This is a special guest post by visiting filmmaker and blogger Laura Zinger.* To read more about her trip to the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival and impressions of Canada and Newfoundland, visit her blog 20kfilms.com
for the complete blog posts.
After breakfast, I stopped by the film office—the festival women were hard at work managing the completely amazing festival! Anita, the director, told me that she put together the kind of festival she would like to attend. So far it has been an incredible experience with well done and RELEVANT workshops. The festival crew is amazingly helpful, kind, and they have hospitality coming out of their ears. Thank you, Anita!
Today’s workshop was Roberta Munroe’s, The Best Short Film Workshop Ever. It started out with introductions—the most interesting of which was a woman from the provincial government in Newfoundland who was in charge of the culture fund and who had come to find out how to better fund filmmakers! Oh, I wish I was Canadian! I had this feeling several times during the week as I learned more about how much Canada supports its artists and filmmakers with real funding. (Christine Vachon actually talked about how Canada subsidizes its film industry during her talk the next day.)
It was also interesting how seriously and respectfully the women at the workshop took themselves as filmmakers. Everyone called themselves filmmakers rather than “aspiring” filmmakers. I think in America, women do not consider themselves filmmakers unless they make a film that is hugely successful in a commercial sense. In Canada, it seems like films are made for the sake of making film, not money, which is incredible to me. Every movie I want to make, I think about how I can get it to make money so that I can continue to make films, but in Canada, enough funding exists to not have to worry about this.
Back to the workshop. The fact that Roberta Munroe has a blog, titled “what drives me to drink” where she has a photograph of herself in an afro wig holding a fake gun while smiling at the camera is a perfect example of the kind of person Roberta is: fun, but also no-nonsense in a way that makes you actually listen to her thoughts and opinions on short filmmaking. Roberta also never comes off as condescending, which is great for anyone feeling insecure about their knowledge or experience.
I have never made a short film, but Roberta focused her workshop on issues that relate to all filmmaking—whether feature narrative or documentary. Without giving too much away, here are some tidbits I want to share.
1) Always read beyond the clichéd story!
2) Be economical with your story.
3) Reveal yourself completely at the beginning.
4) Create a look book for your short.
5) EVERYONE needs a Producer. (I really agreed with this point. I currently produce everything I direct, and not only am I losing time that should be spent on my documentaries, but I’m suffering creatively from the stress of managing the productions. I got booed at the workshop for sharing my thoughts on this, and referring to producers as managers, which I do admit came off wrong. I didn’t mean that Producers cannot be creative too, but I usually relegate the creativity for a film to the director, and the Producer, at least to me, is the person who first and foremost makes sure production runs smoothly, while offering some creative input on the side. They are managers in my mind, but still extremely necessary and important. Sorry workshop people who booed me. I did not mean that you were not important! Although shocking, it was a nice boo, because they were, after all, lovely, nice Canadians!)
6) Don’t make period pieces for a short.
7) What do your characters absolutely have to say?
8 ) Foundation of a short film is a good script.
9) Filmmakers have to be entrepreneurs too. (This sucks but is so true. When the hell do we just get to be filmmakers again?)
10) Short Film Festivals to enter: Palm Springs, Toronto International, Tokyo short shorts. Also, check out the following for some film festivals that charge no submission fees: Short Film Central and Short Film Depot.
11) Paul Zadie’s free production forms
Roberta showed two great short films during the workshop—Two Cars, One Night, and Dani and Alice. I would share her thoughts with you, but really you should just get it straight from her by taking her workshop or reading her book.
My final thoughts on short films:
1) For some reason, I think that short films are more purely emotional than longer features. Maybe it’s because they’re so limited in time that the filmmaker has to jump to an emotional level right away in order to make a connection with the audience?
2) The purpose of short films is to really force you to tell a story visually. There’s no mucking around. They start, you have a minute or two to get to the middle of your story and then another few minutes before you end it and somewhere along the way, you have to introduce characters and a plotline and make people care enough about both to stick around for the ending.
I was really impressed with Roberta’s Munroe’s workshop, and I highly recommend it even if you are only interested in features. Visit Roberta’s website to learn more about her and where she’s teaching next, or to order her amazing book. She is an incredible resource for the independent filmmaking community.
Read all of Laura Zinger’s blog posts on The St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival 2010. They’re so good, it’s almost like being there:
- SJIWFF10 Day 1: Digital Dames
- SJIWFF10 Day 2: Roberta Munroe
- SJIWFF10 Day 3: My Film Proceed and Be Bold Screens at the Festival!
- SJIWFF10 Day 4: Christine Vachon and Pitch This with Jan Miller
- SJIWFF10 Day 5: Going Home
Don’t miss this othe great article on the festival. Joy Loewen of NSI Drama Prize Loves the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival
*Laura Zinger is the Founder of Chicago Production Company 20K Films. She currently teaches introductory courses in video production and editing in the Motion Picture/Television Department at the College of DuPage. In 2008, Laura went all in and independently produced and directed the feature-length documentary Proceed and Be Bold!, which has screened internationally in Italy, Germany, Austria, England and Canada. The documentary also screened as an official selection in six American film festivals, including the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival and the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival in Newfoundland Canada.
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