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Poetic Realism: French Cinema in the 1930s

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0000

This week, the BFI re-releases the 1930s classic L’Atalante, the only full length feature from French film-maker Jean Vigo. Funny, heart-rending and exhilaratingly inventive, it is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. Microwave looks at 5 of the best Poetic Realist films of 1930’s France

French cinema of the 1930s has been held up as a high point in film history due to a very specific body of work by a number of key auteur film-makers, among them Julien Duvivier, Marcel Carné and Jean Renoir. This body of work is often described as poetic realism. Rather than a definable movement as such, poetic realism can be more accurately described as a “sensibility” or cinematic style, characterized by its melancholic fatalism, representation of the popular hero and highly stylized, proto-noir aesthetic.

Key features of the poetic realist style include working class characters often on the margins of society, evocative and yet recognisable locations, a shift from action towards milieu and atmosphere, a dark and pessimistic ending and the recurring presence of particular actors, notably Jean Gabin with his striking portraits of the working-class male in crisis.

The bleakly fatalistic tone of these poetic realist films and their depiction of powerless and passive protagonists won over the contemporary audience in pre-war France with an understanding of their dark and ambivalent world view. Externally, the threat of war loomed, whilst the dissolution of the Popular Front in 1939 – a left-wing, antifascist alliance who had held government from 1936-37 and ushered in a series of new labor laws and improved working conditions – foreshadowed a return to right-wing elements in pre-war France and led to the widespread disillusionment of the French working class.

French cinema flourished in the 1930s despite industrial instability in the period between the wars (the two major French studios Gaumont and Pathe-Natan collapsed in 1934 and 1936 respectively). French film-makers enjoyed an artistic freedom not always available to those working in the Hollywood studio system, as the fragmentation of the industry resulted in greater diversification in access to capital and distribution. The films of this era had a significant impact on later aesthetic movements, in particular Italian neorealism, film noir and the French Nouvelle Vague. Below, we revisit some of the key films of this classic period in French film-making.

L’Atalante
Jean Vigo, 1934

The son of a notorious anarchist, Jean Vigo had a brief but brilliant career making poetic, lightly surrealist films before his life was cut tragically short by tuberculosis in his early thirties. L’Atalante was his only full length feature film.

L’Atalante stars Dita Parlo and Jean Dasté as a newly-wed couple whose relationship shows signs of strain when they move in together on the barge of which Dasté is captain. The opening sequence — the newlyweds’ march from the church to Jean’s boat — is filmed in a discontinuous style that anticipates the films of the French New Wave. The poetic power of the film, however, had a lot to do with the cinematography of the Russian-born Boris Kaufman, who worked on each of Vigo’s films and was said to be the youngest brother of the great Russian film-maker Dziga Vertov, and a collaborator with him on the famous Kino-Pravda films. Kaufman recalled the days of working so closely with Vigo as “cinematic paradise”.

Pépé le Moko
Julien Duvivier, 1937

Jean Gabin in Pépé le Moko

A standard-bearer of French poetic realism and early precursor of film noir, Pépé le Moko depicts an infamous gangster who tries to escape the police by hiding in the city of Algiers. The film is based on Henri La Barthe’s crime novel of the same name, with a magnetic Jean Gabin in the starring role.

Although set in the casbah, Pépé le Moko was filmed in a beautifully designed studio set which the director thought would be less distracting than an actual locale. Duvivier had, in fact, made films on location in North Africa, and preferred a closed environment for accentuating a noir romanticism blending stylized sets and photography. This was typical of the “recreated realism” aesthetic of the poetic realist canon.

“From the evocation of the Casbah streets to the hero’s state of mind, Pepe le Moko deploys a web of glamorous noir images which elevate its basic story of petty hoodlums, incompetent policemen and kept women into the realm of poetry,” wrote French scholar Ginette Vincendeau in her 1998 monograph on the film. “Pépé le Moko both claims and transcends its pulp fiction material and turns it into a powerful emotional statement on identity, desire and loss.”

