Things seen and overheard, Day One of the Toronto International Film Festival:

Ads hyping the new hybrid Escalade are opening every screening of this year's Toronto Film Festival; whether that's a subconscious meta-commentary on the festival itself, a similar all-consuming mammoth that's uniting unwieldy pomp and flash with more down-to-earth concern, is entirely unknown.

While today was the official first day of the festival, Wednesday night featured a lovely "Programmers Gathering" for early-arriving festival heads, film society programmers, archivists, and museum curators. It's a nice touch for TIFF, one to make a generally overlooked section of the film world feel more at home...until the stars arrive the next day, of course. ("Enjoy it now, you'll never be treated this well again," one curator muttered as I reached for a mousse torte). The gathering has morphed from its genesis many years ago as a full-day conference, complete with presentations, case studies, discussions and arguments ("Why didn't that touring Rivette series work?" "Why does Celluloid Dreams charge so much" etc, etc). Needless to say, the new version, a free coctail-and-food gathering at an elegant hotel bar, has proven slightly more popular. (The flowing chocolate fountain might have something to do with that, too.)

The programmers meeting doesn't exactly provide much of a test for festival photographers, though. They could be seen taking a few half-hearted photos, mainly to test their lenses or experience shooting folks without burly bodyguards. One said it was a good way to get in the mood for the festival (i.e., by hanging around people who not only could name every film by Claire Denis, Lisandro Alonso, or James Benning, but actually would, and did).

The Hollywood brigade has yet to arrive, or possibly they're just practicing their "Well, to premiere here, and to already be discussed as an Oscar candidate..." speeches while they're stalled in Toronto taxi-limo traffic. Tonight the festival premiered the new Guy Ritchie film RocknRolla, one of those star-studded genre works that populate the line-up, but like all discerning citizens I had better things to do with my time: attend the world premiere of $9.99, the new stop-motion animation film by Israel-by-way-of-Brooklyn-by-way-of-Australia filmmaker Tatia Rosenthal.

A 25-New-Faces-of-Independent-Film veteran, Rosenthal's many-moons journey to bring this collection of Etgar Keret short stories to the screen took her from Brooklyn to Rotterdam (as part of the Cinemart funding conference), with an international-funding trail that landed her in Australia (courtesy of the Australian Film Commission and that country's Sherman Pictures), where she spent over two years animating the film.

Stop-motion animation is normally associated with Aardvark's animal-based humors: Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, etc, or by others with the rich Czech tradition of filmmakers Jiri Trnka, Jan Svankmajer, etc. In both cases the animation brings to life a fantastic world: chickens talk and break out of a Nazi camp, tree stumps move and eat people, etc etc.

Rosenthal, though, has other goals for her animation: to recreate the real world, movement by movement, blink by blink, a world that may be tinged with surrealism and oddity (these are based on Keret stories, after all), but that is unmistakably recognizable. Here a father worries about his two sons, a child saves money for a soccer game; a couple split up, a lonely elderly man waits for someone to talk with. What's amazing about $9.99 isn't that it's filled with painstakingly crafted animation and figure design (it is, of course), but that its script could just as easily have been portrayed by "real actors." Its themes of loneliness, betrayal, worry, and love are light years from any other animation film in recent memory, and its script (by Rosenthal and Keret) could stand with any festival film here.

Oh, and one star present (besides Tatia, of course): Geoffrey Rush, who provides the voice for one of the characters, and whose genial and erudite presence certainly proved entertaining enough for the crowd.

# posted by Jason Sanders @ 9/05/2008 12:21:00 AM Comments (0)

Bradley Beesley's sequel to his breakout hit Okie Noodling will be screening this Friday and Saturday at the IFC Center in New York.

If you're not familiar with the film, here's a sum up from the release:

In 2001, filmmaker Bradley Beesley brought the strange subculture of barehanded catfishing to the screen in 'Okie Noodling’, which won the Audience Choice Award and 1st runner-up for Best Documentary at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. Now he returns to his home state of Oklahoma to see how the sport has evolved over the last decade in 'Okie Noodling II'. Revisiting the colorful, original cast and meeting some new and eccentric fishermen en route to the largest noodling tournament in the nation- this film explores the legalization issues and commercialization of this once backwoods practice.

For tickets go to ifccenter.com

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 9/04/2008 01:12:00 PM Comments (1)

This piece by Karina Longworth discussing a panel discussion at Telluride on the crisis in independent film is essential reading. Ann Thompson, director Danny Boyle, distributor Michael Barker, critic and professor Annette Insdorf and writer/director Paul Schrader all talk about changing models and whether or not independent film as we know it is dead.

There's a lot of great stuff here, but these words by Schrader are choice, and they echo the comments I far less eloquently tried to advance in the Filmmaker magazine panel discussion that we recorded for the next issue.

From the piece:

“Technology is leaving behind much that we are fond of,” Schrader warned. “I personally believe that movies are a 20th century art form, and they’re basically over.” Several times over the course of the session, Schrader expressed enthusiasm for short-form episodic work made on low budgets for small screens. Referencing the rise number of “professional” media makers who have jumped to the webseries format, Schrader announced that he’s currently planning a film that would exist in a couple of different versions: one feature designed for arthouses, and one “X-rated” version, cut into 12, 5-minute episodes, for viewing on cellphones and/or on the web. Schrader’s not planning to go this route because it’s lucrative, but because it’s what he sees as our inevitable future. “There’s [currently] no money in it, but it’s much better to gore the ox than to hold the ox that’s being gored.”

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/03/2008 11:28:00 AM Comments (0)

In Variety, Ali jafaar reports on a new production company poised to pump a billion dollars into film production.

From the piece:

Abu Dhabi has set its sights on joining the big leagues of pic production.

