Showing posts with label Film and TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film and TV. Show all posts
Dec 29, 2013
Straight to Video: Revenue Beyond Theatrical
We're making a horror movie here. We have no illusions about it - straight to video is a possibility. It could well help our chances to eschew a theatrical into a video release and look at deliberately seeking the DVD, the BluRay, the Video on Demand (VOD) route. If we can market it well enough in the various territories we release in, our lower demands with distribution may help us through the door.A few years back, when the film school AFTRS was still in Melbourne, they held an event I was lucky enough to attend. The distro and marketing people from Paramount, Madman and I think Fox told us about a film they'd just released and a film they planned on releasing. They went into the detail of the marketing plan and spend, followed by their expectations and how/why they were/n't met. It was incredibly valuable information. Unfortunately, a lot of the audience was clearly made up of auteurs and precious people who despised the idea of money and marketing involved in filmmaking, but it did mean those of us who were serious about the business got some quality time.
The Vice President in charge of Distribution from Paramount Australia said some stuff I always remember. First, when asked what he wanted from directors, he said there was one thing he wished to hear but seldom did. He wanted a director to say, "I would like this film to make money." Second thing was outlining the types of films that sell. It was an unexpected but enlightening answer. Allow me to paraphrase.
"There are four types of films.I came away from this session realising the power of genre and comedy. There are plenty of movies we love that are not critically acclaimed, but sit proudly in our DVD collections. A bad film that's easy to market is a genre film, a straight to DVD action movie, a gross out comedy. Hard Target, Universal Soldier, Hellraiser, Super Troopers, Definitely Maybe, Fools Rush In.
"I can sell three of those films. A bad film hard to market, well, no, that's difficult and should be abandoned. A great film that's easy to market, well, that's gold and will do well for everyone involved, but is exceedingly rare. I'll still buy a great film that's hard to market, because we'll believe in the project and the pathway will consist of critical and award recognition. The bad film that's easy to market, too, is just as desirable, because it may not be Oscar or Golden Globe worthy, but lots of people will watch it and buy it. It can still make money."
- A bad film that's hard to market;
- A great film that's hard to market;
- A bad film that's easy to market;
- A great film that's easy to market.
Now I needed data. Website The Numbers is a collection of box office and video data based out of LA. Pay enough money and you can get custom research. Sign up and you get access to a certain amount of information, searchable over decades, with at least domestic and international theatrical box office and production budgets available. In some films, there's information on domestic and international video sales. You get a month of free time when you first sign up, before you have to pay. I signed up and raided every type of dataset I could think of that might help me.
Setting the low bar I keep for realism, I went to the bottom 300 horror films the site had information on. There's a few bits and pieces I collected that will help us sell our concept in a business plan, but here's some good juice.
DVD Sales in the US among the 300 lowest performing horror films:
Minimum Average (bottom 100) $3.4 million made.
Mid-Range Average (all 300) $5.37 million made.
Highest Average (bottom 200) $7 million made.
The lowest average gives us $3.4 million. There are films that did far worse, and films like Paranormal Activity with tiny budgets and huge results. $3.4 million, compared to a budget of $250 thousand, is an impressive enough return for a first feature.
I also emailed Madman, asking them a few questions. Again, this was towards the end of the year, so I got a few quick answers with the promise of more detail in 2014. I was given the thumbs up for interest in straight to DVD and closing the gap on release windows, which I think is useful because it lets us put all our marketing effort into one concentrated period, and reap maximum return from multiple channels.
Finally, as I put this information together and built the case for placing less emphasis on theatrical release, this essay came out:
Not at a Cinema Near You: Australia's Film Distribution Problem"Only one in ten first-release films are now viewed at the cinema. 65% are viewed on video-on-demand and DVD/Blu-Ray. Audience behaviour is changing."Not only is moving away from theatre (even though a DVD will enjoy a perception boost from a theatre release) something that economically makes sense, it's where the audience is shifting. Straight to DVD doesn't mean sucky, and with all the money and time that goes into theatrical, with such a shrinking payoff, video is clearly the future.
Revenue on Film and TV: The Mystery of Advances
I jumped into the start of my research on revenue and expenses as part of putting together a finance plan with our management accountant. After getting together some ideas of how theatrical box office is split up, I needed to go deeper, further backwards in the process. Box office is at the very end of the process, and we're all making a fairly high gamble that the movie will make any money at all, let alone enough to cover distro, P&A and exhibitor cuts enough to leave a decent chunk for us.
Here is the rough pathway I could put together for us. You'll see the question mark that signifies what I've hit up against.
There's a thing called an advance. When you're signing up with a distribution company, they might offer an advance, being a payment of funds up front. It's like in the publishing industry, where an author might get an advance they can use to fund their life while they write. If you're established as a filmmaker, producer or production company, you might get an advance. Every year the figures for advances shrink.
How much is that figure, then? What sort of advances are out there, even in the big leagues, as something we can bounce off of? This is the most difficult piece of information I've tried to find. I did manage to find a table of average advances to video paid in 1997, split up on a scale from A+ movies down to B-. Here's the link:
The Feature Film Distribution Deal
Take inflation into account and $50k becomes $75k. The industry isn't that good any more, though, so let's discount inflation and keep it at $50k. Let's also assume we suck, so take the lowest figure and split it in half. Even with these figures, from a $250k production budget, it suddenly seems possible to make not only make budget on presale advances, but to go into profit, too.
I doubted it, though. I needed more information, more recent data. Rummaging around some more, I found Mark David Ryan. Mark is a screen academic at Queensland University of Technology, who specialises in the study of Australian horror. Too perfect. I went through his two theses:
From all of this emerged the skeleton of a finance strategy: take the money and run. I spoke with the above the line team about all I'd learned and put the outline to them.
Fuck long term return. Let's try and generate as much funding from the international and private markets as early as possible, and in doing so, sell off the rights and aspects that traditionally might generate long term profits. If the film is successful, we won't see much of it, but we'll have enough early enough to get paid for our efforts on The Lonely Hills and move on to our next one. Meanwhile, everyone else - distro, exhibitors, investors - makes money off of our efforts, hopefully generating returned interest in the next project.
I still had no idea what to expect in way of advances. Time to speak to Australian sales agents. I have connections with lifestyle TV, but not features, so I simply grabbed the Screen Australia list of international sales agents and worked my way down, marking those that might take our genre, and those in Australia. This was at the end of 2013, just before Xmas, so I only had the chance to contact one. He happened to also be the head of Screen Producers Association of Australia. I have to wait until the new year, but the short response I got helped: You won't get an advance at all without a name attached to the film, be it writer, director, or most preferably, talent.
So that's the latest challenge, and one we were prepared for: get a solid, internationally recognisable name on the picture.
Here is the rough pathway I could put together for us. You'll see the question mark that signifies what I've hit up against.
 |
| The big question is whether an indy can get an advance. |
How much is that figure, then? What sort of advances are out there, even in the big leagues, as something we can bounce off of? This is the most difficult piece of information I've tried to find. I did manage to find a table of average advances to video paid in 1997, split up on a scale from A+ movies down to B-. Here's the link:
The Feature Film Distribution Deal
Take inflation into account and $50k becomes $75k. The industry isn't that good any more, though, so let's discount inflation and keep it at $50k. Let's also assume we suck, so take the lowest figure and split it in half. Even with these figures, from a $250k production budget, it suddenly seems possible to make not only make budget on presale advances, but to go into profit, too.
I doubted it, though. I needed more information, more recent data. Rummaging around some more, I found Mark David Ryan. Mark is a screen academic at Queensland University of Technology, who specialises in the study of Australian horror. Too perfect. I went through his two theses:
- A dark new world : anatomy of Australian horror films
- Whither culture? Australian horror films and the limitations of cultural policy
From all of this emerged the skeleton of a finance strategy: take the money and run. I spoke with the above the line team about all I'd learned and put the outline to them.
