Tag Archives: cinema

talkin’ INTERSTELLAR Blues

TED interstellar blogpost

TEDed

“Interstellar” By Chris Nolan has sparked admiration and quality criticism (New Yorker)  Few other high-concept films in recent years have had this kind of echo, as if it were “2001 Space Odyssey” all over again.

TED-ed posted a number of blog posts and visuals about the science in the film.

The conversation continues here Cinemahead Forum

Branding smart w/ fresh squeeze: an immunity booster?

photo

Sweden is famous for its quality of life, democracy and gender equality – but not necessarily for humor (certainly not during the week).

So you can image my surprise when yesterday, just back from travel, I found this funny looking juice with a label the likes of which I’d never seen before.

Here was an example of branding with infotainment!

Recycling bits of Berlusconi news is in itself not news. The man has used gaffes and bad jokes as a way to boost his humanity and friendliness. Anyone remember the sad/mad Holocaust joke he cracked at a EU parliament session.

But now, the Man has lost his parliamentary immunity after been sentenced for fraud. Why put this on the juice pack? It’s innovative branding, for sure.

What do you think?

Any other examples of something similar?

New road doc by Alberto Martin & Daniele Manca welcomes feedback.

Hello everybody, please watch the trailer of this upcoming low budget documentary and give feedback to the makers.

[ http://highmobilitygeneration.com/ ]

A ROADTRIP THROUGHOUT EUROPE “We went on a 5000 kilometer-long road trip throughout Europe. We travelled from Schengen, Luxembourg, the birthplace of a borderless Europe, all the way to Copenhagen, which will be in 2025 the first zero emissions world capital. Denmark on 2012 has also taken the top spot on the United Nation’s first ever World Happiness Report. So we travelled from the birthplace of a borderless Europe to a place where you can already see and experience the future firsthand. ”

TO PORTRAY A GENERATION “We wanted to interview young people who have grown up in a Europe without borders: those who live, study, work, think and travel around in a high-mobility society, both digitally-connected and multicultural… in other words, those who are contributing today in building the society of tomorrow. So we went about casting in an unusual way: We posted an abstract for the project on the social network “Couchsurfing,” and whoever liked the idea then invited us to “surf” his or her couch and conduct interviews. ”

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

Need a film crew?

avatar, film crew network post

FCN – Film Crew Network – is, in its own words “a Network that puts quality before quantity keeping things up close and personal to support each member through their developments. It doesn’t matter where you are in your career our crew will welcome and help you out since we we all started somewhere and sometimes all we needed was some inspiration and support to keep us buzzing and on track. On FCN you will be able to meet some very cool individuals that have worked on gigs we all dream of, make some valuable connections, share and learn from some of the best in the industry.”

SOME FCN FEATURES:
JOB post and respond
PROJECTS create & invite crew onto your projects
NETWORK develop your specialist list of contacts
ALBUMS create and develop unlimited
ADVERTISE yourself or your business
SHOWREEL & video upload and share
GROUP & EVENT creation and participation
UNRESTRICTED contact on the Network

check out the FCN site!
CINEMAHEAD

Make money with your wild movie? (no, seriously) Then give it away…

The Digital Recession and the future of video

reposted from http://medium.com/advice-to-graduates/c84d7c799c83?goback=.gde_4292858_member_267996778#%21

twitter: @jimmycthatsme
email: jimmycthatsme@mac.com

In 2011, a speaker at a reputable film festival said to an audience of filmmakers, “the best part about making movies today is that anyone can make movies, and the worst part is also that anyone can make movies”. I turned to inspect the audience because I wondered, as I do still, to whom he was speaking? How could it ever be good for artisans that everyone can make art? What realtor or travel agent is thrilled by new advancements in global connectivity and the democratization of their work? We are all the victims of an imploding digital revolution and although many seem confused about what this means for our future and the pursuit of film as a career, I’d like to be honest about my experiences in the economics of art, where we seem to be heading, and how we might survive the fallout.

Our first short film was seen by over a million people in 140 counties. We recently completed our first feature, screened it at notable film festivals, were approached by distributors, made the front pages of highly trafficked news and video sharing sites, and we are considered successful by many of our peers. In any other industry similar signs might indicate success, but we still have yet to make a dollar from our artwork. Our degrees have cost us 90 thousands dollars a piece, and we have spent the last 4 years in debt for our decision to pursue this craft. Can you imagine if I told you that this was our experience in becoming carpenters? And yet, we are surrounded by a culture that relentlessly encourages a pursuit of the Arts.