The Abu Dhabi Media Co., which oversees the emirate’s film, TV and radio outlets, is launching a production shingle with $1 billion to spend on developing, financing and producing feature films over the next five years.

Company dubbed Imagenation Abu Dhabi, which will also oversee Abu Dhabi’s existing $1 billion production fund with Warner Bros., has a mandate to produce eight features a year for the worldwide marketplace. Majority of the fare commissioned will be English-language features aimed at mainstream auds. The banner is set to ink a number of deals with U.S. and international film companies in the coming weeks.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/03/2008 12:24:00 AM Comments (0)

At his blog John August announces the arrival of Scrippets, a Wordpress plug-in that allows for easy script formatting within blogs. Check it out. (Hat tip: Noah Harlan.)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/02/2008 08:51:00 PM Comments (0)

In the last weekly newsletter I wrote the following:

Last week Filmmaker gathered a small group of producers, sales reps and a distributor to talk about what some are calling a crisis in the funding and distribution of independent film. Our panel mixed generations, comprising veterans who remember independent film in the ’70s and ’80s as well as relative newcomers who have begun producing in the post-Pulp Fiction/Blair Witch era. I won’t go into all the details of our conversation here because the comments will run as a roundtable discussion in the next issue of Filmmaker. One thing was clear, though – we talked for about two hours and could easily have gone on all night. And while we jumped around a lot, skipping from production issues to distribution ones, we kept circling back to a few basic questions about today’s independent film scene. Has the money that sustained independent film in the ’80s and ’90s left the sector entirely or are we just at a low point in a cyclical business? Have the desires and viewing patterns of our audiences changed permanently, or can they be reawakened by better films and a more concerted effort to build a sense of community around independent film? Is the recent departure from the independent sector by several studios a blessing because it will create opportunities for more nimble players or a curse because it is destroying opportunities for films to be acquired? Are filmmakers fighting a rear-guard action in their quest for theatrical play, or should they accept the small-screen logic of the Internet and perhaps even change their work accordingly? I’m waiting for the transcript so I can begin to edit all of this, but, in the meantime, if you have any thoughts you are always welcome to email them to me at editor AT filmmakermagazine.com.

One filmmaker -- Marc Maurino of White Light Film Works, who directed the short film Trigger Finger -- sent in the following reply, which I know many people who are contemplating a career (?) in independent film will relate to.

Considering my own future as a director and getting a first feature made, the idea of a microbudget feature with no-stars, while potentially artistically rewarding, doesn't seem to be something that I can imagine leaving my very stable day job and risking my house for; likewise, even getting something off the ground at the next level, i.e., $2-5M with a name or two doesn't seem a guaranteed route to financial stabilty or, with any certainty, distribution.

I naturally consider the dizzying array of possibilities available via the Internet, webisodes, serials, and streaming ultra-short films, but since I aspire to directing features, and creating work that both prepares me for and displays my aptitude to do so, I'm about to go out to festivals with a 20 min. short, featuring multiple characters, storylines, arcs, and plot/subplot; in short, not a realistic work for streaming, but, under the "old economy", perhaps is a calling card . . . but a calling card for what, and to whom?

Presumably and predictably, I'll ultimately look for a producer who can help me shepherd the short and loosely-related feature script to the same dwindling cadre of financiers who seem to be leaving the game in droves. And as hard as it is to get financing at all, even at the microbduget levels, as an adult (ie, no longer single in my early 20s), I have a few other challenges.

With the family and the mortgage, to be frank, I can't devote two years of my life to produce, post, and then nurture (ie, self-distribute, tour, etc.) a project unless I can guarantee myself, quite literally, about 250K (ie, give up my government health insurance, 401(k) matching, car, and biweekly paycheck.) I'll be focusing on trying to leverage the short plus loosely-adapted feature script (in the vein of Gowanus, Brooklyn/Half Nelson, Five Feet High and Rising/Raising Victor Vargas, Frozen River/Frozen River) but I wonder/fear if that is the "old model", not to mention that I just referenced some insanely talented and fortunate directors.

So barring the fortune to mimic their patterns, I'm also looking at breaking in to television directing--perhaps equally if not more difficult--but beyond these two models (and I use that term loosely, because they are more just hopeful paths) I am, along, perhaps, with the rest of the aspiring director corps, wondering what the future holds.

I'm fairly certain that keeping costs down in order to maximize the profit margin on any possible distribution deal/DVD/foreign territory sale is mandatory, perhaps moreso than ever before. But I'm also trying hard to think outside of the box, and imagine a successful future as a director which is not contingent on multi-million-dollar budgets and distribution deals.

One model I think about a lot is the theatre--my wife works for and is an actor at a major regional theatre (Shakespeare and Co.) which this summer has mounted some fantastic productions (Othello got glowing reviews in the NYT) and all of which will end tomorrow. They employed a slew of actors and technicians, paid the rent on a sprawling campus and multiple theatres, had multiple 400-seat sellout crowds, and have not gone bankrupt doing so. I wonder if the indie film community would be served by looking at theatre models while also looking at digital/Internet venues, and what that might look like . . .

For instance, could a no-budget feature recoup its costs via a 3-5 night a week summerlong run at a regional exhibition space, bolstered by word of mouth and regional press and marketing, ie, the same thing that draws a crowd to The Ladies' Man or The Goat Woman of Corvis County, just to mention a pair of non-Shakespeare plays that are performing well this summer?

Of course, I don't know. These are just the things I'm thinking, and I don't know if you usually get more erudite or solution-based responsed to your postings, but you certainly have gotten me thinking--the question no longer is just "how do I break in?", but also, "what am I breaking in to?"

