When I was a gangly tween, I used to write plays to perform for my parents with my two younger brothers. They generally involved anthropomorphism and power struggles, and, almost always, ended with the character I was playing claiming whatever throne was at stake despite the best efforts …]]>

When I was a gangly tween, I used to write plays to perform for my parents with my two younger brothers. They generally involved anthropomorphism and power struggles, and, almost always, ended with the character I was playing claiming whatever throne was at stake despite the best efforts of my brothers’ characters. My directing “style” would probably best be classified as dictatorial; when my brother Sam complained about having to play a character named “Dog the Mom” (I was a 12-year-old Almodovar, basically), I would just threaten to drop his beloved stuffed husky out the window as a means of coercion.

For my first legitimate directing project, on a� serialized web series that filmed this past spring, the conditions and stakes were slightly different. For one thing, there was a table filled with snack food within a ten yard radius at all times. I also like to think I wasn’t quite so tyrannical when it came to working with actors. But — at the risk of getting too Freshman English thesis statement here — there was a fundamental aspect, a certain quest to tell a personal story, that was the same, and which I think has run through almost all my different artistic endeavors.

Jordy Lievers

Blogging both personally and professionally for about six years now has helped me immeasurably in developing my voice as a writer and artist. I sometimes liken blogging to “cardio” for writers; you have to produce with intensive frequency, whether you’re in the mood to go to the gym or not. But in that sheer quantity, that massive output of material, you gain strength. And with that confidence, developed over time, comes a certain freedom to get inventive and weird with structure, diction and content — you begin to feel like you can express yourself fluently and clearly without the clouds of insecurity and doubt looming as large. Then eventually it’s as though you’re on this raft with your laptop, where – no matter how many people may be reading your work – it feels like no one is paying you any mind, in a way that’s liberating and serene and wonderful. When I was blogging for New York Magazine, I tried my best to forget about the audience entirely and just pretend I was writing e-mails to my brother about Sarah Palin or Justin Bieber or whoever.

Alex Trow

There is a similar “floating on the raft” quality to filmmaking, as well, I think. The essential difference, of course, is that there’s a bunch of people on the raft with you. The beginning of each stage is marked by some of the same insecurities and doubts, combined with the added challenge of not yet having a feel for the people around you. But then the collective hits a stride; everyone learns who likes fruit snacks and who likes Pop Chips; and you’re able to move at a steady clip, with the fluidity of an efficient blogger. Through the development of the script, the logistical complexities of pre-production, the strenuous long days of production, the tangled web of post-production, your group works in unison to steer the raft along, the horizon remaining somewhat hazy in the distance. (I have definitely squeezed every last drop out of this raft metaphor, I’m aware.) It’s all of these personal viewpoints and stories and ideas coming together, of course, that actually results in creation: it’s in the steering where the film is actually made. (I’m sorry, I can’t seem to stop.) Ultimately, I hope and suspect, our web series will feel as personal to each one of us, in ways subtle and grand, as a revealing blog post, a paragraphs-long e-mail to your sibling, or a five-minute play performed in your parents’ living room.

In 1983 Donatella Baglivo filmed an interview with the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. It was an extensive interview that covered a number of subjects, and fortunately so as Tarkovsky was to die but three years later. About an hour into the piece Baglivo asks Tarkovsky what advice he had for …]]>

In 1983 Donatella Baglivo filmed an interview with the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. It was an extensive interview that covered a number of subjects, and fortunately so as Tarkovsky was to die but three years later. About an hour into the piece Baglivo asks Tarkovsky what advice he had for young people, to which he responded with the following -

“I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.”

What immediately struck me upon hearing Tarkovsky’s words is how they contradicted not just the lyrics of The Beach Boys song I’d had on in the background (Don’t Worry, Baby), but also they seemed at odds with my overall instinctual grasp of the situation. After all, it’s not unfair to state that a recommendation that one spend adequate time alone in order to be comfortable with oneself is unexpected advice. What’s more interesting however is that looking around now, 40 years since Tarkovsky said these words, our culture has made it increasingly difficult to find the solitude he recommends at all. The latest advances in technology have filled even those moments when we are physically distanced from people with the constant sense that we have  a distracting amount of company. It would be no exaggeration to claim that it’s actually difficult to be by ourselves, nor do we feel like we want to, a situation that the psychologist and MIT social studies professor Sherry Turkle has suggested is more symptomatic of our loneliness than a cure for it. So as Tarkovsky suggests, perhaps despite our social pretensions we are all hiding from ourselves in plain sight.

Further exploration of this notion took me down a line of thinking which led me to quite unexpected conclusions both about what technology’s radical rewiring of our social interactions could mean for the future of our society, and the meanings of the words ‘god’ and ‘art’ to us now.

…

Nine years before Tarkovsky conducted that interview, the philosopher of communication theory Marshall McLuhan posed the notion that -

“The most human thing about us is our technology.”

The statement certainly would explain the exponential spread of social-based technologies throughout our culture. These days connectivity runs like water from half of the holes in our immediate vicinity. We don’t just feel the urge to constantly update people with our state of being; we are developing an emotional dependency on the response it might glean. In fact research conducted this year by the Psychology Department at the University of Michigan suggested that -

“The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next; the more they used Facebook over two-weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time. Interacting with other people “directly” did not predict these negative outcomes.”

So could McLuhan in fact mean ‘mortal’, ‘imperfect’, or maybe just simply ‘revealing’ when he uses the word ‘human’?

A year or two back the comic and actress Sarah Silverman pondered aloud (on Twitter) that she felt that the existence of Twitter itself must have prevented many suicides. Joking or not, it’s something worth thinking about. On the one hand, the ability to reach out in the dark for validation when feeling very alone is something the internet has granted us in many new ways. On the other hand, like the Beach Boys’ song, contemporary culture is always reaching back to grab that hand, and might as well be mouthing the words, “if you knew how much I loved you, baby, nothing could go wrong with you.”

To quote Sherry Turkle from her 2012 TED talk Connected, but alone? -

“When I ask people “What’s wrong with having a conversation?” People say, “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with having a conversation. It takes place in real time and you can’t control what you’re going to say.” So that’s the bottom line. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be.

Human relationships are rich and they’re messy and they’re demanding. And we clean them up with technology. And when we do, one of the things that can happen is that we sacrifice conversation for mere connection. We short-change ourselves. And over time, we seem to forget this, or we seem to stop caring.”

Given that a noticeable quantity of seemingly personal relationships are seen as part and parcel of public online engagements, it’s perhaps expected that businesses are now heartily involved in the matter and reward you as much as they can for keeping things that way. In so doing they augment our growing addiction to it. There are now very few websites, apps or social networking tools that one can use for work or pleasure that don’t enticingly suggest that you should share everything you do with your friends. This means that the line between staying in touch with friends and promoting products has also somewhat blurred in our minds, and has added further complexity to the psychology of the matter – an issue I will return to later.

…

It’s easy to believe now that every passing decade represents the natural evolution of our greater understanding of the human condition. Thanks in part to the Dark Ages, it has taken us centuries to understand that different sexualities should be encouraged and that perhaps nationalism, religion, traditions, cultures, languages and money are all, whilst certainly instrumental in the growth of our civilization, in fact limiting factors in humankind’s rather precarious journey toward some kind of improbable universal harmony. One possible path to this harmony is via The Singularity that futurist Ray Kurzweil has championed -

“The Singularity is an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity.”

This is a concept which, as noted by Kurzweil in his 2005 book The Singularity is Near, could present the following conundrum-

“The Singularity will allow us to transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains … There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine.”

Like Marshall McLuhan, it’s easy to be awestruck at how technology is evolving in our hands and at the part it is playing in our self-discovery. After two decades of ideological transfusion, the Internet would appear to have become the new blood flowing through our various technological devices, and these all the more lifelike pet machines of ours are proving particularly well behaved in times of war and civic unrest. In the last few years Twitter has brought power to revolutionaries in Iran, Tunisia and Egypt, Julian Assange’s Wikileaks controversially pulled back veils on many levels of government deceit, and the 4chan forums have heralded the birth of Anonymous, an online, arguably peerless, headless political group of doubtless great influence – to name but a few instances.

Online, technology’s increased utility in times of strife and its inherent insistence that we all ‘stay in touch’ further contests Tarkovsky’s dictum. However in his defense again the Professor of Critical Theory at Toronto University, Mari Ruti, alludes to how we commonly and unfortunately mistake our projected ‘personality’ for what she calls our ‘singular self’. Not to be confused with Sigmund Freud’s Id and Ego, this is a point that bears closer scrutiny when thinking about the psychological side effects of social networking. PhD student Daniel Tutt paraphrases her forthcoming paper thusly -

“Your ‘personality’ is thus the most artificial self, constantly undergoing change and flux. It remains the primary zone by which the self-help discourse seeks to repair. What [they miss however is another] dimension to your self, the ‘singular self’.

Your singular self is the self touched by the real, what we might call your character. The singular self expresses something about your desire and its relation to your drives. The singular self is composed of the unsocialized elements of ones life. What makes life unique is our relation to this core of undeadness, which connects us to a sort of innate existential loneliness.

The singular self is the bruised self. That part of the self we are told we should keep at bay in self-help discourse, that part of the self that we mustn’t let out of its cage less we lose our power or it limits our advancement at work, etc.”

It’s amusingly coincidental that on the one hand you have Kurzweil arguing for a ‘singularity’ that is perhaps the ultimate ‘togetherness’ and on the other Ruti is arguing for a greater awareness of the ‘singular self’, which could so easily be buried by The Singularity. I say buried because if machine processors come to equal human brains and it becomes harder to differentiate between either as a result, what is stopping everything from being networked and our singular, bruised, imperfect human identities becoming a thing of the past? This soft, hidden ‘singular self’ is after all what makes us really us, rather than any fabricated personality built to help us hide within the walls of society.

