I am currently in Austin for South By Southwest Film and Interactive conference and festival. I’m here with the From Here to Awesome team, meeting (and recruiting) filmmakers, finding screening partners and shooting video for the educational component.
I’ve also been invited to speak on a panel about short films. The panel is on Tuesday, March 11 at 11am, in room 15 of the Austin Convention Center. Friends Jigar Mehta and Brent Hoff are on the panel with me.
Is it the Golden Age of Short Film? People keep saying it is, but I doubt many filmmakers have felt the gold yet. Some short films are bringing in more money than most award winning documentary’s are being sold for. Find out what is the best way to capitalize on these new potential revenue streams as Filmmakers and industry experts discuss if this will really finally elevate/free shorts to become an art form and not just a stepping stone to features.
For you die-hards who are still curious to learn more about Four Eyed Monsters, here is yet another audio interview. Director Daniel Schechter interviews Susan on Renart Films. This one is worth noting because it is a semi-rare opportunity to hear Susan’s side of the story alone and because Schechter moderates a compelling discussion covering a wide range of topics in a (relatively) short period of time (51 min).
Susan tells about an email that Arin received from someone who discovered the film as a free, unofficial (and basically illegal) download on Bittorrent. He loved the film so much that he bought a t-shirt and DVD from the website. This is a great follow-up example to the grilling a London filmmaker gave me about whether it’s possible to make money when you’re giving your film away for free.
More and more frequently, filmmakers ask me for feedback on their film websites, and I keep seeing the same thing: heavy, multimedia sites built on Flash. I keep seeing site navigation all in a full-screen image representing some iconic place in the film; animations of design elements flying or fading in on every page; music playing automatically; long loading screens; and the dreaded splash pages. This seems to have become the standard. Hollywood does it. (See: Beowulf, Lions for Lambs, American Gangster.) The indies do it. (e.g. Margot at the Wedding, Eagle vs. Shark, Weirdsville). It’s awful, and it’s so Web 1.0.
We are well beyond denying that a film website is the most effective and often the only entry point to discovery of your film. The audience has to jump an increasingly absurd number of hurdles to see your movie in the theater. The website is an opportunity to introduce the film as quickly as possible, provide the detailed information your audience and the media are looking for, to engage your audience repeatedly, and to make it ridiculously easy for fans to promote your film for you.
Below, I’m going to explain why this ancient model fails and suggest a few starting points for an alternative approach. Read the rest of this entry »
Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of participating in the Power to the Pixel conference at the London Film Festival. Liz Rosenthal, director of the conference, invited me to join Arin, Susan and a number of other pals and speak to a breakout group after the rest of the conference. The Q&A was moderated by Richard Ayers of Magic Lantern.
I introduced myself and my role in the Four Eyed Monsters self-distribution. We focused on the application of traditional business principals to the changing models of media distribution. Have a look:
Today, I decided that it would be cool to have an elimination tournament of “Frat Pack” movies. Films would be judged, two at a time, by a panel of judges to be selected by me. The winning film would be rewarded with a mention on blog.chirls.com. To qualify, a film must have at least two of the following actors: Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughan, Jack Black. Films directed by Wes Anderson are ineligible, as are films whose titles begin with “Meet the.”
Ok, this is pretty hilarious. Our beloved President has posted a fun little video ad on his campaign website. It’s a series of clips of a bunch of Democrats saying nasty things about Bush, ending with something about how we should be optimistic instead of getting all pissy. They even managed to get Hitler in there somehow. I think it was from that moveon thing from way back. But that wasn’t made by anyone in the Kerry camp, and they denounced that anyway. [more from Salon]
I can see where that message might appeal to some people, but is it really worth giving the Dems an opportunity to make their point right on the main page of georgebush.com? Are these guys being ballsy, desperate or just plain obtuse? I mean, Hitler? Honestly. The Kerry campaign doesn’t seem to find this as funny as I do. Check out this blog entry . Bush has a blog too. I have no plans to waste my time with either of them.
Speaking of entertaining politics, both the New York Times and The New Yorker have profiles of Governor Schwarzenegger this week. Both very well written, interesting and informative. They both portray him as quite charismatic and give a deeper, more nuanced impression of him than most media coverage he’s received so far. I still think he’s a schmuck.
Coincidentally or not, Terminator 3 was on tonight. As I’m staying home to do laundry, I watched it. All of it, actually. It’s surprisingly not awful. Two aspects that bother me about it are the handful of gaping holes in logic and the dumbed-down, exposition-heavy dialogue. Funny and maybe a bit ironic how these guys over-explain everything, giving too much information in movies and give way too little in politics. I would have thought it should be the other way around. However, there are some similarities. Like much politics today, Terminator 3 is basically a parody of the last one from a decade ago but dumber and with a lot more unnecessary destruction.
The event has officially been announced, and the invitations have gone out. Some of you may not have received the email. Here are a few possible reasons:
1) You have trained your adaptive spam filter on my name and/or any of the countless sales-oriented words in the body of the invitation message.
2) I tried to email you, but I don’t have a recent address for you.
3) You are not invited. Sucks for you that you’re not my friend.
A select few will fall into category 1) or 2). If this is the case, send an email my way, and I’ll make sure you have all the details. The rest of you may send an email with your name, address and social security number to spam@chirls.com.
Ok, this is pretty hilarious. Our beloved President has posted a 