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/01/2008 08:50:00 PM Comments (8)

As we enter a lazy Labor Day news cycle, Anne Thompson picks up on her Variety blog the press release that THINKfilm CEO Mark Urman is leaving the troubled distributor and will join Senator Entertainment as the head of its new theatrical distribution company.

Here's the press release:

Effective October 1, veteran film industry executive Mark Urman will join Marco Weber’s Senator Entertainment US as president of his newly formed distribution company. The teaming with Urman follows Weber’s recent acquisition of all shares in U.S.-based Senator Entertainment Inc. in order to focus solely on the production of English language films and to establish this U.S. based distribution entity. The company will be fully bi-coastal with main offices in both Los Angeles and New York.

Urman co-founded THINKFilm in 2001, heading the company’s theatrical division and serving, most recently, as president. Prior to that, he was co-president of Lionsgate Releasing. Urman will work side-by-side with Weber in establishing all windows of distribution for the company’s slate, allowing Weber to concentrate on the original productions the company is making with a broad spectrum of A-list actors and filmmakers.

“I believe this is the perfect time to launch a company of this shape and size,” says Urman, “and I’m thrilled to be joining Marco in this exciting new endeavor. We start with an exceptional line-up that combines commercial crossover films with classically niche-oriented ones, and we’ll have the ability to alternate wide releases-- involving hundreds of prints--with prestige titles that expand from exclusive platforms. By building a company that can be big and bold when it wants to be, but streamlined and strategic when it needs to be, we plan on being the best possible combination of a studio specialty division and a true independent.”

Weber commented, “Mark’s expertise in the independent film world is without rival. He has proven consistently that he understands how to design specific campaigns for movies that are high quality, yet challenging to release successfully. It is our good fortune to have secured him as a partner to work with us as the company prepares to release its first slate.”

In this terrible distribution environment, it's great that there is a new theatrical distributor. But what will become of THINKfilm and the filmmakers and vendors who are owed money? Will owner David Bergstein find that rumored next round of financing and hire a replacement? Or does Urman's exit signal the company's imminent demise?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/29/2008 05:44:00 PM Comments (0)

During this election season I recommend taking a break from the cable talking heads and reviewing some of the independent media that has been produced over the last couple of years about American foreign policy. One of the best documentaries is Charles Ferguson's Academy Award-nominated No End in Sight. As Ray Pride report at Movie City Indie, Ferguson is streaming the film free on YouTube.

Pride reports:

No End in Sight is being made available free to the public to reveal the facts about the Bush Administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq to voters concerned with the issues of national security and the adverse economic impact of the war when making decisions in this crucial election. NO END IN SIGHT condenses and clarifies the murky decisions made before and after the invasion and is invaluable to the public’s understanding of what went wrong. The film is both an analysis of an ill-conceived war and a plea to consider the impact of future military actions. According to the film's director, Charles Ferguson, he underwrote the exhibition of the film on YouTube because, "I wanted to make the film, and the facts about the occupation of Iraq, accessible to a larger group of people. My hope is that this will contribute to the process of making better foreign policy decisions moving forward in Iraq and elsewhere. During this election year, it’s important to examine the leadership mentality and policies that caused Iraq to descend into such a horrific state that after 4,000 American deaths, at least a quarter million Iraqis killed, 4 million refugees, and over $2 trillion spent, Iraq remains in a state of near collapse."

Beginning September 1 you can watch the entire movie on this YouTube channel.

I interviewed Ferguson a year ago for our Summer, 2007 issue. Here's my intro, and you can read the entire piece at this link.

In the current debate over the Iraq war, Charles Ferguson’s debut documentary, No End in Sight, takes what is perhaps the most troubling position of all: the war could have gone right. Largely sidestepping questions about the justness of the war and focusing on the few months leading up to and immediately following the invasion, Ferguson pinpoints the mistakes that laid the groundwork for the current conflict. And while it’s commonplace to view Iraq’s violent civil strife as being just as inevitable as the discovery of WMDs was once believed to have been, Ferguson assembles a convincing group of talking heads — including General Jay Garner and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage — who assert otherwise and lay blame accordingly.

For news-aware viewers, Ferguson’s basic argument will be familiar. Insufficient troop levels, the failure to stop Iraqi postwar looting, poor advance planning and the decision to disband the Iraqi military combined to create an active, deadly insurgency that the U.S. military was unequipped to handle. What makes Ferguson’s doc revelatory and necessary, however, is his gripping and exact detailing of these failures and his giving voice to the government officials (largely from the State Department) whose realistic counsel was deliberately ignored by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

With a Ph.D. in political science from MIT, Ferguson was well versed in the arcana of foreign-policy-speak, but before beginning No End in Sight he had never made a movie. Having achieved success in the technology field — in 1996 he sold his company Vermeer Technologies to Microsoft, which incorporated Vermeer’s FrontPage into its Microsoft Office software — he self-financed his film, bringing on a talented team headed up by executive producer Alex Gibney, whose own documentary on Iraq, Taxi to the Dark Side, is being released later this year. I sat down with Ferguson at New York’s Mercer Hotel to discuss making a first doc, post–Michael Moore political filmmaking and the future of Iraq. Magnolia Pictures opens the film in late July.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/28/2008 05:05:00 PM Comments (0)

I like Aaron Sorkin, but I don't know what to make of the fact that he's so loudly publicizing the fact that he knows so little about the online world he'll be writing about in his Scott Rudin-commissioned script on Facebook. I've listened to interviews with Sorkin before in which he's talked about capturing the rhythms of intelligent speech and about how one doesn't have to know all the details of a character's profession in order to write that character. And yes, often an outsider's eye can be the best when it comes to entering into a world and finding the moments of drama that will connect with a larger audience.

But did he have to go so far as say that his dead grandmother knows more about the internet than he does?

