HD For Indies

Hey all -

so when I got home late last night (around 1am) and started writing up my thing on the Red pricing, little did I know that:

a.) I misunderstood some of the options
b.) I was tired and cranky (more than I realized)
c.) and, unknown to me, my Dad was across town getting a chest tube put in at the emergency room.

He's fine - he had a spontaneous pneumothorax, I had one in high school that hospitalized me, it is a hassle but treated is OK - it is a partially collapsed lung, they have to put in a chest tube and you're tethered to what looks like a gin still for a few days until you can go home, then there's zero lasting effects. He's having a Vicodin nap, he's OK and my sister is with him now till Mom gets there to spend the night.

So I haven't had a chance to really update my thoughts on Red & pricing, but I will as soon as feasible. I'm sitting in the restaurant across from the hospital where I've been most of today (since shortly after I posted the earlier update). I got a chance to get the emails responding to my late night questions, so I'll have a different tack to post on it later once I've digested all that new info and can put another article up.

-mike

THURSDAY UPDATE: Dad got discharged from hospital, got home, they called a half hour later - there was a problem with the final pre-discharge X-ray: apparently they nicked something pulling out the tube, so he had another collapsing lung at the moment. Now he's scheduled for surgery tomorrow afternoon, in hospital another week. Grr. Dammit. I want him home and done with all this and OK.

-mike

SATURDAY UPDATE: Surgery went OK, I'm sitting in hospital room whilst he naps, catching up on some news and writing a bit. Stand by for updates later today...

-mike

Labels: Red, SXSW

Theatrical acquisitions panel - I walked in late and could only stay for a bit:

-rottentomatoes is flawed somebody says, metacritic is better. if there's 10 films with an 80 rating and 1 with a 97, guess which one is more likely to get picked up - gotta stand out from the crowd!
-some movies (300, Ghost Rider) are critic proof for their audiences, but for others (The Queen), NYTimes positive review is crucial
-reviews matter for certain films
-for smaller markets and smaller films, word of mouth and grass roots is key
-Guillermo did a big push for Pan's Labyrinth in Spanish language marketing, touring, etc.
-Deena Kalai (friend of mine) asks - for films being chopped up between different markets - does it matter? Answer: Miramax usually doesn't buy foreign rights unless US is available - Miramax will carve out all English speaking rights, for instance - lots of indies can play in that market, but non-English markets
-keep all rights available, esp. N. America - if you sell TV, that makes it tougher (even though that's a significant profit source)
-when pickng up a movie, what % from DVDs? Depends on genre - action/horror is multiples of box office (hopefully), foreign language (10% or some horrible/tiny/shitty amount") - if does well at box office - it'll do elsewhere. Genre does better in DVD (The Host, for instance), wouldn't acquire ANY movie without DVD rights - theatrical break even or lose money, TV/DVD is where you make your money
-rare company projects to reach overages from theatrical
-Oscar shorts only does theatrical & DVD rights, have back end on iTunes, needs to work theatrically and it is kind of a joke to try and do that
-distributors getting 40-50% for income
-"How important is festival rep?" - make your first festival a well known one if you can - because it is old news, you can find old reviews as an acquisition person to find out about it
-if you premiere here as a small film, from there you want to play other fests to get word of mouth going - be a big fish in a small pond - gettting a Sundance premiere might get you overlooked -but if you stand out have a better chance
-is Tribecca a serious acquistions festival? "Everyone goes..." "We didn't "go", but we bought three films there."
-as for DVDs, having talent on box count
-if you've been playing festivals around the world but not biggies, that DOES hurt - since festival programmers are effectively telling people "we've seen a bunch of movies that suck, here's what we liked" - it pre-screens the movies
-make a good movie THAT HAS AN AUDIENCE - it'll get bought
-if you're not getting into bigger festivals, a good name rep (John Sloss) will help - they can't muscle it in, but that maximize results
-it is silly to lie and say there aren't tiers - there are better places/festivals/reps/etc. - the further up you do, the better
-but those folks aren't perfect - Sloss passed on a film that got an Oscar nom
-John gets the most press, there's times some folks have passed on a film because John's repping it
-life's too short sometimes - John has ticked off buyers/distribs by his hard deal cutting
-if things are getting difficult, they'll walk - why suffer?
-do you want to be repped by someone with 14 films there with a big rep, or have someone that's just fighting for you?
-be clear with folks - don't lie to distribs about what clearances - were promised that two Bruce Springsteen songs were claimed to be cleared but weren't
-what's the threshold of spending for docs? Docs are viable acquisitions (Al Gore giving a Powerpoint preso?) - it is dangerous to spend $1M on a doc if not Michael Moore - since most didn't gross NEARLY that much...
-money is spent on above the line talent - if you don't have names, why go into debt for hundreds of $1000s?
-is like gambling - whatever you can afford to lose
-to get found as a movie - talent agencies, reps, festivals, etc.

