First up: the DWW through the eyes of one of its current participants.
Women directors make up less than 10% of all working directors in Hollywood, and the AFI Directing Workshop for Women has been doing its steady best to change that number. Since the program’s inception in Los Angeles in 1974, there’s been plenty of famous faces in the ranks, and a high percentage of the alumna have moved on to directing features, television shows and creating their own singular works.
Lauren Ludwig is the prime example of a women director who doesn’t take no for an answer, and makes things happen without waiting for the perfect moment. One of the eight women chosen to undertake the AFI Directing Workshop for Women this year, she’s an accomplished playwright, radio and theatre director as well as a writing coach who has won numerous awards for her theatrical work. Her short film Burns Brightly, created during the workshop, finished production this summer. We recently caught up with Ludwig to catch a glimpse of what the program was like on the inside.
The question of why there are so few female directors working in Hollywood is a complicated one, and Ludwig believes that the problem begins for many female directors in film school when more forceful, and often male, voices are rewarded with attention, while women may be afraid of speaking up, or discouraged. She acknowledges that the problem is a systemic one and that there is no clear-cut solution to getting women into positions of authority within the industry.
“Women need to be told they are storytellers and encouraged to tell those stories,” said Ludwig.
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As you all undoubtedly already know, Google Glass is finally here.
Sponsors
Now streaming: the archive of our Google Hangout On-Air with Jesse Vigil of Psychic Bunny, one of the designers of the new audio adventure game FREEQ (iOS/Android).
We’ve featured dancer Matt Luck’s work before.
I first encountered Sifteo Cubes back at IndieCade last October, and spent some time playing around with the little blocks which I first mistook for iPod Nanos.
Over the weekend I was having a conversation about the new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum that’s been announced.
