From the 2011 Independent Filmmaker Conference.

I had a disappointing experience the other day. After ordering a DVD of one of my favorite indie filmmaker’s latest works, I popped it in my DVD player. I was excited to discover what extra goodies might await me on the disc. I was soon greeted …]]>

I had a disappointing experience the other day. After ordering a DVD of one of my favorite indie filmmaker’s latest works, I popped it in my DVD player. I was excited to discover what extra goodies might await me on the disc. I was soon greeted by a black screen and a single, solitary ‘Play’ button.

This isn’t the first time this has happened, and it always baffles me. Sure, physical media is dead, etcetera etcetera, we’ve heard it all before. But producing a DVD is still a great way for a filmmaker to capitalize on his or her creation. It makes your work into a physical product that movie buffs can add to their shelves and gives your fans an excuse to show their support with their wallets. Why not put a little more care into it?

Who cares?

Well you should, first of all. But you’re probably asking yourself who would possibly care to see all of this extra stuff about your movie. Not everyone. But don’t do it for everyone. Make the DVD for your future fans. Approach it from the perspective of a film historian and give them everything they could possibly want.

Treat your movie like it’s for the most important film in the world. You should make it the resource for your film, packed to the brim with extra content. Widely available software like Apple’s DVD Studio Pro and Adobe Encore make it easy to author a professional-caliber disc. Tutorials on the ins-and-outs of the software are a Google search away.

Behind-the-scenes

Be thinking about your assets while you’re making the movie. Don’t let it get in the way of anything, but keep it in mind. Having a production meeting? Someone surely has a Flip camera or an iPhone. Let it run in the corner. You’ll thank yourself later when you realize that your genuine reaction to the news of that sudden production cataclysm was caught on video. That’s the stuff that great behind-the-scenes docs are made of.

For the DVD of my first feature, The Lionshare, I remembered a documentary I had seen called Steal This Film that had a lot of themes in common with the movie. They also had made their raw interview footage available freely on their website. I was able to comb through it and edit a featurette that illustrated points as they related to the film. And it looks like I spent a lot of time and effort to make it especially for the disc when it really just took me the better part of an afternoon.

Frame the Conversation

Now, you may think this isn’t your job. You’ve already done your job, and the film should speak for itself. This is still true. But think of the DVD not as a simple product or a marketing tool. Think of it as a companion to the piece itself. It should be an experience that complements the work. You have an opportunity to frame the conversation, and this will affect how your film is received.

A commentary is a great, easy, and fun way to provide context. Get key cast and crew involved. Invite them over with popcorn and beer while you discuss the movie as it plays. Encourage people to be frank with their opinions. There’s nothing more fascinating than hearing the creators discuss what they didn’t like, or how things took an unexpected turn from the original intention.  You might even learn things about the film you didn’t realize yourself!

You also may be surprised at the closure this gives you on the work. It’ll feel like you’ve put it to bed, so to speak.

Extra Extras

You probably have more material than you realize if you just give it a little thought. All those iPhone photos people snapped on set and uploaded to Facebook? Throw them all into a slideshow set to music. Adobe Encore and DVD Studio Pro make this so easy you might as well do it if you have the pics.

Undoubtedly there’s a script and a soundtrack for the film. Put them in the DVD-ROM folder that people can access when they put the disc in their computer as a PDF and MP3. Extra value for work that’s already been done. (Note: if you didn’t write the script or compose the music, be sure you have permission to include these materials.)

And then there are the infamous Easter Eggs. Those fun bits and bobs that don’t quite fit anywhere else, hidden in the menus. Bloopers are great for this, especially if you don’t have the time (or desire) to create a whole reel. Create an invisible button accessible only by taking an unexpected turn on the menu. People love it when they find these hidden features, no matter what they are.

Then what?

Once you’ve authored your disc and burned copies for friends to test in their various players, it’s time to sell the thing. There are several ways to go about this.

A print-on-demand service like Amazon’s Create Space is easy and hassle free. You send them your burned disc and artwork, and after a proofing process, they make yourDVD available for sale on Amazon.com. They take a significant cut of the sale, but you are allowed to set the mark-up at whatever you like. And it’s worth it to be able to tell someone they can search for your title on Amazon.com.

