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On Tour: Proceed and Be Bold! in St. John, USVI

We just showed Proceed and Be Bold! in the US Virgin Islands this past Tuesday.

Here’s my blog post about the amazing screening there. Thank you, St. John’s Film Society for inviting us to show the film!

Laura Zinger On Tour: Just Do It

That’s me telling her to make documentary films. Do you see how serious I am?

The Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundations’ On Screen/In Person grant I got just started! For the entire month of March, I will be screening Proceed and Be Bold! at the following places, having  (hopefully) in-depth conversations with audiences about the film and attending community events, speaking to students at Colleges and more.

Read the first blog post I wrote for the grant, HERE.

1. St. John’s Film Society in St. John, US Virgin Islands
Tuesday, 3/06/2012 at 7pm

2. CityFest/Theater N at Nemours in Wilmington, DE
Thursday, 3/22/2012 at 7PM

3. Cumberland County College in Vineland, NJ
Friday, 3/23/2012 at 8PM

4. Beautiful Art Deco Oswego Cinema, 138 West 2nd Street, Oswego, NY
Tuesday, 3/27/2012 at 7PM

5. Clay Center for Arts & Sciences of West Virginia (Walker Theater) in Charleston, WV
Thursday, 3/29/2012 at 5:30PM

6. Riverviews Artspace in Lynchburg, VA
Friday, 3/30/2012 at 7PM

7. Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA
Saturday, 3/31/2012 at 2PM

Nicest Email I’ve Ever Gotten!

Just got the nicest email of my life from someone who just watched, Proceed and Be Bold!, the first feature documentary I ever directed/produced starring the wonderful letterpress printer, Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. I don’t get these often. Thank you, kind viewer! (Hopefully, there is a breastfeeding documentary of some kind in 20K Films’ future.)

On The Subject of Twitter (Reposted from BadGirlChats.com)

This blog post was written with one of my clients, Nicole Hollander (who is the creator of the long-running syndicated comic, Sylvia) for her blog Badgirlchats.com. It’s written more for older artistic folks who are still not yet convinced that Twitter is anything worthwhile, but I think this is an easy and straight forward written tutorial for anyone wanting to get on Twitter, but not there yet. Also, we put together a nice little video tutorial together to help walk people through the process of signing up for Twitter and following Nicole so that her fans can see what she’s up to with her current work. We also encourage her fans to practice out using twitter with Nicole on her account. Hope you enjoy! 

Hello Everyone,

I’m starting a new Twitter page dedicated to the things that Syl and I like to talk about as well as a way that friends of www.Badgirlchats.com can communicate directly with us. We often need help finishing our sentences….

If you visit the Twitter page here, you will see my photo and a drawing of Sylvia. You are in the right place.

I know that Twitter might seem distant from your lives, and you are probably right, but if you give it a try, you might find it a delightful way to waste time or keep in touch with new people and long ago friends.

If you hate Twitter, but are curious to see how it works or to better understand it, please feel free to practice with Syl and me on our new page.

Here’s a way you can help us complete a thought:

1) Sign up for a free Twitter account here: http://twitter.com/

Twitter's home page in all its glory.

2) Once you get set up, you can follow Syl and I here: https://twitter.com/#!/nhollandersyl

Nicole and Sylvia Twitter page.

3) Once you follow me, I will follow you in return. Rest assured that someone is following your tweets (I was about to say that’s what a twitter message is called, but only people on other planets are unaware of that. Or perhaps they are perfectly aware, but I digress.)

4) At this point, you can go back to the @nhollandersyl page (that is our twitter page and the @ sign is what you put in front of your “twitter handle” which is now your Twitter identity. Again, my “twitter handle”/identity is @nhollandersyl) and you can scroll down my page and read my tweets.

I will be discussing, following, and tweeting about these topics on my Twitter page: politics, women’s rights, choice, freedom, comics, the oddity that is Newt and more.

I will also be following and “tweeting” about these hashtags: #Women2Drive, #humanrights, #Right2Dignity, #SaudiWomenSpring which are related to the current issue of Saudi Women being granted the right to drive.

A hashtag is a word preceded by the number sign #. These hashtags are just an easy way for anyone interested in a topic to search for tweets about that topic. By typing the # sign in front of a word you are interested in, into the Twitter Search bar in the upper right of your Twitter page, you will be rewarded with tweets talking specifically about that topic. For example, if you were to search for #sylandmythoughts, you would find my tweets and anyone else talking about Sylvia on Twitter if they have included this hashtag in their tweet.

