Here’s the third of our New Breed videos on new distribution ideas and paradigms at the Sundance Film Festival. The intro: SABI filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah move away from identifying the questions toward some possible answers that may, in fact, lead to the solutions we seek. Insights from Linas Phillips (Bass Ackwards), Habib Azar (Armless), Dan Mirvish, and Brian Newman are fleshed out with more thoughts from the pre-Filmmaker Summit roundtable. NEW BREED PARK CITY – Seeking the Answers, Part 1 from Sabi Pictures on Vimeo. Watch all the New Breed videos.
As a magazine editor I am not unsympathetic to the need to generate paid online readership. I will also admit that I didn’t get it together to work out a Variety sub before Sundance now that the site has gone paywall. Yes, I need Variety for business, our parent organization subscribes so it comes to the office, and I will arrange to get it online, but I will also say that I am irritated by the initial promise of content one sees when clicking the site that’s then followed by a black screen of death. (“Just Control-C when the screen […]
Here is Night Catches Us producer Ron Simons’ fourth post from Sundance. January 24th was a good day. I finally got to have in-person conversations with two of the powerhouses of the Sundance Institute: Michelle Satter and Anne Lai (both of whom have been crucial in making this film come into being). They’d both fielded worried, stressed, beseeching calls from Sean, Tanya and myself. They were ever supportive with sage advice administered with calming tones and gracious patience. I also got to meet a number of other filmmakers at the Producer’s Brunch. The key note speaker was Lynette Howell, who […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 9:00 pm — Temple Theatre, Park City] The most difficult decision was the one to expose the mistakes of fellow film and TV program makers. The related question is why I decided to do it. There were two reasons for that. Firstly those mistakes were instrumental to the justification of an unjust war; secondly in many instances there were grounds to doubt that those mistakes were innocent. In other words, those mistakes were probably lies. To me personally they were shocking because I’d seen with my own eyes what havoc Russian bombs wrecked in the […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 8:30 pm — Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] Deciding not to do a tour documentary on the band, which was what was first proposed. I have strong feelings about the distance between performer and audience, and I didn’t want to contribute anything more to this gap. I wanted to make something that I would be psyched to see and here it is. That and deciding which kid to kill in a scene were pretty difficult. In the end it was a combination of his hair and fake blood that did it.
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 9:00 pm — New Frontier on Main, Park City] The most difficult decisions on our film were made in the editing process and had to do with balancing music, tangent and story. We had one scene in particular that looked great and had a really good friend of mine and her son acting in it. Everywhere we placed the scene in our movie seemed to throw it out of balance or clutter the narrative. The last thing I wanted to do was lose some of those shots, and I especially didn’t want to cut my […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 5:30 pm — Library Center Theatre, Park City] The hardest decision was the location. I had to choose between Boston, Milwaukee, Cleveland and Minneapolis. The criteria was that I needed a theater that I could sell out twice in order to shoot two performances. Those were the cities where I was selling tickets the fastest. Minneapolis has great crowds but the theater is white and kind of sterile and the audience is separated from the stage. Cleveland is great but the show I had booked there was a little too late in the year. I […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 9:00 pm — Egyptian Theatre, Park City] We made lots of hard decisions making Me Too. I think, in fact, directing is making decisions all the time. For both of us, me and Antonio Naharro, the hardest one was to ask for the real Pablo Pineda to play Daniel on this film. It was difficult because when we realized that nobody else could play this role we had no choice. In fact the film couldn’t have been made without him playing this kind of alter ego of himself. How it affected the film? Well, the […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 9:30 pm — Eccles Theatre, Park City] The easiest decision that I made with respect to the film was to film it in stereo (3D). In hindsight, this became the hardest decision as the creative and technical challenge was with us every single day and continues through the post and the exhibition path. The outcome, however, is stunning.
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 3:00 pm — Egyptian Theatre, Park City] Probably the hardest decision during the whole process of making Contracorriente was casting the lead role of Miguel. The story of Contracorriente relies completely on the shoulders of the main character and so I needed a talented actor that could be both strong and vulnerable, masculine and sweet, who wouldn’t shy away from playing a man in love with his wife and with another man and who would be believable in the role of a fisherman and leader of his town. I also wanted him to be Peruvian […]