Holiday simplifying, or: Paul's Junk Giveaway

I've been going through my house over the last few days trying to do my semi-seasonal purge of things I don't need. It's all part of the continual process of reducing the clutter (physical, mental, spiritual) in my life. Among the things I no longer need: An old copy of DVD Studio Pro 2 (install discs, manuals, box). I've upgraded to Final Cut Studio, so I have no use for it, but it seems like a waste to just throw it out and recycle the manuals. It's not the most up to date version, I assure you, but post a comment if you want it and I'll mail it to you, free of charge.

Here are the minimum system requirements, as found on Ken Stone's site:

Macintosh computer with PowerPC G4 processor (733 Mhz or faster). AGP graphics card with 8MB of video memory (32MB recommended) Mac OS X 10.2.6 QuickTime 6.3 256 MB of RAM (512MB recommended) 20GB of disk space DVD drive required for installation Apple SuperDrive or other DVD burner for writing finished projects (recommended)

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While I'm at it, here are a couple of things I've been reading during my seasonal simplifying. Both are good reads during this season of "Buy! Buy! Buy!"

The venerable classic: Walden

A classic I just discovered: Richard Gregg's The Value of Voluntary Simplicity

Enjoy.

Self-Reliant Film Store

I get a fair number of emails asking me to recommend this or that book, or asking what films constitute a "Self-Reliant Film canon" and so on. So I thought that I'd add a modest Amazon store so that I can simply point people towards books I recommend, movies I like (or want to see), and so on. You can access the store by clicking the link below and, after this post loses prominence, you can always access the store by clicking on the SRF Store in the menu bar at the top of the site, just under the banner.

Purchasing through the store will help offset the costs of server space, etc. so if you do purchase something, thanks a bunch!

Finally, if this feels crassly commercial, please note that the header of the SRF store says "Stuff to Buy or Borrow." Knowing what you need and don't need to buy are good principles of self-reliance. If you got some of these things from your local library or a friend I'm sure Thoreau and Emerson would be proud.

Click here to enter the SRF Store.

I'll be doing holiday stuff over the next week. When I return I'll be doing some posts related to a new film project of mine. Happy Thanksgiving!

David Lynch self-distributing Inland Empire

David Lynch has decided to self-distribute his new film, Inland Empire. The Hollywood Reporter has the story. Says THR:

After a flurry of rumors pointing to just about every indie studio in the business, director David Lynch has worked out a deal with French producers Studio Canal to self-distribute his three-hour epic digital video feature "Inland Empire," in the U.S. and Canada. Producer Mary Sweeney said the plan will "explore a new model of distribution."

Lynch will work with well-known theatrical and home video partners to launch his epic fever dream of a film, retaining all rights to the low-budget project in each service deal. The partnerships will be announced within the next week.

If you've read any of the press about this movie so far, you already know it's a labor of love for Lynch. He shot it on DV over two and a half years; he says he's never going back to film. To me, DIY distribution is a logical next step. What makes this noteworthy is DIY is so often associated with younger filmmakers trying to "break in." Here we have an older, established filmmaker going back to basics.

Of course, some will say that Lynch's decision to self-distribute is simply a response to the fact he didn't receive any offers, or good offers, from major distributors. I have no idea if Lynch did or didn't get offers but, even if that's true, one shouldn't take that as an indication of quality: Should we be surprised, especially in today's climate, that this film scares off distributors? Lynch has never made blockbusters, this film is 3 hours long, and it's reportedly one of his most impenetrable movies (and that's saying something).

Self-distribution (or brokered self-distribution, like IFC's First Take or Truly Indie) is, more and more, the way that the real labors of love reach audiences these days. Is it surprising, then, that Inland Empire is any different? Yes, a little. But that makes me that much more interested.

Until we hear more about how the release will unfold, you can watch Lynch, and IE stars Laura Dern and Justin Theroux, on YouTube doing Q&A at the New York Film Festival. More indieWire coverage here. The reviews from NYFF and Venice have already begun.

And, speaking of getting back to basics, here's an amusing review from the past.

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.