The truth is that every year millions of students are graduating off of a cliff, looking for jobs that do not exist, and relying upon paychecks that are becoming increasingly rare. Members of the EU met last week to discuss Europe’s youth unemployment epidemic, what to do with this “lost generation”, and how to fix it.

But there is no fixing it, and here is why:

THE TYPISTS

The invention of the typewriter revolutionized the written word. Schools were founded to teach typing, jobs became plentiful, and an industry was created. People’s livelihoods were founded upon operating these machines and then the American Typewriter was released and it became cheap and easy to type and the entire industry, many years after it’s creation, imploded. Although typing has never been more popular, can you imagine paying someone to type for you? Having devoted their lives to this job, what should the typists do now? You can be certain that people are asking themselves these very questions with respect to the digital revolution, their future livelihoods were based upon technologies that are now or are soon to be outdated, and they worry that they are as well. The modern typewriters are among us, they are digital photo and video cameras, digital music, video, and photo editing software, as well as all other modern technology that makes something we used to pay people for, easier and more accessible, or in other words, ‘less work’. Video production, like typing, has the same future.

This happens naturally. Moore’s law is the mathematic observation that our technological capabilities double roughly every 18 months, which means that we can always expect exponential advancements in industries until nearly all jobs are replaced by technology. In the film industry, with cameras becoming cheaper and easier to use, we can expect that video will only become more democratized until every person in every country is able to participate, adding to the already staggering 24 hours of footage that is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Although this is very promising for the diversity of art on this planet, and is no doubt a global good, it is not promising for anyone that expects to feed their children through a career in film. Jobs are disappearing because the gap between the professional and the average consumer is getting smaller, faster, every day.

Many believe that our governments are in charge of creating jobs, as if that’s their job, or as if they have influence over technological advancements that naturally delete them. As of 2013, the Golden Gate Bridge has no tollbooth operators, they were replaced by a digital camera and online payment system. There is less traffic, shorter commutes, and less tollbooth operators to breathe our exhaust all day. Should our government rehire these people? Should they also hire workers to fan the exhaust out of the tollbooths? It would certainly create more jobs, but the truth is that that job is now unnecessary, and so are the workers, and so will we be.
[…]

Why would anyone pay for something that will be online tomorrow for free?”

THE PROBLEM WITH PIRACY

The amount of digital piracy in a country is correlated to the average internet speed. It would be very time consuming to download Avatar on a dial-up modem, so many in El Salvador will have to buy a hard copy, but Americans often watch movies online for free simply by googling the movie’s title followed by the word “streaming”. As if this isn’t already easy enough, advancements in internet speeds will only make watching movies for free easier, or in my opinion, ubiquitous.

In 2010, a filmmaker friend of mine raised 125,000 dollars from family and friends for a feature film. He submitted it to festivals, received glowing reviews from hundreds of media outlets including Indiewire and Variety, and premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival. A reliable distributor bought the film, promising a small theatrical release and contractually guaranteed revenue from future sales. Again, this sounds a great deal like success and many filmmakers dream of being in this position; a Hollywood deal, signs of interest, and the potential for financial return and future projects. Months later however, the distributor released the film for sale on iTunes and within days the movie was popping up on free streaming websites like putlocker.com. Within 1 month the film had countless views and it still lives illegally online for free. Many filmmakers suffer this fate, unable to recoup their investment because of the nature of the internet. This is not solely a failure in business, this is a failure to understand the value of art in the digital age. If all that it takes to separate a filmmaker from revenue is one person uploading a copy of their movie to the internet then the future of film is only growing more unpromising.

Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Steven Soderbergh have recently spoken at engagements about the terrible state of the film industry, (we can only wonder who guards their piles of money when they climb down from them to speak) and yet none of these successful businessmen enlightened the world to the obvious fact: that it is not the film industry that is collapsing, but the value of video, that overwhelming supply has devalued it as a whole, that cameras in every phone will only further push it off the cliff, that people are becoming less likely to pay for moving images in a rectangle, and that there is no stopping it.

How should we cope with this future?

