Truth About Non-Fiction : New Venues for Documentary

I’ve always found it funny that my current job (blogging ) isn’t one that existed when I was growing up.   I never could have said to my teachers, when I grow up I want to spend my day writing stories on the internet, kind of like a journalist, but kind of not.   Likewise, filmmakers could probably never have predicted the intense change that has occurred in the past few years, not only concerning how films are made but also how they’re distributed.

Today dreams of a movie theater premiere are not only unrealistic but are also often a bad idea - as being in a theater often doesn’t benefit most filmmakers (outside the arena of ego and a somewhat false measure of success).   The last panel I saw at Independent Film Week addressed this very issue and aimed to look at how technology is changing the ways films are distributed and the new venues that exist for them.

The folks on the panel were quite diverse, starting with Submarine Entertainment’s Josh Braun (sales agent), MSNBC’s Michael Rubin (I’m not sure his title, but he was a trip and clearly an executive of some sort), Carnivalesque’s David Redmond and Ashley Sabin (ind. distributors) and my panel favorite New Day Film’s Alice Elliott.

New Day Films is an awesome organization that is actually a co-operative, meaning that all the member-owners have a stake or a share in the company and that one person’s success is every person’s success - which is so amazing!   They specialize in documentary that stands on it’s own as a film but also can work in educational environments as part of a curriculum.   Read the rest of this entry >>

Independent Film Week might be over but I’ve still got a few awesome panels to report on - including one of the more interesting ones, entitled “Subjective : Working With Documentary Subjects.” The panel consisted of an awesome moderator - Silverdoc’s Sky Sitney and 4 pretty great lady filmmakers, Nina Davenport of Operation Filmmaker, Tia Lessin of Trouble the Water, Lucia Small of The Axe in the Attic and Cynthia Wade of Freeheld.

The four directors opened the session by showing a clip for each of their films and talking a bit about the particulars of their relationships to their subjects. Since you weren’t there to see them, trailers for each film are below:

Operation Filmmaker :

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As a filmmakers, digital technologies mean a lot of things, many good and many not so good.   They mean cheaper high quality cameras that allow people to make movies they never would have been able to make in the past and on that same token it means many many many many many people making movies, most of which aren’t very good.    They mean new and exciting means of distribution that potentially allow filmmakers more control over their film and more eyes on their film and on that same token they also mean the slow loss of the theater dream and much more complicated distribution deals - which leads me to the panel I saw this morning on knowing ones digital rights.

The panel this morning consisted of various folks who function in the realm of digital distribution including Steven Beer, Janet Brown, Charles Choi, Karol Martesko, and Joe Swanberg (click on their names for resumes).   What struck me most about the conversation was talk of inverting the old distribution models in a way that works for the independent filmmaker today. Read the rest of this entry >>

I love going to screenings that filmmakers are at and panels about filmmaking.   It’s always great to hear people speak about their craft, esp when you got to just see it.   What I don’t love is the portion of the event that consists of “questions from the audience.” In fact this portion almost always makes me wince and shake my head.

Independent Film Week is one of the worst examples of this phenomenom, mainly because the folks on the stage are somehow involved with the film industry and the folks in the audience want to be in that industry (or at least get their movie made).   This essentially means that during the audiences Q&A time, there is at least 2-3 folks that use the time to ask about their specific film project.   It’s hard to watch people to try mask the fact that they are asking the person on stage to adopt their film in some way with another question.   Often times the moderator has to cut them off.   I wince, I shake my head. Read the rest of this entry >>

Josh Sapan is the head of Rainbow Media, the parent company of IFC, Sundance and Mad Men’s AMC. He also understands how digital technologies are directly impacting filmmakers and the film industry and came to talk about it at Independent Film Week.

Josh Sapan with everyone I love from Mad Med (Sapan is on the left)

The conversation began with a look at the particulars of Rainbow Media, specifically IFC and the newly acquired Sundance.   Sundance Selects will bring 50 new (non-fiction) releases from Rainbow per year.    He then went on to explain how Video on Demand (VOD) works and how it is giving independent filmmakers opportunities they never had in the past.

VOD as is stands gives 50 million people the opportunity to see a film vs a theater run which is considerably less.   In fact, Sapan sees the VOD movement today as just the beginning and predicts that in 5 years, independent films on VOD will be able to have 5 million dollar gate (profits) (now they have closer to 1).

The only real challenge here is tearing filmmakers away from their romantic dreams of the movie theater (I’m not sure if you could tear me away..)  Not only are theaters the ideal aesthetic setting for a film but they are also still the general meter of success.   Sapan says that filmmakers need a new point of view for a new world. Read the rest of this entry >>

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. Read the rest of this entry >>