Geeks click on the link to read prolost…

Developed following feedback from photographers and cinematographers, Firmware 2.0.3 further enhances the EOS 5D Mark II’s excellent video performance. The addition of new frame rates expands the camera’s video potential, providing filmmakers with the ability to shoot 1080p Full HD footage at 24fps (actual 23.976fps)—the optimum frame rate for cinematic video. 25fps support at both 1920×1080 and 640×480 resolutions will allow users to film at the frame rate required for the PAL broadcast standard, while the new firmware will also change the 30fps option to the NTSC video standard of 29.97fps.

There’s a japanese tv programme which you can find using your googling fingers called Pitagora Suichi which is a constant delight to me no matter how many times I put it on. The new video for “OK Go” steals the idea and whilst at first I found this a bit winsome and was childishly irked by what looks like a pretty obvious edit in the shower curtain sequence, I have to admit that by the end I was rather won over by this silly and oddly inspiring video.

I’m delighted to say that there are a pair of brilliant comments on the end of my recent posting about self distribution. If you’ve not yet seen them then go here http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog/2010/02/diy/ and have a look at two very interesting case studies.

My original question was whether anyone chose to self-distribute their film or whether in truth it was always something forced on them but the disinterest of the established system. Hammad clearly answers that with the case of Lance Hammer who did indeed turn down a distribution deal for his film “Ballast” to do it himself.

According to IMDB “Ballast” has grossed $80.2k, which sadly doesn’t seem that positive when he’s quoted as turning down the distribution deal because “…conventional distribution advances for a small film like “Ballast” range between $25,000-$50,000. “If you made a $50,000 project, that makes sense,” Hammer said. “If you happen to spend more money than that, it becomes difficult to justify giving up creative control.”

I can completely see Hammer’s argument but you have to ask if the time and energy he committed to self-distribution was worth that extra $30k. Seems unlikely when it is suggested that he raised an additional $250k for the P&A.

As is generally the case in discussions about distribution, these numbers are all annoyingly flimsy. I can’t find any quotes for the original budget and I wouldn’t remortgage anything based on IMDB figures. Neither have I seen “Ballast” but it’s a highly praised, award winning film, listed among the Guardian’s “Top 10 Films of 2009 you probably won’t have seen”, which is surely not the best advert for self distribution…

And so time marches us ever forward into March, doubtlessly so named since it marks the point at which the year finally stops feeling new. I’m feeling the march of time quite heavily at the moment because my brother and I are juggling the writing and development of three different projects.

This isn’t my preferred creative process. Ever since I glumly admitted that the insanely productive author figure in Vargas Llosa’s novel “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter” was a fiction to which I could not usefully aspire, I have tried to limit my creative focus to one thing at a time. However since January opportunities for all three projects have come like hungry visitors and now all must share the dinner.

In addition to this, March seems to me like it’s going to be a month for europe. Firstly the 10th is the deadline for the interesting new scheme being run by The Bureau. SOS – Save Our Scripts – is a europe wide development programme that seeks to bring together writers and producers. There’s loads of information here – http://www.saveourscripts.com but safe to say that The Bureau ran Cinema Extreme so entering a feature-focused european wide programme from them should be near the top of your list of things to do.

I’m also going to be at the European Independent Film Festival in Paris in a couple of week’s time. Now it’s 5th year the festival claims to be “committed to being at the centre of the discovery, promotion, and projection of the very best European independent filmmaking talent.” It has the prestigious sponsorship of G-Technology by Hitachi who seem very excited to be “aligning with today’s premiere filmmakers and creative professionals to celebrate and support their efforts in the art, craft and business of independent filmmaking.”It has a programme of 67 films from 26 countries and I’ve never heard of it.

Consequently when the chance of a free trip turned up it was another hungry guest I couldn’t turn down. Living about 30 minutes from St.Pancras means Paris and Norwich are roughly equidistant yet whilst I’m regularly turning to Screen East for money and support, the European film scene remains something of a distant beast. But I’ve been asked to go over and interview some of the Directors, Producers and judges who are taking part as well as sniffing around the seminar programme which is all built around how new technology is changing the face of independent film. I’m also on a personal mission to try and find out why this festival has never been on my radar before, why so many British filmmakers seem blinkered to the opportunities offered by Europe and, most of all, why the European Independent Film Festival gets abbreviated to ECU.

There was a refreshingly constructive response to the casting call post I wrote a week or so ago. I was going to bang on a bit more about the sort of thing directors and producers should and should not do when writing casting calls but between them Katherine Reilly – http://shootingpeople.org/bulletins.php?mode=read&bulletin=2&issue=3654#msg_355411 – and Guy Evans – http://shootingpeople.org/bulletins.php?mode=read&bulletin=2&issue=3655#msg_355550 have pretty much said all that needs to be said. If you’re about to put up a job and you want to make sure you’re post is in the right sort of place to attract talented actors, read those posts and you can’t go far wrong.

