Small Gauge Madness: Home Movie Day

August 12 is Home Movie Day. As part of the festivities, small-gauge film-related events will be held in 27 states and 6 countries this year. This is the first I've heard of it, but apparently Home Movie Day is in its fourth year. Here's some information from the website:

Home Movie Day was started in 2002 by a group of film archivists concerned about what would happen to all the home movies shot on film during the 20th century....

The Home Movie Day founders envisioned a worldwide celebration of these amateur films, during which people in cities and towns all over would get to meet local film archivists, find out about the long-term benefits of film versus video and digital media, and—most importantly—get to watch those old family films! Because they are local events, Home Movie Day screenings can focus on family and community histories in a meaningful way. They are also an education and outreach opportunity for local archivists, who can share information about proper storage and care for personal films, and how to make plans for their future.

Great stuff. If you happen to go to one of the events, post a comment and let us know how it went. My ladyfriend and I are hoping to attend the one in Richmond.

On a related note, if you've got a lot of 8mm or Super-8 movies that you need to have transferred to video, check back tomorrow.

Hello, Dolly

Yeah, yeah, even I groaned at the title to this post. But hey, it's no worse than the title of the article I'm linking to, is it? Studio Daily's, ahem, "Roll With It" article covers all the means of moving your camera that were announced at NAB this year. If you can move past the puns (sorry, another one!) you'll find some interesting stuff. From what I can tell by the photos, my favorite is the Scooter Shooter. It's an equipment cart that doubles as a dolly once you've unloaded it. Great for small crew shoots. The $2600 price tag seems a little much, but it's about $2000 less than what a Matthews doorway dolly willl set you back. The concept is a 10, though, and I'm sure enterprising DIYers out there could build this thing for about $200. If you do, let me know and I'll post (or link to) your findings.

In the meantime, if you want to move your camera like Murnau or Resnais, check out the dollies.

[Via DV Guru]

Tom Schroeppel: SRF Interview

You won't find Tom Schroeppel's face adorning the cover of Film Comment, Filmmaker, MovieMaker or any other film magazines that champion American cinema, yet, in his own way, Schroeppel has exerted a quiet influence on aspiring filmmakers in film schools across the country for the last twenty-five years. How? As the author of The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video, one of the simplest -- and by simplest, I mean best -- textbooks to cover the basics of motion picture production. When you get a copy of Bare Bones in your hands the first thing you realize is that Schroeppel's not kidding with the title. It starts with the brown (think: "paper bag") cover and block lettering. Open the book and you find text in double-spaced 12 point Courier font and simple hand-drawn images. The content is standard film/video textbook stuff, only it's distilled to its most essential, readable essence. It's like the film textbook equivalent of one of those incredible, out-of-nowhere independent films from the late 70s or early 80s. What it lacks in production values it more than makes up for in content and handmade charm. But don't take my word for it -- no less than Nestor Almendros called it "a marvel of clarity and conciseness."

In true "self-reliant" fashion, Schroeppel took the DIY route to publishing and distributing the book. What's unusual, though, are his sales, which are approaching 120,000 copies sold. When you stop to think about the number of student filmmakers that have learned about such basic concepts as "color temperature" or the "rule of thirds" from him, well, that's what I mean when I say quiet influence.

After I decided to use Bare Bones this fall for the production courses I'm teaching at Virginia Tech, I approached Tom about doing an interview. Happily, he agreed, and over the last few days we emailed back and forth about his 89 page/$8.95 wonder, and its sequel, Video Goals: Getting Results with Pictures and Sound.

 

***

How did The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video come about?

In the late 1970s I was pretty busy shooting and editing TV commercials and industrial sales films in Miami. During the same period I was traveling to Ecuador a couple times a year to train camerapersons at a small TV network there. One day as I was drawing on a Little Havana restaurant napkin to explain a setup to a client, I realized that this was the same thing I had explained in Spanish the previous week in Quito. I decided to translate my training notes back into English and print them in a version I could give to clients.

I based the content of The Bare Bones Camera Course on what I was teaching in Ecuador. This is turn was based on what I had learned at the Army Motion Picture Photography School at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. (I was an Army cameraman and later a Signal Corps officer.) Both environments required quick but thorough knowledge of basic camerawork.

The Army Motion Picture Photography School sounds fascinating. How did you get that assignment? Did you have an interest in motion pictures before you went?

In 1966 I was drafted after I dropped out of graduate school. I wanted to avoid the infantry, so I extended my enlistment from two to three years in order to qualify for motion picture training. For me, it was the most interesting thing the Army had to offer. I came from a family of avid amateur still and movie photographers, so making a living taking pictures was always in the back of my mind.

Is the school still around?

I'm pretty sure the school no longer exists, under that name anyway, although I'm sure the Army is still training photographers and doing a very good job of it. Army education has, in my opinion, two great things going for it: first, they assume you know absolutely nothing about the subject; secondly, they constantly verify that you thoroughly understand and can use what you're being taught. At the mopic school, our training started with silver halide crystals on a piece of film and ended up eight weeks later shooting dual-system sound with a 35mm Mitchell studio camera the size of a Volkswagen. Every day we would have a lecture, shoot assignments based on the lecture, then go back to the classroom and have the previous day's footage (which was processed overnight) critiqued by our teachers, then edit that footage and be critiqued again. I didn't realize it at the time but we were implementing the well-known quality-control cycle of Plan-Do-Check-Act. So, returning to the book, how did you approach writing it?

Over the summer of 1979 I jotted down notes and drew stick figures and eventually put together the first version of the book, typing it on my IBM Selectric typewriter. My industry friends thought it was pretty good, so I had some copies printed and stapled and passed them around.

I started thinking about getting a real publisher to buy my book. To get more input, I placed a classified ad in the American Film Institute Education Newsletter, which went to film teachers; in the ad I offered a free copy of the final published version of my book in exchange for criticism of my rough draft. One hundred teachers asked for copies and 30 of them wrote back and said they wanted to use the book--even in its current stick figure form--as a textbook. I contracted with a local animation house to overdraw my stick figures with better art and had 1000 copies of the book printed, which I started selling to colleges.

Among students of film you're best known for your books, but those books are the result of a long career in film and video. Can you tell me about that work? I worked for many years out of Miami, primarily shooting and editing TV commercials for local, national and Latin American clients, plus a lot of industrials and training films. Later I did more writing and directing. My one foray onto the national stage was when I wrote, directed and shot more than 100 episodes of a syndicated children's magazine show called Kidsworld. What were, for you, the most memorable or creatively satisfying projects? I enjoyed Kidsworld because I was given a lot of independence in the production and I enjoyed working with kids. I made a documentary on my own in Peru called Cuzco...In the Valley of the Incas, which won some awards. The great majority of my work was in TV commercials, sales films and industrial training films. My corporate clients, especially, gave me a lot of creative leeway and most of the time I had fun.

Your website claims you've sold 117,000 copies of Bare Bones. I don't know much about the publishing business, much less self-publishing, but that sounds like a heck of a lot. Can you talk a little bit about self-publishing and self-distributing the book? Who uses it? How did you first market the book?

First of all, the 117,000 number refers to both of my books: The Bare Bones Camera Course and Video Goals. As of today, July 12, 2006, I've sold about 104,000 Bare Bones books and about 14,000 Video Goals. Over the course of the 27 years Bare Bones has been in print, that comes out to an average of 3851 books a year. I sold a lot fewer in the early years and I sell a lot more now. My main customers are colleges; I've sold to more than 400 so far. Lately I've started to sell books to secondary schools, as they get into video instruction and production.