Fuck long term return. Let's try and generate as much funding from the international and private markets as early as possible, and in doing so, sell off the rights and aspects that traditionally might generate long term profits. If the film is successful, we won't see much of it, but we'll have enough early enough to get paid for our efforts on The Lonely Hills and move on to our next one. Meanwhile, everyone else - distro, exhibitors, investors - makes money off of our efforts, hopefully generating returned interest in the next project.
I still had no idea what to expect in way of advances. Time to speak to Australian sales agents. I have connections with lifestyle TV, but not features, so I simply grabbed the Screen Australia list of international sales agents and worked my way down, marking those that might take our genre, and those in Australia. This was at the end of 2013, just before Xmas, so I only had the chance to contact one. He happened to also be the head of Screen Producers Association of Australia. I have to wait until the new year, but the short response I got helped: You won't get an advance at all without a name attached to the film, be it writer, director, or most preferably, talent.
So that's the latest challenge, and one we were prepared for: get a solid, internationally recognisable name on the picture.
Dec 28, 2013
How Do I Make Film and TV from Australia Profitable? The Backend
One of the first things I've been doing as producer is proving these two projects, the feature and the lifestyle show, are economically viable. We're not making these just because we feel the burning passion to create. I don't want my crew starving while their veins are full of fire. Without fuel, their fire'll die. Our industry's been running on just fire for too long.
I spoke to some accountants I know, lovely people, and asked them a question, "How do I make money for other people, using film and TV?" It's a simple question with an answer I'll spend my life trying to find. I need professionals in this department. My account pals spoke to me later, and it was a question that bounced around in their heads. One said he kept turning it over when he showered.
They've been incepted.
One chap is a management accountant. What he does frequently for other businesses - real businesses - is take a collection of assumptions about revenue, expenses, overheads and investment, run them through his processes and tell owners or idea holders how the project could be profitable. Assumptions! I can make those (from an educated position). I thought we'd need something more solid. Off I've gone, then, researching independent horror features and lifestyle programming.
Expenses are easy enough. That's budget for the production itself. Napkin maths on the horror gives us a target there, with 10% contingency. Lawyer and accountancy covered, too. Marketing thrown in to be safe. For the lifestyle show, I've got the original, detailed budget we put together for World's Greatest Cafes, the brand funded show we negotiated a year back. Can't give figures at this point, but if you're wondering, just work out how many days of shooting you'll require, add a few for safety, and speak to your fellow freelancers about day rates, or use standard rates from rental houses. Go higher to be safe.
Revenue's the hard bit. It requires some inside knowledge. For the feature, I'm a bit stuck. I started at Box Office Mojo, but their data is superficial at best - just grosses from the box office itself. I need to know what the prodco gets. What I did find was more detail on the breakdowns of where money goes.
Theatrical box office (the money audience gives the cinema for tickets) first gets split between a region's exhibitor (the movie cinema) and the distributor (Hoyts, Paramount, Madman), but the distributor also needs to take their P&A (print and advertising) spend. P&A is the cost of the actual printed spools of film, or the outlay on digital transmission these days, and the advertising within the regions the distro company is selling the film. The ad on the side of a bus or on a billboard or in your Spotify stream most likely came from the distribution company handling that film in your region. So, the distro get their money back on P&A, and it comes from the box office. They also take their cut, shared with the exhibitor or movie theatre chain. The leftover goes back down to the production company or producer (me) - BUT! I'll give a percentage of that to the sales agent I'm most likely to employ, who will get our film into the hands of the distributors in the first place.
Useful links I used:
Revenue and Making Money Out of Film
http://www.creativeskillset.org/film/knowledge/article_5103_1.asp
How Much Does a Movie Need To Make to be Profitable
http://io9.com/5747305/how-much-money-does-a-movie-need-to-make-to-be-profitable
That paragraph up there, that's the backend. People like pie charts and visual representations of text, so here's one showing you an incredibly inaccurate backend breakdown.
That's the very start of the rabbit hole. There's the mysterious and difficult to find advance from a distributor.
That's just theatrical. Theatrical isn't the main event any more. There's a whole other chunk of information I found about video revenue (DVDs, BluRay, VOD and digital).
Click the links to find that info. I'm dribbling it all out as I find it and make sense of it for myself.
I spoke to some accountants I know, lovely people, and asked them a question, "How do I make money for other people, using film and TV?" It's a simple question with an answer I'll spend my life trying to find. I need professionals in this department. My account pals spoke to me later, and it was a question that bounced around in their heads. One said he kept turning it over when he showered.
They've been incepted.
One chap is a management accountant. What he does frequently for other businesses - real businesses - is take a collection of assumptions about revenue, expenses, overheads and investment, run them through his processes and tell owners or idea holders how the project could be profitable. Assumptions! I can make those (from an educated position). I thought we'd need something more solid. Off I've gone, then, researching independent horror features and lifestyle programming.
Expenses are easy enough. That's budget for the production itself. Napkin maths on the horror gives us a target there, with 10% contingency. Lawyer and accountancy covered, too. Marketing thrown in to be safe. For the lifestyle show, I've got the original, detailed budget we put together for World's Greatest Cafes, the brand funded show we negotiated a year back. Can't give figures at this point, but if you're wondering, just work out how many days of shooting you'll require, add a few for safety, and speak to your fellow freelancers about day rates, or use standard rates from rental houses. Go higher to be safe.
Revenue's the hard bit. It requires some inside knowledge. For the feature, I'm a bit stuck. I started at Box Office Mojo, but their data is superficial at best - just grosses from the box office itself. I need to know what the prodco gets. What I did find was more detail on the breakdowns of where money goes.
Theatrical box office (the money audience gives the cinema for tickets) first gets split between a region's exhibitor (the movie cinema) and the distributor (Hoyts, Paramount, Madman), but the distributor also needs to take their P&A (print and advertising) spend. P&A is the cost of the actual printed spools of film, or the outlay on digital transmission these days, and the advertising within the regions the distro company is selling the film. The ad on the side of a bus or on a billboard or in your Spotify stream most likely came from the distribution company handling that film in your region. So, the distro get their money back on P&A, and it comes from the box office. They also take their cut, shared with the exhibitor or movie theatre chain. The leftover goes back down to the production company or producer (me) - BUT! I'll give a percentage of that to the sales agent I'm most likely to employ, who will get our film into the hands of the distributors in the first place.
Useful links I used:
Revenue and Making Money Out of Film
http://www.creativeskillset.org/film/knowledge/article_5103_1.asp
How Much Does a Movie Need To Make to be Profitable
http://io9.com/5747305/how-much-money-does-a-movie-need-to-make-to-be-profitable
That paragraph up there, that's the backend. People like pie charts and visual representations of text, so here's one showing you an incredibly inaccurate backend breakdown.
That's just theatrical. Theatrical isn't the main event any more. There's a whole other chunk of information I found about video revenue (DVDs, BluRay, VOD and digital).
Click the links to find that info. I'm dribbling it all out as I find it and make sense of it for myself.
Dec 18, 2013
The Movement To Make
Title sounds like I have to take a dump. And I do, but right now there are more important things to attend to.
I've attached myself to produce a feature film and a TV series, but it could only happen now. Since 2007, I've been getting good at producing video. Deakin and RMIT left a lot to be learned. We were taught how to make feature films, then entered the world realising we'd be fools to immediately make one. It's like finishing your MBA and then walking into Telstra, slapping your degree on the receptionist desk and declaring, "I'll take the CEO job, please." Hubris.
I worked at Channel 10 for two years, taking notes on how studio television works, eyeing the producers and their roles, as well as everyone else's. Hearing where satisfaction and dissatisfaction lay. I went up and down the east coast on cooking lifestyle show Boys Weekend, learning about crewing on location. I edited a season of Good Chef Bad Chef, seeing the post-production process in action. I met a sales agent and discovered their crucial role in the business side.
I buried Green Rabbit, sold the assets, watched as our employees started the behemoth Jumbla, and restructured everything I'd learnt into The X Gene, my phoenix. This video agency is the sharpened, savvy result of all my street smart education. I'm confident in the processes, I have a treasured collection of freelancers who I trust not only to excel at their work, but that add something to it, and I understand Business.
With all this in my past, as I analysed a writer-producer agreement, I realised it was only now that I could fully make sense of this document and the context surrounding it. Only now could I bend my experience to the purpose I set out of uni with: to be part of those who change the film and TV industry into a more profitable, global industry.
The horror feature and the lifestyle TV show are the first steps, and I wanted to use this blog to keep track of how its going. I also want to share what I learn, because one of the great frustrations has been the secretive, little black book approach of the old guard. The lean young entrepreneurs I've met know this is a bullshit approach, so stay tuned and learn with me how to make movies and shows that make money for the people who are a part of them.
Feb 1, 2013
Our go at Crowdfunding
Not asking much, comparatively, and we're giving you stuff you might actually like.
UPDATE: HA! We failed! Ba bowm.
UPDATE: HA! We failed! Ba bowm.
Jun 10, 2012
25%+ Aussie Pirates: Reasons Why
The Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation tells us more than a quarter of Australians are pirates.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/426521/more_than_25_australia_ip_pirates_ipaf_says/
When video content was available on CD or DVD, there was still piracy, but it was never as widespread, nor were its proponents as vociferous as they are now. In the DVD age, piracy was more the trade of organised crime. Dedicated DIY factories would pump out pirated DVDs to sell en masse as a money making exercise for unscrupulous sorts. It wasn't the pimple-faced teenager returning after school to find his Game of Thrones had downloaded. Nor was it the Mum delighted another episode of Pregnant in Heels was up on Zshare.
The reason piracy, as it's known today, wasn't like that in the DVD age was because DVDs and CDs, on the whole, worked. When you bought a DVD of a new movie, you could play it on any DVD player or computer in your house. You could take it to your friend's home and play it on their system. You could lend it to a cousin and they'd have no trouble pressing play. All you needed was a DVD player and a TV (the cables came with, for free). If the movie or TV show came out earlier in a different country, you could go online or call overseas and order it. The disc would arrive in the mail, and if you had a region free player, or had bought an overseas model, you were sorted. There were no barriers, other than whether the video content had been released yet.
Now, it's madness. In short, it's this:
The Oatmeal's 'I tried to watch Game of Thrones and this is what happened.'
TV shows or movies are available overseas, tantalisingly a click away, but not in your country. Series are seasons behind in their digital versions, and DVD releases are becoming more chaotic as they get tied in with digital rights negotiations.
If you don't live in the U.S., it's exponentially worse. If you want to buy a digital version of a TV show, and then watch it on your TV, you have soooooo much more to do and pay for than you used to. iTunes? Thinking of using a cable to connect your iPad or iPhone to the TV? Nope - officially unauthorised. You'll need AU$100+ for AppleTV, plus the approximately 50% mark up in Australia's iTunes store for the actual content. Then there are huge delays in release dates. A popular show like Parks and Recreation, for example, is only up to season 2 on Australian iTunes, but season 4 in the US. Amazon Instant Video looks closest to working, but you need specific hardware (admittedly a far larger range than Apple), and the USA-to-Australia situation isn't entirely clear. There is no Australian Amazon or amazon.com.au, leaving compatibility questionable enough to avoid clicking 'Buy Now' for a little while yet.
More than 25% of Australians are pirates, and loudly arguing about piracy online and in the media, because actually accessing content we want to consume and are happy to pay for is becoming both ridiculous and in some cases, impossible. We used to buy a video and watch it wherever we wanted. Now, the only way to do this is to pirate. You get a video file you can play on any device, without confusing and sometimes conflicting DRM problems, and you can get it as soon as it airs from around the world. The increasingly complex, walled-garden approach of digital content distributors like Amazon and Apple are strangling the market and pushing record numbers of everyday, otherwise law-abiding citizens into piracy. The big industry players are using broken models that force their customers into positions the customers hate. Until the giant companies start simplifying and making content more accessible, they'll continue to face a growing sea of angry pirates.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/426521/more_than_25_australia_ip_pirates_ipaf_says/
When video content was available on CD or DVD, there was still piracy, but it was never as widespread, nor were its proponents as vociferous as they are now. In the DVD age, piracy was more the trade of organised crime. Dedicated DIY factories would pump out pirated DVDs to sell en masse as a money making exercise for unscrupulous sorts. It wasn't the pimple-faced teenager returning after school to find his Game of Thrones had downloaded. Nor was it the Mum delighted another episode of Pregnant in Heels was up on Zshare.
The reason piracy, as it's known today, wasn't like that in the DVD age was because DVDs and CDs, on the whole, worked. When you bought a DVD of a new movie, you could play it on any DVD player or computer in your house. You could take it to your friend's home and play it on their system. You could lend it to a cousin and they'd have no trouble pressing play. All you needed was a DVD player and a TV (the cables came with, for free). If the movie or TV show came out earlier in a different country, you could go online or call overseas and order it. The disc would arrive in the mail, and if you had a region free player, or had bought an overseas model, you were sorted. There were no barriers, other than whether the video content had been released yet.
Now, it's madness. In short, it's this:
The Oatmeal's 'I tried to watch Game of Thrones and this is what happened.'
TV shows or movies are available overseas, tantalisingly a click away, but not in your country. Series are seasons behind in their digital versions, and DVD releases are becoming more chaotic as they get tied in with digital rights negotiations.
If you don't live in the U.S., it's exponentially worse. If you want to buy a digital version of a TV show, and then watch it on your TV, you have soooooo much more to do and pay for than you used to. iTunes? Thinking of using a cable to connect your iPad or iPhone to the TV? Nope - officially unauthorised. You'll need AU$100+ for AppleTV, plus the approximately 50% mark up in Australia's iTunes store for the actual content. Then there are huge delays in release dates. A popular show like Parks and Recreation, for example, is only up to season 2 on Australian iTunes, but season 4 in the US. Amazon Instant Video looks closest to working, but you need specific hardware (admittedly a far larger range than Apple), and the USA-to-Australia situation isn't entirely clear. There is no Australian Amazon or amazon.com.au, leaving compatibility questionable enough to avoid clicking 'Buy Now' for a little while yet.
More than 25% of Australians are pirates, and loudly arguing about piracy online and in the media, because actually accessing content we want to consume and are happy to pay for is becoming both ridiculous and in some cases, impossible. We used to buy a video and watch it wherever we wanted. Now, the only way to do this is to pirate. You get a video file you can play on any device, without confusing and sometimes conflicting DRM problems, and you can get it as soon as it airs from around the world. The increasingly complex, walled-garden approach of digital content distributors like Amazon and Apple are strangling the market and pushing record numbers of everyday, otherwise law-abiding citizens into piracy. The big industry players are using broken models that force their customers into positions the customers hate. Until the giant companies start simplifying and making content more accessible, they'll continue to face a growing sea of angry pirates.
Jun 5, 2012
Shane Brennan, Showrunner
Wanted to say we're going to hear Shane Brennan speak tonight at The Wheeler Centre. Shane went to the US after writing 100+ hours of produced TV in Australia. He now runs both NCIS shows. As the promotional material says, a budget of "150 million dollars and employs more than 400 people."
When we started BULLET: A Superhero Comedy, I'd already been inspired after hearing Mr Brennan talk at an AWG event. We experimented with the Showrunner model on BULLET. It worked really well, and our collaborators are excited about it all. Our goal is to take our experience and apply it to TV, blazing the trail Shane Brennan marked out for us.
The lads from BULLET are joining me tonight. We're going to come away incredibly psyched.
TV people, please take heed. This is the future of our biz. We truly believe it. If it isn't us, it'll be someone else. We plan for it to be us, though...
When we started BULLET: A Superhero Comedy, I'd already been inspired after hearing Mr Brennan talk at an AWG event. We experimented with the Showrunner model on BULLET. It worked really well, and our collaborators are excited about it all. Our goal is to take our experience and apply it to TV, blazing the trail Shane Brennan marked out for us.
