THE LOST CHILDREN is a fiction film, but being shot as if a documentary. This isn’t anything new these days. From the beautiful work of Guest and Co, to the inescapable Blair Witch, to the TV show The Office, this has become a pretty accepted dramatic format. So I wasn’t under any delusions of breaking new ground.

I wanted to write up an article detailing the reasons I did make this decision, in the hopes of clarifying, both for myself and others, some of the things I’m after with this project. I also wanted to provide this because I see a lot of people choosing the same format, without really thinking through why. I think it deserves some thought.

Economics of Independent Film in 2009

When we started this project, our intention was to make a $100K indie feature, shot on RED, and (hopefully) distributed through the usual means. We had the script ready for this production and had gone into pre-production. We had shoot dates set, the cast ready, and we were all set to roll.

But at the same time, everyone started talking about how distribution was changing, failing, crumbling, etc. And this stuff was coming from so many places, I started to get worried. I had not really thought about distribution up to that point, assuming we would worry about it when the film was done. But hearing all of this hue and cry, I decided I needed to do some research. I put the production on hold and did that. And the conclusion I came to was that we could probably make a good $100K RED film, but it was entirely likely that this film would be lost in the massive ocean of similar films pouring out of every nook and cranny. It’s not hard to have production value anymore. And the lower the point of entry gets, the higher the baseline gets.

Now, I do believe our story is good and unique and multi-dimensional, but I didn’t have faith that that would be enough. We had no name actors. I was a first time feature director. When I looked at it practically, I just thought there were going to be too many things to overcome. With $100K in borrowed money, I didn’t like the odds. I know that’s nothing in movie terms, but…it’s kind of a lot of money to me, when I wasn’t certain I could pay it back.

So I put the old brainbox in gear and started to really think about what my goals were with this film.

1. Get through my first feature alive. I actually think this is a laudable goal; to actually finish a feature film that’s coherent, watchable, and compelling. Many first time features don’t even accomplish two of these.
2. Challenge myself as a filmmaker. Paint myself into some corners and fight to get out of them.
3. Focus on characters over visuals.
4. Make the film for an amount low enough that I can afford to experiment with distribution strategies. I feel like this is critical for filmmakers right now. If I try one thing and it doesn’t work, I need to be able to try some others without the pressing need to make the money back. In fact, it’s much more important to me right now to learn what works and what doesn’t than to actually make the money back on this film. As it stands now, I don’t owe anyone anything for this film. It’s paid for.

“Filmmaking” and Storytelling

I made a short in 2009, called EVIE. With EVIE, I was still working very much on my “filmmaking” techniques; telling a story visually, manipulating elements to exact certain emotions from the audience. But as I finished the film and screened it at the Downtown Independent in July of that year, I realized I was getting bored with filmmaking. It seemed like everyone was doing it now, and so much of it was just starting to look the same, and there was a part of me that simply didn’t like the act of manipulating those elements to pull up emotions. I think it’s the part of me that needs to examine and think about everything. It’s hard for me to shut up and enjoy a summer popcorn movie if that movie is just stupid, lacking in logic of events or character. I’m just not willing to turn off the part of my brain that wants things to make sense.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Throughout 2009, I had started to really take an interest in things like mobile, transmedia, alternate entertainment forms. As I looked about more and more, it kept nagging at me that so many independent filmmakers were busy investigating 21st century distribution models, when they should be looking at 21st century entertainment forms. And increasingly, these forms are becoming multi-media. They can use filmed elements, text elements, interactive elements. For instance, while many struggle to get their films on mobile platforms, I find this largely a waste of time. I think we should be figuring out how to make content for mobile platforms.

All of this led me to decide that I was going to tell the story of THE LOST CHILDREN, as a more multi-media effort. This would be how we would try to differentiate ourselves in the ocean of pretty-good films. There is a LOST CHILDREN film, to be sure. It is told in the form of a documentary, but it follows a pretty standard 3 ACT structure.

But we’re also working on other ways of extending the storyworld out beyond the movie. There are going to be websites that tell certain aspects of the story. For instance, we removed one whole subplot from the film onto a website. This means the story plays out through the website, through comments on blog posts, through webcam videos, etc.  Likewise, on our mobile platforms, the goal will not just be to put the movie on a phone, but to tell parts of the story through the phone; text messages, phone calls, location-based content, etc. Things only a phone can use to tell a story.

I came to view what I was doing with THE LOST CHILDREN, more as storytelling, than just filmmaking.

