Film Strategy

Back in March, 2014, Participant Media partnered with the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center's Media Impact Project (MIP) to announce their collaboration in the service of understanding the social impact of entertainment media.  Their efforts would be named The Participant Index (TPI) and would asses the impact of both Participant and non-Participant supported projects across the range of entertainment: narrative film, documentary films, scripted and reality/alternative TV, short online videos, CSR and branded entertainment. The NY Times now provides us with an update  on this latest quest to uncover the holy grail of audience metrics: ...[N]ew measures of social impact will enable sharper focus and rapid course corrections in what have often been guesswork campaigns to convert films into effective motivational weaponry. That approach would apply to a hit like the movie “Lincoln,” which counseled civic engagement, or to a box-office miss like the antifracking film “Promised

​ on loan from Short of the Week - see their 2013 list of shorts 2013 winds its way to a close and we are wiser, wealthier or both.  Hopefully.  Wealth is never a guarantee for the veteran filmmaker let alone the first-timer. And, as a result, the wisdom gained can be bittersweet.  Nevertheless, as a weird mix of artist and entrepreneur, the wealth and wisdom we attain can be measured and classified in a variety of blessed ways.  Wealth and wisdom in practical knowledge, local connections and production experience are valuable indeed. We live and work in interesting times and the tech we use and watch, the society we live and practice in and the tactics and strategies we employ are ever changing taking our beloved art form to strange places. And until the end of time or until film as an art form is supplanted, each year brings something new that mattered in film and TV; whether its a modification of something old for new times or something simply brand new and unexpected.

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

Captain's Log. Star Date:9.18.13 62 years ago today A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE opens When Elia Kazan’s film  A Streetcar Named Desire  opened in September of 1951, those who’d read the play or seen the Broadway production, knew this was something very different. The 1947 drama, for which playwright Tennessee Williams received a Pulitzer Prize, was for the most part intact. The haughty Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) comes to live with her sister Stella (Kim Hunter), and her sister’s earthy husband Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando). But the nuances that defined William’s dramatic style were quietly erased. The Production Code Administration, led by Joseph Breen, demanded up front 68 changes (some rather major). Blanche’s dead gay husband is now simply referred to as sensitive; the rape is covered in darkness; Blanche’s sexuality is quieted down. But even this was not enough, as Warner Brothers worked out a 11th hour deal with the Catholic League (unbeknownst to either Kazan or

Captain's Log. Star date: 8.28.13 Ready to jump right in and answer some good questions but first a moment of silence because 26 year ago today in 1987, "one of the great directors of all time, John Huston , died from emphysema in Middletown, Rhode Island. Like another Hollywood titan, Alfred Hitchcock (whose last movie was called Family Plot ), Huston’s final production was a harbinger of his mortality: an adaptation of James Joyce’s The Dead . The film was a nod to Huston’s Irish roots, and he very much conformed to the stereotype of a hard-living Irishman: Huston was a man’s man – the Hemingway of the cinema, if you like – a heavy drinker and shameless womanizer (he was married five times) who supposedly only took on The African Queen so he could go shoot an elephant (if White Hunter, Black Heart is to be believed, anyway). Bedridden for several years as a child, when Huston recovered his health he took on life with an insatiable hunger: he followed his fat

Captain's Log. Star Date: 8.14.13 "On August 14, 1945, film director Wim Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. Well, almost. Wenders’ parents wanted to call him Wim, however – despite this being over three months after VE Day – the authorities did not consider this (Dutch) name acceptable for a German baby, so instead he was christened Ernst Wilhelm Wenders. (“Ernst” was the name of his godfather, and “Wilhelm” was the closest Teutonic name to “Wim.”) While his parents were forced to conform, it’s something that Wim himself resisted: in the mid 60s, he dropped out of university to become a painter. He moved to Paris to achieve his dream, and while his quest to get into art school floundered in the City of Lights, he found a home at the Cinemathèque Francaise, where he allegedly watched five movies a day and fell head over heels with film. Returning to Germany, he was accepted into Munich’s newly founded Hochschule für Fernsehen and Film (HFF), and graduated in 19

One drawback of making shooting and editing technology accessible to the masses is that the field gets crowded with more filmmakers vying for the limited attention of audiences and clients.  And while technology has made the field more democratic, it hasn't leveled the pyramidic structure of the movie industry.  At the top of the movie industry are the titans like Spielberg, Lucas, Scorcese, Malick, Nolan and all the other A-list Hollywood filmmakers.  Below them are the top indie filmmakers like Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson, Jared Hess, Neill Blomkamp, Shane Carruth (you could also add the top directors in television, music videos, commercials and documentaries here). Below them are the filmmakers who have had their films appear in the top film festivals, at least once, and are in a good position to move up the pyramid with their next project.  Below them are the filmmakers who have a very good track record overall; a combination of lots of festival screenings, financiers willi