“Time and technology march on. About 100 years ago, the movies came along to kill the novel, the theater, the opera and almost every other art form besides popular music, which itself killed the symphony.

So now it’s time for the cinema’s dirt nap. The movies are dead—long live the tweet.

By dead, of course, I really mean completely fractured. Good and great films are still produced, but mostly outside the United States (I just Googled “death of American independent film” and got more than 21 million hits.) The major studios have shed or radically downsized their quasi-independent arms, as in the case of Disney’s gutting of Miramax. Artistically ambitious directors here generally have to sneak their quality in through the camouflage of a Batman or a Bourne film.”

Read the rest of this article from Culture Map.

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Sign up now for your own FREE monthly subscription to “The Director’s Chair” filmmaking ezine and get: (1) Day One of my 201 page mutli-media Online film directing audio course, “The Art and Craft of the Director Audio Seminar” and (2) the first 24 pages (plus mp3 audio) of my 137 page “Script Breakdown and Film Scheduling Online Course For Independent Filmmakers.”

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That question has come up a lot lately on Twitter among indie filmmakers enduring the plight of self distribution. I decided to do some quick research on the matter and figure out for myself how one might go about getting their film on iTunes.

I know the filmmakers of Inkdid it, but then again their film has a huge following and has been around for a few years. I wondered if the little known indie filmmaker, with the little known film has the same access to iTunes that a more well-known film has.The sad fact is, Apple and iTunes has little to no information on their website about their selection process. However, my research uncovered some alternatives to contacting iTunes directly.”

Read the rest of this article from Angelo Bell.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

VICTOR Okhai is an independent producer and one of the few intellectuals in Nollywood, who feels saddened with the failings of the movie industry. Yet he maintains a positive posture with the belief that Nollywood will soon get out its dark tunnel with the emergence of a new generation of filmmakers. However, he is embittered that government agencies saddled with keeping the industry alive have turned out its greatest enemy as they roll out unworkable and self-serving theories while ignoring the real problems of the industry.

But to cap it all, a recent utterance allegedly attributed to the Minister of Information and Communications that Nollywood is Nigeria’s problem didn’t go down well with him and others in the industry. He responded to this among other issues in this chat with ANOTE AJELUOROU.”

Read the rest of this article from NGR Guardian News.

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Sign up now for your own FREE monthly subscription to “The Director’s Chair” filmmaking ezine and get: (1) Day One of my 201 page mutli-media Online film directing audio course, “The Art and Craft of the Director Audio Seminar” and (2) the first 24 pages (plus mp3 audio) of my 137 page “Script Breakdown and Film Scheduling Online Course For Independent Filmmakers.”

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“When I was a child my dad got a supper eight camera and shot our family movies. The family would sit at night, in the living room, while my dad put up the projector that screened our home movies. The quality of the films was poor and the audio sounded as if it came from far far away. Nostalgic as it may appear to some of us, there is not much to miss by the loss of the film format.”

Read the rest of this article from Cameras Lover.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

“Another film watching year is in the books! My final total of 338 films seen in 2009 is lower than the 445 films seen in 2008 and 385 in 2007. However, the quality of films I saw in 2009 was much higher than that of the previous two years. With the exception of a few films (soon to be outlined in a best of 2009 post), a majority of the best films I saw in 2009 came courtesy of the film festival circuit, routed via Sundance, Rotterdam, Cannes and eventually landing in CIFF.

For me, the importance of Film Festivals cannot be emphasized enough and going into a new decade film festivals continue to be the only venue for most of the cinephiles around the world to peer into the existing beautiful cinematic universe.”

Read the rest of this article from Scribbles and Ramblings.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

A decade as odd as this one, with George Bush and Barack Obama as its bookends, deserves to be examined. While the U.S. moved from rebuilding decimated skyscrapers to the rebuilding of an entire economy, film moved from the multiplex to the mailbox to the cell phone. But did the pictures really get small?

We tried to find out by surveying Bay Area film-industry professionals as well as everyday fans on the trends that moved them. We found love for animation and hate for the ascendancy of the first-person narrator-star in documentary films. We saw pleas for more collaboration and less ego. We encountered disdain for CGI and hope for independent exhibitors and filmmakers.”

Read the rest of this article from SF360.

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Sign up now for your own FREE monthly subscription to “The Director’s Chair” filmmaking ezine and get: (1) Day One of my 201 page mutli-media Online film directing audio course, “The Art and Craft of the Director Audio Seminar” and (2) the first 24 pages (plus mp3 audio) of my 137 page “Script Breakdown and Film Scheduling Online Course For Independent Filmmakers.”

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The Sundance Film Festival is in full swing, some  films are being bought and others are not. Understanding the reasons for these decisions is critical for independent filmmakers.  Film Independent recently produced a round table that focused on indie distribution. It’s an offshoot from their Filmmaker Forum, which was held over an entire weekend in early October.

This discussion looked at the economics of distribution; traditional, DIY, and digital strategies. The panelists also addressed the state of film distribution: past, present, and future. Their goal throughout this series was to give filmmakers the unvarnished truth and to look at the industry as it exists.”

Read this article from Global Film Village.

“201 Things You Wouldn’t Know
Without Movies or Television!”

“A lot of filmmakers think that when they’re done their filmic masterpiece the festivals will beg to play it, the distributors will instantly send offers, and peace will fall over the planet. But this is not the case.

I got lucky with my first film, “Hunting Humans”. I put together a really crappy one-sheet myself, but because my film was high concept it got picked up. You probably won’t be so lucky.

I got even luckier on my second film. I hired a guy named Erik Ashley to design a poster for “Fear of Clowns”. He put together a couple of great ones, and I can tell you this with absolute sincerity:

His poster got Lionsgate to pick up my film!”

Read the rest of this article from KangasKahnFilms.

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Sign up now for your own FREE monthly subscription to “The Director’s Chair” filmmaking ezine and get: (1) Day One of my 201 page mutli-media Online film directing audio course, “The Art and Craft of the Director Audio Seminar” and (2) the first 24 pages (plus mp3 audio) of my 137 page “Script Breakdown and Film Scheduling Online Course For Independent Filmmakers.”

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“Video editing, like video shooting, has terminology all its own. Much of it is a product of the computer age. And while some terms are unique to current technology, others date back to the early days of film making.”

Read the rest of this article from Rismedia.

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Sign up now for your own FREE monthly subscription to “The Director’s Chair” filmmaking ezine and get: (1) Day One of my 201 page mutli-media Online film directing audio course, “The Art and Craft of the Director Audio Seminar” and (2) the first 24 pages (plus mp3 audio) of my 137 page “Script Breakdown and Film Scheduling Online Course For Independent Filmmakers.”

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“At the Telegraph, critic (and former professor of mine) Sukhdev Sandhu writes about “the sorry decline of American cinema” and comes up with a handful of cultural flashpoints for the future: “The new energy hubs are likely to be found in Mexico; in Romania; in Thailand… in Lagos… in Korea.”

While I don’t agree with his blanket bashing of our domestic film product, It’s true, at least, that world cinema has trend-hopped as exhaustively as the music world in terms of what’s hot in the past ten years. Here’s a tenuous list of seven countries that I saw as most having left their mark this decade in different ways.”

Read the rest of this article from The Independent Eye.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall