Things I learned at the IFP Filmmaker Conference: Day 5

OK, so it's obviously taken me way too long to chronicle this IFP conference, which was a month and a half ago now.

I actually wasn't around for all the panels on the final day, as I had a train to catch. However, I still managed to snag a few final pearls of wisdom.

#5. The Internet is the opposite of movies in many ways.

This observation came from “interactive art director” Jeff Soyk, one of the contributors to a panel on Hollow, an interactive website devoted to sharing stories from a struggling West Virginia community. He said that film and the Internet were “contradictory experiences,” pointing out that the web is a more information-driven medium with a shorter attention span. He added that developing the Hollow project meant getting away from the auteur approach, and developing the story as a team. (Hollow also involved giving camera equipment to the community members, and training them in how to use it, so that they could tell and record their own stories for the site.)

#4. Sound is an overlooked and underappreciated aspect of film.

This also came up during the Hollow panel. The project's creators found that sound design and music was essential in contributing a mood to the experience. One of the contributors named the addition of the music as marking the point when the project finally felt “real.”

My extreme delay in completing my IFP write-up means that this ties in with a similar point I heard yesterday at the Buffalo Dreams film festival, during a talk from Paige Davis of the distribution company Alternative Cinema. When an audience member asked about common mistakes that low-budget filmmakers make, she stressed the importance of good sound. She said that filmmakers are often so caught up in the logistics of getting the movie made that they don't give audio the attention that it needs.

You may have already heard it said that audiences will forgive a crummy picture (and even accept it as a style) but are less tolerant of crummy sound. But it's worth repeating anyway.

#3. If you've already shot your movie, think of a pitch that describes what you know you have.

Nancy Abraham of HBO Documentary Films said this during a panel on the art of pitching documentary films, but I suspect it applies equally well to narrative films.

This point is actually somewhat dear to my heart. I've met people who can come up with a catchy-sounding one-word premise, but don't know how to develop it into actual characters and scenes. Whereas a lot of my ideas come from something a bit more esoteric – a theme or mood I want to express, or a genre I want to play with – making it a challenge to figure out how to explain the story to people in a simple way that makes it sound compelling. I did several drafts of Saberfrog before getting to the point where I could easily sum up the premise of my little road movie: “An aging slacker goes on a road trip to find old friends because voices in his head tell him to.” (And if memory serves, the voices in his head weren't even in my original outline.)

#2. Anyone doing any sort of media needs to collaborate with people in different disciplines.

This came from Brent Hoff of the new Made in NYC Media Center, a venue that was on the verge of opening to the public at the time of the conference.

That point is something else I've been learning through experience. Being a filmmaker isn't just about knowing how to write a script, block a scene, or choose lenses. You need to know about business. You need to know about the Internet and social networking. You need to know about promotion. And while I've enjoyed wearing a lot of hats on my past films, I've found that not all of these areas are strengths of mine.

#1. Filmmakers should look at other measures of success besides box office and Facebook likes.

This came up during a curious talk by Debika Shome, representative of a big-data organization called the Harmony Institute panel. Shome introduced her talk by discussing several possible measures of success and impact – not just box office and Facebook likes, but also awards, critical response, and the number of press articles covering the movie.

Shome was promoting the idea that you should think about “optimizing” your work, and evaluating its effectiveness in tangible terms. This seemed to be a potentially controversial area: One audience member criticized the idea of equating impact with popularity and performing statistical number-crunching when developing a project, saying “This is what Hollywood does” and implying that this approach was incompatible with the indie spirit of doing something original and personal.

Shome responded by discussing the documentary film Waiting for Superman, about the problems in the U.S. educational system. She said that the Institute studied what “frames” and metaphors did and didn't resonate in audiences and press. If you pick an approach that doesn't resonate with the public, she said, then even a hard push might not be successful.

General thoughts …

Whenever I return to NYC for one of these events, I'm always struck by how the artistic community's attitude has changed since I was a student there in the 1990s.

The idea that being unhappy or helpless makes you deep was mercifully absent. It was smarter to be clever and to do something and make a difference.

Obviously not everyone has changed with the times. During that week (but not while at the conference), I overheard some nerds complaining – only half-jokingly – that being able to look stuff up on the Internet makes it harder to have arguments about trivial knowledge. To me that says something: some people would rather feel that they're right, rather than take the effort to learn and correct themselves. Today, I feel like the old snobbiness of “I know something obscure that you don't, I'm part of this exclusive scene” has sort of vanished in the Internet age, when theoretically anyone can know anything if they bother to look it up.

(Of course, maybe the new challenge will be to try to reintroduce value-through-scarcity. As of this writing, I am possibly the only person who has seen both the rediscovered Orson Welles film Too Much Johnson and the new Troma film Class of Nuke 'Em High Part 1, because I attended exclusive regional premieres of both.)

Everything at this conference was very positive and high-functioning. No one really gave in to the low-achiever pastime of complaining incessantly about conservatives – and those who did were motivated to make documentaries! Even the criticisms of Hollywood were fairly low-key and determined to find the silver lining – discussing what we as indie filmmakers can do, not what we can't do.

Being in NYC, among smarter and more creative people, did a lot to recharge me. Years after leaving school, I've encountered more and more people who complain about the status quo without ever quite seeming to consider that anything better could be possible. It's easier to bitch about how your favorite franchise isn't satisfying you than it is to show interest in anything new.

But it seems that younger, smarter, niche audiences do want something new. They want compelling ideas. They want community. Everyone at this conference assumed – perhaps naively? – that the web is a place where people are positive and constructive. It's only dumb “mainstream” stuff that is dependent on old or aging brands, aimed at an ever-more-arrested audience that only wants more of the same.

But maybe these themes are region-specific. In cities like New York, the emphasis is on being big and important and influential and cutting-edge. In Rochester, there's more of a middle-class culture of learning the existing rules and following them, and being grumpy when someone doesn't. In rust-belt areas like Buffalo or Pittsburgh, there's more of a gritty underdog attitude, in which artists either embrace horror and exploitation genres or become underground and avant-garde.

So it's been quite the learning journey this fall.

But now it's time to move on to what I should be doing – which is developing some new stories. November is National Novel Writing Month, and I had planned to spend it finishing the writing of these damn novels. The month is now one-third half over and I haven't had the time to do much. So time to buckle down and do some writing...

Things I learned at the IFP Filmmaker Conference: Day 4

Before we begin, a bit of a flash-forward. Since returning from the IFP conference I've continued to take advantage of learning opportunities back in Rochester. I've been taking some classes in how to make movies with a DSLR, how to use the animation program After Effects, how to format a book for self-publishing, and how to write a novel in 30 days. (The latter is just in time for National Novel Writing Month.)

But a couple weekends ago I reached a point where I thought – you know what? Learning and absorbing and recharging is all well and good, but there comes a point where you gotta start producing. I've drank enough and it's time to pee. (Maybe not the most tasteful metaphor, but oh well.)

There must be something in the air (hopefully not the smell of pee), because yesterday IndieWire posted this article describing filmmaker Ava DuVernay's keynote speech at the Film Independent Forum voicing similar thoughts:

“You're in info-gathering mode. You come to these gatherings and think, "Am I interested in this? Can I do this? What is this about? What is this whole independent film thing? How do I get it done?" ... I rarely meet people who tell me what they're [actually] doing. I often meet people who ask, "Can you help me?" or "How do I do this?" ... All of the time you're spending trying to get someone to mentor you, trying to have a coffee, all of the things we try to do to move ahead in the industry is time that you're not spending time working on your screenplay ... All the time you're focusing on trying to grab, you're being desperate and you're not doing. You have to be doing something.”

So soon enough, I'm going to be doing something. I'm going to have DVDs of Saberfrog for sale at the Buffalo Film Expo this coming Sunday. I'm going to see if National Novel Writing Month can be an opportunity to make progress on my spin-off novels. And I'm in the early stages of getting some of my old films remastered. So I need to finish this series of blog posts that I started last month, so I can have next month clear for other projects.

So anyway, stuff I learned on Day 4 …

#5. It's now legal to raise money in the way that people have been doing anyway.

On September 23, it became legal for producers to publicly solicit investments for films. Presumably this is in response to crowdfunding, through which people have been, you know, publicly soliciting investments.

#4. Crowdfunding money counts as income, NOT as donations.

During a soft-money panel, panelist Cameron Keng raised various legal issues regarding crowdfunding that he had previously outlined in a Forbes article called “Could Kickstarter's Policies Trigger An IRS Tax Audit?” This article is well worth bookmarking, but Keng's strongest statement during the panel was that the money you raise by crowdfunding is income, not donations. You will pay tax on it, and if you make a mistake then you will get an IRS audit. If the person giving money is getting something in return, such as a DVD or a T-shirt, then it's not a donation. Even getting credit in a film can be argued as getting value.

Also, fellow panelist Dianne Debicella of Fractured Atlas, pointed out that a fiscal sponsor can hold the money for you for the next year so that you don't pay tax on it in the current year. The panelists plugged their blog, Filmonomics, where more info about the economic issues of filmmaking is available.

#3. Information about digital projection formats is actually available.

Panelist Graef Allen from Dolby Laboratories gave a panel on how DCP (the modern digital format that has replaced 35mm for theatrical exhibition of films) actually works. She said the slides from her presentation were available at Sundance's Artist Services website. I went there and couldn't find them (let me know if you can) but fortunately http://www.thefilmcollaborative.org/blog/2013/01/the-independents-guide-to-film-exhibition-and-delivery-2013/ has much of the same information.

DCP is a collection of digital files, which are shipped to theaters on a physical hard drive. A composition playlist (CPL), which is basically an XML text file, determines what combination of video, audio and subtitles to play. The drive containing a DCP can hold 4 or 5 different dubbed/subtitled versions of a movie, and the theater will play whichever version they booked.

The video (JPEG 2000 codec, aspect ratio 1.85 or 2.39) and the audio (WAV files, uncompressed, sample rate 48kHz, 24-bit depth, 5.1 audio) are separate files, with a container file in .mxf format. If you want subtitles, those are written in a separate format called CineCanvas XML.

To prevent piracy, DCPs need an encryption file called a KDM in order to play. The DCP is shipped to the theater by a courier (such as FedEx, UPS, or DHL) on a CRU Dataport HDD drive, and the KDM is sent by email.

Converting your video to DCP can be challenging due to a variety of technical issues. If your source video has an HD aspect ratio, or isn't 24 frames a second, or if the audio isn't properly calibrated for cinemas (too loud or quiet), conversion will be difficult. Also, watching the movie from beginning to end on its drive is essential for testing.

If I understood the presentation correctly, a common workflow for transferring a finished movie to DCP is going from your original format (which may be tape or QuickTime) to DSM (digital source master) to DCDM (digital cinema distribution master, where individual frames are separate uncompressed TIFF files in XYZ format) to JPEG 2000.

If you're lost by now, it might not help to add that the color space is DCI P3, mapped to XYZ. But we're all going to have to learn this stuff, since 100% of theaters are supposed to be digital-only by 2015.

#2. Artwork is important for publicity.

A panel on publicity artwork ran home the point that indie films often neglect to generate art materials, or at least decent ones. (Guilty.) You need to look at the two or three days when your actors are in costume and makeup on the principal set, and set aside half a day with a good photographer to get group shots and individual character shots. You should get shots from the front, the side, and a three-quarter view.

In addition to simply having the necessary materials, you should make sure they send the right message for the film. If it's a comedy, the artwork should be funny. You need to think about the logo, font, photographic style, and overall feel. Figure out what audience you're aiming at, and what would appeal to them visually.

#1. Again, know your audience.

A couple panels that I missed most of due to a schedule conflict had a couple good nuggets that stuck with me. David Larkin, CEO of the indie film portal GoWatchIt.com, pointed out that the much-criticized gatekeepers in the film industry are less powerful now, but the downside is that without their help you have to find new ways of finding your audience. He said “don't make the film for an audience, but know who the audience is.” One of the producers of the music documentary Sound City said that you need to consider what is unique about your film, and what are the assets that will bring it attention.

By this point in the week my brain was getting full, but I still had one more day of learning ahead of me. (Or half a day, since I had a train to catch)

To be continued ...

Things I learned at the IFP Filmmaker Conference: Day 3

Sorry it's taken me a while to get to part 3. I've been (you guessed it) busy. Catching up on work, and on my own writing, since returning from this trip.

Anyway, after the heaviness of Day 2 of the conference, with its emphasis on the real world and how we're all being screwed by larger forces, it was good to hear about things that are more fun. Such as …

#5. Alec Baldwin is a real person.

As I walked to Lincoln Center that morning, I passed a poster promoting a series of film screenings at the center, for which the music would be played by a live orchestra. (One of the films in the series, fittingly enough, was 2001: A Space Odyssey.) I lingered at this poster just long enough to notice that the artistic director of the series was Alec Baldwin. “Hmm,” I thought. I continued to walk around the corner toward the entrance … and happened to see the man himself getting out of a car, carrying a duffel bag and looking dog tired.

No, I didn't bother him. I figured he was on his way to work and didn't need to be hassled. And thanks to the wraparound sunglasses I was wearing, I was able to pretend I didn't recognize him. Frankly, I was surprised he was by himself. I didn't think someone that famous would have the luxury of being able to walk around in public unaccompanied.

There's not much point to this story, except I just wanted to say … I saw Alec Baldwin.

#4. Humor is still good.

The first panel of the day was basically an interview with Derek Waters, creator of the short film that became the Comedy Central series Drunk History. The moderator, Brent Hoff, had previously given an award to that film (which had already been on the Internet) instead of one of the “films about Cambodian children with diseases caused by corporations”, a decision that apparently still makes people angry to this day.

If you haven't seen it, the premise of Drunk History is simply that a (genuinely) drunk person tells a story from the history books, intercut with actors solemnly acting out the drunkard's crude account. Waters said he got the idea from noticing that drunk people always want to tell stories. So he thought of something that people would never tell when drunk – in this case history, which is often told seriously and with no passion. His theory was that there are three stages of being drunk:

1. You're my best friend, life is great!
2. Have I ever told you the story I just told you ten times?
3. I'm a terrible person, life is terrible.

(He said that the second and third stages are when you need to be recording.)

He said that a brand new idea made out of something people are familiar with is what tends to be popular. Slightly contrasting this, he also advised the audience to “make stuff you believe in” and said that any time you put your voice out there it's a success, even if only ten people see it.

This panel helped buttress my belief that it's OK to do what you believe in, and that it's OK for indie cinema to be silly.

#3. You should make more material than just the film.

In a panel on building “buzz”, one panelist pointed out that “your audience has an insatiable desire to watch short clips.” Another panelist, Marc Schiller, said that filmmakers should be developing more original content for the web, but that they aren't doing this because they're just trying to get their film finished. (Though he did point out that for documentary filmmakers this is easier, since they already have more footage than they can use in the finished film.) He said that you can't make this stuff at the last minute, when the film is finished – it needs to be part of the process.

This isn't a new idea. Way back in the day, I remember reading somewhere that during the making of Jurassic Park, they filmed extra material for use in a CD-ROM. And I think they shot extra scenes during the making of the Matrix sequels for use in the tie-in video game. But I guess indie filmmakers are still catching up to Hollywood in this area.

This gets us into the area of that familiar buzzword “transmedia”. Instead of just having the film, you can have added material providing additional character development.

#2. Apparently, there are still reasons for an indie filmmaker to shoot on film.

Even as a native of Rochester, and as the child of a father whose 29-year career at Kodak put me through film school, I approached the “Want the Film Look? Shoot Film” panel with skepticism. Although I'm starting to miss the experience of watching actual film in public, I don't miss it much as a filmmaker. To me the rise of digital video cameras is the greatest thing to happen to indie filmmakers since the invention of the Bolex. When you shoot on video, you don't have to check the gate, you don't have to worry about the camera scratching or eating your film, you don't have to hope that the lab doesn't wreck your footage. As a film student, I had to worry about all of these things. Then I got my grubby mitts on a miniDV camera in 1999, and never looked back. And neither did nearly everyone else.

But the panelists had plenty of reasons not to give up on film. One is that it simply has a higher resolution than even the best video cameras. While high-definition is taking the leap from 2K to 4K, film is more like 6K, is still a reliable basis from which to create master copies, and lacks the compression issues that occur with high-definition video.

The panelists also approved of film because of the discipline it imposed. For them, the short time limit of a film reel and the unwieldiness of film equipment requires crews to be more organized and efficient.

I personally can do without the unwieldiness of film equipment – I'd rather be able to shoot quickly, and spend more time working with the actors rather than being muzzled by technical restrictions. But I can't argue with the fact that film looks better, and has remained a stable standard even as video renders one format after another obsolete.

One more point that did surprise me – the panelists said that the “video village” separating from the directors from the actors was actually slowing the process down. The ability to instantly review your footage has apparently interfered with the filmmaking process, allowing everyone to look at the last take rather than allowing the DP to maintain autonomy.

