And now for something even more awesome: ‘Los Angeles: A Love Poem‘, by Dylan King (featuring a poem by Sandra Beasley)
For the second year in a row, I produced the Slamdance/ WorkBook Project/ Open Video Alliance Filmmaker Summit at Slamdance Film Festival (sponsored by IndieFlix, Banyan Branch and the Ford Foundation). The summit happened Saturday January 22nd, and was live streamed online.
It featured speakers Scilla Andreen (IndieFlix), Tiffany Shlain (Dir. Connected, Yelp), Brian Newman (subgenre media), Jenny Samppala (Banyan Branch), John Anderson (journalist), Lance Weiler (Pandemic 1.0), Greg Pak (Vision Machine) and Orlando Bagwell (Ford Foundation).
My friend Regina Gelfo sent this to me in the first few days of 2010 as an exercise to help me establish and put clarity into the year that had passed. She found it somewhere on the internet, not sure where. It’s been helpful to me, and perhaps it might be to you, as well.
2010: COMPLETING AND REMEMBERING
2011: CREATING THE NEW YEAR
Zoot-suiters in Los Angeles, and the girls who loved them.
Sources:
a. http://pic40.picturetrail.com/VOL272/8157143/15269508/231094190.jpg
b. http://www.flickr.com/photos/80643375@N00/356743212
c. http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HCcB7IDJQ6Q/0.jpg
These indie tropes are now done. Maybe even overdone.
1. THE BAND TOUR DOC
Band from US/UK/Australia goes on tour to Europe/US/Europe&US. Filmmaker tags along. Filmmaker films freeways being driven upon, through front window/side window. Prevalent attention paid to road signs in foreign idioms. Band engages in hijinks such as: drinking all night, driving while groggy, sleeping on floors, partying with people of the opposite sex (never seen one that parties with people of the same sex– that might be interesting!). Band has a couple of totally empty gigs. Band gets exhausted and tempers flare. Band has big falling out, someone quits. Band has one triumphal awesome gig. Band comes back home to their day jobs in menial work. Band vows to carry on despite all odds.
2. THE SOAPBOX DOC
(AKA The advocacy doc)
Earnest in tone and pointing to legitimate problems in the world, the advocacy doc is also usually incredibly yawnsville. It is healthy and dull, like a brussel sprout for your brain. And as with a brussel sprout, it’s hard to get particularly excited about consuming it. Try adding some humor, a story, a damn good editor, and an opposing point of view. And please: No more films about Katrina or global warming, at least for a little while.
3. THE FILM ABOUT MAKING A FILM
(AKA The film about ME!)
Making movies is totally hard. You deserve to be in the spotlight and so does your superhot girlfriend. You are a talented motherfucker and talent like yours must not be contained. You are going to make this movie against all odds. Now please take that 2 hour feature containing those succession of shots of yourself in the mirror earnestly discussing your artistic process, chop it into like 30 shorts, and release it episodically on Youtube. Thank you.
4. THE TV SHOW PILOT ABOUT ANIMALS
A TV exec would probably be very excited about your film, but: You ‘re putting it forth for theatrical screening, and everyone can tell it’s a pilot. Few people will watch a 52 minute nature doc (with heavy voice-over and swelling music) while scarfing popcorn in a theatre. People watch those types of films on Tuesday nights, at 10PM, on their sofas. Send it straight to Animal Planet/ NatGeo (and you’ll probably get paid more, too).
5. THE SUPER-ESOTERIC ART FILM
Much more at home in an art gallery or in your grad school critique, your screeches and public displays of modern dancing feel ridiculous when presented as a narrative film.
6. THE HORROR FILM KNOCK-OFF
I know it’s, like, a cultural meme now, but believe it or not it takes a lot for a zombie movie to be good, not just your drunk frat brothers walking around with mascara and lipstick smooshed on their faces. Same goes for ‘Blair Witch’ knock-offs, ‘Paranormal Activities’ knockoffs, ‘Saw’ knowckoffs and vampire movie knockoffs. And then you submit a making-of as a documentary? See item 3.
7. THE MILQUETOAST FILM ABOUT A KOOKY PERSON
If you must do this, please make it either a. under 10 minutes or b. about something that actually HAPPENS to that kooky person. Ninety minutes of a kooky person just being kooky/crazy/wild/deep is forgettable, immediately being filed in that gray area in your brain reserved for “cool characters that mean nothing to me”. Also, see ‘honorable mention a’.
