Category Archives: blog tank

REMEMBER THE GIFT TROJAN HORSE ?

I love “Fitzcarraldo” (by Werner Herzog, with Klaus Kinsky), a story about mad vision in the Amazon forest. And yet, the making-of film “Burden Of Dreams” (by Les Blanc) completes the movie organically, not only as a Blue-Ray added value. The same I can say about “Apocalypse Now” and its making-of film “Heart Of Darkness”.

Independent films can tell their making-of story as an organic making-of doc as well. The story of a movie starts with idea, and journeys thru development, Kickstarter / Indiegogo campaigns, etcetera.

The image that comes to mind is the Trojan Gift Horse, full of power within, and only in appearance a predictable offering.

Once inside the gates, the movie-horse can open and reveal hidden content.trojanhorse-gif

4 GOOD REASONS TO CHANGE A MOVIE TITLE

trojanhorse-gif

While I was blog-posting about an indie documentary which is still in the making, the filmmakers told me they had changed the title.

WHY CAN THAT HAPPEN?

1. You change a title because you can. When you make a truly independent film, you own it. You owe no lip-service to anyone, and no one owns your imagination, you can come up with your own title. MAke it free, make it unique, make it awesome. COMMENTS WELCOME: WHAT is YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE TITLE EVER?

2. A GOOD TITLE GETS YOU INTO FESTIVALS
From my experience organizing festivals, I know Good titles get noticed and watched first, before juries get tired, overwhelmed.
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3. ABC comes before RTS in the ALPHABET.
Use a title that will end up on top (or bottom) of a list, but not in the middle. Special characters are ben better #HashtagTitle comes before “A Good Title” Worth changing for.

4. IF YOUR TITLE INCLUDES A TRADEMARKED NAME or BRAND, better to change it now. TIP: more Pirate is to leave the original title, get the publicity-making reaction before the fine, then find an even better, legal title.

Russian American filmmakers Kirill Mikhanovsky made an indie feature film in Brazil entitled “Dreams of Fish” and – before going to the Cannes Festival – changed the name to “Ana”. No problem. “Ana” won the award for best young director.

NEXT POST: REMEMBER THE GIFT TROJAN HORSE

“Notes on A wire” birdsong by R.B. Smart (click “Post”)

This piece makes you both think and let go while you try to capture some big Why? and its Answer! in total wonder. Reminds me – in principle, not sound – of John Cage’s nation of “Chance Operations”, making art film music with found material.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=267029866807388

birdsong

UPLOAD YOUR VIDEO Doc Next Network wants YOU

Doc Next Network is calling on media makers, social activists and critical thinkers: take a stand and share your views on Radical Democracy for Europe on video!

How can we create an open and inclusive European society?

Submit your media works to our video challenge and win €2500! Deadline for entries is April 13.

Read up call

Here are some more reference and inspiration links.

YOUTH CINEMA
DOCMOB.NET
NUFFGLOBAL
NUFF.NO

“APPLAUD or DIE!!” Must see Award-Winning Short (10 min)

Contemporary film studies commonly use the feature film as the basic, common dramatic space and format. The three acts, the familiar setups and characters populate what film students examine the most. If you are learning how to write screenplays, you probably have read and reread “Chinatown” and “Ordinary People” and “Tootsie” ay nd “Casablanca” and other classics. These films of course are awesome and history and deserve attention, respect, awe. But they are not the only source out there and, in my POV, they can frankly be too much. If you are learning to swim, laps are more manageable than crossing the Channel. If you are a beginner at Chess, you can learn how to “castle” from a friend, without having to study a whole Fischer-Spassky match.

This new category in the “Movies Without Cameras” Blog suggests different award-winning short films to watch and perhaps explore. Shorts can have alternative structures, fewer characters and streamlined scenes. What better gym for short-film makers to flex their imaginary muscles in?

The first short I offer for thought is called “Applaud or Die” by and with Benson Simmonds as a desperate man in an alley playing for his life. Not recent, but a timeless CLASSIC.

Release the Captured Image

danny photo

published in the collective book: MAGIC MOMENTS
by Broby Grafiska – Film I Värmland, 2014
ISBN 978-91-981533-0-9

I struggled as a kid with the systematic murder of butterflies in the name of the study and preservation of their magical, ephemeral beauty. Maybe an idea is like a butterfly that we find alive in flight, perfect as is. We humans are curious creatures, we live for ideas, we want to feed on rapture and wonder. We are driven to observe, hold, capture, even devour an idea. It’s a process we do unconsciously, like breathing, I suspect.But then, as in any story, once we feel an idea… “what happens next?”

For me an idea is like lighting a match in the dark, IT makes all the difference. IT reveals a little more. IT creates shadows and in betweens. Before I “get IT” or explain IT or identify IT, I can recognise one feeling: an idea can transform the unfamiliar into a cell of awareness without having a name or a purpose yet. Just a bolt of energy that reshuffles what we knew before, like a new kid on the block has the power to change an entire neighborhood.
For the most part, my ideas remain private, unexplained. Instinct is wordless, right? Why explain ideas to yourself? Sequences of verbal translation are a social tool of communication. My guess is when you feel an idea, you do what a plant does thru photosynthesis, changing light into nutriment. Perhaps our ideas are inputs, breaths to exhale later in new form. In between the in and out, is the mysterious, fascinating creative adventure of “process”, the middle of things, the Now. The East sits on the path of “what’s happening now” in a contemplative, deeper sense. The West keeps trucking’ on the highway of what happens next: desire, competition and material accomplishment. Action is inevitably a story structure: beginning, end, middle. The middle comes last because, a middle is a middle only if it is followed by an end.