Filmmaking Exercise

There’s always been much debate on DVXUser( A filmmaker’s site I frequent ) about how much your gear does or does not matter. For my own viewing, gear matters almost not at all. I would much rather see a good story, well told and acted shot on crappy cameras, than the slickest thing on Earth lacking those same elements.

I’ve also always been fascinated by documentaries, and their ability to weave stories out of random and found materials. For instance, Ken Burns is able to tell a compelling story about the Civil War with little more than 150 yr old photos, voice-over, and music. I got to thinking about this a lot. See, with my own short films, I had been working toward ever slicker visual styles, trying to learn how to use the camera to build a certain emotion in the viewer, how to manufacture a specific moment for a specific impact. And I like all of this stuff. But I also started to get really interested in this question: What if I were limited to the material I had? How would I tell a compelling story then? Well, the story itself would have to be mighty compelling, wouldn’t it? The story of the Civil War or the Brooklyn Bridge are pretty friggin’ compelling.

Click here to view the embedded video.

At this point, I went back through THE LOST CHILDREN script, pretty much scene by scene. I was still confident that we were telling a pretty unique story, that we were telling it well. And as I read and re-read it, my confidence grew. And I thought, what if we tell this with only limited materials? It’s kind of the ultimate filmmaking exercise, I think. I’m not sure if they teach this in any film schools, but if I were teaching a filmmaking class, I would probably start by giving them a box of random old photos, and telling them to make a story out of those.

I’m also reminded of the comment Jack White made in It Might Get Loud. He says he likes old broken guitars. He likes making the process hard, forcing himself to fight the instrument, and wrestle a sound out of it. He thinks that pushes him forward as an artist. This idea just shot through me like a lightning bolt. And I realized I had been applying the same to THE LOST CHILDREN. What if I not only shot it like a documentary, with shaky cams and all the rest, but also actually shot some of the footage badly? Meaning, what if I had to go through some crazy post processes just to extract the image from the footage, as you might have to with found footage? What if I made it hard on myself?

Maybe it’s because movies are so hard to make anyway that people don’t think this way. Or maybe it’s because people are so focused on career and the business side these days, that they are too afraid to do anything but what’s accepted.

I joked with my girlfriend, an artist herself, that I had a confession to make: “I think I’m a video artist!” Which is funny because I am typically so critical of video art because so much of it lacks both discipline and basic mastery of the tools.

I became obsessed with this idea and spent the next several months re-working the script. Same story. I simply looked at how to tell the story in a different way. And I decided to be very strict about it. Meaning, if there was no valid reason to have a camera in the scene, then I would have to figure out some other way to tell that scene. Maybe it’s a voice recording. Maybe it’s a person re-telling it accompanied by photos. But if there was no real reason for a camera to be there, then that scene did not get shot.

Brecht

There’s another thing I like about documentaries, which is their purpose: to make you think about a subject and/or potentially do something about it. This is not the primary purpose of a fiction film. Certainly, some fiction films have causes and purposes associated with them, and the filmmakers are using the film as a way to raise awareness about those, but the primary purpose of the fiction film is to suck you into that world and take you on a ride. To make you forget what’s going on outside of that world for that hour and a half ( or increasingly, 3 hrs ). I started to realize that I love the purpose of documentaries. This is just kind of how I’m wired. I love reading, I love knowing how things work. I love history. I love thinking about things. But there was always something in the back of my mind nagging me and telling me that this was the road to a boring-ass film.

Then I saw my friend Vern‘s latest play: “Lenin’s Embalmers.” In Lenin’s Embalmers, the characters regularly step out of the action and speak to the audience. After the play, over beers, I asked Vern why he had made this choice, and he said he was working with a “Brechtian kind of thing.” And that’s when it hit me. This is why I’m doing this.

I started in theater, so of course I was well aware of Brecht and his theories of theater. He often employed conventions which would intentionally remind the viewer that they were watching an artificial thing. And he did this for the very same reasons I like documentaries; so that the audience wouldn’t get so caught up in the emotion that they forgot to think about what they were seeing on stage. He intended the audience to maintain some measure of distance. Again, this is typically not the purpose of a fiction film.

Holy Moly, This Movie is Going to Suck

I don’t know if documentary makers go through this, though I suspect they do, but the problem with shooting the way we did, is that you have about a million hours of footage. And you have to make that into something worth watching. In the past, I was a storyboard Nazi. I had the entire movie drawn out as a comic book ahead of time, so shooting it was largely a technical exercise; make sure you get the performances and the shots, and it’s going to be really hard to screw it up.

I’ve been editing THE LOST CHILDREN since about June 2010. And I’ve been one nervous mofo this whole summer. I’d dread looking at the edit for fear that it was as bad as I feared. But invariably, every time I did go back to it, I was drawn in, and it wasn’t so bad after all. When people asked how it was going, I would respond with: “I don’t think it will suck too badly.” Then I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to have some manner of validation. I sent an extremely rough draft of ACT I to a friend I could trust to be honest, and I had one question for him: “Should I just jump off a bridge right now?” His answer was without a doubt “No.” He felt like I had something there. Whew! But honestly, I didn’t completely believe him until this past week. I took off from all client work and secluded myself in my office to edit full time. I tightened up the first act and just about all of the second, and even moved into the third. And for the first time since we started shooting, I am honest to God excited to show this film.

Our goal right now is to have the project ready for the world by Jan 2011. That includes Transmedia content, mobile apps, and the completely finished film.

I’d say after that I am taking a vacation, but I know that’s just the beginning…

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Dead Man

This went quite well. Actually looking at the footage, it went much better than it felt on set. I was very very lucky to have a group of dedicated people on board. Rodney Smith, as always Steve Boling, the Nikks, Yoneidy, Bill, Pawel, thanks very much all.

I am going to start a proper production blog soon. But here is a raw grab. This will receive a lot of treatment in post.

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1. Being soaked in some fake blood
2. Possibly seeing representations of your own entrails hanging out
3. Being dragged about the floor and pretending like you are being stabbed to death
4. Lots of screaming, and agony and gnashing of teeth

Unfortunately, we cannot pay for this, but we can offer a lot of fun! And a good story out of it for your kids…And there will probably be some free beer…

And it should not take more than a couple hours of time. NYC location.

Sound like the time of your life? Drop us a line at: info@desperatecomfort.com

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http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/json-api/changelog/

So now we’re good to go for using this plugin out of the box for our mobile apps.

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Also posted over at NEW BREED.

So I’ve been waiting for WordPress 3 to come out before really diving into this, because in WP 3 they introduce easy use of custom content types. Up to this point, you were allowed to create either a post or a page. Now you can create any type you want. These types are still just posts really, but it allows for something I’ve been working on for some time.

Mobile apps for films and storytelling have been a hot topic for a while. There have been good ideas and bad ideas. But the one thing I think any mobile content app should have is the ability to update the content on the fly. This is where WordPress comes in. It’s a robust and widely used CMS option, which saves us the time and hassle of writing our own CMS. It has a large support base, active development and just about every feature you could ever ask for in a tool like this.

So I had been thinking for some time about how to use WordPress to power mobile app content. One problem was that I did not want the mobile content to show up on the site. So the custom content types came in exceptionally handy for just this. I was able to create a type called “mobilecontent” and thus guarantee that I could direct that content only to my mobile devices and not to the site itself.

What’s beautiful about this is now I have one place to manage my story-world, my BTS, my articles, my Transmedia data, etc. All in WordPress.

But how do you get it to the mobile apps? One way to do this would be for the app to read an rss feed off of the site. RSS is XML. The problem I had with this was that the standard RSS feeds did not give me as much data as I wanted about posts. So I first set out to write my own plugin to create the feeds I wanted. Then I got to thinking about it a little more and decided I liked JSON REST services better anyway. They are simpler to deal with and both Objective-C and Java have super-simple methods of consuming them and turning them into objects for use in your app. So as always, before I started in on my own JSON plugin, I searched existing WordPress plugins. And sure enough, some dude made one that suited my needs (nearly) perfectly. So I installed that and wrote a little Android code to consume it. But the one thing this plugin lacked was access to custom content types. He had written it before these were available. So I added this to the plugin myself. I will submit it back to him to see if he wants to keep my code in there.

But what this got me was exactly what I needed to serve up WordPress content to my mobile apps.

Of course, you could have the standard mobile app that looks like a mobile version of your website. Or you could launch a whole mobile story, fed through WordPress, and served up to mobile devices. Adding custom fields to WordPress posts for lat/long means you can now tag a post for geolocation. Then your app can respond accordingly. Now, WordPress can be used to create a scavenger hunt. Or a location based ARG delivered to mobile devices. All with this off the shelf, FREE CMS system.

There is still a lot of work to do on this and a lot more detail to add. But I thought I would kick it off with these initial thoughts to plant the seeds and see if anything catches for people. I am moving forward on this now, probably working out a framework in Android first, because it’s so much more fun to code than Obj-C. I will be using this on the LOST CHILDREN apps, and would be happy to have some more guinea pigs as well. If you have an app in the works, and looking for some way to update the content regularly, hit me up.