There’s also the option of having the discs duplicated in bulk from a company like Discmakers. Keep some or all to sell yourself at screenings and events. If demand starts small, you’ll be able to take orders on your own website and mail them out yourself. If this gets to be too much to handle, you can use a fulfillment service like Amazon Sellers. For a fee they will stock your units and fulfill the orders for you.

Digital media has been a great thing for film and filmmakers. But it’s created a world saturated with media that’s arguably perceived as disposable and ephemeral. Curators (but not gatekeepers) are more important than ever. Give someone a reason to care. Make your film a physical artifact.

From the 2011 Independent Filmmaker Conference.

Passman: What is ASCAP? What do they do and how can they be a resource to filmmakers?

Devine: ASCAP is America’s leading performing rights organization. We’re a membership association owned and run by our more than 420,000 …]]> Jordan Passman (scoreAscore.com) interviews Sue Devine, Senior Director, Creative Services, Film/TV for ASCAP in NYC.

Passman: What is ASCAP? What do they do and how can they be a resource to filmmakers?

Devine: ASCAP is America’s leading performing rights organization. We’re a membership association owned and run by our more than 420,000 U.S. composers, songwriters, lyricists, and music publisher members. We’re home to the greatest names in American music, in all genres, past and present — from Duke Ellington to Katy Perry, George Gershwin to Stevie Wonder, Leonard Bernstein to Beyoncé, Marc Anthony to Alan Jackson, Henry Mancini to Howard Shore — as well as many thousands of writers in the earlier stages of their careers. Through agreements with affiliated international societies, we also represent hundreds of thousands of music creators worldwide.

We’re the only U.S. performing rights organization created and controlled entirely by our members, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the membership. ASCAP’s President & Chairman of the Board, Paul Williams is an Oscar, Grammy and Golden Globe-winning Hall of Fame songwriter.

Our core job is to protect the rights of our members by licensing and distributing royalties for the non-dramatic public performances of their copyrighted works. In other words, we pay songwriters and composers royalties when their music is played in public. ASCAP’s licensees, the people who pay us, encompass anyone who wants to perform copyrighted music publicly. That includes radio broadcasters and TV networks, bars and live music venues, websites and streaming music services (e.g. YouTube and Spotify), even Disneyland – most anywhere that music can be heard.

That’s the big picture, but we do much more than collect and distribute money. ASCAP’s Creative Services Department focuses on artist development for composers and songwriters. We interact with filmmakers frequently, helping them connect with the right film composers and songwriters for their projects, and we regularly feature our members at film/TV industry events worldwide. We also run several workshops a year that foster the next generation of professional composing and songwriting talent.

Passman: What licenses for music do filmmakers need to get? And can ASCAP help?

Devine: There are three basic music licenses related to a film or TV production. The first is the Public Performance License, administered by ASCAP and described above. The broadcaster, not the filmmaker, is responsible for this license. I can’t stress that point enough: filmmakers do not need to interact with ASCAP at the licensing level. It’s the broadcasters of film, like HBO for example, that must get a public performance license. That license would cover the use of all ASCAP music in all HBO programming.

Filmmakers are responsible for securing two other types of licenses, and must pay very close attention to them. The filmmaker must get a Synchronization License (synch) from the publisher of the work and a Master Use License from the owner of the master recording of the music (usually the record label or the artist themselves). These two licenses are not administered by ASCAP.

ASCAP can help filmmakers learn about this process. Read the ”How to Acquire Music for Films”, and “Music, Money, Success and the Movies” articles on our website for a solid overview. Filmmakers can use our ACE Title Search to find the writer and publisher information for a musical work they’d like to use in a project.

Passman: Let’s talk now about your Creative Services Department, and connecting filmmakers with film composers.

Devine: While ASCAP’s main role is to license and administer public performance royalties for our members, and to represent it legally and legislatively, ASCAP also has a very strong Creative Services Department that helps develop our members at all stages of their careers, across all genres. In addition to our many emerging songwriter workshops, songwriter retreats, and music industry showcases, several of our programs may be quite useful for filmmakers.

We run three highly competitive film and television scoring workshops. Each is an intensive program, widely recognized as a major educational and networking opportunity for aspiring film, TV and visual media composers. We feature prestigious workshop leaders, mentors and guest speakers from the highest levels of the film and television music industry, side-by-side with hands-on experience with both the technical and creative requirements of scoring to picture.

Filmmakers are welcome to sit in on certain workshop sessions, particularly the scoring sessions. I can’t emphasize enough how useful sitting in on these sessions could be for a filmmaker. When it comes to music in film, filmmakers need to feel the difference music can make, viscerally. That can be experienced in some of our workshop sessions, where you watch the same scene repeatedly with a different score each time. Having an intellectual appreciation for the film music process is very different than experiencing what music is (or is not) contributing to your film.

NYC-based filmmakers can sit in on the first two sessions of the ASCAP Columbia University Film Scoring Workshop, where we walk a select group of thesis filmmakers through the process of hiring their film composer. Anyone interested in  attending one of our workshop scoring sessions can contact me at sdevine@ascap.com.

Every year we run the ASCAP “I Create Music EXPO” in Los Angeles. It’s the premier conference for songwriters, composers and producers within the music industry, and we always feature numerous film music panels that filmmakers would find educational and constructive. It’s a great place to network with composers, too.

Additionally, we recently launched the ASCAP Composer Spotlight on our website, a powerful resource for film, television and video game producers to discover and connect with some of the best and brightest emerging composers. The Composers to Watch section highlights a select group of outstanding composers from our scoring workshops. You can find bios, resumes, website links and sample cues for each composer.

ASCAP also produces the official music programming for the Sundance Film Festival, called the Sundance ASCAP Music Café, along with the ASCAP Composer Spotlight @ Sundance. You can even listen to a Spotify mix of all the featured songwriters and composers.

Passman: Filmmakers constantly struggle with pricing the music for their projects. How do you suggest they go about this difficult process?

Devine: Director Alex Steyermark, formerly a top music supervisor on films for Ang Lee, Spike Lee, Jim Sheridan and many others, once said that filmmakers should be dedicating at least 5% of their overall budgets to music. That is a minimum. If your budget is very low, that percentage will be greater, as you must allocate a minimum budget to cover music. That will include the creative fee for the score, as well as the recording costs for the players, music editor, mixing, etc. It will also include license fees for any songs you use, and those can vary greatly depending on what songs
you’ve set your sights on.

To learn more about this, I highly recommend reading a chapter called “Pricing Your Work” out of ASCAP Board member Richard Bellis’s book The Emerging Film Composer.  While written for a composer audience, that chapter will be quite valuable for filmmakers as well.

Passman: How do filmmakers find film composers?

Devine: There are far more extremely qualified composers who want to score your film than most filmmakers realize. I have long observed a wide gap between the film and music communities at the emerging level: emerging filmmakers and emerging film composers rarely know how to find each other. As a result, many an acclaimed filmmaker has hired his next door neighbor to score a film, because he happens to play piano or slide guitar. While that may suffice, you can
certainly elevate the level of score you bring to your project. We created the ASCAP Composer Spotlight precisely to bridge this gap. Please take a look at The Composers to Watch feature and peruse the Composer Spotlight @ Sundance as well.

And now, a plug for my interviewer: I am very excited about ScoreAscore.com, as it brilliantly cuts through much of the high anxiety that a filmmaker faces that often makes them delay the process of hiring their composer (“I’ve never done this before! How do I know what works for my film?”). You post your clip, you check back in three days, and there will be sample scores for your scene. *Magic.* Right away, you get a feel for which ones work for you, and you can begin a
conversation/interview with those composers.

Beyond that, you can reach out to agents who represent composers that are further along in their careers, from mid-level all the way to the top composers in the industry. If you hire a music supervisor, they will be consulting these resources. Plus, they will have the scoop on the latest up-and-coming composers.

Passman: How do you feel about popular artists like Trent Reznor & Jónsi making a significant impact on the composing world?

Devine: ASCAP works with a wide variety of composers, both classically or otherwise formally trained, as well as songwriters/artists-turned-composers. Many composers have come from backgrounds in television or Broadway music, or in rock/pop or urban songwriting. Great scores certainly come from all of these, and keep the field fresh and exciting. You’re looking for the unique sound, style, composer or artist that resonates with the voice of your film. It’s hard to predict where that will come from.

Passman: Every filmmaker should know about cue sheets. What are cue sheets, why do they exist and how do you file them?

Devine: A cue sheet is a schedule of the music contained in a film or television program. It’s the essential document that ASCAP requires in order to distribute royalties to a film’s composer, any songwriters with songs placed in the film, and the publisher of the score (which is often the film production company). It is normally prepared and delivered to ASCAP by the production company. You can find out everything you need to know about cue sheets at the Cue Sheet Corner section of our website.

Passman: What are some of your favorite film scores of all time?

Devine: I’ll answer a slightly different question, since I was quite struck by a comparison relatively recently. This may illustrate the power of understanding what a score can bring to your film.

A favorite (relatively) recent film score was Carter Burwell’s score to Twilight. It was sweeping, dreamy and dramatic in a way that elevated the film, and held all of its moody, staring-into-eyes scenes together while propelling the movie and characters forward. I watched the film again specifically because of the score.

Compare that to its sequel, New Moon, where the filmmaker chose to have top artists/bands write songs specifically for particular scenes. While strong song placements can often work extremely well, and having the songs custom-written to scenes was intended to further fine-tune these placements so they would carry the film, in this case I feel it didn’t do the narrative justice. While any one of these songs may have nailed the moment and made for a great individual scene,
much was lost in the context of the whole.

Without unifying score/themes/melodies interwoven through these scenes, connecting them from the wider perspective of the arc of the film, these scenes remained as separate islands. Nothing tied them together and helped them build momentum or crescendo sequentially. Nothing integrated them with the scenes that did have score.

As such, in my opinion, the invisible tensions between the characters was lost, the drama was lost, and we were left with characters’ empty staring into eyes, which fell flat. In this case, with fewer song placements and more room for a proper dramatic score, I think the film might have played much more strongly.

Pictured (l-r) at the 2009 ASCAP Film & TV Music Awards: ASCAP President and Chairman of the Board Paul Williams, Twilight composer Carter Burwell and director Catherine Hardwicke, director Bill Condon, ASCAP CEO John LoFrumento. Photo by Lester Cohen/Wireimage.com.

Bloodshot eyes

After we wrapped WELCOME TO PINE HILL I was pretty shell-shocked. When people asked me about it I held back a tic and smiled. “It was great.” I’d met other directors who were battered by a tough shoot. I just never thought I would …]]> (with titles from Pat Benatar)

Bloodshot eyes

After we wrapped WELCOME TO PINE HILL I was pretty shell-shocked. When people asked me about it I held back a tic and smiled. “It was great.” I’d met other directors who were battered by a tough shoot. I just never thought I would be one of them. But making it wasn’t without its lessons.

Hit me with your best shot (just not too many shots)

The first day was supposed to be an easy eight-hour shoot. I’d written the script. I’d done my research. Worked with the cast and crew. Everyone was on time. The PA’s mom dropped her off on time.  Easy day. Nothing could go wrong. We wrapped 16 hours later.

A no-budget shoot needs to cram a lot in each day. But you also have to be realistic: good shots take time, performances need moments of calm, and everyone needs to be focused. Even after we went back for another full day a few months later, we didn’t get all the shots on that first list.  Some movies supposedly do a page a day. We were working with what would have been 5- 15 a day. That’s possible, but probably not a good idea.

Fight it out

PINE HILL was shot in a way that required intense coordination, sensitivity and clarity. We shot with three cameras in long, improvised takes of up to 45 minutes, with a very fluid sense of what was happening with the cameras and in front of them. My hope was to have everything feel real, from the way we shot it to the performances to the final product. I worked hard in pre-production conversations to explain what I was going for. It all seemed clear to me, but it just wasn’t to everyone. That was my fault. Everyone who worked on PINE HILL was amazing. Really. I trusted them. They were all doing great and I could see it. But every time I felt something off and didn’t say something, I saw it later in the edit and couldn’t work around it. The deep respect, trust, and admiration I have for my friends shouldn’t get in the way of challenging them. If it’s not the best it can be, fight for it and make sure it is.

If you think you know how to love me (you also need to know when to shut up)

Even though I should have fought for what I wanted, you should also trust the people around you and shut up when you need to.

