F**KING SWEET!

(but I don’t think PRECIOUS should have been shot in 3D).

Personally, while imbued with a healthy does of skepticism and prone to ranting, I’m looking for a glimmer of hope on the horizon. It is with those glasses and crash helmet that I begin this series I’m calling “Filmmakers are Dead” (we’ve talked about Dark Tony, right?). My goal is very selfish: I hope to better understand what’s going on and hopefully get your two-cents in the process. In order to give this series some structure, I’m gonna release one installment per basic reporter questions (i.e., who, what, when, where, why and how).

Welcome to the first installment:

Who?

As I’ve already mentioned, this is very much the old guard (mainstream media such as the studios, broadcasters and all those that profit from working with them under the current structure) versus forward thinking up-and-coming artists.

Allow me a tangent here (the first of many). Let’s breakdown these artists of the internet age into the major disciplines addressed by Scott in the interview above. We can safely say that the majority of internet artists are either musicians, animators or filmmakers. I’d like to permanently break filmmakers out from under this umbrella. Why?

1. Unlike musicians or animators, filmmakers can’t make movies by themselves in their bedrooms. Filmmakers need crews, locations and actors/subjects.
2. Films, on the whole, will always cost more than the output of musicians or animators. While Jill Sobule can hold a web-a-thon to raise $75,000 to comfortably record a very polished album, a filmmaker would need to raise anywhere from three to ten times that amount to create an equally commercially viable and polished film.
3. Independent feature films don’t lend themselves to the internet by simple virtue of their length. According to Scott, five minutes is the longest any internet video should run (after that, viewers bounce). And again, unlike the musician who can put their full length album up as individual MP3s, the feature filmmaker can’t really present their film as a chopped up series of shorts.

Let me tackle another tangent. The popular term for filmmakers of the internet age is content creator and personally, I hate that term. I know it’s meant to expand the understood scope of what filmmakers create (features, shorts, websites, web series,  games, ARGs, etc.) but it makes me sound like I’m some corporate shill pumping out widgets for customers. It strips the art out of what we do. Yes, I understand that one of the keys to survival under this is new model is identifying your audience and targeting them with laser like precision but that also means you need to brand and market yourself as a specific kind of content creator. You are the dude that makes motorcycle films, period. Me, I’m still exploring my artistic voice but I beleive all my works are steeped with the themes that drive me, Look at Scorsese. It doesn’t matter if he makes a period romance, a gangster flick, a horror thriller or even a music video, you can recognize his works by their themes and style. Me, I’m a filmmaker.

Now, let’s get back to the “them” that I simply described as the old guard. Yes, it’s easy to boo the major studios and broadcasters, their corporate parents and all their related media spawn but don’t we all want to play in their yard? I know we’re all in an economic crisis and I don’t know where they get the stones to say “instead of giving you a commercial with a six-figure budget we’re gonna demand a high quality product with a two week turn around but we’re only gonna give ya pizza money and we’re gonna call it a viral video, which we’re gonna post all over YouTube, Hulu, you name it, but we’re not sharing any of the profits. The exposure is your profit. BTW, since we’re the copyright holders we’re not gonna let you post it on your own website. Cool? My lawyers tell me it’s cool” but don’t we still do the job for the exposure and the pizza money? Hey, cold pizza will feed ya for most of the week. Plus, aren’t they scouting us, hazing us, testing us to see if we might be the right person to direct the webisodes based on their new Christian Slater series? I know it’s terribly unfair but…

Another tangent: I love how clients ask for viral videos. Um, you can’t make a viral video. You make a video, send it out into the world and it either becomes viral or it doesn’t. That’s for the internet to decide.

So now we have some idea of the players, their motivations and how they clash and commingle but let me leave you with this question: Unions and their members are always confronting major corporations (as they should) but how do they interface with new media? I’m not talking about television shows repurposed for the internet but rather original content. How do they (or any of us) make a living from new media, much less collect dues to pay for benefits? Before you answer so quickly, have you seen the budgets on new media programs? They’re all over the map: Joss Whedon‘s DOCTOR HORRIBLE cost in the low six figures, John August‘s THE REMNANTS cost over $25k and I know some folks that make internet shorts for less than $100 a pop. Want one union’s answer to new media? Check out SAG’s New Media Rate Sheet?

Next week: What?