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I only recently discovered You Suck at Photoshop.

Click here to view the embedded video.

One thing I love about this is it’s low-budget nature. It’s dependent entirely on the writing and the performance. Anyone with skills in those two things can do this. You don’t need a crew. You don’t need a RED camera. You don’t even need a budget. Something good for poor indies to think about here…

Here’s another great recent example. This one is particularly funny to people in technology.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Again, the key thing here is that it’s dependent on writing and performance.

What I also like about this is, it’s a kind of entertainment purely made for the web. Sure you could have done this on TV, or in a film, but I think the length of the piece and your expectations for the length of web content combine to make this only really possible on the web. You will check this out at your desk when your boss isn’t looking, but would you sit down on the couch and tune into this? Probably not. Likewise, the concept, funny as it is, can only really be carried on for a few minutes at a time.

Or can it?

Enter Mr. Plinket

So this guy started doing these reviews online. He’s done a number of sci-fi movies, which kind of gives him  a built in audience. What’s striking is that what he does is a mix of an actual good review, and comedy. He plays a character while reviewing. But what he says is usually very sharp and spot on. So what is this beast? A review? A comedy sketch? Whatever it is, it’s pretty telling that I’ve watched Phantom Menace twice; once when it came out, and one more time just to make sure I wasn’t on drugs the first time. But I’ve watched this guy’s entire review series for Phantom Menace 6 times. That’s the whole batch of 7. I’ve watched some individual episodes many more times than that.

Here’s the first one for Phantom Menace. But I strongly encourage everyone to go watch the rest. These will probably have less of an effect if you’re not a fucking  geek, but I think you’ll still get the point. Would love to see him do Sex in the City 2 though.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So we’re looking at some entertainment here made specifically for the web. But what else is it about these? POV? They are all subjective camera? They are all from the protagonist’s POV. They all primarily tell their stories through speech and screen-capture. Plinket’s videos have some inter-cut “scenes,” which I find far less entertaining than his actual reviews. But for the most part, it follows this model.

What else can you do this way? A Sci-Fi story, for sure. A horror story? A Drama? Let’s try something. Anyone have any good story ideas you think would translate to this as a medium?

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I’ve been seeing more and more talk lately about the coming dominance of the “app,” over the open Web. The most recent example was this article in the Atlantic. In a way, I think it’s a little funny how quick everyone is to make predictions based on the latest trends. But I also find this potential future quite depressing. It’s a future in which the entire web has become little more than a consuming device, a future that looks disturbingly like the past when we had 3 TV networks, and very specific and tightly controlled channels for getting information. And none of those channels were operating in our interest.

One of the things that’s disparaged the most about the “open Web” is the lack of accountability in news reporting. Bloggers who post anything are seen as an erosion to “journalism.” However, I think this is largely false, as the history of traditional journalism shows that it’s made up largely of lies and propaganda with only a few sparks of actual, vital truth in between. Furthermore, can anyone point to a local newscast as worth…well, anything worthy at all? What I like about the “open Web” is that it forces us all to be more diligent about what we take in. It forces us to be more educated and to think for ourselves. And if we read something at one source, we can take the time to find it on many other sources and validate it. Of course that’s the ideal, and not everyone does take the time to do it, but I like having the ability to do that.

When I read about the coming “app” model, all I can think is that people are once more going to be sacrificing choice for comfort. Brian Newman said it better in a recent DIYDays speech:

If all we get from this revolution is a fancy, internet connected TV set that allows us to watch any film ever made, anytime we want, on demand we will have failed to innovate. Yeah, like Memorex, it will really blow our minds, but it’s not mind-blowing. It’s easy to get caught up in this and think this is the goal, but TV Everywhere will just be annoying things like being able to watch whatever we want and comment on it via Twitter or FourSquare, and buy whatever the characters are wearing, or make catty comments about it.

But at the end of the day, that’s a pretty boring vision for the future. That’s not the innovation we want or deserve. If all we get is that fancy TV set, or if we just settle for getting our films on VOD or Netflix, we’ll have failed to live up to the potential of digital and the internet. This is dangerous, because we let our vision of the future be limited by our views of the past. We as artists must get involved before this settles into what Jaron Lanier calls “lock-in” where we design the entire system in such a way that to change it at a later date will be impossible.

