Information vital to the Rebellion: Watching the Star Wars “making-of” documentaries

You've surely heard by now that there's a new Star Wars movie opening this week. I see that many people are marathoning the previous six movies in preparation.

As a kid I devoured every book, article, interview or documentary I could find about how Star Wars came to be, what its themes are, how the effects were done. Star Wars, to me, was always something that somebody made, and I was always on the side of the person who made it and interested in what he was trying to achieve.

But I think many other viewers prefer to accept invented universes like Star Wars at face value, and to acknowledge the writer or director only when it’s time to blame someone for something they didn’t like. This is aided by the fact that, more and more, science fiction and fantasy films and TV shows are based on existing properties, making it easier for viewers to feel that they know in advance how the story should go and that the filmmaker or showrunner will get it wrong. 

In defiance of this trend, I decided that instead of marathoning the previous six movies (something I’ve already done anyway), I would marathon the “making of” documentaries, and revisit the Star Wars saga from a behind-the-scenes perspective. In doing so I hope to champion the creativity and hard work of the people who made them.

(Disclaimer: I don’t have a player to watch the Blu-ray features, so my marathon will be limited to what’s on DVD, on the internet, or in my personal collection. Also, the prequel DVDs are loaded to the gills with bonus features, so in the interest of time and sanity I limited myself to one or two documentaries for each prequel.)

THE BEGINNING: MAKING EPISODE I (2001)

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is widely criticized for its lack of realism, so what’s fascinating about the making-of documentary The Beginning is how raw it is. It has no narration, no background music, no talking-head studio interviews, no fancy graphics or transitions. There is some occasional plain text telling you what the location is, what the date is, or how many weeks are left before the movie comes out, but otherwise this is fly-on-the-wall footage of the film’s planning, shooting and editing, presented without comment.

The upcoming Episode VII will be the first Star Wars movie made without its original creator, so it’s poignant that my marathon would start here. The documentary opens with Lucas being interviewed on 60 Minutes, explaining that the “auteur” theory is true, that movies resemble their makers, and that he to have a strong emotional commitment to these films in order to make them.

A scene in Episode I that’s grown on me over the years is the one where Anakin Skywalker’s loving mother sends her young son off to new adventures with the words “Don’t look back.” It’s a scene I now find moving, since the other two prequels have provided clearer knowledge of how painfully the adult Anakin would fail to live up to his early potential. I bring this up because The Beginning has the heartbreaking real-life equivalent – we see little Jake Lloyd excitedly signs the contract to play Anakin, while his female agent tells him how proud she is, surely assuming her young client is destined for stardom. (If you don’t know what later became of Jake Lloyd – who even changed his name! – I’ll just say that his Wikipedia page is a sad read.)

Contrary to Episode I’s reputation as an exercise in CGI overkill, we see the extensive use of audio-animatronic creatures, large physical sets, and arduous location shooting under difficult weather conditions. Lucas is seen to be a very hands-on director, consistently involved in every creative decision.

Still, rewatching this documentary leads me to suspect that many of Episode I’s problems result from Lucas’ preference for directing films in post-production rather than on the set.

When Lucas is reviewing the finalists for the role of the young Anakin, he says he is trying to decide between one kid who is pretty good all the time, and another kid who is more hit-and-miss but has brilliant moments that could be combined in editing. Later in the film, editor Ben Burtt sounds slightly frustrated by Lucas’ desire to try to re-direct a film in post-production; Burtt points out that in the old days one would reject a take that had something wrong with it, and that the ability to digitally combine different details from different takes has now made the editing process more challenging.

If Lucas likes a certain type of performance, and is able to cherry-pick every element of a take or scene that fits that preference, that may explain why the performances in Episode I seem so monotone. I would also argue that if the finished CGI had kept more of actor Ahmed Best’s on-set physicality, without exaggerating his character’s movements and facial reactions to such a cartoony degree, Jar Jar would have seemed less grotesque.

In any case, Burtt’s grumbling is one of only two scenes in the documentary that indicate creative difficulty behind the scenes (even though it was made for Episode I’s belated DVD release, by which time the film’s reputation as a disappointment was set in stone). The other, more famous moment is when Lucas and company review a rough cut of the film and are concerned about how to salvage it. Lucas is concerned that things move too fast (“if it’s fast for us, a regular person is going to go nuts”) and that it might be possible to reduce this. It’s unclear whether Lucas is referring just to the action climax, or to the movie as a whole. If it’s the latter, his attempts to slow things down might explain why the pace of the exposition scenes in Episode I feel a bit sluggish.

Lucas’ attitude through the film seesaws between optimism and caution. I’m fond of the scene where he pragmatically observes that the sequel to American Graffiti was a box-office failure, and that “you can destroy these things – it is possible.”

Fun fact: Swear words (mainly from producer Rick McCallum) are bleeped throughout the documentary, but they missed one. After executing a stunt, actor Ewan MacGregor says that when he was offered Star Wars his response was “Too f**king right!”

The Beginning won’t convince anyone to love Episode I, but it’s a good glimpse into the filmmaking process from beginning to end. Seeing and hearing a full chorus belting out “Duel of the Fates” is a particular highlight.

FROM PUPPETS TO PIXELS: DIGITAL CHARACTERS IN EPISODE II (2002)

"STORY" (2002)

The DVD for Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones doesn’t clearly identify one of its bonus features as a primary “making-of”. There are two “Documentaries” and three “Featurettes”, so I watched one of each.

The documentary From Puppets to Pixels has the same minimalist approach as The Beginning. The emphasis this time is on the challenge of creating convincing digital characters, specifically the new digital Yoda as well as Obi-wan’s four-armed friend Dexter.

My favorite moment is when Lucas and his animation director are arguing the subtleties of how sad or worried that the digital Yoda should look when delivering the line “Begun, the Clone War has.” This animation had apparently gone through several unsatisfactory iterations by this point, and Lucas seems to be struggling to keep his sense of humor about a shot that is now trying his patience.

Like The Beginning, this documentary provides glimpses into the filmmaking process from filming to editing. However, this time we only see two of the main actors at work (Ewan MacGregor and the late, great Christopher Lee) and that alone makes it feel less comprehensive than The Beginning.

By contrast, the featurette “Story” is a more conventional piece that has talking-head clips of Lucas and the main cast discussing the important story developments that occur in Episode II (a film that many fans like to insist has no story). Samuel L. Jackson states that this film will be a return to the swashbuckling spirit of the original films. I found this statement curious, since if anything Episode I was the more light-hearted film and Episode II is the one that plunges into darker territory. But it’s interesting as an indirect acknowledgement that the previous Star Wars film was not universally well-received.

WITHIN A MINUTE: THE MAKING OF EPISODE III (2005)

“THE CHOSEN ONE” (2005)

Within a Minute, the making-of documentary for Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, is an interesting departure from those for the previous prequels. Stylistically it’s more conventional in its use of interviews, graphics and music, but its content is very different. It follows a single minute-long section of the movie through the entire filmmaking process from beginning to end, taking pains to emphasize how many people are involved and how many decisions are made along the way – from scripting and planning and filming, to special effects and sound design and music.

Whereas The Beginning opened with Lucas discussing the auteur theory, Within a Minute celebrates all the individuals who contribute to making a film. Each subsection of the movie includes a scroll of all the names involved in that part of the process. The roll-call of animators actually includes two guys I knew at RIT – Brian Cantwell (who is interviewed on-camera) and Kurt Nellis. The film even covers the people who never get covered in making-of documentaries, such as the caterers and the people who handle payroll.

The section of Episode III that was chosen for analysis is a minute-long portion of the climactic lightsaber duel between Anakin and Obi-wan, as they fight atop a large structure that breaks apart and falls onto the sea of lava beneath them. This battle was a famous piece of unseen backstory for years before the prequels were made, and all involved seem excited at the prospect of bringing this legendary moment to life.

I love Episode III but am aware that many people do not. This conflict made me squirm a bit at producer Rick McCallum’s obvious pride in the work on display here. I think his pride is justified but I could mentally hear Internet trolls snickering at his every declaration.

The shorter documentary “The Chosen One” is less about the production process and more about the creative development of the character of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, and how Episode III completes the story that is developed in the other five films to date. We get talking-head quotes from Lucas and Hayden Christensen, as well as on-set footage of Lucas directing Christensen and explaining the character’s motivation. The moment of Christensen walking on-set in the final Vader costume is understandably treated as a major event, with the crew applauding and Christensen later recalling the event as something he will not soon forget.

(Also, in a recap clip from Episode I, the puppet Yoda is replaced with the digital Yoda seen in Episode II and III. This was still a few years before was Episode I was re-released in 3D and on Blu-ray, with the new Yoda fully implemented by then.)

