“How is the film industry going to learn to support the artists who are willing to take risks, are committed to their own audience and advancing the language of cinema?

But now, through technology, we can change that equation. Barriers to entry have dropped. Barriers to distribution have dropped. Because I definitely believe that there are titles that have value that draw people (to them). What Hollywood and the film industry have never done well is match people to titles that they will respond to.

The film industry have never empowered the artist in that equation or said “You have to think through the life cycle of your film, how you keep it relevant in this day and age.” As we start to get hip to that, we see that we are free from the mass market dictates.

We don’t have to make our work for everybody. We can go into the niche audiences — but on a grand scale. We can unite people around their common values. And we can reward them for the activity they care most about.

It’s a double anchor because the audience has to say “this IS the culture that I want and I am voting for it with my dollars. I expect you to deliver something that is more than a product. I expect you to deliver an experience to me.”

And that’s where I see our business going: we stop making products and we deliver relationships and experiences.”

Yes, yes, yes. I know I posted this video once before. But now it is with the full transcript!

“Filmmakers, Hollywood, The Industry, rarely know whom their audience is. We do it so ass-backwards: we make a movie and we think it is so wonderful that people all over the world will come to see it. Wouldn’t it be a hell of a lot easier if all we did was take our movies where people are already gathered?

I certainly think that beautiful movies work: they compel us talk about them afterwards. When you go to film school, it is often taught as preproduction, production, post-production, distribution, and marketing. But the experience of what cinema is begins much earlier.

What it the point (moment) of discovery? It is the beginning of that narrative when you begin to think about that story, when you are primed in someway to do it.

I am incredibly excited about what the future holds for film lovers. There’s silent. There’s experimental. There is ephemeral. It is cult. It is action. There is independent. There is classic cinema. It is english language. Japanese. It is EVERYTHING.

And through that people become passionate advocates for what they want and community develops.

Isn’t that kind of the idea of what creating a community, be it online or in the physical world, is? That by working together, you can get the things that you want, and have a better experience from it?“

There is, of course, a lot more to it than that, but you will have to read my my book to get the full details. This is a pretty awesome first taste!

I think there are universal hopes all audiences have for cinema each and every time they sit down to watch.  When we fail to provide them, people start to lose faith in our product. We need to keep this promises front and center when we create new movies. Many do, some don’t. Which side do you want to be on?

I recognize that this may feel a bit “back to the basics” or even obvious.  Yet, I can’t even begin to list the number of times I have left unfilled. I recognize great cinema does a lot more than these five too.  I have made my lists of all I want from cinema. I encourage you to do likewise, but mostly I want us all to keep these five essential needs at the forefront of our endeavors:

• Take me somewhere I have never been. The discovery can be a place, person, or thing. It can be beauty or an aesthetic. It can be emotion or thought. It just needs to feel fresh, original, or somehow new.
• Make me feel. This needs to be authentic, not manipulative. Sadness is perhaps the easiest to deliver, perhaps alongside fear. It grows increasingly challenging to deliver more complex emotions.
• Help me understand this issue/world a little better. And this needs to be for myself — don’t just tell me.  I want to walk away with this new found knowledge as part of myself.
• Deliver fun and surprises. Chills and giggles. Beauty and desire.
• A transformative experience. This can be either for the viewer or for the characters on screen (and thus potentially replicated by the viewer too).

Without these things, what are we delivering? Without these things, how can we unlock the inherent utility of cinema?

How do we decide what is the best approach? What makes sense in terms of how we should work today?

For me, I start with the premise that everyone has less available time.  We work more and more.  We have more responsibilities and obligations. The less time we have, the more valuable that time becomes. We generally don’t commit our available time frivolously. 

From there, I accept that there is increased competition for our time.  Although we have less leisure time, we have more options on how to spend that time then ever before. 

What does this access to everything mean for us? Generally speaking, the quality of our experiences improve with the increased input we get; that is, the more we consume, the better we are equipped to consider our next move. As we find “better” work to immerse ourselves in, the better work we do. When we have better advisors, our output benefits. As long as we don’t surround ourselves with the wrong people and things, things do get better.

How does our immersion in better things influence us? Overall we expect a better “ROIE”: Return On the Investment of our Engagement. We value time. We know there is plenty of good things to find. Our curiosity grows.

Luckily for us, those of us in the film business have a truly distinct product whose value has generally gone untapped.  Business has taught us to look at film primarily for the revenue it can generate of course.  The audience has been taught to value film based on how much entertainment it delivers.  Yet, as any cinema lover knows, movies are much much more than that.

