All those weekends spent at my brother’s house watching Headbanger’s Ball and being disturbed by the visual tales told alongside the sounds of Tool, Nine Inch Nails, and Alice in Chains actually paid off. Thank you MTV (when you actually lived up to your name.)
This past weekend I shot my first music video for faux-folk singer/songwriter Pepper Coat. Those of you who know me will know that I’m not much of a music video guy; the last one I’d ever really enjoyed was for Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” back in the ‘90s. But because I enjoy Pepper Coat’s folky tunes I decided to come on board and help him stretch his nostalgic soul deeper into the Internet.
One of my favorite shots from the Pepper Coat shoot.
The storyline of Pepper Coat’s latest single “She’s Gone and I’m Here” is pretty standard and summed up in the title, which is a benchmark of all great songs that stand the test of time. The nonlinear storyline of the video itself, however, which I wrote, is a bit more complex: The character of Pepper Coat is lost in his brooding mind which is haunted by memories of girlfriends past that don’t want to be forgotten. But Pepper Coat can’t move on unless he exorcises those apparitions so that he might find a special someone at the café next door.
Pepper Coat gave me free reign to tell whatever story I wanted, and although my first draft was “cliché” (his word…and eventually mine), I then rewrote the script, taking his only suggestion: “How about many women?” That’s what the story needed, and so it became an amalgam of my short film Perfekt (similar storyline of one guy with many women) and Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (alternating those women within various scenes).
The only other criteria Edmund Lawrence Kasubinski III (the man behind the music) gave was for him to be in a tuxedo and to have a scene in a graveyard. Done and done all thanks to a marvel of a producer, Marinell Montales, who single-handedly put her first production together on a below micro budget. Of course, the video was shot with Alain Aguilar, my best friend and brother behind the moving images in Perfekt and Cerise.
The visual story had been pretty straightforward on paper until Alain, Marinell and I went location scouting a few days prior to shooting. Until then, I never fully understood the importance of a location scout, but I now see how it can change a few elements, and always for the better. With Alain’s guidance as my trusted friend and cinematographer, we were able to create shots that were a bit more conceptual in nature, and a lot more like a music video, something that proved a bit challenging for me as a more linear storyteller.
Shooting this music video was, for me, like opening a door into a new world of ideas and themes I want to address in future productions, like plastification, which I explore in the video in the form of mimicking Edward Hopper paintings, will also be a prevalent motif in my next production Mating Dome and the idea of memories as ghosts which I’ll give further shape to in the short films that make up my “Memory Trilogy.”
Edward Hopper's mood and tone is prevalent in the Pepper Coat video.
I have to say that I was very happy with every shot Alain and I set up, and would like to thank the wonderful cast and crew who worked without pay and who went into overtime each day just so we could put together a music video we’d all be proud to include in our portfolios, reels and shelves. So a big thanks to our crew (Alain, Beth Drenning, Joe Lomas, Tatsuro Nishimura, and our amazing make-up artist Vanessa Brun), all our leading ladies (Uvannie Enriquez, Loarina Gonzalez, Jennivere Lee, Cat Migliaccio, Jessica I. Silvestre, Kate Young, and Mariana Vily), our leading man Pepper Coat and of course, our producer Marinell!
And, of course, a special thanks to Walter Enders and Two Guys Pizza and Grill for donating some tasty food to keep the cast and crew smiling the whole way through!
Aside from writing and directing the music video for Pepper Coat’s “She’s Gone and I’m Here” (and recovering from the poison ivy I got from our first shooting day at the Jersey City Cemetery!), I’m also editing it and I’m hoping to have something to unveil in September, so stay tuned, folks!
8/28/11 UPDATE: Callbacks and Further Auditions Announced!
Following on the heels of my most recent short film Cerise, I’m pleased to announce that I’m getting ready to tackle my next short film––Mating Dome, a sci-fi comedy which “exposes” the true nature of mating in the 22nd Century!
Callbacks and Second Casting Call
We are still seeking our lead female roles. If you auditioned for us back on Saturday, August 20th, you may be getting a call if you made the cut, so be on the lookout for a phone call from our producer Ruben Rodas or our AD Pao Calderon this week.
If you’d like to audition, we’re looking for fun, sexy, slim and talented actresses between 20 and 30 years of age to play supermodels from the future. The film will be shot over the first weekend in October (September 30th, October 1st and 2nd) in New York City.
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, please email a PDF resume along with a recent head shot and, if possible, a swim suit picture (preferred, but not required) to matingdome.casting@gmail.com.
This casting call is open to union and non-union talent, and the position is PAID.