The lads from BULLET are joining me tonight. We're going to come away incredibly psyched.
TV people, please take heed. This is the future of our biz. We truly believe it. If it isn't us, it'll be someone else. We plan for it to be us, though...
Feb 26, 2012
Star Wars will never die, but we might!
These movies are over twenty years old. PLEASE SOMEONE FREE US FROM THIS INFINITY LOOP!
Blue Harvest, It's A Trap and Something, Something, Something Dark Side are THREE different extended parodies by Family Guy. WHY!? They even reference how common and lazy such a thing is in the title of the latter. THEN WHY!? Characters from American Dad and The Cleveland Show are dragged in to make up numbers. WHY!?
Robot Chicken also did three (THREE!) Star Wars parodies. How many jokes are left to be extracted from this inflated, bedraggled, immortal beast?
There's no doubt Star Wars appeal will continue to endure...TO OUR GRAVES AND BEYOND, LIKE A VERSION OF REPETITIVE HELL.
Blue Harvest, It's A Trap and Something, Something, Something Dark Side are THREE different extended parodies by Family Guy. WHY!? They even reference how common and lazy such a thing is in the title of the latter. THEN WHY!? Characters from American Dad and The Cleveland Show are dragged in to make up numbers. WHY!?
Robot Chicken also did three (THREE!) Star Wars parodies. How many jokes are left to be extracted from this inflated, bedraggled, immortal beast?
There's no doubt Star Wars appeal will continue to endure...TO OUR GRAVES AND BEYOND, LIKE A VERSION OF REPETITIVE HELL.
Location:A special circle of Hell
Nov 12, 2011
48 Hour Film Project - Melbourne
I just saw the 48 Hour Film Project, Melbourne awards night. The twelve best films, each made in 48 hours. Participating teams were given a prop (earrings), a line (I never thought I'd say this) and a character (Jenny the Pharmacist), and an individually drawn genre (ranging from horror to musical to film de femme).
It was immediately apparent that the event was by filmmakers, for filmmakers, when the opening video was a showcase of the RED 4k playback device, using references to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I felt bad for the people in the audience who weren't filmmakers, as they'd have no interest - then I realized that was maybe five people. My frustration is that these events don't really help us get any closer to building an industry based on audience appeal and commercial success. To put it bluntly, it felt like one big circle jerk. The category-sweeping winner was a meta-film that crunched eight different genres into a story about a writer who is living a delusion of his own script and has to be as random and convention-crossing as possible. Yup. As Shirley says in Community, "That sounds very appealing to filmmakers."
I was there hoping to see some of this new anti-auteur, pro-commercial aspiration filmmaking we're apparently starting to see more of in this country, that Screen Australia's new head is all about.
For me, the stand outs of the night were:
Touched, a webcam dating site video with a great pace that held one shot. I loved this (full disclosure: Ben McEwing and Hannah Moon are good friends of mine, but that wouldn't stop me tearing it apart) because the team spent some 80% of their time on story and concept, so that they could create a script that really worked. There was a good rhythm to the jokes, and attention paid to the interplay between anxious sincerity for a final pay-off punch line. The AWG bang on about how important a script is as the fundamental base for any project. The team of Touched took this on with admirable strength. For once, it was great to watch an Aussie film that didn't spend all it's time wanking off over cameras, lenses and cinematography, and just let acting and story star. A lot of the audience as I moved about were muttering how great the performance was, with the lady beside me exclaiming her glee to me immediately after.
The One Up was a sexy, slick short about a group of girls who ensure women have the upper hand in relationships by faking the male's adultery. The idea is the guilt will always keep the guy in check, while the girl knows nothing ever happened. The plot got a little convoluted, but the gags were sharp and the pace was quick. The acting again strong, and although there were some character idiosyncrasies that didn't hit the mark, there was a confidence and sexiness that an adult audience could appreciate.
It's The 90s was a sitcom set in 90s Australia, with a trio of boof head twentysomethings riffing on nostalgia. This one was a little loose, but it had a bit of a punk Young Ones vibe, in that the cast didn't give much of a shit, they were just having fun. That came through. The camera work was a little off, but that seems to be the trade-off for good concept. It felt like if the writers were given more than 48 hours, they'd polish up a great script. Apparently YouTube is already serving that purpose.
Last, I liked Two Minutes, a straight up comedy of errors about a guy at the edge of sex, who needs to journey to find a condom. It was easily the roughest, with lots of out of focus shots and some pretty messy audio, but it had heart, goddamnit. A cross dressing prostitute with more status than the protagonist showed me they weren't after too cheap a laugh. And the visual humour, relying on no words, showed they had some sophistication as far as applying comedy to film.
These four were films that audiences outside of the little theatre at Palace Kino might like. Incidentally, they also received the least amount of kudos from the judges. Based on the feedback we heard from the judges, it seems the gatekeepers are just as clueless as the rest of the industry. I hope the filmmakers of my four picks show their work to a broader audience, and that the teams spend some proper time on some more scripts.
As for the event, you could really tell that almost everyone in the room knew all the teams and that it was a very filmmaker-heavy event. It was a soft, easy audience. Great for them, not good for the rest of us.
It was immediately apparent that the event was by filmmakers, for filmmakers, when the opening video was a showcase of the RED 4k playback device, using references to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I felt bad for the people in the audience who weren't filmmakers, as they'd have no interest - then I realized that was maybe five people. My frustration is that these events don't really help us get any closer to building an industry based on audience appeal and commercial success. To put it bluntly, it felt like one big circle jerk. The category-sweeping winner was a meta-film that crunched eight different genres into a story about a writer who is living a delusion of his own script and has to be as random and convention-crossing as possible. Yup. As Shirley says in Community, "That sounds very appealing to filmmakers."
I was there hoping to see some of this new anti-auteur, pro-commercial aspiration filmmaking we're apparently starting to see more of in this country, that Screen Australia's new head is all about.
For me, the stand outs of the night were:
Touched, a webcam dating site video with a great pace that held one shot. I loved this (full disclosure: Ben McEwing and Hannah Moon are good friends of mine, but that wouldn't stop me tearing it apart) because the team spent some 80% of their time on story and concept, so that they could create a script that really worked. There was a good rhythm to the jokes, and attention paid to the interplay between anxious sincerity for a final pay-off punch line. The AWG bang on about how important a script is as the fundamental base for any project. The team of Touched took this on with admirable strength. For once, it was great to watch an Aussie film that didn't spend all it's time wanking off over cameras, lenses and cinematography, and just let acting and story star. A lot of the audience as I moved about were muttering how great the performance was, with the lady beside me exclaiming her glee to me immediately after.
The One Up was a sexy, slick short about a group of girls who ensure women have the upper hand in relationships by faking the male's adultery. The idea is the guilt will always keep the guy in check, while the girl knows nothing ever happened. The plot got a little convoluted, but the gags were sharp and the pace was quick. The acting again strong, and although there were some character idiosyncrasies that didn't hit the mark, there was a confidence and sexiness that an adult audience could appreciate.
It's The 90s was a sitcom set in 90s Australia, with a trio of boof head twentysomethings riffing on nostalgia. This one was a little loose, but it had a bit of a punk Young Ones vibe, in that the cast didn't give much of a shit, they were just having fun. That came through. The camera work was a little off, but that seems to be the trade-off for good concept. It felt like if the writers were given more than 48 hours, they'd polish up a great script. Apparently YouTube is already serving that purpose.
Last, I liked Two Minutes, a straight up comedy of errors about a guy at the edge of sex, who needs to journey to find a condom. It was easily the roughest, with lots of out of focus shots and some pretty messy audio, but it had heart, goddamnit. A cross dressing prostitute with more status than the protagonist showed me they weren't after too cheap a laugh. And the visual humour, relying on no words, showed they had some sophistication as far as applying comedy to film.