Movies create a shared emotional response amongst strangers. Good cinema compels us to discuss it afterwards.  A movie can create empathy amongst folks who have only previously felt differences.  How incredibly powerful is that?  Can we unlock that attribute on a regular basis?  Damn straight we can! The transformative power of cinema is its true utility; well, that and its consequent ability to build community around it.

If we highlight these aspects of film, we give the audience a better ROIE.  Give more.

If we give the audience more, they in turn give us more. Isn’t that great?

Time to stop thinking of film as just an entertainment. Movies change people and they can change the world.  Let’s celebrate this utility inherent in our art and business.

The London Screenwriters’ Festival 2011 was where my career really began. Made to talk to the person next to me by festival creative director Chris Jones, I shook hands with screenwriter Tom Kerevan. A fateful encounter.

We started working together and soon after met cinematographer Ernesto Herrmann on a short film shoot. The three of us have been working together ever since.

In May 2013 we made the somewhat snap decision to take the plunge and produce a feature film ourselves. Having never produced something of this scale, I fully admit that the undertaking was terrifying, but with that dangerous mix of confidence, arrogance and blind optimism we figured that between the three of us, we must amount to at least one competent producer…

And it turns out we weren’t entirely wrong. Nine months of raising finance, four months of pre-production and four weeks shooting on location in Cornwall we were able to shout the words, “That’s a wrap!”

Here’s 5 key things we picked up along the way:

1. The worse thing you can do is nothing at all. I’m a firm believer that the best thing you can do is the right thing, the second best thing you can do is the wrong thing, and the worse thing you can do is nothing at all. Producing is about doing. It’s about making decisions, even if they’re the wrong ones. I know it’s a cliché but every mistake you make is one step closer to success and getting more decisions right than you get wrong really just comes down to experience. You won’t get that experience if you don’t do anything.

We haven’t finished post-production yet and we are already getting meetings about what we’re up to next, as well as seeing a general increase in opportunities. These people have no idea if the film is any good or not. All they know is that we did it.

2. You’re wrong most of the time. As a producer you are going to be expected to do everything, but you are only one person and you will need help. So get out there and find an amazing team – which is easier than you think. Film is a collaborative exercise with each and every idea filtering through your team of different people with different skills and specialisations. As you are just one person amongst this team, you are bound to be wrong a lot of the time. Your job is to recognise this and listen to your team to combat it. It doesn’t always have to be your idea, but whether you like it or not it will always be your decision. Which leads us neatly into…

3. Nothing is your fault. Everything is your responsibility. I first heard this phrase at a talk with producer Stephen Follows. There isn’t really much to say on the matter: 99% of the time problems are not your fault, but 100% of the time they are your responsibility. At every stage of making a movie there are constantly countless obstacles, problems and challenges, all of which have the potential to shut you down. Stay calm, deal with them one at a time and try not to get overwhelmed – they are fixable. And as I said before, have an amazing team! 

With the light fading on our last day at a remote location, due to various problems we had an hour to shoot one of the most complicated death scenes in the film. I don’t think one single individual can take credit for what happened next, but we decided to change the scene to a quick death against the isolated and arresting landscape. We moved all the complicated elements – action, stunts, SFX – to a different scene we were shooting a couple of days later. The result didn’t just work, it works better in the overall context of the film.

Ultimately we take responsibility for that decision, but our collaborative team take the credit for a brilliant solution.

4. It’s just a film. Those of us who work in film have all been on that set where there was nothing more important than the film! But really it’s just a film and as a producer you need to understand that. People need to eat, people need to sleep, and people need to work in a safe environment. A set is one of the most challenging and rewarding places you will ever be but it is also one of the most dangerous. Keep your crew fed and keep them safe because otherwise there won’t be a film to hold sacred at all. 

For example, we decided to shoot for only 10 hours a day, a relatively small amount for a low-budget 4 week shoot. We knew the conditions would be tough: 90% outside, extreme coastal weather, and everyone living on top of each other cut off from the real world. We didn’t want to over-work the cast and crew – it’s no fun for anybody, and they wouldn’t be at their creative best, which is more important than rinsing people for every hour possible. It paid off – we finished the entire shoot 1 hour over schedule.

5. Nobody knows anything. And if they tell you they do then they’re lying and you need to get the hell out of there. If everybody in the film industry knew exactly how to make a perfect film then everyone in the film industry would be making a perfect film. If everybody in the film industry knew exactly how to make money making films then everybody in the film industry would be making money making films. But they don’t, and they’re not. We were told we couldn’t raise finance for our first movie without a script. Done. We were told we couldn’t shoot 50 external sets across 15 locations in 22 shoot days. Done. We were told we couldn’t make a profit on this movie without known actors. We don’t know if this will be the case yet, but based on other ‘truths’ it’s hard not to feel that people are giving advice based on their own experiences. Nothing wrong with that but remember that some things work for some people and not others. Listen to people, take in their advice, thank them for their time… then trust your gut. Know your limits. Know your potential.