…

In June last year, the American blogger David Roberts delivered a TEDx talk, in which he outlined the current state of the planet Earth’s global warming situation in layman’s terms. He illustrated that, at best, we have around 150 more years left to live on this planet. Beyond that, unless the whole world changes its attitude to global warming and we make some severe changes to how we approach our daily consumer lifestyles, our grandchildren will see what some will describe as our judgement day. Not to mention our great grandchildren who, if not dead, will endure summer months consisting of hiding from a Sun that blisters their skin like it would vampires.

This horrifying thought brought my mind back to The Singularity, which Kurzweil’s projected timeline predicts will be upon us just 30 years from now. One thing we know for sure is that this prophesied acceleration of technology will grant us solutions we can’t remotely conceive of at present. However placing one’s hopes in such an unpredictable and potentially disruptive moment seems ludicrous and so we should proceed under the assumption that there will be no deus ex machina to save us. The great irony is that despite everything discussed earlier about the power of our social networks, the fact that we’ve gotten to this fateful moment in history proves that the likelihood of everyone coming to a consensus on the problem swiftly enough to change anything is implausible and likely impossible. Even though we talk to each other every day through one device or another, the fateful paradox is that we are rarely talking about things that could prevent a vast array of inevitable future disasters. Yes, we know from the examples above in Iran and Egypt that we will stop and react when people are dying, but the prevention of such things in the future appears to be impossible due to the inevitability of human greed, and an unfortunate default level of ignorance.

Perhaps this is because the term social-networking is actually a misnomer, when the reality is that it’s self-destruction disguised as self-promotion. The critical word there being ‘self.’ As Sherry Turkle put it, “we slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us feel less alone. But we’re at risk, because actually it’s the opposite that’s true. If we’re not able to be alone, we’re going to be more lonely.”

We have created a tool to share and achieve common goals and it is turning us inward and preventing us from taking the time to see the bigger picture.

…

In April of this year the American pop-star Justin Bieber visited holocaust victim Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam and left a message in the guest-book. The message read -

“Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber.”

As some well know, Beliebers are what Justin Bieber’s devout fans call themselves. The implication was that as much as a kid in his position could possibly relate to Ms. Frank’s strength, stamina and eventual plight in the face of unthinkably grim adversity, Bieber hoped that had they been acquainted that she might be an obsessive fan of his. Not a friend. Not even a ‘friend’ in the Facebook sense of the word. Just a fan. Someone who ‘likes’ him. Another screaming teenager who buys his records and subsidizes his further detachment from from reality. For even at 19 years old, Justin is aware that the best drugs just take you away from it all as painlessly as possible.

This statement is the perfect metaphor for the vicarious, disproportionately entitled world we live in today. Try as some might, you cannot entirely blame Justin Bieber for his behaviour. Those who have elevated him to the position he’s in by buying his products, those who talk about him in the press just to sell their product, and those who care to even bring his name up at a party: we’re all to blame. Just as we were all to blame for what happened to Michael Jackson. To look in awe at the terrible circumstances these idols of ours get themselves into is to look into a mirror. Justin Bieber was discovered on YouTube because enough of us ‘liked’ his videos more than anyone else’s.

…

Whether consciously or not, there are some who are fighting this problem. There are some who are using these social environments that we’re all using to hide from reality, in order to achieve quite the opposite result.

On November 8th of last year, the English technologist and artist James Bridle created a new kind of account on the popular mobile application Instagram. Titling the account Dronestagram, he began to post photographs of locations on Google Maps that have recently been hit by military drone strikes. Below each photograph he posts any public data he can find about the strike in terms of location and the number and nature of the casualties. He continues to post these to this day whenever a new strike is made public.

Dronestagram’s bite-size encapsulations of secretive, multinational government warmongering pull people out of a world of cats, meals, sunsets and pretty girls and deliver a dose of global reality not even seen on the front pages of their newspapers. Furthermore it delivers an experience that perversely echoes that of the operators of these drones. Each one boxed away in Creech Air Force Base, north of Las Vegas in Nevada. Each one sitting in front of what amounts to little more than a shitty looking video game. Each one perhaps aware that there’s a bad ‘one armed bandit’ joke in there somewhere.

It makes you wonder at what point during our path towards The Singularity we will lose touch with Ruti’s singular self, and in the end who will be controlling whom. If the machines are simply an extension of us as McLuhan suggests, is The Singularity our only possible destiny? Could Tyler Durden from Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club be more right than he knew, when he stated that, “self-improvement is masturbation?”

…

On Wednesday June 12th of this year, the American author David Guterson delivered a commencement speech to the graduates of Roosevelt High School in Seattle that upset a great deal of the students and parents in attendance. At different points they can be heard jeering and at one point a girl even lets out a fearful shriek. In the 20 or so minutes Guterson allows himself to deliver his message he cuts through the many levels of denial and deceit we face when finishing our schooling. He begs us to more deeply consider the choices we might make when trying to live a healthy and peaceful existence out there in the really real world. Here’s an excerpt -

“Our very sophisticated modern economy [...] knows that you are insecure about your appearance and in advertising it does everything it can to make you feel even worse about it, because if you feel worse about it, you will buy expensive clothing or pay a doctor to change your face. So in our society, not only do you have to be unhappy on that existential level that is just part and parcel of being human, you also have to be unhappy in ways designed for you by others [...] Add to this your natural anxiety about the future—your distress about what it means that we are developing smart drones and melting the polar ice cap—and happiness begins to feel, for a lot of us, impossible. So impossible that the rate of mental illness in America, of depression in particular, is higher than it has ever been. The world might seem full of possibility, and it is that way, but it is also a place where you can very quickly find yourself among the living dead—a being without the means for happiness.

Here is something you can do about it—or something you can do to get started. Take whatever handheld device you own out of your pocket or bag and set the alarm for 2 hours from now. When it makes whatever noise you have selected for it to make, ask yourself how often during the last 2 hours you were actually in charge of your thoughts. How often was your mind just rolling along like a pack of drunken monkeys, doing whatever it wants without you having anything to say about it? How often was it busy being bored, dissatisfied, critical of others, self-absorbed, insecure, self-hating, anxious, and/or afraid? How often were you genuinely happy? And exactly at the moment your alarm makes its noise, where was your mind and what was it doing? Because in the end your mind is the one thing you have going for you when it comes to happiness.”

Guterson is again zeroing in on our pocketed machines but additionally highlighting my earlier concern about commerce’s part in all of this. Weave in everybody’s desire to make a buck and you’ve put another brick in the wall of our desire to remain jacked into this technology every waking minute. Sherry Turkle ended her TED speech optimistically by insisting we find some kind of psychological balance: she suggested we compartmentalize our lives and habitats for machine and non-machine use. Guterson’s suggestion, that you use the machines themselves to pull you out of this proverbial Matrix, seems somewhat more devious in comparison. Either way, it would seem that for now the way out of this is certainly through.

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A few months before Guterson had stood at that podium, I had had an argument with two friends here in New York about the Kathryn Bigelow feature film Zero Dark 30. I was incensed by the nature in which I felt this film presented itself as fact, given the immediacy of the subject matter. Based on all we’d learned from the Wikileaks scandal it seemed incredibly unlikely that a film about a top secret US government military operation could be a factual account. Bigelow should have postponed the making of it until many years had passed and more details could be confirmed as truths, or at least considered an approach similar to Gus Van Sant’s treatment of the 1999 Columbine High School killings in his film Elephant.  The conclusion I therefore drew was that she did it very much as a reflection of her own ego as a female filmmaker (championing a story about a strong female lead in a major contemporary military debacle), and also, for the money. The whole argument reminded me of these remarks from the late filmmaker John Cassavetes -

“The cause of motion pictures should not be a dehumanizing one. Major companies are making pictures that are disgusting. They make anti-war movies but exploit it by making money on those anti-war pictures, by publicizing and selling them. People on screen are stripped naked and left there to die. The thinking is supposedly committed to a revolutionary spirit but lacks the depth of intentions necessary for such discussions. Audiences begin to accept this exploitation as part of their lives. They find themselves laughing at what isn’t funny, angered by what they don’t care about, and influenced and contaminated by hours of heartfelt, unmotivated propaganda.”

These sentiments, particularly those of the exploitative suggestion, tie strongly back to both what Tarkovsky and Guterson are saying and linger like a stench around the actions of those like Justin Bieber. A kid so unaware of the world around him, so fueled by his imagined value of people’s interest in him, that he felt superior to even those figures in history who stood for the level of freedom he enjoys how.

Speaking of exploitation, in May of this year Edward Snowden, infrastructure analyst at the US National Security Agency-contracted firm Booz Allen Hamilton, leaked details of several top-secret United States and British government mass surveillance programs to the press. Whilst the revelation was more ‘undeniable proof’ rather than any kind of surprise, it was still unnerving to have many of our darker suspicions confirmed. As constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead wrote just a week ago on the website for his civil liberties organization, The Rutherford Institute -

“Anything and everything you’ve ever said or done, from the trivial to the damning—phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, Google searches, emails, bookstore and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter toll records, etc.—will be tracked, collected, catalogued and analyzed by the UDC’s supercomputers and teams of government agents.

By sifting through the detritus of your once-private life, the government will come to its own conclusions about who you are, where you fit in, and how best to deal with you should the need arise. Indeed, we are all becoming data collected in government files. Whether or not the surveillance is undertaken for ‘innocent’ reasons, surveillance of all citizens, even the innocent sort, gradually poisons the soul of a nation. Surveillance limits personal options—denies freedom of choice—and increases the powers of those who are in a position to enjoy the fruits of this activity.

