This is a special guest post by visiting filmmaker and blogger Laura Zinger.* To read more about her trip to the 2010 St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival and impressions of Canada and Newfoundland, visit her blog 20kfilms.com for the complete blog posts.
This was a long day. I attended the Conversation with Christine and Pitch This! with Jan Miller (our own Chair!) where I was told that I need to breathe and not talk too fast. I don’t think that anyone who knows me personally would be surprised by this. I also attended the New Distribution: Dissemination in a Digital World, which was more or less a workshop on how to get your films distributed online.
The day started out fantastic, with amazing croissants (Phillip was back!) with Amos and Marnie—the letterpress printer who invited Amos out to Newfoundland in the first place. One of the best things about the trip to Newfoundland was getting to talk to Marnie about the differences between Canada and America, which boiled down to national health care and public funding for the arts. (Ooooo Canada, I will be back, I promise!)
I barely had time between workshops to eat, and subsisted on cookies for most of the day, but since I got to listen to Christine Vachon (Producer of 50+ independent films, interviewed by Noreen Golfman, founder of SJIWFF and Board chair, I was happy. Noreen was an excellent interviewer too.
The greatest thing about Christine Vachon, and I feel capable of making this statement because I’ve read her book, and have now listened to her talk at the film festival, is that she is honest. I’ll bet brutally honest the more you know her, but I appreciate that kind of no-frills honesty.
For example, when she and Killer Films (her company) try to decide if a director is worth working with, she has a litmus test that they must pass: the director must have had a long-term relationship with another living thing (whether it be a person, plant or animal). Apparently, this litmus test has prevented Christine and Killer Films from working with impossible people.
I also liked some of her other honest, no-frills remarks:
1) Independent film is one that is singular in vision and cannot be made any other way. (Meaning its vision is so unique, that only an independent, someone outside of the studio system, would attempt to make it.)
2) The director must be able to articulate their vision. Indecisive directors are hard to work with. Killer Film’s expression: “My indecision is final.”
3) Filmmaking is a commercial art. It is a very expensive form of self-expression. (Which is why most filmmakers are from the middle and upper classes. Who else can afford to be an unpaid intern for long periods of time?)
4) Film is subsidized in other countries to help keep their culture alive. (This also helps keep filmmakers alive, and I wish that America would subsidize at least some films, so that they can be made for the sake of art, not money.)
5) The market is going towards TV drama, not theatrical. It’s too expensive. (Damn. That’s all I have to say.)
6) DVD Market is evaporating. It’s really hard to pre-sell films without an international director and international stars.
7) The new funding strategy is to get micro-equity investors to put in a couple hundred thousand per movie instead of a couple million.
8 ) It’s hard to make films with female protagonists. (Damn. Damn. Damn. Why?)
9) At every stage of a film’s process, they show the film to an audience. (I understand this, but I asked Christine at her interview if she showed Kids to an audience, and she said yes, but it wasn’t like how they show it to an audience today. Is it really necessary to show a film to an audience? I know it’s important to show it to people before you release it, but to get a random audience to view it and to change it based on what these random people think kind of gets me down. Here again is the battle between money and art.)
10) Christine said that she is of two minds about attending film school. Christine: Film school is a meaningless exercise. It’s easy to make films yourself. Making films in film school is nothing like making film in the real world. The only thing that film school does is expose you to film culture.
11) And finally Christine’s theory on why there are so few female directors: “They want to have kids. It’s just the world we live in.” (This is sad. It’s also very true. Christine used the woman who directed, I Shot Andy Warhol as an example. She made the film, won a bunch of awards, then took 7 years off to have children, and is now having difficulty making another film because she was out of the industry for so long.
Christine also shared what she looks for in a script:
1) Fresh voice
2) Universality of story
3) Can she sell it?
4) Is the story timely?
5) Is the key performance good?
6) Does the director pass the “any living thing” test?
In closing, Christine has two books out that I think anyone who wants to be involved at any level in independent film should read:
Oh, and one last thing. Apparently Christine was at some event where she saw infamous independent filmmaker, John Waters and asked him what he thought of Social Media Networking, and he told her, “I don’t do that Face Page!”
