Hunting Santa Claus- literally.

In 2003, Finnish director Jalmari Helander made a zany short film about smugglers in the business of hunting Santa Claus and inadvertently created a viral sensation. The short, “Rare Exports Inc.,”  and its 2005 follow-up, “Rare Exports: The Official Safety Instructions,” contained a playfully inventive hook: Helander imagined Santa as a naked, bloodthirsty species far from the charitable bearded gentlemen of Christmas lore. Captured and tamed, Santas could be shipped to consumers each Christmas season and delight clueless children around the globe. By meshing action-adventure tropes with dark comedic inspiration, Helander created an utterly unique high concept premise that practically demanded elaboration. Seven years later, he has taken the inevitable next step with “Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale,” a feature-length adaptation of the material. Although it contains the same goofy spirit, Helander fails to build on the original lunacy, suggesting that great short films may owe part of their appeal to brevity.

That does not make “Rare Exports” any less fun than its predecessors, at least for a little while. The movie technically functions as an origin story, setting the stage for the Santa export business that Helander so cleverly explored in the shorts. It opens with an excavation of Santa’s Finnish tomb, establishing a mood filled with such a familiar kind of cinematic wonder—aided by Juri and Miska Seppä‘s exaggerated orchestral score, and the exoticism of the barren icy climate—that you almost expect Indiana Jones himself to waltz through the scene. Helander mercilessly cribs from the energy of kids fantasy movies from the 1980s, establishing his self-made Santa mythos with a mixture of innocence, wonder and otherworldly creepiness worthy of Tim Burton. “The Coca-Cola Santa was a hoax,” concludes wide-eyed loner Pietari (Onni Tommila), a young boy whose father owns a slaughterhouse on the outskirts of the excavation site. After spying on the Americans unearthing Santa, Pietari does his homework, and learns that the creature was lured into a frozen lake by an ancient civilization. It turns out Saint Nick wasn’t so jolly, but rather a dangerous pest intent on kidnapping naughty children.

Absurd as it sounds, Helander actually manages to play it straight for much of the running time. Using a spare cast and relying more on atmosphere than special effects (the Santa creatures are, after all, just wizened old men), his narrative suggests John Carpenter’s “The Thing” for the holiday season. Sadly, the appeal of the director’s openly derivative approach grows redundant after he establishes the basic threat of Santa unleashed, and the build-up goes nowhere. Only when Pietro’s father and a colleague discover an elderly man caught in a bird trap outside, unaware of the situation at hand, does the suspense nudge upward. But there’s no follow through; we never get the chance to see the full lethal potential of the beast in question.

With hardly any of the run-and-gun entertainment or consumerist satire present in the shorts, it seems as though Helander couldn’t find an ideal strategy for expanding his initial conceit. The climax borrows the worst clichés of modern blockbusters where the earlier scenes borrow some of the best. Helander’s trite, half-baked resolution is held down by murky action and lacks a thrilling showdown. It’s like he suddenly lost a sense of humor, which demolishes the unique vision evident in the shorts. If anything, Helander should have taken even more liberties with the Santa myth and pushed the excessive genre components to an extreme.

An obvious bid for a franchise, “Rare Exports” leaves room for plenty of sequels and the possibility that Helander, a capable filmmaker with the capacity for emulating the feel of a polished Hollywood product, could nail it better the next time out. Then again, perhaps his follow-up should return to the short film realm. The flaws of “Rare Export” offer an important reminder that looking good on YouTube does not provide qualifications for a bigger screen. - Eric Kohn

YouTube Launches $5 Million Grant Program

YouTube has announced the launch of a $5 million program to support amateur video creators and help them attract a larger audience to its Web site.

Several emerging YouTube video creators have been able to generate substantial revenues and command an audience that rivals those of the broadcast networks while managing all aspects of their business, from writing, filming, and producing content to the marketing, post-production, and distribution of videos. Despite this success, however, many video creators lack the resources and deep financial backing available to studio-backed production houses.

To remedy the situation, YouTube established the Partner Grants program to bolster the production budgets of a small group of YouTube video creators who are at the forefront of innovation. The grants will serve as an advance against the video creators' future YouTube revenue share, enabling them to invest in better cameras, shoot for higher production values, expand their marketing efforts, and hire more staff, with the ultimate goal of bringing a richer body of content to YouTube users and advertisers and raising the creative bar for online video.