On a Technical Level…

I’m not so sure I buy into this app model. It’s good for some things, but I don’t see it for the bulk of what the web is good for. I for one, hate having nine millions fucking icons on my phone, each one going to a separate site, essentially. Because what most apps are, are basically mobile versions of websites. Just about any content app is this. So now, instead of having something as simple as “bookmarks” for my favorite places on the web, I have nine million fucking apps. This is stupid, and inefficient beyond belief. There’s only so much room on my phone. And it’s annoying as hell to have to scroll through page after page after page of apps to find something. Then I forget that some apps are there. And I don’t look at them for a long time. As where, a simple RSS feed delivers me the daily updates to whatever I want to see.

Secondly, I can attest from being out there in the market pitching apps to potential clients, that while everyone thinks they need an app now, no one wants to pay for one. It’s very very hard to get clients to put real resources into this. Because they don’t quite understand how it really, honestly impacts their business. And they’re right. We’ve been trying to pitch unique ideas for interface, and for app functionality, and it’s still very very hard to make them see where there is any value in these things. Value worth spending their budgets on. Because for about 90% of the apps out there, you can get exactly the same thing from a simple mobile template on your existing website.

No,  I think this whole “shoving apps down our throat by one company and pretending it’s some kind of trend” reeks of what it is: the publishing companies trying to turn back the clock. And when I see the apps they’re making for the iPad, I think: “Wow, they are really trying to turn back the clock. This is about as good as  a web-browsing experience from 1994.” And really? Ads I can’t turn past? Guys, even in print magazines I can turn past the ads I don’t want to look at.

The publishing industry is being characteristically lazy about this whole thing. They’ve been told that all they have to do is translate their mags into apps and they will be able to go on doing what they do. Once again, they’re missing the boat. Instead of innovating their way out of a problem, they are falling back on a lock-down solution. And what’s so frustrating about this is that this same industry was one of the first to experiment with digital delivery of content in the 80s, for God’s sake. They’ve not only seen this coming, but have had all the time in the world to innovate out of it. yet time and time again, they seem to ignore what’s coming and try to turn the clock back to what’s already been. This will not work.

Instead, I would like to see the publishing industry embrace what I am increasingly calling the “make cooler shit” model. Like this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, this doesn’t actually exist on the iPad yet, which is the mistake they made here, I think. But one of my partners was able to make an interface surprisingly similar for the iPhone using what technologies are currently allowed. Pretty cool stuff.

Advertising, Spawn of Satan, likewise has a beautiful chance to innovate here. Instead of forcing us to watch your crap through pop-ups, overlays, or iPad pages that freeze, why not create something actually cool? I know this is a foreign concept for most people in advertising where the industry survived for decades by forcing us to watch stupid shit. But some people are doing it:

Click here to view the embedded video.

That is an ad for a TV. You never see a TV in the ad. You don’t even know what company it’s advertising for, do you? But once I had my mind blown by this, I sure as hell went to find out. And you know what, I had a lot more respect for the company for not treating my like a moron, for not trying to convince me that if I just buy their product, my cock will magically be sucked by 19 horny virgin cheerleaders in succession. I had more respect for them for not lying to me. But just making something whose goal was to show me how great their product was.  Whoa, selling products based on their merits? Who’d a thunk it?

Then there was Old Spice approaching things from the goof-side, and making something both funny and cool. Funny because, well, it’s funny. Cool, because of the geek-out factor of it’s creation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Made by Weiden & Kennedy, this again is something innovative. Entertain me with something amazing and I will likely have more respect for you. And it also shows how hip Old Spice is to let the agency go to town with something like this.

Finally, there’s the Liquid Mountaineering commercial:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Again, not trying to shove the product down your throat, but making something so cool you kind of have to go find out about it. You want to know who’s behind this. You want to pass it around. Because it’s awesome.

So this is my hope for both the publishing and advertising industries; instead of trying to lock things down, make them lame and boring like every iPad magazine app I’ve seen now, please learn out how innovate your way into the future. Or just go out of business please.

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For me, I thin, an app might be useful as an audience building tool. Absolutely not something for delivering your film. Unless your film is geared toward a mobile app, or maybe a series or something. But a feature film in an app is dead in the water, I think. No, I think the best thing an app can offer would be a centralized place for your audience to get info on the progress of your film, screenings, etc. Of course, all of this can also be done with a mobile version of your site with something like the WordPress Mobile plugin. The main advantage to making an app would be offline viewing of content. Videos, articles, blog posts, etc. could be downloaded more as podcasts, cached locally and viewed even when no Internet connection is available. This is the primary advantage. Of course, there are other advantages when one tries to use features of the device only accessible to apps. Like location-based features, or the device’s camera, microphone, etc.

