Going Global: Learning About Film Distribution for a Global Community

A while ago my friend (and sometimes collaborator) Todd Brown referred me to Stacey Parks.  Stacey was looking to make a viral video for her website, www.filmspecific.com, a distribution resource for filmmakers.  As part of the deal for making the video for her, Stacey gave me a pass to her weekend boot camp on global distribution.

So here I am at the Viceroy Hotel in Santa Monica, listening and learning about global distribution at a time of world disarray.  The funniest thing was running into the Carberry twins, who I've blogged about in the past.  These 19 year old kids managed to finangle a job videotaping the event.  I'm convinced in 5 years we're all be working for them.   Sitting next to me right now is Bilal Khan, a graphic designer/social media consultant/businessman who is doing a documentary on relief work done by Islamic charities during Hurrican Katrina.  Such an interesting person who effortlessly blends piety and modernity.

I've learned a lot of interesting things from the event, and when I finish producing the marketing video for Stacey's site, I'll post it in the future.

Sleep Dealer

There's been some great sci-fi in the last few years, work that's really brought the best of the tradition of sci-fi in its ability to critique and present insights about the world we live in.

Sleep Dealer seems to fit into this mold.

This is the description I found on IMDB:

"Set in a near-future, militarized world marked by closed borders, virtual labor and a global digital network that joins minds and experiences, three strangers risk their lives to connect with each other and break the barriers of technology."

What made me really want to see this film was this- a walk through one of the scenes by the director Alex Rivera.

One In A Million

The New York Times has a great series profiling various interesting people in the city: there's the maid to New York mayors, a tabloid photographer, and my favorite, the principal of a Muslim high school. The essays are told through photo essays and narration by the subjects themselves.

Check it out here.

A story well told will find an audience...

In the same year that Barack Obama became President, 'Slumdog Millionaire' was announced as best picture by the Academy.

Our world is changing in profound ways, and it's affecting every art and industry, including the most powerful of them all, cinema.

Here's another excerpt from the NYT that just came out today:

"American film is one of the last remaining exports, a kind of bejeweled software that the rest of the world clearly loves. More than half of the money American movies make at the box office comes from elsewhere in the world, and given the downward trajectory of DVD sales domestically, those global markets are only going to grow in importance.

But global imperatives go both ways. When a film with a British director, Indian actors and French co-financing goes home with eight Oscars, it’s hard not to see a message.

“I think it demonstrates that a good story well told, whether it is about someone in Mumbai, China or around the corner, will find an audience,” said Nancy Utley, chief operating officer at Fox Searchlight, the division of 20th Century Fox that found Oscar (and box office) gold after picking up “Slumdog Millionaire.” She added that the studio specialty division knew it had a winner on its hands when it screen-tested the film in Orange County, Calif. — sort of a ground zero of a conventional American audience — without any marketing or explanation, and the room loved it...

The winner of the documentary short category, “Smile Pinki,” was filmed in India as well. Working the carpet, I spent time making nice with its young subject, Pinki Sonkar, radiant after a cleft palate repair and a film about her journey. At the end of the interview with her and the film’s director, Megan Mylan, I awkwardly folded my hands together at my chin and bowed, as I had when the kids of “Slumdog” came through.

“I’m going to have to learn how to do that,” said a reporter next to me. It will be clumsy for everyone. Hollywood’s efforts to globalize its content as well as its business have been a train wreck for the most part, but for a stagnant industry under duress at home, the rest of the world is waiting for their stories to be told as well."

You can read the whole article here.

Oscars gone global...

Just read this in the NYT and I thought, yup, that's right:

'Hollywood has been taking on more and more of a global tilt with each passing year, but on this evening iat was especially evident in the show and in the awards themselves.

After Penélope Cruz won for best supporting actress for her role in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” she gave part of her speech in Spanish — she said backstage it was a dedication to the actors and people of Spain — and then suggested backstage that the movies had to grow beyond the bounds of strictly American stories. “We are all mixed together, and it has to be reflected in the cinema,” she said.'

And here's the rest of the article, if you're interested.

Becoming a hollow reed...

Here's a fantastic poem from Hafez wherein he speaks of the difference between the mature artist and the immature one:

 

The Vintage Man

The 
Difference 
Between a good artist 
And a great one

Is:

The novice 
Will often lay down his tool 
Or brush

Then pick up an invisible club 
On the mind’s table

And helplessly smash the easels and
Jade.

Whereas the vintage man 
No longer hurts himself or anyone

And keeps on 
Sculpting

Light.

-- Hafiz, (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

As alluded to in the above poem, there is much to say about the way artists often hurt themselves in their creative path.  I am personally of the opinion that 90% of this anguish and self-sabotage is unrelated to our actual work- it is not the fire that burns us, it is the fear of the fire.

It's become clear to me that work should always be joyous.  Even when it is hard and painful and we have to sacrifice for it, there should always be an element of joy present.  It seems very difficult to realize our potential, otherwise, for how can you pour your into the very thing you resist? 

My goal is to create in a sustainable, authentic manner.  Why let success or failure, or fear of either stand in my way?

I recently heard a great TED talk by Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert that explored these ideas and more.  I encourage you to listen to it if you get a chance. 

And after you watch that talk, perhaps you will have time to read another poem that speaks to the essence of what art is, this one by the extraordinary Jorge Luis Borges:

The Art of Poetry 

To gaze at a river made of time and water 

and remember Time is another river. 

To know we stray like a river 

and our faces vanish like water. 

 

To feel that waking is another dream 

that dreams of not dreaming and that the death 

we fear in our bones is the death 

that every night we call a dream. 

 

To see in every day and year a symbol 

of all the days of man and his years, 

and convert the outrage of the years 

into a music, a sound, and a symbol. 

 

To see in death a dream, in the sunset 

a golden sadness such is poetry, 

humble and immortal, poetry, 

returning, like dawn and the sunset. 

 

Sometimes at evening there's a face 

that sees us from the deeps of a mirror. 

Art must be that sort of mirror, 

disclosing to each of us his face. 

 

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders, 

wept with love on seeing Ithaca, 

humble and green. Art is that Ithaca, 

a green eternity, not wonders. 

 

Art is endless like a river flowing,

passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same 

inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same 

and yet another, like the river flowing. 

-Jorge Luis Borges 

Some advice for your first feature, Part 2 (Tze Chun)

Here's part two in the series- these thoughts come from Tze Chun, director of 'Children of Invention'.

About the list Tze says: I don't know which one I'd say was the most important.  Number 1 probably:

1)      Drink a Red Bull as soon as you finish lunch.  Food coma is okay in real life, but for a director it can be a disaster. 

2)      Don't get too attached to your shot list.  When the day winds down, you may have to combine shots.  It's not the end of the world.

3)      Surround yourself with people that you trust. When you work on a 14-hour day, there will be at least 60 minutes a day where you will have effectively lost your sh*t. You want people around you who will tell you when you have bad ideas and support you when you have good ones.

4)      People are always saying never to work with child actors.  I say you should work with them before you forget what it's like to be one. 

5)      You need to put a lot of feeling into your film, because it's going to get diluted when it finally gets to your audience.  You need to feel a lot just to get your audience to cry or laugh a little bit.  I dunno why that is, but it is.

6)      As much energy as you put into the film, put that much energy into being calm.  Most fights on set happen when someone gets frantic.  That negative energy pollutes everything.  It's how you act when things are at their worst that defines how people remember working you.

7)      No Indian food on set.  Ever.