Film Strategy

A large part of a distributor's and filmmaker's day is spent considering how to extract that extra bit of attention from the audience to extract that extra dollar.  Hollywood and its counterparts have the time, desire and money to analyze and figure out ways to accomplish that feat (too bad that the efforts to market many times end up better and more creative than the actual film itself but that's another story).    And although many independent, specialty or art filmmakers can't invest the time or money that Hollywood does (many don't even want to), they still learn, adopt and modify what Hollywood does to effectively reach the audience.  That's why I found the new Google white paper, "Quantifying Movie Magic with Google Search" by Reggie Panaligan and Andrea Chen informative.  The paper is meant to sell the importance and value of using Google/Youtube as a search source and its intended target audience are the makers of studio-financed/distribu

Three friends get ready for a hot halloween night out, until destiny changes their lives forever.  Even though we've all heard about the type of film made for less than $100 that then goes on to reap success beyond the value of its budget, it's still surprising to come across films like that.  Halowin is that kind of film; made for about $50, and shot and acted with intense provocative grit.  It all started in August 2012, when Danish director  Lars von Trier  posed a challenge to aspiring filmmakers of the world: Reinterpret one or more of six classic works selected by von Trier into a film, video, still, piece of music or soundpiece for a project entitled "Gesamt - Disaster 501: What Happened to Man." The Gesamt project will take 400-plus submissions and work them into one exhibition at the Charlottenborg Palace in Copenhagen, Denmark, to run October 12 through December 30, 2013.    The Irish short film "Halowin" directed by the Spanish-D

Diary | Tim Hetherington | 2010 | UK | Format: various | 20 min   One of the main reasons I felt a section on filmmaker's journals or diaries would be useful on this site is that there are times when it helps all of us to understand the filmmaking process from the subjective view of the filmmaker.  As beginning and even experienced filmmakers hope to make it in the industry, it's always good to see how the filmmakers you admired overcame their obstacles or planned their vision.  Without a doubt, it can inspire and teach you.  But there is also a voyeuristic insight to be gained from peering into a filmmaker's diary and it's not as clear cut as a motivation or a lesson would be.  Maybe the insight we gain from the filmmaker's diary benefits us as artists and fans to understand a filmmaker's work better from an aesthetic, historical and academic perspective.  Or maybe it just satisfies our desire for gossip because it's our human nature to be nosy an

Reading this article by Lacey Rose, was an eyeopener (almost as much as this one ).  The broadcast networks are truly trying to come up with ways to deal with their loss of ratings and audience viewership and one of the ways is by offering original summer programming.  The time when they could take summer off and leave show development for the fall might be over for good now that cable has exploited that window to great success with year-round original programming.  Although the 4 major networks are aware of the dilemma, the networks are going into summer with different strategies based on trying to answer the following question: How to offer originals in a way that's economically feasible at a time of year when viewership and ad money are down? Each of the networks are answering the question in different ways (see below). In turn, the answers made me think of  what that could mean for TV producers and production companies developing future projects and which of the current/