In my experience making a film is a huge financial and emotional risk. However, and this is just my opinion, it’s one of the most worthy and rewarding risks you can ever take.

Alex Lightman is a director and producer. His debut feature film Tear Me Apart, made with Cannibal Films, was shot in June 2014 on location in North Cornwall. It is currently in post-production, scheduled for completion early 2015. See more guest blogs from the team on how they made the movie and what they learnt: www.cannibalfilms.co.uk, @CannibalFilms, Facebook.com/TearMeApartMovie.

We’ve seen and experienced this firsthand with the films we’ve put together, and with clients as well. The process for our films and our colleague’s  films begin with a process of cutting, compromise, and parring the script down to the very essence of the story.

While attending this fall’s film festival circuit and working with writers across the globe in mentorship programs, we saw a lot of great stories get wrapped up $50m-$100m bows.

Coming from film finance and production backgrounds, we were able to help these writers par their screenplays down to reasonable budgets while keeping the essence of their story in tact, and conveying one simple truth — the essence of every story costs nothing.

But first, let’s talk a bit about setting up finance…

Film finance is always a matter of the chicken or the egg. You need your “elements” in place before you can start to financially piece together your film, but said elements — talent, casting director, EPs — won’t be interested until there is money locked into a bank account.

So what’s the solution? Relationships are the solution.

Keep your rolodex hefty and reach out to each member of your industry network. Take meetings with their referrals and finance people face-to-face.

Moreover, find ways to mitigate your investor’s exposure. If and when you find the person who believes in your work enough to place hard cash in a bank account for you, return the favor by taking advantages of asset backed pieces of finance.

Structure your film’s finances in a way that guarantees some recoupment (albeit little upside, but this is about making a risk free return for your investor and making a film for yourself).

Shoot in a state with a great tax incentive, utilize a distribution relationship for an international minimum guarantee, and seek out post houses who will work deferred for a senior position on the investment waterfall. Bankable pieces of debt such as these will make your film a reality.
But, back to the essence…

Think of your favorite films. They draw you in with their story — The characters and their words, world, relationships, etc are all part of this “story.” The plot is not — the plot is part of the screenplay, a set of devices really.

The essence of your story is what you’re trying to convey with every line — and it’s 100% free. Big budget set pieces, while great for studio pictures and star driven vehicles, aren’t necessary to tell a story. That costs money. A character’s words, their emotions, their reactions, do not. A certain look in a character’s eyes can convey something more powerful than you may think.

Here are examples:

In 1957, United Artists released “12 Angry Men” by the then unproven Sidney Lumet. Lumet had come from the theatre world and split his time acting in and directing stage plays in New York City.

As he was new to film, and unproven, he worked on a modest budget and had to figure out cost effective ways to get to the essence of his story: When the all else is against you, how can you prevail and seek justice?

As the tension rose throughout each act of the film, the actors would look sweatier, more exhausted. Lumet used wider and wider lenses, bringing the ceiling into frame and making the room these 12 men in seem smaller — like the walls were closing in on them.

Finally, the 12 men come to a decision, and once released from the room we cut to the exterior of the courthouse – free at last.

We can expand upon this further with a more recent film, Foxcatcher. Though a larger budget film, we can learn from the choices made in this film from director Bennett Miller — not a second is wasted on superfluous dialogue or nagging sub-plots. We’re being told a story, first and foremost, from the second the film begins until it’s shocking ending.

There is a scene where Mark Ruffalo’s character is being interviewed about the wrestling team’s progress at Foxcatcher farm. At this point, the audience knows that Ruffalo is the catalyst for the team’s progress, not the Steve Carrell character, though that particular character would want you to think differently.

For the Carrell character to show his dominance, he has the interviewer steer the the interview in Carrell’s favor. What’s Ruffalo to do here, knowing that Carell is a loose canon and the ultimate decision maker when it comes to his job’s life span?

The scene is a series of reactions from Ruffalo — more about what the Ruffalo character doesn’t say than what he does. More about the time in between words than the words itself. The scene is a master class on directing your actors to the essence of their character, scene, and story.

Lastly, think of a film like Place Beyond the Pines (perhaps Buffalo 8’s favorite film of the past 5 years). The film focuses on the characters and their world simply by keeping the actors in frame for extended periods of times. The characters move the camera, not vice-versa.

