Status of Stuff: Hollow Spaces

So where I stand on Hollow Spaces is that I’m still hoping that it comes together this summer. The screenplay is on the fifth draft, I was hoping to bang out 10 drafts before rolling so its entirely posable, now that leaves us with everything else (the script, while not easy, only requires me - now we’re got to assemble the rest of the crew).

So I’m looking for people - friends I trust to review the script and provide feedback, who knows - maybe I’m way off and I’m blinded here and this thing really sucks and would be a waste of time. (if you feel up to reviewing it hit me up at johnjfink@gmail.com or on facebook).

As for the next phase - we’re looking for cast and crew and are starting that process, feel free to use the above methods of contact if your interested in that. I’m also looking for bands, I’m not sure what I’m going to do about music yet - my hope is that we can find a good local band that’ll donate a song or two in exchange for credit and perks of having a song in a short film that will hopefully make the festival rounds. Again - know anybody, or your interested hit me up.

This is sort of the in between phase where things can go either way - hopefully they’ll all come together nicely. That’s really it for now.

10 in 2010

A surprising move came today as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Oscar folks will now nominate 10 films for Best Picture, up from five. The New York Times reports this reason: The Dark Knight. It was the most popular film of the year, well reviewed - whereas a majority of the Best Picture nominees (including The Reader) weren’t nearly as popular. Then again they all didn’t have Batman.

The Dark Knight is a fine picture representing the very best of Hollywood storytelling ripe with emotion, it was a strong work. Slumdog Millionaire rightfully won, it was an energetic, vibrant and amazing film, also a crowd pleaser. I saw it at Toronto last September and knew it was going to be huge. On the eve of its Best Picture win I saw it again in Paramus at Garden State Plaza, with a sold out audience, it received an equally enthusiastic reception, it was no fluke.

The fact that The Dark Knight wasn’t nominated, some proposed, meant that the Academy was out of touch the public. I would propose that the Oscars are not the people’s choice awards, however they are Hollywood’s awards. Film snobs like me have the annual listings in Film Comment, which I am in synch with it appears, they also gave the top honor to Wendy & Lucy, whereas two years ago the magazine and the academy agreed on The Departed.

10 has its benefits. For starts Pixar has been overlooked time and again in the Best Picture category - it would be shocking if Up, a masterpiece is overlooked. For me, I’m hoping the Academy will dive into the truly overlooked films that come close to vanishing into obscurity. Sadly IFC Films, who releases some great films and Magnolia disqualify themselves with VOD releases prior to theatrical.

VOD to its credit has introduced audiences to new filmmakers and IFC to its credit did give Hunger an Oscar Qualifying run, it wasn’t successful which is a shame since it was a powerful film. Then again there are only so many movies and so little time, choosing 10 seems hard, I have a problem doing my top 10 list and I see a great deal of films throughout the year. 

This year could also see some other films, but it feels, knowing of the criticisms of AMPAS that the move is meant to include more popular films. Paul Blart: Mall Cop may be the most popular film of the year, and it was pleasant enough - but we’ll have to wait and see what sort of diversity is in this set of 10. Hopefully, if anything, those films will all be well deserving, critically acclaimed, and released throughout the year. If anything Paul Blart has the January opening working against it.

What does deserve a nom, thus far? Glad you asked:

Up

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Treeless Mountain

Goodbye Solo

Adventureland

Knowing

Watchmen

Coraline

Memorial Day

The Hurt Locker

Medicine for Melancholy

Of Time and the City

*Out of those UP is the only one, that stands a chance.

Indie-Wired: The Death of the Studio Indie and the Rise of something perhaps unustainable

Is indie dead or is the term somewhat meaningless. Warner Brothers I think thought so when they decided to close Warner Independent and Picturehouse, citing that some films from WIP could have been distributed by Warner Brothers and vice versa, in fact a few were picked up by major Warner Brothers, some more successful than others.