5) Once you somewhat understand all of the above, please go to the Nicole and Sylvia Twitter Page, and look specifically for tweets that start with this phrase: “Help Syl and I finish our thoughts” or this hashtag: #sylandmythoughts.

Once you find this tweet, you will look directly above the words, and select “reply.”

(You will also see the option to “retweet,” and if you are especially tickled by one of my tweets, please click this option, which will allow you to re-post my tweet on your Twitter Feed.)

After selecting reply, you will see a box open that looks like this:

Please keep my “twitter handle” @nhollandersyl at the beginning of your tweet so that I know you have replied, and type in your answer, and then click on the “tweet” button in the lower right corner for the box.

Here is an example of one of  “Finish our Thoughts” tweets:

You could “reply” with any of the following comments: Betrayal, lawyers (probably the same thing as betrayal), exotic countries I will never visit, exotic medical procedures that I will never have done, and fish tacos.

We would love to hear whatever comments you have for helping Syl and I finish our thoughts.

We hope to post daily and will be happy to hear from you.

My tech person, Laura, and I also made a short video tutorial about how to hang out with us on Twitter too. Please see the video below.

Some Weird Story Ideas I Had When I Was Younger

When I was younger, I had all kinds of odd story ideas for animations and cartoons and films and what have you. And I just want to say it really sucked being a 13-19 year old wannabe filmmaker back before cell phones recorded video and youtube existed. The tools I had for filmmaking were photoshop, a Hi-8 video camera that gave way to a more advanced mini-dv consumer level camcorder. Recording external audio? Yeah, what the hell was that back then? Here in no particular order, are the weird story ideas I had when I was younger.

Sarcophakitti

This is a still from what was supposed to be the opening credit sequence to this animation.

Sarcophakitti was supposed to be a story about, Ryan, a male archeologist turned historical detective who teams up with the magical Sarcophakitti who was the beloved and now embalmed and long time dead favorite cat of an important Eqyptian pharoah who I had yet to determine. The two characters join forces and solve crimes by old mummies and other terrors that come back to wreck havoc on modern day civilization. This animation feels like a cross between the Indiana Jones franchise and the Scooby Doo Series. The character of Ryan being like an Indiana Jones figure and Sarcophakitti being like Scooby Doo.

The image of Sarcophakitti is a photo of a felt piece I glued together to make up her image. It is now sewn onto several pillows, one of which remains at my father’s house and my nieces sleep on and the other at my Aunt and Uncle’s house in San Diego, where they unbelievably display it in on their living room couch.

Anatomy High

This was supposed to be a live puppet series that helped young kids understand how the body worked in a fun and entertaining way instead of just being forced to read boring and stuffy old textbooks. The premise is that all of the organs in the body are students at a high school called Anatomy High where they are taught how each one of them works together to make the human body function. Think Degrassi Junior High but with puppets of human organs. For example, Lungsy (the Lungs character) is having a hard time breathing because of all of the second hand smoke at the local roller skate rink, and so she has to deal with still finishing her homework while figuring out from her friends (the Heart, kidneys, etc characters) how she can get better and not get sick from second hand smoke. This is meant to be a very dramatic series.

My Thoughts on Film Festivals in 2012

20K Films' Owner, Laura Zinger, at the Landlocked Film Festival in Iowa where Proceed and Be Bold! was an official selection in 2010?

Yesterday, I received an email from a Chicago Filmmaker asking me if I had any advice on how to go about entering their film into film festivals. Of course, my canned response was WithoutABox.com which makes entering your film into multiple festivals a snap as well as a drain on your checkbook, because festivals, of course, are money making ventures as much as anything else.

But in all honestly, my initial inner response, was “Why?” In this day and age, with how many online distribution outlets are available to indie filmmakers, would anyone want to pay to enter their film into film festivals? Chances are you just spent a boatload of money making your film (unless you just used your iPhone 4 or 4S and recorded external audio which is my recommendation for any new and budding filmmakers out there reading this. Keep it cheap, Sister.)