Episode III was not only the final Star Wars prequel, but – as far as anyone knew at the time – the final Star Wars movie ever. Many of the people in these documentaries – including Rick McCallum, Ben Burtt, and animation director Rob Coleman – had been working together for a decade. Within a Minute and “The Chosen One” show this project coming to its natural end, yet no one is seen to express emotion or melancholy at this. Instead, the filmmakers are excited to be part of a piece of history (as the Star Wars saga is finally complete) and express a sense of victory and accomplishment. It’s almost as if they knew that the story was just beginning.

Which leads me to…

STAR WARS BEGINS (2011)

I had originally planned to just marathon the official “making-of” documentaries – the DVD extras for the prequels, and the TV specials that accompanied the release of the original films. However, I remembered that a fan named Jamie Benning had made a series of documentaries about the original Star Wars trilogy, by intercutting each film with behind-the-scenes footage as well as audio-only interview material from various sources. I’d never gotten around to actually watching one of them, so I decided that now would be a good time. So I watched Star Wars Begins, Benning’s 2-hour-and-19-minute interlacing of the original Star Wars with behind-the-scenes content.

I’ve always been fascinated by the development of the original 1977 film, the one we now call Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. All the other films have had a successful proof-of-concept to follow, but this is the one that began as just a vague notion in Lucas’ head of swords and capes and ray guns, an ultimately world-changing idea that he struggled to develop through four very different drafts. Studio heads struggled to understand Lucas’ concept, the production of the film was famously difficult, the rough cut of the film was deemed a disaster and had to be extensively reworked, and entirely new special effects technology had to be developed in order to complete the film.

However, little of that seems to come through in Star Wars Begins. Occasionally an archive quote will mention how stressed and unhappy Lucas seemed to be during production, but the focus seems to be more on minor trivia – alternate takes, redubbed lines, what the camera and crew looked like when a particular scene was being shot.

The film doesn’t have an obvious point of view – it is basically other people’s documentaries and interviews stitched together in script order. Onscreen text (often with typos) will sometimes throw in an interesting factoid, and also identifies who is speaking in an audio clip and what year their quote is taken from. Any time a quote was from 2004 I recognized it from the original trilogy’s DVD release – either from the commentary track, or from the accompanying DVD extra Empire of Dreams – and I recognized a lot of behind-the-scenes footage from Empire of Dreams as well.

However, there were also some clips I didn’t recognize and some anecdotes I hadn’t heard. I was impressed to hear quotes from Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing, who seem to have seldom been recorded speaking about their most widely seen roles. So Benning and/or his Internet friends (thanked in the credits) did an impressive amount of research, even if the resulting “documentary” is no more than the sum of its parts.

The most interesting thing about Star Wars Begins is that it provides a glimpse of how the original version of Episode IV would have played with its most famous deleted scenes integrated back into it. These scenes include early cutaways of Luke Skywalker (before he meets Artoo and Threepio); a few shots of Han with an unidentified female companion who leaves when Luke and Obi-wan meet with him; and of course Han confronting the original, human, fur-wearing version of Jabba the Hutt.

Some fans would love to see the early scenes of Luke and his friend Biggs (who appears in the finished film only as a Rebel X-wing pilot during the finale) actually edited into the film. Seeing these scenes placed in their original context, though, I think Lucas (or the studio?) was right to cut them.

As released, the original film opens in the middle of a conflict that is only partly explained to the audience, and gets away with this by telling the story from the point of view of two robots who also are unclear what’s going on. To cut away to seemingly unrelated characters in a strange environment talking about the Academy, the Empire and the Rebel Alliance would probably have confused the hell out of 1977 audiences who – remember – had not seen Star Wars before and did not already understand this universe.

However, watching the dialogue between Luke and Biggs is interesting for another reason. After the prequels, Lucas gained a reputation as being inept at directing actors. It’s tempting to look back at some irreverent quotes from the original trilogy’s lead actors, and the knowledge that Episode IV had to be salvaged in editing (largely with the help of his then-wife Marcia), and conclude that Lucas was always deficient in this area. However, the Luke-and-Biggs material – which plays out in lengthy medium- and wide shots – is well-played by both actors, and the prequel documentaries show Lucas working closely with his actors (and animators, in the case of digital creatures) to shape a character’s performance. So this supports my aforementioned theory that the digital-era Lucas is not necessarily a bad director of actors while on set, but perhaps pushes out too much of their spontaneity in his editing choices.

Star Wars Begins was a little frustrating in that I wanted to see more of Episode IV’s birth pangs and not just random trivia. But I hadn’t planned to actually rewatch the movies in this marathon, so it was cool to find myself accidentally rewatching the original movie in this exploded, deconstructed version.

THE MAKING OF STAR WARS (1977)

This hour-long documentary aired on ABC on September 16, 1977. It was scripted by Time critic Richard Schickel, with narration by William Conrad and some jokey in-character commentary from Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio (well, by See-Threepio anyway). The Artoo/Threepio material is corny and inconsistent – sometimes the droids seem to be recalling the film’s characters and events as if they were real, and sometimes they are recalling the experience of being actors in the movie.

I probably did see this at a very young age. I have a dim childhood memory of seeing the droids on a white sci-fi set when Threepio makes some kind of meta comment about the movie, and while I long pictured that set as being the blockade runner from the beginning of Episode IV, I now believe I’m remembering the set on which the droids appear in the host segments of this documentary. I don’t know for sure whether this set was built especially for this documentary or was left over from something else, but it’s very detailed and retro-awesome.

The bulk of the film is narrated behind-the-scenes footage narrated by Conrad, framed by occasional cutaways to Artoo and Threepio. There are very brief interview clips of Alec Guinness (clearly made during shooting, as he’s in costume and on set), Harrison Ford (in a boat for some reason), Carrie Fisher (in a video arcade!), George Lucas, a VERY long-haired Mark Hamill, and producer Gary Kurtz.

Despite – or because of – the thermonuclear levels of cheese in this documentary, I found myself holding back tears at its extreme simplicity and innocence. When this TV special aired, Star Wars – though already the highest-grossing film of all time – was less than four months old. Its footprints in the world were still fresh. The narration re-explains the entire film to its audience, and every major scene is shown, in case viewers did not remember the broad outlines of the plot. Lucas explains – perhaps for the first time on-camera – his desire to tell a more innocent adventure story, as well the religious concept behind the Force. Clips of old movies helpfully illustrate Star Wars’ roots in Flash Gordon serials, WW II dogfight movies, swashbucklers, and Westerns.

Near the end, Fisher mentions that there is talk of the next Star Wars being set on “an ice planet”, and also “a tropical planet” similar to the moon of Yavin (the misty rebel base seen in the original film), which is a startling indicator of just how early the broadest outlines of The Empire Strikes Back were being determined.

The closing narration, accompanying the famous scene of Luke gazing at the twin sunset, ends with “The magic of Star Wars does not lie only in its brilliant special effects. Its power derives from something simpler and rarer: the romantic spirit that moves in it. Before it we are all young again, and everything seems possible.”

If you watch this old TV special and are able to hold it together at that moment, you are made of sterner stuff than I. But it is Threepio who gets the last word when he rhetorically asks, “Where will it all end? Perhaps, Artoo, it will never end.”

I will always defend the prequels for their ambition, and for taking the innocent Star Wars universe into more adult and troubling waters. But watching this hokey documentary put me in the right frame of childlike innocence to remind me what Star Wars means to the rest of my generation.

SP FX: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980)

I DEFINITELY remember watching this one as a kid, as it is basically Mark Hamill saying “Young Curt, I order you to make a movie” for forty-plus minutes straight.

Ostensibly a documentary about the special effects in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, SP FX is really a celebration of the art of special effects in general. Hamill’s narration (again written by Richard Schickel) frequently waxes poetic about the power of effects to transport us to realms of imagination, freedom, and possibility.

This TV special includes clips from many celebrated fantasy and science fiction films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, King Kong, The Thief of Baghdad, and even A Trip to the Moon (that’s the silent film where the rocket lands in the eye of the moon). But it’s the inclusion of clips from amateur stop-motion movies by child filmmakers (at about the 10- and 35-minute marks) that seared themselves into my young psyche. Rewatching those clips now, it’s startling to see that one of the films was made with paper cutouts and that the filmmakers named in the film were between 11 and 17 years of age. It so happens that, years later, I made a stop-motion paper cutout movie when I was between 13 and 15.

There are only a couple of brief interview clips, from Peter Mayhew (who played Chewbacca) and sound designer Ben Burtt. Otherwise it’s all Hamill talking about how inspiring and wonderful special effects are.