Now Seeking Male Parts
We’re also casting for one lead male role (speaking) in Mating Dome, as well as a few non-speaking roles. The physical requirement is key: You must be built! (This is the 22nd Century, a utopian future in which the women are slim and slender and the men are cut and ripped.)
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, please email a PDF resume along with a recent head shot and, if possible, a body picture (preferred, but not required) to matingdome.casting@gmail.com.
This casting call is open to union and non-union talent.
Who’s the Team Behind the Dome?
Well, I’ll be directing and editing Mating Dome, and you can find out more about who I am simply by perusing the stories that make up my Manvelope or by following me on Twitter. The film will be starring Joe Whelski (who also wrote the story and script) and will be shot by Alain Aguilar, which marks the comeback of a talented triumvirate that once went by the name Nothingman Production, specializing in creating quality films (something) with little money (nothing)!
And we’ve got even more help! Mating Dome will be produced by Ruben Rodas of Skyframe Pictures, and as a producer, he’s building up quite a resume for himself; definitely someone to keep an eye on if you need to get things done.
Follow, Like, and Keep Informed
That’s all for now, but you can get a head start on keeping up with all that’s going on under the Mating Dome by following the film on Twitter and “Liking” the Facebook page!
Cheers, everyone, and don’t forget to close your towel!
So you now know some of the keys of a successful campaign from reading the first post in my Tao of Crowdfunding series, but that’s only part of the ongoing battle to find alternative sources for financing our creative projects. Based on the incredible response “The Three Ps for a Successful Film Campaign” received from the indie film community and beyond, I’ve decided to soldier on and address a topic which some of my closest friends have cited as a bit of a concern––Crowdfunder Etiquette.
Some of you might be thinking to yourselves I didn’t know such a thing existed! It does or doesn’t, based on your own experiences crowdfunding. But I prefer to call it by its more common name: Good Manners. Whether your crowdfunding platform is IndieGoGo, Kickstarter or any of the myriad others out there, here are five basic tenets every campaigner should follow:
1. “I’m Not Only the Campaigner, I’m Also a Funder!”
Some of you may remember that 1980s TV commercial for The Hair Club for Men and Cy Sperling’s famous concluding statement “I’m not only the Hair Club president, but I’m also a client.”
Similarly, you should be more than just the filmmaker, musician or entrepreneur by having something more tangible than time invested in your project. Surprisingly, this is something crowdfunders rarely do. Let’s be honest––if you are not willing to put your money into your own campaign, how can you ask any of your friends to contribute, let alone a perfect stranger? Whether it’s $5 or $5,000, you should be the one to jump-start your own campaign either by setting aside your own cash and raising additional funds, or by contributing to your own campaign via IndieGoGo or Kickstarter. With Cerise, for instance, I opted for the first choice, saving up $10,000 and crowdfunding for $5,000 more. And, of course, I let my potential funders know that within the first thirty seconds of my pitch video. If you opt for the second choice, your name should appear (as opposed to being listed as “Anonymous”) in your “Funders” tab so that others know you’re not only the campaigner, but your also a contributor. This kind of transparency is absolutely vital to the integrity and ultimately the success of your campaign.
2. Saying Please and Thank You
Remember “The Please and Thank You Song” from Barney and Friends? (Fear not! I won’t salt the wound this reference may have opened by posting the video here.) These “magic words” run marathons in all circles. So when you promote your campaign on Twitter or Facebook, whenever possible include a simple “please” (or its abbreviation when it comes to character limits) in each one.
Travis Legge tweets "Please" for Poetic on IndieGoGo.
More importantly, whenever you receive a contribution, the absolute least you can do is thank that person. Sending an email, message on Facebook and/or Direct Message on Twitter is fine, too, but in today’s multifaceted social media stew, the more out in the open a “Thank You” is, the better.
The Red Scare Team humorously thanks a new contributor, keeping with their 1950s "Red Scare" motif.
Apart from thanking contributors to your campaign, it’s equally important to thank any- and everybody who retweets your tweets about your project or shares your link on Google+ and Facebook. It’s polite and shows that you appreciate their part in getting the word out about your campaign.
Writer/Producer Sam Platizky thanks yours truly for tweeting about his latest zombie comedy.
Another, more general thank you, but just as strong and just as personal.
It’s about making people feel appreciated by publicly acknowledging them for all the good things they’re doing on your behalf.
3. Send Contributors Something N0w And Later
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote “With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.” And so do your funders. You should give them something more immediate than a signed copy of your new album when it’s finished several months after your campaign has ended. It can be something personalized for the funder at one of the lower perk levels, and somehow related to the project you’re campaigning for, like these awesome perks from Sync:
I love the smell of nostalgia in the morning!