You can visit Sorkin's Facebook group here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/28/2008 01:11:00 PM Comments (0)

Everyone's talking about small screens -- what it's like to watch movies on mobile devices like cell phones and iPods. Mark Cuban's musings about the Olympics and The Dark Knight, however, lead him in the opposite direction:

Of course it would also not be a stretch to place the biggest screens in existence in open air locations where huge gatherings and related events can take place. Would families pay 50 bucks for a day of Olympics fun outside on 100 acres? Olympicsalooza anyone ? Why should it be any different than all the events that take place SuperBowl, or NBA or MLB All Star weekends ? Make it a huge party. In 100 cities across the country.

Could you sell 20mm tickets to attend out of home Olympic events at an average of 20 bucks each ? That's 400mm minus the cut to the theaters, locations, etc of 50pct, or 200mm. Plus of course there is all the non stop advertising that will be built into all of these events. On screen, at stadium/field/farm/theater.........

NBC proved that the Olympics can still be a communal event in the USA. Dark Knight proved that if enough people get excited about the same event, if you make it a special event, they will leave their homes to see it. Sports leagues have done an amazing job of building specialty events around the main event. Could technical advances in large stadium screens be a tipping point in the economics and presentation of the Olympics ?

How big can a screen be in 2016 and at what price ? Why not a panoramic emerssive experience in the new Cowboys stadium ? Or a 10 story tall 3D presentation of Olympics Basketball in the American Airlines Arena ? 20k or 50k or 100k people screaming U-S-A and watching on a screen that makes you feel as ifyou were there, is that worth 20 bucks ?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/27/2008 12:21:00 AM Comments (2)

A couple of weeks after organizations for the disabled attacked Tropic Thunder for an epithet used in the movie, the Council on American-Islamic Relations is objecting to the title of Alan Ball's new film, Towelhead, which opens next month. But Eric D. Snider at Cinematical argues that the film's title shouldn't be considered offensive as it can't be separated from the intentions of the film itself:

I think CAIR's objections could be remedied by simply watching the movie. Over the course of it, the girl (played amazingly by Summer Bishil) comes to feel empowered and confident in who she is. She overcomes the slurs and the harassment, and she embraces her identity as an Arab-American and as a young woman. To complain about the title is to miss the forest because you're too busy looking at the trees. I think people who have actually seen the film understand that.

Towelhead is also the name of the novel by Arab-American Alicia Ehran that the film is based on. Both she and Ball comment in this Reuters piece:

Erian, who is Arab-American, said that although the title is an ethnic slur, she "selected it to highlight one of the novel's major themes: racism."

She called CAIR's work "admirable," but said that "the solution ... is not to force the artist to alter her work, but instead to use the occasion of that work as an entry point for meaningful debate and discussion."

Ball said he felt it was important to retain the title of Erian's novel because "she so effectively dramatizes the pain inflicted by such language, something many people of non-minority descent never have to face."

Read the rest of Snider's piece and the lively comments thread that follows at the link above.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/26/2008 11:03:00 PM Comments (0)

Declining box-office... shuttered indie arms... busted distribution windows... the credit crunch... bankrupt distributors... creative malaise -- they are all cited by Dade Hayes and Pamela McClintock in Variety as the reasons for indie film's "dismal year."

A key graph summarizes the debate that many in this business are engaged in right now:

The bottom line is that it's a changing world -- and it might be something cyclical, or things may have changed permanently. The matrix of different ancillaries -- which has expanded radically from the early video days to include VOD, Web downloads, airlines, music and merchandise -- puts a new spin on the still-crucial theatrical window.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/26/2008 10:54:00 PM Comments (1)

I mean, really, don't. It's one of the greatest movies ever made, and a personal top ten favorite... but here on this blog is not the way to see it.

Let me explain. I first saw Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter while visiting a friend's house for the weekend. She had it on VHS and we watched it on a pretty small TV. I thought it was really good. Later, feeling I had missed out on seeing it on the big screen I caught it during a special run at New York's Public Theater -- back when the Public Theater had both a film theater and a film program. On its decent-sized screen, the film went from being a good film to being a masterpiece. A tiny moment at the end, when the boy is given an apple by Lillian Gish, gets swallowed up on the small screen, but projected this simple gesture is transcendent.

When Simon Callow's monograph on the film was published by the BFI, I wrote about it in Filmmaker. An excerpt:

François Truffaut queasily likened The Night of the Hunter, actor Charles Laughton’s 1955 directorial debut, to a "horrifying news item retold by small children." Quoted in Simon Callow’s new British Film Institute monograph on the film, Truffaut goes on to offer a bit of middlebrow advice proving that the confluence of film criticism and box-office commentary is not solely a turn-of-the-century phenomenon: "Screenplays such as this are not the way to launch your career as a Hollywood director. The film runs counter to the rules of commercialism … it will probably be Laughton’s single experience as a director."

Indeed, Laughton’s use of an Expressionist, theatrical mise en scene and flashes of burlesque humor to adapt David Grubbs’s best-selling blend of Southern Gothic and Grimms’s fairy tales resulted in newspaper attacks on the film’s "arty" direction. The reviews weren’t all bad but enough were; depressed and unfinanceable as a director, Laughton soon abandoned his planned adaptation of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead. Lack of critical support on its release coupled with Laughton’s retreat from film directing resulted in The Night of the Hunter’s peripatetic status within the Great Films canon. It’s the kind of glorious one-off that falls to the footnotes of film histories, even if it’s also the sort of masterpiece that other directors spend a career working up to

.