Le Jour se lève
Michel Carné, 1939

Jean Gabin and Arletty in Le Jour se lève

Directed by French auteur Michel Carné (who would go on to direct one of the most highly regarded films of all time, Les Enfants du paradis), Le Jour se lève is considered to be one of the principal examples of poetic realism. In a compelling story of obsessive sexuality and murder, the working-class François (another turn by the wildly popular Jean Gabin) resorts to killing in order to free the woman he loves from the controlling influence of another man.

Le Jour se lève was Carné’s fourth film with the surrealist poet and screenwriter Jacques Prevert, and was propelled by the melancholic fatalism that pervaded many of their collaborations. It is a film that was very much created and impacted by its political and social milieu, and can be successfully read as an allegory for its times. The film offers a glimpse into the existence of an uncomplicated factory worker, François, whose ultimate destruction mirrors that of the French working class in 1939. Its sense of doom and defeat captured the mood of France on the eve of the Second World War, and was even banned in 1940 by the Vichy government on the grounds that it was demoralizing and had contributed to the nation’s defeat.

The circularity of the film’s structure mirrors its fatalistic mood – the outcome of Francois’ predicament is clear from the start. Carefully structured dialogues reveal just enough information to produce the most tragic effect possible. This delightful paradox, teetering between spontaneity and artifice, is common to poetic realism. It is noteworthy that Carné’s film was achieved without significant investment in set design.

La Bete Humaine
Jean Renoir, 1938

Jean Gabin in Le Bete Humaine

Based on the Emile Zola novel of the same name, La Bete Humaine follows Jean Gabin as the tortured protagonist Jacques Lantier, who gets himself caught up in a murder plot when seduced by the very definition of the Femme Fatale, Severine, played by the feline Simone Simon. La Bete Humaine is often considered a precursor to 1940s noir, though the use of light and shadow, the dark, romantic fatalism and the working class hero align it to the aesthetics and themes of the poetic realist movement.

Renoir, working on the margins of the French industry at this point, and in stark opposition to the Hollywood fare which dominated the cinemas, favored working class protagonists to the bourgeois. One of a number of Renoir’s films reflecting the birth and death of the National Front, La Bete Humaine celebrates the working man whilst making us aware of the oppressive class distinctions of the time. Renoir makes an additional character of the trains which Lantier works on: the lengthy opening scene shot in documentary style depicts Lantier and his colleague working together on the train and highlights the physicality of man. Renoir investigates the small, banal moments of Lantier’s working day – reporting of broken machinery, greeting his colleagues – moments which actually help to richen the landscape of the film, rather than detract from the narrative.

La Regle De Jeu
Jean Renoir, 1939

A still from La Regle De Jeu

Renoir’s decision to follow up the dark brooding of La Bete Humaine with a satirical comedy was perhaps a bold move, especially given the critical reception it first received. An absurd comic tragedy, La Regle De Jeu was described by Yale Film Lecturer Dudley Andrew as “the most complex social criticism ever enacted on the screen.” A box-office failure in 1939 due to its depiction of the French upper class and initially banned by the French government of the time, the film is now often ranked as one of the greatest masterpieces of cinema.

By this point, Renoir had firmly carved himself out as a director of the left, making films with a strong social critique. La Regle De Jeu is a scathing account of the corrupt French society told as a typical comedy of manners during a weekend at a country chateau. The symbolic core of his critique of French society is seen in the hunt, a scene that most clearly reveals the volcano that seethes beneath the two opposing sides: the masters and servants, both of whom feature the jealous husband, faithful wife, despairing lover, and intervening friend. Renoir derived these two sets of opposing characters from two French classics, Alfred de Musset’s Les caprices de Marianne and Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’ Le mariage de Figaro, and this pairing of servants versus masters also evoked one of Renoir’s recurrent themes: the relations among classes.

L’Atalante screens at the BFI from today, please visit the BFI Website for more information

From Gallery to Cinema

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0000

Steve McQueen’s profile in the global film industry has risen alongside a selection of his peers, those established artists who have made mid-career leaps from the gallery to the cinema. The following article will take a look at the fine art background as a springboard to feature film-making – or indeed, how film-making can often be a natural continuation of artist practice – in a commercial environment that grows increasingly receptive to artist’s film.

