Financing
Filmmaking - Financing
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Debating the Future of Hybrid Films at CPH:DOX
“Let’s start before we kill the term,” joked Jakob Hogel during the opening moments of “The Future of Hybrid Films,” a panel that took place last week at Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX. Preempting musty debate about the so-called hybrid genre, where various forms — usually documentary and fiction — are combined in single works, Hogel said, “We should be beyond the point of whether hybrid films exist, are dubious or morally wrong. They exist and who cares?” Hogel’s dismissal of hybrid handwringing doesn’t mean that the issues posed by such films aren’t being debated in the film industry. It’s just these debates […]
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Two Filmmakers Walked into a Bar…
The US in Progress market begins tomorrow. I fly to Wroclaw, Poland, in a few hours. Translation: I am frantically packing, burning DVDs, and researching European distribution companies. An Introduction: I’m a longtime film worker and first-time filmmaker. I’m in the final stages of finishing my first feature. I’m 33 years old, I have two daughters, and I live in central Pennsylvania. For over 12 years I have been a full-time alchemist attempting to fuse well-rounded family life with a career in film. This is an uncertain science and the results have been inconclusive. But A Song Still Inside, my […]
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A Kickstarter Launch for Stephen Elliott’s Happy Baby
Author Stephen Elliott (The Adderall Diaries) founded the culture website The Rumpus and recently directed his first feature, About Cherry. He’s launched a Kickstarter campaign for his second, Happy Baby, an adaptation of his 2004 autobiographical novel. The below is excerpted from Elliott’s Daily Rumpus newsletter, which, as a newsletter writer myself, I highly recommend. — SM Someone asked yesterday why I was doing a Kickstarter for my movie. He said he would donate $5, he doesn’t have very much money (which is fine), but he wanted to know why I needed you (he said, “Why do you need us?”). […]
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Five Questions with F To 7th Creator Ingrid Jungermann
Ingrid Jungermann was selected by Filmmaker as part of this year’s crop of “25 New Faces of Independent Film” along with her comedic cohort from The Slope, Desiree Akhavan. After chronicling the relationship between two “superficial, homophobic lesbians” in The Slope, Jungermann is striking out on her own with a new web series, F to 7th — currently in the final stages of its fundraising campaign on Kickstarter — in which the same “Ingrid” character reappears, now looking for her place in the world. Filmmaker briefly chatted with Jungermann about her upcoming show, going solo and lessons learned from The Slope. Filmmaker: Tell us about F to […]
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5 Kickstarter Tips from the National Film Society
The guys at the National Film Society recently succeeded in the Kickstarter campaign for their Awesome Asian Bad Guys web series. (Featured, by the way, on Filmmaker’s curated Kickstarter page….) They’ve posted a thank-you video offering their top five Kickstarter campaign tips. Speaking of Kickstarter, Zak Forsman’s piece on how to do a campaign is one of the best things we’ve ever published on the site. Bookmark it for when you do your own campaign. P.S. While linking to the National Film Society above I came across their latest video, a “Who Is Jean-Luc Godard?” spot. If only for the […]
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What if You Could Crowdfund a Filmmaker, Not a Film?
Here’s something I’ve always wondered: why are film investments always focused on the film, not the filmmaker? In other words, why don’t investors taking a chance on a first-time filmmaker get more than just the usually non-existent returns from that debut feature? Often what hits after the debut of a first feature is not the film but the filmmaker. The movie gets bought for a modest amount and usually underperforms, often leaving the investors with some degree of loss. But, after that film, the filmmaker is, well, a filmmaker, and in a position to move on to bigger and more […]
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Crowdfunding: The Unsustainable Truth
You cannot create a film career by crowdfunding. Let me say it again. If you believe that crowdfunding has the potential to reach levels that will allow you to make movies on a consistent basis, movies that can compete with commercial fare or even modestly budgeted union-made films, you are going to be severely disappointed. I’m assuming that a career in film is what you want. But if your only goal is to get a project produced and have it seen by those who attend the hundreds of film festivals in the U.S. or the thousands of festivals that have […]
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Deadline Approaching for Biennale College – Cinema Microbudget Production Program
The deadline of October 22 is fast approaching for the Biennale College – Cinema, a new initiative open to first and second-time directors that will lead to the production of three micro-budget films. In a program led by the Venice Biennale in partnership with Gucci, 15 producer-director teams will take part in a ten-day filmmaking workshop, after which three projects will be selected for further development and production funding in the amount of €150,000. Projects must be able to developed, produced and edited within five months, and they will then premiere at the 2013 Venice Biennale. The Call for Application […]
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Film Tax Incentives
A recent panel on State Tax Incentives sponsored by Media Services and Film Incentives Group, LLC., was centered on tax credits for Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but much of the advice is applicable to other state programs. It’s important to note that while many states offer some form of tax incentive for filmmakers, there are several important differences between the various programs: whether it’s a rebate or a credit, transferable, has a cap [the state has a total limit per years for all credits], the minimum production budget requirements, and several other details. Also covered was: different ways to use the […]
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The Potion to a Pitch
Independent Film Week kicked off on Sunday at Lincoln Center and co-writer/co-producer of Brooklyn Flee, Devon Kirkpatrick, and I sat in a room full of Emerging Narratives filmmakers nervously awaiting our moment to practice pitch our scripts in front of an esteemed industry panel. We spent two hours the day before sketching out our thoughts over bad guacamole and happy hour Chardonnay, attempting to figure out what makes a good two minute pitch. After a few hours, Devon and I parted ways needing to take a moment to center ourselves before a hectic week. I went home to fall asleep […]