I’m sure many prequel haters will seize on Hamill’s closing speech that “In the end, a special effect is just a special effect. If it isn’t surrounded by people we care about, if it doesn’t serve a story that moves and involves us, and if above all it doesn’t help us to grasp some larger imaginative vision, then it’s just a trick, a gimmick.” But while I agree that the prequels falter on the first point they still manage the latter two, at least for me. Which I guess puts me in the role of Artoo-Detoo, who rolls onscreen at that point to tell Hamill to give it a rest.

“The Star Wars saga will continue,” concludes Hammer. “In the largest sense, it can never end, because imagination has no end.” Okay, Schickel, you’re starting to repeat yourself. Otherwise you did a hell of a number on my younger self. Good job.

FROM STAR WARS TO JEDI: THE MAKING OF A SAGA (1983)

In late 1983, two Star Wars documentaries aired within a few weeks of each other. The first was Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi, hosted by Carrie Fisher and Billy Dee Williams. But I couldn’t find a complete copy of that one on YouTube and thus had to skip it for this marathon. So I’ll stick with the second and far superior From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga.

Like the two earlier specials, From Star Wars to Jedi is narrated by Mark Hamill and written by Richard Schickel. And again, we see plenty of on-set footage of the latest movie (in this case Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi), primarily filming Jabba’s lair (with brief input from Jabba’s puppetters) and the Ewok village.

But compared to the two earlier TV specials, this one doesn’t gush about the wonder of cinema, or show any clips from older films in order to explain and justify the tradition it’s working in. Instead, Star Wars is now firmly established as an end in itself, as Lucas gives one of his first and most extensive platforms to explain his theories of what the overall Star Wars saga is all about. The film regularly cuts to Lucas sitting in front of a leafy plant somewhere, explaining his thoughts and ideas as well as his disappointment at things that didn’t live up to his aspirations due to technical limitations. “In his mind,” says the narration, “George Lucas was jumping to hyperspace long before he visualized the process for the rest of us.” Lucas himself also asserted to my younger self the integrity that artists must have when he said that “that’s the way it should be, and if the public can’t deal with it, then what can I do it? … The film is about human frailties, it’s not about monsters.”

While I only have dim childhood memories of the two previous documentaries, I was able to record From Star Wars to Jedi off cable TV on VHS and subsequently rewatched it many, many times while developing my own filmmaking. During those repeat viewings I was fascinated to hear Lucas describe the development process of Star Wars, to see abandoned concepts (this must be where the human-Jabba footage from the original Star Wars was first shown publicly), and to hear Hamill’s narration explain the themes and mythology behind Star Wars. So I’m always baffled to encounter those who loved the Star Wars movies as much as I did but whose love never drove them to explore what made them tick.

Lucas talks about his attempts to explore how fast-paced a movie can be before it becomes incomprehensible, which ties in interestingly with his reaction to the rough cut of the “earlier” Episode I. He then adds that success has made his personal life more intense, which is a sadder statement when you consider that the time and energy he devoted to the Star Wars trilogy led to him becoming divorced.

This docu-marathon began with an older Lucas describing how films are the embodiments of their creators. By contrast, From Star Wars to Jedi has a final post-credit shot of Lucas getting on a plane and waving goodbye. “As attractive as the Star Wars world is, sooner or later you have to leave home and go on to some other place.”

And so the saga continues, for others to tend.

Lessons learned in 2014

"[E]very time somebody opens their mouth they have an opportunity to do one of two things—connect or divide. Some people inherently divide, and some people inherently connect. Connecting is the most important thing, and actually an easy thing to do. ... I’m shocked that there are so many people that live to divide."

-Joss Whedon, 2013

"I want to spend time doing films and exploring ideas, with the opportunity to fail - which you don't have in the professional film business. You've got to win every single time, and it's very difficult because you end up making very safe movies: you know this works, so you do it. ... I want to try making some films that I'm not really sure will work or not."

-George Lucas, 1981

* * *

At the end of 2013 I wrote what I thought was one of my best posts to this blog. Then, some weeks later, I discovered that it had only gotten about a dozen hits (it’s had more since then) … and that the new blog entry I was about to post covered very similar ground.

So I took it as a sign that maybe this blog had reached its natural end. It had begun as an online tie-in to my then-new indie film Saberfrog, and I also used it to discuss topics that I felt were related to the movie. By 2014 the movie had been out for a while, and I figured it was time to move on.

Saberfrog still pops up anew from time to time – opportunities still arise to sell some additional copies to interested viewers. But in 2014, my focus has switched to an older project that I am now remastering – a Super-8 stop-motion animated sword-and-sorcery film that took me two years to make as a teenager, and that had languished forgotten for decades.