There are a few upstarts that have come to town recently, I think being well capitalized and smart in that you don’t over extend yourself is a good strategy. I think the best example is Summit Entertainment, which I think is being overly cautious with The Brothers Bloom (although I see there point - after all, it’s better to have a slow build up for a film thats quirky than a bam - big release that lasts a week). After P-1, their first release seemed like a loss leader they’ve been released films that didn’t feel independent in the least, they felt like they came from the big studios: Twilight, Knowing and Push.

They seem to have a formula that works - they set realistic expectations and for the most part (aside from Push) make pretty good films. Indie film, or small budget films can be successful, I think with realistic expectations. An example at Summit is Next Day Air, it cost 3 Million to make, and grossed 9 Million, modest but considering that its marketing budget was probably reasonable it seems profitable.

A tiny example of this, right off of IMDB is Kelly Reichardt’s first feature Old Joy - it cost $64,000 to transfer the film from 16 to 35 and cover prints, $6,500 on trailers and the studio spent $7,000 advertising the film. The film itself cost $30,000 - therefore it was modestly profitable at $107,500, all together. It grossed $255,352 in theaters.

These spreads are tiny compared to the fuck you money a big blockbuster flick that a Warner Brothers blockbuster does - but then again some of those films loose money. Old Joy, to me seemed like a success, modest, sure but better than loosing money, and it played in theaters. 

Reichardt’s next film, Wendy and Lucy made just shy of 1 million dollars and played in mostly every major art house in the country from a new upstart distributer that really has great taste in film - Oscilloscope Pictures. I respect their view that you have to do some theatrical - that you should just do video on demand stuff.

I also think with digital projection (sure it doesn’t match the beauty of 16MM or 35MM) content can be delivered to theaters the same way that theaters show the Metropolitan Opera - designated an indie film night. You show up at 7:30 on Wednesday for example and we’re going digitally project a new indie film that’s currently only in New York City (not a big deal for me in Northern NJ, although I might use it as a way of getting out of paying a toll, waiting in traffic and dealing with parking). 

The death of indie film is a little scary - there was always two tiers of indie and now with cheap HD technology there is an even wider gap, like America, the middle class is disappearing. This isn’t such a bad thing, but studios, aside from Fox Searchlight and maybe Lionsgate are getting out trying to sell a film on it’s “indie” appeal.

The IFP/Film Independent Spirt Awards award films based on their “independent spirit” - I have tired to figure this out many times, even their years seem off. This year I saw Sugar and The Hurt Locker before you all did, yet The Visitor, which premiered last year (2007) at Toronto (where Hurt Locker did in 2008) was also considered. Slumdog Millionaire, a film so indie Warners didn’t know how to release it wasn’t considered, but Election won big a few years ago despite coming from Paramount and MTV Films. And I’m a member of this great organization? I don’t really get it.

This rant comes on the heals of two news stories recently reported in indiewire: the creation of one company and the shutdown of another. Let’s deal with the shutdown first.

Senator Entertainment is shutting down its film distribution business after one awful film that made no sense graced some 482 screens across the country and made 300,000.00. The Informers had a budget of 18,000,000 per IMDB. Call that a monumental fuck up - hopefully they made some money on the foreign rights (probably not so much). It was an awful film with some big name talent. Directed by the talented Gregor Jordan and staring Billy Bob Thorton, Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke, Winona Ryder, Jon Foster and Amber Heard - while watching it’s nonsense I thought to myself “hey this is one of those movies that I’d see in the basement of the Village East 7 on a rainy Saturday afternoon, be alone, and the film would never be heard of again”. I was right, except I saw it on a Sunday night at the Headquarters Plaza in Morristown, and was in the theater with exsactly two other people.

Senator’s departure leaves behind a few unreleased titles including the God-awful All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (can’t say I’m unhappy about that not seeing the light of day after it was dropped by the Weinstein Company after a disastrous test screening I saw two years ago), Brooklyn’s Finest (Antoine Fuqua’s latest, which I do want to see), and Gregor Jordan’s next film, Unthinkable.