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After that, walked out and walked around a bit, ran into Amanda Congdon doing interviews in the hall and said hello, she interviewed me for a bit and I got a picture with her.

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went to lunch with some folks from Avid, Matt Feury who is the high end editorial workflow guy, and Amy Peterson (can't recall her title, met her at NAB last year). We talked about where Avid was going, some workflow issues I was interested in solving with Avid, and I shared my thoughts on where I thought they should take the product line (AJA and/or BMD hardware support!) Avid has some cool new features coming, one I can talk about is a new script tool that does voice-to-text recognition on your footage and then pattern matches that to your script in a quick automated fashion - this used to be doable but only by hand - so even if it is only mostly accurate, still saves a TON of time. I'll try to catch a demo of it soon.

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panel went OK, but it was overly broad - with so many people from so many fields (me, the Dallas Panavision rep, an Avid rep, a Technicolor rep, a Kodak rep, a facial animation performance capture rep), it was too broad to go into any detail on anything, so we covered a lot of generalities - if anyone were to go into depth in their area, it would be rude to everyone else. Panel attendance was good, but the subject matter was overly broad.

TALK ABOUT THE FACIAL ANIMATION SOFTWARE (I'll update this later with links)

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After that went to the DGA party, hung out with Jen White (DoP friend of mine), Tim McCanlies (writer/director of Secondhand Lions and others), Frank Reynolds (my editor friend), James from Panavision Dallas, Jennifer Milliman a local AD, etc. Ran into Bryan Poysner from the Austin Film Society an talked a little geekery with him. Tim, Frank & I talked fun geekery about HD vs DI finishing, Avid vs. Final Cut, etc. James from Panavision and I talked about where they were going - what's next in digital, what's next in lenses for them - film lenses are contrast biased, HD lenses are sharpness/detail biased - which way should they go in the future for their rental pool? Also factor in that they've merged with Plus 8 as well and now handle their Vipers etc.

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after that went to see Knocked Up, which already has theatrical distribution, and I've heard advanced buzz that it's good (I'm writing this in the Paramount before it starts)...and since they have online access in here, I'm going to go ahead and post up what I've got for the day...

UPDATE - saw Knocked Up - it was scathingly hilarious - the audience LOVED it, it'll be a HUGE hit I'm sure this summer. I don't think I've laughed so much at a movie in many, many months. While all rom-coms Have A Message, this one did a good job with it. Ran into Paul Rudd and another of the actors from it at the Chronicle party and congratulated them and chatted a bit, it was great. Also ran into Adam Scott who had a small part in the film.

Labels: SXSW

After seeing Rodriguez's panel yesterday, I had to go home and work for a bit. I came back downtown and caught part of He Was A Quiet Man, which I was unenthused about, and the ending basically pulled off one of the classic movie cheats that makes you say "Oh, just forget it." Christian Slater looked surprisingly un-Christian Slater like in it, William Macy & Elisha Cuthbert were in it, and as Forrest Gump said, that's about all I have to say about that.

Later I went to dinner with Megan Gilbridge from Burnt Orange Films and Rita Sanders (editor I mentioned the other day) and we talked business and geekery.

Regretably dinner ran long (soooo busy downtown during SXSW) and we missed Joe Swanberg's new film, Hannah Takes The Stairs. Joe caught my attention with Kissing On The Mouth the other year - I saw that and Four Eyed Monsters within a few days of each other and really saw those as harbingers of a new zeitgeist of DIY filmmaking and new voices on how movies can be made and talk to a new generation. My friend Frank Reynolds saw Hannah Takes The Stairs and I'll ping him for his thoughts on it shortly.