"Ultimately the game has changed, and people are throwing the rules out the window," George Strompolos, partner development manager at YouTube, told the New York Times. "Folks who ten years ago couldn't even get their content shared to friends across the street are now connecting with audiences around the world. We see that not only as a cute thing, where someone has a viral hit, we see these people as the next content creators, the next brand in original programming. It's where our roots have always been, and we are doubling down on that type of programming."

Analyst calls Sundance's YouTube streaming inititative a FLOP

Last week Devindra told us about a new initiative to democratise the Sundance experience just a little.  In a pioneering move to undercut the elite access of Utah-bound schmoozers and carousers, 2009 and 2010 selections The Cove, One Too Many Mornings, Homewrecker, Children of Invention, and Bass Ackwards were each made available on YouTube for rental.

Of course, getting a YouTube stream to play on your TV is pretty hard, even impossible for many consumers, so it would be foolish to expect similar rental numbers to those generated by iTunes or X-Box 360 rentals when viewing would be mainly monitor-bound. All the same, were the scores even in the same ballpark? Sadly not.

Some hard (and I mean hard) numbers and the despairing words of one analyst coming up after the break. Here’s the damage. The best performing film was The Cove with a shocking count of just 303 rentals. Check out the full chart for a catalogue of hurt:

• The Cove - 303 rentals
• Children of Invention - 301 rentals
• Bass Ackwards - 299 rentals
• Homewrecker - 279 rentals
• One Too Many Mornings - 241 rentals

That means more people read reviews of these films online this weekend - positive reviews too, in most cases - than actually clicked over to YouTube and watched the films themselves.

Here is The Motley Fool’s Rick Munarriz:

Ouch! We’re talking about 1,422 total views, or $5,673.78 for all of the rentals at $3.99 apiece. If Google is giving the filmmakers roughly two-thirds of the take - and I’m going by other digital-media standards, since the site isn’t publicly spelling out the royalty payouts - each of the five productions will walk away with just hundreds of dollars for their role as video-sharing pioneers over the weekend.

Part of the problem may have been how difficult it was to carry out the purchase, which was, to be honest, not too difficult at all; or more likely it was down to incredibly bad promotion of the scheme.
I’m confident that had these films been made available via iTunes the figures would have been unrecognizably different.

Perhaps Google will see the lesson in this and address their YouTube rental system to make it more streamlined, not to mention more well publicised and easy to find and navigate. They’ll need to try something fairly drastic to even stay on the chart of legal movie streaming options, I think, because tomorrow, Apple will unveil their “latest creation” and, I expect, give the iTunes movie rental store yet another nitro boost.

I hope that the Sundance folk aren’t put off by these stats and continue helping to facilitate easier access or smaller, more alternative or less accessible films by the countless viewers worldwide who would enjoy them. - Brendon Connelly

"Panic Attack!" filmmaker inks deal with Ghost House

Fede Alvarez, the Uraguayan filmmaker behind the YouTube sensation short "Panic Attack!," has signed a holding deal with Ghost House Pictures to develop and direct an original genre project.

 

The deal, in the six- against seven-figure range, will see Ghost House hire a writer for the project, which is based on an idea by Alvarez.  


Alvarez made "Attack!," about giant robots attacking Montevideo, for several hundred dollars. The same day he posted, Hollywood, impressed by what he was able to do imaginatively accomplish for such a small budget, came calling. A week later he arrived in town to face a full court press of agents, managers, execs and producers. 

Alvarez ended up signing with CAA, Anonymous Content and attorney Karl Austen the week before Thanksgiving and entered immediate talks with Ghost House after bonding with its principals, which include director Sam Raimi.

The Cinematic Civil War – Part 2: Getting To The Battlefield

All The Old Familiar Places….

You’ve shot your film, edited it, did all the finishing polishes, and now you’re ready to go, but you’re a first time filmmaker, so it won’t be easy. Let’s also assume that your film is of the best quality possible; it will make things more applicable. The good news is that you’re far, far from alone; every single filmmaker in this industry has been exactly where you are right now. Naturally, the first instinct is to send your film off to film festivals in hopes of recognition and appreciation, and that’s a very good instinct, but its not the only option you have.

The Short Route

You made a short film. You sent it off to festivals and it did well, won a few awards, maybe a few featured posts on blogs or coverage in a trade, but no distribution deal has come your way. As American Filmmakers we have to face our first hump: Short Films have no Market in America.

