NOW AVAILABLE ON VIMEO ON DEMAND and VUDU!
NEXT SCREENING:
Louisville International Film Festival, Saturday Oct. 11th 2:30pm
Holly Theater – Galt House Hotel: 141 N Fourth Street, Louisville, KY 40202
More Info: louisvillefilmfestival.org
More channels, screenings, and news coming soon!
We got into BaltiCon! This is Maryland’s biggest sci-fi/fantasy convention, running from May 23-26th. This is four days of workshops, cosplay, films, singing, gaming, author panels, and lots more! Details:
WHERE: Hunt Valley Inn, 245 Shawan Road, Hunt Valley, Maryland 21031
WHEN: Sunday, May 25, 9:30am in the Garden Room
TICKETS: Balticon.org
The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival was, in short, quite wonderful. Their claim is that it’s run by Brooklyn filmmakers for Brooklyn filmmakers, and they deliver. The screenings were organized into blocks that made sense, the pairing of shorts and features worked well, the communication between the festival staff and the directors and producers was great… and the overall atmosphere was joyous.
Cast, crew, fans, staff, and industry folk mingled pretty freely, both during the pre-screening receptions and at the nightly after-parties. It was, of course, great to be able to commute to a festival as opposed to taking trains, buses planes, and automobiles. But the venues themselves were also easy to get to by subway and a lot of care was taken to make sure the projection and sound quality were up to par.
So, here are a few really quick ‘snapshots’ of the films I saw. There wasn’t a bad one in the bunch, but I’m trying to write this quickly and I didn’t get to everything, so I apologize in advance if I don’t mention a few films (hopefully I get a little more time to write a follow-up piece).
Dee and Arthur at the festival
The first set of films I saw were part of a shorts block on Wednesday, May 7th. These things are often a very mixed bag, with one or two standouts and a very pretty terrible pieces, or others that simply don’t relate thematically to each other very well. So imagine my surprise when every damn short worked well and flowed naturally into the next one.
One of the qualities all the shorts had was their restraint. There wasn’t an extraneous line of dialog, an out-of-place trick shot, or a distractingly flamboyant performance in the bunch. The show/tell ratio was perfect in all of them.
Inquietude (directed by Morgan Davidsen): This was a really tense short film about a dancer who’s at a particular crossroads – she’s broke, desperate for a break, losing both her apartment and maybe even her mind. There are only a handful of lines of dialog in the whole film. Unlike flashy crap like Black Swan, you really feel for the character. Fun fact: the film was shot several years ago but the audio was lost and had to be recreated. Perhaps this lends something to the sparseness of the film as well?
Without Fire (directed by Eliza McNitt): A single mother and her daughter struggle with poverty, no heat and little hope on a Navajo reservation house in the middle of the desert. But the girl has an idea about how to get heat… The director, cast, and crew did an amazing job of conveying the depths of the story, the stakes, the resourcefulness, all with a bare minimum of flash, some great music and sound design, and terrific performances.
An Honorable Man (directed by Harrison P. Crown and William G. Utley): This won the best short award, and for good reason. A cynical, older priest shows up to give a eulogy, but no one’s showed up for the funeral. If this sounds like a downer, I assure you it isn’t. It’s funny, tragic, wonderful, and hangs entirely off a few well-placed camera moves and the priest’s performance.
The next block I saw was on Thursday night just before the Found In Time screening. Again, a wonderful selection of films – that all fit well together – so I’ll just mention a few here.
Armed Defense (directed by Irina Patkanian) is a mysterious, quiet short. A man walks into a house – is it his? We don’t know – and he’s not talking. He starts arming himself, setting up defenses. Against what? It’s a great film because it doesn’t supply all the answers, but perfect captures a mood.
Kosmodrome (directed by Youcef Mahmoudi) was the definition of trippy. It’s a story about a young psychic woman who’s being brainwashed by a another psychic (working for the KGB) to kill the head of NASA. It’s got a ton of ideas and somehow captures the its subject perfectly. I’d love to see a feature version of this.
Found In Time was part of a sci-fi block that started later that night, that included two well-done shorts, The Dahl House (directed by Jason Markowitz and Zac Grant)and Hole (directed by Brian McCann).
The Dahl House is about a family that seems to be living in an underground bunker. But the son is having trouble making friends. Can dad help him out? It’s a Walt Disney meets Twilight Zone film. This was really well-made – it’s inventive, shows rather than tells, and has a great twist. It also features some really nice performances and has a great, lo-fi look to it.
Hole is about a young, rational, realistic guy who suddenly finds himself in the middle of either a quirky string of coincidences or a web of interconnected, suspicious events. It’s another film that shows rather than tells, has some understated, winning performances, and is really well shot and edited.
Both of these films treat the audience like adults, and the filmmakers were a lot of fun to hang out with as well. I wish them a lot of luck on the festival circuit!
After three days of film watching, networking, and hitting up the after-parties, I had to take a break. But we came back to hit up the “Dark Side” screening block.
