Film Strategy

Master director / master decision-maker: Stanley Kubrick Decisions on acting, cinematography and editing are the main provinces of the director. And rightly so, because those decisions, good or bad, many or few, are what distinguishes the kind of film we see from one director to the next. Still, as important as those decisions are, the director has no decision to make without a script.   Of course, no one needs to be convinced of the importance of the script since that is where it all begins.  The screenwriter writes, rewrites, polishes and submits the script to the producer and director or produces and directs it herself.  As soon as the actual production of it is imminent , practical considerations like budgets, schedules, rehearsals, set and prop designs, etc. come to the fore which affect the kind of film the script will become. But more important than even those, I think, are the considerations of aesthetics and visualizations that the director undertakes before and while

For me, there is nothing like directing; the rush of arriving on the set at the crack of dawn, the anticipation to get that first shot in as the crew sets up, the anxiety that creeps in when a scene takes longer to shoot then you expected and the AD looks at her watch for the third time, the high you get when a camera moves gracefully and your actors convince you the world they inhabit in the scene actually exists and the numb exhaustion at the end of a very long intense, decision-filled day.  Directors can relate to this regardless if what they are making is a shlock horror flick, an art-house drama, a hard-hitting documentary expose, a funny commercial, a psychedelic music video or a corporate industrial.  In fact, directors love the work so much they would do it for free (ok, for deferred payment) in the hopes that they can actually make a living, day in and day out, directing.  And the only way to get there is by directing more and more stuff and getting better and better. Thr

  The no-to-low budget director is a man of many hats and throughout the production, the director will, at different times and simultaneously, wear the writer's cap, the executive producer's top hat, the director's beret, the line producer's helmet, the editor's hood... hell maybe even the caterer's toque. This is simply a reflection of how a no-to-low budget forces one to do more with less and so the director becomes a hybrid doing many of the most important jobs on the set by himself.  In an otherwise standard or big budget production, the director would pass the head gear to someone else who can devote all their attention to that specific job at hand.  One of the most important jobs that a director MUST perform with a no-to-low budget production is the job of the line producer.  In fact, even when he can delegate to someone else, the director would still benefit from wearing the line producer's helmet. It's easy to imagine the line producer wear

LOVE NEVER DIES... Sometimes it kills! One could say that we make films because we are so haunted by the movies we saw in our past that we feel compelled to create new ones. That might explain why director/producer Peter Szabo has been wanting to make films ever since Jaws scared the wits out of him as a little boy.  It also hints at the haunted protagonist at the heart of Peter's latest short, Love Never Dies .  Thematically, Peter is attracted to dark and tragic tales so it's no surprise that he adapted "Nona" by Stephen King for Love Never Dies after acquiring the non-commercial adaptation rights through the Dollar Baby Scheme . TITLE: Love Never Dies GENRE: horror/thriller short (35 minutes) DIRECTOR:   Peter Szabo PRODUCERS: Peter Szabo and Reese Eveneshen BUDGET: $10,000 FINANCING FROM: In-kind donations and Self-financing PRODUCTION DATES: March 13 through April 3, 2011 POST PRODUCTION DATES: April 2011 through November 2012 CA

Captain's Log.  Star Date 07.24.13 Lots to read and think about if you're a producer or a director, so let's just jump right into it. Variety's latest article makes me think of the following: In the aftermath of some horrible box office numbers for tentpole films, will the studios still prefer spending $250 million on a single movie and letting more quirky or personal films migrate to video-on-demand?  With big- budget event movies cannibalizing each other, will the overseas market grow fast enough to make up for the collateral damage?  Instead of throwing money at a film or an actor and hoping for the best, is there a better, more analytic way to determine beforehand if a film is worth making, and at what specific dollar value? According to Henry Selick , animation also seems to be infected with the condition of " big blockbuster bloatedness " too.  Are creative diversity and online streaming the answer? 6 Lessons from the new digital distribu