*When I use the term “Market”, I mean it in the most economic sense, you could make the argument that due to YouTube, Short (Media) Films are actually the most popular form of media to date and more people have viewed video on YouTube than every single film ever made combined. However, YouTube is free. It costs nothing to watch or post videos on it. (more on this later)

There are primarily 3 reasons we make short films:

-1. We have a vision for a wonderful little piece and it doesn’t need to be more than that.

-2. We have a vision for a wonderful story and make the short as a Demo in hopes of raising money for a full feature.

-3. A showcase of our skills and an addition to our reels and resumes.

Naturally, we want as many people as possible to see our work and sometimes it’d be nice to recover any money we put into it. There are several ways to do both that are just beginning to develop in this new age of Do It Yourself (DIY) Distribution.

In October 2008, through the distribution deal with Shorts International, “Centigrade” a Canadian Short Film made by Madison Graie & Colin Cunningham (no relation), became the first Live-Action Canadian made Short Film distributed on iTunes. In March 2008, the same film became the first Canadian film to qualify for the 2009 Oscars when it won the Best Narrative Short prize at the Cinequest Film Festival, an Academy Awards-sanctioned event.

“In making this short, we didn't expect it to be a financial success,” says Cunningham, the film’s lead actor who also wrote and directed it. “This deal opens doors to aspiring directors and producers.”

Cunningham and Graie are currently in discussions to turn “Centigrade” into a feature. The 17-minute film, which is about a man trapped in a trailer that is slowly burning up, captured 5 Leo Awards, which honor the British Columbia Film and Television Industry, and has qualified for the Genie Awards.

Since iTunes first became user friendly in 2004, anyone could distribute video and audio podcasts for free through the program, but in February of 2007, iTunes started to open its doors to Indie Filmmakers, with the film “That”, available for download at the cost of $1.99. It is currently unknown what the profit share between the Mac Company and the Filmmakers is. iTunes has since stated that it will sell video outside of its larger deals with companies like Disney and Lionsgate. Another note about distribution through iTunes is that the company will not distribute your project if you are giving it away for free somewhere else.

Just recently in January ’09, The Sundance Institute joined with iTunes to release 10 short films which played at the festival, available for free download. "We are thrilled to be able to highlight a selection of short films from this year's program free online on the iTunes Store for those who can't make it to the Festival," said Trevor Groth, Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer. "The 10 films offer a sample of the diversity and originality of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival shorts program."

With these few examples, we can see the trend of profit based releases for Short Films beginning to rise, but not everyone is keen on having their short film’s watched on a laptop, some believe that their films should ideally be shown at a theater.

Over the past few months, a movement of traveling exhibitions and film festivals has been on the rise. Groups of filmmakers and artists are joining with each other in order to take their films and projects to more people and expand their audiences.

Currently, as part of the “American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Culture” exhibition, 3 films made specifically for the exhibition that bring Latino music and dance to life. Each short film (approx. 6-8 minutes long) features performance footage and filmed interviews with artists and experts, and the narratives examine key events in the history of post-World War II Latino music.

- “Rivalry at the Palladium” tells the story of the musical rivalry between Tito Puente and Pablo “Tito” Rodriguez, two Puerto Rican mambo masters.
- “Dance! Dance! Dance!” explores the effects of dance crazes such as tango, mambo, and cha cha cha have helped introduce Latino music to broader audiences.
- “Hollywood” looks at Hollywood’s role in creating images of Latino artists.

These three shorts are not the only art being displayed in the exhibition, many artifacts, wardrobes, musical scores and speakers will also be featured, but it serves as a successful example of a group of artists traveling with their work. Some artists have decided to take a cue from Music Groups. In January ’09, New Media group “The Collective” announced plans to compile the short films of several filmmakers (much like bands compile their music videos and bonus content) and release them over a series of affordable DVDs in effort to bring both exposure and funding to filmmakers.

“There’s really no market for shorts here,” says Ryan Strouss, V.P of The Collective. “with the right marketing and the right art, we can target specific audiences that already exist. Not only would they enjoy these films, but potentially use them as tools in an educational setting.”

The Featured Way

You made a feature film. You sent it off to festivals and it did well, won a few awards, maybe a few featured posts on blogs or coverage in a trade, but no distribution deal has come your way. You put effort, time and money into the project and you hope to recoup it, as well as give your film exposure. Now what?

The dream of some filmmakers today (those who wish to use their Indie Films as a jumping point to the Studio System) is for a high priced negative pickup. The film they made is bought, including all rights and intellectual property, by a distribution company for national and foreign wide release. This scenario, per capita, is uncommon, varying buyouts, but not unheard of. Motives for wanting such a deal are wide reaching, but if this were the only way, there’d be no call for creative thinking and new ways to reach your audience that makes this industry so surprising. And what are those alternative methods? How much of it can be considered Self-Distribution?