When I contributed to Brendon Fogle’s short film, I received my perks––a pair of records from Brendon’s personal collection and two Sync stickers––a few short weeks after clicking “Contribute Now” on IndieGoGo. Now I’ve got a constant reminder of Sync until the film’s finished up and I can get my DVD in the future.
A sound designer named Christopher Postill recently got in touch with me about a campaign for his project Sounds Like an Earful, a pod cast about rethinking the sounds we’re surrounded by on a daily basis. Seeing the usual suspects of perks, I suggested he make them more personalized for his potential funders. When I saw his IndieGoGo page next, I saw he had added a perk in which he’d create a sound specifically for the funder. Another perk higher up the ladder lends itself to Christopher creating a piece of music that a funder can gift to a friend or family member or keep for him- or herself.
Now this is an immediate perk that packs a personal punch!
Not only are these new perks innovative and personal, but they’re also immediate; once they’re created, they can be posted on the funder’s Facebook wall, tweeted, or emailed.
4. Constantly Keep Your Funders Updated
So you spent three intense months crowdfunding like a rockstar. You thanked all your funders. You mailed them their perks. And at the end of the campaign trail you became another crowdfunding success story! Feels good to be done, right?
Even after all that, you’re only now seeing the finish line, but you’ve still got a ways to go. Just as it’s important to keep your funders updated throughout your campaign, it’s just as important to maintain a steady stream of updates about the progress of your project even after the campaign has ended. Your funders have contributed to your campaign for various reasons, whether it’s because of your personalized pitch, your cool perks, or because they’re family and have to, but they’re also giving something more than money to you and your campaign, so the least you can do is make them feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves.
Perhaps Cerise funder Andrew Bichler said it best in this quick video about why he contributed to my short film:
You heard it right from a proud funder’s mouth: “What really turned me on [was] the fact that I, as an everyday guy, could get involved in funding and supporting the arts…” As such, it’s gratifying to be kept in the loop about what’s going on regarding a project you’ve become a part of; I receive regular updates with behind the scenes footage, post-production notes and other status updates from many of the projects I’ve contributed to like Red Scare, Tilt and How Do You Write a Joe Schermann Song. If you don’t update your audience, they may start to think all kinds of outrageous things, the worst of which quite possibly being “Well, I won’t support that person’s campaigns any more!” Again, it’s all about appreciation, so treat your funders with the same respect that you’d show an investor, whether they’re contributing at the $1 rung or closer to the top of the ladder.
5. When Engaging Your Community, Don’t Solicit, Elicit
Perhaps the greatest aspect of the indie community is that in most cases it will come to bat for you during your crowdfunding campaign. The most recent account is probably the come-from-behind victory of Lucas McNelly’s A Year Without Rent, which had been stagnant for the long haul of the campaign. But in its final days and hours, this video project was pulled from the Sarlacc pit of unfunded dreams by the entire indie film community. This is an exceptional case, of course (I don’t recommend starting a campaign without plenty of preparation and a solid plan of action plotted out beforehand), but the lesson is pretty much standard: If you show passion for your project and drive it forward, your community will come to your aid.
Every time I tweet about my current 3rd Crusade for Cerise––in which I seek film festival submission funds from friends and followers so I can continue submitting my short film to festivals––I make sure each one is unique and clever, and sure enough, my followers retweet it to their followers. I haven’t had to ask anyone to “please RT” anything in over a year because I’ve built up some credibility by showing them that I take pride not only in my film, but also in every minute detail that makes up the whole of Cerise.
If it happens to be a holiday, I make my tweets about that holiday.
If the project you're campaigning for centers around certain subject matter, keep that subject in play.
As crowdfunders, we might try to elicit help from our respective communities and solicit less simply by showing them how truly important our campaigns are to us and how imperative their support can be in helping us reach our crowdfunding goals.
BONUS: Promotion, Not Spamotion!
There are many ways to get people not to contribute to your campaign or help you with promoting it, but by far the most sure-fire method is by coming across in your promotion as a spam artist. And I’m not just talking about sending the exact same tweet five times a day; other ways include linking your personal and project’s Twitter accounts so that those same five tweets per day are now ten tweets (but more on that in my next Tao of Crowdfunding post “Twitter Tips for Crowdfunders”) and even appending your campaign’s information as a comment onto another campaign’s page! This unscrupulous practice is actually such a problem that Kickstarter needed to mention it as one of their “Community Guidelines” on their FAQ page:
You'd think some things still fall into the realm of common sense. Not so much...
Be a pro when planning out the promotion tactics for your campaign. Even when I would promote my IndieGoGo campaign for Cerise directly on my friends’ Facebook walls, it was always personalized enough that I was able to avoid the pitfalls of those annoying “Need Cash Now?” advertisements texted to people’s phones. So be personable when publicizing your campaign to steer clear of the “unfriend” and “block” features that occur with social networking and you’ll soon see that the personal touch leads to the Midas touch.
