04.21.08
Posted in Classes/Books, Film Festivals, I-Man Cast Film Update, Music at 10:54 pm by Amanda Rogers
This weekend I went to my first film festival. The California Independent Film Festival is a small festival held in nearby Livermore, and this year was its tenth year running. Time didn’t allow me to see everything, so I only attended a few events.
The first event I went to was a seminar on Saturday on Directing, Producing and Distributing Indie Films. It was only 45 minutes long. What could they possibly share in only 45 minutes that I didn’t already know? The answer was…nothing. I’ve heard it all before. They mostly talked about distribution of indies. Nothing much about directing or producing. There simply wasn’t any time. The prevailing attitude that shorts are nothing more than a calling card was expressed and so I shared a story that I know of a short that actually did make money. I’ll have to blog about it sometime. It’s a great example of out-of-the-box thinking.
The next seminar immediately followed and it was on Indie Music for Television and Film. Okay, I actually learned a few things at this seminar. Most notably, I learned about the importance and role of a music supervisor in a film. Besides finding the music for a film, a big and very important part of a music supervisor’s job is to get clearance on music rights. Without the proper clearance, lots of legal problems can crop up and that can cause all kinds of headaches that could have been avoided simply by doing due diligence.
One of the panelists was a music supervisor with a long list of TV and film credits. He has the kind of experience I would be looking for to build a strong team for my film, so after the seminar I talked to him and got his contact info.
I got an invitation to the filmmakers party that night, but the darn thing didn’t start till 10:00 p.m. I’m an early riser and I need my sleep, so I passed on the party.
The next morning I was back at the theater to watch the Tri-Valley Shorts Showcase…a slate of nine short films from filmmakers here in the Valley. The reason I wanted to see this series was because I knew a couple of the filmmakers whose shorts were being featured. One of them was John Meredith. You long-time readers may remember that I blogged about his On The Lot entry last year. Well, John has come a long ways. This was the first time he got one of his shorts on the big screen and his filmmaking skills keep getting better with each film.
Overall, this was a nice introduction to film festivals. One of these days I really need to attend one of the big ones like Sundance, Toronto, or Cannes. Oooh, visiting France sounds like fun.
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03.29.08
Posted in Classes/Books, Film Financing, I-Man Cast Film Update at 11:34 pm by Amanda Rogers
Last Saturday I was back in San Francisco for a one-day workshop. This workshop was taught by veteran venture capitalist (VC) Frank Green, Ph.D, and sponsored by the Institute for International Film Financing (IIFF). IIFF is the same organization that put on the workshop that I attended last month featuring IFP founder Sandra Schulberg. It’s a forward-thinking organization that offers good opportunities for education, networking, and financing for filmmakers. I’ve been attending so many of their meetings lately that I decided to go ahead and become a member.
After getting a producer’s take on film financing last month, it was nice to get a venture capitalist’s viewpoint this time. The workshop was called the One-Day MBA Leadership Workshop for Film Entrepreneurs. A great deal of the day was spent on leadership skills where we learned the VRE Leadership Execution Strategy. I’m not going to go into detail about this but, basically, we learned how a leader must have a vision (V) for their project, cultivate relationships (R) to be able to work as a team, and be able to execute (E) a plan to get the desired results. One of the things that really impressed me was his emphasis on working with people of different personality types and temperments. This is not the kind of information I was expecting in this workshop but, as you will read later, it makes perfect sense why this would be important to a VC.
Interestingly, he didn’t cover subjects such as what a VC looks for in a business plan or how to find VC money. I guess he figures that you should know how to get that information. However, he did offer a couple of valuable tips:
- When pitching to a VC you better know what your vision and strategic goals are. He said that 90% of the people looking for capital don’t have a vision or any strategic goals and many don’t have a clue as to what those are. So you better do your homework.