I submitted The Bare Bones Camera Course to every publisher I could find and no one wanted it. It was too short, too simple, not marketable. Then I found a book, How To Get Happily Published, by Judith Appelbaum and Nancy Evans, which I enthusiastically recommend to any would-be author. The second half of this book discusses self-publication. The basic idea is that if you have a niche book, know your market and are willing to invest in book printing, advertising, and order fullfillment, then self-publishing can be a good thing.

The first few years I mailed flyers to the chairpersons of film departments listed in a published guide to colleges that teach film. I reproduced some of the book pages and included favorable quotes from the teachers who were already using The Bare Bones Camera Course. Lately, I haven't advertised at all; with so many copies of my book floating around, word of mouth seems to be working well.

When I picked up Bare Bones for the first time I was impressed with the blurb on the back cover from one of my all-time favorite cinematographers, the late Nestor Almendros. How did that come about?

A good friend and fellow editor in Miami, Julio Roldán, worked with Nestor Almendros in Cuba and was still in touch with him. At Julio's urging, I wrote Mr. Almendros a fan letter and sent him a copy of my book. He wrote me back, praising The Bare Bones Camera Course, and later graciously gave me permission to use his quote, translated into English, on the back of the book.

Your second book, Video Goals: Getting Results with Pictures and Sound seems to overlap some of the same concepts as the first. I like Video Goals, but I am curious why you made it a separate book instead of simply expanding Bare Bones?

Video Goals contains information I used in various talks over the years. I first thought of adding this information to The Bare Bones Camera Course, but teachers said they preferred keeping the first book as simple and basic as possible. So I decided to make a separate book dealing with the overall production process as I experienced it. Since production includes camerawork, I had to provide some information that overlapped with The Bare Bones Camera Course.

One of the most charming aspects of both books are the drawings used to illustrate concepts of framing and cutting. At first, their rudimentary nature was a turn-off, but I then I gradually grew to like them. Aside from obviously keeping down the costs of printing the book, I realized that because they aren't actual photographs of real people and places -- that is, because they don't represent a specific reality -- the drawings allow you to focus on the conceptual points you're making about, say, the rule of thirds. Had you thought about this, or was it just a practical matter?

I wish I was that smart, but I'm not! I originally wanted to hire actors, rent a stage and shoot stills for all my illustrations, but I didn't have the money. So, as I mentioned earlier, I worked with an animator friend to have my original stick figures overdrawn. Since, I've been told by people who design books that drawings are probably the best way to teach principles of photography, because they contain no extraneous details. The other advantage is that, unlike photos, drawings aren't so dated. If I'd used 1979 actors and cameras, I would have had to reshoot all the illustrations several times over the years.

[Click here to see one of Tom's original drawings from 1979.]

As for the text, do you still revise using a typewriter?

My IBM Selectric died some years ago, so I've made the few revisions in the book on my computer, using a Courier font.

Through your books you've played a role in the education of countless filmmakers. Have any of them ever contacted you? From time to time individuals write to thank me for The Bare Bones Camera Course. It's always nice to know that something you've created has helped another person in some way.

Do you have any words of wisdom that you'd like to share with filmmakers -- beginning or advanced -- that might know you through your books and that are reading this? It all comes down to your audience. Know your audience, then make your movie for your audience. Also, don't be afraid to ask for criticism, because it will always help you; even if some idiot says your work is terrible, you will have learned that you're not reaching the idiots out there, which is probably a good thing.

The LOL Team: SRF Interview

The biggest joke in LOL, Joe Swanberg's second feature, may be the one that the filmmaker plays on the audience. Neither romantic (though there's plenty of frank sexual content), nor a comedy (though there are many funny moments), LOL feels less like the rom-com that its title suggests and more like a digital age mash-up of Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game and David Cronenberg's Crash "“ on the one hand, a humanistic, if occasionally bitter, social critique disguised as an ensemble comedy and, on the other hand, a chilly, unsentimental look at the ways that our fascination with technology (in this case, cell phones and the internet) keeps us apart when it's meant to bring us together. While Swanberg's lo-fi digital images and casual sense of plotting may not achieve the cinematic heights of either of the aforementioned masterworks, LOL has a charm all its own. Some of that charm, no doubt, is a product of its production history: The whole thing was made by Swanberg and his friends in Chicago without a script for a mere $3000. What's even more impressive, though, is how the movie starts as a comedy of awkwardness and gradually molts into a bleak satire with a mature, dramatic punch. For this, credit goes to the non-professional performers and Swanberg's sharp editing of his improvised source material.

After premiering in March at South by Southwest (where it was very warmly received), LOL had its East Coast premiere at the Philadelphia Film Festival. The night after its first screening in Philly, I had dinner with Swanberg and two of his collaborators, Chris Wells and Kevin Bewersdorf. All three, as actors behind the improv, are credited as "co-writers." (Bewersdorf also composed the soundtrack.) Among other things, we talked about improvisation, choosing one's collaborators, and making a feature on the cheap.

Here's some of that conversation:

Kevin Bewersdorf: The process [of making a film with Joe Swanberg] is basically just maximizing accidents. Make as many accidents happen as possible because the accidents will be genuine. Sometimes it's a technical nightmare because Joe will just be like, "Alright. We step out here. Here's the mic. Let's just start shooting. Let's just go and do it. Let's just do it." And I'll be like "No, wait, Joe, I mean, the light's not enough here. We're not going to be able to hear the mic." And Joe's just, "No, let's just go. Just shoot, just shoot."

Chris Wells: I feel exactly the same way. We did the phone sex scene, before I knew it the camera was rolling and I was already sort of doing it. Joe didn't give me any time to think about it, which is probably better. I think that's how Joe can get performances [as good as those he gets]. People don't think about it.

So: How do you maximize accidents?

Joe Swanberg: Well it's something that I just realized on the first film [Kissing on the Mouth] that I was making. Things started getting knocked over. And I started thinking about how nothing ever gets knocked over in movies. So in my first movie, multiple times, somebody will open up a cupboard and something will fall out of it. Or they'll do something and a thing of laundry detergent will get knocked off of the washing machine. Or I'll accidentally bump the table and a thing will fall over on it. And so then I started thinking, "Why don't things ever fall over in movies?" They do, but then they don't use that take.

Kevin: So it's not really accidental, in that you choose to use the take where the accident occurred. It's deliberate.

Joe: Yeah. Right. But I specifically set up a scene with enough misinformation that people are going to have to invent things that aren't there. I'll explain a scene to a point, but then I'll leave crucial information out so that the actor will have to actually be thinking while they're in the scene. They can't just go through it [pre-rehearsed]. As Kevin was saying [at the LOL Q+A at the Philadelphia premiere], the second or third time [you do the scene] then you start to react to what you did the first time. But the first time there's gotta be stuff that both of the people don't know so that they have to be on the spot and think of it. For instance, I put Kevin and Tipper [Newton, who plays a girl named Walter] on the porch and I said, "Tipper your parents live in St. Louis and, Kevin, you're trying to get to St. Louis. Now go!"

Kevin: Or, for example, in the scene where I'm going to film Tipper making noises, you didn't tell Tipper that's what I was going to do. You said to Tipper, "He's going to ask you to do something. Do it. And Kevin will film it." So it's about keeping people in the dark just enough.

Joe: ...enough that they're comfortable, but not enough that they know what they're going to do before hand.

Because if all you say is, "He's going to ask you to do something," then she might say, "no" in the scene. Instead, she knows she's gotta say "yes", but she doesn't know what she's saying "yes" to. And that keeps the way she says it fresh.

Joe: That's a good point. If you leave it totally up to chance, it could go horribly wrong.