In Short…
My Dad always used to tell me “by nice ways you’ll accomplish everything.” A lot of this may seem like common sense to some of us, but it’s this kind of sense seems less and less common. As crowdfunders, we’re asking people for money, and when we ask for anything and get it, the least we can do is show our gratitude to those who gave it. By treating your funders and supporters properly, you’re not only gathering money for this one project, you’re also forging a stronger network, and at times friendships, that will stand by your side long after your first campaign has ended. And when you start another campaign for your next project, those same people will be ready to show their support once again to back a rising star and a real mensch!
* * * * *
What are YOUR thoughts about crowdfunder etiquette? FUNDERS: Any props or pet peeves YOU’d like to share about crowdfunders you’ve encountered? Fill up the section below with your comments, questions or concerns!
Recently, I had the opportunity to step in for IndieGoGo co-founder Slava Rubin for a presentation about crowd-funding at a seminar sponsored by the New York Women In Film and Television (NYWIFT). Though the seminar was primarily focused around grant writing and the more traditional ways of getting money for films, more of the attendees seemed ready to merge onto the more active freeway of crowd-funding rather than take the passive back roads of grant writing.
If a Buddhist, a Confucianist, and a Taoist all tried to crowd-fund, which would be most successful?
Although crowd-funding has been around for a few years now, it’s still the big buzz word amongst the indie community. IndieGoGo and Kickstarter have become household names, with other platforms rising to the challenge but falling a bit short of the kind of success maintained by these luminaries. The only real issue I find with crowd-funding is that many people jump into a campaign without the proper knowledge of how it all works or without a carefully planned outline. Specifically, there are things that every filmmaker should be aware of before embarking on a campaign, things that have been proven to work not just for my short film Cerise, but for many other, more recent projects as well.
There are three aspects of crowd-funding that should be thoroughly sketched out before your campaign goes live, and they are pitch, perks, and promotion (what I’ve termed The Three Ps of Crowd-Funding.)
The Pitch: Your First Impression is Everything
Your pitch is the single most important part of your campaign because it’s the one and only chance you have to sell yourself and not necessarily your project. Talk to your potential backers. Tell them about yourself, and then eventually tell them why you want to make this film and why they should help. Keep in mind the “they”––we may think that crowd-funding is about us, but the word “I” isn’t a part of this neologism; it’s all about the crowd, so make it about them.
A mistake that many crowd-funders make is not appearing in their pitch video. The truth is YOU MUST APPEAR IN YOUR PITCH. Not many people will give money to a photograph or a movie trailer. People give to other people. No one likes to ask for money, it’s true, but the least you can do is ask your potential funders as personally as possible, and in this case, your pitch is as personal as it gets.
Many of you have probably seen my pitch video for Cerise, which got the attention of IndieGoGo’s other co-founder Danae Ringelmann, and in turn she gave me the additional, last-minute confidence I needed to actually go live with my campaign. If you haven’t seen it, check it out below:
Granted, I went the extra yard with this pitch video and actually shot short scenes to further illustrate my perk levels, but not all pitch videos have to be this detailed. An excellent example of a simpler one that worked wonders is filmmaker Jeanie Finlay’s pitch for Sound It Out, a documentary about the last record shop in Teesside.
I’d originally made her acquaintance when she asked if I’d give her some feedback on her IndieGoGo campaign. I watched her pitch video, which was really just the trailer for the film. I told her she needs to be in that video and ask people for money directly rather than having them read her written pitch below the trailer. She kept it as is and launched the project.
A few weeks later I received a tweet from Jeanie with a link. Jeanie had not been raising much money, so she decided to rerecord her pitch video with her in it, and practically overnight she saw a major difference. Funds started coming in (through much promotion on her part, as well), and when all was said and done, she’d overshot her goal of $3,000 by $1,468! Now Sound It Out has screened at film festivals all over the world, including Sheffield Doc Fest, Silverdocs and Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Take a look at Jeanie’s second pitch video (that’s her in the foreground again!) when she launched another successful campaign for $5,000 to get her and her team to the über prestigious SXSW Film Festival where Sound It Out had its world premiere:
The Perks: Again, This Isn’t About You
This is really the basis of crowd-funding––you give me money, you get something in return. While there’s nothing wrong with offering tee-shirts, DVD copies, signed posters, and Associate and Executive Producer credit in your film, it’s much better to think outside the money box and GET PERSONAL WITH YOUR PERKS. The biggest example is with my own film Cerise. Originally, at the $10 perk level, I offered a shout out on Facebook and Twitter. Then my girlfriend and marketing mage Marinell Montales suggested I write each funder a poem. I’m a poet, yes, and Cerise is a film about words, yes, but like Dudley Randall, a poet is not a jukebox! My biggest concern was “what if I have to write, like, fifty poems?!” Well, I ended up writing over 100 poems, which Marinell beautifully formatted and posted on our funders’ Facebook walls to their surprise and delight.