I've personally never been on a set with that kind of setup. But about a year ago, I did see a documentary about the making of David Cronenberg's recent film Cosmopolis, and was kind of shocked to see my hero Cronenberg entombing himself in a video suite in a completely different room from the actors, rather than being on the actual set when the cameras rolled. He appeared to be entirely happy with that working method, but where's the fun in that?

#1. The making of the story can be the story.

“There's an audience not just for your product, but for how you make your product,” said moderator Ward Emling on a panel about local film offices. In the earlier “buzz” panel, the documentary Our Nixon – made of old home movies from the Nixon administration – was cited as an example of how the creation of the film can be the story that interests people. The narrative of you creating the film, with you as the central actor – that has the power to gain free exposure and get audiences to identify with the film's journey.

I wouldn't have thought that that kind of auteurism was still in fashion at all. But as Marc Schiller put it, “you can only say 'go see my movie' so many times.” You have to get the audience to identify with something, and if they haven't seen the film yet, then I guess it makes sense that the filmmaker him/herself has to be the warm-up act.

While Day 3 gave me a lot to think about, Day 4 would turn out to be the real crash course.

To be continued …

Things I learned at the IFP Filmmaker Conference: Day 2

The second day of panels at IFP's annual filmmaker conference was basically Documentary Day. While I'm not primarily a documentary filmmaker myself, I learned at a previous year's conference that many lessons intended for docs apply to narrative filmmakers, and vice versa. So here are five things I learned on Day 2, followed by some general thoughts.

#5. Don't wait until after the US festival circuit to contact foreign distributors. By then it's too old.

That advice came from Cat&Docs' Catherine Le Clef during a panel on international documentary sales. I don't have much to add to this, but it sounds like good advice.

Dogwoof's Andy Whittaker also had some catchy advice about contacting distributors. He said that “I'm emailing you because this film is perfect for you” is a better introduction than “Here are three films.”

#4. Pick a story that the news media is excited about, and you'll have no trouble getting press.

This lesson came from filmmaker Penny Lane, who was speaking from experience. She's the director of Our Nixon, a recent documentary based on newly unveiled home movies from the Nixon White House. Lane and her filmmaking team found that, even decades after the fact, the news media still has enormous interest in Richard Nixon because … well, because the Nixon era made heroes out of journalists.

One could argue that this lesson is a cynical one that depends on the media not being as impartial as one might hope, but it was an interesting point nonetheless.

#3. When crowdfunding, you should already have an email list of people to contact, and you should also give people a reason to care.

I personally have not yet taken the crowdfunding plunge. My previous films have been funded on the 1990s credit-card model (“debt funding” I've since learned that it's called). The main thing that even I know about it is that IndieGoGo lets you keep the money you raise even if you don't meet your goal, whereas Kickstarter does not, and for that reason IndieGoGo is considered by many to be the more appealing option.

But the Our Nixon gang helped explain the appeal of Kickstarter. Producer Brian Frye said that Kickstarter was a better-curated site, and that its purpose is not solely for raising money but also for finding an audience and teaching artists to be entrepreneurial.

Self-promotion and publicity have tended to be weak links for me, but I often hear people say that crowdfunding is as much about building an audience as it is about raising money. Frye's comments helped to clarify that point. He also pointed out that people aren't interested in your need for money; you need to have a story that they care about and want to share with others.

#2. Documentaries still have the power to piss people off.

Many artists like to think of themselves as rebels challenging conventional society and traditional modes of thinking. The history of art is full of works, from The Rite of Spring to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, that pushed against established boundaries of form, language, or taste. I'm old enough to remember the furore over films like David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing, or Todd Haynes' Poison.

And if you're a documentary filmmaker, then you can be a muckraking journalist as well as an artist, and thus double trouble. Except that I wasn't sure anyone still cared.

By now we know that most documentaries are going to be about (as the creator of Comedy Central's Drunk History put it later in the week) “Cambodian children with diseases that were given to them by big corporations.” I guess Fahrenheit 9/11 was kind of a big deal at the time, because for a while it seemed like maybe it wasn't going to be released. Except that it was released, and most people probably knew where they stood on the issues before they even set foot in the theater. We've heard it all before. Haven't we?

A panel with the agitprop title “When Documentaries Disturb the Power Structure” addressed issues of compromise and self-censorship. The discussion centered largely around Park Avenue and Citizen Koch, two documentaries that became political hot potatoes due to their criticisms of zillionaire David Koch, a significant funder of the public television outlets where the films were intended to air. (I hadn't previously heard about these films or their controversy, but a fuller account is here.)

What made the panel especially lively was the presence of a ringer: documentarian Eugene Jarecki, who was apparently added to the panel late (his name didn't appear in the printed program). Jarecki declared that “the system knows no language but its own violence” and that “revolution is a tapestry of individuals”, and dismissed the very topic of the panel as “self-centered and stupid. With democracy under siege, so much power in central government and wealthy influence, who cares about the filmmaking community? There's a community of humans!”

But it was during the Q&A that things got really good. The first audience member to speak was in fact a PBS representative, who sarcastically referred to herself as one of the “podunk” PBS executives (as one of the panelists – probably Jarecki – had characterized them) and ended up arguing with Jarecki. She defended PBS, saying that PBS does air films on controversial topics, and asked, “Is PBS for diversity? Or is it just a venue for viewpoints beloved by this room?”

I'm not a very political person most of the time, but I know entertainment when I see it, and this was a hell of a show.

But Jarecki, for all his alarmist anger, ended on a positive note, saying that America's “hard-won meritocracy of crazy, passionate people” produces better documentaries than the BBC, who crank them out as a machine. “When you stop people from seeing something,” he concluded, “you increase the value of the moment when people see it.”

#1. The acclaimed documentary Leviathan looks like it might be a bit of an ordeal.

While perusing the calendar at Squeaky Wheel in Buffalo some weeks ago, I was intrigued by the writeup for a screening – actually scheduled for this coming Thursday as I write this – of a film called Leviathan. Despite the film's potentially dry subject matter (“the North Atlantic fishing industry”), its avant-garde approach earned it glowing notices from The New York Times, the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and Filmmaker Magazine (which called it a “game-changer”). I read all this and thought, “Hmm, sounds like something different. Maybe I'll check it out.”

One of the hidden joys of IFP's annual conference is that people who a film guy like me might have heard of, but would never expect to see in person, are just there, as panelists. (The first year I went, Moby was a panelist during a discussion about music. Yup, Moby.) So imagine my surprise when the director of Leviathan, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, gave the closing address for the day.

LC-T's speech expressed scorn for many aspects of modern documentary filmmaking – from its emphasis on 'story', to the use of editing and music to 'infantilize' the audience, to the narrator to tell you what things mean, and conversely the liberal effort to make a film's subjects into heroes or martyrs. I personally found most of these complaints a bit pretentious ... but someone in the audience went “Wow” at end of the speech, so maybe he knew his crowd.

Anyway, the cheese at the end of that maze was a ten-minute excerpt of Leviathan. “Oh cool,” I thought, “a preview of a movie I was thinking of seeing.”

Basically, Leviathan is a film shot on a fishing boat, largely at night, with tiny portable video cameras strapped to people's heads in order to capture their point of view while they're working. Based on the excerpt shown at IFP, the film seems to be based on the What the Hell Is Going On Aesthetic. The dark, grainy footage (what is this big strange furry thing moving around – oh, that's the fishing net) and poor acoustics (in which the human voice is indecipherable among unearthly mechanical noises) combined to create something suitably surreal and eerie, and made me kind of understand why Film Comment would call it “the best horror film of the year”.

However, I can't see myself sitting through an hour and a half of this, and what I saw seemed to make a mockery of LC-T's pontification just minutes earlier. If you're the kind of person who expects documentaries to inform rather than obfuscate, or at least make it possible to tell what you're looking at and what people are doing or saying, you might be too bourgeois and reactionary for this movie.

From what I saw of Leviathan, I would describe the film as The Tree of Life meets Trash Humpers. If that description tells you nothing (or sends you running from the room screaming) then you may not be its ideal audience. Still, I respect that someone out there is marching to his own drummer, whether it speaks to me or not.

General thoughts ...

The role of marketing – for the purposes of fundraising as well as publicity – was unavoidable by this point in the conference, and it kind of made me question whether indie filmmaking is really serving any kind of need. Instead of offering the original vision that people have been waiting for, you have to market to an existing viewpoint in order to be successful. You have to find an existing niche. So we all have to become studio heads in a way, whether we want to or not.