I spent much of 2014 reconstructing this old project – transcribing my old handwritten script into Celtx, getting the Super-8 footage digitally transferred, making a temporary soundtrack to sync with the rediscovered visuals.

Rediscovering this project has been an emotional experience. Whereas Saberfrog was the angst-ridden tale of an adult trying to get his life back in order, this older project was the more innocent work of a teenager who had his whole life ahead of him, and was absolutely confident of his purpose in life.

I felt that reviving this older project would be a way of reconnecting with my less jaded self, who believed wholeheartedly in a life of filmmaking, before adulthood intervened. It was an opportunity to set aside the cynicism I’d developed in recent years, and return to the joy and optimism and positivity that originally fueled my passion as a young filmmaker. I also set up a crowdfunding campaign with a friend of mine, after doing as much research as I could on the brave new world of social media and online fundraising.

Unfortunately, both I and my crowdfunding partner ended up going through major job changes at the time, and I was therefore unable to devote the necessary time and energy to promotion. Prioritizing my new day job was a major reason why I failed to commit more passionately to the campaign.

But it was not the only reason. Even after all the groundwork I’d done, I found myself extremely hesitant to promote the project on the Internet, even though I knew (from telling strangers about it in person) that this was a project that would probably interest people. I had to think hard about why I now had such cold feet.

I realized that – for the first time in my many years, off and on, as a filmmaker – I was now afraid of the audience. That fear was holding me back, and I needed to overcome it once and for all.

* * *

Like many teenagers, I was a bit of a misfit and an introvert. But I loved movies, and I loved sci-fi and fantasy. And it seemed like those things came from a world that was somehow better – a world of artists and thinkers, a smarter and more tolerant community than the “mundane” world of regular people who weren’t fans.

When I first became an aspiring filmmaker, it was a time when people loved movies, and admired and respected filmmakers. Creating an entire world from one’s own imagination, and sharing that personal vision with an audience, was a celebrated achievement. Filmmakers were praised for pursuing their own visions, rather than allowing focus groups and studio conservatism to tell them what they could and couldn’t do.

Today is actually not a bad era for movies. Mainstream Hollywood has fully embraced the once-marginalized world of geek culture, creating ambitious and interconnected stories. Independent films continue to explore brave new territory. VOD has made acclaimed, limited-release films available even to people without specialty theaters in their neighborhoods. And even if none of that were true, DVDs and Blu-rays and VOD continue to make the riches of the past as available as those of the present.

And yet, nowadays I often sense a deep hatred and resentment of movies and the people who make them.

When people badmouth certain films and filmmakers – as well as other storytellers working in TV, literature, or comics – they do it with such a swell of pride, as if the highest demonstration of intellect was to be unmoved by a creative work.

That is not an attitude I’ve ever identified with. Even as a kid, I always thought that seeking out and appreciating the good work was more important than dwelling on lesser work.

And the people who made the good work were my heroes and role models. I always respected people who did the work more than I respected people who could only find fault with the work of others.

Has Internet culture turned this value system upside down? Is it now the social role of artists and storytellers to simply be punching bags for people whose self-esteem needs a boost?

I hope not. Especially when promoting this new (old) project, I want to believe that audiences are open and accepting, that they will give a movie the benefit of the doubt instead of deciding in advance that it sucks.

* * *

I guess I’ve always seen sci-fi/fantasy movies as a more expensive type of experimental film. Movies like Star Wars and Tron and The Dark Crystal seemed like someone’s personal, creative vision – passion projects that a studio was somehow convinced to pay for.

When I was real little – we’re talking late 70s / early 80s – the line between mainstream and experimental was a lot blurrier. Underground filmmakers did animation for Sesame Street. Oddball short films were regularly shown to the public, projected on 16mm in schools and libraries, or used as filler between movies on cable. Stand-alone animated specials would show up randomly in prime time. UHF stations and fledgling cable networks showed any obscure movie or foreign TV show they could get their hands on cheap.

That great churn of the weird and wild and unexpected had just as much impact on my interest in filmmaking as the more universally recognized hits like Star Wars. You would see these strange things as a kid, not knowing where they came from or who made them or why they were being shown. Maybe years later, you could finally look them up on the Internet or ask someone else if they knew what the title was. But the stuff you remembered less well would always be out of reach, and probably not easily available on video even if you could identify it.