An acrostic poem written for Kyle Baxter
Another example is the short film Sync, which very recently found success on IndieGoGo through a masterfully executed campaign spearheaded by filmmaker Brendon Fogle. He started out with one of the typical perks––stickers (very cool ones at that), but went the extra mile in his perk descriptions (it’s okay to get creative when asking for money, trust me!) Here’s an example:
Kudos for upping the nostalgia factor with "Trapper Keeper"!
Another of his perks was titled “33 1/3 RPMazing: $33” and this was where we got a glimpse into Brendon’s world, because at this level he sends you a record from his personal collection! I’m actually a very proud backer of Sync, and I was originally going to contribute at the $12 level so I’d have some money left over to finally join Pearl Jam’s Ten Club. Then I saw the $33 perk in all its coolness, and I just had to click “Contribute Now.” (Sorry, Eddie! Next year, perhaps.)
But Brendon didn’t stop there. Keeping with the theme of vinyl (the story of Sync revolves around a grandfather trying to connect with his MP3ed-in grandson through the gift of records), my favorite of his perks turns a mild-mannered funder into a super hip album cover!
"The Blue Note Treatment" = Brilliant!
From perks that hearken back to the old days to perk dollar amounts that reflect record RPMs, it’s that fine attention to detail that funders want to see. So go the distance and make every aspect of your perks count for something special.
Plenty of Promotion: Crowd-Funding is Another Word for Marketing
I’ve said it at the Apple Store in SoHo, I said it again to the packed house of the NYWIFT event, and I’ve written it down in my prior crowd-funding post “Read Me Up Before You (Indie)GoGo!”––CROWD-FUNDING IS A FULL-TIME JOB. Anyone who tells you otherwise must not have had a very successful campaign.
A successful crowd-funding campaign demands around-the-clock promotion. In today’s technocracy, that translates to constant tweets, relentless Facebook status updates, email blasts up the wazoo, sleep strikes, the occasional hunger strike, and any other means by which to keep your project on the minds of your friends, family, and supporters. It also means having some fun with your promotion, keeping your audience engaged with things like contests, giveaways, fun videos, and the like. Brendon sure had fun with his video updates for Sync:
I’m sure many people worry about the rejection that may result from a campaign with a strong social media presence. But really, it all depends on how you tackle your promotion. If that’s all you’re updating your status with and you’re not having any conversations on Twitter other than ones with #MyProject appended to them, then yes, you’ll most likely lose followers and friends very quickly, and rightly so––there’s a fine line between promotion and spamotion. Don’t cross it.
Or, if you do cross it, do it with tact. For instance, with Cerise, I took a chance that I was sure would end badly. When I wasn’t getting enough “Likes” and “Comments” (and, by extension, not enough contributions) from my friends on Facebook by simply posting the link to our IndieGoGo page on my wall, I started to post the link directly on my friends’ walls with a bit of small talk and a humble request for their support. To my surprise, I received plenty of contributions using this tactic, and only lost one friend and, ironically enough, gained over 300 more by the end of the campaign. It all depends on how you come across in your promotion, like a company or like a person.
And this brings me to the final P of crowd-funding (I know, I said there were only three, but only because this last aspect of crowd-funding was woven through each of the others I mentioned)––Personalization. That’s perhaps the biggest difference between traditional ways of funding a film and crowd-funding; investors invest in projects, while people invest in people. That’s probably the most important thing to walk away from after reading this blog post aside from a few helpful tips that have been proven to work from a handful of victorious projects: PERSONALIZE EVERYTHING IN YOUR CAMPAIGN. The spirit of your pitch, your perks, and your promotion should be YOU as a person; give to your potential funders a piece of you, and they’ll give you more than just a part of their paycheck.
They’ll give you the power you need to really succeed!
Any crowd-funding stories or tips YOU’d like to share? Write them up in the “Comments” section below and perhaps I’ll be able to work them into my next blog post about this subject.
I recently had a brief but insightful discussion with a screenwriter friend of mine about just how long it should take to write a short script. Apparently, someone mentioned she’d taken a while to finish her fifteen-page script, suggesting that in the time it took her to finish writing it, he or she could’ve completed the entire film from Final Draft to Final Cut, perhaps. It got me thinking about this lightning-fast world of ours and the many filmmakers in it who hold to this mentality, that the more films they make, the better their films will get in time. While this makes perfect sense from a technical skills standpoint, it says nothing about quality storytelling, and for a film to be as good as it can be, the script needs to be as good as it can be.