But for a first iteration of an app, here’s what I’ve been thinking:

1. Deliver blog posts related to the film. Production blogs, perhaps other Transmedia blog posts from characters, etc, you might be using to build interest. These can, of course be easily categorized and put into separate tabs.
2. Videos: Either YouTube or straight up video hosted on your own server. These can hold video podcasts, short content produced in the same universe as the film, etc.
3. Calendar of events related to the film.
4. Social interaction: At the basest level, allow users to comment on and share all of the above through the usual suspects: twitter, email, Facebook.
5. All of this up-datable by you. My thought is to write a Word-Press plugin  that would deliver data from a WordPress install to your mobile app. WordPress is wide-spread and easy to use and free. So you would be able to update the content in your app whenever you wanted.
6. In app purchase of your film from iTunes, etc.
7. Special feature content only available through your app.
8. Tie-ins to things like IndieFlix? Your Kickstarter or Indigogo campaign?
9. QR-Code tie-in for playing trailers off of your posters and postcards.

Okay, these are just spit-balling now. Personally, I am not sure how valuable any of these are. I am developing some much more customized features for the stuff I want to do with LOST CHILDREN. However, it’s possible we will also have some variation on the above.

But this is largely an exercise in figuring out if I can provide some product to the independent DIY filmmaker that is a) useful and b) cost-effective.

Does any of this seem useful? What other ideas would you like to see in an app geared at independent filmmakers? Which features would you find useful in such an app?

And what would you be willing to pay for something like that? Do you think it would be beneficial to pay for it at all? Do you see something like this adding value enough to budget for it?

What dream-features would you ask for in a mobile app for your film?

Feel free to leave comments below.

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The Whining

There’s been a lot of whining and hand-wringing in some indie film circles lately, about panels and conferences. Panels like DIYDays and The Conversation. These gatherings feature speakers, workshops, etc. where people talk about new movements in distribution, filmmaking, uses of social media, etc. Then a couple of dudes started posting rants against these panels, admonishing attendees to fore-go these panels and just make movies instead. Focus on craft and the rest will fall into place, seemed to be their point. I think part of what caused the shitstorm though was that their point was made in the smarmy tones usually reserved for bitchy teenage girls on MySpace.

My comments on this situation in several blogs all said the same thing: The proof is in the pudding. And frankly, after seeing some of the work of these panel-haters, I’d have to say that if your mantra is: “The final product is all that matters” then your final product ought to be better. The work of these guys generally doesn’t come close to the work of some of the more prominent panel-attendees I know. So maybe you should go to some panels?

Their rants are also based on misinformation and a false confrontation. They assume that if you are attending a panel, you are not making work. I don’t know who their comments are aimed at, but many of the people I’ve met at these panels are among the most prolific creators I know.

In the midst of this, there was an article on Filmmaker Magazine’s site by an indie producer, saying much the same thing. He throws out a lot of platitudes about “visionaries” and “innovative work.” But he shows off his true colors with this paragraph:

“There are some brilliant films out there today that are having a hard time finding an audience. This isn’t the filmmakers’ fault. It’s the fault of the youth audience whose minds have been melded by the corporate consumer-entertainment machine. What was potentially indie film’s next greatest audience didn’t materialize because it never learned about true rebellion, what counter culture means and where it is often found. It’s often conjured up and cultivated under smelly overpasses by angry outsiders, not in corporate-sponsored high-tech think tanks by salaried media trend experts.”

Blaming the audience is a critical mistake. With that, you officially sound like an old man whining about “kids these days.”

Then, Filmmaker had this article.

Indeed, WBP Labs’ Johnson says, “I’ll stream movies on Netflix, rent from my Xbox, use torrents, whatever is easiest. If I can watch something on my cell phone, I will.” Because in the new age of watching-whatever-you-want-whenever-you-want, according to Johnson, “it’s really about being able to watch it immediately and talk to other people about it and be a part of that conversation.”

I think this is something independent filmmakers really, really need to pay attention to. Hell, I’m a 40 yr old man, and that’s how I get my media. I never go to film festivals for content. I never go to see what the newest thing is. And no one I know who is not also a filmmaker goes to them either. No one. I rarely go to theaters at all, in fact. But I do routinely meet up at the bar around the corner to discuss the latest episode of Breaking Bad, or Fringe, or some treasure I dug up on NetFlix instant. And I go with my Fiance to her weekly LOST viewing party. But even more, I have extensive conversations with other people all over the country via message boards. We dissect a movie like Primer. We argue about performance, shot choice, writing. Maybe this is what the next wave will be about.