Shame, which releases in the UK on 13 January, has become one of the most talked about features of recent months. Anticipation has built around the caliber of its leading actors – stars-in-ascendance Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan – not to mention the provocative subject matter, of a man tormented by sex addiction in present-day New York. Just as intriguing however is the reputation of its director Steve McQueen. The acclaimed British artist first made his name in the contemporary art world with his remarkable film installations and fine art photography, and was justly recognized with a Turner Prize win in 1999. It was therefore no surprise when his first foray into feature film-making, a startling account of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands was of equally exemplary form, winning the Camera D’Or prize for best first feature at Cannes Film Festival in 2008.

McQueen’s profile in the global film industry has risen alongside a selection of his peers, those established artists who have made mid-career leaps from the gallery to the cinema. The following article will take a look at the fine art background as a springboard to feature film-making – or indeed, how film-making can often be a natural continuation of artist practice – in a commercial environment that grows increasingly receptive to artist’s film.

Steve McQueen: Content and Form

Established artists who have made mid-career moves from the gallery to the cinema often have to tackle the transition to a completely different set of audiences and industries. London’s ICA, who this month are running a focus on such artists remind us that these transitions are not always successful – Robert Longo, David Salle, and Cindy Sherman never got any further than their first attempts. Nevertheless, an increasingly rewarding trend is emerging of acclaimed British artists – Douglas Gordon, Sam Taylor-Wood, Gillian Wearing – who have successfully transposed their vision from gallery to cinema, spearheaded by Steve McQueen.

For McQueen, the decision to move into feature film-making was not a conscious choice. In his philosophy, the focus is on the idea, rather than one particular medium. As he put it in a recent interview with Little White Lies, “the subject matter tells me what to do. Bobby Sands [the subject of his debut feature, Hunger] was crying out for a narrative, a feature film, same with sex addiction, but other times it doesn’t work that way. The next one might want me to make a sculpture, it might want me to do a print.” In other words, the content decides the form.

Nor does he see film-making as a substantial departure from his previous practice, which has encompassed sculpture, photography and video art. In his own analogy, he likens his progression from artist to film-maker to that of someone who writes poetry going on to write a novel. There is, he points out, a compactness or preciseness about the nucleus of a poem, in comparison to the form of a novel which is much more elongated and linear. We are invited to draw the same conclusions about the structure of his works.

As an artist McQueen was perhaps best known for his silent, black-and-white film installations such as Bear (1993) and Deadpan (1997), which were characterized by their visual economy and minimalist, anti-narrative approach. In much the same way, Hunger, made for a delicate £1.63m budget in 2008 displays tightly controlled experiments with formal film language and cinematic conventions. Sparing use of dialogue, subtly disorientating camera angles and long, uninterrupted single takes led some commentators to call his film-making architectural, and even sculptural, whilst another critic compared McQueen to Rembrandt in one breath and Tarkovsky in the next.

Still from Hunger

An artist’s mindset is also evident in McQueen’s latest feature, Shame. In an interview with Little White Lies, actress Carey Mulligan discussed his methods: “Steve’s whole approach, with me at least, was that we were artists. He believes in making art – the film is a piece of art. He doesn’t believe in ‘acting’, he believes in people just being real on camera and him capturing it.” She recounts an amusing anecdote to this end when the film’s relatively limited budget (Mulligan admits the film was only financed through the attachment of the increasingly bankable Michael Fassbender) meant that the production could not afford any music rights in a scene in which she was required to sing. Momentarily bewildered at having to improvise a song on the spot, McQueen’s response was: “You’re an artist aren’t you? Make one up!”

Film-making as a continuation of artist’s practice

The tendency to see film-making as a natural continuation of artist practice rather than a radical transition can be traced back to the latter generation of YBA’s, the Young British Artists of the late 1990s who saw film as simply another medium of fine art. A 2009 article in the Guardian drew comparisons between today’s artist film-makers and previous generations of leading British film-makers such as Ridley Scott and Alan Parker, who made the switch to feature films from the world of advertising. The YBA’s interest in new media and in moving images during the late 1990s created a similar path for them into the world of mainstream cinema.

