OKAY 2015 Here we go!

Prior to introducing the article and topic I just want to glaze over the fact that the last four months have been spent in near isolation figuring shit out.  I've come away with a metaphysical zilch after having combed through Camut's "Myths of Sisyphus" and Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces." I'm not certain if I'm supposed to have resolve now but I look back and realize I haven't read or written a whole lot of the very subject matter that got me on this track.  Even watching movies has dimmed in its entertainment level because now more than ever the medium represents a far off world, dangerous yet beckoning.

Nevertheless, when looking elsewhere I find the same old elsewhere crap I'd rather not be attached to.  Adapting to the maze of a life determined to the whole bootstrap business, do or die, seems my lot (to the chagrin of partner and family).  If blogging is the least I can do that can be considered both an investment in trade research and public communication then let us embrace the absurdity of dreams and do it properly.

Thus, the Oscars.

For more information, please read How Much Does a Hollywood Oscar Campaign Cost?

There's not much to be said except lo and behold - the stink.

It's not that movies aren't a wonderful and rich medium full of inspiration and art and sentiment and with all the powers to bring the world together and remove the dividing lines, etc, etc.  It's that the pursuit of money and the idolatry of glamor has promoted such excesses of spending for a handful of people to manipulate the public.  The public tastes, being fabricated like votes being bought, do not exist. 

There are ways, as shown in the article, of boiling down even splits in preference to singular choices because there must be a winner after all.  And lets not forget the prevailing majority of white male seniors doing all the voting because diversity certainly isn't necessary when deciding the representative film of all films in a given year that underscores the state of public consciousness.

This is one wide circle jerk.  And the lesson to absorb here, which is pretty amazing, is that circle-jerking is actually quite effective in achieving the classical intent.  Fake it till you make it becomes circle-jerk till you're convinced its an orgy and so hot.

You see, Hollywood can't exist without fans and supporters.  It's make-believe after all.  Fans and supporters don't rally unless there's an obvious cause to rally for.  The symptom of "obvious" is created when we appreciate the big to-dos of the manicured elite from afar.  The illusions of elitism is perpetrated by the purchase of industries of projection - the publicists, the groomers, and so forth.  Either way, it's the magic (see: the bullshit) of movie makers doing their thing. 

We eat this up because we, the public, are in desperate need of an escape from the imprisonment of our own poverty.  It's always been this way and poverty isn't strictly financial.  The hardworking slave away for home and family, many having given up passions before they even discovered them.  And although film-making is damned-hard work, the crew certainly doesn't end up in the Oscars.

If you look at shows like Madmen or House of Cards, you'll begin to appreciate a concept we all generally accept but likewise would rather avert our gaze from: the flow of power and influence is decided by the people who create the context.  Publications, PR Firms, Event Coordinators, Photographers, spin-doctors all with a mass audience capable of doing no more than dancing to the tune because while the ideas of the public vary greatly, they carry no organization that can fully denounce the printed word - not when they have bills to pay and realities to escape from.  The Oscars are not chosen by popular appeal, though the films themselves are often beautiful.  The Oscars are the result of political war.  The benefit of the whole damned circus is to give off the impression that Hollywood is an institution and we're all benefiting.  But behind that parade of smiles is a bean counter and greed. 

Takeaway:  Try it out.
My fellow filmmakers, especially those like myself without two cents to rub together, seduced by the prospect and bewildered by the cold, bring your people together and make your own Oscars in your very solitary tier.  Fill it with boos and sympathizers, some live music if you can procure the talented desperate of that persuasion and put out a press release to the local wordsmiths and your nearby college or town press.  Make funny awards and provide sincere praise and if you make a recurring culture of it and honor your following then too might you one day find the power to manipulate culture to the tune of millions.  It is the dream and consequence of our success.  And it is not beyond the least of us.