I think it’s pretty friggin innovative that I can converse with people all over the world about one piece of art. Don’t you? I think it’s pretty friggin innovative that filmmakers might have the chance to go directly to an audience. I think it’s pretty friggin innovative that Cory Doctorow can put his book online for free and reach his audience instantly. Furthermore, I think it’s pretty friggin innovative that his readers make all of the e-book copies for him. Maybe this is where the innovation is happening this time around.

What is Visionary and Will You Know It When You See It?

So this whole thing got me to thinking about some of the personal revelations I’ve had recently. Recently, I’ve really become aware of how the two big threads in my life are destined to come together. For a long time, I’ve considered software just my “day job,” and film the “thing I really wanted to do.” But it’s becoming clearer and clearer that there’s no reason for me to give up either of those things. They will more and more compliment one another. Hell, I think they will more and more become one and the same thing in terms of what I make. And I dig that.

It seems that so much visual art has the potential to merge into one big thing. Meaning, it might have some film aspects to it. It might have some written aspects to it. It might have some live aspects to it. It might have a smart-phone app aspect to it. Of course, the big buzzword for this right now is Transmedia. This term has a lot of advertising odor about it, and I kind of wish that wasn’t so. But the point of it is that a story might be told over multiple platforms. Maybe you get a blog post from a character filling in some small bit of the story. Maybe there is a short film telling another part of the story. This stuff all turns me on waaaaay more than just a film by itself. But more importantly, I feel like it more accurately reflects how people will be experiencing visual art in the future. Picking. Choosing. Finding their own way through story rather than having the story spoon-fed to them by the “artist.”

I’ve seen comments about Transmedia lately like the one on a recent Filmmaker Magazine post:

“Seriously, could you imagine Wendy and Lucy: The Video Game?”

Comments like this are beyond stupid and display a remarkably shallow imagination. Because this stuff does not have to instantly boil down to “video games” or “action figures.” Though, I got more joy out of making up my own stories with my action figures as a kid than almost anything I can remember since, and I think that kind of play really shaped who and what I am today. Instead of just a passive consumer, I love to make things. So maybe we shouldn’t dismiss them so quickly.

But the point is, I could see a story like “Wendy and Lucy” told through a website, with map locations all over the US and video pieces or short films from each location as they progress on their journey. You could have the same level of performance and writing and shooting and everything else. It would just be different. You could also combine this with writing about/by the characters, perhaps contributions from real street kids all over the country. Real street kids were featured in the film, and the director talked about that culture. I think this could be very very cool. And I don’t think it would diminish the film at all.

Can all stories be told this way? I don’t know. But call me when you’ve made “Apocalypse Now,” and we can talk about things that maybe shouldn’t be messed with.

But this is not the issue. The issue is that I feel like many independent filmmakers are sort of frozen in their views of what a film is. And what it can be. Or maybe I should say, frozen in their expectations of what their skills are capable of producing. They all seem to think that because films looked like what they did in the 20th century, that is what they should look like now. They are not expanding their minds to what a film could look like now. Or in the future. What a film designed for the web might look like. Or a film designed for a mobile device might look like.

Take a look at this thing from HBO Imagine.

This HBO Imagine site is fascinating to me because it actually uses the medium it was made for. It’s not just throwing your film on the web, or putting your film into an app, or trying to just use these things as a substitute for for the movie screen. It’s actually using the medium. It’s designed for the medium. And this is what I want independent filmmakers to think about when it comes to mobile, web, etc. and telling their stories. Think about telling stories for the medium.

Why does this seem hard for a lot of filmmakers? Well for the most part, I think it boils down to ego, and the fact that filmmakers can often have some pretty precious attitudes about their work. Maybe I’m wrong, but this is what it seems to me.

Maybe it’s because I’m basically self-taught, and also have a very wide range of interests, that I don’t have any really adherence to one form over another. Maybe it’s because I’m not all that interested in getting into the “film business.” Or maybe it’s because I’m pretty objective about my work, and I don’t mind allowing it to evolve into what it wants to be. But more and more, all I see and all I care about is good stories.

This is why I’m excited about people pushing the boundaries of how to tell those stories. Guys like Lance Weiler. I just think it’s cool that a guy like this has no pre-fabricated notion of how to tell his stories. He doesn’t seem to have any chip on his shoulder. He doesn’t seem to think that everything out of his word processor is Gospel. He’s just out there trying many things, some of which might fail, some might succeed, he doesn’t always know.

So this is the thing I think the indie producer, and all independent filmmakers need to understand. “Visionary” and “innovative” may not look like what you think it should look like. And the very fact that you assume it’s something that will please you, means it probably won’t be visionary or innovative. It probably means it will look like something you’ve seen before. Which is kind of the opposite of “visionary.”

