Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Distributors, End the 20-Year License Term! Producer Mike Ryan Talking TV vs. Film and More at IFP Screen Forward
Earlier this summer, veteran producer Mike Ryan — an Independent Spirit “Producer of the Year” nominee as well as one of Variety’s “10 Producers to Watch” in 2007 — sparked a conversation with his Filmmaker article, “TV is Not the New Film.” Acknowledging the declining role of cinema in the broader culture amidst the rise of episodic television, Ryan spent the bulk of the piece detailing strengths of the film medium that are specific to its form. He called on filmmakers to embrace these formal qualities or else just go make TV instead. Ryan’s declarations sparked passionate agreement from cinephiles […]
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“Pitching Is Just An Extension of Your Best Self”: Reinaldo Marcus Green at IFP Independent Film Week
[This is Reinaldo Marcus Green’s second guest post from IFP Independent Film Week; his first one can be found here.] It’s a wrap on IFP Film Week! Having the Pope in New York City this week certainly added some delays to my daily commute, but I think somehow it also added hope to my meetings. If you saw a Black and Puerto Rican man in a suit and tie running in front of the Vivian Beaumont theater (across from the Henry Moore sculpture pond in Lincoln Center) every single day last week, it was probably me. I want to take […]
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Blurred Lines: Content Intersections at the IFP Screen Forward Conference
As the IFP Screen Forward Conference comes to a close this afternoon with a series of talks on VR, I’ve collated a handful of takeaways from the week’s panels that point towards an ever thinning gap between episodics and film, festivals and an official release, marketing and distribution, and, hopefully, creator and audience. With the abundance of tools at her finger tips, today’s filmmaker must function like a Swiss army knife, ready and willing to carry her project every step of the way from inception to distribution. Here are a few tips on how to do just that. Know your serials before pitching your film. During […]
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NYC Filmmakers Supporting One Another: Ani Simon-Kennedy at IFP Independent Film Week
[As IFP Independent Film Week comes to a close, Ani Simon-Kennedy shares her experience there in this guest post.] “I think coffee counts as a food group.” As we enter Day 3 of IFP Film Week, talk is of the fuel that keeps us going. It’s been a mad dash from meeting to meeting with my partner-in-crime, Cailin Yatsko, who has the badass title of cinematographer/producer on our next feature film The Short History of the Long Road. As one of the 25 projects selected for RBC’s Emerging Storytellers, ours is in good company and part of the fun of this week has been getting […]
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The Alchemy of THINGS
This weekend at the New York Film Festival, Sherlock Holmes & the Internet of Things will convert Lincoln Center into a massive crime scene. Come step into an immersive storytelling experience that enables you to become Sherlock Holmes. – “It’s pitch dark. A faint chatter spills across the theater. Someone clears their throat and everything goes still. A ringing cuts the silence. It has a crispness, a tone that signals the sound of actual metal vibrating. Just on the edge of piercing, it’s an old school ring, one that now only exists in classic cinema or reruns of pre ’80s TV shows…” Read More
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IFP Screen Forward: 5 Questions for SXSW Film Director Janet Pierson
As Head of SXSW Film Janet Pierson relates below, her Austin-based festival has, for several years, showcased the work of television creators alongside works by feature filmmakers. For SXSW, throwing television into the mix is not so unnatural — the festival is a sprawling behemoth with not only music and film but interactive, gaming and sports. But other festivals, like Tribeca and Toronto, have jumped into the mix too, and some critics — like producer Mike Ryan in a recent Filmmaker article — have been calling for film festivals to focus on cinema and forgo small-screen work that is hardly […]
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Anticipate Questions and Be Prepared with Answers: Jennifer Reeder at IFP Independent Film Week
[Jennifer Reeder files a guest post from IFP Independent Film Week; above, a still from her short film A Million Miles Away.] Coming to you live from the morning of day 3 of the Project Forum. I spent all day yesterday in meetings with my feature length narrative project called As With Knives and Skin, a feminist teen noir set in rural Kentucky. Sunday, which was day one, was relatively light. All the projects had a pitch rehearsal in the morning, which was really helpful, and l loved getting a sense of all the other invited projects. The wide range is inspiring […]
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IFP Screen Forward: Five Questions for Producer Mike S. Ryan
Ahead of his conversation at tomorrow’s Screen Forward conference, Mike S. Ryan fielded five questions about his career and recent Filmmaker piece “TV is Not the New Film.” A producer on such films as Meek’s Cutoff, The Comedy and Palindromes, Ryan explains how transmedia represents an loss of faith in the filmic medium, why True Detective is an exception to the rule of the TV writer as auteur, and what he looks for in a script. Filmmaker: In your “TV is Not the New Film” piece, you mention that the move to transmedia shows a “[loss] of faith in the medium,” while many others seem to argue that transmedia is […]
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An Unpredictable Release: Four Surprising Facts about It Follows’ Road to Success
During the second day of IFP’s Screen Forward conference, Indiewire’s Eric Kohn moderated a discussion between Animal Kingdom producers Joshua Astrachan and David Kaplan, and former Radius-TWC CEO Tom Quinn on the breakout success of David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows. An indie juggernaut, It Follows grossed 15 times its $1.3 million budget at the box office, in large part due to Radius’s last minute decision to stall VOD and expand to a wide release two weeks after its limited theatrical opening on March 13, riding the wave of word of mouth rather than costly P&A. Below are four major takeaways on the film’s unusual […]
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Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Ten Goals for IFP’s Independent Film Week
[Editor’s note: this is the first of two guest posts from Reinaldo Marcus Green about his experiences at this year’s IFP Independent Film Week. Green was one of our 25 New Faces of Film this year; click here to read that profile.] IFP’s Independent Film Week is an exciting time in New York City, where both aspiring and established filmmakers — writers, directors and producers — come together to share their stories. For one week, NYC becomes the world’s premier destination for independent film, television, and web-series development. It’s a time when nomadic filmmakers feel like they have a home. […]