Keith Fulton / Brothers of the Head

Keith Fulton -- co-director, with Lou Pepe, of Brothers of the Head -- answers indieWire's questions today. Favorite quote, both because of the Temple shout-out and the philosophy:

I made a bunch of experimental super-8 films in college and then attended an MFA program in film production at Temple University. Temple's program encouraged its students to learn all aspects of film production and did not follow the industry model at all. There was no structure where you played at being "the director," "the writer," or "the producer," an approach which I think is unhealthy. There's enough time to experience the hierarchy of film business later on, and I think the most important education you can have if you want to direct films is to learn every aspect of the process.

Indeed.

On paper Brothers of the Head looks gimmicky ("conjoined twin rock and roll band mockumentary"), but it's smarter than that -- intense, demanding, and weird (as in "Ken Russell weird"). Definitely not your typical summer fare. Go see it.

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.

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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.

July 4

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

-- Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

Twyla Tharp: Getting Things Done (with Boxes)

As I said in my last post, I'm generally suspicious of motivational speakers, self-help books, and so on. In fact, going near that section of the bookstore alone just gives me the willies. Still, a year down the road, I'm glad I took a look at David Allen's productivity phenomenon Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity even if I have reservations about the some of its jargon and, at times, (needless?) complexities.

Enter Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit (co-written with Mark Reiter).

I ran across Tharp's book in the arts, not productivity, section of the bookstore. A good sign. (Certainly if you find yourself reading productivity book after productivity book you're missing the point.) Browsed a few pages. Plunked down the cash for it and, upon taking it home, found that The Creative Habit is, yep, one of those books. Happily, it's a little different, too.

For one thing, the book caters to artists, not paper-pushers. Sure, in some ways, work is work. But getting things done can be a lot harder when the "things" are ideas you've dreamt up entirely on your own. (I imagine this applies to programmers, too. Merlin, are you reading?)

Even more importantly, the writing is credible. Twyla Tharp is a bona fide giant in choreography. She's had a long, successful career in a competitive field. For that reason alone, her ideas on being creative and productive in the arts carry some weight with me.

As Tharp states in the first few pages, her book's basic premise is that "[i]n order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative." The rest of the book talks about how to make a ritual of your creativity, how to work through creative blocks, and how to get out of (and altogether avoid) ruts. I'm not going to summarize the book -- it's a good read, why should I? -- but the whole thing is a substantial investigation into the process of creativity. Sure, it has some of that self-help anyone-can-do-it syrup, but I found that it was a digestible amount.

One thing that's particularly interesting, and a little amusing, is that Tharp's system for organizing her work is not so very different from that found in Getting Things Done.

David Allen's notion of "Collect. Process. Organize. Review. Do." is echoed in Tharp's quoting of Stephen Kosslyn's notion of how you can act on ideas: "Generate. Retain. Inspect. Transform."

If that sounds familiar, check this out:

Everyone has his or her own organizational system. Mine is a box, the kind you can buy at Office Depot for transferring files.

I start every dance with a box. I write the project name on the box, and as the piece progresses I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the dance. This means notebooks, news clippins, CDs, videotapes of me working alone in my studio, videos of the dancers rehearsing, books and photographs and pieces of art that may have inspired me.

The box documents active research on every project....

There are separate boxes for everything I've ever done. If you want a glimpse into how I think and work, you could do worse than to start with my boxes.

The box makes me feel organized, that I have my act together even when I don't know where I'm going yet.

It also represents a commitment. The simple act of writing a project name on the box means I've started work.

The box makes me feel connected to a project. It is my soil. I feel this even when I've back-burnered a project: I may have put the box away on a shelf, but I know it's there. The project name on the box in bold black lettering is a constant reminder that I had an idea once and may come back to it very soon.

Most important, though, the box means I never have to worry about forgetting. One of the biggest fears for a creative person is that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn't write it down and put it in a safe place. I don't worry about that because I know where to find it. It's all in the box....

They're easy to buy, and they're cheap....They're one hundred percent functional; they do exactly what I want them to do: hold stuff. I can write on them to identify their contents... I can move them around... When one box fills up, I can easily unfold and construct another. And when I'm done with the box, I can ship it away out of sight, out of mind, so I can move on to the next project, the next box.