Don't be a martyr. Learn to sell and buy yourself a sandwich. [3 Must-read articles on DIY marketing]

Read

• Attention, Filmmakers: Here's How to Design a Web Site for Your Film
• Marketing Your Indie Film: A Few Key Tips to Wrap Your Brain Around
• Everything You Wanted to Know About Digital Deliverables (But Were Afraid to Ask)

Takeaways:

1. The standard for crowd-funding has raised.
2. You have to plan for pre and post production with the same level of focus as production.
3. Observing VHX landing pages can give you insight on design and functionality.
4. Think of your movie in in terms of videos, and pictures. Use everything (and create more).
5. The deliverables coincide with everything you get on a standard blu-ray.  Think ahead.
6. Professional set photography is key.
7. Most importantly, you need a long term holistic approach to storytelling to maximize your chances of success.  There are no shortcuts but if you hit most of these points with due diligence you'll be head and shoulders above the rest. You gotta be obsessive to tame DIY.

The inherent struggle of success in film

Read. Read. Read.

• What's the Foundation of Filmmaking? Here's Director Werner Herzog's Answer
• Review: 'My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn' Reveals the Sad Story Behind 'Only God Forgives'

Takeaway:

1. Herzog's accent makes him way more artistically credible.
2. Get $10k and make a film.  Don't wait.
3. Would Refn have benefited from the reminder that storytelling should be its own reward?
4. If the ends are all about reputation, you'll end up reputed to be an asshole.

The Independent Film Week = headslap

For more information, visit IndieWire for all their reports on what I've been rattling the cages on for a year.

I'm sore.  I'll admit it.  I didn't have the right amount of drive and wasn't born in the right town and don't have legacy film blood in me to start me off with a fighting chance.

But damn it!  The self-distribution game is wide open and hot and any chance to make a killing is getting swamped by all the press and institutional support of what the folks at Killer Films and Seed & Spark and many other companies and individuals are putting together to change the face of the industry.

It's very much the rallying us creators need.  But I feel like once more the strongest resources are going in the safest directions.  All this accessibility should have been a boon to level the playing field but there's a whole new tier of competition rising into the fray: technologists.

People who got into graphic design or web design or programming have a path into storytelling much like indie game programmers.  The harder learning curve is in the tech and while there are a lot of resources online to get things moving (primarily Youtube and Google), there is now a gatekeeper that hadn't been there before and that's singular capacity.  Every group endeavor is going to be affected by its weakest link and only the most committed and capable individuals will rise into the light.  Just because you understand the mythic structure doesn't mean you'll be able to breakdown wordpress or basic accounting, SEO or distribution deals and you need it all.

That may mean those eligible are people who don't have to worry about survival or are in fact crazies.  But those in between - the moderates and mild-mannered, the average joe storyteller looking for enough stability to pursue his dream - still doesn't have a shot.  You've got to flex money or you've gotta go crazy.  There's no other way to handle a campaign and that scares me.  The real commitment of competing filmmakers is involves a do-or-die approach that requires a complete personal sacrifice.

I'm jabbering and you get the picture.  The tips I pulled from a stream of articles were to

1. not forget about grants and fiscal sponsorship when moving from short to feature
2. build your audience on the way to your kickstarter, not after
3. appreciate that story and character are still the highest priority above post production and gadgetry.
4. know that at a certain point your content might be ripe for branding, be open to the opportunity and sit down with advertisers before you make a decision
5. learn how to study your competition
6. study the competition (it may be other production companies or just similar productions)
7. accept that content begets everything and the more visual the better.  Create things for people to look at and then post it everywhere your audience might find it.

There really is too much more and you're just going to have to do some digging.  But I've experienced the self-repeating message and know that at some point you've got to take off the learning hat and put on the doing hat and it's going to take a certain amount of hours to build your story for the fans to take on.  I'm both thrilled and terrified to be moved into pursuing a transmedia project.  But quite honestly I really just want to play Destiny on an XBOX ONE.

For me, between the live subscription, game, console and a new TV, it's like a $1500 investment and I'm a destitute wannabe creator.  Well...for all of you out there that share my inertia, carpe diem bitches.  It's never too late.  For the sake of the glorious fantasy realms we may not have access to or the time for, we might as well be building our own for others to come and play.


wow... Inner child freaking.  Why's life gotta bust balls for?

No I didn't sneeze. It's YEKRA!

Read
Distribution & Curation's Love Child: Yekra Becomes the First 'DIY Digital Movie Theater'

We should all be feeling this arrival.  For the horde of middle-class artists (not just filmmakers, but musicians, painters, writers, anyone with a story to tell), there is a widening avenue to breed thought and passion co-mingled with new technology and people with a mind for the expansion of expression.