The director, Derek Cianfrance, chooses to use long takes so that we can connect with the characters easier — we can get to know them. We can see their essence in an unrelenting way.

When finding your film’s essence, you want to stay away from the clutter that so many large film’s fall victim to. Of course, there are huge films which connect audiences to the film’s essence in beautiful ways, but there is typically expendable cash and resources when making these pictures.

Titanic, for example, is one of the best films of our generation. Yes, it’s a $200m epic piece of filmmaking, but, simply put, while the setting is immensely expensive, the story is a class tale of young love, told in endless films previous.

To wrap up, a film is the collective of juxtaposed moving images. Any two images played back to back will evoke an emotion from an audience. Remember this simple truth when putting your project together.

Now that you’re financial structure is set up and broken down into a sleek business plan, you will be ready to hit the market and begin the process of getting your story from the page to the screen.

And remember, the essence of what you’re trying to convey as a storyteller won’t cost a dime, but it will be the most important part of making your story timeless.

Buffalo 8 is a turn-key development, production and post-production company based in Beverly Hills with a library of 30+ indie titles. Having produced 30+ feature films, the team recognized a dilemma in the production process — union deposits — and launched BondIt to resolve the situation to assist producers & union representatives alike.

 
www.BondIt.us
www.Buffalo8.com

We live in an era of cultural abundance.  How does this change the way we engage and discover? How has it already done so?

When I moved to NYC I initially was overwhelmed by the options I had before me. A simple newspaper gave me a good heads up of the cornucopia of options on how to utilize my leisure time. I found solace in Woody Allen’s line “In New York, you always know what you are missing.”  As a kid from the boondocks, my teen years were rife with anxiety over FOMO. Arriving in NYC, I found a new calm. It no longer was a question of access. The choices were before me; there was no scarcity. And I could step out my door and be there in a blink. I knew I would never be bored in NYC. And I wasn’t.

Now we all live in such a land of plenty, only it’s been pumped up and given a full set of shiny bells and whistles. The internet beckons us always with a better alternative.  Why finish reading this article, when there is a list-icle with more attractive faces? We have all been infected with this feeling that somewhere there is not only something better to do with our time, but there is also a deeper knowledge or new tool that will somehow lift us up to a new level. Hurry! Get there NOW!! We have new friendships or business alliances just waiting to bring us deeper satisfactions. There is a book or song or movie that we haven’t even heard of that will soon live forever and ever on our list of the best of all time. And we know this to be true because it has already happened to us. Everyone has now noticed that our life has improved (in some ways) by discovery and serendipity on the internet. We have more than we could ever use.

And their lies the rub. We are overwhelmed. We are all missing out — constantly.  We are not connected to the content we will love best or will lift us up the most.

And then when we do employ filters or curators or recommendation engines, we get caught in those silos and echo chambers where we have lost all serendipity, never expanding beyond our current consumption habits. Our pleasure often peaks from when we touchdown in newfound lands — albeit ones that have some semblance to our prior charted worlds. We love to be taken to some place new — as long as it is not too new.

So that’s the problem (overabundance and the consequent overwhelming deluge it brings) and the answer is curation with inherent serendipity. But can an algorithm ever answer that? Is it something we always will need people to solve? And then can they then deliver the hockey stick graph needed to build a business on? I do have hope that this can be the law of the land. The trick is doing this simultaneously as we raise the bar and reach higher with what we create; the abundance demands that too. If we meet this head on we can take advantage of this unique moment in time.

This is one of the moments we are living through: The Rise of The New Curiosity.  At least, this is how I see it, define it, and hope it will grow.  People know that what they want is out there, somewhere. They have searched and found new and exciting things. They go to the sites that deliver surprises, provided they are not random and still within the range of their desire.  But they don’t get enough of it. They are hungry and we should deliver. That hunger will dissipate, but not by delivering for it, but by the opposite.  We have an opportunity to manufacture new desire by showing the benefits of this new curiosity. If we don’t use it, we will lose it. This should be a calm to arms for the film business. It is a tremendous opportunity.

What are the next steps? Can we highlight design that helps to spark this flame? Have you seen sites that do it well?  Let us know about them, please. We need to celebrate our curators. How come I never see that list of who are the top curators out there? We need some good guides. If critics only celebrate the work that gets the marketing push, how can we find those that raising the bar? Can we all do more? We are missing out. That’s a good thing if we make sure others know about it.

Let’s not let this curiosity NOT spread. May it infect the world.

For producers, this is groundbreaking. Finally, the playing field is leveling out, making it possible for truly talented individuals to break through without needing monstrous budgets.  