Kevin: You have to have the skeleton set up. But you don't know how anything hangs on it. Chris: I feel like with my [scenes] it was interesting because I kind of knew the direction the scenes were going to go, but Greta [Gerwig, Chris' co-star] didn't. And I was really talking to her on the phone. So I would just call her up in the middle of her day and she'd start talking to me and I would know where the scene was going to go and she wouldn't, but it would have to go in a different direction because I was reacting to her lack of knowledge. So what I thought the scene would be would end up being something completely different than what I expected.

Joe: But she always knew we were filming. Otherwise, that's exploitation, and that's not what I'm interested in. I want everybody to be aware of the process and aware that it's happening, but unaware of certain crucial information.

Kevin: The other important thing is that Joe's whole style as a director is to be completely invisible. He gives NO direction. His direction is either "Yes it was fine" or "No, do it again." No other direction at all of any kind. Not "do this in this way." Or "More feeling." Or "Slower." Or anything. It's either working or it's not working, and if it's not working we continue to do it. And if it is, then it's fine. And that's why, for some people, it's awful.

Joe: Well, for professionals, it is.

Kevin: And that's why you can't use professional actors. Because unless they're being told what to do they don't know how to feel, they don't know what to do. Because they have all these little tricks and techniques in this little bag of tricks that they've learned. I mean I have great respect for actors, but with non-professionals you can't tell them what to do because then they'll be acting, and then they'll be bad actors. If you have non-professionals and you tell them nothing, then they won't be acting.

Joe: I like professional actors, just not in my movies.

Does it not strike you as unusual that you've found people that are willing to work so hard for you? Joe: No, because it's a backwards process. I cast people who... I found the people and then we found the movie. I didn't have the movie in my head and then I found the people. So really, had I been working with Chris and had he not been in that relationship with Greta that was like that, then the movie would be different because his character would be different. To me it seems perfectly natural that the movie ends up the way it is because I cast the people first and then we all make the movies together. LOL is the only way LOL could end up being. It's these specific people, at these specific points in their life, and this specific point in time, with this technology. There's no vision before it starts.

But on a bigger level, you found people that for six months are saying, "I'm coming along for the ride. And I don't know where it's going. And I'm going to do this." That is what is amazing. This is not something to take for granted. Joe: I don't know. I'm lucky I guess. I can't answer because I have no technique or method other than saying, "Please help me" and then people help me.

Chris: Joe's movies are all so fun for because he's making them out of your own pocket, with his own money.

Joe: I think that is a nice level to it. I'm losing money [making films]. I'm not making money on it. There's a different vibe to everything that happens.

Kevin: People know that Joe is not profiting, that Joe's not just using us. No one feels used because everyone knows that Joe isn't like some Hollywood dude saying, "Hey want to make me a million dollars and be in my movie for free, Trix?"

Chris: There's a huge level of comfort of working for someone who knows he's going to lose money -- he's taking the hit for it -- and just wants to do it because he really, really wants to do it.

It almost has this sort of innocence of those movies from the Thirties where the characters are like, "Hey, let's put on a show!" Because you're all going to do this, you're doing it because you want to tell a story. And you don't even know which story.

Chris: We all start out with friendships I think. Joe knew Kevin from high school. Joe and I have known each other for the last couple of years, and while Joe didn't know Tipper that well, everyone becomes friends through the process of making the movie.

Kevin: I thought LOL would suck. Even until I saw the rough cut. I thought LOL would be terrible. I still did it just because it would be fun to do. I'd get to hang out with these other people. It was like a sport, almost. Like hunting.

Joe: And if your team loses at the end of the day then.

Kevin: . it's a fun game. I didn't feel like I had that much to lose. And being skeptical in the whole thing from the beginning, felt like, if it was bad, well, I was skeptical all along. so I was right. (laughs)

Chris: The movie was made almost like [writing a] paper. There were a lot of different drafts of it. It wasn't like a traditional movie where to go back and to do re-shoots is a big deal, or costs a lot of money or is really difficult. Because for Joe it's no more difficult than anything else he ever shot.

Joe: I was editing as we went anyway.

Chris: Yeah, exactly. I got a copy of the movie in November and I watched it through as it was, and I was like, "Well, my character needs a scene here and here and here, and this is what these scenes need to be." And then we could go back and weave that into the story and just make sure the continuity matches, and then its like we intended that from the beginning.

Joe, one thing you mentioned at the Q+A at the Philadelphia premiere was that while shooting the film is a collaborative process, ultimately the process ends with you, in your bedroom, editing alone.

Joe: That's the one aspect where I'm not really looking for collaboration. I show the movie to Kevin and Chris along the way so that they can tell me what's working and what's not.... I'll always do the first pass without showing it or asking anything like that. And I feel like that's where the director credit comes in. Technically, LOL will always say a film by the three of us, but I think my editing is where I'm doing my directing. Not on set.... Editing is really fun for me. It's the part of the process that I'm most passionate about.

Talk about the technology you used to make the movie.

Joe: We made the movie with one camera and two microphones.

Kevin: And the microphone was hooked up to a pole by a rubber band.

Joe: We didn't have a boom operator. We just had a 3-legged music stand with a rubber band holding a shotgun mic and a 25-foot XLR cable.

Chris: And you ended up buying a new wireless mic, which was one one-sixth of our budget.

Joe: The most in the budget was the wireless microphone. I bought the wireless microphone, I have a Sony PD-150, and there's 30 DVCAM tapes, and there's a 25-foot XLR cable, and there's the shotgun mic that comes with the PD150.

Kevin: And [we weren't even] shooting progressive. Just shooting interlaced.

Joe: Standard 30 frame interlaced. That's the entire package. And then I have a single clamp light with a dimmer switch, just in case, that I usually carry with me. In two hands I can hold everything use to make both my feature films. But that's the way that allows me to walk to somebody's house and shoot and then walk back home and edit that footage 5 minutes later. I don't need to mobilize the troops to shoot a scene. I just need to take my camera case, take my mic pole, and walk somewhere and shoot. I need to be mobile because as soon as it takes two people to transport my stuff somewhere then I need to plan it a day beforehand, and as soon as I need to plan it a day beforehand I'm thinking too much about it. It's not going to happen spontaneously anymore.

So the stuff with Tipper, where Kevin's playing the music at her house, I said, " I know this girl Ann Wells, and I want this girl to play Tipper's roommate, because I know what she looks like and I kind of know how she acts and aesthetically I want that. So I called this girl, Ann Wells -- and it's such a throwaway role, but I knew I wanted that girl to be that throwaway role -- so I called her and she was like, "I don't know if I can do it." and so I said, "Tell me an hour that you have free, and she said "Ok, if we can do it between four o'clock and five o'clock then we can do it." So I said to Kevin, be at Tipper's house at four o'clock. I'm going to be there at 4. We got there at 4:00. We shot from to 4:00 to 4:45.

Kevin: I held out my t-shirt and he white balanced on it. And then we started shooting.

Joe: As soon as we got there. I was rolling as Kevin was unpacking. And then at 4:45 I drove Ann to where she needed to be. And that was the scene. We even shot two scenes.

Kevin: That's another way, going back to maximizing accidents: If you have that kind of restriction on time. Joe could have said, "I want to take my time. Let's not use Ann Wells. We'll use someone else, and take our time and shoot it." Instead, Joe was like, "If we just go and shoot it, then maybe some things will happen.

And if it doesn't work out, you've only lost 45 minutes.

Joe: Absolutely.

Kevin: That's the whole philosophy of the movie. Instead of investing $100,000 to do it you invest $3000.