It also occurred to me that so many of the marketing strategies advocated in this community seem to assume that the audience consists of cutting-edge, social-media-savvy hipsters. Certainly there are a lot of people in the world like that, but there are also a lot of people who don't even have a smartphone. So you need to not only know your audience, but also know how they communicate. And after years of hearing about transmedia, it occurred to me that transmedia projects really depend on audience involvement and input to even exist as intended – unlike a stand-alone movie, which is a stable, tangible thing regardless of the size or engagement level of the audience.

These were all heavy thoughts, perhaps appropriately for a day devoted to nonfiction. The next day would begin on a very different note.

To be continued ...

Things I learned at the IFP Filmmaker Conference: Day 1

OK, last month's post was nonsense, but I was too busy to write anything more meaningful.

This month has been busy too. I went to IFP's annual Filmmaker Conference this past month, and learned a hell of a lot. While I don't know if I'll have time to write up the depth of coverage I gave last year – and you can read someone else's notes anyway – I'll share with you some of the more memorable lessons I learned on each day of the conference.

We'll start with six things I learned Day 1 ...

#6. Comedy can be challenging to sell internationally, because it's culturally specific. That's why depressing or violent films sell internationally.

And you thought foreign audiences were just these gloomy snobs.

#5. There is a film festival devoted to Internet cat videos.

It's called the Internet Cat Video Festival, or CatVidFest for short, and it's based at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Its curator, Scott Stulen, spoke about the festival, which has drawn huge crowds.

Here's their Facebook and Twitter, and their website (they're coming to Rochester in December!) and at some point I would love to listen this SXSW seminar with the amusingly alarmist headline "Is This the End of Art?"

#4. If the storytelling is good, we feel the characters are like us. If the storytelling is poor, or has an agenda, we feel the characters are inscrutable.

That's actually a quote (or paraphrase) from George Saunders' book The Braindead Microphone. I confess to being unfamiliar with Saunders or his book, but a panelist dropped that quote during a panel about Call Me Kuchu, a documentary about LGBT issues in Uganda. I'm sure the panelist brought up the quote for its relevance to documentary filmmakers, but to me it seems even more relevant to fiction writers and narrative filmmakers.

At a different panel, this one on web comedy, moderator Todd Sklar said something not entirely different. He said that a key to a successful web series is having relatable characters, so that viewers who know people like that will want to share the series with other people.

#3. There are still new stories to be told. Just not in Hollywood.

A “New Black Voices” panel of African-American indie filmmakers brought up some interesting issues. One of the panelists, director Terence Nance (An Oversimplification of Her Beauty) said: “Even white films have trouble getting made. Nothing gets made out there unless it was on a lunchbox ten years ago.” Another panelist, director Shaka King (Newlyweeds) made a seemingly opposing observation: “There's been a shift where people don't know what happened ten years ago.”

But the moderator, writer Tambay Obenson, made what I thought was the most memorable remark as the panel ended. He commented on an article he'd read somewhere (after some Googling I think it's this Guardian piece by Paul Schrader) that complained about “narrative exhaustion” resulting from every story having already been told. Obenson said that his thought when reading this was “Maybe for you, white man. You've seen the complete breadth of your experience. But our stories haven't been told.”

I laughed loud and long at this, to the point where a black woman sitting in front of me turned around and stared at me in bafflement. But it wasn't mocking laughter. I was laughing because he was absolutely right.

I've always hated people who say “there are no new stories to tell.” Without exception, they are always people who have no ideas themselves, who have nothing to say and no stories they want to tell, and they are seeking some cosmic excuse for their own lack of talent or imagination.

But just because Hollywood keeps disinterring dead franchises, doesn't mean you have to be as dumb as they are. Tell the stories that haven't been told.

#2. People are still making original work. Just not at the movies so much.

Because I went to a big-name film school at a time when NYU- and USC-trained directors were still lionized, a part of my subconscious has been clinging to the old “get noticed by the system” model. And film buffs love to mourn the lost golden age of the film-brat 1970s and Indie-wood 1990s. But several panelists talked about the Internet and web series the same way people used to talk about independent film – as a venue for original and personal work.

It's strange. Hollywood seems more dependent than ever on old properties that, as Terence Nance put it, have already been on a lunchbox. Yet in the constantly-shifting indie world, I sometimes feel like my training in older formats and traditions can be liabilities.

At the web comedy panel, Todd Sklar said that he was always losing work to people who just made a short, or do web comedy. He said losing a feature directing job to someone who's only done shorts and web series, when you've done two features, is frustrating … but it makes sense, because shorts and web series can be watched more easily as samples of someone's work.

Sidenote: The week after the conference, I drove to Squeaky Wheel in Buffalo for a screening of the new indie film Computer Chess, a comedy-drama set in 1980 and filmed with vintage black-and-white video cameras from the era. During conversations after the screening, I overheard a film student say that he's studied big Hollywood movies, but now realizes he's probably never going to make big Hollywood movies and so he should study more indie films.

I'm glad that guy learned that lesson at a younger age than I did. And I'm glad I'm finally learning it too.

So stop complaining about how scripted cable TV shows have made people stop caring about movies. Make your own online movies … or series.

#1. It's all about the audience … or is it?

Listening to the advice given by the various panelists this year, I sensed a tension between the more traditional view of filmmaking (especially of the indie variety) as a vehicle for personal expression, and the idea that content really needs to have an audience in mind that can be expected to engage with that content. I guess that's the big difference between old and new media.

But the day's closing keynote speech by producer Jon Kilik seemed to suggest that filmmaking is – and has always been – full of contradiction. Responding to the famously pessimistic speeches made by Steven Soderbergh, and by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, about the imminent death of Hollywood cinema, Kilik said such end-of-industry predictions have been made before, but that there are now more ways to make movies and to get people to see them.

“For every tentpole,” he said, “there's a young filmmaker with a small cast and crew to create a uniquely personal vision. For every sequel, there's something fighting to be born. It's never been harder and it's never been easier – and it's probably always been that way. … Don't take yourself too seriously, and take yourself as seriously as death itself. Have both confidence and doubt – it keeps you awake and alert.”

As if trying to reconcile the needs of the audience with the needs of the auteur, Kilik also stated: “The only way to truly connect with an audience is to be as personal as you can be, and share that vision onscreen.”

To be continued ...

People who like more than one thing

I started writing this blog entry on September 17, while sitting by the waterfront at FDR Drive and East 23rd Street in New York City. I was attending IFP's Independent Film Week, and an outdoor film screening was about to begin, of excerpts from various feature films that indie filmmakers were making through the organization. I've been attending this conference for several years in a row, and while I continue to find its panels and lectures to be informative, I've found that having the opportunity to network with other filmmakers is even more beneficial.

This year I got to meet one-on-one with a respected advisor in the field of independent filmmaking and self-distribution, who acknowledged the steps I'd taken so far – a website, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a blog, a YouTube trailer – and gave advice on additional steps to take.

Fishing for constructive criticism, I asked if there was anything that I was currently doing wrong. With a slightly pained expression, she brought up this very blog, saying that it read more like a diary than a film production blog. I couldn't really argue with this. Much of the past year has been slow behind-the-scenes, so I took to writing about other things that crossed my mind – movies, culture, philosophy. For me, though, these topics were at least indirectly related to the themes of the movie, or to experiences that had influenced its creation.

In the world of indie film and self-distribution, I've repeatedly heard two pieces of advice which seem to contradict each other. One is that a filmmaker should concentrate on filmmaking, and leave the publicity and marketing to someone else. The other is that you, as a filmmaker, know your film better than anyone else and that therefore only you truly know how to market it.

For me it's been tricky because Saberfrog is a warped comedy that resulted from the uneasy mental state I was in when I wrote and directed it. In other words, Saberfrog is a personal film. And in order to truly understand the film and its potential audience, I had to understand the fool who made it.

About a week before going to the IFP conference, I made a somewhat shorter trip out of town to discuss my upcoming screening tour at a meeting of the Buffalo Movie-Video Makers. During my Q&A, I was asked: “What did you learn about yourself while making the film?” That was a pretty profound question, which I don't think I quite managed to answer, even after several years spent nurturing this nutty project.

I think the answer lies with something that John Karyus said when I interviewed him for a promotional video. I asked him who he thought the target audience was for Saberfrog, and he said, in part: “People who like more than one thing.”

To some degree, he was referring to the film's combination of elements from different genres, saying that it would appeal to people who like both character-based drama and B-grade horror movies. I thought that was an insightful statement, but I also think it runs deeper than either of us realized at the time.