Sure, most producers definitely need to harbor an entrepreneurial gene or two in order to realize their ultimate musings, but for those that have the drive and determination, the wonder that is the interwebs has offered forth a plethora of tools and platforms that make it possible to fund, produce and distribute content, on an otherwise non-existent budget, all from the comfort of ones own home.

Alas, with every yin must come yang.

In this scenario our yang is content saturation. For content producers, this translates to how do I find my audience? How do I break through the online noise in a cost-effective way? While it’s easy to be blinded by the staggering statistics that support massive future connectivity for billions of users around the world, spending most of their time online consuming video, today there is more competition than ever before, and that is growing at a crazy rate too. Global competition, from the past as much as from the present, from all formats, at all price points – including free!

Having your content available online does not mean it will be seen. Building a website, making your content available from it and hoping people will show up seldom works, unless you’re Dave Grohl or someone with a massive and loyal following, and even then, you’re leaving real money on the table as the attached case study will show you.

The key to success online lies in having a great strategic plan, the right distribution partners at the table and enough time to execute effectively. There is a very real reason studios market their films 18 months out – they need their content to break through the noise too! For independent producers who are serious about their craft, this means that you need to be prepared to match all of the effort you committed to getting your film into the can, in order to release it to the world effectively. You need to pick your partners carefully and you should never, ever rush it and put it live simply because the tools are there.

Here at YEKRA we’re building tools along with a community of consumers and promoters to help committed producers break through the online noise and reach their unique niche audiences.  Our community supports each other, so instead of expecting every filmmaker to go it alone, we’re building a shared economy, whereby every filmmaker who works with YEKRA benefits from what has been brought to the table by those before them, and every promoter who works with us gets rewarded for supporting our creators. We call our promoters affiliates, and the case study below highlights how our affiliate network was leveraged effectively to drive over 50% of the total $550,000 in online revenue that one of our films, Sirius, has realized through YEKRA alone. We hope you find the information useful.

This is an important one. For me, forgetting about this tool is stupid for two big reasons. First, it’s a creative reprieve from production mayhem; second, it’s fucking fun. Oh, turns out there are several other reasons why a look book is incredibly useful, like pitching and other stuff, which are cool but I want to talk about the fun part.

Building this book is when I get to visually cue myself, and eventually others to how great my unmade film is going to be. Scouring the Internet and books for elements that will represent what I have spent ages writing and tweaking is, for me, a miraculous process. I get to see what’s behind my words and get excited about my story and characters in an entirely new way. My intended way, displaying them with pictures and sounds.

It’s a moment in my process that inspires evolution. I’ve come to realize a look book goes far beyond a show and tell visual aid for pitching and marketing. It is also a useful development tool. In my searching I’ve discovered ways to illustrate my vision beyond what I have sold myself in my head. Better, simpler or more inventive ways to tell the story. This tactile exploration is huge, even if it leads to more script tweaks.

I made inquiries to veterans and read a handful of articles about what a look book should contain. What I found was, opinions vary. 

• The basics like visuals that represent tone, location, design, lighting and color, casting inspiration, anything visual that represents your three dimensional intentions.
• Video clips that show similar shooting style, story pacing, tone and action.
• Include audio ideas. If the book is digital play music over the visuals. If the book is printed supply a link to a play list.
• A short synopsis, an audio version and a written version.
• Short bios of yourself and key team members.
• Links to previous work and mentions of any write-ups, awards or other noteworthy attention that the script that you or your previous work may have received.

You get the idea. After considering all the answers, anything goes as long as it opens up the story and clearly releases it upon the senses. All that inspires conversation about every aspect of the project is fair game. I leave my mind all the way open.

I found many others who like to use images and clips and stills from well-known films. I spent months writing a script that would be distinct and fresh, comparing it to what’s already been done seems counter intuitive. I want to construct my own vision without any attachments that a viewer might have to famous images and movies they may or may not like. There’s plenty of material out there.

The “argument” between hard copy verses digital copy seemed silly. Sure, the immediacy of digital is always appealing, plus video and audio come more easily into play. For whatever reason, some like the physicality of an actual book. Both make sense to me. I plan to create a Vimeo channel for audio and video references and provide the link in my hard copy. It’s easy enough to have both and I figure it can’t hurt.  

It’s important to remind myself to not get carried away and luxuriate in the process. Like every word in the script, every image, sound bite, song, video, casting idea, lighting reference, quote or whatever has to be absolutely necessary and serve the story. I am constantly catching myself, throwing red flags, as I am easily swept away when it comes to imagery.