However the other issue that came up last week was that of the self-distribution of feature films. I flippantly wrote that “…No one considers a self-distribution strategy. You are forced to accept a self-distribution strategy because distributors don’t yet trust you to back you…” and understandably some people leapt to the defence of their projects.

The brilliant Zahra Zomorrodian wrote “…yes it can mean one hasn’t yet garnered the trust or support of the industry – BUT – it could also be because the filmmaker has decided upfront that that is the best way to get their film in front of an audience…”

Now I have to be honest, this struck me as an odd thing to say. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that self-distribution is a mistake or even a bad thing. Nor am I implying that films that don’t get picked up by a distributor are necessarily bad. Distributors make a commercial decision, not a creative one. There are huge numbers of films that do “get distribution” which are utterly abysmal and many that don’t which never the less deserve to be seen. I’m not even saying that self-distribution is an uncommercial option, even making a purely financial call on a film is a very hard job and clearly Distributors do sometimes just get it wrong.

What struck me as odd about Zahra’s comment though was the idea that a filmmaker would chose self-distribution over having the job handled by someone more experienced and much better connected. However Zahra was not the only one to take issue with my throw-away remark. Seb Smith wrote “…my first no- budget film was picked up by Lionsgate but considering self-dist for my next one as don’t want to sign all my rights away for 20 years…”

Zahra closed her response with this…

“I think the industry is on the cusp of a whole new way of working at the moment and a lot of that revolves around distribution and exhibition. One of the films we currently have on our slate is a definite self distribution case, whereas with the rest we will be looking at a more traditional model.”

This fascinates me. Like I say, I completely see the value in self-distribution but turning to it as a definite preference over using an established Distributor? Who else is planning this? Is it genuinely a preference or just a good alternative? What are the benefits?

Unnecessary apologises for my silence over the past few days, which was caused in part by a trip to Gillingham to talk to some students about filmmaking.

A few years back a corporate job for St.Pancras Station turned me into a bit of a train geek so I was childishly excited to have a reason to travel on the new high speed line that goes from St.Pancras to Ebbsfleet, sadly still one of the least glamorous names ever given to a place. It’s genuinely only about fifteen minutes from Kings Cross to Stratford. Obviously the downside of this is that then you’re in Stratford but Phil’ll be running the East End Film Festival there soon so at least all that rail infrastructure investment wasn’t a total waste.

Once we got to Gillingham though our journey became a little harder. We decided to walk from the station to the college but, guided by an iPhone, we seemed to take a strange zig zagging course through the town. However this sign suggested that it might not have been entirely the fault of the computer…

That’s right, Gillingham Town centre is one and a quarter miles to our left and also one and a quarter miles to our right. I think that means Gillingham is a sphere roughly two and a half miles in circumference, which explains a lot.

Oh huzzah and joy for the internet.

I wrote a couple of days ago about what I saw to be a classic example of the bad casting call. I think my post was pretty clear that I did this not out of any desire to blacken the name of the director responsible, but rather to highlight the importance of wording these posts correctly.

There has been a lot of anger about the unpaid work that gets advertised on Shooting People and a lot of hot air spouted about exploitation. This post seemed a classic example of why the actors who use Shooting People often feel so hard done by, why they feel that there is so little good work available to them on the site. Actors wrote in support of my post both on the site and to me in person.

However Mark McDermott’s eloquent defence of his project (which you can read here http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog/2010/02/not-a-good-casting/) proves my real point. I made it plain in my original post that I didn’t believe Mark was trying to exploit anyone and his reply makes it clear that he is an intelligent, thoughtful, dedicated professional who is trying to make a challenging and complex film. In short, Mark is actually precisely the sort of director that the actors who use SP should want to work with.

I’ve not set out to attack him personally and I’m sorry if anyone felt that it was unfair of me to name him, I was simply quoting from a public posting not divulging any private conversations. However I am glad that his reply has given me this chance to publicly praise him – and also given him a chance to set straight a few of the confusions about his project that his posting created. I am far from alone in seeing the underscoring of the importance of female nudity in a project as a worrying sign and it’s great to read that far from insisting on it, the matter is entirely open to discussion.

However, the crucial point remains – through some bad choices of wording this talented director has made his project look much less appealing than it actually is. Not only that but in so doing he has added to false perception that the SP Casting list is full of men desperate to cast naked women and that it doesn’t contain gem jobs that will open up an actor to some new and brilliant creative partnerships.

The biggest problem with an online service like Shooting People is that contributors often forget who they are actually writing to. In your room, at your computer, the delight is how personal and chatty a service like SP can be. But don’t forget that it is read by thousands of people. Advertising a job on Shooters is not something you should do in a hurry because, as we have seen, it is all too easy to create a very false impression as to the nature of the project you are embarking on.

Equally, I have long thought that many of the actors who attack the jobs on SP do so without a full understanding of what is going on. The fact that Mark has turned out to be such a genuine and thoughtful person rather proves that point.

Regular readers and obsessive bear stalkers will remember that at the end of November last year Chris and I were lucky enough to have our feature script “Hallo Panda” performed and scrutinised as part of the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Forum.

It was a fascinating, enjoyable and really useful night for us and you can, of course, read how it worked out here:
http://shootingpeople.org/bensblog/2009/12/oh-so-thats-how-it-works/

Better still the doors are now open for your script to go through the same rigorous but vital gruelling… your script, brought alive by an amazing cast, at BAFTA, in front of one of your all time film making heroes? Why are you not clicking on the link below already…?

MAY 2000 to MAY 2010 – 10 YEARS OF ROCLIFFE FORUMS – CALL FOR SCRIPTS

The BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Forum invites submissions for its forthcoming 10th anniversary events in Nottingham and London. Over the last 10 years our BAFTA-supported initiative has connected scores of aspiring British writers and filmmakers with BAFTA Award-winning talent including Mike Newell, John Madden and David Parfitt. Deadline for submissions for the 10th Anniversary forums is 17:00 on 8 March 2010. For an application form and more information log on to www.rocliffe.com/scriptappl.php

Subscribers to Shooting People’s Casting Network will probably still remember the nasty taste left in the mouth by the recent volley of bitter recriminations about low and unpaid work. Always keen to take an unpopular route I wheezed on loud and long about the value of such work and why Shooting People should still offer its acting members the chance to make their own minds up about what they turn down or follow up.

There are caveats to this of course. No one supports productions that don’t share their resources equitably and with respect for the work of all involved. No one is suggesting that actors shouldn’t be paid – only that sometimes no one earning any money is not a reason for a film not to get made.

However the biggest problem I find with repeating this argument is the postings that then come in from directors looking for actors to collaborate with. My girlfriend is an actress and so I generally skim over the casting bulletin each day and recommend to her anything I think she’d be amazing in. She is definitely castable as “…late 20’s/early 30’s – well spoken – attractive – height between 5′6″ and 5′10″…” so my fingers hesitated over yesterday’s casting call from Mark McDermott about his feature film project “Silent Terror”.

I’ve never met Mark and I don’t think I’ve seen any of his previous work, I have no personal vendetta against him and I am definitely not accusing him of any short practice, unfairness or anything other than crass stupidity. Equally I am in no way intending to attack his feature project, just the way in which he is pitching it to his would-be collaborators. This is not the worst casting call I’ve read on Shooting People but it does contain some of the regular flash points that always stop me forwarding things to my girlfriend so I thought I’d take a moment to explain why, expressed like this, actors have good reason for feeling like we’re treating them like idiots.

“Hi, I am currently casting for my second low-budget feature film Silent Terror, a suspense driven psychological thriller….”

Mark’s opening sentence at least sets out a clear genre and he goes on to give useful and concise information about shooting dates, location and format. However whilst “second low-budget feature” may sound like a step up from your “first” low-budget feature just have a think about what message this is actually sending. Of course it is good to let your prospective cast know that you have experience and we all know how hard it is to make films so no one will hold it against you that your first low-budget feature clearly vanished without a trace. But is this the first thing you want to tell people?

Because the simple fact is that if this is your “second low-budget feature” that generally means the first didn’t enable you to secure a better budget for this film. Again I must stress that I’m not trying to say Mark is a bad filmmaker, I’ve not seen his first film and I have no idea what he was trying to achieve with it. Neither does the average reader of this casting call. All they have is the information he has given them, so, like me, their first thought should be that rather than promoting his credentials, a man directing his “second low-budget feature” is not actually showing a glowing track record. This is probably an unfair assumption – but there is nothing to stop us leaping to it – especially when we later read:

“We are evaluating distribution opportunities at present and are considering a self-distribution strategy, along with film festival submissions.”

Come on, we are all grown ups here. No one considers a self-distribution strategy. You are forced to accept a self-distribution strategy because distributors don’t yet trust you to back you. This is fine. This is your second low-budget feature after the first one did nothing – of course you’re “considering a self-distribution strategy”. No one will think you’re a failure for this state of affairs, what erks the reader is the attempt at spinning it.

