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.
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.
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.
Apple recently hired Matt Dentler to be the company’s new Indie Film Partner Manager for iTunes.
First, there was Amazon Studios.
Now, there’s Amazon Studios’ People’s Production Company.
Amazon recently posted some new job listings as part of a search for what
Ryan Lawler (Gigaom.com) describes as,
“…creative execs to develop programming through its Amazon Studios initiative. The jobs specifically are for the “People’s Production Company,” which is the name of the production studio producing original content, located in Sherman Oaks, Calif. Successful applicants would report to Amazon’s VP of Series Development and would be expected to:
Mike Fleming’s recent interview with Harvey Weinstein in Deadline touches on Weinstein’s thoughts about the Oscar 2012 contendors and “Indie Film in the VOD Age” …
Fleming describes Sundance 2012 as being “all about VOD and the success of Margin Call.”
According to Weinstein,
“It’s very exciting.
The VOD gives you such incredible visibility, it’s almost like having a $20 million P&A campaign for free.
You go home, you put on the TV and see spots for Margin Call. You walk by the theater when you’re out of town and go, ‘I’ll go see Margin Call.’ Maybe I can’t get it at the hotel, but you open the newspaper, Margin Call is there.
Or you say, ‘it’s Saturday, honey. The kids are having a party downstairs and somebody better be here with a shotgun. Okay, let’s order up Margin Call.’
The cross-pollination of advertising is perfect. I don’t understand why people always say you could have had more. They did a great job and I thought the reason that it worked was you had the two of these together.
I’ve learned the lesson and that’s why we brought Tom Quinn and Jason Janego in. We need to be doing that here.”
For Fleming’s complete interview in Deadline with Harvey Weinstein (January 30, 2012) …
RP & KW
