DIY Filmmaking

[digg=http://digg.com/movies/It_isn_t_easy_being_green_3]Afternoon finger lickers! The following is, without a shadow of a doubt, gross conjecture offered without any solid research or factual foundation, but when did that ever stop me…

I always felt kinda smug about the whole environmental issue. Growing up I always figured that Britain was a far greener nation than the United States. What with the media who-ha over Kyoto and everything. So in my dealings with Americans, my wife being a notable example, I was always suitably pompous in the “it isn’t easy being green” debate. Yes, that’s right, our local town council collects glass, paper, plastic, garden and food waste separately and no, we’re not all driving huge petrol guzzling vehicles that could be used to invade Iraq. But, as I’ve grown older and more socially aware the realisation that I don’t really do anything personally to reduce my environmental impact hit home and I began to think more about green issues in relation to filmmaking. From the miles of celluloid consumed every year to the electricity used in powering countless square feet of studio and post production space, the impact must be colossal.

Recently, after a couple of weeks of reading Hank Green’s ecogeek.org blog, I began to think about the environmental impact of not just Hollywood, who were evil to start with in my book, but also indie filmmakers. Are indie filmmakers intrinsically greener than Hollywood? Is it not just a matter of economic circumstance that forces us to consume less? I believe that we should be continually mindful of environmental issues in our filmmaking rather than resting on our laurels because we’re not as bad as the very bad man on the west coast of north America! Being virtuous only in comparison to the worse offender is nothing to be proud of in my opinion. I instantly thought of the efforts of Robert Redford and the Sundance Institute to encourage us all to be greener. However, I do not believe that having Lexus sponsor the “Lexus Hybrid Living Lounge” at this years festival is the way forward in the fight to reduce global warming… Lexus for god sake! It is however the way forward in advertising really huge unnecessary vehicles.

It seems to me, that if we want to encourage true green credentials for Indies then what is really important here is the epistemological and ideological imperatives behind the two groups. These are of course hugely diverse in the indie world. While Hollywood is contained both physically and demographically Indie filmmakers are undoubtably heterogeneous in nature. This is not just middle-class white america we’re dealing with. This is a gigantic spectrum of artists working all over the globe. However, in comparison to “the industry” the ideology marking the foundations of indie film is still in its relative infancy. So, I believe that while epistemologically Indie filmmakers are naturally disparate it is at the heart of their shared ideology that we need to inject environmental sound underpinnings.

This realisation in turn got me to thinking about the indie dream. Digital self-production and digital self-distribution. We have an extremely viable and successful model for self-production using digital platforms, however, what the environmental impact of this model is, I have no idea. I would hazard an uneducated guess that given the economically frugal nature of our productions means our footprint must be massively smaller than the beached whale that is Hollywood. However, as I said earlier this ‘only in comparison to’ thinking is flawed. What we need to do is inject green values into the progress of the indie take-over. With the likes of From Here to Awesome making the dream of self-distribution an ever growing reality the indies will undoubtably garner far more control over the market. Should this model grow as I know Lance, Arin and M dot Strange are keen for it to do I believe that the market can be truly flattened creating an almost seamless connection between filmmaker and viewer. It is with this “indie take-over” that could come the collapse of Hollywood and the democratization of the art form. With indie filling the Hollywood void it should therefore have progressively green values and it this I want to encourage.

I believe it is more important to encourage the indies, who I am certain will ultimately replace or grow to be a serious threat to Hollywood to undertake green practices than to attempt to retroactively impose these values on an industry that evidently doesn’t care. If we can introduce these imperatives at this relatively early stage we have a fighting chance of educating the world through one the most powerful entertainment mediums on the planet and reducing the impact of an industry that is no doubt a huge contributor to global warming. What are these imperatives and practices I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. Anyone with more knowledge of these issues please get in contact and maybe I can get Hank Green to write a guest Finger Lickin’ blog to highlight some of the most important issues.

I need to go away and get facts and figures to back up my assertions so for now… watch this space….

K

[digg=http://www.digg.com/movies/Zombie_2_0]Afternoon finger lickin’ fans. So I mentioned a while ago that horror legend George A. Romero was at Sundance discussing the democratization of filmmaking in a spout.com interview. However, I didn’t really get into the reason why he was at the festival. His latest installment in the “Dead” saga premiered at Sundance and, as any good film director should be, he was whoring the hell outta it. The flick is basically a Blair Witch shakey handy cam take on his other apocalyptic tales. I am a big horror fan but not especially into the living dead stuff I’m more of a slasher man, however this really took my fancy.

