The Film Festival Experience

I’m heading down to the San Diego Film Festival to support a friend who has a film screening and it got me thinking about what festivals can do for you.  Particularly in the world of Youtube and a million little no-name festivals.

There are many things a filmmaker gets out of film festivals and it’s slightly different for shorts and features so I’ll stick with shorts for now.

Basically, here’s what you get from festivals…
-    Experience screening your film (including learning how to properly set up your film beforehand because even some of the big fests employ kids to work the booths - and they are usually unsupported, not knowledgeable enough and extremely stressed out from filmmakers jumping down their throats.  Hint: Please, thank you, and a smile goes a long way in this situation.)
-    Practice talking about your film in public (I’m a PR whore so I try to give whatever interview I possibly can to both promote my film and so I get practice giving interviews now when no one gives a crap about me.  It’s painful to watch your first ones, but if you’re honest with yourself you can get better quickly.)
-    Publicity
-    Exposure to lots of great and not-so-great films and filmmakers
-    An opportunity to meet festival programmers
-    An opportunity to meet distributors (though this really only occurs at the bigger fests)
-    A greater understanding of festival programming (there will always be a celebrity-directed film that sucks but screens everywhere, a experimental one that no one seems to understand but also keeps popping up and other such craziness.)  Programming really is an art form though - some fests get it and others definitely do not.
-    Awards (these are much needed because once festival season is over it’s the only thing that sticks around to let everyone know how cool you are.  And if we’re honest, that’s what Hollywood really is, a coolfest.)
-    Bragging rights (see awards)
-    A bit of a vacation seeing the world (most European fests fly you out and put you up.  But don’t get too caught up in this - you could lose a year of your life traveling around when you should be making more movies.)

It’s all a learning experience.  Every moment of this crazy film journey.  And, as a friend reminded me this week, since the only way you really get any value in Hollywood is to direct a feature that wins at major festival or write a script that sells, you have to make your festival experience work for you as much as possible.  Hustle, hustle, hustle people!

If anyone has any questions about what do to prepare for or what to do at film festivals, let me know and I’ll answer them next week.

Success!

I’m glad to report that my worries last week were totally unwarranted.  We had a brilliant shoot on Wednesday and I loved my actors as much at the end of the day as the beginning.

What I had happily reinforced this week is that if you cast properly, and your actors are professionals, they will do their job. And that will make yours a hundred times easier.

These guys were great.  Prepared, generous, pleasant to work with, took direction well, kept energy up on a really hot & humid set and just generally did great jobs.

Here are some stills from the shoot…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And from behind the scenes…

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here’s an awful, but funny, picture of me and my DP, Philip Lott, at the end of the shoot day at a nearly 100 degree location.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, these are actually the looks of loving what you’re doing!

The Casting Conundrum

I’m directing a commercial tomorrow that I’ve been prepping for all week.  Casting was on Friday and we saw lots of great actors.  From which, I found my perfect cast.

I love working with actors during casting.  I try to get a feel for who they are, if they’re talented, if I like them, if they’re creative and energetic, if they’ve got ideas.  I also find out how directable they are.  And frankly, I get to test out some of my own ideas a bit.  And I do this by creating a warm, open environment - one actors find comforting and freeing.

But something happened this time around that may have changed my mind.

At the fitting, one of my talent commented on how easy the audition was.  How this person felt more comfortable and relaxed than any other audition they’d been on recently.  This was said in a manner of thanking me.  Which I appreciated.

But I also noticed that with more people around at the fitting this actor was less relaxed, more desiring of attention from everyone.  As I watched this, it occurred to me that I may have been doing myself a disservice all this time by having casting sessions that are too easy on actors.

The question is, if I’m creating atmospheres in casting that are more comfortable than the atmospheres I’m able to create on set - something infinitely harder to control than a small casting office - I won’t find out how my talent works under pressure until the day of the shoot.  That’s a pretty big risk.

Hm.  Well.  We’ll see how the shoot goes tomorrow.  I may be in the process of finding a new appreciation for cold, hard casting.

USC films that rock

Last week I spoke on a panel at USC for a class of students about to make their thesis films. There were a million things I wanted to tell them and the other panelists were no different. There were four of us on the panel and we all bubbled over with information, eager to help these students make the best films they could.

I don’t know if the class found the evening useful, but those of us on the panel certainly did. Afterwards the four of us went out for dinner and found that we’re all going through the same challenges and learning the same lessons but in relative isolation of one another. Each of us feeling as if we’re cutting a new path, but in fact we’re pushing forward just beside one another, going in the same direction with blinders on.

I was incredibly inspired by these three filmmakers I shared the evening with and very proud to have been included in their company. If you’d like to see some really great USC thesis films check out these guys…

• Rajeev Dassani’s student academy award-winning A Day’s Work
• Matthew Scott Rickels’ very funny web series The Clean Up Crew
• Vineet Dewan’s multiple award-winning Clear Cut, Simple

 

There are incredibly talented people making great films out there. Go see it, support them, be apart of your filmmaking community. If for no other reason, it comes back. I promise.