Maybe a part of me is still wedded to that time when movies were mysterious and magical, when seeing a movie was an ephemeral privilege. Perhaps the permanence of home video was what enabled the modern nerd instinct to collect and categorize and rationalize. Like a villainous computer in an old Star Trek episode, we now try to explain away anything strange or unexpected as simply incorrect or impractical.

I guess I still crave the experience of seeing a movie I don’t know that much about, in a dedicated cultural venue, in the company of actual humans who shared my curiosity enough to go see it too. You don’t get that by watching a movie at home on VOD. Even with video stores you had to go somewhere, browse the shelves, and talk to the weirdo behind the counter.

Roger Ebert once pointed out that Starbucks offers not just coffee, but also a trip away from the office. He meant this as an analogy to argue that Netflix and video on demand would not supplant the experience of going to video stores. But clearly he was wrong – a lot of people are happy to watch movies at home, or on portable devices, without having to go someplace or interact with other people.

Is that antisocial attitude now manifesting itself in the tone of Internet culture?

* * *

In the last few years I’ve been to a fair number of independent filmmaker conferences, and read many articles about indie filmmaking, in an attempt to keep up with a changing industry.

One of the major messages that keeps coming up is that filmmakers need to be marketers and self-promoters. The days of a Kubrick or Kurosawa being allowed to concentrate simply on creating his art, and let distributors and critics do the work of convincing people to go see the finished product, are over. With the decline of brick-and-mortar cultural hubs (not just video stores, but also record stores and bookstores), it’s become more important for the artists themselves to maintain an online presence. You need to be on social media. You need to engage with your audience in a personal way.

But to me, interacting with strangers on the Internet is a daunting prospect. The Internet is where people seem to drop all real-world pretense of civility and politeness, and vent their frustrations and hostility at length. And major media outlets feed this climate with their clickbait headlines, generally phrased in terms of disdain and rejection: Why You Shouldn’t Watch This Movie, Why You Should Stop Watching This Show, Why This or That Person is a Hack or a Jackass.

Perhaps it’s mainly the big Hollywood productions and franchises that generate that kind of hostility, while smaller independent production are relatively safe. But should artists really stay small – never leaving the garret or the garage – to be safe from criticism? Is that really how we should think? Are we not supposed to be bold and strive?

* * *

The original Star Wars was one of the films that inspired me to become a filmmaker. I certainly enjoyed watching it as a kid, but when I was old enough to read accounts of how blown away people were in 1977 – by the opening shot, by the cantina scene, by the jump to hyperspace, by Han’s heroic return at the end – I thought, I want to do that. I want to make something that amazes people. Not by making a Star Wars fan film, but by learning the craft well enough to come up with something of my own that would have a similar effect.

Is that still a realistic goal today, when so many people seem to hate movies before they even come out? Or does it only seem that way on the Internet?

* * *

These thoughts have led me to at least one positive lesson. I never thought of myself as particularly social or outgoing or extroverted. But Internet culture has forced me to realize how comparatively well I thrive in real-world situations. When I introduce myself to strangers, I hear myself speak with much more charm and confidence than I ever feel when I’m brooding in isolation, staring at a computer screen, reading hostile text written by trolls.

This revelation has motivated me to go to the movies more often than I’d been doing lately, and to attend social and cultural events even when I’m not quite in the mood. The Internet might often seem like a race to the bottom, but the real world is a place where skill, accomplishment, and distinctiveness are still somewhat valued. And realizing this has helped me to reconnect with humanity in a way that the Internet – seemingly designed to connect people – has not.

When you go to a movie, you have to leave the house. You are watching, on a big screen, something that took a lot of effort and expertise to complete.

And more often than not, it tells a story of a goal-driven person who accomplishes something difficult.

(Maybe that's why Internet trolls hate movies.)

So that refuels me as an audience member. But what about as a filmmaker? In the digital age, what kind of film can you still reasonably aspire to make, that has enough of a sympathetic audience to make it worthwhile?

* * *

I think a mistake I’ve made in this ol’ life is looking mainly to the big successes for inspiration. I was a precocious filmmaker at an early age, and I went to one of the most celebrated film schools. So I’ve allowed myself to believe that I was destined for big things, and that if I didn’t achieve that then I was not successful.

But there are other frames of reference, and other models of success. Completing projects is success, regardless of their scale or profile. Doing what makes you happy, no matter what other people think, is success.