After Christine’s interview, I headed over to a pub for a quick lunch with some other filmmakers, one of which was 26-year old, Ashley McKenzie, who made the fantastic short, Rhonda’s Party. I was really impressed with her film. She doesn’t have a trailer on her site, but if you email her, I’m sure she’ll sell you a copy for a fair price.
Most things are fried when eating out in St. John’s, although they did have a fair share of salads on every menu. I sadly never tried the fish and chips. I am a dear friend of the vegetable, and stuck mainly to those. One of the best restaurants in St. John’s was Sprout—a vegetarian restaurant where I had the best avocado brie sandwich ever and a banana chocolate chip walnut muffin. Amos tried to convince them to open up shop in Gordo before we left. One of the waiters is still mulling it over.
Ashley told me that she was headed to Pitch This! which was taught by Jan Miller. The entire workshop was on how to properly communicate and pitch project ideas to investors.
I originally wasn’t planning on going to this workshop, but my new filmmaker friend Ashley was going, and I had met Jan the night before—an incredibly interesting person, so I thought, why not? I’m so glad that I went. I really thought that pitching was an easy thing to do, but as clichéd as this sounds, it is an art form, and I wasn’t even familiar with any of the brushes!
I knew that clear communication was key to pitching, and I knew what a logline, cutline and synopsis were, but I did not realize how vital all three were to being able to clearly communicate your pitch. I didn’t realize that there was such a thing as a one-sheet, which is basically a front and back page with the above mentioned items, as well as some slick graphics.
Thankfully, Jan asked two people to pitch their ideas to workshop, and I asked to be one of them, because I am clearly terrible at pitching. I talk too fast, I don’t breathe, and I get off topic too easily and too much. Jan was very kind in her criticism, and did say that she liked my dedication to my idea, which I will take and run with.
Really though, Jan made two major points that sum up the art of pitching:
1) Pitching is a conversation. You need to connect to and know your audience.
2) Pitching is part storytelling and part sales pitch.
Jan really stressed that before you pitch, you need to research whomever you are pitching too. This should be common sense, but few people do it.
The workshop after Jan’s was called New Distribution: Dissemination in a Digital World—a workshop on how to get your films distributed online. This was led by Kendra Anderson of Cinetic Rights Management. I walked into this workshop 30 minutes late because Jan’s ran late. By the time I got there, Kendra was halfway through her power point presentation, and from what I could gather, Cinetec runs a site called FilmBuff that helps filmmakers distribute online. I actually just looked at the site and saw a film that was made by friends of someone I interviewed in my documentary. The film is called Make Out With Violence. I’m not sure what their deal is with filmmakers, if they charge a percentage of their total online sales or what, but they help encode the film and get it to online marketplaces like iTunes and other VOD options.
As soon as this workshop was over, I headed over to a party that NIFCO, the Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers Co-Operative, was having. Don’t let the words, “independent” or “co-operative” fool you. NIFCO was probably the most amazing thing I saw in St. John’s (Signal Hill was a serious contender.)
NIFCO is a fully functioning post-production facility with Final Cut Pro and Avid Editing suites, a broadcast television center, and a full sound board. The whole point of NIFCO is to serve the independent filmmaking community in Newfoundland. Chicago has Chicago Filmmakers, which is the closest comparison I can make, but still, Chicago Filmmakers struggles with funding and resources, and NIFCO has such incredible funding. Why oh why can’t there be American public funding sources that are more supportive of independent film?
I took a few hours off after the NIFCO party to reflect and relax. I was trying hard to figure out how to fundraise for the next three documentaries I’m producing and directing. You can really only borrow money from your friends and family once. After thinking for awhile, I joined the rest of the festival folks at the Ship Pub where Rita Chiarelli, a Canadian Blues Singer, was playing a set. I unfortunately missed Rita’s documentary that night called Music from the Big House, about Rita going to Lousiana, the birthplace of the blues, and discovering Angola Prison, where she decided to sing her blues for the prisoners. I really wish I had gotten a chance to see this. I got to ride to the airport with Rita the next day (The amazing, festival volunteer, Barb O’Keefe, drove us back to the airport) and she was an incredibly kind and down to earth person.
Tomorrow, I’m going home.
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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