Length? I’ve read a lot about the precious time of executives, they seem to like writing about that. I’ve heard everything from two to ten pages. Unanimously, shorter is better, but clarity of vision is invaluable. For me, as long the story is served and nothing stalls a viewers momentum, it’s as long as it needs to be (without being ridiculous).

The Recess look book is a continual work in progress but, for now, I’ve done my best to challenge all the visual and audio details that I thought were nailed down while writing. And I’m having some fucking fun!

Happy 2015 everyone!

See a few look book examples here:

Evan Buxbaum’s feature, Sunbelt Express
Brett Haley’s feature, And Then I Go
Amber Sealy’s feature, New Mexican Rain

Craig Abell-Champion: An unusual kid who grew up on a sheep farm in Oregon. When I reached legal adulthood I was gone and never looked back. I earned a BFA in photography and spent several years shooting pictures around the world. A cinema lover, I moved to Los Angeles in 1998. Directing TV commercials was my film school. Today, I have left the realm of thirty seconds for a longer narrative road. A first time writer/director, my project Recess is in the packaging phase seeking financing.

“Making something out of nothing” is what filmmaker Mira Nair called the Filmmaking workshop that she was doing in the spring of 1999 in Cape Town South Africa.  The bulk of the students were from the black and “colored” townships way outside the city and traveled more than an hour each day for their two-week initiation to cinema. It was the dawn of the post apartheid years and they were pregnant with compelling and amazing stories that they wanted to bring into the world either through narratives or documentaries.  For decades, generations before them had their voices stifled, and they were fighting to finally become the narrators of their own history and had chosen filmmaking as their weapon.  And I was there to film that process.  “Show, don’t tell, make films that are accessible to you, be inspired by what’s immediate, cut your cloth”. Mira kept hammering at them. Mira, at that time was doing a little bit of tailoring herself; she had been designing a new project, a personal low-budget intimate film to be shot entirely in her home region of Punjab, India.  With Kama Sutra already 3 years behind her, she found herself getting restless waiting for the green light on a project stuck in development and had made the decision to just shoot. Monsoon Wedding was that little personal film. Mira knew that she would encounter adversity in the US to finance her project and decided to bypass conventional funding avenues and go strictly independent, the way she had done for her first films India Cabaret and Salaam Bombay.  “Monsoon” was shot in 30 days, with a small crew, in homes of friends and family, and many unknown actors, totally dogma style.  Monsoon Wedding made for a little over $1 million ended up winning the Golden Lion in Venice in 2001 and several other prestigious awards. It went on to gross over 30 million at the box office. Not bad for a small intimate indie film.

Mira Nair’s workshops had a lingering influence on me. Six years later I would use the same models and lessons for my own filmmaking workshops in Haiti. I’ve often shared Mira’s story with many friends to encourage them to go out and make their films by any means necessary. But unlike Mira, I was not practicing what I had been preaching, lately. I was too mired in my own filmmaking rut to even remember those lessons. D-Hell, D for development is one of the absolute worst places for a filmmaker. I had some financing committed, but everyone was waiting on the cast to put money on the table. I was in a place where I had promised myself that I would never be: playing the Hollywood game and waiting on bankable actors. I began descending into the deep vortex of frustration and self-doubt. Until that spring day, this past May when I watched the Cannes press conference for Mauritanian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako and his film Timbuktu (everyone should see).  Abderrahmane spoke about trusting in the magic of cinema, about the desire to tell stories in places that have been forgotten. As I was watching him I could also hear Mira’s melodic voice, chanting her mantra “make something out of nothing, cut your cloth”. Abderrahmane said if filmmakers who are socially and politically engaged aren’t bold and brave to make films that are unpopular, then they can’t call themselves filmmakers. Sissako’s film Timbuktu is about the Jihadist invasion of Northern Mali that terrorized the peaceful population living in this desert city. When the invasion first happened in 2012, Sissako wanted to make a documentary but realized that it was absolutely impossible; no one would ever want to come forward and participate for fear of reprisal. He dropped the project and revived it through a narrative. Only through fiction could he give voice to both sides and try to unravel the absurdity of the invasion.  By the end of the press conference, 45 minutes later, I was so elated; I had seen the light from the abyss. I made a pledge to myself that by hook or by crook I was going to shoot my first narrative in the summer. Not the one in development of course, another one, much more “accessible”.

Ayiti Mon Amour was born on the heels of the horrific Haiti earthquake nearly 5 years ago because I hungered for counter narratives to the plethora of sound bytes, clichés and stereotypes that overpowered the airwaves in the weeks following the tragedy. The spotlight quickly faded on Haiti in the same fashion that it did for Timbuktu. Just because international mainstream media does not feature our stories did not mean they did not have validity.

