by Crimefile.

As I prepare to both act and crew in an independent film things are quickly changing in terms of power.

The current system is awash in criminal racketeering, restraint of trade and anti-trust activities. There are about five talent agencies that currently determine what films will be made and who will act in them.

Actors hire agents to represent them and get them work. However, the agents have somehow reversed this to them hiring the actors. The talent agencies tell the studios what films they can make and just who will act, direct, shoot or write.

Massive amounts of money are gathered in what’s considered risky investments to make films. The talent agencies seem to control the cash flow. More importantly they control the movie theater owners and just what films will hit the big screen. The Agencies had the ability to intimidate, bully and control the screen owners and exactly what films will see the light of day.

However this system is changing at the talent agents can’t do anything about it. The large flat screen TVs are here with fabulous sound systems. They are in homes with the best snacks, and that important pause button for bathroom runs.

Read the rest of this article from Crime File News.

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from IBN Live.

DearCinema brings to you a few voices that define the Indie scene in India today, ruminating over what independent cinema means to them. Straight from the horse’s mouth. Following Q, Shonali Bose, Onir and Shivajee Chandrabhushan, in the fifth in the series, filmmaker Nila Madhab Panda whose debut feature film ‘I Am Kalam’ won a national award and much critical acclaim speaks his mind on indie filmmaking:

Recently, I was at a round table discussion on ‘Managing and Protecting Creativity’ at IIM Bangalore. Alongside me were several legendary filmmakers and dancers. When their turn came, each of them said they were not great speaking in front of an audience. But I feel if our generation does not speak out, we will keep on having such seminars and talks, on Indie cinema, and on creating and protecting creativity, without any result ever.

So, I believe in speaking my mind, as I did at the round table. Because I strongly feel that if we have to take forward our cinema and our arts, we have to be proactive, to the extent that we look at even the otherwise routine-sounding seminars and conferences as a platform to take forward the movement and the struggle to create art work in consonance with the sensibilities of the modern times.

Read the rest of this article from IBN live.

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by Tony Myers.

The decisive moment for smartphones overtaking point-and-shoot cameras occurred last summer when the iPhone 4 became the most popular device for picture uploads to the image-sharing site Flickr. At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, camera makers were scrambling to adapt to this new order, adding internet connections and more powerful zoom lenses to even basic models.

But it is not only photographers who have been quick to realise the potential of the camera in devices such as the iPhone 4 and 4S, and Nokia N8; film-makers have also been working with smartphones to produce not only quality shorts, but in some cases full-length feature films – shot completely on a mobile phone.

Read the rest of this article from The Guardian.

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by David Spaner.

There have been plenty of history books written about independent film, but few take the expansive, international view of journalist and critic David Spaner in his new book “Shoot It!: Hollywood Inc. and the Rising of Independent Film,” released this month.

“Shoot It!” is a revealing history of how Hollywood, with its eye on the bottom line, lost its ability to support the work of creative filmmakers; it is also a passionate portrait of the independent filmmakers who have risen to fill the void.

Indiewire is sharing an excerpt from the new book. Here, from the chapter entitled “New York Magic,” Spaner tracks the evolution of the New York underground filmmaking scene in the 1980s.

Read the rest of this article from IndieWire.

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by Chandra Steele.

Every town has gone a little Hollywood this month. Cinemas are packed with theatergoers wanting to see esteemed Oscar nominees and this week’s Sundance Film Festival previews what could be the next gleam in their eyes.

One of the Oscar favorites, Hugo, is an uncommonly gentle film from Martin Scorsese that’s a love note to those who go to the movies and also to those who create them.

Whether it’s a recent fancy or a long-time fantasy of yours to make a movie, now’s the time. Most filmmaking tools are low-cost (or even free) and easy to use. Here’s what you’ll need to create everything from the opening scene to the end credits.

Read the rest of this article from PC Mag.

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by Matt Soergel.