Whether he intended it or not, it well may be that Obama, moving into the home stretch and looking to establish a lasting “legacy” to characterize his time in office, is remembered as the president who put the final chains in place to imprison us in an electronic concentration camp from which there is no escape.”

This speaks almost entirely to Cassavetes exploitation fears and stands as a powerful omen in the face of our internet addictions. The imbalanced sense of entitlement that different classes of humanity exhibit will likely precipitate an inevitable fight for control; with this in mind, whatever The Singularity heralds, such a battle will deeply shape any eventual union between humans and their machines.

So what’s next? If learning to be comfortable in one’s own company is how to find a satisfactory level of inner peace, and saving our species requires leaping off a precipice of unimaginable  worldwide collaboration, what is our real goal with this thing we call the internet and why do its pretty flowers give us a false sense of happiness? What needs to happen next for us to be able to turn down the volume and hear our own thoughts as Tarkovsky asks, or is self-confidence no longer a tool we’ll need in this one possible future? Shouldn’t we be more comfortable in our own skins so that we can focus on those next to us falling to their knees in pain? Is The Singularity an answer to this or simply a possible fate that we’ve made for ourselves? The presence of such a concept certainly makes you begin to wonder what the universe is trying to tell us about the direction we are headed in.

Towards the end of the HBO television show Six Feet Under the protagonist Nate Fisher turns to his sister Claire and says “Stop listening to the static. Everything in the world is like this transmission, making its way across the dark. But everything – death, life, everything – it’s all completely suffused with static. You know? But if you listen to the static too much, it fucks you up.”

One thing is for sure, we’re all able to control one single thing more than anything else in this world, and that’s our minds – but we’re surrounded by voices telling us that that’s impossible. Before he died the stand-up comedian Bill Hicks used to end his performances with the following speech -

“The world is like a ride at an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it, you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round; it has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly colored and it’s very loud and it’s fun… for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: “Is this real, or is this just a ride?” And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, and they say, “Hey – don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.”

And we kill those people – “Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride – shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry! Look at my big bank account, and my family! This just has to be real!”

But it’s just a ride. And we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok? Jesus – murdered; Martin Luther King – murdered; Malcolm X – murdered; Gandhi – murdered; John Lennon – murdered; Reagan – wounded …

But it doesn’t matter because: It’s just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride: Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.”

I’ve listened to Mr. Hicks give that speech a hundred times but writing this essay seems to shed new light on its meaning, particularly when you realize what it could take to explore space together. If we only have 150 years left on this planet, it’s important that we start thinking about this, particularly when doing so may involve a truce with technology that we may never recover from – despite all our concerns for our individual state of mind, the loss of self that The Singularity heralds may actually be our only way off this planet.

To quote Cassavetes again -

“These days, everybody is supposed to be so intelligent: ‘Isn’t it terrible about Nixon getting elected?’ ‘Did you hear about the earthquake in Peru?’ And you’re supposed to have all the answers. But when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, like, ‘What is bugging you, mister? Why can’t you make it with your wife? Why do you lie awake all night staring at the ceiling? Why, why, why do you refuse to recognize you have problems and deal with them?’ The answer is that people have forgotten how to relate or respond. In this day of mass communications and instant communications, there is no communication between people. Instead it’s long-winded stories or hostile bits, or laughter. But nobody’s really laughing. It’s more an hysterical, joyless kind of sound. Translation: ‘I am here and I don’t know why.’”

It’s interesting to think that if we do find out why we are here, given the acceleration in our intelligence, scope and understanding that will likely come with The Singularity, it may well not be a concept we’ll enjoy as individuals. In this way you begin to realize not just that god is our answer to the question of why we are here, but that getting closer to god means we all may have to become one. Consequently you realize that we may evolve beyond the questions art seeks to address: representations and musings on the imperfect beauty of being one of many living individuals, not having all the answers and not knowing what is going to happen next. In this respect art may prove to be a fleeting concept in and of itself: a prelude to finding god.

You can get your tickets to this years Independent Film Week Conference here!

After attending the Sundance Shorts Lab at BAM this past Sunday, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of people wanting to write, direct, or produce a short and submit it to the Sundance Film Fest. For 8,000 submissions, there are only 80 films that …]]>

After attending the Sundance Shorts Lab at BAM this past Sunday, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of people wanting to write, direct, or produce a short and submit it to the Sundance Film Fest. For 8,000 submissions, there are only 80 films that are actually accepted into the program. That’s a slim margin for success, and daunting for any filmmaker angling to elevate themselves to the next level. I was reminded throughout the day that just because you don’t get a short into the Sundance Film Fest, it doesn’t mean you aren’t a good filmmaker. Maybe there was a similar film that edged your film out by a fraction, maybe it was simply the luck of the draw. For whatever reason, I stopped thinking about the day as ‘ways to get into Sundance’ and started thinking about it as ‘unique ways to tell an authentic story really well’. Here are a few observations from the day and lessons I learned from the various panels:

Programming Tips

The programmers had a Q&A on how they select projects for Sundance (and a rough outline of how other festivals select films). Ultimately, it comes down to how they can group films together: theme, genre, etc. They look for similarities that help them assess what type of slate they have overall. From there, they choose films based on how they’re grouped. Even if someone else has made a short film similar to yours, was the story told as “interestingly” as yours? At the end of the day, the programmers themselves always ask the same question: How did the short film affect the viewer? Regardless of production value, concept, plot, theme, or acting, they will always think back to how the film affected them emotionally. I thought this was a valuable lesson for filmmakers, since they should consider their audience pragmatically throughout the writing/production process. Before spending time and money in production, it might be a good idea to think about how an audience would react to your film while it’s still in the early story development stages.

Story Development

Both filmmakers Craig Zobel (Compliance) and Howard Gertler (How to Survive a Plague) had refreshing perspectives on story development that most screenwriting books don’t really offer. Craig explained how he discovered his story for� Compliance and The Great World of Sound. When writing, he taped one crucial question to his keyboard and referred to it constantly to keep himself focused:“What bigger question are you asking with the film?” He said that this was his biggest guiding principle. He said that this question should supersede plot and link more directly to theme, but never be stated outright. Rather, it’s best dramatized throughout the story.

Another interesting nugget Craig shared: while researching for a story, he noticed that he would often have a very specific reaction to something he found. He would then evaluate how he reacted and analyze why he reacted that way. When Craig was researching for Compliance, he noticed he shrugged off the victims of a fast food restaurant for sexual assault as ‘naïve’ and that most people wouldn’t do something like that. After reflecting, he wondered why he responded so defensively and why his initial response was to dismiss these people. He began to think about how any person might get caught up in a situation like that and suddenly he was on his way.

Working with Actors

Craig Zobel explained that actors always need to have a purpose in their scene, otherwise things slow down or the actor loses focus in the scene. This is a bit of a textbook point but still important- always give actors a specific goal to reach in the scene to help them focus and stay in the moment. It gives them a purpose beyond stating the lines.

Also, it’s always helpful to give actors a couple different goals to vary performances. Sure, you could get 8-10 takes of the same performance, but that won’t give you much to work with in the edit room. It’s refreshing for the actors and helpful for you to have different emotional ranges from the actors to color your story.

In the ‘Working with Actors’ panel, Alex Karpovsky shared that as both an actor and director, the most alienating thing a director can do is to just leave the actor hanging after a take, or fail to provide any context for the actor in the headspace of the scene. As a director, Karpovsky always has a conversation at the top of the scene with each actor to ‘dial in’ to the context of the scene: What’s at stake? What are the beats of the scene? Where does the scene fall within the greater story? What does each character know? What do they think they know? What have been the dynamics of each of the characters with respect to one another? The more context you can give an actor, the more they can use in each take.

Collaboration

In a panel with Producer Mike Ryan (Old Joy, Palindromes, The Comedy), DP Jody Lee-Lipes (Wild Combination, Tiny Furniture, Martha Marcy May Marlene) and Editor Melody London (Down By Lawy, Mystery Train, New York I Love You) they all echoed the same sentiment- when working with collaborators it’s important to set up a code or manifesto for the project that gets everyone on the same page right away. It’s essential that you identify what film you’re trying to make, and then establish that all your key collaborators are on board. If your editor is trying to turn your campy horror Zombie film into an ironic statement of post-recession malaise, it might be good to discuss before collaborating with them. Talking to your collaborators about your goals and purposes for the film, even if they are emotional, is a good way to help your collaborators relate to the story.

In the panel with filmmakers Cutter Hodierne (Fishing Without Nets), Rashaad Ernesto Green (Gun Hill Road), and Eliza Hittman (It Felt Like Love), the topic of discussion was ‘navigating the business end of your film from short to feature’. One point that all the filmmakers made was how important it is that you not wait to get your film made. Set a date, and then tell collaborators, investors, distributors, etc that you’re making a movie on this date, and that they should either get on board or get out of the way. They all stated that if they had had discussions with potential investors and said something along the lines of ‘I have a script, but I’m just waiting on financing’, they likely wouldn’t have gotten the same enthusiasm.

If you do end up being one of the lucky ones getting accepted into Sundance, be prepared to have an upcoming project. It’s a total waste if you get to the fest, get meetings with a powerful distributor and have nothing on slate.

Of course, this is a top line digest of some of the points discussed at the Sundance Shorts Lab. Hopefully it proved a little useful information about the day. For a full day event, there’s just too much to fit into one blog post. As always, any workshop or conference is always a fantastic way to learn from filmmakers who have been lucky enough to find their film a place in the world. Sign up for IFP’s newsletter for a weekly digest on upcoming events in the film world and how you can stay connected.

