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Truly Free Film

What Do We Sacrifice When We Give Up Time?

FilmCourage interviewed me and asked “How do you know when your movie is ready to shoot?”. In the conversation, I simplify things into three steps:

  1. Discovery: the process of defining what matters;
  2. Prioritization: organizing complexity and weighting the options and opportunities;
  3. Engineering serendipity: you build the bottle that can hold the magic elixir.  How can we reach higher? How can we accomplish more than we planned for and manufacture magnificence?

The film business as of late has been cutting budgets to the bare bones and filmmakers are rising to the occasion.  We prep our movies in less and less time.  It’s mission impossible but we deliver it.  But what get’s lost in the process?

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Truly Free Film

The Priorities Of Producing Today

Our goal producing today should be to get our movies MADE well, SEEN widely, and COMPENSATED fairly.

We need to support all four legs: Artists, Audiences, Industry, and Investors.

The best thing we can do is to make sure that investors receive a risk appropriate return.

Check out all the details in this video (never mind the pretty flowers):

Categories
Truly Free Film

Method Characterization and Haunted Doorknobs: A First Time Writer/Director’s Trial by Fire. Part #2

image-1Recap: This series chronicles my wide-eyed and crushingly insecure processes that pulled back the curtain on my ideas about filmmaking – revealing what it really takes to write and direct my movie, Recess. Occasionally I gain productive insights that plant me on less insecure ground. Others I still talk to my therapist about. Perhaps the most important insight I’ve kept – from teething as a writer – the idea that creating detailed, well-drawn characters with original voices can make even a script about a haunted doorknob compelling. I realize there may be infinite approaches more resolute but, for me, the haunted doorknob concept puts character development into perspective.   

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My Films

Come To My First LA Bookstore Reading EVER!

Yup.  I will tell some great tales, read a few passages, answer a lot of questions, and distribute some free gifts.  All this and more this Friday evening.  At Book Soup. 7p.  8818 Sunset Blvd.  See you there!

Categories
Issues and Actions

We ARE Building A Better Film Ecosystem

I have great HOPE for what is happening right now in the film business.  I recently wrote about it for The Hollywood Reporter. Check it out here.

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Truly Free Film

Inside the Writers’ Room: Post #13: One Vision, Two Models

Television’s impressive artistic and commercial success is not a solely American phenomenon – it is not even an English language phenomenon. The case of the Danish series Borgen (2010-2013) is exemplary. Borgen brought together on average a 50% share in its home market and was shown all over the world to great acclaim. Much like The West Wing, it worked as a reminder that sincere idealism can still be part of politics, while at the same time giving a pretty nuanced idea of how politics work. Danish TV drama (shows like The Killing/Forbrydelsen of 2007-2012, The Bridge/Bron from 2010-2013, and most recently The Legacy/Arvingerne and soon-to-be-released 1864) began its revival about fifteen years ago – at the same time as its domestic film industry, and with the fiction department of the public channel DR as its driving force.

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Truly Free Film

How Economics Influences Indie Film Aesthetics

IMG_9758It is a rich topic, and we need to think about it far more than we — the filmmaking community — do.  Here’s a start:

1. There is very little development funding of scripts. Consequently directors are encouraged to develop their own material. Generally this encourages a focus on personal stories, stories based on experience, and thus we get character dramas first and foremost.