When Patrick Barry was in high school at Bishop Kenny, in the dark ages of the late 1990s, filmmaking was his passion, though it wasn’t an easy one to follow.

“But I guess we just did it,” he said. “You got your friends together, got to the thrift shop, found the funniest costumes you could and built around that.”

Not many amateurs were making movies back then, he says, and no wonder: Shooting and editing on bulky video camcorders was awkward, time-consuming. Then converting that video to film, so your work actually looked good when you showed it to an audience, was way too expensive.

He’s 30 now, still making movies. And things have changed greatly since the dark ages: The number of today’s budding filmmakers is “absolutely, without a doubt” booming, said Todd Roobin, head of Jacksonville’s film and TV office.

Just consider the advantages offered to them, after all: Digital technology makes shooting, editing and distributing your film far easier than the video and film cameras of the past.

Read the res of this article from Jacksonville.com

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by Adam Dawtrey.

Time and again, independent filmmakers around the world claim that without Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and their team at Sony Pictures Classics, there would be no market in the U.S. for their work.

Barker and Bernard are known for being frugal in buying and marketing their movies. With a tiny but long-serving staff, they have made consistent returns for 20 years in the toughest arthouse niche, which has kept them in the game when others have come and gone.

Their low-cost model gives auteurs from home and abroad not just an aud, but also a real chance of seeing profits.

Read the rest of this article from Variety.

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from The Daily Beast.

Ever since his 1995 directorial debut, The Brothers McMullen, which grossed over $10 million at the U.S. box office on a budget of just $23,800, Edward Burns has been at the fore of cutthroat,low-budget indie filmmaking. With his latest film, Newlyweds, released Dec. 26 on video-on-demand, the director opens up about how independent film distribution models have changed, and what it means for the future of indie moviemaking.

Sixteen years ago as a film student at Hunter College, I made my first movie—The Brothers McMullen. While film technology has made rapid leaps and bounds since then—I shot my most recent film on a Canon 5D—the method of exhibiting indie films theatrically has seen little change over the years, and it is still as difficult as ever for independent filmmakers to reach a sizable audience in movie theaters.

Read the rest of this article from The Daily Beast.

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from Encore Magazine.

A first time feature documentary maker has struck a deal with Woolworths to distribute his film. Woolworths will stock DVDs of Australian Joe Cross’s healthy living documentary, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead in the produce section of its supermarket.

Cross’s story is the opposite to Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me. As an overweight broker, Cross sold his company and used a roadtrip across America with a cameraman, sound guy and a juicer as a way to get slim. While eating and drinking only fruit and vegetables Cross aimed to discover why people didn’t eat better.

Cross told Encore: “I did the deal directly. Woolworths are supporting the film as their view is this is a film that inspires people to eat more fresh food and they’re the fresh food people.”

Read the rest of this article from Encore Magazine.

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by Kim Voynar.

Last time on Adventures in Filmmaking, I told you all about the awesome crew we’ve lined up to shoot my short film, Bunker, and promised that I’d write another journal entry about the art design and such. Then things got a little busy, what with going off to NYC a week before my shoot, but I thought I’d take a few minutes out of my day to catch up on this before I disappear into the netherworld of last-minute pre-production and shooting for two 12-hour days this weekend.

One of the things I see lacking on a lot of low-budget indie films is production design. I was reading an article in Filmmaker Magazine about how the economy and budget crunches are affecting below-the-line spending and how art direction is one of the areas taking a hit with this, and how more and more filmmakers are using their own furniture and such in their production design to save dollars.

Certainly this has been the case with Bunker. We’re spending a lot of money on this film, for a short film (and we’re still looking at doing a crowd-funding thing to help defray some of our post costs, even though we’ve managed our expenses as well as I think we could have while getting the level of crew experience I wanted), but when it came down to the bottom line, I felt like I needed to focus our spending on those areas in which I have zero experience or knowledge (all the tech stuff, basically). If I wanted to get the best folks for those jobs, something was going to have to give.

Read the rest of this article from Movie City News.

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