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[digg=http://digg.com/movies/Film_Festivals_just_ain_t_working_Find_out_why]I know bang on about this all the time - but just watch the video…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTehTbT7aho]

And click some links…

From Here to Awesome - A new way forward.

Submit a Film - And join the revolution.

Arin Crumley - Democratizing Indie Film Distribution.

YouTube - Watch more of the same.

K

[digg=http://www.digg.com/movies/Hats_off_to_them_Coens]Afternoon Coen fans! I’m going to keep this brief because I’m not really in favour of the hype the Oscars gets and I don’t really want to draw any more attention to them than is really necessary. However, I felt it was of great importance to tip the metaphorical finger-lickin’ hat to the astounding Coen brothers. No Country For Old Men, my favourite film of the year to date, garnered four Oscars at last night’s ceremony and quite frankly nobody deserved it more.

The Coen brothers have been inspirational for a whole generation of filmmakers and while Fargo was also rightly recognised by the Academy, No Country for Old Men is a masterpiece and a truly brilliant return to form. So, Ethan and Joel, if you’re reading this, which you’re not, but if you are… congratulations on four every well deserved Oscars.

K

[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/Juno_makes_indie_mainstream]It is an undeniable fact Juno has been a smash hit indie success story. Indie is the new mainstream, or so we’re told by the mainstream. Indie is cool. Juno is cool. TV and Radio presenters are cool because they talk about Juno and play the Juno soundtrack on their cool shows. Diablo Cody is cool because she wrote Juno and Ellen page is the next big thing because she is Juno. Third rate film critics are cool because they dislike the mainstream and express the incontrovertible coolness of Juno. My Mum and Dad are cool because they have “heard of” (read a drab newspaper article about) Juno.

However, it isn’t with my Mum and Dad that I take umbrage. Their foe-indie-enthusiasm is passable. It is with the third rate film critics that jump on the indie bandwagon when they discover it is cool to do so, that give me “the rage”. Now, don’t get me wrong. This is not a case of a indie film geek hating on an indie success story, far from it. I loved Juno I thought the flick was light hearted and refreshing. I was impressed with both Ellen Page and Michael Cera and I thought that stylistically the film was strong. Overall, I was most impressed by the writing and dialogue, Diablo Cody (cool name btw.) is obviously a talent. However, back to them critics.

James King is a classic example. For those of you who don’t know he’s the vacuous and generally shockingly poor BBC Radio 1 “Film Critic”. While I don’t always despise everything that comes out of the man’s mouth - he does talk about the right flicks but he goes into no real depth or detail - he’s normally shallow and generally terrible at his job 90% of the time. Again, this is not an I hate successful critics session, so please no hate mail saying I’m a frustrated film critic crying out for attention, because I’m not. I say good on the man for getting where he is with the diabolical analytical skills he possesses. However, he has, as would be expected, jumped fully and wholeheartedly on the indie cool Juno bandwagon by playing clips from the trailer and berating the mainstream films currently in the cinema. These are the guys normally plugging the latest Rocky bullshit sequel or some other shite. It genuinely makes me wanna vomit that these third rate critics get to trade off the success of a creative talent. I know it’s all good publicity for the flick but still… critics are parasites.

Juno btw, is really cool… go see it! Trends, don’t you just love ‘em!

That’s enough from me…

K

[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!

[digg=http://www.digg.com/movies/Sundance_Distribution_Issues_George_A_Romero]With reference to my last post about the lack of distribution deals going around at Sundance, this seems to be a problem that even veteran filmmakers are noticing. George A. Romero, horror legend and creator of the infamous Dawn of the Dead (1978) is attending the festival for the first time to screen his latest film Diary of the Dead. Interviewed on video, Romero speaks to Spout.com about his work and the festival. Right at the end of his interview he touches on the issues I’ve been talking about. While greater accessibility to cheaper equipment is meaning lots more great independent films are being made, there still seems to be no solid distribution model for this type of work.

Check out their video interview at MySpace.

[digg=http://www.digg.com/movies/Sundance_Deals_and_Distribution]Spout.com blogger, Karina Longworth, who’s currently at Sundance 2008 has written an interesting piece about the lack of deals being made so far at this year’s festival. Karina, speculates about a number of reasons for the relatively low number of distribution deals. Firstly, she references the mainstream press who are apparently suggesting that the buyers haven’t found that magic they have in previous years. Which is of course suitably vague and journalist speak for “we haven’t got a damn clue”.

