According to Adam Leipzig, film and theatre producer, writer, Cultural Weekly’s Publisher and former executive at Disney and National Geographic, a perfect storm has developed from the collision of new technologies, new business models, and new creative talent and it’s creating a new Golden Age in cinema.
Some thoughts from Rick Pagano
(Writer, Director, Casting Director)
There are volumes on what it means to be creative. Let me add two more metaphors to the canon.
To be an actor means to play in your own sandbox, on cue, under pressure, in front of a bunch of people who need to be reminded of their own, often misplaced sandboxes.
Buried by production, time, and personal pressures, the people sitting in many audition rooms usually look like they’ve just swallowed a half-pound of toxic waste. The air in the room can be stale with tension.
From the blog of John Bailey,
Cinematographer and
Film Director …
No one is likely to conflate the dangerous, kinetic world of Nigerian Nollywood action movies with the benign fantasies of Lewis Carroll, although each portrays a surreal universe. The Nollywood portraits of South African photographer Pieter Hugo depict the denizens of a dark rabbit hole of third world cinema, one heralded as the world’s third most prolific production center—behind only Hollywood and Bollywood.
Some Thoughts from Rick Pagano, Writer, Director, Casting Director…
I would like to talk about discipline, specifically the discipline of the Olympic athlete and how it compares to the acting profession.
Think of Los Angeles as the Olympics of acting. This is the city where actors come, from all around the world, to compete for the “gold.” Throw a rock in this town, and you’ll hit an actor, writer, director. There are those who hate that notion; personally I find it a tremendous asset/resource/comfort for those of us who have come here to create.
But the proximity of collaborators comes at a price. Because they are also your competition.
EU Wants More Indie Films Released Online
Reporting for Reuters by Ethan Bilby, editing by Paul Casciato
BRUSSELS (Reuters, October 23, 2012)
“Ever turn on your television to find the same tired line-up of last season’s movies available to watch? Or been disappointed about how it takes weeks for a movie to arrive on-demand?
While cinemas have always enjoyed privileged status when it comes to being the first to screen movies, the European Commission wants to level the playing field for digital outlets by encouraging the same day release of films across platforms.
INDIE GAME: THE MOVIE premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival where it won the award for best editing in the World Documentary Competition.
It’s the story of four struggling independent game designers, Phil Fish, Edmund McMillen, Tommy Refenes, and Johnathan Blow, and the three games, Fez, Super Meat Boy, and Braid, they fought tooth and nail to create.
It’s also the story of two independent filmmakers from Winnipeg,
Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky,
and how they’ve used the internet to bring their feature-length documentary to life in the digital age.
Kenton Bartlett, director, writer, producer, is 23 years old. He wrote MISSING PIECES, a suspenseful, romantic comedy, when he was 19. Three and half years later his film is finished.
Total budget: $80,000.
Length: 117 minutes.
Cast: includes Mark Boone Junior (Memento, Batman Begins, Se7en) and Melora Walters (Magnolia, Dead Poet’s Society, Butterfly Effect)
How did Bartlett, a young, unknown working on his first film, do it?
It’s not too late to view and vote!
The first-ever PBS Online Film Festival
doesn’t conclude its five week run
First, there were crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo designed to make the process of donating to creative projects more broadly and easily accessible.
Now, there’s SLATED …
A new online film investment marketplace designed to connect accredited investors with independent filmmakers who have high quality films in need of financing.
