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...

A journey through maturity

It's been an eventful month. I guess it sort of started at the end of May, when filmmaker/fundraiser Tom Malloy spoke at the monthly Rochester Movie Maker's meeting. Malloy identified 7 common mistakes that filmmakers make, which I'll share with you here:

1. Not firing a pissed-off crewmember. Especially if he's the DP (director of photography), who sets the tone of the shoot.

2. Being too cheap on food. You should have a great craft service table, not just pizza. A Hollywood shoot pays people a meal penalty when they don't get lunch. (I would add to this an unwritten rule I learned somewhere, probably in film school: if you're not paying people then you definitely have to feed them.)

3. Making decisions too quickly, without thinking them through. He seemed to be talking specifically about deciding who to have on your crew. When hiring someone, you should get references.

4. Not focusing enough on the actors and their performances. You can fix technical mistakes in post, but not acting mistakes. Sound is more important than picture.

5. Giving control to someone who can shut you off in a heartbeat.

6. Not buying swag. He said that T-shirts, hats, etc. are good things to give your team, especially if they're not being paid well. (In the interest of balance, I should say that I've heard other people say the opposite, that it's money wasted promoting the film to people who already know about it.)

7. Not having a vision or taking charge. You don't have to be a dictator or asshole, but you need to know where you're going. You need to have a vision so that people will believe in you and respect you.

Some of these things I've already learned, either through experience or from being told by someone else, but it's still advice worth hearing.

He then ended with an anecdote which basically had the following moral: You need to have the fire and the willingness to not listen to people who discourage you.

That's a good lesson too, and one which I personally have found harder to follow with age. As you get older, and farther away from the world of high school and college, you can end up being less and less in touch with other people who share your goals and priorities, making it more of a challenge to keep the flame alive.

I've been thinking a lot about these things because I recently reached a landmark birthday, one that makes you take stock of your life. As it happened, the 1982 classic Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was playing at the George Eastman House around the same time, which seemed fitting since that's a movie where Kirk finds himself having a birthday and thinking about getting older. So I decided to invite some friends to have a birthday dinner with me and then go see it.

I haven't watched much old-school Star Trek in a while, so seeing this movie on the big screen again made me realize something. If you were a nerdy kid in the 80s who was into books and creativity, and alienated from the world of sports, then Star Trek was practically your only exposure to grown-up virtues like teamwork, leadership, courage, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. Most other sci-fi tends to be about nonconformists heroically bucking the system altogether, either by escaping it or by overthrowing it. And while that can be a good message when you're an adolescent trying to find your identity and escape peer pressure, it doesn't always apply so well to the working world of adulthood, where you are much more interdependent on other people.

That same weekend, the Visual Studies Workshop had a big sale, which included tons and tons of books on art and philosophy and so on, for dirt cheap. I picked up a fair bit of esoteric and psychedelic reading material, to refuel the creative side of my brain.

When I was in college, the 60s generation still cast a long shadow. There was still a lot of emphasis on being innovative and irreverent, and marching to your own drummer. While that generation had become sour and snobby and censorious by the time I was growing up, I still respected their original emphasis on optimism and creative freedom. And I used to think that sci-fi, as a genre, was part of that, because that was the genre where you could make your own rules and create your own world.

As my generation has come of age and taken over the culture, I've sensed a growing emphasis on hostility and cynicism. It's as if people can't think of any way to make themselves feel important except by resenting and criticizing anyone who's actually made something of themselves. The idea that the role of creative people is to be a punching bag for less creative people doesn't sit well with me. My generation's attitude seems to be that life is just one long struggle to climb back into the womb. The few tentpole movies that aren't just nostalgic reboots of an existing franchise tend to be about the world being destroyed. There's a sense that the past is more comforting than the future.

But if you can manage to escape from people who have that mindset, and look at what the next generation are up to, there seems to be much more friendliness and sociability and willingness to make connections. I know that musician Amanda Palmer had a gig not that long ago where she let fans sign her naked body. I find it hard to fathom having that kind of trust in strangers. I'm much more used to having to have my guard up.

Rightly or wrongly, I guess I learned a different life lesson, from my peers and from the generation before us. I learned that you can expect other people to try to stomp you down, and that you will survive only if you stick to your guns and don't worry about what other people think. But I'm feeling like that lesson has outlived its usefulness.