One of the best known of the YBA alumni to branch into feature film-making is the 1997 Turner Prize nominated artist Sam Taylor-Wood, whose debut feature Nowhere Boy was released in 2009 to widespread critical and commercial success. Supported by the UK Film Council and Film4, the film’s relatively large budget – £13m – perhaps owed much to her existing high profile video art and photography work, including her 2004 Crying Men series which featured many of Hollywood’s glitterati crying, including Robin Williams, Sean Penn, Laurence Fishburne, and Paul Newman. A much lauded short film, Love You More, premiered at Cannes in 2008 providing further groundwork for a directorial career.

Further evidence of experimentations with film form in the art world as a precursor to feature film-making is evidenced in the work of Gillian Wearing, the Turner Prize winner for 1998. Her debut feature Self-Made (2010) in which members of the public divulge their innermost secrets via method-acting workshops is a clear continuation of the ‘editing life’ approach developed in her early photography and film installations. Elsewhere, the Turner Prize winning artist Douglas Gordon premiered a critically acclaimed football film Zidane, A 21st Century Portrait at Cannes Film Festival in 2006, whilst contemporary artist Tracey Emin and Turner prize winners Damien Hirst and Wolfgang Tillmans have also made short films.

Artists and the British film industry

The last few years have seen a marked increase in the recognition of artist’s film within mainstream cinema. Whilst arthouse and experimental film-making has always had a home in British cinema through the work of distributors such as Artificial Eye, in 2009 artist’s film was given a vote of confidence by the public sector with a £15m fund from the UK Film Council aimed at promoting more work from first-time feature film directors – particularly those who were already established names in British art galleries. Gillian Wearing’s Self Made was one such recipient of this fund, as well as Clio Barnard’s innovative 2010 documentary The Arbor. Within Film London, the Artist’s Moving Image Network (FLAMIN) supports London-based artists working in moving image in all its forms, and has commissioned works such as Ben River’s award-winning 2011 debut feature Two Years at Sea.

Though now unfortunately defunct, the UKFC’s then chief executive John Woodward said that funding new and second-time film-makers, some from other creative areas, was the best way of “balancing out an increasingly nervous marketplace.” It could also be argued that the freedom film installation gives to artists to experiment, and the nurture contemporary moving image artists receive from the likes of the Turner Prize and the Hayward Gallery results in original, innovative feature film work that provides a refreshing alternative to the sometimes cynical commerce of the British film industry. The warm response to films like Hunger and The Arbor suggests that British audiences welcome such change.

As the global recession continues and public sector belts tighten further, the future of art cinema in the UK is once again thrown into doubt. Commenting on his recent successes in the mainstream film world, Steve McQueen reported that he was “just trying to make the films that have a reason to be made.” One would hope that given the wealth of potential talent available in the form of the UK’s artists and experimental film-makers, British audiences will continue to see the films that have a reason to be seen.

Shame is out on general release from today

2011, a year in film

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0000

Following yet another successful British Independent Film Awards on Sunday, and as 2011 comes to an end, Microwave looks back on another successful year for British Independent Film.

2011: a Year in Film

Following yet another successful British Independent Film Awards on Sunday, and as 2011 comes to an end, Microwave looks back on another successful year for British Independent Film.

The shockingly powerful film adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s 2003 novel We Need to Talk about Kevin, directed by BAFTA award winning Lynne Ramsay, was up for several nominations, and saw Ramsay awarded Best Director. This is Ramsay first film since 2002’s Morvern Callar and it’s clear that in the nine year gap, she hasn’t lost any talent. We Need to Talk about Kevin also received nods for Best Supporting Actor (Ezra Miller as the disturbed Kevin), Best Actress (Tilda Swinton, in a chilling performance as the titular Kevin’s mother) and Best Technical Achievement for Seamus McGarvey’s cinematography.

