Well, another year has gone by and Sundance 2012 is over. The festival itself was very quiet the second weekend, and, for the most part, screenings that had shown up as “sold out” earlier in the week suddenly had seats available for audiences to catch up on films. Some films …]]> i

Well, another year has gone by and Sundance 2012 is over. The festival itself was very quiet the second weekend, and, for the most part, screenings that had shown up as “sold out” earlier in the week suddenly had seats available for audiences to catch up on films. Some films though, such as the documentary”The House I Live In” was still turning away people that had waited in the wait list line.

I caught “My Best Day” on Saturday afternoon, which was a quirky little comedy with some nice performances, especially by the hysterical Ashlie Atkinson who weaves her way through each of the subplots.

Mostly my friends & I tried to see little bit of the area while it was quieter. We took the funicular up the side of a mountain into the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel for dinner on Friday night, where we saw former chief of staff and current mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel with a group of friends for the second night in a row. He had been at Chimayo on Main Street the previous night.

On Saturday, the skiers were back in full force to the slopes of Deer Valley. We headed into Salt Lake City to see the Mormon Temple. How many times have you flown in and out to go to Park City, and wondered what Salt Lake was like? Other than seeing some of the other sites used for screenings, such as the Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts, the Temple and its surrounding buildings are it.

Sales were going strong over the weekend. Magnolia was especially busy, picking up the delightful comedy, “Two Days In New York”, ” Nobody Walks” and the controversial thriller “Compliance”. ATO Pictures acquired “Shadow Dancer”, while Participant Media and AFFRM have teamed up to acquire US theatrical rights for “Middle of Nowhere”.

In Salt Lake City on Saturday night, the Sundance Awards ceremony took place. To no one’s surprise, the most talked about film of the festival, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” won the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Feature. The Grand Jury Prize for a documentary went to “The House I Live In”, directed by Eugene Jarecki. Jarecki’s brother Nick directed “Arbitrage”, which also premiered at the festival.

The Dramatic Audience Award went to “The Surrogate”. It was also awarded a Special Jury Prize in Acting for it’s outstanding cast that includes Helen Hunt, John Hawkes & William Macy.

In all, Sundance 2012 was a terrific success. The New York Lounge proved to be busier than ever as a great place to meet new people with whom we hope to be able to collaborate in the future. We had an outstanding celebratory dinner with Pat Kaufman and her team from NYS at Bistro 412.

Other highlights of the week include the fabulous dinner thrown by IFP at the Montage Hotel; the Tisch lunch and the Queer Brunch both held at Grub Steakhouse; the intimate after party for “Two Days in New York”; the raucous dance party hosted by Kodak and the numerous other gatherings held at all  hours of the day and night for the last ten days.

Now it is back to New York to recuperate and prepare for the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New Directors/New Films  program, as well as the TriBeCa Film Festival in the Spring.

It was a day that alternated between beautiful snowfall that excited all the visitors and rain that made getting around just plain annoying. Main Street was much quieter, with many of the vendors and sponsors of the festival having packed up already.

Indoors, though, it was a good day for …]]> i

It was a day that alternated between beautiful snowfall that excited all the visitors and rain that made getting around just plain annoying. Main Street was much quieter, with many of the vendors and sponsors of the festival having packed up already.

Indoors, though, it was a good day for filmmakers. Many deals were going on, and sales continued throughout the day. Sundance Selects picked up the AIDS documentary, “How to Survive A Plague”; Roughhouse Pictures acquired “The Comedy” ; National Geographic Channel acquired the TV rights to “Chasing Ice” ; Entertainment One took “Wish You Were Here” ; and Magnolia Pictures has picked up “V/H/S”.

IFC continued to be active. They purchased the thriller “The Pact”, and as of this writing were still negotiating to acquire Antonio Campos’s dark drama “Simon Killer”.

What did I do on this weather challenged afternoon? Instead of seeing another new film, I went to see Ira Sachs’s drama “Keep The Lights On” for a second time. Having seen the film last week, it has stayed with me throughout the festival. Pauline Kael once said to Roger Ebert, as recounted in his new memoir, ” I go into the movie, I watch it, and I ask myself what happened to me”. This is how I feel about KTLO. The characters are richly drawn and recognizable to many people I have known through the years. It is a deeply moving drama that recounts a 10 year relationship between two successful gay men, in both it’s ugliness and beauty. It is also very much a New York film, in both it’s setting and feel. Although I have not yet heard about any deals being struck to distribute this film, I have no doubt it will find a wider audience in the near future.