It’s not easy, The Weinstein Company is having cash flow problems, some think because they’ve stretched themselves too thinly. I think the films are the problem, like at Miramax, they’ve released too many in too small releases, they need a hit. I think they still have it, but I suspect they rely too much on test audiences, I contend, while a test screening is a good thing for determining a film’s playability, you cannot please all of the people all of the time, if you try, you make a film nobody likes. However, I’m sure with foreign sales they manage to break even, they invented the commercial indie film and were great at turning small flicks into hits at Miramax - an example is Chasing Amy, it cost 250,000, it made 12 million dollars.

There are some indies still in the game - Sony Classics still stays true to its core, stretching once in a while to a wide release that some how doesn’t seem to work quite as well. They also, I think, botched the release of Atom Egoyan’s masterpiece Adoration which should have been given a slow build and then bam - a big 400-print release. Egoyan has never had a cross-over hit despite churning out masterpieces time and again. I just re-watched The Sweet Hereafter and it still is a powerful and amazing film. The Weisntein’s I think gave Egoyan his greatest box office success with Exotica, the title is an easy sell, so much so it ended up in the “mature” section of my local video store once along with soft core sex titles that weren’t raunchy enough for the back room. It is anything but that.

Oscilloscope is probably the most exciting new company around, run by a Adam Yaunch of the Beastie Boys is releasing some groundbreaking titles, I think the fact most of their films have recently debuted at the Film Forum proves their artistic success. They don’t have the money to go crazy and make Treeless Mountain the family film hit that say a Sony Classics might have tried to do, but they know their audience. They opened Treeless Mountain simultaneously at the Film Forum and at an AMC Theater in a Korean neighborhood in New Jersey.

The other announcement that spawned this rant is the launch of DF Indie Studios, run and advised by several indie film figures. It seems like a hedge fund approach to creating 8-Million Dollar studio films. Not all will be Little Miss Sunshine or Sunshine Cleaning, but the hope is they can be. In that range you can attract stars, it’s a lot of money, hell it could do Informers’ numbers if it’s not well reviewed or the studio botches the release.

Informers, of coarse is a complex case of having a film that should be driven by positive reviews and word of mouth be, simply unwatchable. It wouldn’t do well in New York and LA because they’re review driven cities, they would never stand a chance to expand to 300 screens if they failed in New York and LA, but who knows maybe they were contractually obligated to do a release of that size.

I will take a wait and see approach of DF Indie Studios. I wish they’d make films for under a million dollars, like In/Dig/Ent set out to do years ago before giving up. Is indie film a profitable business to be in. I’d like to think if it was more studios would do it. Sure we now have major studio films with the swagger of indie

The game has changed so much. Tonight I saw Downloading Nancy, a film that a few years ago might have come out under the Miramax banner - now it’s being released in theaters by tiny Strand Releasing and on demand by IFC Films. Video on demand seems like the future, it’s a good way of getting small films out there to places where they wouldn’t play, but I like the idea of “Indie Film Night” more, use those digital projectors for the reason they were intended - bringing in new, exciting and diverse content to a theater on a night when people would rather stay home on the couch with their snuggy. If it’s poorly attended then you’ve only given up one showtime on an unpopular night in a small auditorium.

This won’t save indie film. Indie film ranges from garage band filmmakers to fully funded $20 million dollar films - some more risky than those garage band films. Defining what is undefinable won’t save it either. Start up firms come and go, none really last - hell even Lionsgate is on the verge of being taken over, and they took over Artisan, the firm that was considered so brilliant a few years ago when they released the massive hit The Blair Witch Project. Summit may have its rough patches, Oscilloscope I think will stick around and not fall into the traps of the small upstarts like Think Film, which ventured into larger releases and budgets.

The way I see these two upstarts is this: Oscilloscope is like Strand Releasing in terms of the scope of their releases, they pick up films based on their artistic merit, in a way they have picked up where New Yorker Films left off after being sold to another company with grand indie ambitions - Madstone.

Madstone proposed running theaters, converting low performing sites abandoned by General Cinema, Mann, and other chains to high end art theaters. It didn’t go so well and the theaters lasted only a few years, after all some markets cannot sustain an art house with several screens. Sadly Norther New Jersey (i.e. Montclair) streamlined years ago - the town had 3 theaters, combined with 11 screens of art films, we’re now down to 6 at the Clairidge.