Easily acquited. Inexpensive. Perfectly functional. Portable. Identifiable. Disposable. Eternal enough.

Those are my criteria for the perfect storage system. And I've found the answer in a simple file box.

No "tickler files." No "weekly review." It's even more simple. Boxes. Just boxes.

On top of all of this, The Creative Habit is worth reading because Twyla Tharp is a pretty good storyteller. She invites us into the process behind the creation of some of her biggest successes and failures, and she does so in hopes of helping us with our own creativity. As with Getting Things Done, I'm sure your mileage will vary, but you might give it a look.

Some notes on Getting Things Done

This is part 1 of a two-part series discussing productivty books -- for artists and not.

Last year, after reading about it via Merlin Mann's 43 Folders website and his Life Hacking column in Make Magazine, I decided to explore David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.

Even with my aversion to self-help literature and motivational speakers, Getting Things Done -- or GTD, as it's called by its disciples -- was alluring. The attraction for me could be found in the book's subtitle. Productivity? Sounds great -- I'd like to be more productive. Stress free productivity? Wow - sign me up.

It's been about a year since I read the book, so I thought I'd do some reflecting on what worked, what didn't, and why. Maybe it will be useful for you. If not, move along.

GTD in theory.

For me, the premise of GTD basically boils down to keeping your mind clear of distractions so that you can concentrate on accomplishing the meaningful tasks. On a philosophical level, that's great for creative types since distractions are probably our number one enemy. At least, I know they are for me. I also know that the moments of truly inspired creativity, especially writing and editing, are devoid of multitasking -- they're moments of deep, loss-of-all-sense-of-time concentration.

Beyond this, most of GTD deals with how to sort physical stuff. Paul, do you mean, like, it's all about sorting things? Yeah. Some of the GTD ideas are pretty straightforward and common sense. And sometimes the ideas sound like they were inspired by a George Carlin routine. But that doesn't make them any less useful.

Anyway, everything boils down to stuff. You've got stuff on your desk. Stuff you've not done. Stuff in your inbox (email, literal, or proverbial). And so on. To "get things done" you act on the stuff -- you can't just push it around, but really act on it. David Allen says anything that comes across your desk will need to be: collected, processed, organized, reviewed, and acted upon.

On a practical level, here's how it works. Something comes across your desk. What now?

First, you process it:

If you can't act on it, you trash it, file it away for later, or you save it for reference. Examples: junk mail, an newspaper article you might want to adapt into a short film someday, or a new phone book, respectively.

If you can act on it then:

1) You can act on it immediately if you can accomplish the task in 2 minutes or less. (Great for email.) 2) You can delegate someone to do something about it. 3) You defer it to be acted upon later, preferably by putting it on your calendar or by assigning a "next action" to it.

#1 is the most immediately satisfying, in the sense that you're dealing with stuff very quickly. #2 is useful if you have someone to whom you can reliably delegate. #3 is for the important (or at least time consuming) stuff.

I won't go into details about the actions (this is most of the book), but Allen stresses that you must define what the next actionable step is. Failure to do this means you've just pushed it aside and you're going to end up spinning wheels. But (theoretically, at least) if you follow the system, you're going to figure out a meaningful action that you can take and then you'll do it.

GTD: My experiences.

After taking a few days to get set up (basically, sorting through all my junk, classifying it, and so on) I found that some of the concepts it describes were, in fact, useful for me. For example, GTD's system of relying on file folders for organization did help me gain a sense of control over my stuff. And, when I was vigilant about following its system, it also helped me keep my email inbox down to zero.

I also found that its orientation towards specific, actionable tasks was immensely helpful. It's not enough to say "I swear I'm going to finish editing my documentary." And it's even worse to say, "I'm going to figure that problem scene out." Figuring something out isn't an action. You have to say, "I'm going to try to cut it from character X's perspective and see if that solves the problem I'm having with the pacing." That's action, which, um, gets things done. Again, as I said, some of this is straightforward, common sense stuff, but even applying the slightest bit of theory to your productivity can help you become aware of what is and isn't working for you.

That's the good stuff.