Not only do film festivals cost a lot of money to just enter your film (Do you know how pissed I was when I paid over $2,000 in festival fees for my first documentary feature and only got into a few of them? I could have made a great start on another indie film with those bills!), but it takes forever to find out if you got into any of them, then you have to wait around until the festival happens, and then you also in almost every case have to pay to fly out to the festival to represent your film. You’ll have to pay for your own hotel and food as well. I even had one festival contact me recently inviting me to enter my documentary into their film festival, then was shocked when I asked them to waive the fee (which is standard etiquette as far as I know when a festival INVITES you to submit to THEIR festival), then they agreed to waive the fee asking me to pay it if my film was accepted. Lame, but fine, because indie filmmakers have been trained to believe that the film festival is the be-all-to-end-all. So I started filling out the application, and then read that if you submit your film and your film is accepted into this film festival, you have to commit to attending the film festival including paying for yourself AND another crew member’s entire travel, lodging and food fees. This festival, which was only in its third year mind you, has this as a  REQUIREMENT for entering this film festival. I was horrified! Are only rich people making indie films? Am I a total oddball here in admitting that as a 32-year old filmmaker, I am completely and utterly devoid of any kind of savings account or IRA or 401K that I could possibly tap into in order to attend a film festival like this?!  I would rather spend the money on my next film.

The only film festival at this point that I think is worthwhile in terms of paying to go to is Sundance, and that is only because it’s probably one of the last few, if only, American film festivals that where the films accepted into their festival have a chance at getting distribution. As a matter of fact, Sundance just announced that all films PAST and PRESENT will get online distribution by none other than Sundance itself. Read the article here.

I’m probably a terrible person to write this article, because I am a little cynical about film festivals and honestly I have a bad attitude towards people who say oh, you HAVE to get into a film festival, or else no one will watch your film. I’m calling bullshit on that. There are all kinds of ways to get your films seen, and at this point, I have to agree with a great local indie filmmaker and friend I know, Ben Hicks, who recommends that until you build a name, you should put your films online for free.

In fact, he insists that this is the only way for an unknown indie filmmaker in today’s world to get their films out there.  But I do want to add that I think this is great advice only for strictly narrative films. People will pay to watch Indie documentaries. It’s amazing to me how much money an indie doc can make, no matter how poorly or well it is made. If you make a doc about something where very few docs about it exist, you’re golden.

But you can still part-time apply Ben’s freebie model, if you’re an indie doc maker by putting your indie doc up on SnagFilms.com for free for a limited time (i.e. one month) and then tell all of your friends and hope that word gets round. If there’s an audience for your doc, word will really get around if people can watch it for free, like it, and share it.

So, in closing, my thoughts on film festivals in 2012 is to stop thinking about them, stop worrying about them, put them out of your head, and just go and make the film that you want to. Just focus your energy on making your film and getting it done. Then if you feel the need to waste large sums of money entering your film into film festivals, instead of just putting it online and finding some kind of online distribution outlet, do it after you finish your film. That’s my plan for 2012 at any rate. Happy filmmaking, folks.

Laura at the SJWFF and some former SJWFF's staffers, Shannon and Aimee, and I am so sorry I don't know the woman's name to my left.

Also, on an endnote, one of the best festivals I ever attended was the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival.  It was amazing to meet a great group of female filmmakers in a great country! (oh, Canada) Really, the one great thing about festivals is the people that you meet, and this is also the festival where I met Ashley MacKenzie, who is one of Canada’s up and coming female filmmakers. Check out her short film, Rhonda’s Party.   It’s odd, but I rarely meet female filmmakers with an encyclopedic knowledge of films and filmmaking, but Ashley is one of them! (Correct me if  you think I’m wrong here, Ashley, but I was pretty impressed.). It’s really too bad that there seems to be so few women who have film knowledge like this, because the iconic filmmaker stereotype is always a male who has watched every single film ever made in America, Japan and Brazil. (I’m talking about you, Quentin Tarantino!) And I feel like if a female filmmaker hasn’t watched every single film ever made (because she might be, oh, just living her life instead of watching a million films) in America, Japan and Brazil, then she is instantly judged by male filmmakers and the snobby male movie watching scene as inadequate and how could this female filmmaker ever make great films if she’s never watched every French New Wave film no matter how obscure. Seriously, I am sick of this stereotype, because I am definitely not one of those rare women who are on top of their film knowledge, and if all I want to watch are Fellini films and Bladerunner then everyone can kiss my ass. But, going back to Ashley MacKenzie and her knowledge, it’s great to know that if anyone else brings up this unspoken issue that “women don’t really watch or understand true cinema,” I can just say, “You’ve got to meet, Ashley MacKenzie.” Sorry to put so much on you, Ashley!

Ashley is part of a film company called Grass Fire Films. Their twitter feed is pretty awesome too.