Perhaps indie is as meaningless and as broad as “IMAX” has become. I hate to see it as a brand in the way that I hate that people say they like “indie films because they are different”. I really hate hearing people say that on an elevator ride up to the car in the Montclair parking garage. New York City of coarse is the greatest city for film lovers - where else will a Turkish art film sell out at 9:40 on a Tuesday night at the Film Forum? Not in Ann Arbor.

Die a Virgin: the Virgin Megastore in its Last Days

The other day I witnessed the demise of an old retail friend - the venerable Virgin Megastore. Virgin and Sir Richard Branson did it better than any other store achieving what all good brands do: create an emotional connection with their buyers. This is what sets Target with its catchy ascetics apart from the bland Wal Mart. Virgin is the hip, urban version of Barns & Nobles, where instead of classical music they have an actual on site DJ booth spinning jams.

Going to Virgin Megastore was for some strange reason an exciting experience - especially the imports section, where for $30 you could buy a rare version of - say - the new Avril Lavigne album from Japan with 3 extra tracks on it. And that’s why you felt cool shopping there - instead of having to run around between little record shops looking for something, or hoping they’d have it at the mall or Best Buy - Virgin always had it.

Then a little thing called the internet came around. Virgin Megastores I learned actually were still profitable - why are they shutting down? Well the holding companies that run them - Related Properties and Vornado Realty Trust are real estate companies - they think the space is worth more leased out. They may be right with Virgin Megastores sitting mostly in prime real estate - Times Square and Union Square in New York, Downtown Disney is Orlando, and the Sunset Strip in LA. Other locations in malls I learn were shut down even sooner.

The last holdout to my knowledge is Union Square in New York City - the whole South East corner of the square will be a row of broken retail dreams. While I doubt Union Square will reach the apocalyptic-like images found over at deadmalls.com - with Circuit City and Virgin gone - Barns and Nobles across the park will be the only game in town (save for a few Best Buys not that far and Strand Books). 

The scene at Union Square was depressing - and strange - inside Virgin Megastore it was as crowded as it has ever been, everything is 50% the already higher than Best Buy sticker price (MSRP), the books are all gone - and its strange actually buying a CD. I haven’t done so thanks to iTunes. Instant gratification takes the fun out of delayed gratification I guess - there was a time when you’d have to get in the car and drive to a store on Tuesday to buy a new CD. Now you can download it that morning from iTunes at a lower price.

Virgin still had a great selection of DVDs and some books, the books were more limited, you felt that Virgin handpicked what was cool and fresh to sell. That’s what I liked it was like getting a recommendation - here’s the new Sarah Vowel book - because we’re the anti-Barns and Nobel, we’re younger, fresher, we’re not your parents record store.

But then a funny thing happened - our parents still go to record stores. Virgin and others (like FYE) sell MP 3 players and video games. The company that was built on Rock and Roll now cannot sell it in a retail format. There are already iTunes only releases, and other digital, online platforms. The next frontier is filmed entertainment and sites, applications and delivery methods are improving.

Perhaps the thing I’m most sad over when considering the death of the Virgin Megastore is the death of an era before iTunes and the iPod. I love these tools, in fact one can explore - you can pick and choose, even buy more guilty pleasure music. Shopping became a personal experience in that you were almost concerned that upon check out the clerk would make fun of your music tastes, I always had that fear - so I stopped buying CDs that would prompt that, as a result my taste in music got better.

Then college and iTunes happened it all went out the window. Virgin sold everything, it was a vibe, a scene - it was everything other entertainment retailers weren’t - it was kind of a tourist destination just by the simple fact most were located in major tourist hubs (aside from Union Square which survived as the hipster alternative to Times Square). And so is the end of an era.

Some retails are good at creating energy that leads to an emotional connection with one’s brand. I think Urban Outfitters is good at doing that with indie rock music, the rough brick and wood finish of their stores that look industrial, almost like something you’d find in your garage or your school’s art studio, and other branding features.