Okay, so what?

I think the lesson here is especially applicable to micro-budget filmmakers on the real fringe. Because your organizations are small and limber, and there’s not a lot of money at stake, you’re the ones who can afford to really try new things and really push the boundaries. And I think if you decide not to do that, you are missing out on enormous opportunities.

So open your minds to what’s possible. And don’t assume that you know what “visionary” will look like the next time it rolls around.

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It’s a nice write-up, though I think it makes me seem a little crotchety. Which I guess I am.

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This thing has been going all around for the past few days.

We’ve all heard the MPAA and the RIAA whine, whine, whine about how Internet piracy has basically destroyed the movie/TV/software/music/video game industry–citing famous studies that estimate as much as $200 billion and 750,000 jobs lost in a year. But now the government is stepping in and admitting what many kind of suspected–those studies are often misleading.

I don’t “pirate” anything myself. I guess I’ve downloaded a thing or two over the years. But I never adopted it as a habit for a couple of reasons. First, even though I love sticking it to THE MAN as much as the next guy, I actually do think it’s wrong to take things in a way that the owner doesn’t intend. Secondly, as a content creator, I just feel like it’s inviting bad Karma. Because no matter how I decide to distribute my content, that’s me making that decision. And I would like people to abide by it. Thirdly, it’s just too easy not to pirate. If I want to see something, I can usually just buy it pretty easily. And I can know I’m getting a quality product. The few times I have downloaded, it was slow, and quality was always just unacceptable. I’ve read online that that means I’m just not doing it right, or not going to the right places, or whatever. But that’s precisely my point. It’s just easier now to go to iTunes, or Netflix, or wherever, and just watch something.

But the thing that struck me about this report was the part about how the industry assumes that every download is a lost sale. This is where they make the biggest mistake, I think. Because generally, would the people downloading anything and everything, be buying anything and everything if they had to go through the trouble and expense? Probably not.

So if they are not losing sales, are they in fact gaining anything from piracy?

Piracy as Promotion

There is a portion of the DIY movement right now, that thinks piracy can act as a kind of free promotion. Meaning, if you allow people to download your movie on BitTorrent, they might spread the word about the movie. Or IMDB or something will show that you were the most downloaded movie this week, and that might somehow turn into sales. Or interest.

I think this is interesting and it certainly would be great if it were true. This happened to the film INK. I’m not sure what ever came of this, but they were extremely popular in the BitTorrent community for a while. And it was their hope that it would translate into sales, I certainly hope it did. I bought the DVD sight unseen just because I loved how open and honest and gracious the filmmakers were with their journey in getting the film made. The film was pretty good too. Certainly a breath of fresh air amid so much of the drek that stinks up the indie film universe.

But more importantly and more probably, I think this piracy as promotion thing will have legs, not for the film that’s being pirated, but for the films you haven’t made yet. If you can show companies that you can make something millions of people will want to see, you might have made an investment in your career. Of course, the trick is to do this for an amount of money you can afford to lose.  But I always say, if I cannot make something compelling for $300, I will never make something compelling for $3mil.

But large companies are in the best position to experiment with this. And I think they’ve even been accused of doing so; seeding bit torrents with their own copies in an effort to track popularity. If they can indeed do this, then they’ve won this battle. Because the questionable number of lost sales is nothing compared to the amount of very low-cost marketing data they’ll get.

Ultimately, I’m not sure piracy will lead to real sales for the independent filmmaker. As I said, corporations can afford to float some experiments out there, and can also spread the pain over a broad area. Independent filmmakers don’t have these luxuries. Besides, from what I’ve heard the amounts of money being made this way are nothing really.

There are examples like Nina Paley, who made the movie Nita Sings the Blues, and gave it away for free. She’s become something of a legend on the DIY talk-circuit for making some money back this way. Giving it away for free leading to selling swag, “official” dvd copies, etc. She has made money this way, but nothing approaching real money, nothing that could support more than one person, much less a company.

There’s also VODO, which is a sort of tip jar for BitTorrent. If you download something and like it, you can “donate” to its creator. I kind of like this idea in theory, as I love the idea that you have to be satisfied by a product before you pay for it. Years ago, those of us who are old enough remember having to buy an entire crappy album just to get one or two good songs. But in practice, this isn’t working out too well either. VODO is not delivering anything remotely like real money. And I don’t think it will. Because generally, I just don’t think the people who download have enough respect for content creators.

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