Next, she discusses a comment by Sony’s Tom Bernard where he states that, we, the bloggers are to blame for taking the mystique out of the film buying and distribution process. According to Bernard the immediacy of blogging means that the press coverage of a film is happening too quickly and therefore they lose control of the media machine.

Finally, Karina suggests that possible the solution could be as simple as the fiftieth anniversary of Sundance has a pretty weak offering of dramatic feature-length flicks. Whether this is the case, is not for me to judge, I haven’t seen any of the films in question. Maybe next year, with a shiny Finger Lickin’ press pass around my neck. But, what these sluggish sales do make me wonder about is the value of a festival like Sundance to the filmmaker. Sure, it gets you some first rate press and sure it gets a very select audience into a cinema for 120minutes to watch your film. But where’s the real benefit? Where’s that golden ticket, the distribution deal that everyone is looking for? Has the time come where festivals like Sundance aren’t delivering the goods? It’s all well and good being able to put “Official Selection Sundance Film Festival” at the opening of your trailer but if only those three hundred ticket holders attending the festival get to see the film… where’s the real benefit to you, the filmmaker?

Distribution is key. The more I learn about alternative, exciting and innovative methods of getting your film seen and turning those views into earnings the more I believe that while there’s a place for the festival route, you need to think bigger.

Read Karina’s blog post here.

[digg=http://digg.com/movies/Comic_Book_Style_Guide_to_Copyright_Law_for_IndepeFilmmaking]This is a great resource for all DIY and Independant filmmakers out there. Copyright law is an absolute minefield of mind numbing dos and don’ts and you never quite know if it’s legit to use something or not. Whether it’s displaying a Coke can in the foreground of your shot or understanding music licensing this graphic novel guide to indie filmmaking and copyright law is indispensables.

[digg=http://www.digg.com/movies/Moonshine_3]First time director Roger Ingraham’s film Moonshine debuted at Sundance 2006 and has garnered much critical acclaim. Ingraham shot his first feature-length film for under $10,000 when he was only twenty years old. Set in small-town America Moonshine is a vampire film that focuses upon a young guy, Peter, who takes a job working in a convenience store in order to care for his dying parents. As Peter works this soul-destroying job a figure of darkness waits in the shadows to take his life. Interestingly Moonshine has yet to attract a distribution deal, which is a real shock to me given the quality of what I’ve seen so far. Yet another filmmaker finding that the festival route isn’t working?

According to online murmurings, like Four Eyed Monsters, Moonshine is due to be release in its entirety on YouTube. Ingraham’s film has also been submitted to From Here To Awesome and is currently awaiting your support on their website.

Check out the trailer below and keep your eyes peeled for Ingraham in the future because he appears to be a real talent.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmYXL-2FNhg]

[digg=http://www.digg.com/movies/Say_hello_to_From_Here_To_Awesome]In recent years, independent filmmakers of all shapes and sizes have been exploiting Web 2.0 technologies to promote their individual projects. From basic trailers on a MySpace or YouTube page to the 360-degree empire that Arin Crumley and Susan Buice, of Four Eyed Monsters fame, have built for themselves; these filmmakers have harnessed the power of some extremely powerful viral technologies for their own ends.

However, online promotion and festival buzz is all well and good but what actually matters is how your turn your film, that you no doubt ploughed a good deal of hard earned or borrowed cash into, from a flick with some online buzz to a economically viable distribution deal. From Here to Awesome is a collaborative film festival founded by indie filmmaking and distribution gurus Arin Crumley, Lance Weiler and M dot Strange. The festival is designed to allow filmmakers to submit their film for free and involve the online audience, through social networking tools, enabling them to programme the festival themselves. Ultimately the project hopes to experiment with new distribution methods and ways of reading global audiences using online, cinema, on-demand and mobile technologies.

This is a really exciting development and a fantastic way for filmmakers to make a foray into alternative distribution. Hopefully in the near future Finger Lickin’ will be able to get a interview with Arin Crumley about his hopes for the project. Until then, please go and check out the site, submit your films and take advantage of this fantastic opportunity.