Indigo (directed by John Hawthorne Smith) was a really great tragic thriller. Eli Casey is an up-and-coming photographer, happy husband and father, and recovering heroin addict. When his son is kidnapped, his whole life falls apart, and his old habits start getting the better of him. He tries to battle both his inner demons and figure out the mystery of his son’s disappearance. This is a heavy film, but NOT a downer. It’s a well-acted, well-directed film, takes its time, doesn’t try to rush the scenes, and builds up the dread.
This has to be one of the best fests that we’ve been to, in terms of the quality of the films, the dedication of the staff, and the good vibe of the fans and fellow filmmakers. Can’t wait to come back next year and soak in the films as an audience member!
Just a quick reminder that we’ll be screening at the Art Of Brooklyn Film Festival!
WHEN: Thursday, May 8th, 8pm (reception) / 9pm (screening starts)
WHERE: St. Francis College, Founders’ Hall, 180 Remsen St., Brooklyn, NY
TICKETS: $10 for the evening – includes the reception, 2 shorts, Found In Time, and a Q&A!
MORE INFO: AOBFF Page
I’ll be there with DP Ben Wolf, editor Dan Loewenthal, costume designer Ghislaine Sabiti, and other crewmembers for a post-screening Q&A!
First, the great news: Found In Time has been picked up for domestic DVD/digital distribution, by Green Apple Entertainment! Many thanks to our producer’s rep, Glen Reynolds at Circus Road Films, for working so hard and never giving up in the film.
Second, it’s time to take stock a bit and figure out what, if anything, we learned about distribution during the past year of trying to chase it down. This will be an ongoing process, since the actual distribution phase of the film has just started, but here are some initial thoughts.
When my girlfriend heard that the film had gotten a distributor, her first reaction was “that’s great.” Her second was, “so that means you can move on, right?” For better or worse, no.
Unless you’re one of the lucky contestants who win the jackpot – a decent all-rights deal with an actual advance – distribution is really the third act of the very long (melo-)drama that is the making of your film. Distributors want to make money. You probably want money too, but you also want other things – fans for your next film, a sustainable filmmaking career (whatever that means these days), and some exposure for your work. Sometimes exposure runs counter to income (as anyone traveling the festival circuit knows).
Once you have a distributor, you now have to put together your deliverables.
The last few deliverables contracts that we’ve seen (both for our film and others’) have specified that the projection master be delivered via QuickTime. Tape delivery (on HDCAM-SR, DigiBeta or other formats) has mostly gone by the wayside. This is great news, in that at least you don’t have to shell out for dubs at the point where you can least afford them.
On the other hand, it may mean that the distributor is fronting those costs through post house deals they have, which also means that they’re going add them to their list of expenses. Which means you may have to wait even longer to see any money. Find out if that’s what’s going on. Perhaps your post contacts can even outbid theirs?
Artwork is key. If you have a poster, postcard, DVD sleeve, etc. artwork, then make sure to provide them to the distributor, preferably as layered Photoshop (PSD) file. Don’t forget to include font files for any custom fonts you’ve used.
Make sure you get good stills, or know how to intelligently grab still frames from your film and resample them properly for print. Learn the difference between web-friendly and print-friendly graphics! If you don’t know this stuff and don’t have time to learn or just don’t feel confident that the results will be any good, find someone (and pay them something) to do it for you.
Get a music cue sheet from your composer! This is nothing more or less than a list of all the music cues in your film, named, with the beginning/end timecode of each. Didn’t get it from the composer? Track done your sound post folks. Is neither an option? Then it’s time to watch your film in your NLE and write down cues!
A timed dialog list is very helpful to have. That’s a list of every line of dialog as it was uttered by your actors (you’d be surprised how different it is from what you wrote), along with the timecode start/stop points. You also want to include title cards, written words on screen (like on someone’s phone), voice-overs/off-screen dialog, and even “human sounds” (laughter, grunts, etc).
This list will be used to create subtitles and dubs of your film, if you happen to get foreign distribution. It’s incredibly tedious to make these, but if you can stand to do it yourself you’ll save some bucks. Here’s an Excel template with some example lines from Found In Time to show you what one looks like.
Found In Time will be distributed on DVD and digitally. There’s no guarantee of what exact shape that distribution will take, or how long it will take to get the film out there. While that’s happening, we want to publicize the fact that it’s getting distribution, so that more people will still be interested in buying it when it’s finally available.
The best ways to do that:
We’ve taken the film to festivals and critics, and have used Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and our monthly e-blast to get the word out. We could be doing more with social media, but honestly there aren’t enough hours in the day.
We’ve also sent out personal emails to people we know and love, letting them know about the film, and offering quid pro quo if they’ll get the word out. So if they have something going on they’d like us to publicize, we’ll be happy to do it. Not only is this good networking, it’s also a decent way to be.
One of the things we’re considering right now is whether to do some kind of limited theatrical distribution. We could use an intermediary, who will charge a service fee; or use a company like Tugg, that does ‘event-type’ screenings and doesn’t cost very much up front; or do something non-traditional. We’re considering the latter option right now. Since we made a sci-fi film, we’re reaching out to sci-fi conventions to see if they’d screen it as part of their film sidebar (if they have one).
Our strategy is evolving, and we’re still learning, about this amazing (and sometimes frustrating) game. But we’ll post more details – and of course, the street date for the DVD and streaming – soon. Until then!