These four were films that audiences outside of the little theatre at Palace Kino might like. Incidentally, they also received the least amount of kudos from the judges. Based on the feedback we heard from the judges, it seems the gatekeepers are just as clueless as the rest of the industry. I hope the filmmakers of my four picks show their work to a broader audience, and that the teams spend some proper time on some more scripts.
As for the event, you could really tell that almost everyone in the room knew all the teams and that it was a very filmmaker-heavy event. It was a soft, easy audience. Great for them, not good for the rest of us.
Jun 17, 2011
Film Victoria Sent Me A Package
I completed a producer's survey for Film Victoria. As thanks, completely unsolicited, they were kind enough to send me a notepad with built in pen holder and thin post-its and a deck of playing cards with locations and Victorian-shot films on them.
I'm not ungrateful, but in the wake of the $45k dinner party, I have to ask two questions:
1. Was this provided via in-kind or heavily discounted support?
2. If not, what was the spend, and was it necessary?
Anyone know anything? Sound off in the comments.
I'm not ungrateful, but in the wake of the $45k dinner party, I have to ask two questions:
1. Was this provided via in-kind or heavily discounted support?
2. If not, what was the spend, and was it necessary?
Anyone know anything? Sound off in the comments.
Jun 4, 2011
Film Victoria Responded: Short Films and Emerging Filmmakers
Film Victoria called me. Sort of.
I tweeted my post about Film Victoria seemingly giving up on short films and asked Film Vic is they cared to respond. I got a DM asking me to give a certain someone at their office a call.
I called, and was put onto a nice lady from the investment area. She admitted she hadn't read the article and wasn't particularly sure what I was talking about. Their twitter feed is maintained by their marketing co-ordinator, who hadn't forwarded my concern on. I was going in fresh, so I let her know my concerns.
The ma'am at Film Vic, who I don't want to name just in case, was lovely. She sympathised with the difficult nature of coming up form the bottom, having come from publishing into film being told she may as well swim in lava for all the chance she'd have of staying afloat (I'm paraphrasing).
She told me about Raw Nerve, Springboard, Internships and Propellor Shorts, all programs made to cater for the emerging filmmaker. Some of them aren't always running, some come and go. Some I was aware of, some I wasn't. Hopefully I can make you all more aware too, and we can flood these fuckers with quality material that's been gone over with a fine-toothed comb and keeps the audience front and centre.
I was also made aware of 37°South, the sales market for our kind. This is for features only but still useful.
I tweeted my post about Film Victoria seemingly giving up on short films and asked Film Vic is they cared to respond. I got a DM asking me to give a certain someone at their office a call.
I called, and was put onto a nice lady from the investment area. She admitted she hadn't read the article and wasn't particularly sure what I was talking about. Their twitter feed is maintained by their marketing co-ordinator, who hadn't forwarded my concern on. I was going in fresh, so I let her know my concerns.
The ma'am at Film Vic, who I don't want to name just in case, was lovely. She sympathised with the difficult nature of coming up form the bottom, having come from publishing into film being told she may as well swim in lava for all the chance she'd have of staying afloat (I'm paraphrasing).
She told me about Raw Nerve, Springboard, Internships and Propellor Shorts, all programs made to cater for the emerging filmmaker. Some of them aren't always running, some come and go. Some I was aware of, some I wasn't. Hopefully I can make you all more aware too, and we can flood these fuckers with quality material that's been gone over with a fine-toothed comb and keeps the audience front and centre.
I was also made aware of 37°South, the sales market for our kind. This is for features only but still useful.
Apr 8, 2011
Has Film Victoria Given Up On Emerging Filmmakers?
I'm not one to cast aspersions (ha!) but I have a pressing feeling Victoria is not the place to be if you are an emerging filmmaker who wants state government support.
I'm not a massive fan of government bodies as sole funding mechanisms for film, but I do understand that as an emerging filmmaker with an unconfident private sector, finding money to get that first project off the ground can be hard. If you can scrape together some money from business, matched funding from government can be useful to push the film further. Over all though, there aren't many choices for young ducks. Thus, I've been exploring funding opportunities through Film Victoria.
I was at the Australian Writers Guild conference at the start of the year. They had breakfast speed-dating. We moved from table to table, getting in 10 minute chats with officers from places like Film Vic, Screen West, Channel 10 and Sticky Pictures. QLD and WA's reps were super keen to get us younglings over to their state and fund emerging projects. New people. Fresh blood. I moved over to Film Vic's table for the home-ground advantage.
Last year, Film Vic ran an initiative called Catapult. Writers could submit feature films that had no producer attached. No previous experience (two hours of nationally broadcast TV or a theatrically released feature film) was necessary. The initiative simply aimed to uncover new raw talent. I had missed the deadline last year, so I asked about it for this year. I was told they probably wouldn't be running it, but maybe next year in a different format, we'd get something else. I asked why they weren't running it this year. Was it not successful? "Oh no," she replied. "We got over 100 scripts. It was just too many." So they won't be running it again this year because they had too high a response? I was very disappointed by this answer. Surely getting a huge response is a good thing? Doesn't that mean there's a lot of budding talent out there, who could stand to be nurtured by the state body established to do exactly that?
I went back to the Screen West table and started thinking about stories I could tell in Perth.
Fast forward to now. We have a short film that's at an advanced stage of development. The script is tight, a slick animatic with sound effects has been done up by our director. There's funding interest from the private sector. As producer, maybe I can find further funds from Film Vic to help realise this puppy? I go to their site and click 'Funding'. Hmm, no short film funding there any more. OK, let's type 'short film' in their search bar. Nothing? What the hell? I could not find a single stream dedicated to shorts. The best I could see was the slate funding option.
Short films are odd. They're difficult to sell and make money from, but can be a useful tool to get seen and promote talent. As a product, they're difficult. As a marketing device, they're brilliant. The private sector struggles to see the value in dropping $30,000 on a project that has few tangible financial benefits. If any one understands the value of a short, it should be Film Victoria. I swear I remember a time when Film Vic were about short films. Am I wrong, or have they abandoned this important stepping stone?
Please, tell me I'm wrong and point me in the right direction.
I'm not a massive fan of government bodies as sole funding mechanisms for film, but I do understand that as an emerging filmmaker with an unconfident private sector, finding money to get that first project off the ground can be hard. If you can scrape together some money from business, matched funding from government can be useful to push the film further. Over all though, there aren't many choices for young ducks. Thus, I've been exploring funding opportunities through Film Victoria.
I was at the Australian Writers Guild conference at the start of the year. They had breakfast speed-dating. We moved from table to table, getting in 10 minute chats with officers from places like Film Vic, Screen West, Channel 10 and Sticky Pictures. QLD and WA's reps were super keen to get us younglings over to their state and fund emerging projects. New people. Fresh blood. I moved over to Film Vic's table for the home-ground advantage.
Last year, Film Vic ran an initiative called Catapult. Writers could submit feature films that had no producer attached. No previous experience (two hours of nationally broadcast TV or a theatrically released feature film) was necessary. The initiative simply aimed to uncover new raw talent. I had missed the deadline last year, so I asked about it for this year. I was told they probably wouldn't be running it, but maybe next year in a different format, we'd get something else. I asked why they weren't running it this year. Was it not successful? "Oh no," she replied. "We got over 100 scripts. It was just too many." So they won't be running it again this year because they had too high a response? I was very disappointed by this answer. Surely getting a huge response is a good thing? Doesn't that mean there's a lot of budding talent out there, who could stand to be nurtured by the state body established to do exactly that?
I went back to the Screen West table and started thinking about stories I could tell in Perth.
Fast forward to now. We have a short film that's at an advanced stage of development. The script is tight, a slick animatic with sound effects has been done up by our director. There's funding interest from the private sector. As producer, maybe I can find further funds from Film Vic to help realise this puppy? I go to their site and click 'Funding'. Hmm, no short film funding there any more. OK, let's type 'short film' in their search bar. Nothing? What the hell? I could not find a single stream dedicated to shorts. The best I could see was the slate funding option.