Less than a week after watching the conference I took my shears into the script  and began making alterations. I added “AQ” to the title (after the quake) to situated it. The themes of love and grieving still remained but I changed all the stories, I opted for simple stories that could still be compelling yet easier to film. The original script had four stories; I brought it down to three.  It took place in three locations including the US, I narrowed it to one region and mainly in a fishing hamlet on the Southeastern coast of Haiti where I lived for two years with my family and still have some strong ties. You definitely want to be in a nourishing welcoming environment when you are going rogue on a project.  I used my salary from a paid gig and convinced my husband (cinematographer) my son who is still in film school (sound) his girlfriend (second camera/set photographer/social media manager) to donate their skills, blood and sweat. We collaborated with Cine Institute the local film school and shot the first story within 7 days.   All this of course shot in natural light, mainly because it echoes the style of the film but also because electricity is a luxury in Haiti, so that was one less line item in the budget. We used mirrors and reflectors for daytime indoor scenes (see video “harnessing sunlight”). Night scenes were lit with candlelight and kerosene lamps and one mini led light panel. Everything was shot in real décor, doing away with production design and set building expenses. One thing about not having any means is that it makes one extremely resourceful, alert and creative.

We are all born tailors, we just don’t know it until we’re put in front of a pattern and have to make an outfit. That outfit could be your life, your relationship or work. You just have to make it suit you. I actually prefer the new script to the original one. The new one is so much more limpid, personal and intimate. I can’t wait to get back to Haiti to finish the shoot. Luckily, with the help of my current Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign I will be able to do so in the next few days.  It was imperative for me to get back this coming January. January 12, 2015 will mark the 5^th anniversary of the devastating quake, returning to Haiti at this moment is important for the narrative fabric of the film but also because we would like to be there for my compatriots as they commemorate this catastrophic event that forever altered their lives and mine. I promised them that the film would put a humane face to the tragedy and the current dire ecological issues (climate change, costal erosion, marine pollution) that they are facing today; while celebrating their courage and resilience, and I intend to keep that promise.

In the end I don’t know how Ayiti Mon Amour(AQ) will fair in theaters, I am not even sure I will go that route. I may just do premieres and release it online with screenings in every city with a large Haitian community and perhaps a run at my favorite independent local San Francisco Theater the Roxie. I know for certain that our distribution model will be customized to fit Ayiti Mon Amour(AQ).

One thing I’ve learned through this process is if a story matters to you, chances are it matters to others. Find those others and create community with them.  Don’t let anyone dictate to you what you should be making. If it’s not what “they are looking for” let them go make what they are looking for. “If we don’t tell our stories no one will” is something else Mira often told the students in that workshop; that has pretty much become my mantra. Development does not have to be a journey to purgatory it could be a time to look within and find the purpose of why you wanted to be a filmmaker in the first place. When you can answer that question you will most likely emerge with a beautiful worthy project. Be a little bit braver, a little bit bolder, get out of development hell and start shooting your films. 

I was born in Haiti, reared in the United States and came of age cinematically in Paris France. “A post-modern gypsy”, a hybrid, my trajectory and cultural identity pretty much pervade  my sensibility, vision and cinematic language. I fell in love with cinema at a very early age in Port-au-Prince. The “electric shadows” on that glowing screen were a stark contrast to our realities and yet they deeply connected us to the outside world. Cinema, for me, became my own little sanctuary, my personal way of filling those chasms that were wedged by an insidious political system. Today, cinema has become an organic part of who I am.  Cinema is how I engage the world around me, how I denounce social and political injustice, it is also my way of interconnecting our common global humanities. For more info about my work you can visit the website: www.bellemoonproductions.com. Check out our blog while you’re at it ayiti-mon-amour.tumblr.com. Just in case you would like to support Ayiti Mon Amour. Want a little pep talk for your own project don’t hesitate to reach out. Guetty@bellemoonproductions.com

Charlie Kaufman is not talking about a financing model for movies and TV here – but in a way he is. That financing model – TV and film being used to sell products – is a big part of how our world is working and what our state of mind is. In my previous post I explained how TV took its systemic elements from the radio. In the beginning it was the ad men who produced: writers were working with their plot instructions and restrictions (“do not have any disreputable person smoking a cigarette.”) And because it was the sponsors rather than the networks that controlled the programs, teledramas were not restricted to a particular network or time schedule. As a result of this programming flexibility, it was not unusual for shows to rotate, in search of the best possible ratings. Some shows would even appear on all three networks in different time slots.

