enough said

HOW NOT TO NEGOTIATE A DISTRIBUTION DEAL by Peter Broderick

Peter is one of THE guys on the indie scene. He's now a consultant to indie filmmakers - which is an amazing resource, one which all indie filmmakers should use. I first met Peter at SXSW when my 1st indie film Sleepwalk premiered there. Then, he was working at IFC's Next Wave, and he purchased Sleepwalk to run on IFC.

His wisdom on the ins and outs of indie distribution is pure gold. Here are some snippets, then click the link for full article.

You’ve finally finished your film and have just received your first distribution offer. Now what?

Negotiation is an essential but little understood part of dealmaking. To make fair deals with good distributors, there are mistakes you must avoid and steps you need to take.

8 MISTAKES TO AVOID

1. Don’t submit to festivals too early. Most filmmakers do and end up regretting it. If your movie is not as good as it’s going to get but you submit anyway, you increase the already high odds of being rejected. You should resist the siren calls of festival deadlines until you’re confident you’ve made the strongest film you can make. You need to put your best foot forward with festivals, press, and distributors. Utilize test screenings with strangers (rather than family and friends) to determine if your film is ready to premiere. These screenings will help you determine what changes need to be made. Then you can test screen a new cut for another audience. 
2. Don’t submit your film to distributors or producer’s reps without internally having a customized distribution strategy. This strategy should include your plans for each avenue of distribution. Too many filmmakers follow the old playbook and take a formulaic approach to submitting their movies to the usual suspects without having a clear vision of how they want their films to come into the world.

To read the rest, click here:

http://paradigmconsulting.fanbridge.com/campaigns/show.php?id=1116759&sid=186551875

an extremely well written film

One can not see every film, listen to every piece of music before one dies. Let's be thankful for that, yes? Of course, yes.

You Can Count On Me is a film I've been meaning to see for a while. Don't know why I never caught up with it, but I finally did and yes sir, mam and all in between - here I am saying watch this film!

Not often do I see characters who truly seem real. These do. The end isn't overblown and roses don't rise out of the pavement. A brother and sister with real needs and real problems. Drama with humor, humor with drama. Excellent acting and yes, these two actually feel like brother and sister!

Here's a NY Times review:

http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C07EED91738F933A25752C1A9669C8B63

You Can Count on Me is a 2000 American drama film starring Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo, Rory Culkin, and Matthew Broderick. Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan, it tells the story of Sammy, a single mother living in a small town, and her complicated relationships with family and friends. The story takes place in the fictionalized Catskill communities of Scottsville and Auburn, New York.^{[1][2][note 1]} The film was primarily shot in and around Margaretville, New York.

The film and Linney's performance received numerous positive reviews among critics, and dozens of award nominations and awards at film festivals and during the awards season, including two Oscar nominations.

The film was primarily shot in and around Margaretville, New York in the Catskill Mountains, circa June 1999.^{[note 2]}

While the bank exteriors were filmed at Margaretville's NBT bank, the interiors were filmed in another bank closer to New York City since NBT considered interior filming a security risk.^[2]

The scenes where Rudy Jr. walks home in the rain were filmed with the assistance of the Margaretville Fire Department which used their trucks and hoses to create the rain.^[3]

Many outdoor scenes away from the Village—most notably the fishing trip—were filmed in Phoenicia, New York.^[3] The cemetery seen in the film is not the Village's—which cannot be seen from the road—rather it is a smaller cemetery four miles outside the village on Route 30.

indie film on showtime

Around June is still playing on Showtime. Click link below for times. And yes, a real indie film - made for under 500K w/out a distribution deal.

http://www.sho.com/sho/movies/titles/3408214/around-june#/index

domestic violence

Yes, I know this is off topic as the space here is dedicated to filmmaking ramblings, but since that word rambling is indeed part of our lexicon permit me to ramble. What the fu*k! It took the NFL to view a video of a guy punching out his woman to suspend him? Really? Her being knocked out totally and a video of her be dragged out of an elevator wasn't enough?

I should be ENOUGH! It should have been more than enough for the local authorities to put this guy behind bars ASAP. Why do the police treat protestors with more malice than they do with men who punch out their women? To protest is not a crime, last time I check. To assault someone is. Priorities? Can we not get them straight?

Fu^k the NFL!

And to all of you young and inspiring filmmakers - do something!  Write a story about this bullshit. Please.

I feel we're at a tipping point. I hope we are. That is, how people of color are treated by the police. How women are treated. Viewed. Keep the pressure on - social media, films, blogs, essays, etc.

advise to my young filmmakers this weekend:

“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.” 
― Frank Zappa

Werner Herzog on Creativity, Self-Reliance, Making a Living of What You Love

Werner Herzog on Creativity, Self-Reliance, Making a Living of What You Love, and How to Turn Your Ideas Into Reality

by Maria Popova

“If your project has real substance, ultimately the money will follow you like a common cur in the street with its tail between its legs.”

Werner Herzog is celebrated as one of the most influential and innovative filmmakers of our time, but his ascent to acclaim was far from a straight trajectory from privilege to power. Abandoned by his father at an early age, Herzog survived a WWII bombing that demolished the house next door to his childhood home and was raised by a single mother in near-poverty. He found his calling in filmmaking after reading an encyclopedia entry on the subject as a teenager and took a job as a welder in a steel factory in his late teens to fund his first films. These building blocks of his character — tenacity, self-reliance, imaginative curiosity — shine with blinding brilliance in the richest and most revealing of Herzog’s interviews. Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed(public library) — not to be confused with E.F. Schumacher’s excellent 1978 philosophy book of the same title — presents the director’s extensive, wide-ranging conversation with writer and filmmaker Paul Cronin. His answers are unfiltered and to-the-point, often poignant but always unsentimental, not rude but refusing to infest the garden of honest human communication with the Victorian-seeded, American-sprouted weed of pointless politeness.

The best advice I can offer to those heading into the world of film is not to wait for the system to finance your projects and for others to decide your fate. If you can’t afford to make a million-dollar film, raise $10,000 and produce it yourself. That’s all you need to make a feature film these days. Beware of useless, bottom-rung secretarial jobs in film-production companies. Instead, so long as you are able-bodied, head out to where the real world is. Roll up your sleeves and work as a bouncer in a sex club or a warden in a lunatic asylum or a machine operator in a slaughterhouse. Drive a taxi for six months and you’ll have enough money to make a film. Walk on foot, learn languages and a craft or trade that has nothing to do with cinema. Filmmaking — like great literature — must have experience of life at its foundation. Read Conrad or Hemingway and you can tell how much real life is in those books. A lot of what you see in my films isn’t invention; it’s very much life itself, my own life. If you have an image in your head, hold on to it because — as remote as it might seem — at some point you might be able to use it in a film. I have always sought to transform my own experiences and fantasies into cinema.

To read full article, click below:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/08/18/werner-herzog-guide-for-the-perplexed-cronin/