Saturday, March 28, 2015

great advise for young filmmakers by Robert downey Sr.

Get it done. Do it yourself. With your friends. Forget the system. Just make a film!

Don't send your scripts around for funding. Write something cheap - few characters, few locations. Make it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZnVfKmuqk0

Monday, March 16, 2015

key to becoming a successful and fulfilled independent filmmaker

I couldn't agree more with the advise here, hence the New Gorilla. If you don't have actors that can "open" your movie, make it with the least amount of money you can. And have something to say!



The key to becoming a successful and fulfilled independent filmmaker is shooting films on your mobile phone for $3 and never giving in to the temptation of studio schmaltz, according to Mark Duplass, the co-creator of Togetherness.
In his keynote speech at SXSW in Austin, the filmmaker outlined his step-by-step survival guide for young directors who don’t want to compromise in order to get their films made.
“The first step is the $3 short film,” he said. “We’re in a place now where technology is so cheap that there’s no excuse for you not to be making films on the weekends with your friends, shot on your iPhone – we had a feature film at Sundance this year that was shot entirely on iPhones and it did really well.”
He explained that along with his brother Jay, he had lived in Austin, working as an editor, before saving enough money to make their first feature film, Vince Del Rio, which cost $65,000 and was, in his words, “a steaming pile of dog diarrhea”.
Despite the film tanking, the brothers decided to take a lo-fi approach with their next film, The New Brad, which was shot on their parents’ dysfunctional video camera, cost $3 and ended up at SXSW and Sundance.
“It changed everything for us,” said Duplass. “Because it really doesn’t matter what your movie looks like – because if you have a voice and something interesting to say they will like you and they will program you.”
He recommended making a $3 film every weekend with “your smartest group of friends”, made up of four or five people including a charismatic lead actor. Detailing his approach further, he said the film should be one scene, five minutes, ideally comedic and/or short – “because they program well at festivals” – and he warned filmmakers to be prepared for failure. Despite that, he insisted that being myopic and inward-looking when making one’s first films was definitely a good thing.
“At the risk of saying you should make a self-indulgent film for your first movie: you should make a self-indulgent film for your first movie.”
Other advice for would-be filmmakers included having a really strong day job (he recommended being a Spanish or Mandarin translator because of the demand and high pay), and saving money in order to travel and submit short films to film festivals.
Turning down money offered by agents – “to avoid being stuck in development for five years” – shooting on mobile devices and asking friends and colleagues for favours were all recommended by Duplass, who called his approach “the available materials school of filmmaking”.

Monday, March 9, 2015

Mark Ruffalo On Casting Rejection: “I Was Rejected 600 Times Before I Booked A Role”

He has been The Hulk in The Avengers, a memory eraser in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and a multitude of other roles in fan favourites like Shutter Island, Zodiac, Collateral, and loads more.
Like many celebrities Mark Ruffalo has faced continuous rejection. He persevered, and ended up working opposite industry favourite actors, in some of Hollywood’s biggest films.  Ruffalo’s perseverance alone was not what kept him in the game and coming back for more auditions – apparently his mother told him that he ‘…couldn’t do anything else” and “if I tried to quit she wouldn’t speak to me again.”
‘It’s been mythologized now but it started with about 600 auditions without success,’ he said about his long slog to stardom. ‘Most smart people would have quit when it takes that long.’
A key part of being an actor is managing rejection. It’s all about being professional, not taking the rejection personally, and moving on quickly to prepare for your next opportunity.
There is nothing gained by feeling terrible over spilled milk, or a botched audition. Keep moving forward, and you never know what can happen – you may just pull a Mark Ruffalo.
For more, go to Casting workbook: 

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Alejandro G. Inarritu on making Birdman

"Fear is the condom of life; it doesn't allow you to enjoy things.  I did it without, and this was the result; it was real.  It was making love."