How's it hold up after a year? I can only speak for myself: Beyond some of the most basic concepts (like the ones outlined above) I've largely abandoned the GTD system. In fact, some of the more advanced concepts in the book -- like the fabled 43 folders -- I tried for only a few days before dropping. At times I felt like I was pushing paper and not getting much done. At other times I stressed more about the system than the actual tasks I was using the system to accomplish. Wasn't this supposed to be stress-free productivity?

I could also find fault with some of the productivity-speak mantras (e.g., "mind like water") that are repeated throughout the book. I don't care if it is a Buddhist concept -- saying things like "mind like water" over and over in service of file folders seems downright corny if not outright hilarious.

I'm sure there are GTD acolytes out there that will tell me that I'm lazy and if I were to keep up with the system, that I would find it's actually useful. It's possible that's true (and it's definitely true that I can be lazy on occasion), but there's a fundamental part of me that rebels against systems like this. It could be my contrarian side, or it could be sheer pragmatism: Am I living to geek, or am I geeking to live? If forced to choose, I'd much prefer the latter.

Finally, I wonder if some of my reluctance to stick with the GTD plan had to do with the fact that with the work I do (or am trying to do) doesn't always parallel the work of what I take to be GTD's intended audience (i.e., suits).

Creative work, for many of us, is often done without any oversight (especially during the most formative stages of an idea), the work rarely follows a routine 9-to-5 schedule and, even for those with a studio, one's workspace doesn't have such clearly defined boundaries as, say, the Office.

Either way, in sum, Getting Things Done was a worthwhile read and it's been somewhat useful for me. Is it my new religion? Hardly. Should you try it out? Dunno. All I can be sure of is that your mileage may very.

My next post will discuss a second "productivity" book, which is written by and for artists.

ADDENDUM: Forgot to link to Merlin's outstanding Getting Started With Getting Things Done. If your interest has been piqued, reading this is a good (to use the parlance) next action.

Rest in Peace, Grant McLennan

I recall a bigger brighter worldA world of books And silent times in thought And then the railroad The railroad takes him home Through fields of cattle Through fields of cane

-- "Cattle and Cane" / The Go-Betweens

I first learned about The Go-Betweens when I was in film school in the mid-90s. A fellow student introduced me to them and, as I think back on it, discovering The Go-Betweens during that time was entirely appropriate. That band wrote some of the most cinematic pop songs I've ever heard.

They were a band you could love: They had that classic, two-songwriter Lennon/McCartney dynamic in Grant McLennan and Robert Forster; Lindy Morrison, their drummer, is my all-time favorite female rock n' roll drummer; and, like Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, they managed to produce a phenomenal break-up record (16 Lovers Lane) when two relationships within the band dissolved.

I met Grant McLennan once, briefly, after a show in New York in support of his solo masterpiece, Horsebreaker Star. Those moments when you tell someone how much their art has inspired you never come off quite like you mean them to, so I just said hello and that I enjoyed the show.

Today a friend sent me the news Grant McLennan died on Saturday. He died in his sleep; he was 48. I imagine that in most of the world McLennan's death will pass in the press without a blip. But for those that knew his music, he will be missed.

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?

Contest: Answers and Winner

Here are the answers to the "guess the movie" contest from last week. (Click here if you didn't have a chance to see the banner.) Most of the films were selected because I like them and/or because they're historic, and also because most are handmade and/or regional films. There are some studio films, too. The Griffith and Chaplin movies, for example, are United Artists pictures... but then they started UA so they could have control over their work. Anyway, if you're scratching your head wondering about the inclusion of one (or more than one), post a comment and I'll reply with my justification.

The winner of the contest is Chris Cagle.