Of the movies I’ve seen this year, my three Oscar hopefuls are:

BTW, it was much harder to pick three possibilities than I originally imagined.

On a tangent, it’s been one hell of a week for celebrity deaths. We lost Ed McMahon who gave us this awesome point of reference.

We lost Farrah Fawcett who advanced mainstream cheesecake (as well as many a young boy’s adolescence) thanks to this poster.

And finally we lost the King of Pop who, as a friend said, gave us dance moves you can quote. Here’s a video directed by my man Marty.

In the time since I’ve shot my film, I’ve come to realize this – I don’t have the time to edit my film myself. I’m working three job just trying to tread water plus my attention keeps getting diverted to other projects. Also, I need fresh eyes on this film. Yes, I’m a good editor but I don’t think I should be editing my own film. I need an objective opinion, or at least a second opinion. I’m willing to enter a co-editing situation, I just need a kindred soul to help see me through.

So who is my idea candidate? I’m looking for someone cool and by cool I mean chill and intelligent and a good fit for me, my compliment. In short, I’m looking for my Thelma.

So if you’re a reader of this blog and we’ve worked together in the past or we went to school or we chatted at a festival or met at a party and you’re an editor, drop me a line.

Note: please don’t repost this w/o my prior consent. This is not an open job listing. I’m strictly looking for folks I know or referrals from peeps I trust. I don’t want everyone and their mother to send me their reels (and yes, I said this is a “no-budget” feature).

I’m not sure if the first film I saw was TAXI DRIVER, GOODFELLAS or maybe even CAPE FEAR but I do know I first recognized the man behind the magic after I watched the Criterion laserdisc of RAGING BULL.

And who knows if his next flick will be about Jesuit priests, Teddy Roosevelt or yet another music documentary, I’m just glad he’s still making movies. Happy Birthday Mr. Scrosese.

PS, did I ever tell ya that we met? I have proof.

In a more “pop” sense, I realized (I think) that a piling on of signs and signifiers cobbled into a pastiche = post modern and every filmmaker working since the late 60s is guilty.

But let us not feel bad. Without pastiche we wouldn’t have “in” jokes, Tarantino wouldn’t have a creative output and we’d never get this little nugget from my man Marty.

In the book, these gentlemen mention many of their influences (I think Kurosawa received the most nods) but few spoke of a particular film. Even more interesting was that only three films were mentioned by two or more filmmakers. Here are those movies (and their original European posters).

Both Bernardo Bertolucci and Emir Kusturica gush over Jean Renoir’s RULES OF THE GAME. Bertolucci claims this film “attains the goal that every film should strive for: transporting us to a different place” while Emir calls this movie “cinema’s greatest masterpiece in terms of direction.” Those are both bold claims but I will says this: after watching the film on DVD, I had to rewatch it two more times. There are many layers and so much depth to this film that it does belong in the pantheon of great cinematic works.

Scorsese says that “every frame of Francois Truffaut’s JULES AND JIM is filled with beautiful information” while John Woo simply calls it one of his all time favorite films. Shamefully, I’ve never seen this film. I know, I know. It’s going in my Netflix queue right now.

This film was also one of John Woo’s personal favorites. David Lynch admires Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 for “it’s ability to communicate emotion through sheer magic.” I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Lynch (BTW, did I ever tell you that I met him at Astro Burger? he asked me “what looks good?” I told him I was having a bacon cheese burger.) regarding Fellini’s amazing movie. It’s such a rich film that I have to watch it over two nights.

A couple of tangents. First, I now have this image of John Woo and David Lynch sharing a popcorn while catching this film at The Egyptian. Second, while I don’t love everything John Woo has made, I’m reminded why he’ll always be more interesting than his action film directing contemporaries.

Lastly, the amazing folks at The Criterion Collection have all three masterworks available. Click on the artwork to learn more about the DVDs.

(On a side note, I love the clean, modern design of the Criterion DVD covers but I find the JULES AND JIM poster amazing)

(DING!)

It feels good to check that one off the list. Already checked “Go to Sundance for the first time” off the list. Hey, not bad. Time to slap myself on the back.

But I can’t get too comfortable. Some big ones to come: “Go to Cannes for the first time,” “Shoot my thesis film,” and “Get my first feature in the (possibly ‘digital’) can.”

Curious to watch this monkey behind the binary bars? You must be if you’re here.

And big props to my man Marty on his Oscar.