So here's the film, courtesy of Hulu. But don't watch it here. Track down a print somewhere. Or get the DVD and watch it on the biggest set you can find. Just don't click below.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/26/2008 07:26:00 PM Comments (2)

Okay, cool mentions across the blogosphere are one thing, but a fashion spread in the Sunday Times is something else. Check out this feature to see Josh Safdie, director of The Pleasure of Being Robbed (my favorite independent film of the year), his brother Benny, actress Eleonore Hendricks and the rest of the Red Bucket Films crew wearing some of the latest Fall fashions. There's also this group of curated Red Bucket Shorts.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/24/2008 07:41:00 PM Comments (1)

There's a good edition of "The Medium," Virginia Heffernan's column in the Sunday Times Magazine this week. She tries to define what makes a web series work. In the most recent Filmmaker magazine newsletter I wrote about Max Richter's new album, 24 Frames in Full Colour, which consists of 24 short pieces that Richter says are designed to be thought of as ringtones, not songs. In the letter I wrote about the perceptual change that prompted in the listener leading to a different kind of appreciation of the album. Applying this thinking to web filmmaking, I wrote that maybe we need to "forget that we are making films and to think of them as something else." I asked, "If we sent a video message to a friend, what would it look like? What video might play in one of those digital picture frames in the sets of any one of our screenplays? If the protagonist of your screenplay had a Facebook page, what video might play on it?"

Heffernan makes a similar point, arguing that the lonelygirl15 was so much better when we didn't think of it as scripted entertainment:

Just as some people don’t like to receive their humor under the banner of “funny” — their smiles fade at comedy clubs called Chuckles Café or Laugh Lane — I don’t like to watch Web serials as serials. What I loved about “lonelygirl15,” when its status as amateur filmmaking was still unclear, was not so much that I couldn’t tell if it was real or fake but that I could never tell if there would be another one. Poor, beautiful Bree, the housebound heroine, appeared to be uploading videos whenever her home-schooling overlords would permit it. At the end of an episode, you had no idea if she’d survive to make another. This thrill is present in all Web interactions in which a Facebook friend or far-flung colleague or gchat buddy is so there, writing the long 4 a.m. communications about Russia or his cat, until he isn’t. When you kick off an exchange with someone online, you don’t know how many episodes have been ordered, what shape or course the relationship might take or how much of a commitment it requires.

In her piece, she offers a few recommendations of what's good out there -- namely Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog, but ultimately looks forward to a time in which the divide between amateur and professional, entertainment and simple experience, is erased:

So where’s the true art? I’m not sure. I know I continue to prefer the strange, beautiful, comical and mysterious stuff of YouTube — the unclassifiable stuff — to the laudable efforts at nouveau serials by bona fide directors. But I still believe that, one day, another serial — not called a serial, maybe, and certainly not webisodes — will exploit the eccentricity of the virals and manage to make new and serious jokes about the truth-illusion-truth-illusion of cinéma vérité, which is what “lonelygirl15” once did. With that, the thrill of filmed “reality” will be returned to viewers, as it was in the early days of film, radio and television.

And, oh yeah, it does cost $4.99 to watch Dr. Horrible on iTunes, but Hulu also offers it for free if you'll sit through a couple of McDonald's commercials. Via the streaming site you can watch it here:



And, p.s., if you don't subscribe to our weekly newsletter, which contains editorial content not found on the blog or in the magazine, you can do so for free on the main page.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/24/2008 07:16:00 PM Comments (2)

On the one year anniversary of Mike Jones's "The Circuit" column at Variety, former AFI Fest Director Christian Gaines, who is now employed by Withoutabox, contributes a two-part discussion on festivals and our current failing indie film theatrical distribution model. Part one is titled "Do Festivals Matter?" and part two is "Things Gotta Change."

In part one, Gaines writes that festivals have become, for many films, the premiere exhibition opportunity:

In the pantheon of viable choices for getting your film seen, film festivals continue to thrive (seems there’s a new one born every minute, right?), and that’s because, putting aside economic factors for the moment, film festivals still provide the perfect environment for the cultural, communal celebration of cinema, where films can be presented in context, with optimal picture and sound, and where audiences can yield, uninterrupted, to the original experience created by the artist.

As commercial exhibition prospects for independent filmmakers diminish, the more traditional path – from festival circuit to theatrical run to DVD release to a comfy spot on the Blockbuster shelf, adorned in festival laurels – has sharply changed direction. Only the festival circuit still seems like a constant part of the equation, with thousands of filmmakers steadily submitting their films to thousands of film festivals around the world each year.

In part two, he muses on a solution and proposes that sales agents consider something he calls a "Festival Acquisition" model (and please read his pieces in their entirety to get his full argument):

In the new “Festival Acquisition” model a sales agent or producer might send a film on a six to ten month tour of sixty to eighty North American film festivals. Absent of commercial venues, if film festivals have become the ad hoc distribution infrastructure for these films - and the film in question might see 250 screenings - then a formal business proposition will emerge, one in which rights holders and film festivals each acknowledge the other’s challenges.

On the one hand, what Gaines is proposing is nothing new. Smaller distributors have always been skilled at stitching together nationwide tours that combine festival screenings with play in various non-theatrical venues. But what is a little different is that Gaines seems to be advocating that sales agents view themselves as these kind of non-theatrical distributors and use their negotiating ability to work out a more financially remunerative model for filmmakers that acknowledges that festival play is all many films will get.

There's already a little bit of a comments thread, with David Poland contributing this:

Ask Cowboy Booking about "the festival distribution circuit." Oops. Can't. Out of business. Bottom line, filmmakers on the fest circuit can only expect some free trips... which is not nothing. The more effort there is to squeeze money out of fests for screenings, the fewer fests there will be. Is that a bad thing?... The question facing all of these films -- and Cinetic is trying to address it online -- is how to grow the number of dollars in play, from fests to DVD to other ancillaries. If a film can earn $100,000 without a major distributor, great, but it isn't nearly enough to matter or to support American Indies.

