Archive for the ‘Producing’ Category
Adam Curtis and some bold documentaries
A couple years ago, some friends in Philly held a little screening session with a selection of films they brought back from the annual INPUT festival that features the best of worldwide public television.
After the screening, a couple films really stuck with me. One was Adam Curtis’ “The Mayfair Set”, but at the time it seemed destined to remain a UK-only film.
I was struck by the playful imagery, imaginative work-arounds for sections without direct footage and for Curtis’ willingness to tackle a bold narrative that assailed major figures in the UK power structure and even threatened his bosses at the BBC.
Thanks to the magic of the internet, we can now view much of Curtis’ work on line (albeit missing quite a bit of beauty due to web delivery limitations.) As his wikipedia entry describes, Curtis combs the BBC film vaults for archival footage that wonderfully illustrate his narratives.
Here are a couple of links in no particular order. I haven’t watched the whole of Mayfair Set yet, but look forward to working my way through.
A more recent film “The Trap”
A writeup and trailer for his most recent collaboration with an avante garde theater group:
A wonderful dialogue between Errol Morris (Fog of War; Fast, Cheap & Out of Control) and Curtis.
Finally, here’s Adam’s blog at the BBC.
Hope you enjoy his work as much as I do.
Art + Art = something more
This post really gets one thinking about how you might add value to that victim of piracy and VOD.. that endangered species – the DVD. Thanks, Brian for thinking out of the box!
SpringBoardMedia: Ken Price, Bukowski, Curation and Film
My favorite part of the show was over at the Franklin Parrasch Gallery in Midtown (only until April 20) – they have a collection of ephemera, books, postcards, album covers and even tequila bottles designed by or featuring art works by Ken Price. If you like his sculptures (I’m not as big of a fan of these as his other work, though they are what he’s most known for), then you must stop by to watch the ten minute video showing his process (layering up paint and then sanding it down to expose layers in patterns). Note to curators – put this video on YouTube once the show is over and his sales will likely triple. Anyway, the piece I most liked, and that I think is in a weird way most relevant to film, was a limited edition hard-bound coffee table book of Charles Bukowski’s Heat Wave, with drawings and original art work by Ken Price. The cover is the photo I’ve used here. As Black Sparrow’s website explains, the book was a large format (15×12) portfolio, with text by Bukowski (poems), illustrated with 17 black and white works by Price, handbound and including a disc of Bukowski reading his poetry and containing a compartment in the back with 15 original serigraphs which could be removed and framed. A limited, signed edition was made as well as a limited, unsigned edition and the entire thing came in a slipcase with a cool design.
I’m a fan of both Price and Bukowski (yes, I’ve not left my college reading days too far behind), but you don’t have to like either to think about how this could be used for film. Not every film, but some. I’ve often talked about ways to monetize content in a world where everything is increasingly becoming free – well, here’s a great example. I can see Price’s works for free, in galleries and online. Bukowski’s poems are all over the place, and even with his popularity, I can find them in numerous used bookstores for cheap. But this is a piece of art – when it first came out in 1996 it sold for about $3,500 and I imagine it’s worth much more now. I can’t afford it, but I bet the 100+ editions they made sold out. How can filmmakers duplicate this? Again, not everyone can, but I imagine there are fans who would buy something similar from many indie films. Perhaps stills from the film, coupled with the script, a DVD, etc. Or maybe the film, the soundtrack and text from an author that is in a similar vein as the subject of the film. I’ve got lots of ideas for this, and I’m helping a few filmmakers whose films could definitely be re-purposed this way, but thought I’d share the idea with all of you, perhaps you can come up with an even better way to copy the idea in your work.
Ted Hope at DIY days
The Workbook Project’s DIY day in NYC last weekend was an inspirational moment of truly collaborative and community based thinking about storytelling and where it is going. Check out one of the lead “inspirers” – Ted Hope
PBS getting pretty post-modern!
“Earth Days” PBS Documentary to Premiere on Facebook
Feature-length documentary film Earth Days will premiere on Facebook with a live video stream and a chat at 8 p.m. EST on April 11, more than a week before the over-the-air PBS television premiere at 9 p.m. EST on April 19.