A lot of the experiences and influences I've had in recent years have led me down the path of satire, of wanting to tell stories that protest and point out what's wrong. But with the modern wealth of entertainment options, people are much more likely to filter out anything that doesn't speak to their existing tastes or values.

People want to be entertained, and that's not a dirty word. But being an artist isn't a dirty word either.

That's the twin challenge I'm facing when trying to write these damn novels. I'm trying to get back to the wildness and freedom and craziness that meant so much to me when I first became a writer and a filmmaker. At the same time, I'm also trying to brush up on my understanding of what a story needs in order to truly click with an audience. Is there enough action? Is there enough humor? Is there enough character? Does it have that deeper level that makes something truly loved, not just briefly fashionable?

There are times when it barely seems worth the struggle, and then there are times when unexpected rewards occur. This past month, to my great surprise, I won a Most Distinguished Member Award from the Buffalo Movie-Video Makers group for my work as writer-director-producer of Saberfrog and co-producer of another feature, Bury My Heart With Tonawanda. The latter film, from writer-producer Adrian Esposito, has a heartwarming message of growth and acceptance and forgiveness, which has moved audiences to tears at screening after packed screening, most recently at the Memorial Art Gallery this past Thursday.

One of my past influences, cult filmmaker David Cronenberg, once said that he makes films in order to find out why he made them. Cronenberg is one of the less heartwarming filmmakers I can think of, but he makes a good point. Art is a journey, which takes the artists – and the people they invite to join them – to unexpected destinations.

So that's the trick – to stay open to new emotions and experiences as much as possible, even when other people seem more skeptical. It may get harder as you get older, but it is worth the effort.

Learning from Kevin Smith

Well, Saberfrog is finally for sale at my website. I also need to somehow put the movie online for sale somewhere, and also send out review screeners. All of which I probably should have done ages ago, but I have a job and other things to do with my time, which to me are major obstacles to being any kind of social-media butterfly.

You've certainly heard by now about the new Star Wars movies that have been announced. There's nothing I can say about this that hasn't been well-said by online critic Outlaw Vern (and, in the comments below, by his fellow Ain't It Cool alum Mr. Majestyk). For better or worse, people now have even more reason to keep voicing their thoughts about Star Wars. The unending kvetching about that franchise and its creator gets me down sometimes, because I think artists should be allowed to take risks and make unexpected choices, even if the results are variable.

But people are possessive about Star Wars in a way that they aren't about anything else. Also, in the age of the Internet there's not really consensus anymore – while some people have greater access to the media or go to greater lengths to make their viewpoint known, almost nothing is universally loved or hated. As Kevin Smith once observed, every movie is someone's favorite movie.

Speaking of whom, a friend and I went to see Kevin Smith perform in Buffalo a few weeks ago. By chance, I got to ask him the first question of the evening. I asked him about an interview he'd given a while back, in which he said that he was tired of the online negativity he'd endured – not only criticisms of his work, but personal attacks on himself and his family.

I asked him how, in the face of such negativity, he maintained his faith that there might still be an audience out there who was receptive to his work.

Smith said that, at age 42, he'd learned to overcome his fear. He talked about how, when he was younger, he was always afraid of getting in trouble, but now he realized that there was little as an adult that he would do that would genuinely get him in trouble. He recited a quote he'd learned: “Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due.”

More than once over the years, Smith has expressed the philosophy that he creates things and sends them out in the world, to find out if anyone else gets it. That approach has worked for him. One might argue that Smith's career began at a time when people were less obsessed with franchises and more hungry for individual, personal versions. Over the years, though, Smith has nurtured an audience and developed his own brand, so he's in a position to be able to create more personal work secure in the knowledge that there would be at least some audience for it.

That's the challenge facing most artists these days.

Before I set out on my Saberfrog tour, I was asked “What did you learn about yourself making this movie?” I didn't have a good answer to that, but I did learn some important things from the trip itself.

You have to know where your audience is, and how to reach them. That's the lesson I've learned from making Saberfrog.

When I was developing the movie, I was proud of the fact that it was a hybrid of genres, and that it represented a particular viewpoint on the world.

But how do you market that, when there are so many entertainment options that the only way for a consumer to filter it all is to limit yourself to the stuff you know you'll like?

You have to be a salesman. You have to make yourself and your project seem appealing to people. That's another lesson I've learned.