One of the themes in Saberfrog is the tension between following your heart and following your conscience, between being a fulfilled person and being a moral person, between being a child-at-heart and being a responsible adult. Most people seem to believe that only one of those two paths is the right one, and that the other is false and delusional. But I guess I'm a yin-and-yang kind of guy, because I'm only truly happy when I'm fulfilled in both areas. I think it's important to do what pleases you, but I also think it's character-building to do the things that you don't feel like doing, or don't think you're good at.

A lot of people don't seem to think like that. The Internet age is all about niches and cliques, and finding the community of people just like you while shunning (or trolling) everyone else. Many people are happy to belong to a clique, whether it's based on politics or music or what have you.

But I've never happily belonged to any one clique. They each have their different prejudices, which go unchallenged if you only fraternize with people just like you.

Maybe you know the feeling of not quite belonging in any one place, to any one group. You might be a fiscal conservative but a social liberal. You might be a Christian Goth, or a small-government atheist, or a Black Republican, or something else entirely that doesn't even have a name yet.

In fact, that's how every movement starts. Someone sees things differently. Someone says and does the things that no one has thought to say or do before, but which seem completely obvious afterward. Or someone says and does the things that no one else dares to do, because it seems so against the grain … and once they do, it becomes clear that other people secretly felt the same way and were just waiting for someone else to say it out loud.

Not everyone starts a movement, but I'm sure there are many restless souls out there who don't accept the shortcuts and easy answers that other people are content with.

So if you care more about seeking answers than following rules ... then this film is for you. This film is definitely for you.

And if you like foul-mouthed comedy, the movie has that too.

So come see Saberfrog.

How's that, Sheri?



Sunday, September 30 - Hamden, Connecticut. The Outer Space, 295 Treadwell St, 3 pm.

Monday, October 1 - Baltimore, Maryland. No screening scheduled, but I'll be in town!

Tuesday, October 2 - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Melwood Screening Room, 477 Melwood Ave, 8 pm.

Sunday, October 7 - Cleveland, Ohio. Cedar Lee Theatre, 2163 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights, 2 pm.

Thursday, October 11 - Buffalo, New York. Hallwalls, 341 Delaware Ave, 8 pm.

Saturday, October 13 - Toronto, Ontario. CineCycle, 129 Spadina Ave, 8 pm.

IFP conference, Day 5

DAY 5 – September 22

By the final day of the conference I was getting a little worn out, so I got to the conference a little late. The first panel I attended in its entirely was titled “Webumentary: Online Releasing and Transmedia Extensions”. The major themes, which seemed to resonate with earlier panels, were: 1) Think of film festivals as your theatrical release, since they attract reviews and critical notice, but 2) be aware of non-theatrical venues for getting your film seen.

Panelist Amy Slotnick, formerly of Miramax, said to make sure you have a trailer and a poster, and to create awareness of your film through a blog and a website. She pointed out venues for renting your film online, such as Distribber and Vodo. Another panelist, attorney Bob Seigel, said to make sure to get releases and clearances, and to go to the American University website to find a writeup of proper guidelines for fair use. Ryan Davis, social media director at Blue State Digital, said to think of everyone who worked on your film as a brand ambassador, and to have their email addresses.

Wendy Levy, strategist for Tomorrow Partners, said to think about your story in a “non-agnostic” way, meaning that a 90-minute feature film might not be the only platform for telling it. She said to consider online and interactive outlets in order to reach “the people formerly known as your audience”. Jason Spingarn-Koff, who made the film Life 2.0, announced that the New York Times is soliciting short video pieces to display on their websites as op-eds; this triggered a lengthy debate about whether political “advocacy” would be permitted in these pieces, and what the definition of “advocacy” actually was.

I was kind of surprised to hear a documentary panel steer into a discussion of gaming and interactivity. Levy described some projects about trafficking or vaccination, in which users could use a mobile tool to enter information about troubled areas in a comunity-generated map. During the Q&A, someone said that in his/her experience, kids found documentary-based games did not have enough levels, posing the question: How do you measure the effectiveness of games, and are the games the right way to go?

Levy said this was a great question, but didn't quite seem to answer it; she did, however, say that at a games panel last year at Berkeley, someone said that games have fought the culture war with cinema, and won. She said that “smart games” have a reputation for being clunky and expensive, and did not have the prestige of, say, Grand Theft Auto. (She added that she would love it if Grand Theft Auto had a secret layer where, when you pick up a bimbo, you can take her to the women's shelter.) “Your documentary can be on Xbox now,” she said. “If you can make something simple and impactful and cool, that's the way to go.” She also mentioned the game World Without Oil, which was played by many people and generated a lot of data.

Davis highly recommended Jane McGonigal's book Reality is Broken, about how game mechanics shape our lives. I haven't read this book yet, but apparently its thesis is that games provide motivation and rewards that are lacking in real life, and that therefore games could and should be used to structure people's thoughts and actions to become more positive and productive. I've read a range of reviews of this book, from positive to negative. The most scathing I think was in Filmmaker magazine of all places; the critic found it lamentable that one would need to build a game to enable one to perform certain basic life tasks. Having spent my own life pursuing artistic, academic and career goals, I'm somewhat troubled by the suggestion that motivation and rewards exist in games but not in real life. But I haven't read the book myself, so I could be getting McGonigal's thesis wrong.

The next panel was arguably the best: “How to Mobilize an Audience”, which consisted of a motivational lecture (and Power Point presentation) by Paola Freccero of Crowdstarter. Freccero's main theme, which she repeated several times throughout her presentation, was “Get over yourself.” She said the biggest problem facing independent filmmakers isn't piracy, but obscurity; if you're being pirated it means people are interested! She said the way to spread awareness of your film is to show it, and while a traditional theater screening still beats showing the film on a TV or iPad, any darkened room will do. She discouraged four-walling (renting a movie screen yourself), saying that your favorite cafe might be a better place to show the film.

Frecerro said that you have to preach to the choir – by which she meant screening the film for your core audience – before reaching the masses. The audience for a film may not always be obvious, but she defined the “core” audience as family, friends, and people who worked on the film in front of or behind the camera, and the “masses” as strangers who would be interested in the subject matter and/or genre.

In terms of marketing and publicity – specifically the trailer, artwork and synopsis – Freccero said that it doesn't matter what you want, it matters what is useful or interesting to the audience. She said you might want to get someone else to develop these materials. She also suggested having test screenings – get friends of friends to a screening, or use a secure online streaming platform to show it to other people – and use a site like Survey Monkey to solicit feedback.

Freccero cautioned against the expense of parties, T-shirts and other publicity materials; while they might be fun to do, you should ask yourself whether these things will help you directly reach your audience. She said to have a website, even if it's not fancy, and that trailers, clips, photos and Q&A sessions from screenings should be “shareable, embeddable, emailable, postable, tweetable, retweetable.” She said you should try to capture the name and email address of everyone who comes into contact with the film. She added that because filmmakers are often too “sheepish” to ask viewers or organizations to help publicize the film, you might want to get someone else to perform this task.

If there's a website where your core audience hangs out, offer the site exclusive content. She also said that the best time to get an audience mobilized is when there's an end in sight (i.e. a showing), rather than trying to get people excited about a film that won't come out for years. If it does take longer than expected, show humor and humanity on your website by apologizing for the delay.

When asked how to generate an audience in the first place, Freccero said to try and convey the idea to people that if they like a certain subject, they will like your film, and to make your online presence about that subject, not just the movie. You can't take the attitude of “My film is unique, you have to see it to understand it.”

For the remainder of the day, IFP scheduled panels in different rooms at the same time, making the attendees have to choose to attend one panel or the other. However, panels in the main room were being streamed live online, so I decided to try an experiment: I would attend panels in the secondary room, but through the magic of wireless technology I would also listen to the streamed panels in the main room. The effect of this was like the Mike Figgis movie Time Code, where your attention shifts among the different simultaneous storylines, focusing on one and then another.

I attended a panel on post-production solutions for independent filmmakers. Jeremy Chilnick, of the documentary Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope, discussed how a Marriott Hotel suite at Comic-Con served as the production office and edit suite for the film; 13 camerapeople would film the convention, then every day the filmmakers would screen the day's footage (“dailies” to us professionals) and make decisions. Other panelists discussed similar experiences when they were able to begin editing each day's footage immediately, in mobile or unconventional locations.

Avid Media Access seemed to be the tool of choice for these panelists. A feature called “script sync” was discussed, allowing the editor to take dailies, then drag-and-drop onto the script, and the tool will identify where those lines appear. Another feature called “phrase find” was praised for making it easy to find certain words in footage. I didn't know what they were talking about in either case, but they said these were particularly useful tools for documentarians.