Joe: If I''m funding something with my own money, like, even when it started to climb up to multiple thousands I was feeling like "Ok, it's time to wrap it up." The financial aspect is becoming too large. The failure rate is so high: No movies get distribution anymore, so many are made, and stuff like that. If I spend $3000 hopefully it can make some money and I can split it with everybody. But if it doesn't, then I've only lost $3000. As soon as the money gets into $10,000 and $15,000" then you're playing the lottery and your odds get less and less with each $5000 increment.

Chris: Especially when you can make [the film] for $3000!

Joe: But that goes back to what you were saying earlier: I need to find people like Kevin and Chris to make it for $3000.

Kevin: The only reason that I did it was because I knew that his last film was in a festival and I was thinking that if this did get into festivals, that I'd get to go for free, and stay at hotels and chill out and drink.

And you're living the dream now.

Kevin: And that's what I'm doing.

Jake Mahaffy: SRF Interview

"This is the world after the end of the world," a boy tells us at the beginning of Jake Mahaffy's debut feature, War. Then, for the next 80 some odd minutes Mahaffy captures, in black and white, the tedious and transcendental moments of a handful of characters, all male, inhabiting a devastated landscape. They work, play, drive, destroy, search for things lost. In a way, it seems, they wait for the world -- seemingly dead already -- to just end already. Is this is what purgatory, or limbo, looks like? Movies this stark, elemental, sui generis are rarely made by conventional means, and in this way War is no different. Mahaffy took five years to produce the thing, shooting it with a Bolex and a handful of non-professional actors in Warren County, Pennsylvania.

Happily, Mahaffy's spare, spiritual vision found an audience on the festival circuit, playing at Sundance, Rotterdam, Ann Arbor, and several other fine festivals. Response was warm, even glowing. Its premiere at Sundance even led to a positive review in, of all places, that bastion of Hollywood biz reporting, Variety.

As Mahaffy has worked on new projects, other laurels have followed: Jake was recognized as one of the "25 New Faces of Independent Film" by Filmmaker Magazine, and he has been awarded grants from Creative Capital and the Guggenheim Foundation. Just this week, in fact, he was selected as the inaugural Lynn Auerbach Screenwriting Fellow by the Sundance Institute.

Last month, visiting Roanoke, where Jake currently lives and works, I approached him about doing an interview. Here is our conversation:

***

War is your first feature film. Why this film?

It was a mix of intention and circumstance. There wasn't a period of career-planning when I considered the potential value of this film as a "first feature." I was a grad student in art school and had to make a thesis film to get my degree and get a job.

I expected to shoot and finish it in a few months -- it took five years. And it changed over time, as it changed me.

In retrospect, I wouldn't want to have made any other movie.

Part of what makes it unique is the way you made it. Tell me about the tools you used. I shot most of it on a 16mm Bolex camera, which doesn't have a battery, by disengaging the motor and winding the rewind key forward. So, I manually pulled the film through the camera, like silent film-operators used to do. That's not a clever attempt at art. It was a practical necessity. With the Bolex, a spring-wound camera, you only get 20-second shots -- many of the shots run 30-seconds to a minute.

I recorded the sound separately with a hand-held microphone and a field deck. So, I could concentrate on picture and sound separately and give full attention to each element for its own sake.

Then editing in Final Cut, I'd piece things back together- footsteps, doors.... I basically made a silent picture-film and a radio-play, composing each for its own sake, then tied them together at certain points, weaving the sound in and out of sync with the image.

Were there parts of your vision for the film that didn't make it on screen? Hardly any of my "vision" made it to screen, thank God.

There are many scenes, written and actually shot, entire plots and characters that aren't included in the final cut. They could constitute a whole other film, actually.

I went in with all my great ideas and was constantly punished for it. It's hugely frustrating and I've lost years off my life - an experience I wouldn't wish on anybody else- but now I wouldn't trade it for the world.

I was beaten into submission- in a good way. I was beaten into recognizing and accepting reality at the expense of all my clever plans. Maybe rather than imagination without restrictions, creativity is really expressed in the friction between ideas and reality. It comes out truly when you deal with the frustrations of trying to impose your vision on the world.

I never would have made a film like this on purpose. But I had to deal with limitations that couldn't be wished away -- or bought out -- which is what you do with a big budget. If you don't have the money to force it then you have to grow and change with it, expand your conception of reality and truth. That's a glorious experience. The film is just so much better than who I am as a person.

Since there was no budget for the project, how did you approach the financial aspects? The film stock was free with a student grant from Kodak. A wealthy, generous man who liked one of my other student films put up $8,000 to buy the camera, tripod and a sound deck. My wife was funding the film, and supporting me, with her job at the time. Then when I got a teaching job- some equipment came with that gig and I started editing.

It was hand-to-mouth. I didn't know what I was doing at the time and couldn't explain to anyone why they should be giving me money for  --  I didn't deserve anybody's money.

But filmmaking isn't necessarily an expensive activity. It's not a big deal to make a cheap film. What costs money is taking the time away from a paying job. That's expensive -- paying rent to live -- taxes, insurance and all the other crap.

In its willingness to let the landscape tell the story War feels like the spiritual heir of Tarkovsky's films. Then, when I met you, I learned that your wife is Ukranian, you speak Russian, and you studied cinematography in Russia. So there's definitely a Russian (or Soviet) connection. Am I just making coincidental connections, and if not, what are there conscious ways that a Russian sensibility -- or whatever you'd like to call it  --have made it into your work? Oh no - don't call my wife Ukrainian! She's Russian - she just lived in Kharkov. Yeah, I studied Russian and Spanish at Brown University. I wanted to get out of myself and away from everything I knew. Living in Russia did that to me in a dramatic way.

As far as landscapes, at the time, I was thinking a lot of Andrew Wyeth. I was trying to compose images and recreate textures that I saw in Wyeth's paintings. It was important to me because I grew up with his pictures.

As stunning as the images are, I thought that the voice-overs were equally compelling -- things like the sequence where the preacher is thinking about the things he misses, and he's listing foods. Were you working from a script?

Some of the monologues we improvised- sitting and looking at the footage and making up stories about it. I told Kenny Hicks -- the guy who does the preacher's voice -- to talk about the Country Kitchen Buffet and how it would feel to be there- hungry but ashamed to eat. He was hilarious and brilliant. My dad too... I showed him several shots of himself dropping rocks into a puddle. I liked the images but didn't know exactly why he was doing it. Right away he said, "Oh, I'm smashing the peepers." And he went off for 15 minutes talking about smashing peepers, how the peepers come out in the spring and bother him and if he kills the frog eggs before they hatch then its not really killing.

But I wrote some of them too. And guided the improvisations. We were just trying to make sense of the images. War was filmed like a documentary because I couldn't use the screenplay I originally intended. I shot images, year after year, of the characters working and living, inhabiting the fictional world of our film. We created an entire self-sufficient reality, gradually pulling a narrative out of the footage in the editing process. Anyway, rather than executing a prearranged plan with a script, we realized the drama indirectly like when making a verite documentary. But that is not the most efficient way to go about making a fiction film, and I couldn't really recommend it.

You've lived and made films in a number of different places -- among them, Providence, Roanoke, and western Pennsylvania. None of them are traditional centers of filmmaking. What's made that possible? Not depending on other people...

These films are not big productions. With a small project you've got to generate your own energy. That's your self-reliance right there.

But there can be some safety in numbers. There"s some security in knowing that other people actually care about what you"re doing, an official "film" and not just some amateur hobby, which is what you get with a producer and a budget. Some people are embarrassed of making a film by themselves- or terrified.

But there"s also a risk for folks to get caught up in that paradigm at the expense of the alternatives. It could be easy to end up not waiting for "money" as much as you"re waiting for validation. You want to build up a network of support that"s going to carry you through production. You want other people to care, which is one way of insuring the film gets finished, seen and approved of.