Poland notes what is common in many of the new models and self-distribution schemes being discussed at the moment: the revenue potential is inherently low. The structure of the models themselves do not allow for upside potential. The question becomes, then, whether or not to accept to as a given diminished revenue and adjust production budgets accordingly, or to think about radically different new models that might bring new dollars into the system. Or, in fact, to think about work that is itself radically different in formulation -- a new kind of independent media that that might fit more comfortably into these new forms of distribution.

Obviously, to be continued...

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/24/2008 01:48:00 PM Comments (0)

I've written before about the "uncanny valley," the term used in discussion of technological attempts to simulate the human visage. It refers to the phenomenon where things intended to look human suddenly seem unrealistic as they closely approach a realistic representation of the human.

There was talk this month at SIGGRAPH about Emily, a completely animated character that promises, in the words of creator David Barton, "new levels of believability in computer animation."

From the linked piece in the Daily Mail:

To create the footage the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies made a a computer generated replica of Emily.

The actress sat inside a sphere of LED lights while she was photographed making 35 different poses.

The light patterns allowed the shine of her skin to be captured independently from her main skin tone, with hundreds of measurements taken for each millimetre.

'The CG models provide unprecedented detail of natural facial expressions - down to skin pores and fine wrinkles,' a spokesman said.

This technique has managed to avoid 'uncanny valley' - in which an animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.

You decide...

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/24/2008 11:31:00 AM Comments (0)

M. Dot Strange, writer/director, 2007: Since being the only one hiding his face amongst the 25 I posted my animated feature film We Are the Strange on youtube subtitled in 17 languages where combined it has been viewed over 1.1 million times adding to my international audience. I did an animated music video for the NYC band "Mindless Self Indulgence" for the song "Animal" and it was included with the bands new album "IF" I'm currently completing the animatic for my new animated feature film Heart String Marionette. It is scheduled to be completed in January 2010 with production beginning in February 09, and is completely self funded thanks to the DVD sales of We Are the Strange. I've also been lucky enough to be flown to 7 different countries for speaking engagements since I was in the magazine, and they keep inviting me.

My advice to the new 25 faces... Do something to stand out from the crowd... don't just climb the Hollywood ladder and do the things that are "good for your career" as your agents and lawyers might tell you. Do what feels right... If you just want to be another rich director jerkface driving around L.A. in a black BMW banging talking blowup dolls then do that... but if you make films for reasons other than fame and fortune follow your heart... not the people waving the paychecks... Money talks... but it doesn't mean you have to listen. This is a new time... a new age wherein filmmakers have the opportunity to make their films their way... Will you make something completely new and unique or will you just be another brick in the wall to be forgotten and stepped by bolder filmmakers in the future? Thats the question you need to answer.


Kentucker Audley, writer/director, 2007: Kentucker Audley's first feature 'Team Picture' will be released by Benten Films August 26th 2008. He is currently editing his 2nd feature, untitled at the moment. It'll raise the question: how much of this was improvised? Attend a film festival for the answer.


Brett Ingram, writer/director, 2003: I was fortunate enough to be included in the Summer 2003 edition of "Faces" when I was working on my first feature length documentary, MONSTER ROAD, about Seattle animator Bruce Bickford.

Since then...

I completed MONSTER ROAD and...

MONSTER ROAD won Best Documentary at the 2004 Slamdance Film Festival, 2004 Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2004 Independent Film Festival of Boston, and won 13 other awards before airing on Sundance Channel for two years.

Last year, I was awarded a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in support of my second feature documentary that I'm just finishing up now. The film is entitled ROCATERRANIA and it's the story of 76-year-old scientific illustrator Renaldo Kuhler, who invented an imaginary country (you guessed it, "Rocaterrania") when he was a teenager and has secretly illustrated the nation's history in notebooks for the past six decades. As it turns out, the history of Rocaterrania is the coded story of Renaldo's own life as a troubled outsider.

I'm just beginning to submit ROCATERRANIA to festivals now, so the premiere date and location is still up in the air. Here's a link to my website with the trailer for ROCATERRANIA:

Brett Ingram
Rocaterrania clips.

This year, I also released Bruce Bickford's animated film, PROMETHEUS' GARDEN on DVD after the film lay dormant for 20 years on a shelf in Bickford's basement:

Prometheus' Garden.

On a personal note, I got married in 2004 to Dorothy Hans and we honeymooned in Annecy, France, where MONSTER ROAD was playing at the Annecy International Festival of Animation. Last year, we had our first child, a daughter, Nuala Siobhan.

That's about it.

Hope all's well in your world. I'll keep you posted on ROCATERRANIA.

Thanks for championing true independent filmmaking. Viva Filmmaker Magazine!


Brian Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky, writer/directors, 2007: We have two projects that we are currently working on.

"Francine" is a narrative feature about an aging inmate on parole who moves to a dreary lakeside town and takes a series of jobs working with animals where she is forced to reconsider the meaning of captivity. The project is currently in development and was recently selected for Cinemart at Rotterdam.

"The Patron Saints", currently in production, is a disquieting documentary that centers around a beautician who works from the basement of a nursing home. The beautician, herself approaching old-age, narrates this episodic portrait about the present day realities of her customers, many of whom face great physical and emotional challenges, as they make the most of the time they have left. "The Patron Saints" will participate in this year's upcoming Spotlight on Docs section of Independent Film Week.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/23/2008 08:13:00 PM Comments (0)

In a Guardian piece titled "Exit Strategies," Ronald Bergan writes about a seldom-discussed part of moviegoing: walking out.

His lede:

Though life is too short, it seems to drag on interminably while one is watching a bad film. The moment during a film when I begin to question my very existence is the moment I decide to head for the exit. It is when I abandon any cool critical assessment. All I know is that my senses and intelligence are being abused by the ugly and stupid sights and sounds on the big screen.