THE DREAMER’S DISEASE

Many of our peers seem to have rifts in their thinking about the digital revolution, that our future is uncertain, but that considering the negatives might distract from the steadfast pursuit of our work and thus lessen our chances of success. Does considering the reality of our own deaths prevent us from pursuing our lives or living them to the fullest? Of course not, so let’s stop deceiving ourselves that the death of the industry is not a real problem that deserves real answers.

Here is one:

There are many new ways to make money as an independent artist, but it is unlikely that we will make it from our future audiences. In the last year, new ways to approach releasing videos online have made it easier for artists to screen their work for free and still receive adequate funding. The show South Park has been pirated and streamed illegally online for years. South Park did not ignore this, they recognized the problem, created their own streaming site, and partnered with companies like Jack In The Box to stream in HD for free, provided that commercials played throughout the episodes. They weakened the blow of the pirates, made sure that their fans had incentive to visit their site, and all it took was speaking with outside parties for financing. Why can’t we do this?
[…]

THE FUTURE

Should schools still charge so much for things that you can learn on youtube for free? Will anyone be able to in 20 years? When the time comes for my generation to send their children to college, what will they think about the value of an arts education? How can we construct the landscape of the internet to better guarantee opportunities for artists? The current atmosphere is bound to negatively effect future generations, and we owe it to them to fix these problems now.

It would seem that the answers are simple, unique media encryption needs to be implemented on iTunes and Youtube so artists can hold their thieves accountable, Netflix needs to allow users to submit films instead of just distributors, movie theaters need to allow the moviegoers to choose what is playing (not the corporations), and the Academy Awards need to allow for the consideration of films that premiere online. These changes seem obvious, but they can only be made from the top.

If we do nothing and continue to gamble our time and money while dreaming of a viable future, we will only lessen our likelihoods of success and become even larger victims of these pyramid schemes. We cannot allow the industrialization of art to make so much from us when they contribute so little. It is time to rebel, to release films for free and to seek our own monetization. We have arrived at the Gold Rush to find the mines emptied, now is the time to circle the wagons and to fight for it.

twitter: @jimmycthatsme
email: jimmycthatsme@mac.com

the director spirit

10 years ago an ad made a bold statement: EVERYONE IS A DIRECTOR.

Making of Sony Two Worlds from Spy Films on Vimeo.

In the 1960’s this statement would have been ludicrous. Directors were grand masters of a young art-form, explorers of the mystery of movement and the power of story. Directors, at least in Eruope, were an intellectual avant-garde at the edge of all the arts, carrying the torch of inspiration, talent, individuality, genius.

Cinema directors of that time were like shamans, a living conduit between universal questions and small human stories told in frame-by-frame detail. Films often reflected experiences that the mostly grown-up audiences could recognize and identify with.

In a film by Fellini or Kurosawa or Antonioni one could expect to get lost in magical worlds that other arts could not yet access. The master directors blended material, physical and spiritual dimensions in personal, unique manifestos. No other art-form could move so dynamically: the monopoly on moving images, virtual travel, urban escapism and human darkness and dream belonged to the cinema.

Directors held the power to unleash Freudian/Junghian shadow dark sides. The new release by Kurosawa or De Sica was awaited (in almost every country except the United States) with fervor, more than a Lady Gaga show today. Cinema audiences were mostly still unspoiled by a world of inflated, constant, omnipresent imagery and constant swift manipulation and pressure to buy, not think or feel.

is making a movie like playing in the band?

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My favourite filmmakers use the same crew for every film. Do yours?

For example, I am Thinking of John Cassavetes, actor -director who shot many of his films inside his own studio-house. He cast his wife Gena Rowlands and his best fiends in every picture.

Each new movie was a challenge to a familiar formation of artists. The scripts went directly to the actors, not to outside casting agents or on-shot producers. The movies were not easy to make and the edits ignored audience tastes. The film “Husbands” was cut long and much less of a comedy than the studio insisted on, costing Cassavetes and his “band” pretty pennies, but resulting in a one-of-a-kind film. (the plot? three friends go to a hotel in London after the funeral of their best friend in the U.S.)

But like a band that plays every new song different, John Cassavetes played film different. He changed the rules of a game that has today changed even more.

Especially if you are making short films, your filmmaking is already like playing in a band. An adventure with friends.

The name of the awesome band in the clip is VIDAR. Worth keeping an eye on.