It's a different kind of "difficult" -- striking out alone without expecting, or trying to convince, other people to care about your project before its finished.

How did you convince the non-professional actors involved with War and Wellness to participate? These are older folks and, presumably, they have jobs, families, and other commitments. Everybody's got commitments. We just try and make it work around jobs and schedules. I don't know. Tell you the truth, I really have no idea why people do this.

Speaking of "safety in numbers" you belong to a cooperative, Handcranked Films. How did you meet the other makers, and what does belonging to it provide?

Dan Sousa, Jeff Sias and I all studied at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) together. Jeff and Dan worked with Bryan Papciak at an animation studio in Boston (Olive Jar).

Since then, Jeff and Bryan put up a website with some of our work. They"re the two central figures and run most of the shows and events. They"ve all been doing amazing work- mostly animation- besides supporting themselves with commercial jobs and teaching.

Dan just made a beautiful animated short, Fable. It's playing at Sundance, Annecy, Ottawa -- all the big animation festivals. Jeff and Bryan are working on a feature non-fiction project called American Ruins. They have some amazing footage and are trying to raise the funds to continue. You can see some of their stuff at www.handcrankedfilm.com

War had a great run on the festival circuit, but there are clearly audiences that haven"t had a chance to see it. What are your plans for distributing it on DVD? How can someone that reads about it here get their hands on it?

I don't have any plans to distribute it. That's a full-time job and I'm busy as it is. The unfinished version of War that showed at the festivals is weak compared to the completed film. I made some small changes that make a big difference. It'd be nice for folks to see the finished film but there's not a whole lot I can do about it at this point. Is there?

But what about audiences that didn't have a chance to reach those festivals. Are you not interested in simply selling the DVD on your website? That's a good idea.

What are you working on now?

There's a whole list of different projects I'm working on... Right now I'm shooting Motion Studies, editing Wellness, and writing a script for Free in Deed. That's a film about a man who tries to perform a miracle and fails. I hope to shoot that within the next year or two-- a civil war movie -- not about the first one but the next one. Wellness, which follows a traveling salesman, was shot on DV. Instead of working with non-sync sound and B+W film, you're now working in color and with dialogue. Did it feel like a radical departure? It's fun -- I can't believe it. Just working with people's faces and tones of voice. It's so much easier and more immediate than dealing in visual terms -- with composition and all. The story just takes care of itself. Editing is a riot -- I'm howling through my tears, laughing while cutting it all together.

When and where can we expect to see it? I've only started editing. We'll see how it turns out.

Just this week you were awarded a Sundance Insititute fellowship for your script to Free in Deed. Can you talk a little bit about the story, as well as what the fellowship will do for the project?

I'm still writing it. So, I can't say a whole lot. It's about a man who failed to perform a miracle when he should have. And how he tries to survive in a new reality without miracles.

The fellowship is meant to help you focus on writing the project. That's where Wellness came from. I wanted to learn about dialogue and take a shot at this whole "realism" kick -- people talking, handheld camera and all that. So

Wellness was shot as an exercise, an experimental project, to help write Free in Deed. But its turning out so well -- it may be its own feature.

Sundance has been so generous. It's such a rare and genuine help. The Labs, the people -- I can't speak highly enough of them. You know, it's out of nowhere this stuff they're doing. So many people -- I see artists so caught up in themselves and people in competition with each other -- trying to outdo each other. The Labs' generosity is really refreshing and positive -- they have a bigger picture of the potential of many movies working together rather than just the small picture each filmmaker has of his or her own project.

One last question. Like me, you teach filmmaking. What are the most important things you try to pass along to your students?

I just try and get students excited about learning, really -- so they can teach themselves over time.

I'd say, go for the long-haul. There's some demented American idea about the importance of age- the prodigy myth- it's a marketing trick, really. But it's simple bullshit. Don't sell out your dream to make a splash. Don't believe the hype, you know? It could be easy to lose perspective with the movies where each new film is the greatest piece of genius since Adam's rib. It's like grade-inflation or something.

And I'd say, be true to the specific subject of each particular film rather than trying to make a "great" film in some generic sense. If the film is right and truthful to its subject then it will also be "good" on its own terms.

Is that preachy enough?

DIY film projects page

Some of the most popular posts on this site are the ones where I link to DIY projects, so I've compiled all of those links onto one page for easy access. Look at the (new) black bar that lists pages. See where it says "resources"? Click that, and you'll see the link. Enjoy.

Small Format Magazine

Just read a posting on OnSuper8 about Small Format magazine, which hails from Germany. Looks interesting by what I can tell from the two articles they have posted online. Having said that, at $79 (US) for 6 issues it makes me think that either I'm clueless to what it costs to put out a magazine these days, or the US dollar is itself awfully "small format."

Notes Towards a Macrocinema Distribution Circuit

My post from a few days ago, in which I proposed a "microcinema circuit," generated some interesting and inspired discussion. Based on the comments to that post, as well as the conversations I've had with some of you via email, I found myself drafting some rough notes towards such a circuit. I think a good name for this is Macrocinema. Instead of writing up a nicely organized blog essay from my notes, I thought I would simply post them raw (or at least medium rare) since the point is not to generate movement from these notes, but to generate discussion and debate, which then generates action.

Harrill's Rough Notes for Building a Macrocinema Circuit

1) Gather information

The first step is to locate all possible non-theatrical screening venues: microcinemas, film societies (like Austin Film Society, Bryn Mawr Film Society, etc). and anyplace else that screens films (ir)regularly.

Anyone who wants to help do this work is welcome. (I would imagine it'd be a mix of filmmakers and microcinema gurus.) Hopefully five or ten people could get involved at this stage. Might be helpful if one or two people doing this work had some sort of institutional (non-profit, foundation, or university) support too. Could help take care of any (probably minor) costs associated with this. This is not essential - most of the first steps of this process could be done electronically (i.e., freely - no paper, no postage, etc). Any institutional support would need to simply be that, support. Not support as a means towards ownership.

Start info-gathering with these:

    - Microcinema Map at Wayfaring. - Academic Venues via The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - Can't believe AMPAS actually has something helpful for indies on their website! - Flicker listing #1 and Flicker listing #2

AIVF should have this stuff on their website, too. I can't find it. Where is it? And Film Arts Foundation used to publish the AEIOU (alternative exhibition index of the universe) guide. Is that on their site? I'm not a member, so I don't know.

Austin Film Society, for example, isn't listed on the above sites, so make sure you really dig to find all the cinemas that need to be contacted.

2) Contact venues

Collect venue information:

    - venue size - how often they screen - how many shows/dates/weeks/whatever they're interested/able to book self- or semi-self-distributed work - genres they show - how shows are promoted - how much they charge - how much of the door they can offer / how much they can offer if FILMMAKER ATTENDS - projection formats - etc - what am I leaving out?

Also: Find out who's interested in a circuit. Not all will be.

3) Analyze and Compile Data...

Compiling them all makes a nice "book" (really a pdf file we can circulate) for all parties interested. Much like the old and out of print (I think) AEIOU (Alternative Exhibition Index Of the Universe) guide that I had back in the late 90s.

"Analysis" means this: See who's out there, where they are, which venues are the most stable/strongest (see next point). In essence, look at the dots before you start to connect them.

4) Build Alliances

It's a matter of connecting the dots on the maps and getting these people to talk.

Regional alliances first. Maybe start with the most well-established microcinemas --- the ones that are the most stable. As we all know, venues like this can be in danger of dying -- sometimes if only one key organizer moves, or a venue space is lost, etc. Some, however, are stable and thriving. So start with them as the hubs. Then build out to the "spoke" venues surrounding them.