If the three acts of filmmaking are writing, shooting and editing, then quality can only begin in that first act, like the exposition of any great movie. It comes down to a question of quality versus quantity, and the former in any film, indie or otherwise, begins on the page. So every filmmaker should practice being a filmwriter first and foremost. Innovation in filmmaking is another integral part of the process, but a filmmaker should know his or her story inside and out and work out any kinks on paper before they can discover interesting and effective new ways of progressing that story from beginning to end.
But today, since new toys are readily at every indie filmmaker’s disposal and at relatively cheap prices, just about anyone can shoot some footage, edit it together on an iPhone and swiftly move on to the next. At this year’s Cannes Short Film Corner, for instance, my short film Cerise was one of 1900 other short films that’d been registered at the festival’s Digital Film Library. With this faster workflow in mind, it’s no wonder there are so many more auteurs out here making movies on more regular bases, and each time hoping one of them might afford them their big break.
It’s the same procedure that screenwriters undergo, really. They slave over laptops tapping away at their next feature with the same levels of hard work and hope that filmmakers exhibit when they bring those words to life on the screen. But screenwriters know the importance of composing coherent and compelling stories before the cameras start capturing them in HD; you can easily revise a few pages of dialogue, but you can’t revise a few slapdash shots that were slapdash because they weren’t fleshed out enough in the first act of the filmmaking process. Then, two wicked words are born: “Reshoot” and “Overbudget.”
Nowadays, though, it seems indie filmmakers––most of whom don’t necessarily consider themselves screenwriters––choose quantity over quality in the hopes of perfecting their storytelling skills that way because of the belief that “film is a visual medium.” This crutch seems to excuse most filmmakers from ever honing their skills as filmwriters, which might be acceptable if the story you’re telling with the camera isn’t your own (here’s the other crutch, that “film is a director’s medium.”) But with most indie filmmakers I know, the stories are our own, and stories aren’t told through storyboards alone; even comic book panels need words.
As a filmmaker second and writer first, shooting a script that’s not 100% camera-ready can be counterproductive, not to mention pricey––a laptop and a latté look better on the budget sheet! I work on a script for as long as it needs, getting the dialog right, describing the action on paper so well that my crew will see the shot the way I see it (I rarely use storyboards, though drawing was my first art), and then shoot it swiftly and without much extraneous thought on set. It’s the only way I can ensure the quality in my work.
Aside from the two features I’ve been working on, I’ve been slowly crafting two short films in a “Memory Trilogy” I’m piecing together. The first film, Statuetory, is five years old and wasn’t entirely working until I decided to challenge myself and tell the story in a nonlinear fashion. That was all it needed; now, a story that was a bit confusing and as preachy as early Woody Allen is now a bit less talky and much more filmic. I couldn’t have rewritten this short script back then the way I’d recently done; I needed the experience of writing Cerise, then rewriting it mere days before it was shot. Now, Statuetory and the second installment of the trilogy, Café Mnemosyne, are both ready for the 5D Mark II.
This question of quality versus quantity reminds me of what a screenwriting professor told me once, which I’m sure I’d mentioned in a previous post. He said that back in Hollywood’s heyday, creative writing classes were a required part of students’ studies as tomorrow’s screenwriters. Nowadays, creative writing’s not even on the lunch menu for most filmmakers. That’s probably why there’s not many Billy Wilders out there anymore. Quality begins in Act One, no matter how beautiful and innovative your images are in Act Two or how innovative the edit is by Act Three. If it takes you a week to write a three-page script or six months to draft a twenty-pager, let it be. The audience doesn’t care how much time you spent writing the story, but it’ll be the first thing they critique if you didn’t spend enough on it.
On Cinco de Mayo, traditionally a time for celebration and revelry, my short film Cerise screened at Bergenfield Film Festival in my home state of New Jersey. “Screened” probably isn’t the most appropriate term––“Stretched along,” “skipped throughout” and “stopped occasionally” are more accurate descriptors.
The screening at BFF was nothing short of a disaster, but not so much for Cerise, although we did have our share of mishaps––from being projected in 4:3 instead of its proper aspect ratio of 16:9 with moments of low audio to a handful of skips and pixelation––but my good friends and fellow filmmakers Sam Platizky and Robert Lise, producer and director of the zombie comedy Blaming George Romero of which I’m a proud backer and cameo actor, got the dark brown end of the stick. This feature-length film, which played to a packed house of laughing moviegoers, skipped and skipped after the first 40 minutes or so, then completely froze on a single, horrifying image:
What’s worse is that after a fifteen-minute break (and because of that losing more than half of Blaming George Romero’s audience), the film continued where it left off only to skip and stop during the final twenty minutes of the film, which took a lot longer before the final credit bumper-to-bumpered away.