Short films are odd. They're difficult to sell and make money from, but can be a useful tool to get seen and promote talent. As a product, they're difficult. As a marketing device, they're brilliant. The private sector struggles to see the value in dropping $30,000 on a project that has few tangible financial benefits. If any one understands the value of a short, it should be Film Victoria. I swear I remember a time when Film Vic were about short films. Am I wrong, or have they abandoned this important stepping stone?
Please, tell me I'm wrong and point me in the right direction.
Mar 22, 2011
Spies and White Lies
I just made a video with Xtranormal.
It's called Spies and White Lies, a little comedy that features a couple who aren't what they appear, sidetracked by a rather delicate question.
No doubt you've seen the litany of vids made with this online software, most of them featuring fuzzy rabbits and bears taking the roles of creative and client (designer and client, production manager and director, SEO agent and client), and then getting more and more frustrated with one another, until expletives pour out of their mouths like confetti. Confetti fired from a mouth cannon.
The neat thing about this software is that you can type in a script with a two or one-hand scenario, and then pick the shots, the movements and the facial expressions. It's a cheap, easy way to play around!
WATCH IT!
Feb 22, 2011
Tropfest 2011 Winner Animal Beatbox
Tropfest has been and gone and no doubt scores of rejected filmmakers and critical fans are grumbling on message boards, comment sections and social media. The winner is Animal Beatbox, a kind of music video for a tailor-made beatboxing score, using paper cutouts of animals gathering around a cellophane river. Watch it here:
So what's being said about the winner? Some say this is an addition to the badger badger mushroom genre of flash animation popular online. Some say so lovingly, others derisively. One comment one YouTube suggested this was a good video for the web, but as a short film didn't make the cut. That's very interesting to me.
As a writer predominantly for the web, I've found that penetrating the holy duo of film and TV is a whole different game. There's a very large divide between what writers and creators do online and what's done in the 'legitimate' creative world of those staid institutions. I think it's to the credit of Tropfest, whose judges included an institution of his own, Bruce Beresford, that a very webby video was selected as the winner. For good or ill, the sort of odd, rather narrative-less video we silly buggers make for cheap and through online has been recognised by a significant figure in the industry.
The great masses have also been pointing to the cheapness and supposed low technical and production value of the winner. Done in a garage with maybe two lights and jerky stop-motion, the film certainly isn't a series of lush lighting set ups, crane and dolly movements, incredible performances by actors with current TV roles (well...), all shot on a RED or an Arri.
Then, who says it has to be? When it comes to this, neither side is ever really happy. People who spend (their parent's) small fortune on their shorts, using DPs from AFTRS or working in the film world; who manage to make gorgeous, deeply visual films, will inevitably feel cheated when a low-budget oddball makes it through. Of course, when a slick high-budget piece wins, those with less experience cry out, "But how are we supposed to get a break in and make something like that."
The outcry might also be, "Production values don't matter if you've got a great story." Interstigly enough, Animal Beatbox doesn't really have any story. People might try and stretch out that our trip down the river is the linear progression of narrative, with the weaving animals acting as sub-plot, but I'd call those people wankers and tell them to shush. Animal Beatbox doesn't have a story. It's a music video or viral video, built on a jokey premise of using vocal and visual depictions of animals to make music and video through repetition.
Where does that sit in what we've been taught as storytellers? Should winning films have a great story? Does it say anywhere that Tropfest is about great story, or great short films? What's the difference, and what's more legitimate? A lot of filmmakers see Tropfest as a launching pad. Wilfred, the SBS series, started as a Tropfest winner. The winner this year will be flown off to meet industry big-wigs. How does Animal Beatbox show off his ability to create something bigger like a series or feature?
Animal Beatbox is a divisive choice. Should it be lauded as a brave recognition of experimental comedy in a medium much maligned by the establishment, or derided as a cheap gimmick that slights dedicated filmmakers creating story? Sound off in the comments section!
UPDATE: http://www.popsugar.com.au/Damon-Gameaus-Winning-Tropfest-Movie-Animal-Kingdom-Accused-Ripping-Off-Eustus-Comedy-Dog-Cat-Video-YouTube-14330103
So what's being said about the winner? Some say this is an addition to the badger badger mushroom genre of flash animation popular online. Some say so lovingly, others derisively. One comment one YouTube suggested this was a good video for the web, but as a short film didn't make the cut. That's very interesting to me.
As a writer predominantly for the web, I've found that penetrating the holy duo of film and TV is a whole different game. There's a very large divide between what writers and creators do online and what's done in the 'legitimate' creative world of those staid institutions. I think it's to the credit of Tropfest, whose judges included an institution of his own, Bruce Beresford, that a very webby video was selected as the winner. For good or ill, the sort of odd, rather narrative-less video we silly buggers make for cheap and through online has been recognised by a significant figure in the industry.
The great masses have also been pointing to the cheapness and supposed low technical and production value of the winner. Done in a garage with maybe two lights and jerky stop-motion, the film certainly isn't a series of lush lighting set ups, crane and dolly movements, incredible performances by actors with current TV roles (well...), all shot on a RED or an Arri.
Then, who says it has to be? When it comes to this, neither side is ever really happy. People who spend (their parent's) small fortune on their shorts, using DPs from AFTRS or working in the film world; who manage to make gorgeous, deeply visual films, will inevitably feel cheated when a low-budget oddball makes it through. Of course, when a slick high-budget piece wins, those with less experience cry out, "But how are we supposed to get a break in and make something like that."
The outcry might also be, "Production values don't matter if you've got a great story." Interstigly enough, Animal Beatbox doesn't really have any story. People might try and stretch out that our trip down the river is the linear progression of narrative, with the weaving animals acting as sub-plot, but I'd call those people wankers and tell them to shush. Animal Beatbox doesn't have a story. It's a music video or viral video, built on a jokey premise of using vocal and visual depictions of animals to make music and video through repetition.
Where does that sit in what we've been taught as storytellers? Should winning films have a great story? Does it say anywhere that Tropfest is about great story, or great short films? What's the difference, and what's more legitimate? A lot of filmmakers see Tropfest as a launching pad. Wilfred, the SBS series, started as a Tropfest winner. The winner this year will be flown off to meet industry big-wigs. How does Animal Beatbox show off his ability to create something bigger like a series or feature?
Animal Beatbox is a divisive choice. Should it be lauded as a brave recognition of experimental comedy in a medium much maligned by the establishment, or derided as a cheap gimmick that slights dedicated filmmakers creating story? Sound off in the comments section!
UPDATE: http://www.popsugar.com.au/Damon-Gameaus-Winning-Tropfest-Movie-Animal-Kingdom-Accused-Ripping-Off-Eustus-Comedy-Dog-Cat-Video-YouTube-14330103
Dec 31, 2010
To Be A Nerd: Patton Oswalt and Nerdism
Patton Oswalt wrote a compelling and interesting article on nerdery, pop culture and subculture. It could be considered the co-theory of Pop Will Eat Itself: Nerds Will Eat Themselves, Throw It All Up and Coat the World. (The article)
I got to thinking a little bit. 'Nerd' as it was used in the eighties and, certainly for me, the nineties, wasn't just about what you liked, or to borrow Oswalt's vernacular, what you lined your thought-palace with. Being called a nerd was as much about the people who did the name calling in the first place. You can't be called something without someone calling. To be a nerd was to like something different, weird, not part of the mainstream. We liked things the cool kids weren't aware of, and that made them dislike us but it also made us special.
I don't think that defining aspect of nerdism is gone. True, nerd culture is now pop culture, but that just means a different set of likes and small joys that sit outside the mainstream are being devoured by a new, different set of neo-nerds. Maybe using the word 'nerd' to describe an outcast kid is off-base now, and we need a new word. It should be easy to find: simply go down to the nearest schoolyard and eavesdrop on the words being spat at by those outcasts.
Nerd used to be derisive, or maybe you've forgotten. I think everyone's always been a weak Otaku, they've just had different things to obsess over. From a housewife in the fifties discussing the best laundry detergent with her friends to a member of the Vienese court, waxing lyrical over Beethoven in 1795. What really made a nerd, back in my day, was that what you liked was scorned by the mainstream, but you loved it anyway.
