Scott Pilgrim teaser-poster rocks’n'rolls
I’m always waiting for the new stuff from Edgar Wright, who by the way can be followed on twitter. Hopefully it’ll also be something different for Michael Cera, whom I somewhat like, but the akwardly-getting-the-girl business is really doing everybody’s head in by now. Though I have to say, judging form the behind this scenes video, he even eats soup awkwardly…
No trailer a of yet – that I could find.
Open models for digital projects (#oggcamp10 talk)
Less than a talk, I would like to host a sort of a workshop that would be interesting for both hard-core geeks and more artistically inclined digital creators as well as every one who enjoys having a beer early in the day and not being judged. For the talk to have broader appeal I need you to tell me, what sort of knowledge you’d like to exchange more. So here is the rough idea, which hopefully you could help me shape into something more precise.
open production & distribution of content:
what it means (and it doesn’t necessarily mean open source!), what are the possibilities and limitations? differences in film, applications and music. How to open up the production process?
what creators could learn from the open-source community and vice versus:
sharing, community building, approach to audience (user), fiscal responsibility etc – characteristics that make a project successful. Also general internet saavy, licensing issues, online platforms…
how to sustain digital project? various models
can it be done? how? There are few known approaches here, I’d like to talk about. This is, however, open for discussion, perhaps we can generate some ideas together.
let’s talk about our projects:
whomever would like to could say few words about the projects (be it film, music, applications or something else) they are developing and if we figure there is some knowledge to be shared between the creators or potential audience-members we can take it to the bar later.
I’ll illustrate this with few examples from film, since this is my are of… erm.. dare I say it ‘expertise’. I’m sure Dan will have the music bit pretty well covered.
Please let me know what you think, what I should include or not to make the whole thing interesting and informative. You can drop me a line at ana(at)abinarylife(dot)com or find me on identi.ca as binarylife, on twitter as binarylife and there’s always comments form below. Thanks!
People to watch: Lena Dunham
I was too cynical to have any sort of idols when I was a teenager (heck, I was too cynical to like boys… these were the days). I consider my lasting relationship with the works of Witold Gombrowicz closest to that sort of thing, but I’m often fairly critical of them plus I don’t have his photo hanging on the wall, so I don’t think it counts.
Any way, I’m kind of trying to imply here that I gained an idol of sorts and that would be Lena. There is generally few independent filmmakers that I’m immensely impressed with. It’s not that teenage thing, sadly. It’s a feeling akin to watching somebody play the same instrument you play – if they do it well they make it look easy, but you tried and you know how much fecking work went into getting this sound. So based on that sophisticated comparison I will do my John Peel thing and introduce you to my new found idols, starting with Lena, as her film premiers tomorrow at SXSW.
It’s called Tiny Furniture and I posted the trailer some time ago. It’s her second feature, first one being Creative Nonfiction, a film about a college student who eventually writes a script for a film based on her recent experiences. There you go, if you followed this blog you can see where I’m going with this. Self-shot film about creative utilization of life for making a film…
Back then Lena made the Filmmaker Magazine’s list of 25 new talents of indie film to watch. Now, Tiny Furniture is a whole new quality, by the looks of the trailer. From what I figure it was done on canon 7D, too. It really looks pretty and don’t tell me this is not as important as the story. This is film, we’re talking about. You can watch the progress of Lena’s works over at her vimeo page. TF is shot by Jody Lee Lipes, who also did Afterschool (much cannes-hyped flick from 2009 if I’m not mistaken)
TF’s main character, Aura, played by the director, comes home from College to find herself suffering from a familiar case of post-degree blues (god, I don’t know a single person who didn’t get hit by that). If you’re in your 20s or 30s you can probably indentify with it or memory of it. If you’re above 40 you might want to watch it to understand your kid’s confusion and despair. You’ll figure out, because “Aura would like you to know that she is having a very, very hard time.”
Descendants
[via the daily what - not to be mistaken with the daily wtf]
voices: Whoopie Goldberg and Christy Scott Cashman
3D Core Team:
Heiko van der Scherm . . . Writer, Director, Design, Modeling
Bernhard Haux . . . . . . . . .Character TD Flower main actors
Goro Fujita . . . . . . . . . . . Supervising Animator
Felix Graf . . . . . . . . . . . . Animator
Holger Schönberger . . . . .Pipeline, Shading, Lighting, Compositing
Time Frame:
Production time (First script to final short) . . . 3 Years
Work time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Full time, 6 days a week
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.75 – 1.5 Years per core person
how not to be a jerk about films
I personally don’t buy into the teory that it’s particularily because they recruit mostly from failed, frustrated filmmakers. It takes work to be acclaimed, so most of these folks probably didn’t even have the time to really try and fail. it takes no work what so ever to self-proclaim, which indicates people who are in for an easy ride. They probably didn’t have the ambition to try in the first place.
Why, then? Because it’s so easy to slip into.