There are a lot of questions to be answered regarding the money flow and certainly the discussion is underway.  Will the available funds trickle into too many separate pockets?  The better question for us is "will artists seeking sustainability be able to afford their rent bridging their inspirations in this new era of direct distribution?"

We're not worried about the giants unable to fill their mouths.  We're talking about an aggressive middle-economy where the fundamentals will really matter.  Insofar as the gatekeepers are forced to reposition themselves into aiding the most ambitious of this wave, rather than keeping the swelling mob out, we have incredible potential now freely accessible at an increasing rate.

Before it implodes, lets go back to why we got started:

Monsters, Heroes, Aliens, Detectives, Love, Lust, Despair, Hope.  I feel like Silicon Valley is really burning the midnight oil here but what happens if the people their technology supports became so distracted by figuring out a new model for themselves that they forgot to stay on their artistic grind?  What a gamble the last 20 years have been.  I'm so confused!

But now that's changing and what started with youtube and crowd-sourcing is now rapidly morphing into a whole new economy.  Thank you Micah Van Hove at NoFilmSchool for your diligence in putting together a solid picture for those of us still in film school getting only a quarter of the education needed to be competitive.

-C

Read FIGURING OUT THE DELICATE ART OF POSITIONING YOUR STARTUP

Image Credit: rap.genius.com

<< This is what you wanna do to your market audience. (Googling haymaker photos is pretty hilarious.  We pay a lot of money to watch people do this to each other. Bananas! I digress.)

This is what you wanna do with your product and for the last several years I have to admit it's just been easier being a lazy muffin.

I get a great idea and that's where it stays.  But according to the article the process of creating a consistent package isn't all that different from selling up to a financier.  You need to have some solid homework and materials ready for the push and an ongoing plan in place to stay with the momentum.  For marketing a film, especially a no-budget for an emerging artist, thinking like a professional shouldn't be a "maybe."  You need to use every available piece of advice because there are no more excuses and no more shortcuts.

That said I wanna break down where I've been on debugging the willpower question.

Image Credit: www.bjorkaoddities.com

You might just be a big baby when it comes to building your own production vessel; a company that will attempt to fly on its own steam performing job after job while fitting in time to pursue feature productions that compete for notoriety and long term payoffs.

If you grew up like the greater portion of Americans you're lower middle class, a generation-y pimp of a dreamer who's likely come to terms with the humility of your own existence. But now that you've embraced production you gotta throw your business up in everyone's face and encourage them to take a whiff.  

Positioning isn't just about homework and self-awareness and discipline.  It's about growing up and finding your courage and your source of will power too.  And it's crazy because if the original plan was a city-job or a corporate gig or working at your dad's motor shop and you can't go back that way because you got on set and experienced something unlike any other field elsewhere then you've gotta buck up.  And you have to know you're not amassing your bravery for a shot at the big time, you're generating a charge that is doomed to fail because you might be the first in your family to try to enter a high stakes poker game filled with players wealthier and more politically savvy than you.  You'll be charging over and over again at a narrow passage that won't budge before you flash whatever credibility will force them to slip.

How long do you want to be a filmmaker?  If it's the long term then shortcuts are a danger.  You need to build an army and a product from the ground up and realize that perhaps the biggest obstacle is the modesty you've accepted for a life below the mountain.

It just occurred to me that I'd somehow second-guessed my aspirations because most of my life I've only understood to control my desires for the reality I'm living in.  For my reality to change I've gotta get unrealistic.  Ya feel me?

Positioning is about making a claim and doing some homework to back it up.  All the relevant industries today - art, tech, music, media, etc - contribute this effort in daily doses and so the prime skills to develop are efficient communication with all the bells and whistles provided by adobe products (most likely) and whatever zaniness you can come up with.  Thinking that way is not about being an employee anymore.  The payday comes when you convince the world it's time.  It's a deal and positioning provides the talking points and the bottom line.  Without these you're a spectator, a civilian, and a consumer for someone else's gambit.  For those trying to break in, filmmaking truly is do or die.

So that epiphany, about having to unlearn restraint in pursuit of a dream many more stability-minded folk might resist, helped me sort out a reason to more fully embrace the risks, the greater time investment to now brand the company and it's ideas rather than just sit and try to write while being confused that the phone isn't ringing.  