Personally, I am interested in one specific kind of idea: the cinematic idea. A cinematic idea moves and changes thru time. It possesses- from its beginning – the energy and DNA of a film, and nothing else. A cinematic idea carries visual power and storytelling potential, emotional dynamics. A cinematic idea wants to be a film, not a statue, a painting, or a building. Trying to freeze and label a cinematic idea to me is like sticking a pin into that butterfly, to be able to place it – dead forever – under a magnifying glass. But I am no scientist or biologist, I am interested in stories ion motion, movies, personal films across genres and media. The movies I am most interested in are not the ones playing on Netflix, but those that have not been made yet. I started working with youth cinema for this reason: young and amateur creatives can fly if you just let them without dissecting them with how-tos and to-dos. One thing is fly, and another is to label, report and study.
James Joyce once said that his final opus “Finnegan’s Wake” – whose verbal flux and storytelling deconstruction were so unprecedented as to frustrate and fascinate readers for ever – said his inspiration for the weaving structure of the book came – in part – from the new art of cinema. [Read the “Introduction to Metaphysics” by Henri Bergson, there is a cinematic idea]

Ideas, in fluid narrative process, can become “stream of consciousness”, the art of flow. Many writers wait for flow to flood their pages with unstoppable, final sentences. Good ideas seem to shine with a promise: there will be “less pain” when a script “writes itself”. Bbut in story development good ideas are necessary but not sufficient. A writer can’t just admire a new magic moment of insight, s/he must dance with IT.

A magic moment “pops up” and we look at it, then we think we must save it, hold on to it, never let it go. How do we do that? Some scribble or tap notes. Some “take pictures” to stake a placeholder claim on the world. We all seem to want to trap, even arrest our ides as images and words, and then imprison them in our pocket digital devices. We seem to give so much value to our “captured images” and their potential value as idea reminders. But I know there is a way to do the reverse, to release the source of an idea back into the wild, to set IT free. I call it the Cinemahead process.

Carrying captured images and sounds can fill the hard-drive space in our camera and brain. This cuts down our play-space and playing with ideas (the process, the now) is the most juicy part of the game. So I try and leave a new idea exactly where I found it. Instead of capturing a shot of a tree as a memory, I play with it, then I put it back: I leave it there. Next time you do, look at how “your” idea returns where you found it. rock-n-roll! The next time, your the idea will be waiting for you there, exactly where you left it. Nobody will steal your ideas in the open. Trusting an idea into the common space can be not sonly exhilaratingly free, but even contagious. Imagine others as they may run into your ideas and you into theirs. Imagine a creative commons of shared ideas right around us, everywhere. So much common ground, so much potential for cross-pollination and mutual inspiration. Personally that in itself feels like an idea, so – like an unknown butterfly – I will leave it here and let it go. See what happens to it, now and next. The best part of a magic moment is breathe it in, and let it be.

[daniel alegi]

STARTUP your STORY – new seminar series

StartupurstoryIn the past, Cinemahead has created doc and animation films for the the city of Karlstad.

StartUp your Story is our new seminar + workshop series on cinematic story design, story different for writers and non.

We open Friday Feb 21st in Karlstad, Sweden at the modern Karlstad CCC Conference center.
The series will continue in different locations for 2014 with further events and dates TBA.

Each event is divided in two sets/halfs. The first half is a seminar which will be entirely free for students with ID. The second half will be a hands-on workshop on scripts, story lines, idea development and scene doctoring.

START UP YOUR STORY opens at 9:00 AM and ends at 16:00, with a 1 hour lunch break @12:00.

Please note that online registration is required for admission. You can sign up for the seminar in this link. No one can enter after 10:00. Contact us if you are a student to joon for free.

The seminar is based on our freeebook “Start-Up Your Story” that you can download here.

photo.

questions?
Contact@cinemahead.com

Immersions in Hybrid Cinematic Spaces

The viewing of powerful cinematics offers wild subjective rewards. Was your life ever changed by a movie full immersion? They never entirely disappear, like splinter-layers of new coral.

When a film surrounds you, a series of emotional squeezes emerge. Why?

A) Films compress time, catalyze and accelerate the viewer’s process of lucid experience. so many reactions and choice over-run our predictable logical defenses.

B) We realize that something is happening and we have to crunch through it, moral positioning and all. Experience can be mediated or un-mediated, prepared or unprepared, outward-in and blind-sided. By surprising us with original content, films forces our human machinery to find ways in the moment to respond.

C) With all senses in and no way out, the big-screen immersion remixes our synapses. We react to color while we hunt for meaning and dodge narrative bullets. When we don’t know what’s about to happen, we feel vulnerable, exposed. Maybe that’s why audiences watch trails and read plots before-hand. Mystery films were popular for a moment.

We can emerge from the darkness transform by new increments in awareness. Specific abstract or narrative content served as a vehicle in adding previously unknown experience to the palette of our consciousness. Yes, there are many feelings we don’t know yet, like for a painter who uses Yellow there are 51 shades of yellow. Each cinematic experience evolves into a particle of active memory, a light pinch of sand onto the sand-castle of our personal architecture.