Independent Film Week is here! Formally called the IFP Market, the week marks a time for the filmmakers with works in progress and the industry to meet and hopefully make connections.   Beyond that, the week always features a conference full of panels about every aspect of filmmaking.

As a filmmaker alumni of Independent Film Week I get to attend the conference for free this go around, so I’ll be able to give you the inside scoop from some of the awesome panels they have scheduled this year.

This afternoon I sat down to listen to Ryan Fleck, Anna Boden and the rest of the team that made Half Nelson talk about finding “visual language” when making a film.   With Ryan and Anna, there was their DP Andrij Parekh, producer Jeremy Kipp Walker and AD Mariela Comitini.   The discussion started off with thoughts on how one uses prep to solidify how to visually translate the sensibility of the film.

Ryan Fleck made the movie geek in me happy when right off the bat he mentioned that the first thing he and Anna do is look at movies they love and then discuss them with Andrij.   The next thing the 3 of them did (after looking at films), which is actually an awesome idea, is to go to the Met and look at paintings to get an idea of the color palate they wanted on the film. Going to the Met allowed them to actually look at color instead of just talking about it.

The team went on to mention that while there are filmmakers like (the great) Stanley Kubrick who really worked to “create” worlds, that they instead “like the idea of letting the real world spill into their fictional world.”   They have to be more flexible on set, but think that the moments who can capture tend to be pretty great.   Of course they admitted it depends a lot on the film one is making too.   Half Nelson was very much a character piece with documentary influence, so flexibility and improvisation complimented the film, but their newest film Sugar deals a lot with baseball and had to be pretty planned out so they could get the outcome they wanted from the scene.

Another part of planning the visuals of a film that they all discussed had to do with what to actually shoot the film on (which film stock or video format).   For Half Nelson they went with Super 16 because it not only fit the budget but also the fly on wall mentality of the film.   They needed a mobile medium and Super 16 gave them a look they liked with the mobility necessary.

After the informal discussion about preparing for and shooting a film, the panel did a few case studies using scenes from Half Nelson.   The major lesson was to do what’s best for the movie and keep calm when things go awry, as Jeremy Kipp Walker said,

there’s always going to be something that creeps up

takepart to learn how IFP helps up and coming filmmakers and stay tuned for more Independent Film Week coverage.

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