The film chronicles the history of Earth Day in the United States and investigates issues related to the today’s American environmentalism movement. It has been playing the festival circuit and in select theaters for months, leading up to its PBS American Experience premiere. Earth Days has pulled a 70 rating on Metacritic — “generally favorable reviews.” Continues…
 |
Friends, Fans & Followers available for free for a few days!
Scott Kirstner’s book on creating a fanbase in the web 2.0 world is available here till the end of SxSW festival.
Some great resources for documentary lovers and makers
A couple great sites that have come into their own in the last two years:
The Workbook Project is an online collaboration that studies, discusses and creates the next generation of multi-platform independent media.
Massify is a filmmaker, actor, producer online community with some pretty big partners (Lionsgate, Killer Films, etc.)
D-word is a documentary specific forum for fans and creators.
Here’s an unsophisticated, but thorough list of documentary resources.
Finally, this is afilm and video finder that links to eight of the most significant educational doc distributors.
Watch Daily Habit Today and Friday!!
Fuel TV’s Daily Habit is featuring Brewce and Laurie talking about the documentary, Skatopia and the Santa Barbara International Film Fest that we just played at. Showtimes: Thursday, Feb 18 at 9PM and Midnight EST, Friday Feb 19 at 2:30PM and 5:30PM EST. Converting these times to your time zone is your responsibility… don’t take it lightly!
Back from Amsterdam and off to Hot Springs!
A great trip to Amsterdam – a place where people live in shipping containers
trees are made of rebar…
rebar tree
and coffee shops sell way more than just coffee…
coffeeshop reefer
When we walked by one of them, Liam said, “Hey, how did they know we were bringing our movie? They’re making Amsterdam smell like Skatopia!”
We rode bikes everywhere…
hanging posters and handing out postcards everywhere we could… even found ourselves in good company poster-wise.
We went to Skatepark Amsterdam, which rocked- a good sized indoor park in this crazy huge container shipping warehouse. It cost a million euros just to build the elevated platform the park sits on!
Our apartment was a block from the Red Light District which made Liam say, “Hey, those ladies are trying to be statues!”
OH YEAH, THE FILM!
The film received an excellent response. De Uitkijk (you say “out-gike”, which means Look-out) Theater was very classy, served beer (even had little tables with drink order forms and a little buzzer to call a waitress) and the audience was great.
The theater where Skatopia played.
We followed up with a special screening at the Streetlab Gallery… special shoutout to them and Stan Postmus for making that screening an event!
There are more photos at our blog at Skatopia The Movie.
At the end of the week we’re meeting the Skatopia crew for a screening at the Hot Springs Doc Festival. Be sure and tell any Arkansans that you know!
Great write up in Amsterdam!
Check out this write upon our film in the Amsterdam Event Guide
:
The “Prenups” – filmmakers and funders trying to get along
The single most common question that independent producers ask me in my role at Mountain Lake PBS (after learning that we don’t have the resources to fund outside projects – even the most promising) is where they can raise their production funding. The answers is that they have to do it the same difficult way we do at PBS: apply for grants, approach sponsors (underwriters in PBS-speak), consider “crowd funding”, get a bank loan, look for tax credits, etc.
But in each of these cases, the filmmakers will have to consider what it is the funders are looking for. Many a relationship between funder and filmmaker has foundered on mis-understanding. A new project hopes to layout a lot of misconceptions for media makers before things go off the rails. Check out The Prenups. Excellent work that every filmmaker should read. You can download the 2 page summary Matchmaker Guide for the Cliff Notes version
free filmmaker stuff
Here is a great site I found when looking for graphics of those little leaves that you put around film fest announcements:
http://www.sonnyboo.com/downloads/downloads.htm
There are countdowns, contracts, templates, etc. Thanks Peter!
Here is the poster that I created with the leaves:
Poster for Skatopia documentary at Amsterdam Film Festival
Documentary Film Maker's Handbook is OnLine!
The open source world is great. Check this out: The Documentary Film Makers Handbook There is tons of great stuff to be found here. Page 323, for instance has a list of all the major international doc markets.