You can make something very commercial, and be dependent on the approval of a large number of strangers … or something low-budget enough that you don’t need everyone’s approval.

The purpose of being an independent artist is not to keep up with the Joneses, or to bow to peer pressure, or to try to appease audiences who don’t get it. The purpose of being an independent artist is to be true to yourself, to be unique and different, and to have faith that there are audiences who do get it.

And if I do better in real-world situations than I do online … well, then I should tell more people in the real world about my work, and show it to them.

The audience is however many people you can get to be interested, in whatever walk of life, online or in reality, whether it’s 50,000 or 500 or 15.

Just make your art, and be happy.

Saying farewell to 2013

Here's a holiday message for all you followers of Saberfrog.

Here in Rochester, New York, it's been bitterly cold. So cold that my car – which last year decided that anything under 20 degrees was not acceptable – has sometimes been reluctant to start.

So it gets to be Christmas day. The day when I should, ideally, be able to get in my car and go visit my mom, sister, and brother-in-law under my own power. But nope. The car would not start, and I had to call my family for a ride.

Frustrated and furious, I returned to my apartment to await my rescue. I found myself contemplating the many other things in my life that have not gone according to plan, and all the things that were making me feel stressed and struggling, and all the ways in which I felt constantly behind.

I turned on the TV, which was tuned to BBC America. And – I kid you not – less than a minute had elapsed before an unexpected programming interruption occurred. It was a live Christmas message from Her Majesty The Queen.

She began by talking about how she once met a man who had to spend a year in a plaster cast due to back surgery, and how he responded to his incapacitation by reading and studying. She then made the point that in this busy holiday season, we need to take time for contemplation.

As you might guess, this hit me where I lived.

If I myself wasn't in an incapacitated situation, I wouldn't even have been home. I wouldn't have had the TV on, and I might not have needed to hear that message so badly. And why was this being shown on American TV anyway? If anything, I was among the few people on Earth she wasn't talking to. Yet it felt as if she was speaking to me personally.

Then the Queen's message ended, and BBC America resumed its zillionth Doctor Who marathon already in progress. Which was somehow fitting, because it seemed like a real-life version of the episode where Wilf was spoken to directly by a mysterious Time Lord woman appearing on his TV.

Of such things are religions made, I suppose. Sometimes things happen and they seem like signs or miracles, even if logically they're not.

That doesn't make them unimportant.

Recently I've been revisiting some older projects, including an attempt at a feature-length movie that I made as a teenager. Back then, I had a much simpler and more innocent view of the world. I believed in dedication and hard work overcoming adversity.

I had not yet gone to film school, or lived in a big city. As a result, I had not been exposed to the artistic intellectual's more cynical viewpoint – that everything is bad; that being “dark” or depressed is somehow deeper than coping; that society is just a big conspiracy to keep the individual in chains, and that therefore resentment and hostility are the only correct attitudes for dealing with life. I didn't think that my entire generation, and perhaps the culture as a whole, would elevate this despairing viewpoint to the level of canon.

Rereading my scripts and notes for my teenage opus, I thought, God, I had it right the first time. And over the years, I've allowed myself to be talked out of it. Now I need to relearn things that I used to know by instinct.

I guess what I'm getting at is, you should live life like the rules work. Live like your dreams and actions count. Live like things matter.

It's easy to get frustrated. It's easy to dig the Web for horrifying news stories about something that happened far from your own community, and use these incidents to buttress a view that the world is broken beyond repair.

But there will always be obstacles and there will always be suffering. You shouldn't use that as an excuse to not try. It shouldn't stop you from aspiring to a better life.

So write that story, apply for that job, call that person you've been wanting to talk to.

The people who succeed, and are happy and stable, are the people who have a sense of balance. They know that some days are bad and some days are good. Perhaps most of all, they believe that their life and dreams and beliefs matter.

Many people who consider themselves intelligent or educated take pride in distancing themselves from religion. While I'm not a religious person either, I'm of the Joseph Campbell school that it still serves an important function. People who believe that there is an order to the universe, and that there is right and wrong, and that their actions matter, tend to live better lives. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's how we become good people.

December is an important time for many religions. It's the month of Christmas, of Hanukkah, of the winter solstice. It's a time when we should be looking ahead to better times even if the current reality is cold and dark.

Even on a secular level, it's the end of one year and the start of another. It's a time to let go of the past, and make plans for the future.

So have a happy new year. Face 2014 with hope and confidence.

And tell 'em the Queen sent you.

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 …