The digital revolution …]]> There’s increasingly a lot of talk about Transmedia storytelling; the idea of taking pieces of a story and systematically putting them across different media touch points for the purposes of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. But why is Transmedia storytelling important for independent filmmakers in particular?

The digital revolution has helped shift the power of decision when it comes to what content people get to consume. No longer do you have to leave your seat and walk to the shops to choose from the latest big release Hollywood DVDs, you can now access over a 100 million videos online through any number of devices from the comfort of your toilet. And I think probably a fair few of us do.

Any niche idea can find its way to any niche audience. The Internet means a storyteller and story consumer can have a direct relationship. This is the essence of independence and it’s a major shift for any independent artist.

But there’s a catch, of course. What you get for free in terms of digital platforms, is available to all; so you have to work hard to earn your audience’s attention. Your story is not just competing with other independent films, it’s competing with an Internet full of distractions. And with small promotional budgets to support your independent film, you need to make everything work harder.

Transmedia storytelling is a valuable approach because it wraps your story around the shoulders of your audience and hooks them in whenever and wherever you come into contact with them. But to do this means broadening your role from maker of film to Transmedia storyteller, to think of your story as something living beyond a locked screen and a single timeframe.

A GREAT STORY IS ALWAYS THE ROOT CAUSE
The good news: The most important factor to success starts with a great story. A strong emotional narrative, whether it induces laughter, tears or fears, is at the heart of any connection, conversation or share—so nothing changes there.

TRANSMEDIA SHOULDN’T FEEL LIKE MARKETING, IT SHOULD FEEL LIKE GOOD STORYTELLING
Transmedia has an element of marketing to it at times, but when done well it’s simply good storytelling, an extension of the film experience. The more it’s thought about as integral to the film, the less it will feel like a promotional afterthought. And as the creative force behind their film, the filmmaker is the best person to create it.

But using Transmedia storytelling to extend your reach doesn’t need to be complex or expensive necessarily. You could do something as simple as The Blair Witch Project, starting the story the moment your audience comes into contact with it.

THERE ARE OPPORTUNITIES WITH YOUR AUDIENCE BEYOND THE THEATER
Re-consider the whole notion of your film as having to just be watched at the theater or TV, to one that can be experienced on your computer.

It gives you the opportunity to make your film more personal. To make it feel like you’re talking directly to your audience one on one.

Maybe even think about allowing your audience to collaborate with part of your project. Understandably, the thought of a stranger touching your craft is often met with dread, but it’s up to your creativity to do it in a way that is powerful. It might not be so bad, the audience that falls in love with your project probably aligns with your tastes…

You could experiment with interactions to enable your audience to “insomnia” live through your story first hand.

Or even a location-based experience that stirs the imagination so much that everyone can’t help but talk about it.

Transmedia is still in it’s infancy, but the definition of it that I’d like to go with is that it takes your story beyond the confinements of the traditional film to earn a relationship and build an audience that has a million options. Depending on what you do, you may need to collaborate with people with different skill sets to make it happen, but it starts with a shift in mindset about what your creative canvas is. I believe that the independent filmmakers who do so will find the most rewarding creative freedom.

L.E.S* began in 2011 in an effort to support and showcase low budget filmmakers, specifically. We sold out all our screenings and were placed on New York Magazine’s …]]>

Well here we go again, Gang. The 3rd annual L.E.S* Film Festival is right around the corner, June 13th-23rd, here in NYC’s Lower East Side.

L.E.S* began in 2011 in an effort to support and showcase low budget filmmakers, specifically. We sold out all our screenings and were placed on New York Magazine’s Approval Matrix – “Highbrow & Brilliant.” Treat! Apparently there was an interest…

We have continued to expand into bigger venues (Sunshine Cinema, Anthology Film Archives, the Crosby St. Hotel) and incorporated some of the best names in film. Our judges panel includes the likes of Academy Award Winner Susan Sarandon, Sundance Winning Director and Writer Rebecca Miller, Academy Award Nominee Travis Knight (Paranorman), Academy Award Nominee Dan Janvey (Beasts of the Southern Wild), legendary performance artist Justin Bond and many many more exceptional individuals.

In the process we have worked hard to stay true to our mission: show the best in low budget filmmaking in New York City’s Lower East Side. Wait… did we mention a lot of our events are FREE and completely awesome?

We wanted to answer some fan mail we’ve received… Kidding – ifp emailed us these questions:

Q: What are festivals looking for in submissions? What about writing a good Artist Statement? How do we know which festivals to apply for?

A: Well, we can’t speak for other festivals, but for L.E.S* we look for the basics first: can you hear the sound? Is the editing good? Are the shots not blown out? Basic things like this are CRUCIAL to watching. You’d be amazed how many people send in films with a weird buzzing noise, zero sound mix, we can’t see or hear the actors… there are many films where we say “if it was just edited a little differently…”

Acting – so important. DO NOT CAST YOUR FRIENDS because you don’t want to pay actors!  If they cannot act DO NOT PUT THEM IN YOUR FILM!

Writing – make sure it’s good! Less is more. Edit, edit, edit! Do a reading with people before you film to see if it makes sense. A reading will change your perception of your writing!

TELL A GREAT STORY! That’s it. Give the audience credit. We have ALL spent our whole lives listening to and telling stories all day every day. There is something in us – ALL OF US – that can tell what is good, what is bad, and what is an artist indulging themselves.

Q: Do we care about an Artist Statement?

A: Not really. The Artist Statement guides the artist. An audience doesn’t care about the artist’s intention. Say you read all about an artist’s intention before you see their film, because you’re curious…if you actually see the film and there’s nothing interesting about it, the artist’s intention or statement is not going to change the bad experience you had.

Applying to festivals requires research. Do not apply to a Christian Film Festival if your film is about a Satanic Cult, or DO because that’s kind of ballsy… but they’re not going to take your film. You may shock them with some blatant hedonism, but they’re not putting your film in their fest.

Every film festival has its own aesthetic and programming committee. Look to where your film may fit best. Look at previous lineups. Where do you think you have the most chance of getting attention from? One of the great things about our festival, we’d like to think, is that it is in NYC and we can get industry to your screening. The great thing about Sundance, SXSW, and Toronto is that everyone knows about them and they can get industry to your screening. Can Big Stone Gap International Film Festival get industry to your screening? No. They can’t. Cause where the hell is Big Stone Gap? Well, it’s where the tip of Virginia meets Kentucky.

Q: What do we do once we’re in a festival? How do we promote our film/short film in the festival?

A: Once in a festival, spread the word like CRAZY! Don’t sit back and think the work is done. The work never stops, and it’s on you to keep pushing!

Q: Do festivals care about having an online following/community or are they just looking at the film?

A: Absolutely!!! Online community is huge! We all know that. If we didn’t we’d be asking for your submissions on Betamax.

Q: When at a festival, how do I maximize the experience for my career (i.e. building relationships with the right people etc.)

A: Don’t rely on the festival to do everything for you. It’s up to you to network and push your film. If you’re travelling to the festival, try to set up meetings wherever you are. Go to other films and reach out to filmmakers whose work you like. There are usually Q+A’s and drinks as well as panels. Go to as much as you can and introduce yourself. Everyone likes meeting future collaborators and friends. If you’re shy, pretend you’re not.

Q: Are festivals going to care if I release my film online?

A: That’s up to the festival.

Our goal, at L.E.S* – to support the next generation of low budget and creative filmmakers. If you are one of them, a film lover, or just want to have a fun time, please come to our Fest. We’d love to have you!

Sincerely,

Damon and Shannon

www.lesfilmfestival.com

an interview about two rising stars and one new web series by Danielle Lurie

Alexandra Roxo and Natalia Leite are simply too fierce not to succeed.  Just take a look at their company profile photo. It’s of the two of them, stylish, poised, and hidden elusively behind …]]> Roxo and Leite – Knocking It Out

an interview about two rising stars and one new web series by Danielle Lurie

Alexandra Roxo and Natalia Leite are simply too fierce not to succeed.  Just take a look at their company profile photo. It’s of the two of them, stylish, poised, and hidden elusively behind the sultry yet powerful logo of a K (for Knock) and an O (of Out) – telling us (without telling us) that they’re going to knock us out by charming the hell out of us, and we’re going to like it.

Now, I’m a female filmmaker writing about other female filmmakers – so I know that it’s more than looks to get a production company, or a film, or a web series off the ground.  All I’m saying is that Roxo and Leite are intoxicating and captivating from the outside in, and back again.  They’re young, their fashionable, they’re driven as hell and they’re going to put everything they’ve got into making magic happen on the big (and now small) screen – and if you ask me, it’s going to work.

They’ve already had success doing what they do well.  Both Roxo and Leite have had feature films and screenplays garner serious buzz: Roxo’sMary Marie was said by New York Magazine to be a “haunting debut feature” and her second feature was a part of IFP’s Emerging Narratives program. Leite won the Kodak Grant Award and is a two-time Sundance Screenwriters Lab Finalist, with her first feature filmBare slated to shoot in Summer 2013.  They’ve been around the block, and are back again – this time with the launch of their new webseries call Be Here Nowish.

With the www (as I like to call it) being totally oversaturated with vlogs and make-up tutorials and webseries made by everyone and their cat (actually, mostly made by everyoneabout their cat), Roxo and Leite are trying to stand out and do something different with this new series.  Be Here Nowish is about two (sometimes gay) women who give up the bustle of New York City to go ‘find themselves’ in Los Angeles.  It’s fresh, provocative, and sexy – especially because Roxo and Leite are not only writing, directing and producing – but are also starring in it, along with some indie film friends of theirs such as filmmaker Ry Russo-Young, who plays one of Leite’s ex-girlfriends.