Today it is not the ad men who produce shows. Still, network shows are mostly being produced in order to sell something – sometimes through direct ads and sometimes through product placement and product integration. Product placement is defined as placement of products in the program where consumers are aware of the product and product integration or sometimes also called surreptitious advertising is where consumers are not aware. In this form whole advertisements are taken out of the advertising slot and combined with the program.

Now, it seems obvious that advertisers have different needs to writers and audiences. Advertisers will want to put their products in programs which reflect well on the products. Safe, anodyne, unchallenging stories will attract product placement, drama dealing with the many difficult issues, which our societies are grappling with, will not be as attractive. As a consequence certain programs will have an economic advantage over others. So they prevail. This is how we have become conditioned to a certain kind of content and form of storytelling.

Cable TV changed all that, because it was subscription funded and not ad funded. So content became more challenging and TV became at times even more avant-garde than cinema.

To make it simple: changing the financing model may change the whole approach towards content – the comparison between network and cable TV is the best and most recent example we have. While the aim of network TV is to please as many viewers as possible in an equal manner, because of its different financing model, cable TV aims at pleasing relatively few viewers a lot and keeping them as a loyal audience over time. A smaller audience means a less homogenized audience, which means more sophisticated and complex characters and stories.

Unlimited viewership in today’s new landscape seems like a thing of the past. Reportedly the TV series with the most viewers ever for a single episode was M*A*S*H – an impressive 121.6 million viewers watched its final episode Goodbye, Farewell and Amen in 1983, surpassing the single-episode ratings record that had been set by the Dallas episode that resolved the “Who Shot J.R.?” cliffhanger. In comparison, The Sopranos had 11.9 million viewers, while an episode of Mad Men has an average of around three million viewers on the domestic market, which is normal for successful American cable TV series.

But the shift in storytelling from network TV to cable TV series is not the only example for how financing models can influence content. While the equity funding model aims at people or corporations that are interested in a high return, so in an audience that is as big as possible, the crowdfunding model can be seen as a variation of the subscription model in that it aims at a targeted, less homogenized audience. Then there is something called the stage financing model, that comes from the world of documentaries: Ted Hope describes it in an interview for SAGIndie: ‘Documentaries have many different stages of financing, where basically you deliver a proof of principle, your trailer reel; that gets you to your next stage, which is your financing reel; [that] gets you to your next stage, which is your rough cut. () Right now who finances movies? Only the people and corporations that can afford to tie their capital up for three years. If we had a secondary market, some people might take chances that their investment today would be something they could extract in six months for a profit. Folks who needed greater liquidity could play in [the film market]. And stage financing essentially is a tool to build that.’

Imagine the difference that makes. In the narrative world, whether TV or film, we are used to result oriented thinking. Stage financing would encourage a more process oriented thinking. The result could be a closer relationship to the audience that would follow the long process of filmmaking throughout. It could also mean more attention to detail, so better films and shows.

The good news is that as our industry is changing more ways will emerge. This is why it is incredibly important for us creators to be part of the conversation. By shaping the new system we are working on removing the limitations of the kind of stories we will be able to tell.

A bit later in the speech, Charlie Kaufman answers his own question: ‘What can be done? Say who you are, really say it in your life and in your work. Tell someone out there who is lost, someone not yet born, someone who won’t be born for 500 years. Your writing will be a record of your time. It can’t help but be that. But more importantly, if you’re honest about who you are, you’ll help that person be less lonely in their world because that person will recognize him or herself in you and that will give them hope. Give that to the world, rather than selling something to the world. Don’t allow yourself to be tricked into thinking that the way things are is the way the world must work and that in the end selling is what everyone must do. Try not to.’

Christina Kallas’ credits as a writer/producer include a number of awarded feature films and TV series, among them The Commissioner, I.D., Danni Lowinski, and Mothers. In 2011 she relocated to New York City, where she is currently teaching at Columbia University’s and Barnard College’s Film Programs, as well as at the New School for Media Studies, and editing her next feature film (and her first as a director,) 42 Seconds of Happiness. She is the author of Inside the Writers’ Room. Conversations with American TV Writers and Creative Screenwriting: Understanding Emotional Structure (London/NYC, 2014 and 2010). Most recently, Kallas was honored for her outstanding contribution to the international writers’ community for her eight years of tenure as President of the Federation of Screenwriters in Europe – in which time she organized the European Conference of Screenwriters, that produced the Manifesto of European Screenwriters, as well as initiated the series of World Conferences of Screenwriters that after Athens 2009 and Barcelona 2012 saw its third edition in Warsaw 2014. You can reach Christina Kallas at improv4writers@gmail.com, follow her on Facebook or Twitter and join the Writers Improv Studio group page for updates.

via DangerousMinds.net & MCN