- One of his favorite tactics is to interrupt a presentation early on and ask a question about something that is covered later on in your presentation. He does this to see how you’ll react. Will you accomodate his request right away and be professional about it? Or will you get all huffy and insist that he wait until you get to that part of the presentation? If it’s the latter, you can forget about getting any funding from him. You just failed his test. See (and this goes back to his emphasis on working with people), he wants to find out how easy it will be to work with you. He also wants to know if you crumble easily under pressure. If you can’t handle this simple request, how can he have confidence that you will be able to handle the pressures of producing a film? Okay, this I understand perfectly, because I admit that I sometimes do it myself. Without being rude, I’ll throw something unexpected at someone and see how they react. This is a great way to judge if I’m going to be able to have a working relationship with that person.
Later that afternoon, the entire class split up into teams of four. There were five teams total. Our assignment was to develop a project strategy for one of several films: a big-budget action packed thriller, a medium-sized-budget documentary, or a small-budget comedy. We then had to give a 10-minute presentation in front of the class with each team member giving part of the presentation. The other teams acted as judges and venture investors and had to decide how much of a $100 bill (for each project) they wanted to invest. My team chose to do a small-budget comedy. Everyone else chose documentaries.
I’m a bit biased, but I think my team totally rocked. We had a producer, an entertainment attorney, a venture capitalist, and myself on my team. I came up with a fun storyline that we tweaked. By the time we had all the pieces put together, we had what would actually be a great little project if it were real. Oh, by the way, we won the contest.
Thursday, I got a call from the chairman of IIFF who also runs a sister organization called Film Angels. They are just what their name implies…a group of world-class Silicon Valley VCs who invest in films. He congratulated me on my team’s win and, even though he knows my project is still in the early stages, he invited me to pitch at one of their meetings when the project is ready. I’m encouraged that he thinks enough of my project, even at this early stage, to extend the invitation. Major Hollywood players pitch to this group, so I better have a strong project to present to them if I hope to compete. It’s not a guarantee of funding, of course, but it is a wonderful opportunity.
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01.19.08
Posted in Fans, Film, I-Man Cast Film Update, Research at 3:45 pm by Amanda Rogers
This is a request to all you I-Man fans out there. I’m doing a research project and I need to pick your collective brains. I’m looking for the titles of movies that are similar to The Invisible Man in terms of genre, style, and/or tone.
To be even more specific, they must meet the following requirements:
- Must have been released within the last five years.
- Must be a movie, not a TV show.
- Can be a theatrical release, a TV movie, or a straight-to-DVD movie.
- Must have been released in the U.S., but can also have been released in other countries.
This isn’t a frivolous request. I’m doing this research for the film project and I can’t think of anyone better to ask than my fellow I-Man fans. After all, you are the ones who know and love the show. I need as many similar movies as you can think of, so if you can please put on your thinking caps and help me out, I would be very grateful. The more, the better. If you want to explain why you think a movie is similar to I-Man, I would be very interested in hearing that, but it isn’t necessary. Don’t worry if you’re listing some of the same movies as someone/everyone else. It’s actually very helpful to me to see which movies you agree upon.
Please reply here in the comments section. If you’re reading this from the mailing list, remember that the mailing list is read-only, so please don’t hit reply to the email. Instead, just hit the direct link at the bottom of the email to get to the blog.
Your help is very much appreciated! I hope to hear from you!
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01.12.08
Posted in Classes/Books, I-Man Cast Film Update, Scripts/Screenwriting at 6:49 pm by Amanda Rogers
Back in October I told you about the screenplay treatment that the writer had turned in. So you might be wondering what’s happening with that. Well, it got put on hold for a while. Why? Because I got sucked into the homework cyclone and it wouldn’t let go. That Story Analysis and Screenplay Development for Film and Television class I was taking ended up eating just about every free moment I had and then some for the past few months. While I regret that it slowed down the project, I think the benefits outweighed the negatives.
For the past three months I’ve been completely immersed in learning to analyze the basic elements of a story: premise, plot, structure, character, and dialog. Our teacher would assign a script for us to read and then we would have to write a log line, a synopsis, and an analysis of the script covering each of the basic elements. We would have to comment on what works and doesn’t work and then give an explanation why. Then we would give our recommendation as to whether the script should be considered for development or not. This is the exact same process a reader goes through for each script he or she analyzes for a producer or studio. For someone who loves to read stories and then pick them apart, it’s a good job. The downside is that you end up having to read a lot of stories that may not be to your liking. It can be quite a challenge to put your personal taste aside and try to look at a story objectively.