Following the film, I stopped into a local bar, The Spur (most of the local establishments try to play up the Western atmosphere here), having been drawn by their promise of live music all day & all night. Interestingly, they were hosting the 9th annual Access Film Music Showcase, which plays the length of the Sundance Film Festival every year. The showcase is to introduce new Indie music acts to up and coming filmmakers to use for their films. It is a great idea, and I was lucky enough to catch “Songwriters in the Round: Beth Wood, Gina Sicilia and Gigi Love”. They were all terrific singer songwriters, each with different styles, but displaying very unique talents. Access Film has a schedule set for each day, giving one hour slots to each act. Very much worth the stop.

At the closing night awards ceremony for then18th annual Slamdance Festival, the following awards were announced:

Grand Jury Awards

Grand Jury Sparky Award for Feature Narrative: “Welcome to Pine Hill”

Special Jury Award for Bold Originality: “Heavy Girls”

Grand Jury Sparky for Feature Documentary: ” No Ashes, No Phoenix”

Audience Awards

Feature Narrative: “Bindlestiffs”

Feature Documentary: “Getting Up”

Another successful panel was held in the New York Lounge this morning, hosted by Post Factory founder Alex Halpern, on the change by filmmakers using digital as opposed to film. Director Ira Sachs, whose film ” Keep the Lights On” is in dramatic competition here at the festival, moderated the …]]>

Another successful panel was held in the New York Lounge this morning, hosted by Post Factory founder Alex Halpern, on the change by filmmakers using digital as opposed to film. Director Ira Sachs, whose film ” Keep the Lights On” is in dramatic competition here at the festival, moderated the forum. Interestingly, Sachs likes the look of film so used it to shoot his drama, then converted it to digital in post.

While much of the discussion centered on cameras and technical issues, several points were of note:

- ARRI recently announced they will no longer produce cameras for film, only digital, marking a major stance in what will be available to filmmakers in the future and the direction of the camera industry.

- Although there are great benefits to filmmakers in being able to keep shooting or reshooting scenes because there is not the cost of actual film, some directors and actors tend not to spend as much effort on trying to get it right the first or second time. This can result in a lot of extra work in post, and a run up in costs as well. Mr. Sachs said that in the course he teaches at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, he limits the number of takes the young filmmakers can shoot to make them more confident in what they want to get out of the scene.

Richard Sheehan, Christine Vachon & Jerry Stoeffhaas

As usual, the lounge was busy all day with many meetings set up in the afternoon. At one point, producer Christine Vachon stopped in, and we were able to have a brief conversation. She is a big fan of filming in NYS, and we spoke a little bit about how she transformed both the city and suburbs of NY to 1920′s Los Angeles for the HBO mini-series, “Mildred Pierce” to take advantage of the tax incentives offered by NYS. Ms. Vachon has several projects lined up for 2012.

Sales are happening! The Weinstein Company ( I have seen Harvey out & about here this week) has picked up Stephen Frears’s film, “Lay The Favorite”, starring Bruce Willis. Fox Searchlight purchased the most talked about film at the festival , “Beasts of the Southern Wild”, which is said to have amazing performances by non-professional actors. Fox also paid $6MM for “The Surrogate”, starring Helen Hunt. Millennium Entertainment has picked up the Robert DeNiro starrer, “Red Lights” and Sony Picture Classics took “Celeste & Jesse”.

As of this writing, the latest pick up was for my client, “Arbitrage”, which has been bought by the team of Roadside Attractions & Lionsgate. These companies joined forces on one of last year’s Sundance hits, “Margin Call”, which also focused on the financial crisis and had the most profitable Indie releases of 2011 by aggressively marketing the theatrical and VOD release simultaneously.

Parties – last night was a big party night. We started off at the NYS Governor’s Office for Film party at the Blue Iguana, which was packed with familiar faces from the East Coast celebrating either their own films or films that they represent. We had to skip the GLAAD celebration over at the Sky Lounge, but heard it too was well attended.

Later on, we headed over to the Riverhorse Cafe for Kodak’s annual party, which always has a great band. Everyone was letting loose on the dance floor. There was representation from every facet of the film community, including The Film Society of Lincoln Center, MOMA, the press and many filmmakers. Spotted dancing up a storm at one point was the lovely red headed actress, Carrie Preston, best known for her television roles on “True Blood” and ” The Good Wife”.

On Friday night, we attended the worldwide premier of Ira Sachs’s film “Keep The Lights On”, which left me still thinking about it 24 hours later. It is a powerful  autobiographical drama based on Sachs’s  on a 10 year …]]>

"Keep the Lights On" star Zachary Booth & producer Lucas Joaquin.

