Financing
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IFP Masterclass: How to Fund Your Documentary
Louise Rosen is a media executive with more than a quarter-century of experience. She formed Louise Rosen Ltd. in 1996 “to specialize in setting up international television pre-sales and co-productions on behalf of independent documentary and non-fiction producers.” She has done everything from research and budgeting to distribution and management. Among her credits are Oscar, Emmy, Sundance, Prix Italia, and International Emmy award-winning projects. Suffice to say, she knows a thing or two about documentaries and getting your film made. Luckily for filmmakers without Rosen’s breadth of experience (or those who do, but can still learn a thing or two), […]
by Billy Brennan on Mar 14, 2013 -
The New Digital Storytelling Series: Elaine McMillion
Last week, Filmmaker and the MIT Open Documentary Lab kicked off their collaborative series of interviews with digital storytellers with a conversation with Zeega. (For an introduction to this entire series, read “Should Filmmakers Learn to Code,” by MIT Open Documentary Lab’s Sarah Wolozin.) In the second part in this series, Elaine McMillion talks about her work, mainly focusing on her interactive documentary Hollow, a “hybrid community participatory project and interactive documentary” that uses HTML5 to depict a West Virginia community via video, photography, soundscapes and interactive data. From her website, McMillion describes herself thusly: Elaine McMillion is a documentary storyteller […]
by MIT Open Documentary Lab on Mar 14, 2013 -
The New Digital Storytelling Series: Zeega
The first our series of interviews with digital storytellers, realized in collaboration with Filmmaker, here are the team behind the interactive storytelling platform Zeega. From the group’s mission statement: Zeega is revolutionizing web publishing and interactive storytelling for a future beyond blogs. With Zeega, you can use any media in the cloud, transform the entire screen into your playground, and share your interactive creations with the world. We’re living in a unique moment. More media than ever is recorded and shared. But the web today is dominated by a few platforms – all stories start to feel the same, trapped […]
by MIT Open Documentary Lab on Mar 7, 2013 -
Immersive Storytelling for The Lost Children
My feature film The Lost Children will have its New York City premiere with the Film Society of Lincoln Center in January, 2013. The premiere will not be a film screening alone. It is presented by Convergence: Film Society of Lincoln Center, which is an arm of the FSLC devoted to immersive and transmedia storytelling. Like many organizations in New York City, FSLC is reaching out and exploring new storytelling methods. The 50th anniversary of the NYFF included its first ever series of panels on transmedia. This year, the Tribeca FF is accepting basically any type of project. And the […]
by Mark Harris on Dec 23, 2012 -
What’s New on Our Curated Kickstarter Page
Filmmaker has a curated page on Kickstarter, where we point you towards projects that we think are worthy of your attention. Here are our recent additions, and to read more about them visit them via Filmmaker Magazine on Kickstarter. Love Spasm: New York underground film icon Nick Zedd has just launched a campaign for what sounds like an ambitious feature set to shoot in Berlin. “The themes of this movie are love, sexual freedom, loyalty, human insecurity and the strategies people employ to survive and maintain relationships within the unnatural constraints imposed upon them by the economic pressures of capitalism, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 23, 2012 -
12 Tips from James Schamus and Christine Vachon at IFP Film Week
The IFP’s Independent Film Week’s Filmmaker Conference kicked off today, beginning with a case study of Beasts of the Southern Wild and ending with a conversation, moderated by IFP Executive Director Joana Vicente, between producer and Killer Films head Christine Vachon and producer, screenwriter and Focus Features CEO James Schamus. Below are 12 tips from the latter event — advice aimed at producers and, in some cases, anybody else, from two veterans with deep, decades-long roots in the independent community. 1. Consider producing. Christine Vachon and James Schamus are producers, but they both remembered a time when they were not. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 16, 2012 -
Senate Passes JOBS Act with Modified Crowdfunding Rules
The JOBS (Jumpstart Our Small Businesses) Act, a collection of six bills intended to make it easy for small businesses to raise capital by relaxing various Securities and Exchange Commission requirements, including those related to crowdfunding, passed the Senate yesterday. It is now headed back to the House for reconciliation and could become law next week. While the House version of the bill passed swiftly with bipartisan backing, its passage through the Senate was rockier, with some Democrats and progressives warning that the bill would dilute necessary investor protections contained in the 2002, post-Enron Sarbanes Oxley Act. The bill exempts […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 23, 2012 -
Crowdfunding Bill Stalls in the Senate
The JOBS (Jumpstart our Business Startups) Act, which passed the House last week, has stalled in the Senate over criticism by Democrats over some of its provisions, including those related to crowdfunding, the strategy being used today by many independent filmmakers. Currently, it is illegal to use crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo to solicit actual investments. Monies pledged on these platforms are donations usually lacking any tax benefit or further income possiblity for the funder. (Or, increasingly, they are pre-buys for a specific goods or services.) The JOBS Act aims to change that, allowing businesses, including filmmakers, to solicit […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 16, 2012 -
10 Tips On Producing And Financing From SXSW
Troublemaker Studio’s Aaron Kaufman hosted a panel titled “Making it Happen: Financing an Independent Film” at SXSW this year, gathering together fellow execs Katie McNeill (V.P. of Production, Electric City Entertainment, the new venture between producers Lynette Howell and Jamie Patricof) and Garrick Dion, Senior Vice President of Development at Bold Films, and a co-producer of Drive (pictured). (Troublemaker, of course, is the production company of Robert Rodriguez.) The three offered thoughts on how to develop and put together projects able to financed in today’s independent film marketplace as well as tips on keeping that development on track. Here are […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 15, 2012 -
The Micro-Budget Conversation: Is Enough… Enough ?
When and how did Edward Burns become the mouthpiece of micro budget cinema? That’s a question I asked on Facebook after a late night holiday bender and noticing the ridiculous amount of press Ed got for making a film that certainly didn’t cost him 9K. Then I thought, who really does make a film for 9K? If you add up all the favors and salaries that are not getting paid you’re in the hundreds of thousands. Then I thought, oh man is there any such thing as micro-budget at all? Or is it like the myth of cover girl beauty. […]
by John Yost on Feb 16, 2012
