Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Make it More than a Movie: Incentivizing Audiences to Watch Independent Film
Earlier today, No Film School ran a transparency-friendly guest post by VHX about the bonus features included on the film Stripped. The filmmakers offer six distinct packages for purchase through the platform, each of which includes varying degrees of bonus content. The most expensive option at $49.99 — with 16 hours of additional content — accounted for 23% of their film sales and 48% of revenue. VHX determined that majority of these purchases came from pre-existing Kickstarter fans but also genuinely curious consumers who watched the doc on iTunes, etc., and liked it enough to head to their site for more. Since VHX compiled the above data, the […]
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The New Ultra-Wide LG 34UM95 Monitor Is A Gamechanger for Sound and Video Editors (Sponsored)
The following is a sponsored editorial post from LG. For video and sound editors, getting enough screen space to get work done efficiently has long been a problem. Even with two 16:9 monitors running off one CPU, there’s still bezel barriers to contend with, and your working space quickly grows cramped, slowing down workflow as you struggle to make all your programs fit. Now there’s a solution: the LG 34UM95, an ultra-wide 21:9 monitor with 3440×1440 Quad HD resolution. Sound mixers can now see all their tracks in a wide, uninterrupted linear sequence, with the high resolution eliminating time wasted […]
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Kickstarter Simplifies Guidelines, Now Instantly Approves Campaigns “by Algorithm”
Kickstarter announced today major changes to its process for accepting applications, simplifying its guidelines for creators and allowing campaigns to “launch instantly” by bypassing the human approval process. Kickstarter’s new rules boil down, writes founder Yancey Strickler, to three points: Projects must create something to share with others. Projects must be honest and clearly presented. Projects cannot fundraise for charity, offer financial incentives, or involve prohibited items. (The rules in full can be read here.) In his post, Strickler emphasizes that “Launch Now” is just an option; creators will still be able to propose projects to Kickstarter’s Community Managers, who […]
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Streaming More Eco-Friendly Than DVDs, Study (Sort Of) Says
A study published last week in the journal Environmental Research Letters under the self-explanatory title “The energy and greenhouse-gas implications of internet video streaming in the United States” looks at numbers from 2011 to conclude that streaming services and servers have become much more energy efficient. As a result, streaming consumes significantly less energy and emits less carbon dioxide than the manufacture and distribution of DVDs. (This is all explained in plain language here and here). The easy-to-extrapolate conclusion is not only that streaming is the increasingly dominant distribution platform of choice but that that turns out to be a […]
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Extrapolation over Return to Form: We Are The Best! and Show Me Love
We Are The Best! may not be one of the “best” films in recent memory, but it is one of my favorites. I’ve spent the last week reading innumerable reviews that deem Moodysson’s latest a “return to form,” harkening back to the heyday of his debut Show Me Love. The majority of the critics in question are less concerned with elaborating on this “return” than diving into We Are The Best!, so I’m left to assume its of the narrative variety. Yes, both films concern teenaged girls on the fringes, drawn against societal norms as well as their own families, but I like to consider We Are […]
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On Finding New Screenplay Structures for Independent Films
The below is a guest essay by Jennine Lanouette, Founder and Chief Content Creator at Screentakes Digital Publishing, who is currently in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign for a line of media rich screenplay analysis ebooks. Lanouette has taught screenwriting and lectured on story structure and script analysis for over 20 years, and much of her wisdom can be found at her site. The new ebooks use text, video and interactive graphics to provide a new dimension to screenplay study. For more details, and to donate to the campign, visit its Kickstarter page. — SM It often seems to […]
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The Independent Screenwriter: Jon Raymond
Portland-based Jon Raymond has four screenplay credits, all in the last decade, to his name, but his iMDB page only tells half the story. Raymond began his career and is still well known as a writer of novels and literary short fiction, and his film career has come not from the usual Black-Listed spec script but from adaptations of his work co-authored by a director/collaborator/friend, Kelly Reichardt. Two stories from his short story collection Livability, “Old Joy” and “Train Choir,” became Reichardt films (Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, respectively), with the two co-authoring their scripts. That work, and the […]
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VHX Launches Transparency Aggregate “Stats”
Last year, John Sloss volunteered the closely guarded VOD and digital returns on Escape From Tomorrow, daring his competitors to do the same for their release catalogues. Unfortunately, not much came of this Multi-Screen Gross transparency crusade, but VHX, the digital distribution platform, has now launched “Stats,” a regularly updated infographic that details revenues and transactions. “We’re big believers in transparency and knowledge-sharing,” reads the announcement, “and it’s time to put our money revenue stats where our mouth is.” An aggregate in the truest sense as it provides no insight into individual titles, “Stats” nonetheless offers an idea of how to best reach your audience. The page breaks […]
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“Cinema Needs Good Images”: An Interview with Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC was given the “Pierre Angénieux Excellens in Cinematography” award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It was a fitting tribute to the 83-year-old director of photography, who chronicled the events of the 1956 Hungarian revolution before leaving his country soon afterwards. In 1962 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States, settling in Los Angeles. During the ’70s Zsigmond established himself as one of the world’s great cinematographers, working on Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller and The Long Goodbye, John Boorman’s Deliverance, and Steven Spielberg’s The Sugarland Express and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, […]
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Vimeo Launches Original Programming with High Maintenance Web Series
Following in the footsteps of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon et al., Vimeo has boarded the original programming train with its acquisition of 25 New Faces’ Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld’s wonderful web series High Maintenance. Sinclair and Blichfeld began posting episodes of the serial, which stars Sinclair as a pot dealer who services a rotating ensemble, on Vimeo last year. In an email, Blichfeld said the following of their decision to join forces with Vimeo, “We have full creative control (writing, casting, etc.) of our work, which is unique. The episodes can vary in length as well. Basically we get to do High Maintenance […]