On Friday night, we attended the worldwide premier of Ira Sachs’s film “Keep The Lights On”, which left me still thinking about it 24 hours later. It is a powerful  autobiographical drama based on Sachs’s  on a 10 year relationship with a lover starting in the late 90s. It is certainly not for the faint of heart in it’s depiction of the sexual relationships and drug use, but is beautiful, haunting and has stayed with me for days after.

"Keep the Lights On" director Ira Sachs

Following the film, we headed to the New Frontiers opening night party. The New Frontiers section is always fascinating in it’s experimental displays in various rooms, this year starting with an avant garde short 3-D film to watch as you passed through into the main rooms. We were joined here by our good friends from NYU Tisch, and ran into many other colleagues sharing what to see or not see.

Saturday morning, we awoke to the first major blizzard of the season. Although the skiers were very happy about it, it did make getting around Park City a little more challenging -all part of the Sundance experience.

After checking in at the NY Lounge, and talking to some people, we joined the masses on the Park City transit, and headed to the annual lunch hosted by Tisch, this year at the Grub Steakhouse. Dean Mary Campbell welcomed over 250 guests, including alumni and current students that have films showing this year. It was a great mix of industry people with whom to network.

Later in the afternoon, we saw the premier of “Robot & Frank” , starring Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon and James Marsden. Langella gave a marvelous performance that I predict will be in Oscar contention this time next year. A lively Q&A followed, at which the director, writer and Mr. Langella entertained the audience.

Saturday evening, we were invited to the party celebrating the premier of “Arbitrage” by producer Robert Salerno. The party attendees  were in a very festive mood because early reviews were raves, calling it Richard Gere’s best performance. Mr. Gere was in attendance, donning a baseball cap, with his lovely wife Carey Lowell. It was a fun evening, followed by a very difficult trip back to our condo in the blizzard.

Sunday morning, we had a 9am screening of “Arbitrage”, which truly lived up to the hype of the night before. Richard Gere & Susan Sarandon (again) are terrific in this fast moving, New York centric thriller that is everything “Bonfire of the Vanities” should have been years ago, with a little Madoff spin to it as well. First time director Nicholas Jarecki  has a very bright future ahead of him. As of this writing, rumor has it that Paramount is considering picking it up.

The annual “Queer Brunch”, hosted by Outfest proved once agin to be the place to see and be seen. Filmmakers, actors, and future filmmaker all gathered to celebrate the films that represent gay & lesbian story lines, as well as drink and catch up.

Sunday evening was a real treat, as we were invited to join IFP at their celebration dinner at the exquisite Montage Hotel in Deer Valley. It was hosted by Rebecca Hall, and the meal was prepared by Top Chef Marcel Vigneron. It was a beautiful evening in celebration of the filmmakers that had come throughout IFP’s programs and were showing at the festival. Supporters of the organization and more experienced producers such as Ted Hope & Anthony Bregman were among the guests.

The final event of the weekend was arriving at the HBO- Blackhouse Foundation party at Blue Iguana around midnight. Brickson Diamond and Dolly Turner of Blackhouse were making sure all of their guests were having a great time dancing and chatting on the multilevel venue with the house music blasting. This after hosting at least three different events that day that included an interview with Ice T and a discussion with Common.

 Cora Olson & Jennifer Dubin have produced four films. Their latest, THE PERFECT FAMILY, starring Kathleen Turner, was a hit at this year’s TriBeca Film Festival.

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In between meetings on a rainy afternoon, Cora sat down with me at Norwood to discuss financing for independent films, and how creative producers need …]]> �

� Cora Olson & Jennifer Dubin have produced four films. Their latest, THE PERFECT FAMILY, starring Kathleen Turner, was a hit at this year’s TriBeca Film Festival.

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In between meetings on a rainy afternoon, Cora sat down with me at Norwood to discuss financing for independent films, and how creative producers need to be in this current market.

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Jennifer Dubin, Cora Olson, Kathleen turner, Rebecca Wackler, Angelique Cabril, Anne Renton & Richard Chamberlain at the Tribeca premiere of The Perfect Family

RS: So, your latest film, THE PERFECT FAMILY, was financed by one investor. What advice would you have for a producer with a great script and possibly talent attached, to find someone like that? It’s the question everyone has – what’s the secret?

