Kickstarter has rolled out today Spotlight, a very clever new design option for their project pages. On first glance it seems simple — sort of like Facebook’s Timeline, Spotlight turns your Kickstarter page into a reverse chronological story of your project’s inception, development, successful funding (you hope) and afterlife. By organizing your updates and milestones in the form of a clean narrative scroll, it encourages you to continue that story long after your campaign ends — making Kickstarter a stickier site. (More traffic for Kickstarter!) To make it worthwhile to filmmakers, as the video below shows, you’re given a prominently […]
Yesterday, Fandor announced the creation of its FIXshorts program, which invited participants in its FIX initiative to submit a budget and proposal for a short-form production. 5 out of the 34 proposals were selected to receive 50% project funding from Fandor, while the other half will be raised on Kickstarter, promoting a “hybrid process to help filmmakers use several modern fundraising and marketing tools to complete and distribute their projects.” Fandor will provide crowdfunding rewards (including monthly subscription trials) and assist with outreach, in addition to ensuring distribution on the streaming platform. The program will run twice annually, with more projects in consideration for support come […]
From filmmaker and Davey Foundation board member Dustin Guy Defa comes word of the upcoming deadline for the Davey Foundation, which will give three grants to filmmakers 35 years and younger for the production of short films. Ben Kegan’s The First Men won the Davey’s single grant last year. This year, two grants have been added, and the awards mix cash with in-kind services and mentorship. Full details below: The Davey Foundation was created to honor the life of David Ross Fetzer and his commitment to the film and theater arts. For 2015, the foundation is handing out three short […]
Don Argott’s interests are eclectic, to say the least. Just in the past five years the Philly-based documentarian has followed the downward spiraling of rock stars, explored a nuclear-reactor community and, most recently, launched a Kickstarter campaign for his latest project Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time. The in-production doc is co-directed by Curb Your Enthusiasm co-creator Bob Weide and is about his decades-long attempt to make his own film about the iconic author, who in the process became a close friend. Argott spoke with Filmmaker about meeting Weide at an overseas film festival, going the indie financing route, and how […]
I’m with a small group of friends for our inaugural weekly movie night. Thinking that a club name will beget commitment, we arbitrarily choose “Zeitgeist.” It’s the first word we see, frozen on the makeshift projector screen. Zeitgeist Films is the distribution company for our opening film, the first in Laura Poitras’ post-9/11 trilogy and a 2007 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary, My Country, My Country. For her film Citizenfour, Poitras is one of two female directors nominated for Best Documentary in the 2015 Oscar race. None have been nominated this year for Achievement in Directing. None have been […]
Data — it’s the most coveted property in independent film. While studios base their greenlight decisions on finely-honed models derived from the financial performance of numerous other pictures, many independent filmmakers perilously based investor pitches and distribution decisions on anecdotes and hearsay. What used to be simple extrapolation (“If that film grossed X, it probably did Y on home video”) has become a near impossible exercise in the age of digital distribution, in which paltry box-office returns hide “the real numbers” — a dizzying matrix of VOD stats, download figures, Netflix license fees and more and more obscure sub-categories of […]
Independent producer Ted Hope, who recently left his position as CEO of Fandor, has been announced as the new Head of Production for Amazon Original Movies. As announced by Amazon today, the division, part of Amazon Studios, will produce and acquire up to 12 films a year for theatrical release and then early window play on Prime Instant Video four to eight weeks later. With producing credits such as The Ice Storm, 21 Grams, Super and Hope, of course, is well known to Filmmaker readers and, encouragingly, he has been tapped to bring “unique stories, voices, and characters from top […]
Creative Capital, the granting and artist support organization, announced today its 2015 awardees in the categories of Moving Image and Visual Arts. Out of 3,700 submitted proposals, 46 projects were funded with the 50 supported artists ranging in age from 28 to 80. More than half our women, and and more than half identify as non-European American. Among the grantees are a number of artists who will be recognized by the Filmmaker readership. Here are just a few of them. Veteran director Michael Almereyda receives his first Creative Capital grant for a series of short films based on Italian folktales. […]
My knowledge of Cuban cinema is limited to a handful of films — one or two native productions and works by foreigners like Wim Wenders’ Buena Vista Social Club and Michael Rubbo’s Waiting for Fidel. So my interest was aroused when President Obama announced his administration’s change in policy regarding Cuba. The political ramifications of the President’s policies are, of course, extremely personal for Cuban-Americans, and discussions about the politics of the announcement and human-rights issues in Cuba are occurring across the nation(s). While not disregarding these discussions, I wanted to take a moment to look at the possibilities normalized relations might create […]
CPH:DOX is like a strange dream. That dream where you wake up and everyone understands that artistically motivated documentaires have a place, have meaning, are celebrated. And frankly the weirder the better. The pitch forum at this Copenhagen-based documentary festival is no exception. Coming up on its fourth year, it is the home of the eccentric doc sibling. The one that confounds and delights, and maybe has broadcast potential, but maybe could also play in an art gallery. In its beautiful peculiarity, the CPH:DOX forum stands out strongly from most of the other pitch forums that abound on the documentary […]