Some of the most interesting assignments we were given involved reading a script that had been produced and then watching the finished movie. We then had to write a comparison/contrast where we identified what had changed from the script to the screen and how that had affected the movie, for good or for bad. It’s amazing how much some movies changed, while others stayed fairly true to the script. Films are such a collaborative medium with so many people having an input that it can sometimes be hard to discern where the changes are coming from. Sometimes it can be due to decisions the director makes. Other times it’s due to decisions made in editing. Sometimes the acting isn’t there. And sometimes it’s a combination of various factors. But whatever factors influence the final product, I found it to be disappointing to read a promising script and then watch it get poorly executed on film.
So these past few months have been extremely busy and educational for me. I’m happy to say I got an A in the class. I’m not going to claim to be an expert, but I do think I’ve got a decent grasp of the basics. So would I ever want to become a reader/script analyst? In one word, no. The reason that I say this is because whether you enjoy the story or not, as a reader you still have to read and give feedback on it. Producers don’t have to do that. Sure, they will get stories that don’t interest them, but they aren’t required to read them. Usually, reading a short synopsis, treatment, or the first few pages of a script is all they need to do to know whether or not it is a story they should invest some time in. Of all the stories I read in the class there was only one that I would have been interested in producing.
As a producer I would much rather spend my time looking for that special story that I can get excited about or else working on one that has the possibility to be really good. This brings me back to the treatment. About three week’s ago, I was finally able to sit down and start writing development notes. Development notes, for those of you who may not know, is feedback that producers give to screenwriters to help guide them in developing the story. In the notes, the producer points out areas that work, areas that need work, and can even offer suggestions and ideas that the screenwriter can use or get inspired from.
In my enthusiasm for this project, I offered a ton of ideas and suggestions. At that point, the writer suggested that we write two treatments. It’s an idea that makes a lot of sense. As I have said before, I’m not the only one who decides which story we do. The decision also belongs to the cast. I have to like the story, but so do they. So writing two treatments gives us twice the odds that at least one of them will be something they are interested in doing. What happens if they don’t like either story? Well, then it’s my job to start all over and look for another story. I keep looking until I find the right story.
Because the writer is busy working on the original treatment, I’m taking on the job of writing the second treatment, which will be a co-authored venture. The treatments are basically two different versions of the same story. The goal is to get both versions in tip-top shape before the cast reads them. After they have gone through as many rewrites as needed to get them in great shape, I will then be getting at least a couple of outside opinions on them from experienced, professional writers/analysts. Getting feedback from pros in the field is absolutely vital and I wouldn’t even think of submitting anything to the cast that hasn’t been thoroughly looked over.
So stay tuned and as we make progress on the stories, I’ll keep you posted.
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11.22.07
Posted in Classes/Books, Contests, I-Man Cast Film Update, Internet, Mike McCafferty at 8:10 pm by Amanda Rogers
I apologize that this piece of news is over a week late, but I’ve been snowed under with homework. It’s the middle of the semester and our assignments are getting more complicated and, thus, more time consuming. In addition, I’ve also taken a business plan class and a cash flow analysis class within the last couple of weeks. Busy. Busy.
But I don’t want to talk about my classes tonight. Let’s talk about The IT Room! This is a brand new webisode series starring Mike McCafferty. It’s a cute little show that pokes fun at IT problems. I think a lot of us can probably find something to relate to here. I know I sure can. You may, also, find it fascinating that this show is completely improvised.
Look around the site and you’ll find lots of ways you can interact and help out. They are looking for IT horror stories, which you can submit via a video or their blog. You can even submit a design for the official IT Room t-shirt. There’s a couple of contests with some pretty cool prizes too.
The first episode went online on November 11 and is ready for you to watch. Simply go to http://www.theitroom.com to view it!
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