Now, if you’re a filmmaker reading this, you’re probably shaking your head at this unfortunate fiasco because you know as well as I do that it is completely unacceptable. But I did receive some tweets from film festival programmers who wanted to know all about the wrongs that BFF imposed on us so they might never fall into that easily avoidable pit themselves. So here’s a quick list of five things every film festival should make sure to do before festival time arrives. Some of this may seem like common sense, but apparently common sense is not as common as it once had been.
And here we go!
Watch (in Its Entirety) Each and Every “Official Selection”
As a filmmaker, I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes film festivals can get a bad DVD from us (not all of us can afford DiscMakers, so we opt for Staples brand instead), but if you don’t test it out by watching the film from beginning to end on the exact same equipment you’re going to use during the festival, you run the risk of inviting problems like what happened with Cerise and Blaming George Romero. My disc, which is a copy like all the other copies I’ve sent to every other film festival, worked perfectly fine when I tested it on my seven-year old Coby DVD player at home. So it must be the fact that BFF used a cheap Protron DVD player––a brand no longer in existence––to screen our films from. This brings me to my next point:
Use Up-To-Date Media Players and Projectors to Screen Those “Official Selections”
Protron? Really? I don’t even want to know what brand the projector was, all aslant and standard definition! Please invest in up-to-date equipment; Blu-ray players and HD projectors are the norm at many festivals now, but even if a festival can’t afford to screen everything in HD, DVD players and SD projectors are cheap enough nowadays for anyone to afford, so there’s no excuse not to have some tried and tested names playing and projecting the filmmakers’ work. Believe me, most filmmakers don’t give a darn about laminated badges and sleek programs; all they want is for their films to look spectacular projected on the screen, so screen them on equipment that will keep the integrity of their work intact. Granted, a friend and film festival director informed me that sometimes festivals use “Made in China” players because they can play both NTSC and PAL DVDs, which is a valid point, and understandable. But, we both agreed that it’s only common sense to…
Hire “Projectionists” Who Know Something About Projection
Admittedly, I know very little about projection, but I know enough that if a movie’s playing and it looks stretched, something needs to be fixed ASAP. As soon as Cerise began, I noticed the volume was too low. Easy fix: turn it up. The second thing I noticed was the aspect ratio was wrong. I was willing to let that slide, but once I saw my film start skipping and colorful pixels lighting up around my characters’ heads, I had to leave my own screening and, when I couldn’t track down anyone who knew anything, I spoke with the two older gentlemen manning the projection booth who had no ideas on how to fix the aspect ratio or pixelation. The moral of this part of my parable is to please be sure to hire projectionists who will pay attention to things like stretched picture and inaudible dialog, and who can make tweaks without affecting the audience’s enjoyment of the films at hand.
If You’re Running the Festival, Be Around To Run the Festival
If something goes wrong at a film festival, filmmakers need someone to go to immediately. In this case, the main person at BFF was nowhere to be found when the skips hit the fans. I figured he was either in the theater where his own film was screening or he was watching the movie that the entire evening was blatantly centered around (more about that in a few). The bottom line is that I needed a helping hand, but the crew from Blaming George Romero needed divine intervention, and in both instances this person was MIA, which is inexcusable. At one point we were directed by one of the projectionists to another person, one of the actual festival directors, I believe, but she was just as clueless as they were about the goings on of a film festival. The same way a film can’t be made without a director, a good festival director can make or break a film festival, and if you’re not around, well, it’s broken by default.
Make Filmmakers Feel Like Celebrities (Even in the Presence of “Celebrities”)
Nothing breaks a film festival like bias. This was my biggest issue with BFF. I can confidently say that I speak for all of the filmmakers who were misrepresented that evening when I say we all felt no more special than the audience did in the presence of the director of a film BFF was proud to have acquired. Now, this direct0r’s only real claim to fame is a few appearances on The Soprano’s, but that was enough to warrant a red carpet gala, an incessant speech (with introductions to all his principle cast members), and a live performance of a song featured in the film for no other reason than because the singer/songwriter grew up in Bergenfield. All this, mind you, was done on the street in full view of people sitting in rush hour traffic, and we––filmmakers and audience alike––stood and watched (except Cerise cinematographer Alain Aguilar, who was like “screw this!” and was next spotted across the street enjoying a nice falafel sandwich.