During my traveling showings of Saberfrog, I interviewed some people that I met in the different cities that I went to, asking their thoughts about why we make art and why it is important. I did this so that I would have something to show for my travels in case the screenings weren't well-attended, and also because I myself was seeking answers to these questions.

I showed a rough assembly of this interview footage at a Buffalo Movie-Video Makers meeting, and one attendee said that this was a measure of how “pure” I was as an artist – that this was what I chose to do to promote my movie, rather than thinking like a businessman. He didn't seem to mean it as a criticism, exactly, but it was a valid point.

Because I'm an introvert at heart (or because I grew up in a world where caring about something other than sports was kind of frowned upon), I'm still getting used to the idea of being able to share my creative passions with other people. My nourishment was more solitary – it came from books and obscure films and foreign TV shows, all of which seemed to come from a better world than my own, where people were smarter and more inventive and more thoughtful. There wasn't a social connection between artist and fan, only a philosophical one. So I'm still adapting to the idea that art is not solely a means of personal expression, but of communication. And not just artist-to-audience communication, but interaction.

Obviously the film scene has changed unrecognizably in recent years. This article has really rammed home, more than anything else I've heard lately, how film as we knew it really is on its way out – and that well-known, widely released films that came out when I was in college are already becoming unshowable in their original format.

We're only going to have digital copies of varying quality (depending on how much money gets devoted to transferring them) that may not even last very long. For lower-budget filmmakers like myself, obviously a DVD or Blu-ray is going to be the public screening format of choice most of the time. But to go to a public screening of a Hollywood movie (including ones that aren't even 20 years old) and basically be watching them on a big-screen TV … what is the point? If it's basically what you could watch on your entertainment center at home, why go to a theater?

To have a group experience, that's why. That's the one thing that still matters. Having something to share, and talk about, with other people.

That's what it's all about.

Saberfrog Road Trip-Final Report

So this was it. It was time to re-enact the fictional road trip depicted in the movie.

On a Saturday afternoon, I left Rochester to drive to Hartford, Connecticut, the starting point for my road trip. The drive was beautiful, and it always feels good to get away from home and hit the open road.

I had wanted Josh, the main character in Saberfrog, to be living in a fairly middle-class and corporate area before he goes on his quest to find himself. After some research I decided to pick Hartford, Connecticut as the city from which his journey begins.

When it came time to research venues, however, I discovered that Hartford actually had more of an art scene than I expected. Real Art Ways was an art gallery / movie theater that seemed like an ideal choice, but I ended up going with the more economical choice of The Outer Space, a smaller venue in nearby Hamden. However, I decided I would pay a visit to Real Art Ways while I was in the area.

There I watched a documentary called Reality is Embarrassing, about an impish artist best known as a puppeteer on Pee-Wee's Playhouse. It seemed fitting to see that film, since I was making a documentary – or at least a video diary – of my own as part of the trip. Before leaving Real Art Ways, I was able to record my first interview. I happened to be there on the projectionist's last day working there before taking another job near Boston, and he was an aspiring filmmaker himself. This was a ridiculous stroke of good luck, and he proved to be a great interview subject.

While I had been very determined to book a showing in Baltimore, I had been unable to find a venue that was both affordable and available in the time frame I was looking for. But for the sake of my trip, I wanted to visit the city anyway.

In the film, Baltimore is where Josh's friend Terrance has made a new life for himself. My prior knowledge of Baltimore was pretty much limited to its status as John Waters' hometown, and in real life I found the city agreeable funky.

Again I went to a movie at a venue I'd considered – this time it was The Charles Theatre, and I decided to go see Liberal Arts, a comedy-drama about a thirtysomething trying to reconnect with his own college-age optimism. Despite its quasi-pretentious title, I'd read a couple interesting reviews that made me decide I should check it out, and I'm glad I did. The film touched on a number of the same themes as Saberfrog, and though reviews have apparently been mixed, I found that the film spoke to me deeply. In an age of so much bitterness and sarcasm, here was a movie which showed people still yearning for beauty and meaning, while struggling to come to terms with the past and moving forward with their lives. I loved it.

I'm not sure Liberal Arts ever opened in Rochester, so seeing it at The Charles would have been enough to make the trip to Baltimore worthwhile. But as luck would have it, Creative Alliance at the Patterson (another venue I'd investigated) was holding an open screening the very evening that I was in town. And I just happened to be carrying with me a DVD of the Saberfrog trailer and two short promos of myself and John Karyus, a DVD which I'd prepared for my presentation to the Buffalo Movie-Video Makers group some weeks earlier.