It’s my hope a theater chain will some day do this - I think if say, AMC took the Virgin Megastore approach, in that they channeled some of the energy of a good rock station into retailing - they’d have success. The example would be that the theater chain would have to transfer the energy of a film festival - the lines, the buzz, the programers and their wackiness. It wouldn’t take much to make going to the movies fun, but there are examples to be learned here in the wake of greats that came before. Good branding can convince you to purchase anything just for the experience.

** The Virgin Megastore at Union Square will close for business on Sunday

A Film Festival...everyday?

As a filmmaker I always appreciate a heads up as to what festivals are good and what really aren’t for whatever film I have to show at that time. With that said, I don’t know what to make of Without A Box and the e-mails I get from the company daily. On one hand it’s an ass-kicker - it says to me “you lazy ass make some movies, there are so many festivals out there” - but every day, usually around 5-5:30 I get an e-mail from them about another film festival or another screenwriting contest. Yes it’s great there are resources, but every day a new film festival or contest?

Granted some are regional or even local, which can a good place to show your film. (I had my largest audience ever for Mary May’s Suicide Letter at Bergenfield thanks to the feature that was playing after it, the theater was packed). But still, every day? Maybe I need to log on to my profile there and adjust my profile.

Designer Labels - with a designer price

I know I’m joining the fray late but I just saw Star Trek in a digital IMAX venue and I have to say – digital IMAX is nothing special. It’s 2K digital, nothing more, nothing less – on a larger screen than some. The picture actually didn’t fill up the entire screen either, but that’s probably a problem with the construction of the theater. Digital IMAX combined with smaller, retrofitted screens, while offering good sound, will be the death of IMAX unless more 3-D features are produced in the format. 3-D is a justification to spend more money, sure, but the IMAX part, not so much.

 

Digital 3-D of coarse has been done well in certain cases, but it’s not the greatest thing ever, there is still a loss of light. The best use of it I think was in an awfully sub-par (and would have been bad in 2-D flick My Bloody Valentine where a packed house jumped at the horror/slasher images – and had a great time). However, some films don’t work no matter how they’re shown (Monsters Vs. Aliens would have been awful in any format). Star Trek is an engaging film, but I have a feeling I could have the same experience seeing it in a non-IMAX theater.

 

And here’s where I add something new to the conversation: at one point I thought IMAX at one point was going to change cinematic storytelling. The large screen could allow you to do much more and some filmmakers were using 3-D to create experimental works, documentaries and short narratives. Stan Brakhage even made a film on the IMAX format (I would love to see it on a real IMAX screen, but haven’t had the chance).

 

I knew it was only a matter of time before a feature film was made in that format, and one that would play with the confines of what you could do on a much larger canvas. We did get that – Fantasia 2000, which combined live action, animation and restored classic animation into a visual tapestry that created an emotional and visceral experience.

 

The next one we got was The Matrix Reloaded, a good movie, but a movie-movie. The IMAX presentation was an afterthought. It would continue to be as such in the entertainment film arena, save for a few large format documentaries but no new visual ground in the format has really been broken since MacGillvray Freeman pioneered the large format documentary. A few experiments have come from major studios, including Warner Brothers who made short subject documentaries on a variety of subjects including space, underwater and NASCAR, but these were fillers until the studio product dominated the weekend. These films because they are special to see in IMAX and are intended to be exhibited in the format, have a much longer shelf-life than the studio features.

 

This is not to say studio product is bad, but the fake IMAX digital set-ups are basically to push only studio product. The Omimax domes at the science museums will probably continue to show the science documentaries and specialty programs; perhaps with the studio films at night once the museum closes (perhaps the new Night at the Museum can play there).

