In this week’s newsletter I mentioned that I’m trying to put together some thoughts on how the looming recession and current credit crunch will affect independent film production. It’s a bigger issue than just that, however, as these economic troubles are hitting at the same time as the industry — both Hollywood and indie — is rethinking the business model that underpins the feature film business. (If you don’t currently get the newsletter, you can subscribe by typing in your email address at right.) I received the following response from Jane Kosek which raises a lot of good points about […]
Over the weekend I read on Ain’t It Cool News about James Gunn and Spike TV’s “PG Porn,” a series of short satiric films starring porn stars but which feature no sex. Here’s Gunn from the AICN piece: My brothers Brian and Sean and I came up with PG PORN years ago. We’d talk about all sorts of scenarios where you take the typical porn set-up and things would somehow go wrong. When I was a kid I’d go see X-rated movies in a theater with my friends. I would rarely get turned on — it was all about laughing […]
CinemaTech’s Scott Kirsner sent me an email alerting me to a really interesting project he’s done with ITVS. From his email: Earlier this year, ITVS asked me to interview a group of documentary filmmakers who were working on the vanguard. Specifically, we wanted to focus on three things: 1. Opening up production in new ways, communicating and collaborating with the audience while a film is still in the works. 2. Distributing in new ways, through avenues like iTunes or downloads on a filmmaker’s own Web site 3. Marketing and cultivating an audience for the work in new ways, and figuring […]
Not film related (not, that is, if you don’t think the general economy has anything to do with film production, studio or independent), but congrats to Paul Krugman for his Nobel Prize in Economics, announced today. Today in the NY Times he asks whether British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has saved the world economy. That topic is also discussed by screenwriter Howard Rodman (Savage Grace) in his Huffington Post blog titled “Hank and the Swedish Model.” (That’s “Hank” as in “Paulson”).
Producer Noah Harlan of 2.1 Films sent us news of his latest production: an iPhone app. Entitled the 2.1 Film Calculator, it “is a multi-purpose tool for filmmakers to aid in common tasks of film conversion and counting in pre-production, production and post-production.” From the site: Film Calculator has three basic functions: Length & Time Converter: This function allows the user quickly convert length to time and vice versa for a variety of film stocks and speeds. Choose from Super-8mm, 16mm, 35mm or 70mm stocks and preset frames per second rates (12, 24, 25, 48) or enter your own. Then […]
Lawrence Lessig has a new book coming out this week entitled Remix, published by Penguin Press. It’s excerpted/adapted in the Wall Street Journal today; in the piece, Lessig argues that current copyright law is outdated and counterproduction, stifling both creativity and economic progress. An excerpt: The return of this “remix” culture could drive extraordinary economic growth, if encouraged, and properly balanced. It could return our culture to a practice that has marked every culture in human history — save a few in the developed world for much of the 20th century — where many create as well as consume. And […]
WRITER-DIRECTOR-ACTRESS MARIANNA PALKA AND JASON RITTER IN PALKA’S GOOD DICK. COURTESY MORNING KNIGHT / PRESENT PICTURES. Still only 27, Marianna Palka has achieved notable success early in her career because she knew what she wanted and showed an adventurous spirit in going out and getting it. A first generation Polish Scot, Palka grew up in the depressed working class Glasgow neighborhood of Maryhill, where at an early age she displayed an interest in theater and cinema. In her teens, she began making what she calls “video art” projects which depicted the world around her, such as By My Very Self, […]
Nikki Finke points to this Los Angeles Times piece that reveals that pro-movie biz breaks are included in the bail-out bill that just passed the Senate and which is headed for the house. Specifically, the bill extends the film production cost deduction included in the 2004 Jobs Creation Act to December, 2009, and it lifts the budget cap on eligible films. Now, instead of being limited to films budgeted at up to $15 million, the deduction is capped at $15 million for any single film no matter what the budget.
Following is the text for Ted Hope’s keynote address at the Film Independent Filmmaker Forum on September 27, 2008. Thanks to Ted for allowing us to reprint his speech. A THOUSAND PHOENIX RISING How The New Truly Free Filmmaking Community Will Rise From Indie’s Ashes I can’t talk about the “crisis” of the indie film industry. There is no crisis. The country is in crisis. The economy is in crisis. We, the filmmakers, aren’t in crisis. The business is changing, but for us –us who are called Indie Filmmakers — that’s good that the business is changing. Filmmaking is an […]
A REENACTED SHOT OF ARTHUR RUSSELL ON THE STATEN ISLAND FERRY FROM DIRECTOR MATT WOLF’S WILD COMBINATION: A PORTRAIT OF ARTHUR RUSSELL. COURTESY PLEXIFILM. Some people age more quickly than others, and Matt Wolf – both in person and in his work – displays a confidence and maturity that belie his tender years. Twenty-six-year-old Wolf was born and raised in San Jose, California, and spent much of his teenage years watching movies. He won a full-tuition fellowship to study film at NYU, where he made a number of shorts including Smalltown Boys (2003), an experimental biopic about AIDS activist David […]