The Very Real Complication of Independent Filmmaking

Funding. That’s it. That’s what I’ve narrowed down as the very real complication of being an independent filmmaker. Don’t agree? Then please tell me how you are able to hold down a job to pay your bills as well as make enough cash overflow to fund your next feature? Grants? Trust Fund? Parents? Friends? Bank loan? If you say yes to the last one, please tell me which bank is lending you any money for a film in this economy.

I’m not the only one with funding on the mind. Edward Jay Epstein, the brilliant mind behind the book, Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind Movies  wrote a sobering article in early 2011 titled, Why Indie Movies Are an Endangered Species.  His blog post lays the groundwork for the dissolution of pre-sales funding for indie films by back-end distributors, because hold the phone, the decline of DVD sales in major retail box stores. Of course, the death of the DVD is inevitable and unstoppable, but did anyone else realize how important DVD sales were in the funding of indie films? I had no idea DVD sales played such a large role in giving cash on hand to distributors so they could help invest in future indie film productions. But forget my duh moment here, my main point is to illustrate that the traditional concepts of funding indie films are dying along with those DVD sales, and again we, indie filmmakers, are being faced with the very real complication of independent filmmaking: finding funding.

So in light of this apocalyptic, post  pre-sales funding world that we live in, what other options are there for indie filmmakers to raise money to make their films? I realize that the most obvious one is a filmmaker’s own pocket, but if your pockets are that deep, you are not reading DIY FILM CHICAGO’s online magazine.

The other options as far as I can tell right now are the following:

1) Kickstarter

2) Your family

3) Shut up and Shoot on your cell phone

4) Just record Audio (sounds weird, I know, but I’ll explain this more and include some nice examples in a further post)

Let’s start with Kickstarter, I have to start out by saying that Kickstarter.com, based purely on their publicly available 2011 Stats  is amazing. The success rate for 27,086 launched projects was 46%. That means only 11,836 of those launched projects got funded. When you break down the funding on Kickstarter by category, and look specifically at Film & Video, the stats are astounding. Over $32 million dollars were raised for Film & Video ALONE.

Check out all of that dough for film & video!!

Granted this staggering amount of funding was spread out over 3,284 projects, but still what other major or indie film studio or production company is handing out this kind of cash?  I do believe in this power of crowdsourcing and feel at this point, that this is probably the best way to get your first indie documentary or film feature off the ground and running.

On a sidenote: You can also use Kickstarter to help fund your other film related needs like DVD reprints. HA! You say, DVDs? Yes, especially if the audience to your film is from an older generation like my first doc. Here’s my Kickstarter Campaign [for reprinting another 1,000 DVDs. I was an idiot when I did this campaign though and spent way more money on reprinting the DVDs than I actually earned on Kickstarter.

But let’s say you aren’t good at social media networking and marketing your Kickstarter campaign (you must be good at both or get help if you are not in order to significantly improve your chances of Kickstarter success. Check out a failed Kickstarter campaign I did for a previous client. We were both idiots in this case and didn’t market the campaign enough. We also asked for waaaay too much money.).

Or let’s say your idea is too weird or crazy or people just don’t get it? Wim Wenders recently said that his most beloved film, Wings of Desire, never would have found funding today. If you are a Wim Wenders throwback-like filmmaker, you may have to go for funding option number two: your family.

My father and an Aunt and Uncle were the major loaning officers for my first documentary feature, Proceed and Be Bold! [HYPERLINK: www.proceedandbebold.com] But before you say, “Hey Rich Girl, my family doesn’t have that kind of money! Screw you!” let me share with you major American indie filmmaker icon, Darren Aronksky’s start.

According to his Wikipedia entry: “Aronofsky’s debut feature, Pi (also known as π), was shot in November 1997. The film was financed entirely from $100 donations from friends and family.[1] In return, he promised to pay each back $150 if the film made money, and they would at least get screen credit if the film lost money.[3] Producing the film with an initial budget of $60,000, Aronofsky premiered Pi at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, where he won the Best Director award. The film itself was nominated for a special Jury Award.[12] Artisan Entertainment bought distribution rights for $1 million.[3] The film was released to the public later that year to critical acclaim and grossed $3,221,152.[13][14]”

It is ok to ask your family for money if they have it. In the case of Chicago-based production company, Beverly Ridge Pictures several former Columbia College film students gathered together and pooled money from their families to the tune of $2 million dollars in order to make Chicago Overcoat,  a feature length dramatic action film that recently got distribution on the Showtime network.  (Editor sidenote: I don’t have direct references for the above info. This is all word of month information I’m repeating, so if I am incorrect here, please correct me in the comments below. And be nice, ok? I’m not trying to be an asshole here.]