So in a limited sense, I did get to have a Baltimore screening after all. My videos were well-received, and one of the audience members turned out to be a friend of Rochester-area filmmaker Chris Seaver, and recognized Karyus from his roles in Seaver's films.

I also got to record two more interviews, one with a filmmaker working on a documentary about an irreverent priest that he admired, and one with a woman who worked at the Patterson as a bartender but was also a singer in an R&B band.

In each city that I visited, I tried to investigate the local arts scene as much as I could in the time that I had. When I originally wrote the script, I knew very little about Pittsburgh and really only associated it with George Romero zombie films, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover what a thriving arts scene it seemed to have. The Pittsburgh portion of the movie was filmed in Buffalo, at a club called The Shadow Lounge, and I was amused to discover that the real Pittsburgh also has a place called The Shadow Lounge!

Saberfrog was booked at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, which is an awesome place – by Rochester/Buffalo standards, it's like Visual Studies Workshop, Squeaky Wheel and the Little Theatre all rolled into one. The venue houses a cafe as well as a screening room, and offers filmmaking classes, equipment rentals, and screenings of classic movies.

While in Pittsburgh, I tried to go to the Toonseum, which seemed to be a museum devoted to cartoons and/or animation. I never actually got to go the Toonseum, unfortunately – I couldn't find a decent parking space anywhere near it – but along the way I got to see the gorgeous architecture in downtown Pittsburgh.

This would prove to be something of a theme during my trip – not completely succeeding at my original mission, but having positive experiences along the way that I would never have had if I hadn't made the attempt. While I sold a few copies of the movie on DVD, neither the Hamden screening nor the Pittsburgh screening drew the crowd I was hoping for. This took the wind out of my sails a bit, somewhat hampering my efforts to publicize the remaining screenings.

The Cleveland showing at Cedar Lee Theatre was competing against at least two events I knew of – a Browns game and a local stage performance of the Rocky Horror Show, so both jocks and nerds would have had other things to do. The Buffalo showing at Hallwalls, though it turned out to be on the same night as an election debate, gave me the chance to reconnect with an old college classmate who came to the show.

Toronto seemed like the biggest canary in the coal mine as far as the status of independent cinema. The Toronto Underground Cinema – an alternative venue that I've always wanted to visit – announced back in August that they were closing their doors. The Bloor Cinema, apparently due to financial struggles, has been taken over by the Hot Docs film festival and been rebranded as a venue mainly for documentaries, meaning that the kind of cult film showings I'd so often enjoyed there (including Troll 2, Hobo with a Shotgun, and Poultrygeist) will now be much more rare. Most surprisingly, the NFB Mediatheque – a viewing center that I only just discovered in my previous visit to Toronto a couple months earlier – has also shut its doors and is now open by appointment only.

Fortunately, a few alternative film venues still survive. One of these was Trash Palace, which shows 16mm film prints on Friday nights. I went to their showing of an old black-and-white film called Stakeout. One of the attendees was an aspiring filmmaker himself, who said out loud what I'd been forced to realize – that the ease of access to moviemaking tools has somewhat devalued the status of low-budget films, and that you now have to be more creative in order to put on a show that people will attend.

While in Toronto I also encountered a group of stilt-walking street performers, two of whom I got to interview. They too were articulate and enthusiastic in explaining why art is important to them.

Saberfrog screened at CineCycle, a funky hole-in-the-wall venue that typically shows experimental films. It strangely fit the Canada-set finale of the movie (which I won't spoil if you haven't seen it). Each time I watched the film on a big screen one more time, it seemed more and more like a film made by someone else. It started to feel like a movie that belonged in the world, not just in my own head.

I'm glad I went through the process of trying to self-distribute a movie. It was a learning experience, and an opportunity to try and create the kind of underground film screenings that I always used to go to when I was a student. But I think the era for this kind of event may be nearing its end. People now expect to be able to consume media where and when they want, and when you commit to a single showing you're competing against whatever else might be going on in town at that time … which can be a difficult thing to know about weeks or months in advance.