CO: It depends on what the movie is, but we always start with the director. We’ve worked with first time directors that have a community of people that may have the resources and network of family and friends that want to help that person’s career. That can happen in a number of ways. This was how we were able to identify the financier of THE PERFECT FAMILY.

In the case of I AM I, which begins shooting in May, we took a “crowd funding” approach to work the network within the director’s community, as well as that of Present Pictures (Cora & Jen’s production company). That is usually how we work. That community expands if the director has done some other projects, and has fans out there that know their work. It can be a good place to look to find equity investors that may be interested in being a part of the new project.

RS: This is about constant networking?

CO: Yes. Pounding the pavement. It is always good to network with friends, friends of friends, etc… to see who is out there that might be looking for an investment opportunity. It also helps if you have a specific element, like an actor that someone is excited about. It’s all about finding what that excitement is that might attract someone with a specific interest.

RS: In the case of THE PERFECT FAMILY, was Kathleen Turner attached as you were trying to find financing, or did that happen later on?

CO: The financing had come together for quite some time before any actors were attached, but our approach was that we didn’t want to make the film without a certain level of cast because of how competitive & difficult it is. Just because you have the money doesn’t mean you have to run out and spend it.

RS: Was it because of the caliber of the script?

CO: We believed in the project. We believed that director (Anne Renton) had enough of a vision for the film to attract an actor; that we could sit anyone down with Anne & get them comfortable with the project.

RS: How many films have you worked on, and what size budget do you typically work with?

CO: We are starting our fifth film now, and our budgets have ranged from $200K to $2M plus. So, it just depends on what the package is and what kind of business we think we can do on the other side. A lot depends on the talent attached to get distribution.

RS: Tell me a little bit about your experience using Kickstarter or is crowd funding the term I should be using?

CO: We heard about crowd funding when we were in the midst of self distributing GOOD DICK, which we had at Sundance in 2008. We understood it to be a tool people were using not only to raise money, but to raise awareness about their projects because you can reach out to your social network, and the social networks of your social networks. We were sort of curious about it, and when we were putting together the financing for I AM I, we were talking to an investor who seemed interested in matching the funds we could raise by using Kickstarter.

It was a great opportunity for us because it is somewhat of a risky project as it is an independent drama with a very talented writer/director that is also going to star in the movie, which kind of limits some of the casting potential. This was great for the investor because he gets twice the bang for his buck. Plus, it allowed us to create this awareness and an impression of the film before it has even been shot.

RS: I had not thought about the marketing aspect of the process, just the fundraising.

CO: That part is huge! In some ways, the money is a secondary benefit to the marketing because to have that kind of awareness around your project at this early stage has turned out to be really valuable to us.

What we did was send the director to a seminar at the DGA to see what she thought about it, and she got really excited. At that point, we started working on what our campaign would look like – built a website for the film, the key art, and figure out what the reward structure would be based on people’s budget and participation.

That took a long time, and the director of this movie really researched it, taking the time to watch other people’s project videos, all that stuff, and ended up writing a little script for a video to try to let people know about how the film was being put together, rather than what it is actually about. We launched the campaign on November 30, just a couple of days after Thanksgiving, and the video got a lot of attention. People started blogging about it, and it just sort of went viral. People were very excited about it. And I think it helped that I AM I had some great talent attached before we launched our campaign. For example, Simon Helberg (“The Big Bang Theory”) is executive producing and playing “Seth” in the film, and when we launched on Kickstarter he had over 40,000 Twitter followers, many of whom became backers or helped us by tweeting to their followings. Jason Ritter, who is playing “Jonathan”, has 10,000+ followers as well and did a ton of tweeting. All of that was vitally instrumental to our success.

RS: Having been in THE PERFECT FAMILY and GOOD DICK, he seems to be a good luck charm for you.

CO: Yes! We love Jason. So, we knew we were going to be able to get the word out there instantly, but I don’t think we anticipated how people would react to the video, and how successful that would be.

RS: You have to pick a target goal to hit, don’t you?

CO: Yes, and that was the subject of a lot of debate. For a while we hovered around $50,000, the someone thought we should do $25,000, and, at some point, after all of this work went into the campaign, a couple of weeks before the launch, we thought “let’s just go for the gold”, and make it $100,000. I think we all just shut our eyes and said we think we can do this. With Kickstarter, if you don’t make your goal, you don’t get any of the money – it is a tremendous amount of pressure.