I’ve just spent the past year and a half working for one of the bigger internet networks, Alloy Digital, creating all the web content for their female branded sites – so when someone tells me they’re going to make a new web-series, and they want me (and you) to invest in it (their Kickstarter campaign has just launched) I’ve immediately got questions about the show’s efficacy, brandability, and – above all else – it’s raison d’être.  I’ve posed these questions, and then some, to Roxo and Leite, and here’s what they have to say.

Q: Why did you two decide to make a web show?

A: We’ve both been waiting for our features to move into production and as we all know sometimes that can take years, and then another year for post.  Being directors we want to be constantly our craft. So instead of twiddling our thumbs waiting for financing, we decided to make our own show. We’ve shot half of it for no money, just using our resources and involving the amazing, talented people we know.  It’s a way for us to be constantly making new work, trying out new ideas, collaborating with other talented people, and just having fun.

Q: Why THIS show? What makes this different than the other series we’ve seen so far?  Why will people watch this?  Why does it need to get made?

A: Well first off, we feel like there are many shows about white, straight, well-off girls, but none featuring queer, minority, more alternative girls. There is no show out there right now that really reflects our community, so we thought ‘why not create one!’  That has been the mantra for a lot of the work we are making together – not waiting for anyone to tell us what or when to make work, just going out there and doing it ourselves. There’s also no show that we know of that reflects spiritual practices among the younger generation. We think this is kind of a hot topic right now and we’re not sure why more people are not talking about it.

Q: Who will be the show’s audience?  Do you see this show being brandable?

A: Hopefully the show’s audience will be broad!  Yesterday I (Alexandra) chatted with the producers of my next feature film, Jonathan Duffy and Kelly Williams, and they said they thought the trailer was hilarious. And they are two straight white guys from Texas, so that makes me feel like anyone can relate to the show. We know it will appeal to a young crowd in their 20′s + 30′s, but we hope that within that age group it will attract people of all different backgrounds, sexual orientation, cultures.

Q: What’s been your acting experience before making this series?  How did you decide to act in this series yourselves?

A: I (Alexandra) acted in my first featureMary Marie and really enjoy acting.  We decided that we were the only ones who would be available for free and at the drop of a hat to shoot this show, so we cast ourselves. I (Natalia) had barely any acting experience and was honestly pretty nervous about being on camera.  My first scenes were super stiff and we decided to trash it in the edit.  But eventually I stopped directing myself and just focused on being in character, and now I really love it.

Q: What’s the most fun thing you’ve shot so far?

A: The tantric sex scene with comedian Adam Carpenter was pretty hilarious to shoot.  We also loved the scene we did on an LA rooftop where Natalia’s character is being punished by a dominatrix and Ry Russo-Young’s character.  Also an improv where Alexandra’s character, Sam, asks her boyfriend to do a bunch of weird role plays (like a lunch lady/student) was really funny.  Honestly we have been working with so many great friends that have made the whole experience really fun.

Q: Tell me what it’s like working together as a team?  Do you plan to alternate between producing and directing these episodes, or do you both wear all the hats all the time?

A: When one of us is in a scene with another character the other directs and produces that episode.  It’s trickier when we are both in the scene, but we have this amazing DP, Dagmar Weaver-Madsen, who has been involved all along so she knows our characters well and she helps a lot with the story and directing when we are both on camera.

Q: What are your three favorite webseries out there right now?

A: High Maintenance,  F to 7th, and  Slutever are all hilarious and really well-done.

Q: What are your references or inspirations for this series?

A: We’ve both used a lot of our own dating lives and spiritual quests as inspiration for the show.  The show is about our generation and the contradictions we live-  one day being in yoga and chanting mantras to some deity of another culture, then the next day staying up ’til 5 am wooing a new dating prospect into bed.  I think our generation is navigating these moments in a way that’s really different from our parents.  Being hungover while chanting Sanskrit mantras at a Kundalini yoga class and checking your phone to see if your new lover texted you is just a part of the world we live in now.  It’s kinda weird.

For more information on Be Here Now-ish or to contribute to the kickstarter click here.

In early February, my small edit team and I relocated from my base in San Francisco to the fog-bound woods along the Mendocino coast. We were tasked with bringing our loose assembly of my doc-in-progress  – which, at the time, clocked in at a dense and daunting 11-hours– …]]>

In early February, my small edit team and I relocated from my base in San Francisco to the fog-bound woods along the Mendocino coast. We were tasked with bringing our loose assembly of my doc-in-progress  – which, at the time, clocked in at a dense and daunting 11-hours– down to a digestible rough cut.  It was a challenge I had dreamed about for years. And, in my mind, there was no better place to accomplish this than isolated in the idyllic Northern California wilderness. I had hoped to remove ourselves from the world, to insulate us from all distractions, immersing ourselves fully within our footage. Our doc (tentatively titled ROOTS AND WEBS), which is about two former soldiers who find a new life and family in Oregon’s wild mushroom hunting trade, is grounded in the forest as a place of refuge. So, I had also hoped that the natural majesty around us would work its way into the film. After two months of laboriously editing from our own woodland haven, we proved successful: we had a cut just under two hours.

But then, came the point when we had to actually show it to people.

After my protected little post-production bubble, the prospect of others watching it was terrifying. I have worked in documentary film for eight years now and seen many a rough cut. However, this was my first time directing. Anxiety welled up inside me each time I thought about new eyes on our film – no matter how much I loved our characters, themes and storylines. I found myself zealously telling filmmaker friends offering to give feedback, “I’ll show you the next cut. Not this one. Give me one week. Or five.” I never thought I would feel ready.

My team and I, though, had the good fortune of being accepted to IFP’s Doc Lab. This meant that there was a firm deadline when we had to show the film. So, last week, I found myself in the throngs of New York City, worlds away from Mendocino.  I was nervous – no one else outside of our internal team still had seen the cut. And, true to form, I was editing away until the very last second, attempting to sneak our most updated version into IFP’s queue.  The day came when we had to watch it.

So we watched it. And it was over. And all sorts of realizations rushed forth.

Years ago, I heard the phrase “break your eyes open” in regard to the creative process. I don’t remember specifically where it came from (a quick Google search reveals it’s the song title by Blue Angel. This song was not my initial source of inspiration…), though those words always stuck with me. To me, the phrase referenced the ability to shatter a vision that first appeared salient and cohesive to instead give way to a clearer means of seeing one’s own art. This was a practice I had myself hoped to implement, especially after two months of working within relative isolation. However, the concrete steps towards this seemed elusive at best.

But, at the IFP Lab, I felt as though this had actually happened: my eyes got broken open and I began to comprehend my film in a new light.Through the feedback sessions and mentorship the Lab provided, I was dislodged out of my protective bubble and forced to wrestle with the essential questions that lay outside of our internal team.

See, the world of my film – like many documentaries – is composed of culturally specific codes, shifting meanings, esoteric rules, histories and storied landscapes. In my rough cut, I had at once tried to portray this mess of complexity but simultaneously neglected the most basic of information. I attempted to illustrate: the economy of the mushroom trade, the political history of Southeast Asia (where the majority of our mushroom hunters come from), the racial politics of the Oregon woods, the life cycle of the matsutake mushroom, and more, all the while pretending to be a “character-driven” film with a narrative arc.  But, I had left out the key context that would actually orient viewers in the Mushroom Camp world. I had wanted to tell it all, yet withheld so much. I was so inside of my own head (which, I know is essential for a period of time) that I had not yet effectively considered how to make the film intelligible to outsiders.

The IFP team, as well as the seasoned producers and editor mentors they recruit, helped me see to this massive issue (and, of course many other things) at exactly the right point in time. And, they did so within a supportive, creatively nurturing environment. They pulled me out of my self-imposed isolation and introduced me to a community of experts, as well as my own first-time director peers. The Labs helped build pathways out of my little haven in the woods – and out of my own mind – towards new comrades all over the country. I now feel much better equipped to distill the film down to its most potent stories and essential meanings; to find the ways to communicate both complexity and clarity of narrative, all the while sticking to my proverbial artistic guns. We have challenges ahead of us as we continue post, but I am armed with a reinvigorated means to see the film –with new eyes now broken open.

I recently chatted with Brave New Wild director Oakley Anderson-Moore about our upcoming Independent Film Week, and how we work to share new work from up and coming filmmakers (and experienced filmmakers!) from all over the U.S. She shares our conversation, and her own experiences at Independent Film Week last …]]>

I recently chatted with Brave New Wild director Oakley Anderson-Moore about our upcoming Independent Film Week, and how we work to share new work from up and coming filmmakers (and experienced filmmakers!) from all over the U.S. She shares our conversation, and her own experiences at Independent Film Week last year, in this great article on No Film School.

Click Here to Read the Interview

Last Friday evening I was walking with Chantel Elassaad, IFP’s Development and Programming Coordinator, after the first energizing and exhausting week of IFP’s Documentary Labs. Approaching the Elephant, my film about a group of children at a free school where rules are created democratically and …]]>

Amanda Wilder’s “Approaching the Elephant”

Last Friday evening I was walking with Chantel Elassaad, IFP’s Development and Programming Coordinator, after the first energizing and exhausting week of IFP’s Documentary Labs. Approaching the Elephant, my film about a group of children at a free school where rules are created democratically and classes are voluntary, was one of ten documentaries selected for this year’s Labs. We stopped at a corner, waiting for a light to turn, and I said something to Chantel I’ve been mulling over since: “I haven’t felt this connected to my project since I was shooting it.”