I'm certain those signifiers still exist today. What are they, do you think? In an age where Boba Fett and comic books are cool, what isn't?
I got to thinking a little bit. 'Nerd' as it was used in the eighties and, certainly for me, the nineties, wasn't just about what you liked, or to borrow Oswalt's vernacular, what you lined your thought-palace with. Being called a nerd was as much about the people who did the name calling in the first place. You can't be called something without someone calling. To be a nerd was to like something different, weird, not part of the mainstream. We liked things the cool kids weren't aware of, and that made them dislike us but it also made us special.
I don't think that defining aspect of nerdism is gone. True, nerd culture is now pop culture, but that just means a different set of likes and small joys that sit outside the mainstream are being devoured by a new, different set of neo-nerds. Maybe using the word 'nerd' to describe an outcast kid is off-base now, and we need a new word. It should be easy to find: simply go down to the nearest schoolyard and eavesdrop on the words being spat at by those outcasts.
Nerd used to be derisive, or maybe you've forgotten. I think everyone's always been a weak Otaku, they've just had different things to obsess over. From a housewife in the fifties discussing the best laundry detergent with her friends to a member of the Vienese court, waxing lyrical over Beethoven in 1795. What really made a nerd, back in my day, was that what you liked was scorned by the mainstream, but you loved it anyway.
I'm certain those signifiers still exist today. What are they, do you think? In an age where Boba Fett and comic books are cool, what isn't?
Nov 6, 2010
REVIEW: The Social Network
First class. The Social Network is first class filmmaking.
Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook, and this is his tale through the eyes of the author Ben Mezrich, who wrote the controversial book The Accidental Billionaires, that Aaron Sorkin then turned into a screenplay. Remember that: this film is a fictionalised account of what took place in the years before and after Facebook took over the world and made Jesse Eisenberg and his youthful cohorts billionaires. How much of it is real and how much of it isn't will create a maelstrom of discussion online for years, maybe decades. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that the elements Sorkin has created and director David Fincher has visualised tell a terrifyingly true-to-life portrayal of our modern time. I agree with other critics; this film captures the zeitgeist.
David Fincher is a great director. He's had his share of misses, but his hits become pieces of cinema that will be remembered long after he's gone. His direction here is masterful, subtle and restrained. This isn't a wild, psychotic visual ride like Fight Club, but more of a steady, mature journey like Zodiac. That Fincher re-teamed with Jeff Cronenweth is a blessing, as the DP's own style has matured into a gorgeous collection of techniques that blend together to show a stark, contrasty, somewhat high-definition digital looking modern Boston and California. The opening shots of Harvard in winter at night, with sodium lamp yellows against stunning centuries-old school buildings as a jilted Zuckerberg runs home through the snow set the tone for a realistic portrayal of a different world, here on earth. Cronenweth uses the tools at his disposal and plays with the final image to give us something unique. His tiltshifts of the rowing meet are lovely, and it's cool to see that effect used outside of a commercial for HP or Kodak. Fincher's re-teamed with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails for the soundtrack, and Reznor delivers a score I immediately downloaded when I got home. It's a mix of quiet organic moments and very synthy beats that express the emotion of each scene beautifully, hauntingly or aggressively. The second track, In Motion, a heavy, thudding kind of retro sounding beat that runs over Zuckerberg's frenzied, emotional creation of Facemash as Fincher cuts back to one of Harvard's elite clubs getting its freak on was memorable.
Jesse Eisenberg has helmed a great rising-star career. He's done it right, and this is his crowning achievement. I loved him in Adventureland, and though his mumbly style may have been suspected of aping Michael Cera, he demonstrated early on in his indie selections that he could indeed act, that there were raw and challenging emotions beneath his awkward, nerdy performances. Those complexities are thrown into sharp relief in The Social Network, as Eisenberg gives us glimpses into an angry, possibly Asberger's-ridden nerd who really, really wants to be cool, but whose faint misanthropy and the massive chip on his shoulder creates something worse. Combine these traits with becoming a billionaire and being hailed a genius and Eisenberg's Zuckerberg demonstrates a three dimensional person, someone conflicted, someone you can't call a monster or evil, because he's really just a jerk or an arsehole at his worst - but real, someone you've met. Sometimes he's loyal, apologetic or friendly, but there's always that smug, indignant anger in Zuckerberg's eyes. It's a great performance of one of the most deep and realised characters on the screen this year.
The rest of the cast are stellar - there's a reason they use the term ensemble cast. When everyone else is a top performer, you can't just call them the supporting cast. Justin Timberlake in particular stands out as Sean Parker, the founder of Napster and a future vision or dark shadow of the young internet entrepreneur that Zuckerberg is captivated by. The Winklevoss brothers, two Harvard seniors and identical twins who get mixed up in lawsuits against Zuckerberg, are played by two different actors, which blew me away when I looked it up just now for this review. Armie Hammer and Josh Pence don't look like bros, yet are fairly similar. Apparently, they were trained to mimic each other's subtle actions, then Pence's face was morphed to look like Hammer's. In certain scenes, it's Hammer talking to himself, but with clever but rather standard editing tricks. I had no idea. Very authentic work, and surely some of the best special effects I've ever seen, because I didn't see them!
One of the biggest joys was Aaron Sorkin's screenplay. Any West Wing fan knows why, and the dialogue in The Social Network is as acidic, fork-tongued, snappy and quick as anything Sorkin has written. He's really wrapped his chubby hands around this source material and bled out some terrific scenes. There's never a wasted moment, never an unnecessary scene, always characters that resonate and have depth. Characters who in other films may come off are throwaway are instead empowered and just as smart as the main characters. All second tier of characters who are only in one or two scenes bring their own decades long histories with them, and challenge Mark Zuckerberg in some way, bringing out the various, toe-curling facets of this fascinating man and the behemoth he built to ride to the land of cool.
Zuckerberg strode into a world of business, dominated by men in their late forties wearing suits and ties, and with a gang of youth-fuelled, anger-driven egotists, smashed the conventions of how a billionaire looks and acts. His posse of coolly yet affectedly casual staff and management wear thongs and hoodies like a uniform, build themselves a legend as giant killers and godmakers. While their thought processes may at times be repugnant, there is still a genuine awe in their achievements at such a young age. When he was about 24 years old, Zuckerberg's Facebook was worth 25 billion dollars, and it's because he capitalised on what my generation finds cool.
At first, everyone seemed to think this film was unnecessary. "We don't need a Facebook movie!" thousands of critics sneered on their blogs or sites, the updates of which were most likely fed to their thousands of Facebook pages or status feeds and liked by millions of friends. Like it or not, Sean Parker is right when he says in the film, "We used to live in farms, and then in cities. And now we're gonna live on the Internet." He's right. Of course he's right. Through what medium did I post this review? Through what medium are you reading it right now? Businesses are now completely dependent on it. Social networks are formed and maintained through it. Nothing exemplifies that more than Facebook, the site that was founded 6 years ago but is still used by a huge majority of the modern world today to stay connected to friends, family and strangers. Sorkin is wise to have crafted this tale, and he also lends it credibility by delivering the most authentic dialogue from people my age talking about the internet. There's no irony or pained humour - the internet is a part of these people's lives. It is Now, and Sorkin writes it so. We're all a part of this story, because we all helped build Facebook and the internet into the monster and overarching social necessity it is today.
I left Facebook a few months ago, and when my sister sits in front of me at a cafe and tells me she I should go back on Facebook so she can show me the photos from her trip, or catch me up on her last few weeks, despite being right in front of me in real life, I can see how important Facebook is and how necessary this film was. The Social Network is first class.
Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook, and this is his tale through the eyes of the author Ben Mezrich, who wrote the controversial book The Accidental Billionaires, that Aaron Sorkin then turned into a screenplay. Remember that: this film is a fictionalised account of what took place in the years before and after Facebook took over the world and made Jesse Eisenberg and his youthful cohorts billionaires. How much of it is real and how much of it isn't will create a maelstrom of discussion online for years, maybe decades. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that the elements Sorkin has created and director David Fincher has visualised tell a terrifyingly true-to-life portrayal of our modern time. I agree with other critics; this film captures the zeitgeist.
David Fincher is a great director. He's had his share of misses, but his hits become pieces of cinema that will be remembered long after he's gone. His direction here is masterful, subtle and restrained. This isn't a wild, psychotic visual ride like Fight Club, but more of a steady, mature journey like Zodiac. That Fincher re-teamed with Jeff Cronenweth is a blessing, as the DP's own style has matured into a gorgeous collection of techniques that blend together to show a stark, contrasty, somewhat high-definition digital looking modern Boston and California. The opening shots of Harvard in winter at night, with sodium lamp yellows against stunning centuries-old school buildings as a jilted Zuckerberg runs home through the snow set the tone for a realistic portrayal of a different world, here on earth. Cronenweth uses the tools at his disposal and plays with the final image to give us something unique. His tiltshifts of the rowing meet are lovely, and it's cool to see that effect used outside of a commercial for HP or Kodak. Fincher's re-teamed with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails for the soundtrack, and Reznor delivers a score I immediately downloaded when I got home. It's a mix of quiet organic moments and very synthy beats that express the emotion of each scene beautifully, hauntingly or aggressively. The second track, In Motion, a heavy, thudding kind of retro sounding beat that runs over Zuckerberg's frenzied, emotional creation of Facemash as Fincher cuts back to one of Harvard's elite clubs getting its freak on was memorable.
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| Concept art, courtesy thesocialnetwork-movie.com |
The rest of the cast are stellar - there's a reason they use the term ensemble cast. When everyone else is a top performer, you can't just call them the supporting cast. Justin Timberlake in particular stands out as Sean Parker, the founder of Napster and a future vision or dark shadow of the young internet entrepreneur that Zuckerberg is captivated by. The Winklevoss brothers, two Harvard seniors and identical twins who get mixed up in lawsuits against Zuckerberg, are played by two different actors, which blew me away when I looked it up just now for this review. Armie Hammer and Josh Pence don't look like bros, yet are fairly similar. Apparently, they were trained to mimic each other's subtle actions, then Pence's face was morphed to look like Hammer's. In certain scenes, it's Hammer talking to himself, but with clever but rather standard editing tricks. I had no idea. Very authentic work, and surely some of the best special effects I've ever seen, because I didn't see them!
One of the biggest joys was Aaron Sorkin's screenplay. Any West Wing fan knows why, and the dialogue in The Social Network is as acidic, fork-tongued, snappy and quick as anything Sorkin has written. He's really wrapped his chubby hands around this source material and bled out some terrific scenes. There's never a wasted moment, never an unnecessary scene, always characters that resonate and have depth. Characters who in other films may come off are throwaway are instead empowered and just as smart as the main characters. All second tier of characters who are only in one or two scenes bring their own decades long histories with them, and challenge Mark Zuckerberg in some way, bringing out the various, toe-curling facets of this fascinating man and the behemoth he built to ride to the land of cool.
Zuckerberg strode into a world of business, dominated by men in their late forties wearing suits and ties, and with a gang of youth-fuelled, anger-driven egotists, smashed the conventions of how a billionaire looks and acts. His posse of coolly yet affectedly casual staff and management wear thongs and hoodies like a uniform, build themselves a legend as giant killers and godmakers. While their thought processes may at times be repugnant, there is still a genuine awe in their achievements at such a young age. When he was about 24 years old, Zuckerberg's Facebook was worth 25 billion dollars, and it's because he capitalised on what my generation finds cool.
I left Facebook a few months ago, and when my sister sits in front of me at a cafe and tells me she I should go back on Facebook so she can show me the photos from her trip, or catch me up on her last few weeks, despite being right in front of me in real life, I can see how important Facebook is and how necessary this film was. The Social Network is first class.
Oct 22, 2010
Simultaneous Release
Movies get released in stages. Theatres first, then retail (DVD), then Video On Demand and digital, then pay TV, then broadcast. In between, there are established waiting period of weeks or months. If a film broke that waiting period, there was trouble. This model is based on a finely balanced set of needs between film studios who want to make money off of films so they can make more films, and the distribution channels who on-sell those movies.
The new model emerging is to smash those windows of release, Hulk style, and release a movie on DVD, in cinemas and digitally on the same day, or a few days apart.
This is a good thing.
Some quarters complain that this could lead to the end of cinemas. Sure. But so be it. Let them go the way of the drive-in as an outmoded form of technology that the audience simply stopped using. The world has decided en masse that they will take movies when they want them. This is the result of that demand. Steven Soderbergh put it similarly: "Name any big little movie that’s come out in the last four years,” he said, and “It has been available in all formats on the day of release. It’s called piracy. Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings, Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s Twelve – I saw them on Canal Street on opening day. Simultaneous release is already here. We’re just trying to gain control over it."
The new model emerging is to smash those windows of release, Hulk style, and release a movie on DVD, in cinemas and digitally on the same day, or a few days apart.
This is a good thing.
Some quarters complain that this could lead to the end of cinemas. Sure. But so be it. Let them go the way of the drive-in as an outmoded form of technology that the audience simply stopped using. The world has decided en masse that they will take movies when they want them. This is the result of that demand. Steven Soderbergh put it similarly: "Name any big little movie that’s come out in the last four years,” he said, and “It has been available in all formats on the day of release. It’s called piracy. Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings, Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s Twelve – I saw them on Canal Street on opening day. Simultaneous release is already here. We’re just trying to gain control over it."
Sep 27, 2010
30 Rock and That Joke
People are throwing the all too familiar moral shit fit today over a joke on 30 Rock. Pete Hornberger explains that with his extra free time he made love to his wife, but that she was asleep, so he didn't have to be gentle. We then see a mid-shot of Pete's snoring wife as she starts to jiggle up and down.
Now, my girlfriend and I exploded with sustained laughter after this gag and had to watch it again to maximise the hilarity. At the time I didn't even think of rape. I was laughing because being a fan of the show, I know that Pete and his wife have a history of bizarre sex practices, and this was just the next step in their escalating kinkiness. I also laughed at the grotesque nature of his wife's mass of snoring flesh wobbling back and forth as a bald, most likely naked Pete began rutting her. I thought my reaction to that horror show was reflected in Liz Lemon's curdled face when we cut back.
Pete intimates he knows it's gross and we cut back to his wife really shaking. Here I figured the writers knew they'd come up with a great joke and wanted to milk it a little extra.
Maybe this says something about me, that my mind didn't go straight to rape, but if so, it equally says something about those whose minds did race to sexual assault in the framework of an off the wall comedy like 30 Rock.
Now that I read the outcry, I realise this scene could indeed be seen as rape, but I really don't believe that was the point or intention of the comedy, and it's certainly not why I laughed. Maybe the writers were a little dangerous with their humour on this one, but in the context of the show, Pete having sleep-sex with his wife seems completely appropriate. This is the same couple who were happy to have sex in Lemon's bed and whose children beat up their father. I believe that Pete's wife, upon waking, would be fine with Pete having made love to her while asleep, because they've set her character up that way. She's a kinky woman. So maybe Mrs Hornberger is happy to be sleep-sexed. Does that mean she condones the same or worse to other people? Does that mean the writers of the show do? Of course not!
The joke is risky, but I think edgy comedy needs to be observed within its sphere of reality. To leap to the conclusion that the scene, the characters and the writers condone rape is absolutely ludicrous.
Sep 21, 2010
YouTube Tuesday: Lisa vs Pooh
Made this after I discovered the joys of decent video on my phone. It's silly, but fun.
I'm sure before long you'll all be enduring five minute vids of my cat playing with a shoe...
I'm sure before long you'll all be enduring five minute vids of my cat playing with a shoe...
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