It’s no secret that a film festival is nothing without filmmakers and their films and an audience to enjoy them. At NYC Downtown Short Film Festival, when a director’s present, the festival director asks the filmmaker to say a few words before his or her movie screens. At EgoFest, my face was beamed to the small town of Brainerd, MN via Skype and projected (on top-notch equipment, I’m sure!) onto the big screen for a Q&A after Cerise ended the festival’s first block of short films. At each of these events, whether or not I was present, I felt darn special, and that’s how all filmmakers should feel, regardless of what “real celebrities” may be in attendance.
BFF is the first film festival I’ve ever really had an problem with, except for a Q&A session at Staten Island Film Festival two years ago, in which an obnoxious filmmaker took solipsism to a whole new level by talking about his short film while two other filmmakers were awaiting their turn to answer questions from the audience. But in the case of Blaming George Romero, it was their first film festival experience (for their first film), so the kind of egregious behavior exhibited by BFF is inexcusable and unacceptable and should be avoided by any self-respecting film festival.
As a final note: film festivals, especially young ones, should realize that filmmakers and audiences are their top priority, above celebrity, above workshops and seminars. Above the festival itself even. Therefore, they should screen those films chosen as “Official Selections” with the respect and integrity they deserve. And if they don’t, well, it won’t take long in today’s social media world before every filmmaker knows all about it.
Thoughts? Comments? Write ‘em down; I’d love to hear what YOU think! Also, what are some film festival nightmares YOU’VE had the unfortunate displeasure of witnessing, either first hand (as a filmmaker, for instance) or as an audience member?
Traditional screenwriting is kaput, in my humble opinion.
For those of you who follow my tweets and Facebook status updates, you might recall that a few weeks ago I finished the first draft of my latest feature-length script Caput, a hyperbolic Hudson Hawk of an action drama that centers around a mafia hit man who’s peculiar quirk inhibits him from “getting out” for good.
Back in December I was determined to write Caput “the right way” which meant sketching some character bios, finishing a full outline, organizing a scene-by-scene breakdown on index cards, and getting through all the other step-by-step instructions that you’ll read in just about any book on screenwriting. It works for so many of my friends and colleagues whom I respect a great deal, but I found that it just doesn’t work for me.
When I write, the words need to flow. I can’t put too much thought behind them. I spent January, February, and March doing absolutely nothing with Caput except a very rough outline, which only got me up to the midpoint (in Syd Fieldian terms) before I was completely stumped. I spent a few days ruminating over it, sketching out some possible directions, but nothing seemed to work. So I put it aside, defeated for the time being.
Then I woke up on the morning of April 4th and got ready for my normal Monday teaching back-to-back Civilizations courses at one of my universities. I had packed my laptop since I was showing The Passion of the Christ as part of our chapter on Christianity, so I had a good five hours to sit down in that dark room amongst my students and write ten pages. That was my goal. It sounded reasonable enough. Ten pages, and that was all I wrote. And even though I felt the drive to continue, I parked my thoughts at page 10.
The next day, after a modest workout and even more modest breakfast, I sat at my little faux-wood table and wrote another ten pages. And ten pages a day it would be for the next two weeks, typing practically non-stop for an average of between two to three hours. By getting into “The Zone,” and most importantly by not thinking too hard about what I was writing, I was organically creating a bigger story with new characters, an entire subplot, twists and more twists with MacGuffens and other textbook elements strewn in here and there. It’s a beautiful mess of a script, I’m sure. But it’s fresh! And beginning this week, I’ll be putting together a tight revision of this first very rough draft that no eyes but mine will see.
Now I suppose it’s the poet in me, working from inspiration, letting the words flow from brain to page as if they were being whispered into my ear by some magical muse with a thick Italian accent (and pointing a gun at my ribs, too!) And although the two mediums are not worlds, but galaxies apart nowadays, one feature is the same for both: Words. If we spend too much time in our minds plotting and re-plotting, nothing gets written.) Just write out that first draft! It’s only when you have it writ that you can tell if it’s a hit.
So then, back to what I stated earlier, that traditional screenwriting is kaput. Okay, not quite. Though many script coaches and analysts will disagree with me here, I’ve found you don’t have to spend your time writing those character sketches, outlining on index cards. Just get the basic story and scenes written out and run with it. And most importantly, don’t overdo it. If you’re a writer in this day and age, you’ve probably got a job to go to at some point in the day, so write what and when you can. Tennessee Williams used to get up at 6am and write until noon every day. Well, we’re not him; most of us have to squeeze in our daily dose of writing with our morning orange juice. For me, it’s ten pages a day. For others it may be Pilar Alessandra’s Coffee Break Screenwriter approach or the “Million Dollar Method” popularized by Chris Soth and USC. And still some may simply learn tips and tricks of the trade by following the insightful tweets of The Script Lab, Screenwriting U, and Raindance Film Festival amongst others.
Whatever your method and however you do it, just write that script!