What to do, oh what to do about my video game habit...

The New "Market-Driven"

Image credit: arcf.org

The new "market driven" is really a developing science of how individuals create relationships with communities.  I think what the average content creator would love to have at his side is an army but how in the world, full of ADD and apathy, do you get anyone to care?

Fuck'em.

I don't mean to say everyone should go to hell.  I mean to say that you have to have a baseline faith that their are others like you and they will come if you speak loud enough and long enough.  Don't try to make people care.  Just you care and learn how to express that effectively with what you have available.

I think that what's market driven for studios is passion driven for no-budgets and the difference is that traditional marketing applies administrative organization to what they define as audience where the no-budgets let passion run its course without attempting to capitalize on the long-game.

Read
A Conversation with A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES Writer/Director Scott Frank
CROWDFUNDING FOR BEGINNERS: THE CEO OF SEED & SPARK SHARES HER SECRETS

There's a website called Slack where I'm trying to organize a group around story development.  It's tough going.  There's no immediate incentive as with all things creative, and it takes an internal drive which is often confused against the day-to-day distractions and external obligations.

While trying to find articles to inspire that undertaking I came across an interview with Scott Frank pushing his new film.  In this discussion was some insight, perhaps a little jaded, on writing in the film industry today. There's a nod to the strength of television and the viability of independent production.  There's also a sense, though likely far removed as he's a long-time studio guy, that the new financing models, and we'll go ahead and add digital filmmaking and online marketing tools, have changed the way films get made. Both long time professionals and emerging artists have gotten wind of it and its making a difference even in career consideration and things have become more flexible and more complicated.

For what it's worth 'A Walk Among the Tombstones" looks just as dark, disturbing and ultimately cool as I'd hope a noire today can be.  But Scott is worried about the audience turnout.

Seed & Spark has been championing the move to crowd-funding with best-practices advice that is now not uncommon.  Though there are helpful reminders and new spins on the advice which urge us to take some things more seriously (e.g. don't plead, once you launch you should launch hard and don't stop, figure out your tone by talk to members of your core audience, etc.).

What's being explained here is what the Studios and the their like can't wrap their head around because it's too close to the ground floor.  (I'm comparing Scott's insider insight and his interest in doing things differently with the phenomenon he's obviously becoming aware of that Seed & Spark is advocating).  YOU, with nothing little left to lose, save the skin off your back and maybe your mind, can be as flexible and as involved with your people  as you want to be.  There are less rules to follow but also less guidelines.  In a way not having direct guidance, the Hollywood machine to set you on the conveyor belt, is a real opportunity to make non-fatal mistakes as often as you need to.

[Disclaimer: I think ^^ up to a certain point.  Small communities will be more forgiving than larger ones as debate can upset momentum and is easier to forgive when less mouths are chatting.  Not sure what the number is but maybe an indie filmmaker needs to set follower milestones to reassess his audience.  And remember you can't please everyone.  There's a cool game called Democracy 3 on Steam where you play a global leader and it's actually quite tricky not to be assassinated, let alone re-elected.]

Biting the bullet to get started is much harder.

I myself have been breaking my head over how to effectively communicate for my story-verse in development and in truth trying to figure out each day where to start - do I spend the first four hours learning photoshop or illustrator for my materials or do I spend the first four hours writing new backstory or do I spend this time having an epic grudgematch with some NLE or another or do I record outreach videos for the community.

You need an audience but just as important is that you need a team that believes in you and you have to believe in yourself enough to go and recruit one.

Reminder: if you're going to lead your vision has to be big enough to fit the visions of others within it.

You might not be able to pay, you might not be able to make a guarantee of pay or some other ROI but this business is about risk from the start and the biggest risk of all is when you bet on someone that may quit on you.

Image Credit: Kumah.org "Where is our Million Man March"

Don't be a quitter.  No matter what, when you find something to go after and its important enough to ask for help, you better be prepared to make every day count and go down with the ship because the only excuse an investor/crew member/ business partner/audience member shouldn't have to hear is that you gave up.  They signed on because they found something in you they needed and wanted and finally, that admittance given, your purpose is stamped.

The hardest part of being independent, is that you traded being a slave to someone else's cause for being a slave to your own.  The road is damned-tough but often just as equally glorious if you can pull through.