Mark is clearly an ambitious young filmmaker who has yet to receive any real support from within the industry. He is getting off his arse and defying their lethargy by making a film to prove that he has a talent with story telling. He is exactly the sort of person that Shooting People was set up to support and exactly the sort of person that actors should want to meet and possibly work with. Yet because of the way he has presented his past record and place within the industry he makes himself look like a conceited fool who doesn’t yet realise that his films suck.

However the real problem with this casting call comes when he pitches the story and the involvement he hopes his actors will have.

“The film is far reaching in its scope, with a large meandering story. Therefore, the parts we are looking for are significant and pivotal, but will only be required for a limited time in production.”

This blew me away. Who pitches a film with the word “meandering”? I mean I find a lot of Robert Altman’s work to often be meandering but I bet he didn’t try and raise the finance like that. Meandering means dull. Meandering means listless, directionless, rambling tedium. You don’t mean meandering you mean, I don’t know, far reaching or complex or many layered or multi-faceted. OK it’s a mistake and we all make mistakes but a pitch is a pitch and it should be cared about and if you say your film is “meandering” then even if I’m being charitable I’m thinking you’re going into this project without a clear idea of what you’re doing – an idea backed up by the next sentence…

“There will be opportunities for improvisation of performance and dialogue, so you have the potential to bring your own elements to the roles.”

Doesn’t that just mean that you’ve not written a good script yet?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m neither being purely sarcastic or anti-impro. Trust me, my girlfriend is a gifted and experienced improvisor and thanks to her I’ve been lucky enough to see some of the best practitioners of the craft in the world (genuinely). I love impro. Which is why it makes me cross when filmmakers reach for it unknowingly, when they assume that it’s a simple case of letting the actors say the gist of the script rather than being word perfect. Again I’m not accusing Mark of this, rather I’m hoping to point out that expressions like “opportunities for improvisation” are meaningless, foggy and suggest that he is not being rigorous in his approach. Perhaps improvisation is a key creative tool in his production, if so, say so. This reads like you’re hoping your actors will save you from the still unresolved problems in your script.

“All travel and food expenses will be covered. A DVD of the finished film will be provided, along with a digital file of your scenes if required for your showreel.”

Hooray for this, the bare minimum requirements of getting strangers to work on your project. But lets just skim over the story to the character breakdown…

“Jane – late 20’s/early 30’s – well spoken – attractive – height between 5′6″ and 5′10″ – partial nudity required. She has dark hidden secrets.”

And there it is. The ever present bugbear of the Shooting People Casting forum. “Partial nudity required”. How come nudity is “required” yet everything else has “opportunities for improvisation”? I mean, what if, using her impro skills, the actress decides to leave her clothes on? Is that ok? As a piece of impro?

Again, don’t get me wrong, as a filmmaker I’m all in favour of nudity in films. Story telling is about drama and I can think of plenty of dramatic situations that are heightened by everyone being actually physically naked. Not a problem. However that’s a general point about cinema. Let’s just think what you are asking your actress to do in this post. You want her to improve your script with her impro skills and get her tits out. For this you will pay her bus fare, buy her a bacon sandwich and send her a DVD of another low-budget film which you will then send to film festivals because no distributor will touch it.
This is why actors get pissed off.

Again, don’t get me wrong – I am merely talking about how Mark has sold this project, not the project and not Mark. I can think of many situations when a gifted young director will inspire his cast to give astonishing performances because they believe totally in his creative vision. This could turn out to be one of those situations… but you can’t introduce yourself to people like this – you can’t just expect people to get naked for the price of a train ticket because you’ve already made one low budget film that has flopped.

I fully support the right of people to seek collaborators for low and unpaid films – but if you are forced into taking this route think about how collaboration actually works before you start demanding your cast get naked.

Eating chocolates has been slightly ruined for me by everyone who has ever quoted Forrest Gump’s mum at me. I’ve not seen the film because everything about it made me want to kick a window but there was a short time following its release when you couldn’t turn for people quoting Ma Gump’s sage wisdom that “life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re gonna get next”.

This has stuck in to my brain like anti-climb paint and consequently every time I open a box of chocolates and am faced with the small guide which clearly tells you what each glossy brown surface conceals, I am struck with a twinge of needless rage. Life is not like a box of chocolates. Unlike life, with chocolates you do know what you are going to get next and you generally get to choose. Had she said “Life is like a box of chocolates because it’s generally over too quickly and contains too much marzipan” I’d probably have gone to see the film but as it is I’m just left bitter and angry.

Apart from that I had a lovely Valentine’s day.