Regional "hub" approach makes it easier for the filmmaker to travel to the venues -- you do a "Southeast" region or a "Northwest" region. Then, at some later date, maybe you do the "Midwest" region hub and spokes.

5) Trial and Error

Let's see how this works, and how well it works with films of different genres. Do a number of trials. Trial runs should, well, TRY different thing. To see what sticks. Features. A package of short films. A documentary with two shorts. With filmmakers in attendance. Without filmmakers. Selling DVDs at venue day of show. Selling DVDs afterwards -- either at venue, one website, or some other way. And so on.

NB: I my notes I listed a few ideas about films that might be perfect for this, but I won't mention them here (yet) since I've not approached the makers.

6) Eventually, MAKE A SYSTEM of this (at least a little)

The aim is to make a system of this so the wheel doesn't have to be invented/reinvented several times by every filmmaker that wants to exhibit this way. Likewise, a system can make things easier for the managers of said microcinemas since they're usually doing this (like the filmmakers) in their spare time, for little/no financial reward, and out of a gut passion. The aim isn't just to generate more income for filmmakers/microcinemas, but also to help save everyone's precious time.

Having said all of this, any system should be a flexible system and, above all, one that grows organically out of the trial and error discussed above. Imposing a top-down system without experiments to see what works is just a bad idea.

One way the Macrocinema circuit could work is to take from the ITVS/Public TV exhibition model (but without the enormous corporate structure. All I mean by this is:

- The network [the MACROcinema] says, "We'll screen the film" - and it goes out to all participating cinemas, rolling out city by city (so the filmmaker can travel to venues)

- The different channels [MICROcinemas] that might autonomously say, "We'll take this one and this one" for the things that aren't going out to (picked up or offered to) the MACROcinema, for whatever reason.

End of notes.

**

These notes are incredibly incomplete, and anyone that has a lot of experience touring or running a microcinema will shoot holes in many of these ideas. That's okay. The point is to advance the dialogue. Like filmmaking, this is a process of creative problem solving.

DIY Film Projects Follow-Up (AKA Make Magazine miscellanea)

Browsing around today on the Make Magazine site, I ran across some more projects that might interest the readers of this blog. So, as a kind of "Part 2" of that post I did about DIY film projects, here is a much-briefer follow-up. Check these things out and, if you try one, let us know how it works:

DIY Telecine

DIY Video Projector

DIY Vehicle Camera Mount

DIY Panoramic Lens thingy

How To Assemble an Open Source IPTV Production Suite

How to Hack One-Time-Use Video Camcorders

Pixelcam Modification for Baseband Video Output

One more tip: While Make's posts are a great resource, the comments that follow the posts are often just as helpful -- for example, in the discussion of converting Super 8 to DVD. Enjoy.

ADDED: DIY "Plywood" Skater

Thanks to Matt over at FresHDV for the link on that one.

ADDED: Microphone Windscreen

Self-Promotion for Filmmakers: Do's and Don'ts

On this website and elsewhere, there has been a lot of talk, writing, blogging, and general carrying-on lately about self-distribution. It's undoubtedly an exciting time for self-distro. Since promotion is part of distribution, it follows that self-promotion is an often necessary facet, at least at first, of self-distribution. And that is tricky stuff. Here's a true story:

One day, while at a film festival, I was walking to the festival's main cinema. When I arrived, conspicuously parked outside the cinema was an ostentatious new car. The entire car had been custom-painted and tricked out to promote... a short film. (The car alone, not even counting the paint job, probably cost more than my own short.) The film might have been interesting, but I'll never know. I chose not to see it because I was immediately suspicious of a film whose promotion was disproportionate to its (under 10-minute) running time. This desperate attempt at self-promotion did the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do. Instead of enticing me to see the film, it told me avoid it.

When any kind promotion backfires it can be pretty ugly, but for some reason it just seems all the uglier when it's self-promotion that backfires. (For me it's probably because I'm more apt to laugh at corporations, but feel pity for individuals. But I digress.) The point is, I think a lot of filmmakers hurt their self-distribution efforts by not seeing the moral of my story above, which (in case you didn't get it) is: Be modest in your self-promotion.

I know this sounds paradoxical, but like most paradoxes, it's true. If the work speaks for itself, you'll be surprised at how quickly other people will speak for you.

Perhaps you've seen it too -- a filmmaker's attempt at self-promotion becomes an expression of self-deception, arrogance, or willful hucksterism (calling one's own work "groundbreaking!" or "a masterpiece!"). Sometimes -- and just as bad -- it's an exercise in bad faith. By "bad faith" I mean that filmmakers that are scared to admit that they're just one person trying to tell a simple story with modest means. Instead they dress their work up with pretentious lingo they've heard used (more appropriately) by multinational corporations: They refer to their projects as being by, say, "XYZ Studios in association with FGH Productions" instead of just "John and Jane Doe." They talk about their "brand" before they have made 30 minutes of material. They credit themselves not only as Writer, Director, and Producer, but also as Executive Producer.

Why? These tactics don't make the film better, nor do they make me take the film more seriously. Quite the opposite. And, perhaps more to the point, What's wrong with being an individual filmmaker working with modest means? There's no shame in it and, in fact, there is something beautiful about it. If you own up to it, that is.

With this in mind, here are some hopefully helpful do's and don'ts, which spring from my experiences distributing my own shorts, as well as from working at film festivals, being a festival judge, being a teacher of filmmaking, and being a moviegoer and DVD renter/purchaser:

DO: Start by making the best film you can. That means unique, non-derivative, and crafted to the best of your abilities and resources. DON'T: Bill yourself or your film as something you or it is not.

*

DO: Credit yourself. Once or twice in your opening titles, closing credits, and video materials is enough. If your film is good, we'll remember your name or seek it out. DON'T: Credit yourself repeatedly with separate cards for Writer, Director, Art Diector, Cinematographer, Editor and (especially) Executive Producer. Remember, Orson Welles saved his name for last in Citizen Kane's credits, and even then he humbly shared the card with Gregg Toland, his cinematographer.

*

DO: Use others' (i.e., critics, festival organizers, interesting bloggers, etc.) words to promote your film. We'll take it seriously. DON'T: Use self-congratulatory and outrageous adjectives of praise without attribution in your press releases. We know you wrote it.

*

DO: Have a modest (but well-written) information kit, which includes a synopsis, unpretentious bios of cast and crew, any press clippings, and maybe a well-designed postcard. Stills are essential, too, but prints aren't necessary. Digital files are usually fine. DON'T: Promote your film with gimmicks, pandering, or anything else that takes the focus away from your film. People in animal costumes. Tricked out cars. Posters that measure over 150 square feet. I wish I was making this stuff up, but I'm not. I've seen it.

*

DO: Have a website with essential information about the film and, for features, a clip or trailer. A blog, if well-written, can be interesting. DON'T: Have six blogs, all written by you, and all devoted to your film. It looks sad or, worse, desperate. When you alone and no one else promotes your film so hard you make me think it's not worth seeing.

*

DO: Email people that might be especially interested in your work -- bloggers, critics, whoever -- with personal notes to let them know about your film. If you don't know the person, it's better if it goes through a mutual friend, but if you have to do it yourself, make it personal. DON'T: Email self-congratulatory press releases randomly or repeatedly, especially when the quotes are your own.

*

DO: Ask people who like your film -- festival organizers, microcinema programmers, etc -- if they know of others that might also like it. DON'T: Give the "hard sell" to anyone, especially industry people. It's a turn-off.