Chilnick stressed the importance of backing up your material. (He said that he does triple backups of his digital footage, and also records it to analog “because I'm paranoid!”) Another panelist, Matthew Parker, said to figure out your workflow before you start, not a week in. The panelists generally said that you shouldn't skimp on post-production; panelist Andrew Weisblum said that it almost always ends up costing more in the long run if you don't follow a proven standard, or at least thoroughly explore and test your process.

The panelists discussed final file formats (DCP, EasyDCP) that I've never worked with. They also recommended some books for editors: The Lean Forward Moment by Norm Hollyn, Dream Repairman by Jim Clark, and an unnamed book by Walter Murch (probably In the Blink of an Eye). Additional tools they mentioned included Dreamcolor, an $1800 color correction tool; Lightworks, an open-source video editing program; and the streaming device Slingbox.

During the above panel, I was trying to listen to the panel in the other room, where Indiewire's Eugene Hernandez was interviewing two women responsible for the success of the documentary Bill Cunningham New York. I confess to not getting much out of this panel, since the post-production panel seemed more interesting me, as well as actually being in the same room as me. So my experiment was off to a weak start.

A panel called “Music Matters: Driving Your Narrative Through Music” was an anomaly in the conference, in that it was about actual filmmaking technique rather than marketing or promotion. I didn't take a lot of notes on this one because it was mostly stuff that, as a film music buff, I kind of knew – music sets the tone, absence of music can be important too, and music can play against the nature of a scene to change its meaning.

Meanwhile I listened to a panel about new venues for documentary filmmaking, including VOD. A panelist said that the documentary “bubble” had burst, and said there are so many documentary films that “there's no place to put them anymore. But you can do it yourself. Don't make as many of them as you have. If there's not a burning need to tell the story, don't.”

I don't know how many people were on this panel or who said what, but I learned a few things. I learned that major distributors such as Netflix might pay $180,000-$200,000 but that you'd give up your ancillary digital rights for a long time, whereas Blockbuster, Microsoft, and Google are acquiring nonexclusive rights to films, so you can work with a digital aggregator or sales agent. (In fact, I learned that those big guys won't talk directly to filmmakers and prefer to go through an aggregator or agent.)

One panelist comment echoed Frecerro's panel earlier in the day: “It's still important to establish an identity for your film. How is the average or discerning customer even going to find the film if there's no identity created for the film? Showmanship, communication, publicity, marketing ... If a film doesn't have a subject that can be communicated, if you're not prepared to do that from the very outset, create assets, communicate and get others to communicate – how are you going to get people to find out about it?”

This panel partly overlapped with the final panel of the day, which posed the question of whether issue-related documentaries are “Preaching to the Converted”. Some by-now familiar themes made a last stand here: know your goal, know your audience and how to find them. Clara Aguilar, president of programming at ITVS, discussed a why-do-we-celebrate-Black-History-Month documentary called More than a Moment; she said that the filmmaker made a mobile app to designate significant places in black history, as a complement to the film and to get people to think about issues. “He thought of this late, but really you should think of it early,” she said.

So what did I learn from this epic week?

Know your goals with the film.

Know your audience and how to reach them.

As an indie filmmaker, you can't do everything, especially not publicity. Get someone else to do it, so you can concentrate on filmmaking.

You can make a no-budget film, establish credibility, then work your way up to having producers and name actors.

Your work should somehow belong to the audience, not just you the creator.

All of that wisdom didn't come cheap, but now you get it for free!

Have a good night.

IFP conference, Day 4

DAY 4 – September 21

The fourth day of IFP's filmmaking conference was mainly devoted to documentary filmmaking. When attending this conferences in previous years, I'd always skipped the documentary panels, but this year I decided it behooved me to learn about all aspects of independent filmmaking. I'm glad I did, since some of the advice supposedly specific to docs seemed equally applicable to narratives (and probably vice versa).

A common theme in today's panels was discussion of a successful recent documentary called Buck, about a soft-spoken cowboy with the ability to calm abused horses (he became an advisor on the film The Horse Whisperer), and whose homespun wisdom apparently grew from his own troubled relationship with his authoritarian father. I hadn't really heard of this film – I think it played at the Little Theatre in Rochester, but I knew little about it besides its nondescript title. It was apparently a big hit, though. Unlike a lot of documentaries that are either esoteric or politically divisive, this was a feel-good film about decency and healing, and appealed to a range of audiences.

The first panel was a discussion with indie producer Andrea Meditch, who spoke about several recent documentaries including Buck; Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man (which apparently came about when Herzog noticed the raw footage being edited for a Discovery Channel production at the same editing house he was using); and Man on Wire, about a man who walked between the Twin Towers on a tightrope back in the 70s. I arrived at Meditch's panel late, but she seemed to talk largely about the role that editing and post-production played in telling the “story” of a documentary. She said that a documentary had three versions – the movie in your head, the movie you have the experience of shooting, and the movie you actually shot – and that it was the role of the editor and producer to “intervene” and make the movie work. She also said that, to tell its story coherently, a documentary may require certain signposts (or “tentpoles”) in the form of narration or graphics, but that if you took these out and the movie still “works”, then the story is working.

During the Q&A, Meditch was asked whether she made decisions from the “head” or the “heart”. She answered, “I'm always looking at heart. If you can't engage audiences at level of heart, you're gonna lose them.” Perhaps paradoxically, she then stressed the importance of structure, and pointed out that Man on Wire had three or four different story threads that interweaved until the moment when he goes on the roof. “Move away from just what happens,” she said, “to what that means in terms of their lives and our lives.”

Meditch said that documentary filmmakers can and should learn a great deal from narrative filmmakers: “Just turning on a camera and saying 'I'll follow this' leads to a lot of footage” which then needs to be sorted. She said that when seeking a documentary subject, she looks for potential for nuance or layers. Man on Wire, she said, is about how this country's changed in the last 25 years, and what it means to be 24 years old now compared to then, rather than just being about the person walking on the wire. “Think about what your film can mean in a larger context,” she said.

Asked about common mistakes in documentary filmmaking, she said that too many documentaries are “one-note” and speak only to a single, limited audience. “Who do you want this to resonate with?” she asked, pointing out that anyone can now pick up a camera and make a documentary, and that your film needs to be of the highest quality possible in order to stand out. Like some of the narrative panelists, she said that when you finish a film, you're not even half done; from the outset of a project, you need to think about what you're trying to achieve with the film and how plan to get it “out there”, and that if you don't think about these things, you'll only make one film.

Asked if she'd ever written a book about producing, Meditch said that she had not, but recommended a book on the subject called Producer to Producer by Maureen Ryan. Asked what advice she would give her younger self, she said, “Do it with joy, do it with other people, try to reach out to other people. I've been able to follow my curiosity about the world and bring these stories to a bigger audience. Find people you like work with. Enjoy it. It's actually fun! Sometimes.”

The next panel was a pitch session similar to the one from the day before, but for documentaries instead of narrative features. The panelists came from various organizations that funded documentary work; they included Ryan Harrington of the Tribeca Film Institute, and Judith Helfand of Chicken and Egg. The panelists said that, when being pitched to, they were looking for unique, untold stories with compelling characters. Harrington said that it was also important to communicate where you are in the production cycle and how much money you were looking for. Helfand added that when pitching you should talk a little about yourself – how you discovered this story and what kind of special access you have.

The first documentary pitch was about a now-defunct Washington, D.C. jazz club whose CBGB-like history had been archived in the form of VHS recordings. The pitch got a mixed response from the panelists, who gave advice on how to shape the story and emphasize the human stories. One panelist, Dori Begley of Magnolia Pictures, warned against making what one film critic called “an illustrated Wikipedia page.”

The second pitch, a film about blind sailors, was well-received for the human-interest subject matter and for the passion with which it was pitched. The third pitch, a film about people on different continents and their relationships with their environment (this one had been filmed but needed finishing funds), was somewhat shyly delivered, and Helfand found this aspect sympathetic; you need confidence, she said, but not everyone has to be a “used car salesman”. Begley suggested emphasizing a theme that seemed implied but glossed over in the pitch – that some of these people had a Herzog-like madness in their fixation on the environment. Helfand and Harrington said not to use the word “environmental”, which they said was a “kiss of death”.