What are the reasons to Self-Distribute a film? Naturally, again, the first goal is of course to get your work seen by as big an audience as possible, but there’s also a very valuable secondary reason many of us don’t think about, yet partake in quite often when discussing our projects: to document our experience, to make the notes available for our peers so that they may learn from our experience. Currently, real Self-Distribution exists in the indie rock world to an extremely high degree, but not for indie film at the moment. So how do we cultivate it?

Some of the previously mentioned methods for Shorts can be applied to feature films, but in my opinion, the best and most successful example of alternative distribution is Gary Hustwit’s documentary “Helvetica”. I have been following Mr. Hustwit and his methods with great interest for quite a long time and I am constantly surprised and impressed by both.

Gary first began the project as a self-described “geeky side project” about design and font, but found himself more and more committed to it as time went on. During the height of project activity, he began to show the film to several design firms, taking it on its own mini-tour before the project was complete. Not only did he expose the film to hundreds of audience members and create a niched buzz, but he also received valuable input from the people who knew the subject better than he and ended up incorporating some of it into the film itself.

“Helvetica” had its World Premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2007. The film subsequently toured film festivals, special events, and art house cinemas worldwide, playing in over 300 cities in 40 countries. It received its television premiere on BBC1 in November 2007, and was broadcasted on PBS as part of the Emmy award-winning series Independent Lens in fall 2008. The film was nominated for a 2008 Independent Spirit Award in the "Truer Than Fiction" category, and was shortlisted for the Design Museum London's "Designs of the Year" Award. An excerpt of the film was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. If you’re interested, and I hope that you are (you should be! Support your peers!), the film is currently available for download on iTunes as well as DVD and Bluray formats. How many self-distributed films can claim the same right now? Not many.

Now, should you wish to go theatrical with your feature, but have no offers on the table, you may consider a Service Deal, which, up until 1999/2000 was most popular with books, but has since seen an increasing viability in films. In a recent article in Filmmaker Magazine, Jon Reiss articulated the intricacies of such a scenario: “With no theatrical offer I investigated service deals. These used to carry a fair amount of stigma: “Your film isn‘t good enough for someone to release it so you have to pay them to do it,” but in the current landscape, where theatrical is often (or only) seen as merely publicity for ancillary markets, service deals are less stigmatized and increasingly even the norm.”

There are “Indie-distributors-For-Hire Services” out there should you wish to take that route, such as “Artistic License” (http://www.artlic.com/) and “Truly Indie” (http://www.trulyindie.com/) and they may certainly be useful in expanding and cultivating self-distribution campaigns for certain features.

With the increasing amount of interest in data portability and digital mediums these days, several companies, like iTunes, have taken advantage of that. Netflix is of course known for their monthly rental fees and unlimited rentals/free shipping costs, but now, they’ve started to massively upload films and TV shows onto their server, which, discounting the cost of bandwidth and space, is a great cost saver for them, which also makes it more feasible for the company to snatch up a few indies. After all, if they stick with a purely digital deal, there’d be no cost in manufacturing DVDs, so it becomes less of an economic and bureaucratic process for them, thus making the purchasing of indie films more appealing.

At the moment, Netflix targets primarily the big releases and Hollywood films, but other sites, like Amazon.com and Jaman.com have a more indie targeted niche, and SnagFilms.com, a service that lets anyone host a movie for free on their own Web page. Sure, many of us would like to have the feeling of holding that DVD copy of our own film in our hands and on our shelves, and many of us are wary of digital distribution, but now many of us are getting the digital deals that can keep us going through these venues. YouTube even has a “Screening Room” channel for professional short films and features that will generate revenue from ads on the site, though the filmmakers themselves will not likely see those profits.

Another great example of this is Hulu, NBC’s answer to “you can see it for free, like YouTube, but you’ve gotta watch a few ads so we can still make money” has made some wonderful, landmark headway for Indie Films in an ironically corporate delivery system. In August ‘08, Director David Modigliani struck a deal that made “Crawford” the first film to make its debut on Hulu.com. Hulu, like YouTube, also offers tools that let people post these videos directly on their own blogs, Facebook pages and other sites (though one has to wonder how that will now work with Facebook’s recent grab for content and use rights). Since going up on the site, "Crawford" has been the top movie and one of the most-discussed videos on the site, says Hulu, which UNFORTUNATELY does not release the number of views its videos generate.

Modigliani’s agreement with Hulu was brokered by “B-Side”, an Austin company that runs the Web sites of over 200 film festivals. Like Hustwit, using email addresses and other data gathered from festival goers, “B-Side” organizes screening events around the country where movies are shown for free as a way to drive DVD sales. Now, with films like "Crawford," “B-Side” is applying the same strategy to the Web.

Hulu didn't pay anything up front for "Crawford." Instead, the company shares revenue generated by the six advertisements that run at various points during the 74-minute film, so yes, as with television shows on Hulu, there will be commercials. Neither Hulu or “B-Side” will say how much that amounts to, of course, but “B-Side” only expects it to cover the company's initial expenses on the film, which they say is only a few thousand dollars. At a time when interest in politics was running high, “B-Side” was banking on a return from selling "Crawford" on DVD, offered online for $19.99. Modigliani self-financed the film so he has no investors to pay back. He used his credit card and used tax-deductible contributions made through the Austin Film Society for the movie's $100,000 budget.

There are great strides yet to be made, but for the first time we can see what the future may look like for us as an industry and as a family. Studios will ALWAYS make movies, fans will always crave tactile contact with their favorite films through Limited Edition DVD releases and technology will always set the standard for budgets, but if Indie Rock is any indication of the paralleled movement our Industry is heading for, as it has traditionally been, we, the indie artists, will always find the new ways to venture before our corporate cousins, and they, in turn, will follow suit upon proof of viability. After all, if we look to bands like Radiohead, they are paving the way by exclusively releasing their albums online and available for download with a “name your own” price, and since doing that, more than twenty-five widely released artists have followed suit.

A Note…

*in my opening statement I had said “let’s also assume that your film is of the best quality possible”. The reason I say this is because, unfortunately, a lot of the films, hell, MOST of the films made each year are crap. That’s not discrediting the talent of the cast, crew and all those involved, but sometimes the pieces just don’t fit and the film will never see the light of day. If we are to survive as a community, we must acknowledge that we will always have weak links, but we should not discourage them from making films, we should help to nurture them, educate them and embrace them as we would have done unto us. This cycle will never stop, there will always be bad films, but if we work together, we can show that we’re not all to be judged by the worst of our kind, and we lift those who lift themselves.

Indie Film: The Great Dedication

“Is it worth it for me to do this anymore?” That was the questions I was asked a few days ago by a colleague, and a question that I eventually asked myself.

What she was referring to was her economical situation. Over the past several months, there have been more and more outlets for Indie Film Makers to showcase their work thru a variety of media, and mostly the Internet.

I firmly believe that the Internet is the most valuable tool in almost any endeavor today, be it Film, News, Business or Medicine. YouTube has revolutionized media, Google Videos has redefined how people access News Sources, and although Film has remained a constant, its politics have not.

The Film Community itself benefits most from the Internet, there are wonderful sites such as Indieoma, and KCRW, as well as blogs, such as Ted Hope’s Truly Free Film, Scott Macaulay’s Filmmaker Magazine Blog, and Mikel Wisler’s Cin-Posium. Each of these sites is an invaluable resource for news, cinematic analysis, and the discussion of ideas. Sites like YouTube, iFilm and AtomFilm are great showcases for shorts.

So why ask “if its worth it?” The question itself has a fundamental root that varies from person to person; “what are you seeking?”

An Indie Film Maker is making a film for one of two reasons; A) Creative and Artistic Expression resulting in wonderful discussion, and, if done well, merit; or B) Creative and Artistic Expression resulting in fiscal yield.

If you’re a Film Maker who is a choice B, then Indie Film is the hardest route to take and you’ll probably find yourself asking “Is it worth it for me to do this anymore?”. Each of the previously mentioned websites and blogs are nothing but supportive of Indie Film, but looking over their contents closely, it all points to a potentially disturbing trend; the end of Indie Features.

While shorts will always be around (they’re an essential resume tool as well as the ultimate creative outlet for anyone with a camera) Indie Features will most likely be trailing off. Both Ted Hope and Scott Macaulay have been championing Indie Features for years as well as offering invaluable insight into the Community, some of their recent entries have all mentioned potentially new ways to distribute a film, and most of them are not as profitable as some Film Makers would need them to be.

While I won’t spend too much time on the details of these new distribution avenues (Ted and Scott are much more articulate that I in their posts and certainly more interesting in their explanations) they are indeed very promising when it comes to attaining an audience. Things come into existence when they’re needed, so why the need?