*

DO: Consider having a "email newsletter" for anyone that is interested. Keep it short and send it no more than once every few months. DON'T: Send long, unsolicited emails in bulk. We have a name for that. It's "spam."

*

This stuff should be self-evident for a lot of people, but if it was evident to everyone I wouldn't be posting. I'm basically just saying: Be smart, be honest, keep a sense of humor about this stuff, and remember people sometimes listen more closely when you whisper. Let others form their own, hopefully positive, opinions about your work. And when they do your task of self-distribution becomes easier because the burden of expressing praise is shared by others.

And remember: While I may have some experience with this stuff, I'm certainly not the Pope of Self-Distribution. These are just one person's opinions, and I definitely invite your comments, dissenting and otherwise.

Gleaning at Garbagescout.com

I don't think I know of any self-respecting independent filmmaker that hasn't done a little dumpster diving in her/his life. (The best find: My friend Rob once reclaimed about a hundred unspoiled 16mm film prints of educational and documentary films, which a university library was throwing out. Mind-boggling.) If you're too proud, watch this and get over yourself. Anyway, this link's for all you guys in New York.

And regardless of whether you use Garbagescout.com when you dumpster dive, don't forget to whistle while you work.

Remix, Reuse, Recycle: Open Source and Public Domain Films

CinemaTech has an interesting, brief note about a "remixable movie." Kind of the antithesis (not a bad thing) of the "self-reliant film", a filmmaker is posting her all her footage and letting anyone that wants to take a crack at editing it. Could be a desperate gimmick for attention, could be really great... I'll have to find out more. Reading about it made me think of a few other projects that attempted something like this (say, the now-defunct Madstone Films' Rhinoceros Eyes">Rhinoceros Eyes). Probably the most exciting approach was taken by the filmmakers of the conspiracy-pseduo-mock-documentary Nothing So Strange. The film concerns the 1999 assassination of Bill Gates. (Hey, I said it was a conspiracy film.) In addition to the filmmakers' "official release", they also released their footage to people that would like to take a crack at editing it themselves. "Open Source Filmmaking" was what they called it -- a brilliant concept to apply to a film about the big daddy of closed-source computing. You can read more about the open source initiative (and download footage) here.

The flip side of this approach, of course, is public-domain (aka found-footage) filmmaking -- that is, making films with footage from public (or not-so-public) domain archival film. For the uninitiated, Bruce Conner and Jay Rosenblatt are masters of the form. The as-darkly-funny-as-Dr. Strangelove Atomic Cafe is also, I think, required viewing.

If you want to get in on the action, check out Archive.org where you can download movies to watch and, well, make movies with.

DIY Film Projects: Six Thoughts

A reader of this blog recently emailed me about a DIY steadicam he had seen online. Though I'm still suspicious of a steadicam without a gimble (i.e., the little ring that's used to control pans and tilts), the sample footage on the site looked okay, all things considered. Anyway, this got me thinking about how the internet abounds with DIY projects. Most of them are variations on one of the following:

a. skateboard dolly: 1, 2, 3

b. home-made steadicams: 1, 2, 3, 4

c. jib arm / crane: 1, 2

d. car mount: 1, 2, 3

e. the aforementioned Depth of Field reducer

f. other: 1, 2, 3

I'm not necessarily advocating any of these projects, much less one plan over another. I just thought I'd post links to a few and people can explore them (or not). Besides these links, those that are interested should check out Nuts and Bolts Filmmaking by Dan Rahmel, which has a lot of DIY projects, as well as other useful information.

A few thoughts:

1) Pros that pooh-pooh DIY equipment would do well to remember that many now-standard pieces of film equipment (boompole, steadicam, etc.) were handmade innovations before they became mass-produced professional tools.

2) Sometimes building DIY projects is not more cost effective than spending the money on a professional tool. Example: A new C-stand costs less than $200. The amount of time and money it would take for me to build some inferior imitation out of pipe I bought at Home Depot simply isn't worth it in the final cost-benefit analysis.

3) An inexpensive homemade tool that doesn't get the job done is less of a bargain than an overpriced mass-produced tool that does get the job done.

4) Conversely, it's simply ridiculous what some companies charge (and what some people will pay) for the most simple tools that could just as easily be homemade. If you know how to use a sewing machine, or know someone who does, you should not be paying $50 for a sandbag.

5) Judging from some of the projects I've seen made with DIY tools, the time spent building the tools would have been better spent working on the script. Of course, the same could be said of many Hollywood products produced with the best tools money can buy. As Agnes Varda once said, "The technical [aspects] and the frames are only a means to go through what has to be felt."

6) Often, the biggest advantage to making homemade tools is not the savings in money -- it's that you can tailor the tools to your project's specific needs. (Cf. the Crafter's Manifesto.) And as long as making your own tools doesn't distract from the real work -- making films -- the peripheral benefit of DIY is that the geeky fun had in making something is often, as Mastercard would say, priceless.

Camera Maintenance with Bernie O'Doherty

I've just returned from Boothbay, Maine, where two other filmmakers and I trekked to take a one-day workshop in camera maintenance and repair with by Bernie O'Doherty of Super 16, Inc. Saying Bernie knows some things about motion picture cameras is like saying Jacques Cousteau (whose cameras Bernie serviced) liked to make little movies of the fishies in the sea. Bernie's not just a renovator that repairs all sorts of movie cameras and converts standard 16's (like my Eclair ACL) to Super-16; he's an innovator. The guy developed a viewfinder brightening process that was nominated for an Academy Award.

It would be unfair to Bernie's business for me to share all his tricks on this blog, but I can say that his workshop covered everything from how to realign whacked viewfinder diopters to how to do a film scratch biopsy. For me the highlight was learning how to fully disassemble, clean from the inside out, and then reassemble my own camera's magazines. Suffice to say that eight hours, several disassembled cameras, and one lobster feast later, Bernie looked to us less like an engineer and more like a guru, a sensei, a jedi master of the movie camera.

Make no mistake: There are plenty of things (say, collimating a lens) that I would never, ever attempt to do myself. But the workshop aimed to give each of us a much higher level of ownership, confidence and control over the tools we already use, and it did that in spades. Knowing that, if I absolutely had to, I could take apart my camera on a shoot and diagnose a problem is a great feeling. That feeling is, in fact, part of what this blog is all about.

Bernie and his wife Julie were uncommonly warm and generous hosts, too, and that made the workshop all the more fun. My two fellow-travelers and I left for Philadelphia glowing not just from the empowering knowledge we'd gained, but also because we felt like we'd made some new friends. It was a great start for the new year.

Obviously, if your camera needs some work or, in a more self-reliant vein, if you want to do a workshop similar to the one we did, give Bernie and Julie a shout.

Wikipedia's Movie Making Manual

If one of your New Year's resolutions is to cut down the time you spend on the internet you should probably steer clear of Wikipedia's open-content textbooks. The "books" cover everything from How to Build a Computer to learning Mandarin to Monopoly strategy. Like everything else on Wikipedia, the content is entirely user-contributed. Considering Wikipedia's communal spirit, it's fitting that one of the few readable articles in the otherwise undeveloped Movie Making Manual is a brief but interesting section on film equipment timeshares. The article discusses the pros and cons of owning equipment and includes a draft of a sample timeshare agreement. And, yes, even this is a work-in-progress, but then isn't everything on the 'net?

Documentary Cookbook

UPDATE 9.1.2009: Looking for the Documentary Cookbook article for our students at Virginia Tech we noticed that it's been taken down from the UC Berkley website and appears to have disappeared from the internet... except in this mildly abbreviated copy/paste job.