Top row:

1. Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922) 2. Night of the Living Dead (George Romero, 1968) 3. The Hours and Times (Christopher Munch, 1991) 4. The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda, 2000) 5. Vermont is for Lovers (John O'Brien, 1992) 6. Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman, 1967) 7. Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997) 8. La Jetee (Chris Marker, 1962) 9. Solaris (Steven Soderbergh, 2002) 10. Punishment Park (Peter Watkins, 1971) 11. Black Girl (Ousmane Sembene, 1966)

Middle row: 12. Inextinguishable Fire (Harun Farocki, 1969) or What Farocki Taught (Jill Godmilow, 1998) 13. Hail Mary (Jean-Luc Godard, 1985) 14. Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955) 15. Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) 16. Harvest 3000 Years (Haile Gerima, 1975) 17. The Celebration (Thomas Vinterberg, 1998) 18. Rome: Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945) 19. War (Jake Mahaffy, 2004) 20. Kandahar (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 2001) 21. A Trip to the Moon (Georges Melies, 1902) 22. Slow Moves (Jon Jost, 1983)

Bottom row: 23. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid, 1943) 24. El Mariachi (Robert Rodriguez, 1992) 25. Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith, 1919) 26. Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977) 27. Salesman (Albert & David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, 1969) 28. Funny Ha Ha (Andrew Bujalski, 2002) 29. Faces (John Cassavetes, 1968) 30. Dog Star Man (Stan Brakhage, 1962-64) 31. In a Year of 13 Moons (R.W. Fassbinder, 1978) 32. The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) 33. The Jackal of Nahueltoro (Miguel Littin, 1969)

Ken Burns' Anger, or: Connecting the Dots between AIVF, Showtime, and Smithsonian

Over the last couple of weeks the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (AIVF) has only raised $11,000 of the $75,000 they need to weather their current financial crisis. Things could turn around but, as it stands, it's looking dark. There are arguments, of course, that AIVF has outlived its relevance:

- AIVF has long provided useful resources and information to independent filmmakers. Now, with the internet, such information is easily (and freely) available to anyone.

- AIVF created (or at least aimed to create) networks of filmmakers. Now, with the explosion of film festivals around the country and internet discussion forums (plus newer developments like IndieWIRE's IndieLoop) filmmakers can connect without needing organizational support.

Shouldn't we be happy that we don't need an organization to supply these things anymore? I think so.

Still, one vital way that the Association of Independent Film & Videomakers has distinguished itself amidst a crowded landscape of film, video, and media arts non-profit organizations has been through its public advocacy work. (For example, AIVF was instrumental in the creation of ITVS.) I'm concerned that this is where AIVF's death -- if it indeed dies -- will be felt most strongly.

For example, I am reminded of the importance of AIVF's advocacy work when I recently read about the Smithsonian's exclusive licensing of its archives to Showtime. Anthony Kaufman covers the story on his blog, and offers a way to protest. Ken Burns (quoted in the NY Times) sums the situation up:

I find this deal terrifying...It feels like the Smithsonian has essentially optioned America's attic to one company, and to have access to that attic, we would have to be signed off with, and perhaps co-opted by, that entity.

Of course, in healthier days AIVF -- because of its non-profit status, because it is a national member organization, because it represents all types of filmmakers -- would be uniquely qualified to lobby against this selling off of America's cultural resources to the highest bidder. AIVF has done this work in the past, and it would probably be very effective at reversing, or at least drawing substantial critical inquiries, into the deal. Yet AIVF's current financial crisis is preventing them from doing so.

How will the cultural landscape change if/when AIVF ceases to exist? Is it possible that some new advocacy group can be formed if AIVF shuts its doors? The only certainty is that this won't be the last time that someone attempts to make public cultural resources exclusive to a for-profit corporation.

For now, if the Smithsonian-Showtime deal makes you angry (or you simply want to know more), read this fine post at Daily Kos. If you want to help save AIVF, click here.

ADDENDUM: Eugene Hernandez writes about an AIVF discussion that went down last night in New York. I was at that meeting. It was a good conversation, and it led me to further refine my opinons on the AIVF situation...hence my posting today. Though some other people at that meeting possibly share my views, my writing (as usual) only speaks for me.

Fair Use, Pt II: Ctr for Social Media

Agnes Varnum from the Center for Social Media has reminded me of another important resource for filmmakers dealing with issues of public domain, copyright, and fair use. It's the Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use. Download it here. Agnes describes the Statement as "a short handbook that articulates certain circumstances in documentary making when it is appropriate to claim fair use for copyrighted material."