Over the past two years the number of Indie Features made each year has almost tripled. There’s plenty of supply, but the amount of demand is never exactly written in stone. Recently, Paramount announced that it was closing its Indie Division, Paramount Vantage. The company has been harshly criticized for doing so by the Film Community at large. Several of the PV’s films were up for an Oscar Nomination this year, such as There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men (Winner of Best Picture). As to why they’re closing it, there are many thoughts on the issues, including the questionable reasons the company itself has publically stated, but one fundamental opinion that most people have is that the top brass simply has no idea what they’re doing and wish to target more formulaic and financially safer films.

The reason the number of films being made has grown is because the technology to make them has been accessible to just about anyone who wants it, but some argue that it devalues Cinema. To quote a line from The Incredibles, “I’ll give my technology to everyone, and when everyone is Super, no one will be.” Or , to a lesser extent, the Andy Warhol argument of how making multiple copies of a piece of artwork takes away from its “essence.”

But does an increasing number of Films made each year really devalue Cinema? I don’t believe that it does, although the concerns and arguments made by those who do are valid and do hold water. These new methods of distribution are mainly intended for the amateur and “lesser known” Film Makers, for films that may gain festival entrance but not attain the big distribution that they want, and for films that do not go to festivals at all.

While my colleague does understand this point, she feels that she is being strong-armed out of her goals by the larger studios and distributors. The films that she makes are of moderately considerable budget size (SAG Modified Lows or Lows) and have one or two recognizable actors in their cast. She has not had much luck with distribution lately, and as almost any Film Maker who has had their film successfully distributed can tell you, there are an almost infinite number of factors involved with attaining distribution, and later on, the right method and medium of distribution. The simple fact on whether or not the film is good or bad also has a lot to do with it, too, but that’s another topic to be discussed at a later time.

When making a Film with money from a private investor, or any investor for that matter, one should make sure that the budget is realistic and that you can get what you want for what you have. You can’t make a 5 million dollar film with no recognizable actors attached and a decent story with nothing unique and expect to attain distribution that will yield a 5 million dollar ROI plus whatever interest on the investment there was. I wish it were so, I really do, but you have to be pragmatic about Indie Film. I’d like to think that for 5 million dollars a film could attract some recognizable names looking for a payday. That would, of course, increase the films production value. Although you may or may not like it, sometimes that’s just how it works.

If you’ve done your homework and researched the market as well as the media, you’ll be able to find a successful, similar project made in a similar way and can build your model off of that.

One Indie Film my colleague often mentions is The Puffy Chair, (one of my favorites). Made for 15k and sold for 150k to Red Envelope. The film enjoyed wonderful reviews and accolades from several festivals, which naturally peeked interest in it and eventually attained the Duplass Brothers a distribution deal. But in order to understand how that happened, you have to understand how the film was made; there were no recognizable actors, an almost non-existent crew, and (most importantly) a very good story.

Short films will, unfortunately, probably never have the amount of merit in the mainstream as features do, which is a shame because we can all think of at least one or two movies that we know were atrocious and don’t understand how anyone could greenlight that piece of *#$t. And if you’re like me, you can’t really watch a full feature film comfortably from your computer, (though on that note, there are these nice little things called S-Video Cables that will solve the problem, look into them) or if you’re like David Lynch, you can’t watch a Film comfortably from your phone device, or, as he so eloquently put it in 2008, in (ironically) a YouTube video, “You can’t watch a *@#$%^&! Feature film on your *@#$%^&! phone, are you *@#$%^&! serious?!” Yes, I do believe watching a full feature film on your phone kind of ruins the experience, but I can certainly tolerate a 5 to 15 minute short.

Personally, I think its wonderful that new film makers have access to such things as YouTube and phone clips, it puts their work out there, gets it seen by an audience. And most of the people who make those kinds of films know exactly what they’re making and aren’t expecting the world as a result.

The simple fact of the matter is that making a successful Indie Film takes a great deal of dedication, passion and commitment from the Film Makers, as well as an understanding of the community (and, sometimes, the politics of the industry). It’s even harder to attain distribution. Its not easy to make a career out of this industry, it’ll wear you down, test you, break you and rebuild you. You’ll receive both positive and negative criticism that you must learn not to take personally. You must learn that delicate balance of loving what you do, but being critical of your work, and, most importantly, you must never, ever, ever, give up, because if you do give up, then it wasn’t worth all the effort in the first place, was it?