Throughout the first week of IFP Labs and now in the week after I have had these déjà-vu sparks, this exciting connection to what I am making that brings me right back to how I felt during production.  I think I’ve figured out where this familiar feeling comes from. It has to do with connection and access.

When discussing the making of documentaries, filmmakers always talk about access as gold. When you have a connection with your subjects (mutual trust, understanding, even friendship) and are granted entrance into a world, well, anything and everything is possible. Yes, connection and access are the keys to everything in documentary filmmaking. No matter what your story is ‘about,’ it’s really about people, and getting as close to them as possible (and even when it’s NOT about people, but about dust or beetles or silence, it’s about a relationship, the filmmaker’s relationship, with dust, beetles, or silence – these relationships too need to be fully realized and felt). People find enlightenment and meaning through relationships and entrances into familiar and unknown worlds, and that’s what documentary filmmakers attempt to provide.

After the first week of IFP’s Labs I have realized that for filmmakers making their first films the importance of  connection and access do not end with production. As I sat in the 92Y Tribeca’s theater scribbling notes while listening to professionals, one after the other, talk about editing, sound design, outreach, distribution, sales and rights, transmedia, and more, I kept thinking, this is access. IFP provided this access by connecting ten filmmaking teams to essential information needed to make their projects the best they can be. To me, this feels as much a gift as someone opening their door and allowing you to film their life.

And so, I would encourage anyone who is making their first documentary film or even their first couple to think about connection and access in two stages: the first is with your subjects during production and the second is with experienced people, other filmmakers and professionals in the industry, who can navigate you through the wild world of post-production and beyond. How else will you figure out what Fair Use actually covers? What percentage of your budget should be put towards marketing and distribution? (A lot of it.) How to decide who your niche and core audiences are (what those words even mean)? Deliverables? Eh? There is a long distance between your footage and your audience; those individuals who can provide access to information you need during post and beyond are invaluable to creating that bridge. So seek them out!

As an entertainment attorney, I am often called upon to assist writers who have gotten themselves into trouble because they do not understand how their work may infringe the rights of others. A writer who learns the fine points of the law through trial and error is receiving …]]>

As an entertainment attorney, I am often called upon to assist writers who have gotten themselves into trouble because they do not understand how their work may infringe the rights of others. A writer who learns the fine points of the law through trial and error is receiving an expensive education. Here is a brief explanation of how to protect yourself.

I. FICTIONAL CHARACTERS

If your script or film contains fictional characters — characters from your imagination — you generally do not need to obtain any permissions or releases. However, if there is a chance that the public could mistake your imaginary characters for real people, you could be liable if you have thereby infringed their rights.

You can protect yourself by making sure your fictional characters cannot be mistaken for real people. Give characters unusual names that no living individual would have. Check the phone book to see if any people with your character’s name reside at the location portrayed in your story. If there is a person in that community with the same name or a similar one, consider changing the locale or setting the story in a fictional locale. Add a disclaimer at the beginning of the film stating that any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

If fictional characters are drawn from another’s literary work, you might be infringing that author’s copyright unless the work has gone into the public domain, or your use is considered a fair use. You may borrow personality traits, so long as you do not infringe another’s copyright. The first author to create a hard-boiled private eye, for example, cannot prevent other authors from creating their own hard-boiled private eyes.

Characters that have a visual component, such as comic book characters, are more likely to be protected under copyright law. Moreover, if you borrow the name of someone else’s character you may be infringing trademark rights they have in the character, and engaging in unfair competition.

As explained later, in some circumstances you may have the right to portray real-life individuals without their permission, especially if those persons are public figures or public officials.

II. FICTIONAL CHARACTERS BASED ON REAL INDIVIDUALS

A writer’s imagination necessarily draws upon one’s life experiences and people the writer has met. A writer can freely borrow ideas, historical facts, personality traits of characters, and themes from other copyrighted work without liability. These items are not copyrightable.

If a fictional character is loosely based on a real-life individual, and the public cannot identify the real-life individual from the context in which the fictional character is portrayed, there is little risk of liability. On the other hand, suppose you wrote a novel about the widow of a former American president assassinated in Dallas, and the widow character later marries a Greek shipping tycoon. Although, you have labeled the book a “novel,” said that it is a work of fiction, and given the characters fictitious names, readers may nevertheless believe you are writing about Jackie Kennedy. If you defame her, or otherwise invade her rights, she may have a good cause of action against you. You can be liable for defaming an individual even if you do not name her.

An interesting case is Leopold v. Levin. The plaintiff, Nathan Leopold, pled guilty in 1924 to kidnapping and murdering a young boy. Because of the sensational nature of the crime, the case attracted international notoriety, which did not wane over time.

In 1956, Levin, the defendant, wrote a novel entitled Compulsion. The framework for the novel was the Leopold case, although Leopold’s name did not appear in it. The book was described as a fictionalized account of the Leopold murder case. A motion picture based on the book was released with fictitious characters who resembled the actual persons from the case. The promotional materials referred to the crime but made it clear that the story was a work of fiction suggested by real-life events. Leopold sued for invasion of privacy. After the novel was published, but before the movie was released, Leopold published his own autobiography.
The court was faced with the issue of whether Leopold, who had fostered continued public attention after having engaged in an activity placing him in the public eye, had a right of privacy in a fictitious account of that activity, or in the use of his name in promoting such an account. The court found against Leopold, stating that books, magazines, and motion pictures are forms of public expression protected by the First Amendment. The court noted that while the book and movie were “suggested” by Leopold’s crime, they were evidently fictional works. The novel and film depicted portions of Leopold’s life that he had caused to be placed in public view. The court did not consider the fictionalized aspects highly offensive, which is the standard for determining invasion of privacy.

The court noted that a documentary account of the Leopold case would be constitutionally protected. Also, an entirely fictional work inspired by the case would be protected if matters such as locale were changed and the plaintiff was not identified.

III. PORTRAYING IDENTIFIABLE PERSONS

A person’s right to privacy has to be balanced against other people’s rights under the First Amendment. If Kitty Kelly wants to write an unauthorized biography about Frank Sinatra, she can do so without his permission. Likewise, Mike Wallace and his “60 Minutes” camera crew can film others without their permission. However, journalists’ rights are not absolute. If Mike Wallace placed a hidden camera in a department store dressing room, he would be liable for damages for invading the privacy of customers.

Determining whether a filmmaker has infringed upon the rights of a subject who has not consented to be portrayed can be a complex matter. The status of the subject — whether he is a public figure or public official, and whether he is alive or deceased — may be important. Whether the activities portrayed are newsworthy may also be decisive. And, the manner in which a person’s likeness is used — whether in a film or on a coffee cup — is relevant as well.
The most likely grounds upon which to sue for an unauthorized portrayal are defamation, invasion of privacy, right of publicity, and unfair competition. Let us consider each in turn.

A. DEFAMATION

Defamation is a communication that harms the reputation of another so as to lower him in the opinion of the community or to deter third persons from associating or dealing with him. For example, those communications that expose another to hatred, ridicule, or contempt, or reflect unfavorably upon one’s personal morality or integrity are defamatory. One who is defamed may suffer embarrassment and humiliation, as well as economic damages, such as the loss of a job or the ability to earn a living.

The law of defamation can be very confusing because the common law rules that have developed over the centuries are subject to constitutional limitations. To determine the current law, one must read a state’s defamation laws in light of various constitutional principles. For example, recent United States Supreme Court decisions have imposed significant limitations on the ability of public officials and public figures to win defamation actions. If a state’s law is inconsistent with a constitutional principle, the law is invalid.

There are a number of defenses and privileges in defamation law. Therefore, in some circumstances a person can publish an otherwise defamatory remark with impunity. Why? Protecting a person’s reputation is not the only value we cherish in a democratic society. When the right to protect a reputation conflicts with a more important right, the defamed person may be denied a recovery for the harm suffered.

The most important privilege, from a filmmaker’s point of view, is truth. If your remarks hurt someone’s reputation, but your remarks are true, you are absolutely privileged. An absolute privilege cannot be lost through bad faith or abuse. So, even if you maliciously defame another person, you will be privileged if the statement is true. Truth is an absolute privilege because our society values truth more than a person’s reputation.

Keep in mind that while truth is an absolute defense, the burden of proving the truth may sometimes fall on you. Thus,if you make a defamatory statement, you should be prepared to prove that it is true — which may not be an easy task.

Another privilege is the conditional common law privilege of fair comment and criticism. This privilege applies to communications about a newsworthy person or event. Conditional privileges may be lost through bad faith or abuse. However, this privilege has been largely superseded by a constitutional privilege applied in the context of statements about public officials or public figures.

Public figures, such as celebrities, or public officials, such as senators, have a much higher burden in order to prevail in a defamation action. They must prove that the defendant acted with “actual malice.” Actual malice is a term of art meaning that the defendant intentionally defamed another or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

Plaintiffs often find it difficult to prove that a defendant acted with actual malice. That is why few celebrities sue the National Enquirer. To successfully defend itself, the magazine need only show that it acted without actual malice. In other words, the newspaper can come into court and concede that its report was false, defamatory, and the result of sloppy and careless research. But, unless the celebrity can prove that the National Enquirer acted with actual malice, the court must dismiss the case. Mere negligence is not enough to create liability when the subject is a public figure or a public official.

B. INVASION OF PRIVACY

The right of privacy has been defined as the right to live one’s life in seclusion, without being subjected to unwarranted and undesired publicity. In other words, it is the right to be left alone.
Similar to defamation, the right of privacy is subject to constitutional restrictions. The news media, for example, is not liable for newsworthy statements that portray another in a false light unless the statements are made with actual malice. Unlike defamation, a cause of action for invasion of privacy does not require an injury to one’s reputation.

