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 …

Things I learned at the IFP Filmmaker Conference: Day 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

General thoughts ...

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

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

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

To be continued ...

Things I learned at the IFP Filmmaker Conference: Day 1

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

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

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

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

And you thought foreign audiences were just these gloomy snobs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued ...