Monthly Archives: March 2013

This is not an Ad – It’s film funding.

Crowdsourcing is the thing now.  When you want to make a film  you take it first to  family, friends, supporters and potential audiences. By the process itself of revealing your intentions in public, you transform an abstract idea (a dream?) into a plan. By asking for contributions in exchange for (clever, fun) rewards, your film becomes a project, one that you are responsible for. Just by posting on Kickstarter or Indiegogo (among others) you become a storytelling entrepreneur, a making-of artist  in the web-circus.

What are you selling when you crowdsource? Your ideas, your talent, your role as an innovator in an innovator world

Your video. good=funds, bad=redo, rethink, remake.

 

What’s your OFS?

An OFS is an Online Film School.

Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Spy Kids) wrote a “10 day film school” book. Other authors have since followed suit with How-tos books about how film is simple and the learning goes quick. Yes! it doesn’t take long to get with the fundamentals of making movies and, like with music and languages, kids learn it faster.

They are even better teachers. Infact some of the best film know-how is spread by Youth Cinema makers who grow up with open access to cameras and the digital realm . They can write and shoot without having to deal with gatekeepers or need the approval of adults or, god forbid, censors. And they have begun to think cinematic, too.

When a young filmmaker makes a film, you get two birds with one peanut: fresh knowledge is added to the common know-how. Youth Cinema pays its (dark) stars with love, learning and growth more than money. A key reward for a young crew is the knowledge and experience of the making-of, of taking the dream home as a festival film. How was the movie made? How were problems solved? That is practical knowledge that rarely fits in an a paper book.

As the internet spreads knowledge, I searched for and found a lot of online film schools. They seem run by young makers, producers and media entrepreneurs. A pool of makers and experts who offer film ABC, substance, and application.

ABC = Alphabetization: of film-making. Our environment remixes images, representation and duplication form the core of our communication-based evolution. the ABC of it is cinematic storytelling.

Substance: Online film schools often include technical content, aesthetics, philosophy, math, history, geography. Film may be passepartout to understanding knowledge as it changes, in practice.

Applications: The How to? Movies are problem solving adventures, experimental tests of will, desire and expectation. To realise what you wanted to say and how you did it a key step of personal empowerment.

A post will soon list our favourite online film schools.

D.

“The Elevator” straps you in the HOT seat again.

Two years ago Riccardo NERI produced the film H.O.T.

H.O.T. is a powerful doc about global Human Organ Traffic. It screened at festivals the world round. It helps raise awareness about the forced extraction of body parts, and the resale and distribution system behind it. Yes I know, you’ve heard about it, but this has narrative and visual detail. Did you see it?

Now Riccardo and his Rome-based company Lupin Film went fictional about the same crazy matter.

ELEVATOR trailer

The link opens the sales-teaser of the new film “Elevator”, a feature directed by Massimo Coglitore and written by Mauro Graiani and Riccardo Irrera.

“Elevator” presses key global buttons about the business of human organ trading.
It will be coming soon to a stairway near you.

ELEVATOR trailer

Producing Shortcuts

Take a look at Cinecore, the new production resource that just looks like it could solve a whole bunch of issues. It’s available for free, and that’s great for exploring the concept and the tools. But – be careful – it quickly asks for monthly subscriptions. For those I suggest you wait until your next budgeted movie in the making.

Creating & viewing locations from cinecore on Vimeo.

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(part 2) Why is this blog called “Movies Without Cameras” ?

One of my favourite philosophy books is “Introduction to Metaphysics” by Henri Bergson, the “cinematic philosopher” who explored matter, memory and motion at the turn of centuries 19 and 20. Bergson saw links between the new art and science of cinema and almost everything around us. He made “Movies without cameras” inside his head.

A century-plus later, we make movies with smartphones, glasses and watches. We make images, that is, not always movies. What is a movie then? Or, as the film school jargon imposes, what is film?

Who are movies made for? Are they for audiences (yes) or for your the pleasure, or personal growth of the makers (also)?

This blog is called “Movies Without Cameras” because it is about thinking about movies and stories, but also about trying to get movies made in a simple and cheap way.

Is this blog for you? Well, this is who I am writing this blog for (the target)

those:

a) trying to say something with your voice as a film (but need an alternative approach?)
B) looking for a niche audience (that can become your crowd?)
C) interested in making movies (with new tech)
D) tired of movies as stars, money and celebrity (…)
E) studying Theory of film (but want to try making one, in Practice?)
F) with a film in post-production (and want feedback?)
G) under 25 years old (and looking for Youth Cinema funding)
H) who are writing scripts
I) looking for skills leading to a job in film & media (less is not more here)

DANIEL

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Why? is this blog called “Movies Without Cameras” (part 1)

A good movie makes you think and feel, and puts you in touch with your self. A movie that can achieve all this without using cameras is even more worth watching.

The first time I saw a movie actually made without cameras was in 2001 when I bumped into an an animation by Norman Mc Laren, the canadian filmmaker who made most of his films by painting and scratching directly on celluloid strips.

You can see some of his original films and process here.

This one won an Academy Award in 1952, and was considered violent.

Neighbours by Norman McLaren, National Film Board of Canada

When you have time, come back to see this feature documentary on McLaren’s process

Creative Process: Norman McLaren by Donald McWilliams

(to be cont’d.)