I did get into What Would Jesus Buy, Morgan Spurlock's (of SuperSize Me fame) new film that he exec produced, and it was a packed house a the Paramount, packed all the way to the rafters, capacity around 1200 I think). It is about a political action group that does comedic performance art (or is it a performance art group into politics? Core question) centered around America's overly consumeristic behavior, and all of the bad effects that has on us. It focuses on following Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir as they toured American in the month before Christmas, making stops at malls, Walmart corporate offfices, and ultimately Disneyland. Reverend Billy performs as a southern revivalist minister, and the choir is a for-real choir, singing and backing him up. In classic Spurlock style, there's documentary footage of the travels and adventures of the group, interspersed with vignettes about the costs and hazards of credit card debt, sweatshop labor, Walmart's predatory practices, Disney's production practices, etc. I really enjoyed the film, and much like SuperSize Me, it is a great message that America may have a tough time swallowing - but I loved this movie, and so did the audience. When the film ended, there was a minutes long standing ovation, that just kept going when Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir took the stage - and then sang a song before Q&A. I commented to one of my friends I saw the film with that I'd love to see this come out in six months, but she said that it would probably be just minutes (this was the world premiere) before Disney and Walmart started flinging injunctions at them. It'll be interesting to see how it goes - this is legitimate satire and documentary commentary, but it'll get tied up in court for some time I'm sure. As Morgan Spurlock pointed out before the film started, they did have some trouble raising money to point out the hazards of corporate greed.

But it is a good film, and much as I felt about SuperSize Me, important for Americans to see in hopefully as large numbers as possible.

-mike

Labels: SXSW

yesterday I saw a couple of movies - When A Man Falls in The Forrest was depressing with not enough payoff, so that's all I want to say about that. Dylan Baker did a good job playing a nebbishy guy though, and Sharon Stone allowed herself to be shown with forehead wrinkles. OK, I'm done & moving on.

I went to some parties, caught up with some folks - saw Joe Swanberg who is here with his film Hannah Takes The Stairs that I plan on seeing later tonight. Went to the frog party and saw the last few people I know that are still there (I started working there nearly 10 years ago, sheesh), went to the Mobile Film School party (I'm on the advisory board), and hooked up with my editor friend Rita Sanders (she cut last year's slam poetry doc Slam Planet that ran at SXSW) to see American Zombie, a fun faux-doc about high level functioning zombies in LA. Are they flesh eating crazies or just a new population to contend with? Silly fun.

Today I went to the Grindhouse 101 panel with Robert Rodriguez and Harry Knowles of AintItCoolNews.com. They started off by reminiscencing about their childhood movie expeirences - yeah yeah move along move along - and finally got to the good stuff - talking about where grindhouse movies came from - they showed some old trailers that were excellent and bizarre. Rodriguez talked about how they intentionally trashed out parts of the movie - intentional bad splice cuts to jump over parts of the movie they don't care about (like how everyone decides Loser is now Leader), or they'll splice cut around MPAA edits.

He talked about how the exploitation films had no quality acting or production value, so it was all built around the concept - which wasn't all that great to start with.

They showed three trailers from the online competition, and Hobo With a Shotgun won, deservedly so. Maiden of Death was pretty good, and I forget the title of the third but it was fun too.

Rodriguez showed a scene from his section of Grindhouse - a group of people in vehicles escaping zombies, shooting them, running over them with a giant truck, etc. Campy silly R rated fun. They've intentionally introduced some "errors" into the film for effect - a red wash that looks like a dye seepage or light leak during printing, dust/scratches/blemishes throughout, accidentally on purpose dropping out the audio, etc.

He also talked about the history of the movie - that he'd come up with the idea of Girl With Gun For Leg a long time ago.

The real gem was one of the fake trailers that will run between Quentin Tarantino's and Rodriguez's movies - Eli Roth did a trailer for an 80s slasher flick. Every major holiday has been done as a horror movie (maybe not Easter) - so he chose Thanksgiving. Deliciously silly and wonderfully violent. You have to have some sex & nudity in a grindhouse flick, so he has the couple having oral sex and the guy gets decapitated. Or the cheerleader stripping on the trampoline, and when she lands (naked) in a split, the killer has a knife stuck up through the trampoline...dead center - that got a huge "OHHHHH!" and full body shudder/grimace out of the entire audience. Then he closes with something classy - a dinner scene with a human body done up as the cooked turkey, and a turkey with a human head stuck in it. Then the killer has sex with the turkey/human head combo in front of the tied up family. Klassy.

But silly fun.

Afterwards, Rodriguez said he'd forgotten to ask if there were any children in the theater, and now he saw a few and was embarassed.....Spy Kids this ain't! And devil bless him because of it - this movie will be FUN.

Scott Kirsner was apparently there too, and he took better notes - CinemaTech: At SXSW: Robert Rodriguez, Harry Knowles, and 'Grindhouse 101'

OK, off for more stuff. It is a rainy afternoon, so I don't want to go stand in line outside.