I base that theory on rigorous self-observation. Two items in my film RSS feed made me slightly chuckle today. And I was going to write about them in the ‘look at what these idiots are doing’ manner on this blog to share my instant disgus. Fortunately, just in time, i kicked myself on the arse with a good ‘ole ‘who the fuck do you think you are, lady’.
Evidence item no. 1: The Suicide Girls: Guide to living trailer.
Why it made me chuckle? Because somewhere in the trailer they make the proclamation that suicide girls present an alternative for every chick tired of not fitting into society’s standards of female beauty. This is ridiculous, they are all skinny, and yes they don’t wear a tone of make up, but they have a tone of tattoos and breasts to die for. if you don’t fit into norms, you won’t fit in with them, because they are pretty rigugorous with their own standards.I don’t like Suicide Girls phenomenon also because of the idiotic use of the word suicide (hence no photos of naked tits here, would be hypocritical to bust my readership this way) . BUT – this has nothing to do with the film. I haven’t seen the film. I saw the trailer, which yes, is rather bad, but is this something worth writing about?
Evidence item no. 2: Book of Genesis in 3D, the new enterprise of Paramount entitled In The Beginning.
Instant thought – Jesus, what the hell? (pun not intended) Of course, after the success of Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, every one will be looking left and right, to create a miraculous 3D world and gross over 100 mln on the opening weekend. But the Bible? Seriously? It all has to be garden-themed now? Can’t you come up with anything more creative..? I’m right to feel tiny bit jaded, I think. But, again, is this something worth writing about?
I don’t read community-based film review websites, because most of all I’m jaded with the ‘Kevin Smith is fat and his wife has big ears’ reviews. And I’ll be damned if I contribute to the amount of rubbish floating around internet – disputable, I know, but at least this type of rubbish. There are 3 film blogs I trust and I rarely read even their reviews, because they scarcely review documentaries – and docs are what i watch most.
How to avoid falling into this trap? answer these questions:
1. have you seen the film?
2. do you have any criticism/praise for the film? (and not the subject matter, the filmmaker’s private life or other works etc)
3. is it really worth writing about?
If the answer to any of the above is ‘no’ – restrain yourself. Don’t be a jerk.
OK. I finished writing and then I saw this. It’s about film critics in the slightly different register to what I write about. At least I hope the question number one doesn’t even apply. If you read, read some of the comments too.
The Hot Blog is, by the way, in my top 3 film blogs.
woman’s look at the Oscars
Yes, I do know I’m late to the party, but frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. There are blogs and websites that did it much better and live. If you’re after film news, you’re at the wrong address; this is film whining and over-indulgence underpinned by film-naive-idealism.
Any way. I follow a lot of film-related folk on twitter (aside from occasional jokes from my friends and @shitmydadsays, this is the appeal of twitter for me). No wonder then, that on Sunday night my feed was pretty much taken over by the Oscars. A bit more surprising that it was 90% about the outfits on the red carpet, but then I went to sleep before the actual circus started.
For the record, that I’m not the token indie film snob, who poopoos the Oscars. I don’t poopoo the outfits craze either. I like the idea of bunch of film folk parading in recognizable brands (somehow the Oscars journalists always know what’s Dior and what’s de la Renta??). They are known to borrow the tuxes and the dresses so effectively they are sponsored – like sports people are sponsored to show up in CocaCola or Nike. Way to go.
Now, as you might already know, none of the above, aside from The Hurt Locker, had luck with the awards (full list here). But that’s ok, because most of them still have a good chance to win the golden dude, especially Maggie Gyllenhaal (her and Eva Green, two women which would very likely turn me lesbian within 15 seconds). Not the case with Burma VJs, one of a kind event, but I’m used to the fact that the Academy does not understand what documentary even means. They gave this award to Michael Moore, I rest my case.
As the internets already stated, it’s “pretty badass” to be the first women to win the Oscar for directorial achievement. I imagine this sounds like an outdated sentiment, but had this been the case, Kathryn Bigelow would not be the first woman to win this prize as well as one of the very few women directors in general.
a last.fm for trailers?
Tiny Furniture premiers at this year’s SXSW narrative competition. The film is written, directed and stars Lena Dunham, who has been one of my favorites since I came across her project Creative Nonfiction. Go Lena!
But how to find them? I have a dream…
Few days back I read this rather interesting post on how to make a screening of your indie flick a festivity of sorts, in order to bring more folks in to see it (by Mike Vogel, maker of The waiting list, guest posting at Truly Free Film). Great ideas and inexpensive. As it happens I like telling people that they have great ideas (and if you don’t you’re a mean, cold fish), so I joined the discussion in the comments. Well, not so much the discussion as general congratulatory thread (nothing wrong with that). And we shortly discussed the following idea.
On a long list of cheap film-promotion activities (more on that soon), I have one which includes cross-promotion with another film via, among other things, trailers. The idea is thus: you pick a sort of sister-film for your film, based on ideas, style, the filmmaker, whatever indicates that people interested in your film could be interested in the other one and vice versus. It’s a basic fundament of all amazons and ebays: “people who bought this book were also interested in…”
Big studios do it too: they chose carefully the films, before which their trailers appear.