A panel about fundraising stated that documentary funding tended to be incremental, with small amounts from local sources such as historical societies and arts councils, perhaps of $500 or $1000; large lump sums were rare and tended to come late in the process. Sundance, Tribeca, Cinereach, Chicken & Egg, CPB, NEH, NEA, Ford, and ITVS were all named as possible funding sources. Searchable online resources the panelists named included realscreen.com, reelisor.com, telcoreport.com, documentary.org, d-word.com, Beyond the Box, IFP, and edn.dk (EDN, an organization who publish a guidebook, and who the panelists recommended becoming a member of).

The panel slowly shifted focus to distribution and promotion. The panelists recommended attending events such as Independent Film Week, Real Screen Summit, Sunny Side, Sheffield, MIP, and MIPCOM in order to network and make connections. One panelist quoted a Scottish filmmaker as saying that going to pitch events felt like being a pole dancer, but with less dignity. The panelists recommended going to these events as an observer at first, and that such events were part of the early stage of promotion and marketing; no one walks away from these events with a check in their pocket, but if you do a good pitch, you will make a connection and may be able to make a successful deal later even if your current pitch doesn't lead to a deal in the next two months.

The next panel was devoted specifically to Buck; they showed a trailer, which finally helped me understand what the fuss was about. The panelists, who worked on the film, said that the film resulted from 300 hours of footage, a year of post-production (10 months of editing, about 2 months of sound mixing), and a budget of over $1 million that was provided by people who cared about Buck. The film appealed not only to horse lovers but to therapists, and had strong word-of-mouth. The film comes out on DVD and VOD on October 4 (this Tuesday), so maybe I'll finally get to see this thing for myself.

A panel on post-production stressed the importance of knowing what deliverables you need to have, which may include E&O (errors and omissions) insurance, releases, a press kit and publicity images. If you're trying to get into a festival or are selling to a broadcaster, you need to know what they need and when they need it, and work backwards from that so you can deliver in a timely manner.

Keiko Deguchi, a film editor for narratives and documentaries, said that the editing process on a documentary goes more smoothly when the footage is well-shot and has decent coverage; slightly flawed footage could take him four months to finish, but footage with more serious problems could take nine months.

Postproduction supervisor Francis Power told a story about how not to do post-production. He worked on a film that had several different directors of photography, resulting in a hodgepodge of shooting styles; the film used a then-recent camera, Sony EX1, that was not yet fully supported by Final Cut Pro; and the film went through several different editors. The resulting technical difficulties stretched the post-production process over a year and a half, although he felt that under more ideal conditions it could have been accomplished in six months.

Mike Jackman said that his company, the lab Deluxe, relies on studios for their “bread and butter” but that they try to be accommodating towards students and indie filmmakers (“the future”); sometimes studios cancel or delay a slot, which the lower-budget filmmaker can take advantage of. He recommended starting post-production during pre-production – shoot a minute of test footage, bring your camera to the post house, know what editing system you want to use, and know what your final format will be. He also pointed out that individual title cards, rather than scrolling credits, are often more practical; fixing a typo in a single title card is more cost-effective than having to redo an entire scrolling credit sequence.

Deguchi said that, as an editor, it helps when the director has a clear idea of what film needs to be. The director may have big ideas for the film, which may not be apparent in the actual footage, but that provides him with a guide; his task is to find that material in the footage. Other parting words of the wisdom from the panel were: know what file sizes you'll be working with (Power recommended 720p proxy), organize your drives well, and name your files in a way that you can understand.

The final panel of the day had the title “In the Documentary Ghetto”. The panelists admitted disliking this title, and shifted the debate to whether documentaries are part of the larger indie film community or are a separate world unto themselves. Like other panels, the subject turned to the continuing importance of film festivals vs. the possibilities of self-distribution and self-promotion through venues such as iTunes, Amazon streaming, Hulu, Netflix, Sundance Now and YouTube. The moderator, Christine Gaines of Withoutabox, asked whether self-distribution is just for filmmakers who can't get into the major film festivals or find traditional distribution, or whether it really is a viable option. The response was that it depends on the film.

David Courier, programmer at Sundance, said that having a festival strategy is important. Know what festivals you could plausibly get into and that would serve your film well. Have your A list, your B list, your C list, like applying to college. Know your calendar; if you premiere at Full Frame, for example, you won't be able to play at Sundance, which wants premieres of its own. (Each festival has its own mission: Sundance is about discovering new talent, Cannes is about known auteurs with their new films, with some discoveries as well, and Toronto is in between.)

Courier also offered some more basic wisdom: Make sure your DVD plays all the way through. When communicating with a festival by email, put the film's title in the subject line and don't include any fake friendliness – just get to the point! He stressed the importance of such issues by pointing out that Sundance receives 4000 feature submissions a year, more than half of which are documentaries.

Another panelist, Thom Powers of the Toronto International Film Festival, said to make sure you have a great image to represent the film in the program book, so that (say) The Wall Street Journal will pick an image of your film when covering the festival. He also said that, when submitting an in-progress film to festivals, send your best possible version; if you can't get the film finished in time then maybe you should have waited, since you only get one chance to make a first impression.

Much of this advice seemed to apply to filmmakers of any stripe, not just documentarians, so I'm glad I chose to attend the entire week this year.

NEXT TIME: I attend the best panel of the week, then manage to attend more than one panel at the same time (sort of).

IFP conference, Day 3

Another flashforward – Wednesday night I drove to Buffalo for some lectures on filmmaking. The speakers included writer-actor Frank Rossi, who had stories to tell about breaking into Hollywood; DIY filmmaker Peter McGennis, who said that there was no one perfect way of making a film; and experienced crew member Chris Santucci, who I actually worked with on a corporate project many years ago.

Having just spent a whole week attending filmmaker panels, I probably wouldn't have gone to this as well, but I'm glad I did because it gave me a flashback to my film school days. I've gotten so used to do everything myself in the DIY manner, it was good to be reminded of the days when I had aspirations to break into commercial studio filmmaking.

It's because of this event, though, that I didn't continue my blog yesterday. Anyway, back to the IFP conference ...

DAY 3 – September 20

The first panel of the day had the inspirational title “Paying the Bills”. Panelist Ursula Lawrence of the Writers Guild of America touted the advantages of joining the Guild, while the other panelists talked about the struggle to get by when making a film. One of the panelists, producer Gil Holland, said that he once made a movie for $250,000 and sold it for over $1 million, but didn't see any actual money for nine months, which left him living on credit cards and getting his phone turned off, etc. He also said it takes three to six months to break into an industry where people prefer to hire their friends.

Another panelist, Antonio Campos (no idea if I spelled that right – my program booklet has gone missing), mentioned the cliché that every waiter is a struggling actor, and that filmmakers should be prepared to pay their dues similarly, pointing out that Christopher Nolan made his first movie over six months of weekends. He also said to “accept that you're going to have credit card debt,” and that if you want a life with more stability, benefits and a regular paycheck, you should do something else.

Speaking of his NYU film school days, Campos said that in film school, the connections you make are more important than the classes you take; if you surround yourself with enough talented people, one of you will make it, and hopefully he or she can help you and others. On a similar note, Holland said that you should be adding points to a “favor bank” so you have people to call when you need them.

Campos' most memorable quote was “I always believe things will work. As bad as things seem in the moment, things will work out if you keep going.” He also discussed the “danger” of getting too comfortable doing paid work, and realizing one day that you never took the plunge of making your movie. This advice sounded a bit reckless given the current economy, although I sort of agree that things “work out” if you do your best and are reasonably smart and adaptable. Holland pointed out that there are jobs within the industry that are less precarious than filmmaking, such as being a film lawyer. (During the Q&A, someone quoted Werner Herzog allegedly saying that filmmakers should go to business school, not film school.)

The next panel was called “How to Craft a Pitch” and consisted of three aspiring screenwriters pitching their projects to the panelists (as they would to a producer or investor), who then gave their opinions on the pitch. The lessons conveyed in this panel seemed to be to keep it short and clear, convey what budget level you're aiming at, and mentioning examples of films in the style you have in mind. Have a log line – one sentence that sums up the movie.

This was followed by a panel devoted to the recent indie comedy Terri by writer/director Azazel Jones, who discussed his career progression from making lower-budget films. Jones had some advice that I wrote down as: “It's important to like the work you're doing. God forbid you make something you don't like and it succeeds. You think it'll buy you the chance to do what you want, but it doesn't work like that. They'll want that again, and you'll be surrounded by people who like what you don't like. It's hard to pick your battles, but to pick a battle is important. Have something to say that no one can say but you. Hopefully that will make you irreplaceable.” Again, that might not be the most responsible career advice, but without that kind of idealism we don't get independent films.