But what if you are an indie filmmaker with broke-ass parents and your film is not a good candidate for a kickstarter fundraising campaign? This is America! The land of opportunities! There must be a way for me to get my film made! Help me!

I hear your cry. In fact, it is the same cry I have had every day for the last two years. I may have gotten my first film funded mostly by my family (I did put a significant amount of money into the doc myself as well), but I cannot keep asking them for money especially since my father is of retirement age, and I feel like a giant jerk asking him to gamble his hard earned life’s savings. I am currently a broke ass filmmaker working freelance part-time so that I can dedicate most of my time to trying to get two more feature length documentaries off of the ground, and I currently have no fundraising ideas for either of my projects. One is about Sickle Cell Disease, a serious fatal disease that affects 80,000 Americans a year, but I will not, on principle, ask this afflicted group of people to fund this documentary, because it is for them, and I want to make it free to anyone with this disease or a family member with this disease.

The other project I am working on is a hybrid between documentary and narrative featuring a prominent cartoonist in Chicago. We may try the kickstarter route to get the film off of the ground, but initially we have zero funding. (We’ll post updates on that project here once we get rolling along further.)

It is my current state of affairs that has led me to come up with funding option #3 and #4: Shut up and Shoot on your Cell Phone and just record audio.

Come back next week to read about these next two funding options which are sincerely and totally for the true and almighty DIY Filmmaker.

In the meantime, treat yourself to the trailer for Aronofsky’s fantastic debut feature, Pi.

Using 3rd Party Filters in FCPX: Who needs a Colorist anymore?

Very cool 3rd party filter provider, CrumplePop, just added “ToneGrade™” which “makes it easy to apply HDR tone mapping to your footage” in FCPX. Here’s CrumplePop’s full description of the filter: By simply dragging and dropping ToneGrade™ onto your clip, you can create a subtle, “hyper-real” color grade that can be visually striking. ToneGrade™ works with Final Cut Pro X only.

Anyone who doesn’t know what HDR is, it’s a very cool stylized look that you can easily give to photos on the iPhone and now with this ToneGrade filter, your video. Click here for more info on what HDR is.  iPhone’s in-camera app lets you take photos HDR style in your phone, so if you have an iPhone and want to see what HDR looks like, follow these instructions. Also, check out Macworld’s article on when and when not to use HDR on your iPhone.

CrumplePop also has other great FCPX filters like an easy split screen filter and a tilt-shift focus filter. Click here to see them in action. And they even offer some free FCPX filters for download here.

So what does the title of my blog post mean then? (Who needs a Colorist anymore?) It means that your life as an indie filmmaker just got easier, especially if you have zero money to hire and pay a colorist. Colorists are the people who help filmmakers add mood and atmosphere to their films using different stylized color choices that more often than not help add to the filmmaker’s narrative story as well.

Most recently, colorists were using the software, Color, Apple’s branded software, but now with FCPX, apparently all of the coloring you would need is built right into the program, so you don’t need Apple’s Color software (which came with FCP7  as part of a suite and was $1,000+ when it was new). Apparently, there is another color program called Da Vinci out that just made their software more affordable because Apple is discontinuing Color and will no longer release newer versions nor updates.

I genuinely feel for Colorists, because they are only going to make a living now on films with higher budgets who can afford to pay them for their time and expertise. But it seems like most of the film world, at least on the indie side of the spectrum is shifting–imagine millions of indie filmmakers all running across a globe from one end to the other causing the world to spin catacylsmically, uncontrollably out of orbit. Imagine that FCP7 was the Sun for these indie filmmakers and now they’re running around the globe trying to figure out what the hell they are going to do next in order to continue to make their films. Imagine that a large portion of the film industry is part of this pack of people too, because a lot of them were heavily invested in FCP7. And imagine another sun being discovered called FCPX and everyone is like screw that new sun, we want our old sun, it was bigger and better, which is true, but, really, and this is fitting in with my new current philosophy about filmmaking, business, and social media, but smaller IS better. And the only way to survive in this tech-roided out world, is to think smaller which right now for indie filmmakers means you’re going to stop hating on Apple and learn to love FCPX. Believe me, I know it’s hard, half the time I’m an FCPX hater too, but thanks to our new 20K Labs’ instructor, Andrew Gleason, who teaches our Editing with FCPX workshops, I am learning to love FCPX. The only other video editing option is Premiere Pro 6 which has yet to be released.

20K Films will be testing out ToneGrade soon, and we’ll post more info as soon as we do!