Shooting a scene in the backyard of a house in Jamaica, Queens, a resident of the house named Willie wandered in front of our cameras and delivered an amazing unscripted and unplanned monologue that moved our lead Shannon so much he began to cry. As it happened I was too focused on Willie to notice Shannon. Shannon’s a pretty tough guy -a 6’4”, 300 pound 22 year-old who makes his living as a bouncer, both in PINE HILL and in real life. I tip-toed over to Lily Henderson, one of the three DPs, and whispered, “Get Willie!” She basically told me to shut up. She was right. Seeing him cry was intense, beautiful, and real.

Love Is A Battlefield (so is a set)

We could have used about ten more people each day. DPs had to dump footage on the computer when they should have been resting or setting up another shot. Our AC was the only one who could drive a stick so he was picking people up instead of assisting the DPs. We worked with what we had. But that’s why the movie ended up the way it did. The toughness of Shannon’s performance was mirrored by everyone on the set. There were some casualties, but every shot was fought for with love and passion, and that’s the quality I wanted in the movie.

Heartbreaker

You’re the right kind of sinner, to release my inner fantasy
The invincible winner, and you know that you were born to be… a heartbreaker

A year and a half later, I’m pretty sure that even with all the planning I can do for the next film, all the lessons learned, I’ll end up with the same amount of problems and challenges, I just guess they’ll be different. Watch Lost in La Mancha and Hearts of Darkness. If it happened to Terry Gilliam and Francis Coppola, it could happen to any of us. And I can’t wait to do it again. Does that mean I’m Out-a-touch?

If you want to learn more about WELCOME TO PINE HILL take a look here: kickstarter

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I saw Gus Vant Sant’s film Elephant in Italy whilst on holiday with my girlfriend of the time. It was  not long after the film had come out and we were lucky enough to find a cinema that hadn’t dubbed it; they had simply put the Italian in sub-titles in …]]>

I saw Gus Vant Sant’s film Elephant in Italy whilst on holiday with my girlfriend of the time. It was  not long after the film had come out and we were lucky enough to find a cinema that hadn’t dubbed it; they had simply put the Italian in sub-titles in instead. It was of course a beautiful, warm evening and the film, despite it’s delicate and dark subject matter, also left me with the most beautiful, warm feeling. Now Elephant certainly had it’s political undercurrents and was more topical than a film like Pavilion, but the sensation it created of simply following, watching and remaining detached from the events portrayed gave me an almost paralyzing feeling of powerlessness. It felt as if for a moment the film might actually miss the action that was so central to its genesis and leave me feeling as if it was one of those dreams you have where you can never quite see someone’s face, no matter what you try. Quite why this felt so good, I couldn’t tell you. It did however leave me wanting more.

Pavilion, from this year’s IFP crop, is one of these types of films. In fact had it not been for seeing Elephant that day, and then later seeing Terrence Malick’s The New World, then perhaps the hot and sweaty July day when director Tim Sutton screened Pavilion for us in my living room, might have been all the more uncomfortable. It was too late though, I’d already fallen hook line and sinker for films of this kind, and the fact that I knew this director wanted us to help him with this project meant that the trip to the bathroom and back, the moment the film finished, was a very exciting one. All 25 feet of it.

My co-worker Zach referred me once to a film (Portrait of Jason, 1967) where a man is sitting there smoking a cigarette for pretty much the entire film. That’s it. Talking about this on the way to get lunch one day we agreed that in a film like that, where that’s all that happens, the small things turn into huge events. Zach then stopped, scratched his head and thought for a moment, whispering to the air in front of him, “what was it that happened in that one…”. I stopped too, waited, and then finally he said “Ah yes, he ran out of gas on his lighter. Huge deal!” We both laughed and then stepped inside Jimmy’s, our regular lunch joint.

So to reiterate, Pavilion really is one of those exact films. It’s almost fair to say that if you blink or cough, you could miss the entire ‘reveal’ at the end of it. There are tiny fragmented shards of dialogue that tell you what’s happening whilst all the while you’re watching the most detached, beautiful and mesmerizing footage of kids feeling out the moments in those long, long, useless days of our youth. In fact what I said when I came back from the bathroom after Tim had screened his movie for us was ‘congratulations’. Congratulations for capturing that feeling of the abstract, aimless ennui of what it was to be young, with almost no sense of responsibility at all.