In her comment on this blog, Agnes adds, "I'm going to be at several fests over the next few months on panels about the issue and helping doc makers understand how to make better use of fair use. It's a small step, but an important one. We already have a lot of movement on the gatekeeper side to adopt the principles at work in the handbook."

She'll be at the Nashville Film Festival (one of my favorites) in April. Check out Agnes' blog, in addition to the Center's website, for more info and other dates.

Open Letter to An Entertainment Marketing Firm

Dear (name withheld): I have recently received multiple emails from you asking me to promote a new television series, which features beautiful young people touring an exotic location with cameras rolling.

When I received your first email, which offered me content from the series so that I could cover it on my website I thought, obviously, you had emailed the wrong person. I chose not to reply. Now you've emailed a second time, again asking me to promote your show, so I thought I'd at least let you know why I didn't write back the first time.

Though this website may, at times, promote films, books, and the like, I choose these works myself; they're not suggested to me by press releases.

Furthermore, the works I discuss are often critically or popularly neglected. I aim to bring more attention to them by writing about them. Your show, which will receive loads of promotion on television, does not need my voice.

Finally, if you had read the reasons I started this website, you would know that this website is not meant to be a shill for "reality entertainment" in which corporate-sponsored American twenty-somethings tour the globe, as the press release states, to "broaden cultural awareness." Robert Flaherty, a pioneer of self-reliant filmmaking, typically spent a year or more in the location where he was going to make a documentary before he ever picked up a camera. Now that's cultural awareness.

Last but not least, my name is Paul. Not Pharrell.

Free Comic for Filmmakers

A reader of this blog (thanks, Jon) alerted me to one of the coolest works of edutainment I've seen in a long, long time. The work in question is Tales from the Public Domain: Bound By Law?, and it's a graphic novel (published by Duke University's Center for the Study of Public Domain) that explores and explains copyright, "fair use", licensing and other tricky, sticky issues that inevitably arise when you're making a documentary. If those topics usually make your eyes glaze over, look no further. Granted, as a graphic novel, Bound by Law's anecdotes about licensing problems in docs like Sing Faster and Mad Hot Ballroom can't compete with the storylines of, say, V for Vendetta or Watchmen, but I was genuinely impressed with the quality of the art and writing. Plus, how many other graphic novels are going to help save you money and keep you out of court when you make your next documentary?

The cost? A mere $5.95 for the book, or free as a digital copy.

Evolve or Die: Nonprofits in the Time of Cyberspace

Brian Newman's "first person" piece on indiewire is worth a read. In the essay, Brian asks some tough questions about non-profit organizations (like AIVF) set up to support filmmakers. Below are some excerpts, which I hope will encourage you to read the whole thing:

What filmmakers... need are a community in which to connect, advocacy for policies that affect them, good information they can use, money to make their work, and new ways to distribute it. These can all be found or developed online, and these centers haven't made the shift. When people try to save AIVF, they are really trying to save the concept of the organization, because these organizations often stopped serving their members real needs long ago....

And later:

...If you want any of these organizations to survive, get involved now -- whether through money or just ideas, because otherwise I predict 2006 will be the end of the nonprofit media movement; and if it dies, our culture and our society will be worse for it.

Brian's most recent blog posting about having an impact with film is a nice companion piece to the indiewire essay.

Fresh and Local: Part II

After I made the "fresh and local" post late last month, I found myself thinking back to a paper that Sara Zia Ebrahimi, a graduate student in the MFA program at Temple, wrote in my producing course last semester. In the paper, she proposes a co-operative filmmaking model based on Community Supported Agriculture programs. I appreciated her ability to draw productive analogies to a system that many independent filmmakers might overlook, so I asked her to share the paper, and she's generously agreed. Sara Zia points out that the paper is a work-in-progress. Eventually she might want to present the paper at a conference -- not to mention implement the ideas contained in the paper -- so she'd love to hear your comments and constructive criticism. Post here, or contact her through her site below.

Sara Zia's short The Achivements of Exile will screen as part of the Philadelphia Film Festival's "Festival of Independents" on Monday April 3, 7pm. Congrats!

Download the paper here.

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.