The grandest implementation of this idea in terms of art is perhaps last.fm – built, at least originally, to make it easy to find new music based on the music you already listened to and liked, based on what your friends like and a crowd-sourced system of recommendations.
And that’s the dream: last.fm for indie film trailers. It will perhaps remain a dream, although a system of this sort is readily available (it’s called libre.fm, and it’s an open source version of last.fm as well as the answer to the later service going slightly too… proprietary). The costs of hosting of that many film clips would, however, be insane. Youtube is not coming even, so what chances do we have. Actually, it’s pretty much only Apple, who can afford to host consistent catalogue of trailers and we all know where their heart lays when it’s comes to indie vs studio.
So for now I’m just throwing it out here as something to think about.
the costs of independent film
Let me tell you. Quentin Tarantino isn’t independent cinema. Or at the very least it cannot be put in the same bag as the actually independent filmmakers who, rise, collect, borrow budgets for their films. On such productions there is no studio involvement (hence no money up front for the budget). ANd therefore executive who sticks his beak in, that’s how they are independent (from…). Arguably Tarantion is a brand and I would guess has the most creative freedom possible. Yet it was the studio (MiraMax!), who eventually decided to split GrindHouse, not him. (infographic source /Film)
Quite like in music, indie came to stand for certain style, not so much the method of creation.
The style, of course, evolved from certain method, but then started living its own life. yet the name still comes from the method.
By going totally independent you exchange financial security for creative freedom,
because you don’t have the initial investor – the studio. You also often go totally independent because no studio will make your film. And these days you might also distribute the flick yourself. You will spend long hours promoting it over the internet and organizing independent screenings – because again there is no initial investment to run an advertising campaign.
Some small studios are considered independent, as they often have to go DIY to make a film happen too. It’s just that there’s a team of them and not the film maker on their own. Still if they help you out they might come in and say, hey dude, can you make this a bit more funny? No one will watch it the way it is…
And then you, the filmmaker, weep silently in the corner. However on both occasions such intrusion might in the end improve your film… This above is obviously an over-simplified explanation. All is up for discussion.
I object to the use of word free because again there is a hell lot of difference between free as in beer and free from
something or open (say software) which is often overlooked. Making a film is never free. EVER. Do not believe in that. If we don’t call these totally independent filmmakers indie and leave the label for Quentin and the gang, that’s fine too. Just remember – in practice there is a difference.
Independent filmmakers sleep less and during the last two years of production their self-confidence has been put to more test than average person’s over entire life-time. They probably know the schedule of the coming festival season by heart. And they make magic happen. So when you see one – give them a hug and a fiver to buy a sandwich.
The Change vs The Fear
Dan: rules are made to be broken. fuck em
me: it’s all well and nice to want to try all sorts of alternative new models, but who in their right mind will chip in for this?
Dan: hmm, I guess that’s the experiement. Like Kev[in Smith] took a chance with all those credit cards, he could have spent his whole life paying it off.
me: no one in their right mind will even give me a credit card. These days are over sir, we’re living post-crisis. This ain’t 1995
Dan: You need to become and MP and claim it on expenses. That’s the new black it seems.
Ha ha. I might well have to. Yesterday was the sad day B-side, the very innovative and funky film distribution company closed it’s doors. They’ve been around for 5 years. They were doing well too. And click, just like that, off they went.
It’s not sad because they won’t be replaced and we’re all doomed forever, although it feels recently like soon enough the only choice we’ll have in cinemas will be between Avatars and Alices in Wonderlands. It’s sad because I have been researching the alternative funding/distribution methods for a while now and this comes to show how hard it still is to be ahead of the curve. I read Ted Hope at Truly Free Film, I follow the endeavors of the workbook project. And occasionally I get on the happy-go-lucky high from hearing so many voices chanting about the need to think about film differently… Yet so often it feels like at the end of the day the big guys come and stomp on our throats and the party, again, is over.
If you are unaware of the wider context of B-side’s exit this is probably the best article you will read: Why exhibitors should be B-Side themselves by Stephen Saito. Another one I cried over last night is Antony Kaufmans observation from filmmaker magazine – about the never dying dream of traditional distribution purchase. Why? Why, why why?
I’m not up for that. As a matter of fact the premise of the earlier mentioned film is not having a commission, not aiming for a distribution deal, ideally not having any traditional solution in place. DIY baby, all the way. And see where this takes us…
With all the luck we can get, it will be a place big guys hope is hell.
Sunday video
This week some TED action. On a mild hangover, which makes any actual activity a ridiculous extravagance, but doesn’t switch your brain off there’s few things better than TED.
There’s generally few things better than TED, although I’m in a sort of love – hate relationship with it. On one side it’s a intellectualized mostly white middle-class festivity of talking about how to fix the world of those who could never afford the entry ticket. On the other hand, there’s a huge diversity of brilliant thought of some of the most intelligent and dedicated people on the planet. Some – others live lives which will never lead them to the stage of TED.
So here, few words about listening to people’s stories and the danger of a single story (obligatory for story-tellers of any sort). Have a great Sunday.