Many defenses to defamation also apply to invasion of privacy. Truth, however, is not a defense. Likewise, revealing matters of public record cannot be the basis for an invasion of privacy action. Express and implied consent are valid defenses. If you voluntarily reveal private facts to others you cannot recover for invasion of your privacy.

Privacy actions typically fall into four factual patterns:

1. Intrusion into One’s Private Affairs

This category includes such activities as wiretapping and unreasonable surveillance. The intrusion must be highly offensive. Whether an intrusion is highly offensive depends on the circumstances. Most people would find it offensive to discover a voyeur peering through their bedroom window. On the other hand, a salesman knocking on your front door at dinner time may be obnoxious but his actions would not constitute an invasion of privacy.

2. Public Disclosure of Embarrassing Private Facts

One who gives publicity to a matter concerning the private life of another is subject to liability for invasion of privacy if the matter publicized is highly offensive to a reasonable person, and if the matter is not of legitimate concern to the public, i.e., if the information is not newsworthy.

This type of invasion of privacy occurs, for example, where someone digs up some dirt on another person and publicizes it, but the information is not of legitimate interest to the public.

3. Appropriation

An action for appropriation of another’s name or likeness is similar to an action for invasion of one’s right of publicity. An invasion of privacy action seeks to compensate the plaintiff for the emotional distress, embarrassment, and hurt feelings that may arise from the use of his or her name or likeness. A right of publicity action, on the other hand, seeks to compensate the plaintiff for the commercial value of exploiting his or her name or likeness.

As with the right of publicity, a person cannot always control another’s use of his name or likeness. While you can prevent someone from putting your face on a pancake mix box, you cannot stop Time magazine from putting your face on its cover if you have been involved in something newsworthy.

4. False Light

Publicity that places a plaintiff in a false light will be actionable if the portrayal is highly offensive. This type of invasion of privacy is similar to defamation, but harm to a reputation is not required. For example, false light invasion of privacy could entail a political dirty trick such as placing the name of a prominent Republican on a list of Democratic contributors. Although, this person’s reputation may not be harmed, he has been shown in a false light.

An interesting false light case is Spahn v. Julian Messner, Inc. Here, Warren Spahn, a well-known baseball player, sued over the publication of an unauthorized biography, alleging that his rights under New York’s misappropriation (privacy) statute had been invaded. In the purported biography, the author took great literary license, dramatizing incidents, inventing conversations, manipulating chronologies, attributing thoughts and feelings to Spahn, and fictionalizing events. The invented material depicted the plaintiff’s childhood, his relationship with his father, the courtship of his wife and important events in their marriage, and his military experience.

The defendant argued that the literary techniques he used were customary for books aimed at young people. The defendant never interviewed Spahn, any members of his family, or any baseball player who knew him. The author’s research was comprised of newspaper and magazine clippings, the veracity of which he rarely confirmed.

The court concluded that the defendant invaded Spahn’s privacy. The New York privacy statute protects a public person from fictionalized publication if the work was published with actual malice. Since the defendant writer invented large portions of the book, he obviously knew his statements were untrue. While Spahn could not prevent publication of an unflattering biography simply because he did not like its contents, this fictitious report masquerading as fact was not protected.

Next blog: THE RIGHT OF PUBLICITY

Self Defense Seminar:
Date: May 21, 2013, New York

This seminar explains how writers and filmmakers can prevent problems from arising by properly securing underlying rights, and encouraging the other party to live up to agreements by adding performance milestones, default penalties, and arbitration clauses. This seminar is an all-day class with Mark Litwak. Attorneys may earn CLE credit. Excerpts from Mark’s last seminar in New York on financing films can be viewed at: http://www.ifp.org/resources/dealing-with-the-legal-woes-advice-from-entertainment-attorney-mark-litwak/

Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts presents Mark Litwak’s Self Defense Seminar: http://www.vlany.org/education/self_defense_writers_filmmakers_art_law.php

Mark Litwak is a veteran entertainment attorney and Producer’s Rep based in Beverly Hills, California. He is the author of six books including: Reel Power: The Struggle for Influence and Success in the New Hollywood; Dealmaking in the Film and Television Industry; Contracts for the Film and Television Industry; and Risky Business: Financing and Distributing Independent Film. He is an Adjunct Professor at the USC School of Law and the creator of Entertainment Law Resources website. www.marklitwak.com

In the year and a half since Brian Newman wrote his very apt and memorable post, “Killing the Film Fest Panel,” panels haven’t improved much. In that time, I’ve spoken on or moderated over a dozen panels, …]]>

Producer Peter Phok and I speaking on a panel at IFP’s Filmmaker Conference.

In the year and a half since Brian Newman wrote his very apt and memorable post, “Killing the Film Fest Panel,” panels haven’t improved much. In that time, I’ve spoken on or moderated over a dozen panels, and it seems that panel organizers haven’t really taken Brian’s suggestions to heart. The majority of film panels remain as excruciatingly boring and useless as ever.

So, let’s try a different tack: I propose that we panelists and moderators step up our game and give the (sometimes paying) audiences a better panel. Here’s how:

1. Be succint. This is the golden rule of panel-speaking. Way too often, I feel like I’m being held hostage by a long-winded moderator or panelist. I see the eyelids of audience members flitting with sleep as the Run-D.M.C. lyrics, “You talk too much, you never shut up,” loop in my head. Speakers (and everyone else for that matter) should learn how to say more with less words. Time on panels and time in life is limited, so please stop wasting it.

2. Stay on topic. It’s OK to go off on a tangent once in a while if it’s relevant and instructive, but people came to hear you based on the topic that was advertised. So do your best to keep reminding yourself what your panel is about, and what key questions the audience expects you to answer.

3. Know your audience. Tailor what you say to who’s in the audience–directors vs. producers vs. press vs. laypeople, etc.–and the level of their film knowledge. I always like to poll the audience at the start of each panel to find out who’s in it. Also, ask the panel organizer or festival programmer about the audience composition.

4. Be specific & universal at the same time. Your expertise is based primarily on your own particular experiences, so it’s good to offer specific anecdotes, but only if they can be applied broadly. Don’t be an obvious shill for your specific agenda and interests–always frame them in terms of how the audience might apply them to their own experiences. However, be careful not to go to the other extreme and start speaking in vague platitudes. It’s alarming how many mantra-like tweets emerge from panels–it’s just a stupid panel, not an evangelical mass. And remember: nobody knows anything anyway.

5. Be conversational. Don’t talk at people, talk with people. The most interesting panels are interactive. I love engaging in genuine conversations with my co-panelists or audience members. To me, dialogues are almost always more compelling and instructive than monologues.

6. Be flexible & organic. This relates to the preceding point. If you are too stubborn about making certain points, or too rigid in your delivery, people will get bored. Like in a film production, you must allow for “happy accidents,” so listen to what your co-panelists are saying and react to them.

7. Be honest & real. Audiences aren’t stupid; they can tell when you’re being phony. Also, share as much insider info and data as you can without violating your confidentiality clauses or threatening your own livelihood.

8. Don’t be boring. You are on a stage with a mic in front of a captive audience. Say something provocative or crack a joke every now and then!

9. Moderators: Don’t be afraid to cut people off. This one is just for the moderators. Don’t be afraid of reminding panelists how much time they have left or cutting them off and bringing them back down to earth. You guys are the “ADs” of panels. It’s your job to keep things moving and on track!

10. Audiences: Don’t pitch your own projects in the Q&A. OK, this one’s a postscript, but I gotta say it because this is such a common problem. I’m sure your project is very interesting, but no one came to that panel to hear about it. So please keep it to yourself, and just ask your question–which will be broadly applicable and succinct, of course!

I’m writing to you now from a screening room in TriBeCa, where we are in the throes of the 2013 Documentary Labs! The Labs are easily my favorite thing to do at IFP, so even though I haven’t seen the sun in hours, hiding here, its a good place to …]]>

I’m writing to you now from a screening room in TriBeCa, where we are in the throes of the 2013 Documentary Labs! The Labs are easily my favorite thing to do at IFP, so even though I haven’t seen the sun in hours, hiding here, its a good place to be. Monday, we shared the titles with you (press release here) and we watched samples of each as a Labs group. What a joy to see a bit of all the films together! As programmers, we choose films somewhat individually. Instead of filling slots for an audience, as a festival does, we tend to answer ‘which filmmakers and projects do we think can best gain from the Labs?’

Such talent in this year’s class! And best of all, unique perspective. Each filmmaker seems to be taking a topic we thought we knew – food, family, crime, war, identity, youth, the arts – and giving it a very personal spin, reinvigorating the discussion.

So, in this, our 9th year of the Labs, it is really exciting to see this class work together, and to help them scheme on launching their films in the best way. I always say this is the ‘I have a great film, wtf do I do with it?!’ program. Yes, we can, and should, dream for the A-list festival premiere, the mini-major distributor and national television broadcast – not to mention the advance that’s large enough to cover deliverables *and* go out to dinner. But barring that rare Golden Ticket, what else is there? Luckily, the answer is LOTS! And we’re lucky to have incredible Lab Leaders in producers Lori Cheatle and Maureen A. Ryan, and direct distribution guru Jon Reiss, and a whole host of savvy industry to help guide our filmmakers thru the minefields – and hopefully a few fields of clover – that independent documentary can be.

Today, we are neck deep in examining all the elements of filmmaking, aside from actually making the film: marketing, distribution, festivals, audience engagement. Generally, what is the state of independent documentary distribution today, and how do these specific films fit into that?