-mike

Labels: Grindhouse, Rodriguez, SXSW

So after the usual melee of getting checked in and picking up my badge, I saw a couple of movies last night -

Disturbia - already has distribution and opens in the not too distant future. Shia Lebouf stars as the troubled teen who is under house arrest with an ankle tracker that starts spying on the neighborhood out of boredom. He discovers the hottie girl next door, and the neighboy who may responsible for the recent serial killings (the trailer gives all this and more away). The film works - it is genre fare (thriller for the younger set), but it works - it is fun, funny at times, scary at times. It'll do fine at the box office. It is a bit predictable but well executed - I enjoyed it. This ran at the Alamo Downtown, which only has 200 seats. I suspect some films that already have distribution are booked here so as to garner a little buzz (like this) and word of mouth - but it is a small enough venue that they aren't letting huge crowds see it.

The Lookout - this one also has distribution, but it ran at the much larger and more opulent Paramount Theater. For those who don't know, it is a nearly century old classic grand theater with hanging chandeliers, painted frescoes on the ceilings, fine detail work, etc. It is a gorgeous old building, and THE place to have a premiere in Austin.

Anyway, The Lookout stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the same kid who was so fantastic in Brick (which was my favorite movie I've watched via Netflix, it is FANTASTIC, go rent it if you haven't seen it). He stars as the once-was-great high school jock who suffers a tragic car accident that kills his friends and leaves him brain damaged. Now, he barely functions and has to write everything down. He misses his old life. His new friend Gary wants to help him regain some of that old glory - by helping him rob the bank works in. Jeff Daniels co-stars, and the movie is much, MUCH smarter than the usual bank heist flick. You really connect and identify with the lead - the movie is about him and how he copes with his world. My friend Frank Reynolds (editor in from NYC, cut In The Bedroom) asked what it felt like, and my immediate gut answer was A Simple Plan meets Memento - the emotional resonance and suffering of the first, the lead character's challenges of the second. It can be a tough watch due to the heavy material (I almost didn't go based on subject matter alone), but I'm glad I did. HIGHLY recommend when it comes out. If Disturbia gets 2 1/2 or 3 stars, this is definitely a four star film in my book.

Also interesting is the fact that both of these films center on dark haired male leads involved in fatal car accidents in high school that dramatically affects their lives.

Today, panels start and there's some movies I want to catch. More later...

-mike

UPDATE:
Variety.com - Reviews - The Lookout

Variety reviews and likes The Lookout, much as I did.

Labels: SXSW

SXSW Film Festival begins today - I'm heading out to go pick up my badge shortly. As you can see from the screenshot of my iCal, quite a bit to do this week - and that's just the stuff that I thought looked interesting, I need to cull out the redundancies and prioritize. Lesson learned from festivals past - you have to do your "What am I going to do & see?" legwork BEFORE the festival starts, else you'll always be trying to figure something out...and missing better stuff in the meantime. Then you also have to learn and modify as you go - skip that movie that's coming out next month, catch that sleeper that everybody says is great - or hey, so and so is going to be at that party, you need to go so I can introduce you, etc.

I'll be panelling Monday at 3:30pm in room 12AB for a panel called Tech Tools for Film Artists.

From the writeup online:

The long hours in a smoke-filled editing room have been replaced with long hours hunched over in front of computer screen. HD filmmaking and other new technologies have opened the door to people to make their vision come to life without a big budget or big crew. Are the times passing you by? This roundtable will discuss what is available to today's filmmaker and what can be expected tomorrow.

Moderator: Anne Hubbell
Regional Acct Mgr/ Independent Feature Film, Kodak
Aaron Simpson, Content Producer, JibJab Media Inc
Anne Hubbell, Regional Acct Mgr/ Independent Feature Film, Kodak
Christian Zak, VP / Digital Film Svcs, Technicolor
Mike Curtis, The Guy, HD For Indies
James Finn, Mkting Exec, Panavision Dallas
Patrick Davenport, Image Metrics
Matt Feury, AVID


I'll be hitting the parties and panels and movie scene, so it'll be busy - don't expect much non-SXSW news this week.

Once more into the breech...

-mike

Labels: SXSW

Variety.com - South by Southwest sets lineup

South By SouthWest (often written SXSW, and locally known as "South By") has announced their film line-up for the film festival beginning March 9th.

SXSW is my hometown film festival, I've been on panels there for about 12 years or so, and will be on a panel this year as well (panel lineup gets officially announced Feb 13th).

Read on for highlights of the upcoming line-up.

Hollywood Reporter's coverage: From war pics to politics: SXSW sets festival lineup

Labels: festivals, SXSW