Bergan doesn't just write about the solitary act of exiting early -- he also writes about the journalistic and business implications of such an act:

If it were in my nature, I would pity the poor critics who have been sent to review a film and are obliged to sit through it to the bitter end. Or are they? Are there ethics involved? Is it fair to review a film that one has seen only a part of? Perhaps a critic should be honest and reveal that they walked out half way, which is a defiant act of criticism in itself. Yet, you can bet that a colleague will tell you afterwards that "the second half was a vast improvement on the first". I reckon that unless it was directed by someone other than the one who directed the first half, there is no way it could have improved much.

Nevertheless, there is a protocol involved in walking out. If one has to leave a film because of a very busy schedule, which happens most often during festivals, or if there are people in the audience involved with the film in some way whom one has even met and doesn't want to insult, one walks backwards slowly up the aisle looking at the screen all the time, shaking one's head regretfully and looking at one's watch.

With Toronto coming up, Bergan's article struck a chord. I'm more likely to sit through a movie I don't like just to make it to the end but, as Bergan says, sometimes that sit is just not worth it. When one is watching a film in a professional capacity, though, one has to be extremely aware of the symbolism -- if not the practical effect -- of walking out. I sat on a film jury once and was surprised to see one of my jury members sauntering towards the exit about 20 minutes into one of the Competition films. "I just couldn't take it anymore," he told me later. "It clearly wasn't going to get any better." The thing is, it did get better. Even though the film was not very good, it was probably among the best we'd seen so far, I told him. (Fortunately, by festival's end a number of worthier films had been screened so his missing most of that one didn't turn out to be an issue.)

When one knows the filmmakers, it's virtually impossible not to sit through the whole movie. If the film is bad and tons of other people leave, in fact, it's mandated that you make a point of being visible and saying something at the end so the filmmakers know that you, in fact, stayed.

Even if a film isn't something I'll write about for Filmmaker and even if I don't know the filmmakers, the act of leaving can be stressful for me. This might be due to my pre-film gig as a curator of live performance and theater. I'd go see a lot of new work, often in very small venues that were quite difficult to inconspicuously slip out of. I remember going once out of a sense of professional duty to a performance by an artist whose work I never liked. I didn't like this new performance either -- more so when I realized it was three hours long and that the exit was directly behind the stage. But I think the anxiety prompted in me by Bergan's piece probably has more to do with having often been on the other side of the auditorium door. I remember standing with my partner Robin O'Hara at the door of one festival screening room catching it as it closed after each walk-out so it wouldn't make a huge noise and telegraph our rapidly depleting audience. (The film we were producers of wasn't designed to be an crowd-pleaser, so we weren't entirely broken up. But the experience proved one thing: people don't walk out after the first super boring part of a movie, they walk out after the second.) Another time, I was really happy to see the head of one of the studio specialty divisions -- someone I had previously worked with -- in the front row of the first screening of a Sundance Competition Film we had produced. I knew the film wasn't right for that person's company, but I thought it was great the exec had shown up. I was less thankful when that same exec then very visibly walked past a line of colleagues to exit the movie after about a half an hour. In the hothouse atmosphere of a festival, one visibly departing checkbook holder or tastemaker quickly multiplies. So, the next time you're feeling fidgety at a festival, think carefully before slinking out that door. One day you'll be on the other side, and the ego you hear breaking will be your own.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/23/2008 05:56:00 PM Comments (2)

With the Slamdance Film Festival turning 15 in 2009, the fest has announced they will be having a series of special events to celebrate. The first will be next month as they screen Steven Soderbergh and Christopher Nolan's Slamdance-debuted films, Schizopolis and Following.

From the release:
FOLLOWING, a captivating neo-noir drama centering on a writer who follows people to ignite his creativity, originally bowed at Slamdance in 1999. Screening in Los Angeles at LACMA's Bing Theater (5905 Wilshire) on Friday, September 5 at 8:00pm, $20 tickets through slamdance.com ONLY; no tickets will be available for purchase at the door. Q&A with Mr. Nolan, moderated by Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, and hosted reception for ticket holders to follow screening.

SCHIZOPOLIS, a comedic satire with confused identity, cerebral wordplay and corporate intrigue, showed at Slamdance in 1997. Playing in New York City at the IFC Center (323 Sixth Avenue) on Wednesday, September 16 at 8:00pm, SCHIZOPOLIS tickets will be $20 and available through ifccenter.com. Q&A with Mr. Soderbergh, moderated by author Anthony Kaufman, and hosted reception for ticket holders at The Post Factory to follow screening.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 8/22/2008 02:20:00 PM Comments (0)

Announced yesterday, filmmakers Hunter Weeks and Josh Caldwell just released their offbeat doc 10 Yards: Fantasy Football on Ourstage.com and SnagFilms.com. A conventional nationwide DVD release will begin on Sept. 30.

According to a release about the online world premiere, Ourstage will offer a free iTunes download of the film for two weeks (as well as offer free music downloads from the soundtrack that features independent artists Luke Brindley, John Haydon, Analog Jetpack, Greenland, Family Jewlers and Santa Clara) while SnagFilms will stream it for free and allow for viral sharing via its "virtual movie theater" widgets.

Weeks and Caldwell's DIY approach on their previous film 10 MPH was highlighted in our Winter 2008 issue ("Navigating The Digital Divide").

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 8/22/2008 12:57:00 PM Comments (0)

Nick Dawson's Web Exclusive Director's Interview this week is Azazel Jacobs, whose third feature, Momma's Man, opens tomorrow. Of the movie, which details a few days in which a young, recent father, Mikey, travels home to his parents (played by Ken and Flo Jacobs, the director's real-life parents) and is not able to leave, having become entangled in the crosscurrents of nostalgia for his childhood, Dawson wrote:

...the film is particularly resonant and moving, as well as being funny and tender, and Ken and Flo Jacobs both give surprising, strong performances, despite never having acted before. But it is ultimately Jacobs' inspired writing and deft direction that make this film so remarkable, his keen eye compellingly capturing the deteriorating situation created by Mikey's inertia.