I originally wanted to book these kinds of screenings over a year ago, when the film was newer, but as usual I had ups and downs in my own life (including a new job) that made this impractical. Failing that, I should have booked these shows a few months earlier than I did, so that I could have spent more time and effort on publicity, but there too I had some events in my personal life that put me behind schedule. Having all the shows so close together in time was possibly a mistake – although it made the trip seem more like a continuous journey (despite being spread across three weekends), it gave me less time or energy to promote the individual shows separately.

The biggest thing that I learned the hard way, though, is that I wasn't prepared for the amount of self-publicity that would be required. I became a writer and filmmaker specifically because it was a more indirect way of expressing myself. But in the social-media age, you're supposed to be an aggressive self-promoter, which takes me somewhat outside my comfort zone. I'm of the older school where the artist stays remote – it's the work that's important, not the author. That older approach is, depending on your point of view, based on shyness (“I don't want to put myself out there”) or arrogance (“I will only deign to communicate with my audience on special occasions”) or both.

In a previous post, I said that when I see a film, I hope to see something that will blow my mind. But having that kind of epiphany is an inward, solitary journey. Art – as maker or as consumer – is no longer a solitary journey of discovery. It's supposed to be social. You have to “engage with your audience” in order to make friends, so that you have someone to invite to your show!

When I was a kid, oddball short films would play on 16mm in classrooms and libraries, and as filler on cable TV. Those obscure, eccentric films played a large role in inspiring me to become a filmmaker myself, but I think this road trip helped me to finally close the door on that obsession. In the age of YouTube and streaming, perhaps there's no longer anything really underground about making movies. The idea of making something unique and original and personal still appeals to me, but you can't afford to think of yourself as a unique snowflake. You have to think like a salesman, and aim at a specific audience.

I'm also ready to let go of the 90s nostalgia which seems to permeate the indie film scene currently. It may be a while before that scene consists of newer guys who are fully at ease with how things are now, rather than struggling to unlearn outdated expectations from the Miramax era.

Perhaps the most tangible benefit from this trip was the handful of interviews I conducted with artists that I met on my journey. I asked each of them what I personally found to be highly challenging philosophical questions – why do we make art, how do we justify the sacrifices required, how does one balance the inner compulsion to be an artist against conflicting responsibilities? To my surprise, each person I interviewed had clear and articulate responses to these questions.

I guess the biggest thing I've learned is that I can no longer afford to be a loner. When I was young I felt like a loner, and it was that sense of alienation that drove me to become a filmmaker. But after the experiences and accomplishments I've had in my life, I'm not that person any more. I have to come to terms with living in a more socially connected world.

When I got home from this trip, I thought for sure that I was done with filmmaking, that I could divide my entire life into before and after Saberfrog. But within days of coming home, there was a networking event and a “how to promote your film” seminar (both at Squeaky Wheel in Buffalo), neither of which I wanted to pass up. And I still have ideas for the tie-in novel … and another screenplay … so I guess I just can't turn it off.

I do feel that I've raised the public profile for Saberfrog just a little bit, and met some new people. And the trip forced me to finally complete a decent DVD. So on a personal level, the trip has been a (qualified) success. Now I just need to do what I should have done earlier – send the film out to various websites to get it reviewed, and get the film online so that it's commercially available.

The Saberfrog road trip may be over, but it seems the Saberfrog journey is just beginning.

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.

Saberfrog Road Trip – Tour Dates!

An idea came to me one day, for a movie that I had to make. A story about a guy named Josh, who goes on a road trip across several cities, to find old friends and recover his own past.

I thought I'd left my filmmaking dreams behind me, but this story came from my soul and demanded to be made. It would be full of comedy and drama and weirdness and deepness.

I got the film made, and the film had some showings in Rochester and Buffalo (the two cities in which it was filmed) and it got into a couple of small local festivals. But the demands of normal life could only be kept at bay for so long, and the film was sidelined once more. For a while.

But you can't make a movie just to leave it on a shelf. Films are meant to be seen, and shown. And I feel a need to complete the journey I began.

So I'm re-enacting the journey that Josh takes in the film. I'm going from Connecticut to Baltimore to Pittsburgh to Cleveland to Buffalo to Toronto. Along the way, I'm going to show the film, talk to people, make new friends, and come home with a record (and a video diary) about the experience.

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.

So if you're in one of those cities this fall, I hope to see you, and I hope you enjoy the movie!