 

There is so much product now on the IMAX screens that the traditional focus on the new cheapo-fake IMAX retrofitted sites is a second screen for its regular product. Now with digital IMAX it’ll become more accessible to any major studio film, even independent film – which would be nice for certain documentaries (think how cool it would be to see a Matthew Barney film in IMAX), but I doubt they’ll get to play on the multiplex screens. The real issue is how small the screens are and how poor quality the digital experience is. I can tell digital apart from film most times, here it was a dead give away from frame one. The image lacked the depth and grain of film, you might not like film grain – but then again you’re an idiot. The image, like early digital lacks life.

 

I don’t mind seeing a documentary produced on a shoe-string budget on video at the Quad Cinema, I understand that (most of the time those films are shot in DV anyway), but this is IMAX, come on. IMAX is the gold standard for presentation and digital isn’t ready for prime time yet. 4K digital is an improvement over 2K digital IMAX, why not wait until the technology is ready and you can do amazing things in digital, you could see details and clarity you could never see in film. Instead they’ve chose the cheap option, they’re charging you more for a sub-par experience, I doubt, however there will be wide spread outrage over this practice.

 

What I really think is a horrible practice is new theaters opening retrofitted IMAX auditoriums, this is a terrible way to build credibility when a major attraction to your complex is an afterthought. I’d be curious to see if an “original” sized, large IMAX screen could be digital, even on a retrofitted screen like the one at City Center in White Plains, the image wasn’t that great. It’s a shame, when I saw The Dark Knight here, on film, it was nearly perfect. Now a days, it’s just a bigger than average screen with a digital picture.

 

It’s a shame AMC and Regal have really committed to this new format, and hopefully it’ll be a regrettable one. IMAX hasn’t addressed the issue of small screen size, citing numbers. They are a brand now more than an experience. They’ve compared themselves to Starbucks, which offers both an experience and a high quality product. The junior IMAX, in 2D is just offering a brand, no experience and product that’s comparable to any screen in a large auditorium, it barely caries the excitement of seeing a film at a major film festival. Theaters would be better equip to figure out how to bottle the energy and excitement of a film festival – get em’ hooked by giving them a great experience instead of selling them a brand name that means virtually nothing, like THX.

 

Chains departed from THX because people don’t care about a certification, in fact most auditoriums are probably well designed anyway in that they qualify for certification, why pay George Lucus for nothing but a brand with minimal value? Same thing with IMAX – retrofit a theater with giant screen and digital projection and call it something else – oh wait, Cinemark and AMC have started doing that too, already. (And charging more for the “experience”) If they get away with it, I blame all of you, John Q Public.

Summer Projects

So I’m announcing officially the start of two new projects - really, this time no bull shit - I’ve been writing quite a bit lately, most scripts I can’t green light myself but these two I can. More details to follow.

The first: a documentary that I expect to be shot, over the next few summers about a very strange and rather dangerous water park we had here in Northern New Jersey - I’m looking to recruit a DP and someone to work the sound. Anybody interested.

The second: a narrative short film I’ve been writing that will be filmed in the Pompton Lakes area - it’s on par with my film Dwell in terms of scope/production time, in that it’ll be about 25 minutes long. The film is a drama with some comic moments, but a meditation on small town life that goes hand in hand with this Districts cycle I’ve been conceiving.

Districts - as told in the experimental film struggles to make sense of the identify one forms from their surroundings and how where you grow up can influence who you become. The second film in the cycle was P L A N S. This new flick - Hollow Spaces confronts a mother/son relationship when the son, after breaking up with his finance moves back home from Columbus, OH.

And for this I’m seeking a lot of actors - some to function as extras, others to star in lead roles. This one I want to make quickly on the weekends (probably two full weekends) with a small crew and natural lighting (a lot of it takes place in well lit rooms, not like that  dark Blood Sweat and Brando picture), it’ll be shot on HD. I feel good about this one, I think it’s a step in the right direction for me in that while it still retains some experimental threads in that it’s a study of time, space and dimension and will be carefully framed, ect - that it moves me towards more professional and I think more story-based filmmaking. Story is everything, I forgot that for a while, even experimental films have stories, so now I’m going to try to make a real film that captures the emotional intensity that I’ve strived for, while containing an actual plot. See, Ercan Bas - when you yell at me enough about plot, I respond - now you owe me.