The last panel was about getting an agent, and the advice all seemed to boil down to the importance of networking and meeting people. Lucy Stille of Paradigm (the agency that represents indie writer-director John Sayles and author Dean Koontz) discusssed the “six degrees of separation” theory and said that getting in touch with someone might be easier than you think. So there was no great magic bullet given out here, except to be connected socially in the field. Agencies secure clients by referral, and by going to festivals looking for talent. Agents don't generally accept unsolicited manuscripts from strangers, although NYC agencies are apparently a bit more indie-friendly.

Actually, Stille seemed to have most of the best and clearest advice on this panel. “It's easier to say no than yes,” she said, and therefore the closer a script is to being a movie the more likely it is to get noticed. If a script shows up from a writer who's talented, her agency may put the writer with a strong development producer who can help the writer make the script into something marketable. When an audience member asked when was a good time to seek an agent, she said that when you have a film in a festival you should have another script written or in progress, in order to have something to present or pitch to an agent.

One panelist – I don't remember who – said that if you start with one type of film (such as a small, contained thriller), your next proposed project should have a similar tone at a slightly bigger budget, but within that genre you can add new elements. “If you change [genre] too much, people won't know what to do with you. If you have more experience and people know you, you may then be able to say you have a different idea. You have to have another script started even if it's not done. If I ask what you want to do next, and you say 'I don't know', I'll be less impressed with you.”

Later that evening was a presentation of excerpts from indie features being developed by IFP. I missed the beginning of this show, and probably for this reason saw more documentaries than narratives. Frankly the docs impressed me more, but there was one narrative that (based on the excerpt shown) stood out from the others. Pervertigo, from a mohawk-rocking writer-director named Jaron Henrie-McCrea, had a wildness lacking in some of the more earnest projects surrounding it. The scene I saw consisted of a guy secretly videotaping a girl in the house next door, only for her to notice him and sic her steroidal boyfriend (and his posse) on him. After seeing these muscle-bound, 1980s-high-school-movie-villain type dudes chase the guy down, threatening him with over-the-top violence and yelling "perv" over and over while the boyfriend rips the camcorder apart with his bare hands(!), I knew this was a movie I wanted to see in its entirety.

NEXT TIME: Post-production topics rear their head as the conference switches its focus to documentaries, and I learn that a documentary I never heard of is apparently quite heartwarming.

IFP conference, Day 2

In yesterday's post on IFP's annual filmmaking conference, I neglected to mention that Troma legend Lloyd Kaufman was in the audience. At first I thought maybe he was seeking some wisdom like the rest of us, but of course he was present because his wife Pat Sweeney was a panelist. Sorry for the omission. Yet it seems fitting to bring up Lloyd Kaufman at this point, since the first panel of day 2 had another known genre filmmaker, Larry Fessenden, as a panelist.

DAY 2: September 19

The first panel, featuring Fessenden as well as producer/author Jon Reiss (Think Outside the Box Office), was about producing. Reiss said that you should think about marketing and distribution from the very inception of your project. Don't tailor the film to an audience, but think about who is the audience for your film and what are your goals: To change the world? To find a large audience? To change your career?

Although the panelists had practical talk about producing, they maintained an emphasis on artistic integrity. Reiss stressed the importance of knowing who the audience for your film is and figuring out how to reach it. Panelist Mike Ryan of Greyshack Films said that for his recent female-centric Western, Meek's Cutoff, he had to tell the investors how the movie would make its money back, and he said that “every woman who listens to NPR will see this.” The panelists also cited the recent film Note by Note, about the making of a Steinway piano, which appealed not only to piano fans but furniture makers. Fessenden discussed a film he made about a chef who seeks revenge against a critic, which didn't quite fit the horror genre but was enjoyed by “foodies”.

“Cinema is about communication,” said Fessenden. “Marketing is about supporting that communication. You can't make an alternative-minded film and then market it aggressively without a sensitivity to what that film is about.”

The panelists, particularly Reiss, also stressed the importance of setting aside money and resources for marketing and distribution. “I say half [of the budget] to get people thinking about this,” said Reiss. He also emphasized the importance of commitment: “If you're in this business to make money, I suggest you have better things to do with your week than be here ... You need to be passionate.” He described the long odds of getting into Sundance, where about 3000 feature films are submitted every year, only 200 actually get in, and only about 40 get distribution deals. (“And they're not good deals,” added Ryan.)

Reiss has coined the term “PDM” (producer of distribution and marketing) as a new crew position that low-budget films should have. His view is that filmmakers – who aren't always socially adept – should concentrate on making films, and leave the outreach to a PDM. He also suggested that a film about a particular subject to reach out to fans of that particular subject, not just a filmgoing audience.

The subject of four-walling (renting a theater and collecting all the income yourself) came up. Reiss said that each film has different needs, and that these days you should think beyond movie theaters. Fessenden said he preferred to split the box office with the theater owners rather than rent the theater. Fessenden also referred to reviews, newspaper articles, and the blogosphere as “free advertising.”

The next panel was specifically about self-promotion, and featured publicist Sheri Candler, publicist Adam Kersh, filmmaker Ava Duvernay, and IFC's Ryan Werner. Candler's advice was that “Self promotion is about helping other people ... Many filmmakers are shy and don't want to gladhand. Give your audience things they're interested in ... Be someone they want to talk to. Spend less time talking about yourself and more on what you think they'll be interested in.” Duvernay had similar advice: “Your pitch is for your film, not yourself. You're nothing without your film … Your pitch needs to be less about 'me and my friends made this' but what it's about, who the audience is, why it's important.”

Kersh and Werner recommended hiring a publicist, and to do so as early as possible, although Candler said that at a smaller festival the filmmaker could be his/her own publicist. At this point, visible tension arose between Werner, who stressed the need to debut your film in a major festival like Sundance in order to get noticed; and Candler, who pointed out that not every filmmaker would be able to do so.

Candler's advice was that you need an audience before you get money. Know your goal, whether it's to get industry attention, or to change the world, or get the film seen (which may not mean money). That helps you figure out your audience and how to market/distribute them. At the script stage, bear in mind who will love your film and how to find them. She also warned against selling all of your rights to a distributor, so that you can still sell copies of the movie yourself.

The next panel was by “distribution strategist” Peter Broderick, who repeated themes introduced by Reiss and Candler: Know your goal, whether it's to make money back, to make another film, to entertain, to open a dialogue with others, to build a fanbase, to educate and motivate, etc. and to know which goals are primary, secondary and tertiary. Getting the film seen or getting top-tier premiere are not goals, just means to an end. He defined the three main reasons to make an indie film as: Maximize revenue, maximize career, change the world. He added that there's only one reason to be an indie filmmaker today: “because you can't help yourself.”

Broderick also said that filmmakers should not try to do everything themselves, and should have a distribution team as well as a production team. He discussed crowdfunding, and said that the building of an audience was more important than the fundraising.

Next was a case study about the distribution of Kevin Smith's new film Red State. As you may know, Smith chose to self-distribute the film rather than sell the rights to a distributor; he controversially announced a plan to auction the distribution rights at a Sundance event, only to declare that he would be doing it himself (look on YouTube for video of that event). David Dinerstein, representing the film on this panel, said that if there'd been a distributor who really wanted the movie, they would have heard about it before this event.

The release of Red State began with screenings at 15 venues in the U.S. and another 5 in Canada, each with a ticket price of $60-$100 but hosted by Smith in person. (I almost went to the one in Toronto, and a DVD was to be included in the ticket price.) The film earned $1.1 million from these shows alone. The film was then released on VOD, followed by another screening (40 theaters showing the film simultaneously) where Smith responded to audience questions sent by Twitter. (I attended the Rochester screening on Sunday.)

A panel about music seemed to consist largely of the high-powered panelists (including composer George S. Clinton) telling war stories about the 60s and about famous people they've worked with, but ended with the advice that, to get music for your indie film, you should give a struggling local musician a chance instead of buying music from a library.

The day concluded with a panel featuring Sundance's Keri Putnam and Tribeca Enterprises' Geoffrey Gilmore. They discussed the changing role of film festivals, which Gilmore criticized for having “too many people with this color hair”, pointing to his own graying head. He said the future would be in new narrative forms, such as games. He recommended reading the Future of Film blog on Tribeca's website.

Even by this second day I was noticing certain themes repeating in the panels, but it was useful and informative nonetheless. Later that evening was a book launch for Sheri Candler's book Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul, which is available as a free download until the end of this month.

NEXT TIME: panels on how to pitch and how to get an agent, plus a crazy movie I saw a preview of.