You can head over there and read Nick's conversation with Aza, but I just want to personally recommend that you go out and see this lovely movie this weekend. Momma's Man is funny, affectionate and also highly unique: it limns an emotional state of mind I've never seen captured on film before. Summoning up an odd but quite believable fear-of-adulthood, the film captures a kind of "in between" state that we can all relate to and perhaps even fantasize about. The performances are all wonderful, and Jacobs' casting of his own parents, who include famed experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, gives the film an extra layer of poetry, specificity and subtext. Set not in some suburban sprawl but in a huge yet still impossibly cluttered downtown loft, Momma's Man becomes not just a particularly idiosyncratic depiction of the 21st century man-boy but also a beautiful commentary on the passing of artistic impulse from generation to generation.

The film opens in New York at the Angelika Film Center tomorrow. Here's the trailer.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/21/2008 07:34:00 PM Comments (0)

In Summer, 2005, the filmmaker Barbara Schock wrote a spirited piece for Filmmaker about studying film with critic and artist Manny Farber, who died on Tuesday. Mirroring Farber's rapid-fire thinking, Schock makes you feel like you're in his classroom as she writes about the man, his syllabus, and his teaching style.

We've posted it in our Web Exclusives.

Here's the intro:

The phenomenal painter, teacher and film critic Manny Farber called his film class “A Hard Look at the Movies.” It was the first upper-division college class I took. I’d transferred from a small college in the Midwest to the University of California at San Diego, and I’d never seen a foreign film, unless you count the Sergio Leone westerns. We watched the following films in a 10-week period, and it turned the way I looked at movies upside down: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Max Ophuls’s The Earrings of Madame de…, Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: the Wrath of God, Joseph Lewis’s Gun Crazy, Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout, Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy, Werner Schroeter’s The Death of Maria Malibran, Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou and Les Carabiniers, John Boorman’s Point Blank, Eric Rohmer’s La Collectionneuse, Joseph Losey’s Accident, Robert Aldrich’s The Grissom Gang, Luis Buñuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid, Frank Borzage’s Man’s Castle, Nagisa Oshima’s Diary of a Shinjuku Burglar, Jean Cocteau and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Les Enfants terribles and several Buster Keaton films.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/19/2008 02:31:00 PM Comments (0)

A year ago Gary Hustwit came out with Helvetica, showing how the typeface became the ubiquitous graphic signifier for... just about everything in the post-'60s era. Well, everything except one thing. As this web video demonstrates, when it comes to movie marketing, a font called Trajan rules. Watch this great clip for a glimpse at how unimaginative our movie marketing has become. (Hat tip: Ted Hope.)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/19/2008 02:08:00 PM Comments (0)

Far away from the world of indie film one of the most dramatic show business stories is unfolding. As Nikki Finke and Variety are both reporting, a high-stakes showdown is occurring in court as Fox is suing Warner Brothers over the release of 300 director Zach Snyder's upcoming The Watchmen.

From Dave McNary and Tatiana Siegel's piece:

A judge has denied a Warner Bros. motion to dismiss 20th Century Fox’s lawsuit over Warners’ right to make a film based on the graphic novel Watchmen.

Ruling is potentially a huge victory for Fox, which could wind up as a profit participant in the film, and could cost Warners millions considering the film’s box office prospects. However, Fox’s legal team says it isn’t looking for monetary compensation and instead wants to prevent the big-budget film from being released altogether.

Ironically, directly adjacent to Variety's story is this blurb promo'ing the Watchmen discussion on the Variety discussion boards:

Watchmen doesn't come out until March, but interest in this comic adaptation is already showing signs of being the kind of crossover phenomenon that hasn't been seen in a comics property in a long time.

For those who want to dive into the nitty gritty of this case, Nikki Finke has posted a link to a PDF download. For those who want a quick summary, I recommend reading the first of her posts linked here, which includes a detailed timeline, and then a long comment in her discussion section by a poster going by the name of "Clearing Some Stuff Up." His post is both a great primer on how optioned material passes hands in Hollywood as well as a reasonable analysis of what's going on in this specific case. He concludes with these thoughts:

I do find it odd, though, when studios go full speed at each other. Although they are competitors, there is a need to play nice if you want others to play nice with you. Each studio will need to confirm quotes from the others; they will need to protect and release titles; and they all do business with each other on co-productions to spread risks. An aggressive position such as this is fairly odd.

Here's the trailer:



And here's David Poland's take on the situation over at The Hot Blog. His piece draws on research he did for an old, unpublished piece on something similar that went down with the production of The Flintstones. Poland concludes by saying that this story won't be around for long, predicting that a Cheney-like solution will be found quickly:

The very least that Fox can expect to get out of this is their development costs, probably doubled and interest added. But Fox is playing for keeps. They will not bury a $300 million investment by a fellow studio. The blood spilt would be too red and slippery. But don’t expect them to go away for anything less than $25 million. And they will take an amount like that now… because they don’t want to gamble either. 100% of WB’s profit could be $0.

And when it comes to alternative remedies, gross points make more sense than anything else. It would be too harsh a remedy to force Paramount out and to give Fox, say, international distribution. To eat a larger percentage of the gross would be to really encroach on the investment well before any chance of recouping.

It will be interesting. And my guess? Completely silent when it happens. Sealed by agreement, settled out of court. Rumored. Lied about. And done. Soon.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/19/2008 01:35:00 PM Comments (0)