There are other crowd funding sites, like Indie GoGo, that don’t work like that – you keep what you raise. But, we felt that the urgency of having to make a goal would make us work that much harder. The campaign was 38 days, through the Winter holidays and New Years. It was a little bit of a nail biter, but I think we ended up with three $10,000 pledges in the last weeks. 60% of the pledges were $20-$100. 80% of those people we did not know – that was a bit of an eye opener! It shows that you start with your network, and it just mushrooms. We had 902 backers that are built in fans that have already shown support that will reach out to their own networks about the film. They also volunteered to do all sorts of stuff for the movie – one person volunteered to create an iPhone app, someone else offered free trained dogs, stuff you never think about. It’s been a really cool experience.

RS: How much did you end up raising?

CO: $111,000 in 38 days!

RS: Can people continue to donate after the 38 days?

CO: They can’t pledge through the Kickstarter site after the campaign is over. But, some people were emailing us saying that they’d had server issues or weren’t aware of it in time, so we created a contribution part of our website, iamithefilm.com, so that they can pledge.

RS: So, you are sold on this idea?

CO: Yes. It is a lot of work. The director really ran the campaign, and it was pretty much a full time job. It is not for the faint of heart, but if you want to do something well, you have to be willing to put your blood, sweat & tears into it.

RS: When you are looking at scripts for projects, and deciding where you will want to film, do you focus on which states offer better tax credits to make use of the extra cash flow?

CO: I would say that for a movie that small, even though we are not eligible for the California tax credit, you don’t want to shoot outside of Los Angeles or New York because you can cast locally and there are competitive rates on equipment in those cities. There is the cost of travel to take into account; you don’t have to have actors travel and put them up in Best Westerns somewhere. They appreciate being near their families, and being able to go home at night.

I do think the tax credits are important, and there is another picture on the horizon that is a larger budget that we are looking to shoot in NY.

RS: When you receive a script, and I imagine you and Jen are always reading something new, how much of your decision goes into how you will raise the money to make it as opposed to how passionate you are about the project?

CO: That is such a good question. I think if the writing is really amazing, we are gluttons for punishment and will take on something that we know will be difficult to get done. But, lately we have been looking far more critically at what we think it will cost, where it will come from, recoupment at the end of the day, and trying to avoid the head banging that goes into some of the projects. More often than not, though, it comes down to the writing because it is so hard to find something that is exceptional and original. So, for us, it starts with the writing, then the director.

RS: Have you always worked with first time directors?

CO: Yes. So far we have, but we are talking to Marianna Palka about her second film. We did GOOD DICK with her, and we are going to do something else with Anne Renton (THE PERFECT FAMILY).

RS: I thought she did a great job for someone who said she’d never been behind a camera before.

CO: She is very grounded and very mature. I felt she was incredibly balanced throughout the process.

We are also working on a thriller to shoot in NY with a second time director, so it’s evolving.

RS: You and Jen have been very creative in the whole DIY distribution front; are you trying to be as creative on the financing end?

CO: Yes. I think that it is where the whole crowd funding comes in – we thought let’s go for it. I do think in what we’ve gone through in distribution makes us think and work a lot harder at this stage. Getting an education on that end has changed the way we look at projects as producers. We’re also keeping up on new technologies, and how they impact filmmaking, what it cost to get your movie out there, and what kind of circulation you can get.

RS: Do you want to tell us a little about your experience in the whole college circuit distribution?

CO: That is a really difficult market. We had some success with GOOD DICK, and tried experimenting with it on some other films, but we found that even the college audiences are looking to see something that they’ve heard of, that has some buzz around it. We found that doing that could be a full time job, and it took us away from what we love most – making movies.

RS: So, in the end, are you optimistic about where things are going in the Indie world? It seems, according to whom you listen, it is either the best of times or the beginning of the end.

CO: I am optimistic, fundamentally as a person, and simultaneously a glutton for punishment. I think Jen and I will always be depression era producers. We’ll always be stealing the sugar packets. We will always keep the budgeting and spending as low and responsible as we can while providing the maximum quality. I do think that’s just smart for any business not to spend foolishly. At the same time, people have to make a living. Filmmaking cannot be a hobby, so it’s about finding that middle ground. If we could focus more as a community on doing that, the more money will be there for everyone. It concerns me seeing huge sales at festivals because then the films become a huge burden to the distributors to live up to expectations, and, if they do not perform, it affects everyone making independent films. We all suffer the consequences. I am glad that there were healthy sales at Sundance this year, and very happy for those filmmakers. It’s a tricky place to be. I’d rather see more films sell for reasonable prices instead of a few selling for $4M-$5M, while many others sell for $50k. There should be some healthy middle ground. But, I am optimistic.