Walk down any city street in NYC, Chicago, LA and you’ll see flyers, stickers and banners advertising the next show of some unnamed band. You go to a bar or a club and there’s a band playing, they’re good. You pick up a record and start following them. The same scene exists for painters, writers, and sculptors.

What about filmmakers?

For instance, how record labels pick up bands. Rarely is it the new band out of nowhere. It’s typically a band that’s slowly over the years built up a steady and strong following, growing their fan-base with each new record. They write their songs, record them, book gigs, play shows, sell records and merch and people get to hear about them.

But for every 1 band on a label there’s 100 bands making money doing what they love.

If there’s one thing I say way too often it’s that it does you no good to make a film and have nobody watch it. I did some stints in the music scene so I end up approaching my filmmaking like an indie band: write film (“write” being loose in doc world), make film, set up a booking or “screening”. Sometimes there is no screening- it’s just online or it’s for a very select audience I know will enjoy it.

It works, each film is a success and with each new person watching, my audience is slowly being built. But unlike the stereotypical filmmaker who shoots for the big budget, career-making movie and is then let down because it flops, I’m shooting to make good films. 5, 10, 45, 90 minutes. Whatever.

And you should do the same.

Read this article from the New York Times and then ask yourself, how hard is it to call a few small theatres, pubs, libraries, art museums and have a film screening of my last 10 minute short?

Go indie style and perhaps, someone will come to you and say you’re worth the investment because you know how to get it done and make it happen- like a good indie band.

Tags: discussion, distribution, inspiration

Note: I write graphically visual content in this post and some may be potentially offensive and hard to read.

I feel in a lot ways I need to say something about this. You may not agree with but I hope it at least sparks some thought.

What bothers me more than anything and also compels me to continue to make good content is people and organizations with power and ability are using it to make society and culture worse. The SAW series is one of those products. Is it highly profitable? I’m sure it is- there’s nothing like immersing yourself in fantasy. It can be video games, porn, or death. In this case the latter. But that doesn’t make it smart. And it really disgusts me.

I want to look at two stories. One really happened and the other is from the series.

I read a non-fiction book about a guy who served in Vietnam and what he dealt with and came across. One particular story that stuck with me was when the Viet Cong came through a village. They raped and killed them. But one particular woman, who was pregnant, was raped, then her baby ripped out, then the men urinated in the empty cavity…and then she died.

In SAW, a woman is suspended in the air by each limb drawn taught. Two hooks are in her chest. At the end of the scene those hooks…in slow motion, rip her ribcage from her body and she’s left there to die dripping and bleeding.

One is historical fact. A reason we go to war and fight for people who are victims of such horrendous acts. But we’re okay as a society with the movie because it’s not real. But does it actually contribute anything worthwhile to society?

I argue NO! It does not. It does not celebrate humanity, goodwill, or good thinking towards our fellow man. Just think, the filmmakers who are writing it are figuring out every way possible the rip apart, humiliate and destroy a human- both in thinking and logic as well as physical. And not just destroy, but desecration of who we are as people. That kind of thinking simply isn’t healthy. Serial killers in our day have thought that way and acted on it. But it doesn’t just stop there, we’ll pay money to watch and be entertained by it- willingly.

Psychologically, movies like this reduce what makes us human to mere amusement; a series of inter-related physiological parts that when removed from one another leave a big mess that’s fun to watch…especially in 3D.

If that’s the case, then it shouldn’t bother you when you hear about what the Nazi’s did or what happened in Rwanda, and Vietnam. It’s duplicitous to argue that it’s okay to contribute this content to society willingly but condemn the same or lesser evils that happen around us.

Tags: culture, discussion, film, philosophy, SAW

Something I’ve been mulling over for the last few months is the best delivery model/method etc., for making my movies, films, productions, documentaries, clips etc. easily aquired by the mobile web user. I currently have more ways to deliver a video on the web than I can count. But what I don’t have is a really slick interface that allows me to post all my vids and provide the user with a variety of ways to download them in the appropriate format; from full HD QT vid, a BRD file if they wanted to, .M4V files for the PS3 users, and little H.264 files for the phone people. Whatever…I want to be able to provide it.

To my knowledge, no current online video host provider has this feature. YouTube formats videos for proper viewing on mobile media, but not to download. I want to freely give my stuff away. Share it, use it, talk about it.

I’m not a programmer at all. I have the full sweet of Adobe apps so perhaps a dabble in Flash here or Adobe Air there. But it’ll just make my head swim. I’d like to provide an interface that I’d host on my own site that would provide all the necessary information on a film/short etc., and all the links to share, download, and love on. A sweet little app I can do my editing of content locally, then update automatically with the web app would be sweet.

I don’t have any solutions yet, but I’m working on it. Do you?

Tags: discussion, tech, tools, video, web