Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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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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IFP Screen Forward: 5 Questions for Sales Agent and Producer Bill Strauss
You can conceive an ingenious plot, pen the perfect script, even begin to line up your ultimate cast — but it all risks being for naught if you can’t sell your vision. Even today, as alternative platforms emerge onto the distribution landscape, a successful pitch and getting that greenlight remains one of the most critical steps towards your project seeing the light of day, not to mention one of the most intimidating. But what goes into — and stays out of — making a powerful pitch? How do the people on the other side of that desk approach the process […]
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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. […]
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IFP Screen Forward: 5 Tips on Pitching Web Series
The on-stage pitch has become a staple of documentary film forums, like IDFA and CPH:DOX, and pitch panels long ago snuck into events like IFP’s Screen Forward Conference (previously the Filmmaker Conference). But the on-stage pitching of web series is something relatively new at these more film-oriented events. Befitting the IFP’s conference name change, three filmmakers storytellers took the stage Sunday at noon at the Bruno Walter Auditorium to impress a panel of web content professionals with their ideas of episodic tales to be streamed online. But given the Wild West nature of web series, where buyers, monetization strategies and […]
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“I Think You’re Confusing Me with Mike Myers”: Michael Moore Addresses his Fans at TIFF
With just a few hours notice, Michael Moore threw an impromptu party for his fans at the Toronto International Film Festival this week. Announced on Facebook, an afternoon People’s Party welcomed the first 100 folks who lined up outside a Mexican restaurant down the street from the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Also getting in were the first 100 ticket holders from the premiere of his latest doc, Where To Invade Next. The film’s a road trip that spotlights economic and political policies in other countries that Moore feels America should have. For instance: Italy, where workers get 35 days annual paid […]
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The Seedy Side of LA: Michael Curtis Johnson on Hunky Dory at IFP Film Week
[This is the first of two guest blog posts from Michael Curtis Johnson, who will be participating in Independent Film Week with his feature Hunky Dory.] Los Angeles. Sunrise. Goodbye kisses. This will be the longest I’ve been away from my wife and two daughters since they were born. I’m catching a flight to New York for the second phase of IFP’s Narrative Filmmaker Labs and Independent Film Week with my first feature film Hunky Dory, a drama about a glam rock dilettante and his eleven-year-old son. IFP’s Filmmaker Labs are a year-long mentorship program that helps first-time directors and their teams […]
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Everyday Is Like Sunday: Soon-Mi Yoo’s Songs From the North
Soon-Mi Yoo’s Songs From the North joins a small group of recent films that attempt to understand North Korea despite a lack of readily available resources. (The Interview will not be mentioned except just this once, because c’mon.) Jim Finn’s The Juche Idea combines real North Korean footage with CCTV-level, rigorously stilted fake propaganda and musical numbers of the director’s own puckish division, attempting to define something about the nation by producing materials ostensibly following the titular gibberish ideology; Mads Brügger’s annoying and unlightening The Red Chapel sends the Danish provocateur to the DPRK along with comedians to find out What’s Really Happening, mostly by […]
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Can I Get a Witness? Black Mass
According to the FBI’s former most wanted man (after Osama Bin Laden), Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger, notorious head of South Boston’s Irish-American Winter Hill Boys, ratting was the most heinous of offenses. Never mind that Jimmy (Johnny Depp) was a heartless killer and gangland powermonger: He considered loyalty a sacred bond. He did, however, define and redefine treachery to suit his own survival. He drew a distinction between his interpretations of informing — a business move in which he keeps the feds abreast of illegal actions in exchange for taking down the ruling North End Italian mob (whom he charmingly refers to […]