8. THE TOPIC THAT TRENDY PEOPLE WERE REALLY INTO 8 MONTHS AGO, IS NOW SOMEWHAT TIRED, AND THAT EVERYBODY IS NOW MAKING MOVIES ABOUT
(AKA the film that thinks it’s really cool)
If you are white, urban, and more than 5 of your friends are ironically into the topic that your film is about (eg pirates vs ninjas; unicorns; hipster beards or moustaches), then — I promise you — a lot of other people are making the exact same film, about the exact same subject, and probably with the exact same Animal Collective soundtrack. By the time your film comes out, the topic is going to be played out. Try a different topic, something genuinely, authentically cool not something that Vice tells you is cool in an ironic sort of way.
9. THE INSANELY STYLIZED MOVIE ABOUT EDGY SHIT
Your Guy Ritchie-eque attempts at frenetic styling and your curse-ridden script don’t work when the film is shot on a flip cam. Nor do the final cut filters, the entry-level aftereffects, and anything like solarization or hyper-saturation on your footage.
10. THE SPIRITUAL FILM ABOUT AN ESOTERIC THEORY
An hour and forty-five minutes of a badly shot religious sermon delineating the connection between the Masons, Ranchers in Kentucky and George Bush, complete with 5 minute text cards in Curlz, fluorescent? Someone take away this person’s camcorder and iMovie.
HONORABLE MENTION A: The film that badly needs a finish editor
Two hours that could be condensed into one. One hour that could be condensed into 10 minutes. If the footage doesn’t advance the story, provide relevant context or just look beautiful, cut it.
HONORABLE MENTION B: The film that should be intended for the internet that looks terrible on a big screen
Superawesome when I’m bored at work. Superlame when I’m stuck watching it in a theatre.
HONORABLE MENTION C: The cross country film
I’ve seen every variation of this – some pretty great (Hunter Weeks’ excellent 10MPH), some mildly entertaining, and upwards of 5 indie docs chronicling a filmmakers’ cross-country walk as inspired by Werner Herzog. Anyways, the topic has officially been amply covered, in all its possible permutations.
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¹ I’ve been programming film festivals and screening films for exhibition or TV since 2003. In these last 7 years, I estimate that I have seen over 4500 independent documentaries & narratives, features and shorts alike.
² A ton of people will probably disagree with this list. Other festival programmers I’ve spoken to, for instance, have disagreed, have expressed dismay at my judgement, and have expressed interest in seeing films like these. Also, bear in mind that this list is written from the POV of festival and/or theatrical programming.
³ Which brings me to my first point of advice to filmmakers trying to get their films seen in a theatre/festival setting: Look at the type of films that your target festival or screening series has programmed over the last few years before submitting yours. If a festival, for instance, has programmed a film about the quirky exploits of a group of cat fanciers within the last 3 years, it stands to reason that they will probably not want to program ANOTHER film about the quirky exploits of cat fanciers. Unless, of course, they happen to be the Cat Fancier Film Festival of Central Metropolis (invented, this does not exist) — in which case you have a very strong chance of being admitted.
In other words: Do your homework, keep you ear to the ground to see what people are making, spend more time on your story development, and for god’s sake watch more independent films – just so you know what’s out there and can then learn from other people’s mistakes. If after all this you find that your idea is not even close to being original, but you feel compelled to make it anyways, then either make it for a specific audience, make it for the internet, or pull all your smartest friends together and make it fucking brilliant, so that your particular film becomes the new standard in the genre that all others are marked against.
Visual Editions, started in 2009 in London, publishes books that are very aware of their materiality. As they put it “books should be as visually interesting as the stories they tell”.
On Nov 15th they will publish their second book, Tree of Codes by acclaimed author Jonathan Safran Foer. This book was generated not from the singular vision of an author in his garrett, but rather from a shared fascination with die-cutting paper. From their site:
Our early conversations with Jonathan Safran Foer about Tree of Codes started when Jonathan said he was curious to explore and experiment with the die-cut technique. With that as our mutual starting point, we spent many months of emails and phone calls, exploring the idea of the pages’ physical relationship to one another and how this could somehow be developed to work with a meaningful narrative. This led to Jonathan deciding to use an existing piece of text and cut a new story out of it. Having considered working with various texts, Jonathan decided to cut into and out of what he calls his “favourite book”: The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz.
Pre-order it here or check out their existing publications here.
Here’s a section of a poem Pete Dougherty wrote when he was 17:
“I knew she wasn’t English,
Because she spoke it far too well.
The grammar was goodly, the verbs as they should be,
And the slang was bang on the bell.
So as the language barrier clanged and banged,
I couldn’t hear – or see
England, London, and Bow
Crumble into the sea.”
You can watch him recite this on this BBC clip on Youtube.
