As Described
TeamJaded friend and supporter Jim Horsfield has a new project: asdescribed.net.
He describes it as:
“A sometimes redundant blog site which kicks into action when and if i do something that may vaguely be interesting to someone else.. covering audio visual shenanigans and VJ/film/video production.”
Sounds familiar. At the moment he’s on a two week tour with The Bays & The Heritage Orchestra in the U.K. It looks and sounds like an interesting gig:
“The premise of the show is that the Bays never rehearse/practice and jam and create their set live in front of an audience. This is somewhat easy to do(!!) as the 4 members of the bays (Andy, Chris, Simon and Jamie) have played together in this way for nearly 10 years.”
Definitely worth checking out.
The Bridge to Funding or not
Over the weekend Abby and I watched a documentary called the Bridge. If you haven’t seen the film, it’s about people who kill themselves by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. More people choose the Golden Gate as their place to die than any other spot on the globe. That’s depressing, but also intriguing so I understand why a documentary filmmaker would be drawn to the subject. However, this blog is not about the film or it’s merits. I will say that it was beautifully shot, and very depressing. (watch it for yourself)
What prompted me to write this post were comments made by the Director Eric Steel in a featurette on the DVD. He basically said that after he read “Jumpers: The fatal grandeur of the Golden Gate Bridge” in the New Yorker, he immediately decided to move to San Francisco and shoot a documentary about the subject. Next he bought “$100,000″ in camera equipment and “learned” how to log tapes. Then he hired a significant crew of production people, and they staked out the Golden Gate Bridge from at least two locations for an entire year.
Wow. Ok. That’s pretty amazing. He just decided to do that after he read an article in the New Yorker. And at the end of it, he had a pretty solid film about a touching issue with some amazing cinematography of one the United States most recognizable landmarks. Like I said, wow.
What I’m wondering is, how do you just afford to pick up your life, drop a hundred grand on camera equipment, and spend a year shooting a documentary? Who has that kind of money laying around? Who can immediately relocate to another city, take at least a year off from paying work, and hire a production crew of talented people?
If you imdb Mr. Steel you learn that he has produced Hollywood feature films in the past (Including Shaft), so he either had the money or knew where to get it. Good for him and his accomplishments, but that isn’t the inspiration I was looking for after I heard him describe how the film was made.
Where does the money come from for filmmakers who don’t have a Hollywood resume? Collectively Abby and I have worked in college radio, international cable television, major publishing, and cutting edge social media. We know a lot of creative professionals, but not any money people interested in backing documentary films.
What are we missing? …because recently I read an interesting article in Mother Jones, and I’d like to relocate to shoot a doc on the subject. Anybody want to pass me a hundred grand? TeamJaded needs to make it happen.
Discuss.
DIY Days
Abby and I just got back from the DIY Days event at Minna. We had to go because, you know DIY was in the name, which has me thinking a lot about the nature of that term, but I’ll save that for another post.
The event was put on by the Workbook Project and From Here to Awesome, and was sponsored by Current. It was hosted by Arin Crumley from Four Eyed Monster. The purpose was to bring independent filmmakers together for a one day event and get them talking about how to use the web for funding, marketing, and distribution.
Since we were once employed by one of the sponsors (Current), and now I work in social media (Seesmic), and Abby is involved in web marketing for Harper Collins; it follows that we might have some knowledge about the stated topic of the conference. It also follows that we might be able to apply that knowledge to our own film projects (Make It Happen and Mulch).
…But as anyone who reads this blog knows, or biggest hurdle has been funding. So learning about where the money comes from is what sparked my interest in DIY Days.
An interesting point to note is that we only found about the conference through a random web search about something else… which leads me to wonder why a conference that seems so perfect for us, would miss us. Then again, I guess it didn’t miss us because we found it eventually.
So did we get from there to awesome? What did we learn? Where does the money come from? Interestingly enough, we found out that we are way ahead of the game in the marketing department that is.
The main points:
Use social media, like our myspace and twitter accounts.
Blog about your project, your problems, and your victories to build an audience who is personally invested… And while you’re doing that, post additional content related to your film, like side videos (our vlogs) and stills… welcome to teamjaded.com
Put your media everywhere: like our Youtube, our Blip, and our Current TV tagged page…
Make your films and let the film industry, your audience, and the monetization catch up to you… Well we’re still waiting.
But one thing we haven’t done and that we need to do is update regularly. So we are going to try our hardest.
Like many of the filmmakers at the event today, one of our problems is that we can’t work on our projects full-time because we need to have day jobs to pay our rent. When we’re not at work, we barely have time to log tapes, much less engage in hours of social media outreach… but we’re trying so hang in there. The conference did not really address this problem beyond “knowing rich people” who want to invest in film… which is what we already suspected and were afraid of… (Anybody know any rich people?)
In the meantime check out Four Eyed Monster because they succeeded in this crazy web/film marketing experiment and from the videos I’ve seen on youtube it looks like they made a solid film. So good for them.
Now we’re off to Cafe Du Nord to see Judgement Day who the San Francisco Bay Guardian claims is totally diy…
Jeremey