While we’re working hard to fill Lab Fellows’ brains to bursting with all the info, abbreviations (I just learned AVOD and SVOD*), rights, terms, goals and guidelines, I’m grateful for these filmmakers who are continuing to inspire us IFPers with their incredible work, and bold enough to challenge themselves to get it out into the world so you can see it, too.

So, to that, give them some love in return and seek them out! Festival programmers and heads of acquisition, I’m looking at you! Fresh documentary, ripe for the picking, ready for you in 6-12months!

Here are some titles, to whet the appetite– check out the press release for more detail on each.

Approaching the Elephant

Fellows: Amanda Wilder (Director/DP), Jay Craven (Producer). Brooklyn, NY

Bringing Tibet Home

Fellows: Tenzin Tsetan Choklay (Director/ Producer /Writer/DP/Editor); Milica Zec (Editor). Queens, NY

Do I Sound Gay?

Fellows: David Thorpe (Director/Writer); Howard Gertler (Producer). Brooklyn, NY.

Evolution of a Criminal

Fellows: Darius Clark Monroe (Director); Jen Gatien (Producer); Doug Lenox (Editor). Brooklyn, NY.

Farmer Veteran

Fellows:  D.L. Anderson (Director/Producer/Editor); Alix Blair (Director/DP); Mikel Barton (Editor). Durham, NC.

In Country

Fellows: Meghan O’Hara (Director/Producer); Mike Attie ((Director/Producer/DP); Lindsay Utz (Editor).  San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA.

Kasamayaki (Made in Kasama)

Fellow: Yuki Kokubo (Director/ Producer/DP/Editor). Brooklyn, NY

The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest

Fellows:  Gabriel London (Director/Writer/DP); Daniel Chalfen (Producer); Nick Clark (Editor). New York, NY

Mateo

Fellows: Aaron Naar (Director/Writer/Producer/DP/Editor); Nicole Vaskell (Editor). Los Angeles, CA

Roots and Webs

Fellows: Sara Dosa (Director); Josh Penn (Producer). Berkeley, CA.

*AVOD – Ad-supported Video on Demand. A la Hulu or You Tube
*SVOD – Subscription Video On Demand. (Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Go)

(photo by eye of einstein)

One thing is clear. For independent cinema to grow and thrive, it needs to find a more sustainable business model. And while there’s been a lot of hype around new forms of “alternative” (or “direct”) distribution, few people have an answer to …]]>

(photo by eye of einstein)

One thing is clear. For independent cinema to grow and thrive, it needs to find a more sustainable business model. And while there’s been a lot of hype around new forms of “alternative” (or “direct”) distribution, few people have an answer to the sixty-four thousand dollar question: “How does this new approach to distribution make me more money than the older more “traditional” approach?”

Akin to the old catch-phrase “Where’s the beef?”, today smart filmmakers are asking “Where’s the business model?”

Having spent the last three years analyzing all aspects of independent cinema in incredible detail (from production to marketing to distribution), I’ve developed my own answer to this question, which I put forth in the form of an equation. With the recent launch of BOND360, I’m calling it the “360 Equation”:

Community + Data + Content Bundling + Dynamic Pricing = $$$

Treated separately, none of these elements (Community, Data, Content Bundling, and Dynamic Pricing) will on their own bring financial success. They are only pieces of a much larger puzzle. But when you put all of them together, and execute them well (that’s the hard part), they form a very potent combination. And if you develop and distribute your film in a certain way, adopting the 360 equation will definitely bring in more revenue for an independent film than any of the alternatives, including the more “traditional” ones.

So first, let’s break down each component:

Community:  Today when people hear the word “community” they immediately think that their community equates to the number of fans and followers their film has on Facebook and Twitter. And while this is indeed a form of community, in itself its not at all what community is about. Today, filmmakers are being pressured by consultants to arbitrarily increase the number of their social media fans, all the while without being given any direction on how they should be using them most effectively. But how many fans is “enough”? 500? 5,000? 50,000? The number is completely arbitrary. The reality is that true results from a community comes from its quality, not its quantity. Having over the last twenty years worked on more community based projects than I can count, one thing that I do know is that the number of fans and followers your film has does not alone, in any way, equate to your future success. I’ve had films with almost no social media followers do EXTREMELY well financially and I’ve had films with tons of followers absolutely bomb. Communities need to be curated and nurtured, not “acquired.”  A community that will bring long term rewards is always earned and never bought. And the problem for most traditional releases is that this takes time. The process of building a sustainable community can’t be confined to the weeks that a social media agency has been retained by a distributor  Community is the by-product (the results),  that, after a lot of hard work, comes when your film starts to connect with audiences. It comes from goodwill, benevolence, and the creation of an environment that motivates people to get involved. It’s the rewards of your efforts, not the genesis of it. And it’s developed more offline that it is online.

For me, your community are those people who want your film to succeed as much as you do, and are willing to do anything and everything they can do to help it get there. They are the people who are willing to spend their Saturday afternoon putting up posters for you in their local towns. They are the ones who can’t wait to meet others who share a similar passion for your project. The real value of community is that these are the people who will tell ten others to go see your movie.  And there’s nothing more powerful (and inexpensive) than leveraging the passion of your community.

When people ask me what the “call-to-action” should be for their film, I always have the same answer – “Get your core fans to tell ten others to go and see it.”  And because of this, when I’m asked what the most powerful community building platform is for independent filmmakers, my answer is never Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr.  It’s the personal email lists of the filmmaking team. Nothing is more powerful when it comes to getting people to see a movie.

Data: When someone watches your movie on any of the older established transactional platforms (brick-and-mortar movie theaters, Cable VOD channels, Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, etc) you, as the content creator, are given ZERO access to an incredibly vast array of data that that platform has collected from the sale or rental of your film. Not only do you not have the ability to communicate directly to those who’ve watched your film, you’re not given any information as to who they are, where they live, what they like, etc. Because of this lack of transparency, a growing movement of content creators who are demanding to have direct access to their own customer data has lead to a whole new wave of more open (and not always film centric) dashboard based digital platforms like Kickstarter, VHX, and others. The real threat that the more established players in digital distribution face is not coming from any one of a host of new hot start-ups. Rather, it’s coming from all of them. The threat is not a company per se, it’s a philosophy is one of data portability. Companies like Apple will either become more open with their data, or eventually they will be left behind. What retailers have known for years is that owning the relationship with your customers means having the ability to reduce waste in your marketing. And in reducing waste, you will reduce your costs. And in reducing your costs, you will be increasing your profits. Its as simple as that. And the key to all of this is having access to your own data. The good news for filmmakers is that each month new start-ups are being formed where giving the content owner direct access to customers is a core principle of the platform.

Content Bundling: Filmmakers who will succeed in the new direct-to-fan model will be those who understand and maximize the bundling of digital content and physical goods to raise the average price point of their films when they’re offered direct through their own digital channels. To be successful, the value that is given to fans through your own website needs to be greater than what’s being offered elsewhere. And the best way to do this is to bundle digital content and physical goods so that a higher price point becomes not only justified, but something that fans desire because they’re getting exclusive materials directly from the filmmakers. Today, we’re giving away far too much good content for free as part of our marketing campaigns because we don’t have any other use for it. We’re still conditioned to think that all bonus materials that’s any good should be put on a DVD for your film. But when was the last time you purchased a DVD?  If you’re like me, you haven’t bought a DVD in years. Until companies like VHX and Vimeo began allowing filmmakers to sell direct, there was no commercial use for bonus content other than on a DVD. Today, smart filmmakers are bundling this content with their films when offering them for sale on their website and giving fans more value for their money. Today, nobody can compete on price with Amazon. And a a time where Netflix offers a month of unlimited access for less than the price of a single movie ticket, the only way filmmakers can make any money by going direct to fans is to offer them something that the other platforms can’t. And if done well this can come at a higher price as long as you are giving fans more value at the same time.

Dynamic Pricing:  For me, the most exciting aspect of new direct-to-fan video streaming tools like VHX and Vimeo is not simply that filmmakers can now offer their films directly to their communities through their own websites; it’s that they can control the pricing of their films without having to go through a third-party. Success in retail comes not from establishing a fixed price and then keeping it at that price until declining sales compels you to lower it. It comes from analyzing sales patterns and adjusting pricing to take advantage of opportunities that occur each and every day. Dynamic pricing is both an analytical and creative process that, if done well, can be the differentiator between making money and losing money. Today, “agility” is the key factor which determines success and failure. And because of this, putting the control of pricing into the hands of the content owner is, for me, the true “game changer” when it comes to VHX, Vimeo, and others in this category. Today, most people believe the statement – “Prices never go up, they only go down” But, for those who know how to use these tools, this is simply no longer the case. When you connect dynamic pricing with content bundling not only can prices go up, they can go up and down as often as you like.

$$$: From all of the work that I have done in this area, I’m convinced that signifiant revenue for independent filmmakers will never come from the current platforms that are based on the old models. Rather, to truly have a sustainable business model for independent film, we will need new platforms that were never a part of the old way of doing things.

And one thing is certain, they will be platforms that offer filmmakers a true “360 Equation”.

So to recap…

Community (Curating and nurturing those who are not only willing to pay more, but WANT to pay more… as long as they’re getting more value.

+

Data (Reaching your community directly, without going through a middleman, thus reducing waste)

+

Content Bundling (Offering a wide variety of versions of your product at different price points)

+

Dynamic Pricing (Adjusting pricing “on the fly”)

=

$$$ (Profit, baby!)

(An earlier more stream-of-conscious “draft” version of this article was shared with those on my personal email list. To subscribe, click here)