I first read the UC Berkeley Center for New Documentary's "Cookbook" essay over three years ago. It's a fairly straightforward essay that investigates, through theory and practice, the question of how one can inexpensively produce intelligent, saleable documentaries. In its subject matter, there's nothing especially revolutionary about the Cookbook -- people have been making movies cheaply for years, and people have been writing about how to do the same for nearly as long. But a couple of things make the Cookbook a keeper (aside from the fact that it's free, of course):

First, it's written by working filmmakers, about working filmmakers, for working filmmakers. It's very, very readable. A damn good read as far as these things go, in fact.

Secondly, it's written from the conviction that all personnel on any film should be paid the going professional rate for the work they do. Salaries are not reduced, deferred, or eliminated from the budget in order to "get the film made."

This second point is critical. It doesn't take a genius to know that if you have access to a camcorder you could theoretically shoot a feature for about $10 (the cost of two 60 minute MiniDV tapes) these days. Making a movie on the cheap and paying all parties involved is much harder. The Cookbook's focus, then, is on helping "journeyman filmmakers" (their term) find ways to make a living while producing vital work. Good stuff.

What makes all of the Cookbook's ideas especially seductive is the reasonable, intelligent voice of the writing, which avoids the unrealistic cheerleading (or sketchy used car salesman vibe) you sometimes find in these You-Can-Do-It essays.

Of course, the question is: Can these ideas work for anyone? The Cookbook was written in 2002, and as far as I know it has not been updated since. How have documentaries using the Cookbook's guidelines fared, both critically and in the marketplace? An email asking about updates and further thoughts, which I sent to its authors last week in preparation for this post, hasn't been answered. I was hoping they would address what the Cookbook spends the least time discussing: distribution. After all, the key question these days is not "How can I get a movie made?" but whether or not it will be distributed.

I'm also interested in what the Cookbook has to say to narrative filmmakers. Obviously, the issues facing the genres aren't identical. To name just one, documentaries are marketed on their content far more than narrative films, which typically rely on the use of one or more "name" actors. Since a $100,000 budget isn't likely to cover the salaries that name actors command, productions in that budget range are usually at a substantial disadvantage in the search for distribution. For that matter, just paying your cast SAG scale would strain a $100K budget.

It's for this reason that the Cookbook probably has the most application to filmmakers that are working "regionally"since they typically are working with fewer resources, a smaller crew/talent pool, and in a style that's more humanistic than spectacle-driven. Reading over the essay again tonight, I was inclined to think of filmmakers like John O'Brien, Todd Verow or Caveh Zahedi whose films blend fiction and non-fiction, actor and non-actor and, script and improvisation in rewarding ways. Soderbergh's upcoming Bubble is another film that springs to mind.

The Cookbook's ideas aren't radical. Or if they are, they're not alone in their radicalism. InDigEnt's production model (as just one example) is not so very different from what the Cookbook proposes. InDigEnt productions (from what I remember) are made for about $300,000, and feature name actors (Sigourney Weaver, Katie Holmes, etc.). The main difference is that talent and crew are paid minimal wages up front and deferred the rest through profit participation. But that is a big difference and, in fact, is the distinction that separates the Cookbook from other models.

One way or another the essay's worth a read... I'd enjoy hearing your comments on it.

Liz Cole on DIY Film Touring

Yesterday, Liz Cole of Evil Twin Booking spoke to the producing class I've been teaching at Temple University. Evil Twin is a hybrid of a distributor and booking agent, which grew out of a touring festival of politically-minded (mostly radical) film and video called the Lost Film Fest. I thought Liz and the work she represents (literally and figuratively) would offer a nice counterbalance to a lot of the traditional models of production and distribution that I had talked about over the semester. She definitely comes from the DIY punk school of getting things done, and that's always a good note to end a class on.

Besides screening some amusing, edgy agitprop, Liz shared some tips on how to set up a DIY screening tour. This seemed to interest a lot of the students -- probably because short films, which most students make, have so few venues.

Anyway, while some of these points are just common sense, all of it was great for my students to hear coming from someone who walks the walk.

Here are my notes:

Touring isn't for everyone, and it's not a strategy for paying off anything but the most low budget of productions, but as a means with cultivating and connecting with audiences it's an interesting option.

Time and Timing: Timing is important: Most collegiate tours that Evil Twin sets up (say, for Sam Green of The Weather Underground fame) are scheduled about a year in advance. A DIY tour at microcinemas and other non-college venues requires about 3-4 months of advance prep.

Decide how much time you can spend doing this. It may be six days, three weeks, or three months. Until you determine this, you ain't goin' nowhere.

Venues: Before you pursue venues, know your work and know your audience. Who is going to want to see your film? The work Liz promotes is anti-establishment, but she and Scott Beiben (her, um, evil twin at Evil Twin) are very business savvy about knowing their audience and where that audience is.

Evil Twin was helped in the early days because Scott had a lot of contacts from running a hardcore label. Still, a lot of this is available by doing simple internet searches. Great venues include: artspaces, infospaces, independent bookstores, and even the odd warehouses. Wherever you go, you'll want to cultivate and maintain contacts at different venues.

Liz emphasized that the Midwest is a great place to show films. The lag-time between East/West Coast and places like Minneapolis, Columbus, Cleveland, etc. is significant enough that these places are hungry for alternatives.

Book your venues with a sensible plan that conserves time, energy, gasoline, and money. Know your geography!

Necessities: To tour DIY-style, you need: transportation, video projector, dvd player, a stereo, and a screen. (Doing college tours you probably won't need anything but transportation.)

Obviously, all of this is easier if you have a car but Liz also said Greyhound is an option some will use. Not comfy, but an option.

The DVD player, video projector, screen and stereo aren't a must, but some venues will only have film projectors (I imagine this is changing rapidly). More importantly, some venues will ask you to pay for use of their equipment, so it's good to have your own. You want to avoid "pay to play" situations where you have to rent the space or the equipment. Most won't ask for that, but avoid the ones that do because you can likely find another spot elsewhere.

Having a laptop with DVD player serves a nice double function so you can work from the road.

Promotion: Create "a lot of small noises" through cheap and free online sources: Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, weblogs (um, like this one).

Work with promoters in different towns that will flyer for your show, use email lists, and generally get a crowd to the show.

Evil Twin makes flyer templates for their shows and they send them out to everyone so they can be tailored for each screening. Flyering, though it's messy, does get people out to your screening.

Films: You should have between one-to-two hours of material. If you don't have something feature-length, you need to fill up that time somehow. Maybe you screen a bunch of short films you made, or short films of yours along with some other people (who have given you permission, natch'). Or maybe you do a performance piece. Or a reading. Or your tour with an author that does a reading. You get the point.

The age of your movie doesn't matter as much as its relevance. If you're touring with it for the first time (or for the 5th time, for a city that's not been screened in), then that's fine -- IF it's not a timely, time-specific movie. (Liz gave the example of the 2000 election. Lots of movies on this, and the subject has been beaten to death.) Be sensitive with work that has an expiration date.

Revenue: While part of the goal of all of this is to get the work out to The People, this ain't charity, either. Typically, the charge for admittance will be around $5. Maybe $8 at most. You will need to split the revenue, in all likelihood, with the venue. But a good night, with good attendance, you can make between $100 to $300.

The similarities between this and gigging in a rock band are strong, and there will be even more as increasing numbers of filmmakers turn to self-distribution and small starting their own DVD "labels" -- in essence emulating what rock bands have been doing for years. That's the thing I don't get about the "dope smoking slacker" cliche of guys in rock bands. If you read a book like Our Band Could Be Your Life, which talks (among other things) about Greg Ginn and his founding of the SST record label, you see that in many cases these guys were very focused, achievement-minded, and they worked very, very hard.