The trailer is ridiculous and there’s obviously some jolly good hammy acting going on, but of all the horror remake dirge out there it actually caught my attention. From what I’ve read Romero has always worked in a very independent fashion and his latest film is no different, he’s using web 2.0 marketing techniques with exclusive MySpace goodies as well as tapping into the wannabe-filmmaker You Tube revolution to inspire his craft. I for one wanna give it a chance!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MdqNr0gN4Y]

[digg=http://digg.com/movies/Calling_all_Filmmakers]Evening all. So I’ve been banging on a lot about From Here to Awesome and the wonderful things they’re doing to encourage self distribution and discover new talent. So… Arin and his cronies have started releasing vids and here’s one of their first. Have you made a film and keep thinking what next? Looking for a festival that might actually see your work getting distribution? Check out this vid. Subscribe to their channel. Join the revolution!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHUwTkbAvn4]

[digg=http://www.digg.com/movies/Give_away_your_film_for_greater_exposure]There is something sick in the film industry. We all know this. From an average DVD-buying consumer to the indie filmmaking community to the academics in their ivory towers to the disgruntled industry insiders, we all know that the rot set in a long time ago. Whether you’re a film school grad trying to get a break or a filmmaker trying to get funding or a consumer standing in the cinema with only four choices on the menu – film is hard, way too hard. Now, I’m not here to get into a discussion about the film industry creating an impenetrable bubble for those of us who are trying to get in, what I am here to talk about is giving your film away for free.

Much of this blog is fueled by the likes of Lance Weiler and Arin Crumley who are actually doing this kinda stuff in practice. My inspiration for writing this blog was the incredibly brief treatment of the “give your art away” discussion in this months Filmmaker Magazine. Arin and Susan gave another interview about their experiences in the world of self-distribution a while ago and during the course of that interview he said something way more interesting than anything Filmmaker published. He said, and I’m paraphrasing here folks, brace yourselves, that it would have been more beneficial for them to have had their movie already up on YouTube while they were doing the festival tour. It is this issue that I believe is so much more important than anything else surrounding the self distribution debate.

We’re are being constantly bombarded by people telling us not to blow our creative and commercial load too soon, excuse the analogy, but we are. For example, in a meeting earlier this month about a web tv project I have ties with, a University lecturer made a point that completely threw me. She said that you need to hold off as long as possible, launch all your content at once and hit the students with a high impact marketing campaign to ensure that they watch. What? Now, while everything else she said was brilliant and useful and insightful this just made no sense to me. Where’s the longtail? Where’s the viral tasty morsels that all those media snacking YouTube junkies wanna stuff down their faces?!?! This is old world thinking people surely it would be better to launch the site with basic content and release regular episodes to encourage stickiness? What I’m trying to say is that giving it all away in one big dollop of flash video is surely not the way forward. Arin and Susan have the right idea, give it away for free, get a sticky following, so to speak, and release the goods themselves when you’re most high-profile to your given audience. So in the case of indie film you need the viral video episodes and the film online. You’re not losing anything by giving it away, you’re not diminishing your selling power with distributors you’re gaining more ammunition to prove that this film has an audience and if you snap it up now there’s a theatrical life for this film just as much as there’s an online life.

The industry and us as filmmakers need to stop thinking of our films as precious and start whoring. How can we get people to view this flick? How can we create a revenue stream from that viewing method? How can we get our video blogs onto every video sharing site on the Internet? And how can we get the film itself onto as may of those sites too!?! Now, I’m not saying there aren’t obstacles to this - upload limits in terms of size and film length as well as average viewer attention span etc. but seriously if you play this right folks you can get that regular viewing audience that are interested enough to watch the whole film online and you can prove to the web 2.0 industries that it is viable for them to sponsor your flick and in turn the film industry must surely pay notice.

I’ve said enough… but check out the following links for further information and some inspiration.

From Here to Awesome - A alternative discovery distribution film festival.
Arincrumley.com - Arin’s personal site, loads of blogage and self-distribution info.
Tube Mogul - Distribute your video to a plethora of online sites.

K

[digg=http://www.digg.com/movies/Scoring_Brick]When it came for writer/director Rian Johnson to score his début film Brick he turned to musician cousin Nathan Johnson of The Cinematic Underground. Nathan’s background was not in scoring soundtracks, his primary experience was playing instruments in bands and writing lyrics. However, the relationship between Rian and Nathan allowed them to work together to build an incredibly striking score for what I believe to be one of the best neo-noir films ever made. Brick’s score is haunting and by using specific instruments for each character Nathan allowed for interaction between elements of the score, just as the characters are interacting on screen. It’s quite a brilliant effect.

Below is a video that I found on the Brick forum quite a long time ago now but I’m only just getting round to posting it. I believe this video gives a wonderful insight into the workings of not just the score but also the amazing process behind its creation. Sadly Wordpress will not allow me to embed Blip.TV videos and YouTube will not allow me to upload anything more than 10mins so I’m afraid all you’ve got is a link… so get clickin’! Oh, and don’t forget to check out Nathan’s band, The Cinematic Underground because their stuff is brilliant!