ITS NOT OVER YET, GOT DELIVERABLES? IF NOT, I’M SORRY, NO ONE WILL SEE YOUR FILM!

It is shocking how little information is available to indie filmmakers out on the net and in film schools. I don’t mean film studies or techniques…but details on how to get a film out there, how to make it look acceptable or decent, from the point of view of people that have actually done it.

Making a film is a fantastic thing, if you can survive the process of making one, if you reach that final cut, I congratulate you sir or madam, you have truly accomplished something many will only dream of doing. Nevermind what the new crop of moronic film critics might say (it seems everyone with a blog can become a critic now days), what is important is what the distributor says, do they like it?, is it something they can sell?, MOST IMPORTANTLY…DO YOU HAVE DELIVERABLES?!!!

Once your film is done, its not over, not by a long shot. Every studio will ask you to deliver the film in its basic elements, sound-picture-extra features for DVD or Pay-Per-View. The catch is, this costs a fortune, and every element, every master tape with an element needs to go through a process called “QC”, or “quality control”.
Its kind of like a test that a video or film lab gives you, and you must pass this quality test, a very expensive test..I might add. If not, you have to take it again, paying for it again.

$$, it adds up, thousands of dollars indie filmmakers don’t have.

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Every month we will bring you great tips and inside information on the world of independent filmmaking, directly from the filmmakers themselves, instead of some magazine or blog writer. People that are actually in the field and can tell you how things are in the real world.

A LASTING IMAGE Part 1

I tend to speak a lot in technical terms, what I like about this blog is that I can be a film fan again. As one works in this biz one tends sometimes to forget about that love... So lets talk film.

The art of creating a lasting image on film...an image that will stay with you and represent the film. A great film usually has several of them, some other films have one, but one that stands the test of time.

I knew I wanted to shoot pictures from early on because I always dissected the film frames I was watching. The use of lenses and lighting which differentiated one Director from the other.

Usually a great Director will give his or her film a defined look, a feel that is only his.....That is one of the things that makes a great Director great.

But great images are not only about lighting and framing, its about the moment, the message being expressed in that frame, the emotional power of that moment:

EXCALIBUR

Since I was a kid I knew JOHN BOORMAN framed and shot things differently, his films just looked..."better", more polished. Excalibur is a triumph of costume design and lighting. In Excalibur, he decided to shine lights with green gels on all the knight's armors, and it looked amazing.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

DAVID LEAN was a great Director that started as a great Editor, and he always made his films look epic. Never one to compromise, he left images that will last 1000 years. Like the famous cut with Peter O'Tool blowing the match and then cutting from that close up to THIS extreme wide shot...priceless in 65mm!

THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY

One of the real best gangster films ever, John Mackenzie's masterpiece ends with a lengthy shot of BOB HOSKINS in the back seat of a car, once a powerful gangster, now knowing that his girlfriend will be killed, so will his family, and he will be tortured and then killed too...and there is nothing he can do. The shot stays, and stays and then fades to black. I will never forget it.

MARATHON MAN

One of the frustrating things about teaching films to young students is that most of them will never see knockout stuff like this, thinking "old is boring". The amazing Laurence Olivier scared the crap out of me as a child and to this day his scene as the "dentist" with Dustin Hoffman is an example of tension and just pure film making. "Is it safe?"..if you have seen this...you'll know.

STAR WARS

I know this film has been seen by the entire human race...I remember seeing this on a Cinerama screen on a 70mm print (35mm blow up), and here is an example of patience, something most of today's director's seem to forget. The frame tilts up and stays a bit showing us the blackness of space, then this massive ship enters the top of the frame. My then 6 year old jaw dropped and I knew I wanted to make films forever.

2001, PATHS OF GLORY and THE SHINING

Stanley and the trusty 18mm or 25mm lens, always wanting deep focus and always creating memorable images. I loved his compositions and his use of production design. Of Stanley Kubrick there is nothing left to say.

THE FOG

Yes, I know...not John Carpenter's best, but he knew how to make smaller projects look better, look bigger, look w-i- d- e- r. One of the few Director's that in his prime knew how to make things look more cinematic. In The Fog, an old fashioned ghost story, there are great wide screen moments, like the very last shot, when the priest gets killed.

ALIEN

When the Alien comes out John Hurt's chest, Cinema was never the same again. Ridley Scott instead of giving us a cheesy 70's version of space (like Logan's Run, which was still fun though...)...he made the characters real, they were blue collar workers, miners, it became a template for almost every space film that came after for many years..

HOW THE WEST WAS WON

I recently saw a Blu Ray version of this old favorite...and, its full of so many memorable imagery. They only had 2 lenses, since this CINERAMA process was new, so they could not get real close ups, and the image size was staggering, amazingly wide. But the best craftsmenHollywood could buy were showing their stuff here. If you see it, see it on Blu ray, it reminded me why I got into this crazy biz in the first place.

Well, that's enough for today, I'll add more things on this topic later.

The Business of Film Festivals

So many film festivals, so little time.

Since 2004, there have been over 650 film festivals in the US alone. That's almost 2 festivals per day. Many of these festivals charge average entry fees of anywhere from $25-$50. Some are lower (or even free), some are higher (Telluride charges $95 and selects only 20 feature films).

We recently submitted The Sacred to two festivals, Toronto International Film Festival and Toronto After Dark Film Festival. With submission fees and shipping costs it ended up costing us about $300 to do this. I dont know about you, but we've spent all our money just finishing the movie!


Toronto International was a long shot and we got the rejection letter from them at a nice price of $75. Toronto After Dark with our entry fee of $70 was the surprise. They only selected 17 features and 28 short films and got well over 700 submissions. So I started doing the math, let's see 700 x $55 average entry fee = $38,500.

I remember when we entered into Sundance 2009 (another long shot) and I got the rejection letter from Geoffrey Gillmore. He had said that they had to whittle down to 200 films from the 9,000 submitted. Yes 9,000!

So, of course I did the math and took the average from short films and feature entry fees and came up with this simple equation: $50 x 9,000 = $450,000

Almost a half of million dollars off the backs of independent filmmakers.

Where does all this money go? Hmmmmm.....since I have had the pleasure of volunteering for the Sundance Film Festival, I know it doesn't go to paying many people that actually work the festival. It could go towards paying the full timers or housing the volunteers.



When I worked the Sundance festival I was put on the staff that handled all the "official" Sundance parties. I was at a different party every night and they had free booze and great catered food and name bands and famous DJs. That memory comes back to me as I wonder where my entry fee went to in Sundance, Toronto, and After Dark.

And I wonder, how many "volunteers" played about 5 minutes of each film before tossing it aside. I know for a fact that a reputable film festival once had a not so reputable person in charge of it and his idea of selection was viewing only the first few minutes of a handful of films and pawning the rest off to his friends to make the selection. Thankfully that person has since been removed.

A number of unscrupulous individuals have also jumped on the film festival wagon and are putting up fraudulent film festivals. They can scam a filmmaker from the entry fee to the additional services like marketing materials. It's all a scam and beware of anyone who invites you to their festival and then wants you to pay. If you ever get an invitation it should always be free of charge.

Please learn from our mistakes, be wise, do research on the festival, see how many years its been in business, how many films are selected versus how many get submitted, and enter early to save money. On Withoutabox you can look up festivals that are specifically under $15 or free to enter. You can also sign up for discounts too. With over 2 film festivals happening per day there are many choices and many smaller festivals to suit your genre.

If you have to try the big dogs (Toronto, Sundance, Cannes, Berlin) know that it is like putting your money on only one number on the roulette wheel in Vegas.

Actually Vegas may have better odds.