Tim then explained that he wanted a website and film posters from us, and we ended up all walking back along a hot Front Street in Brooklyn, talking all sorts of nonsense. Eventually he had to go one way, and we the other, but Pavilion wasn’t going to let us stray too far from each other in the coming months.

The next part, the actual design process, was tough. It’s always tough but this was particularly hard because we really wanted to nail it. Not because this was our ‘big chance’. Chances are people won’t see Pavilion ‘en masse’ until Tim’s next film is out and everyone is freaking out about how good he is. Then they’ll be picking up ‘that risky first movie’, you know, ‘to give it another chance’. No, we really wanted to nail this because the film demanded it. It was begging us to explain to someone who only saw the poster or visited the website for a second, what the film was about without of course explicitly telling them. You know, without a tagline even. It was such an abstract concept and relied so much on a feeling, that we felt it to be an exciting challenge. That said, we also of course didn’t want to oversell it. When very little happens, you can easily make a website or poster that promises too much. That too was a no no.

So the design work began and I sat huddled over my computer for several days in that nervous funk I always get into when I know I can do it and will do it, but it’s just not happening yet. Then, soon, like trying to pee when you’re really drunk, really full of booze, and have been holding it in for too long, things began to trickle out. Then moments later they all just came out together. Pretty soon I had a list of ideas spilled out on the page and sent them to Giles (best friend and Version Industries co-founder) for his thoughts.

He was into it.

For the website we agreed that animated GIFs, living movie stills, or what people are now calling cinemagraphs, were the right direction. There aren’t many truly captivating, art-for-the-sake-of-art websites on the internet, but of the few my favourite is easily if we don’t, remember me. Take a look. If you don’t know the site already (and already love it), you soon will. The only difficulty with Pavilion is that a lot of it is shot with a moving / handheld camera, and IWDRM has the luxury of picking out the movies with all the beautiful static shots in them. Nevertheless, the laid back, audio-less, ethereal quality of these was absolutely spot on for this project and so all we had to do was convince Tim.

Tim was down.

For the posters there were a bunch of things I’d scribbled on paper scraps lying half on and half off my couch in my living room the night before. These I’d typed up and emailed myself and then hated the next morning. However one or two of them triggered new ideas and we realized that effectively taking an idea from the most unlikely of sources – Robert Zemeckis’s 1985 film Back to the Future - was very possibly the solution to this film’s supporting printwork. So we quickly started putting together some demos using a low-quality quicktime of the film Tim had linked us to.

The extent of Tim’s enthusiasm for our ideas in the coming days was enough to get me through the coldest of winters, let alone the balmy week in July that it was. He wrote us back a long email analyzing each concept and explaining why each one worked for him in different ways. We then encouraged him to choose his top 2-3 concepts so that we could start working on the final editions. As I touched on in last month’s article – there’s being paid for doing some work and then there’s meeting the approval of someone who you respect. These two things are completely different, and the energy you get from one far exceeds the other. There was a fantastic feeling in the Version Industries studio the weeks that followed, hard at work as we were hard on the site and a final set of posters.

Some days into the production Tim wrote another excited email stating that he was so in love with the type treatment on the posters that he wanted us to do all the type for the actual film’s credit sequences. The hot pink, italic, capital letters had hit a chord with him (as we’d hoped it might), and had now dethroned the more restrained, plain, black, capitalized Futura he’d been using up until that point.

The only part that still concerns me slightly as we prepare to reveal the work we’ve been doing here is that it all still somehow doesn’t feel involved enough on some cursory level. I think this is because as a company we’re used to coming at a concept from several angles and layering up the visuals where possible. However, in being true to this very unusual film we knew that in every way less was more, and that meaning and impact were to be obtained from the most subtle and imperceptible touches. Furthermore when watching the film you realize the footage is almost untouched out of the camera, and this too informed the very raw and simple feel of all the work we produced in support of it.

So, without further ado, here is the Pavilion website -

And here are two of my favourites from the selection of posters we produced for the film -

We won’t spoil the details of the film by explaining our exact reasoning for the various elements of each design. We do hope however that each speaks for itself and that everything I’ve said gives you some insight into the process from start to finish, as well as leaving you with some unanswered questions of course …