Paddy Considine, best known as an actor, stunned audiences and critics with his devastating directorial debut Tyrannosaur. Using characters he had created for his BAFTA award winning short Dog Altogether, Tyrannosaur follows a widowed alcoholic fuelled by rage, and a Christian woman who tries to help him. Even before its nation-wide release it was receiving major recognition as a powerful film that would surely garner further recognition come awards season. At the 2011 Moet British Independent Film Awards, Tyrannosaur was nominated in seven categories winning in three of them. Considine was awarded The Douglas Hickox Award for Best Debut Director (competing with Joe Cornish for Attack the Block, Ralph Fiennes for Coriolanus, John Michael McDonagh for The Guard, and Richard Ayoade for Submarine), his leading lady Olivia Colman was given Best Actress, and the film took home the award for Best British Independent Film.

Similarly, Steve McQueen’s second feature film and second collaboration with Michael Fassbender, Shame, was nominated in seven categories. A British production made in the US, Shame centres around Fassbender’s Brandon, a sex addict whose life spirals out of control when his rebellious younger sister moves in with him. McQueen has said that he’d felt exhausted after 2008’s Hunger, and he wasn’t feeling up to making another film for awhile. However, once he met with writer Abi Morgan (Brick Lane), the two began work on the script for Shame. The film has received attention not just for the amazing performance from Fassbender, who picked up Best Actor at the BIFA’s, but also from the NC-17 rating it was given. Normally this type of rating would be bad news for a film, but McQueen and Fox Searchlight have decided to embrace the rating and use it as a selling point. Shame releases in the UK 13th January, 2012.

The third film to pick up seven nominations was Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the newest incarnation of the famous George Smiley. Tinker Tailor saw Gary Oldman nominated for Best Actor in the iconic role, as well as nominations for Best Picture and Best Director.

Richard Ayoade, another actor-turned-director (best known for his role in television’s The IT Crowd) saw his coming of age film Submarine receive an overwhelmingly positive response from critics and audiences this year. Other films that were nominated included The Kill List, a return to 70’s era British Horror, and Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, which did very well on the festival circuit and at the box office despite very few exhibitors willing to take a chance on it, and saw one of its leads, Tom Cullen win Most Promising Newcomer.

The year proved a successful one for Microwave as well, with two receiving much acclaim: Strawberry Fields and The British Guide to Showing Off. Strawberry Fields marks the second feature from director Frances Lea and boasts an impressive cast. Set in the English country side over one scorching summer, Strawberry Field_s, which premièred at this years London Film Festival, examines the relationship between two jealous sisters and a picker at a strawberry field. _British Guide turned heads at the International Rome Film Festival when director Jes Benstock and the film’s producers were marched down the red carpet by 30 drag queens. Using a combination of archived footage and photography, and cut out and collage animation, British Guide takes a look at the annual outrageous and Alternative Miss World Show. British Guide is at cinemas across the country now. Microwave has also been working closely with 12 new film-making teams, and will be greenlighting six of these in February 2011 to add the Microwave slate.

Terence Davies and Alternative British Cinema

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0000

Terence Davies, who releases The Deep Blue Sea in UK cinemas this week, is one of Britain’s most original and iconic auteurs.

Terence Davies and Alternative British Cinema

Terence Davies, who releases The Deep Blue Sea in UK cinemas this week, is one of Britain’s most original and iconic auteurs. Over the course of the last four decades he has produced a body of work that has consistently pushed at the boundaries of genre, from his early semi-autobiographical works The Terence Davies Trilogy and Distant Voices, Still Lives – poetic reconstructions of working class life in Liverpool in the 1940s and 50s – to highly stylized, high-profile adaptations of the novels The Neon Bible and The House of Mirth, as well as 2002’s documentary-as-memoir Of Time and The City.

Davies comes from a tradition of British art cinema that experienced its most fertile period during the 1980s and early 1990s, the heyday of auteur directors such as Derek Jarman, Peter Greenaway and Sally Potter. At a time when art cinema in the UK is experiencing resurgent popularity and mainstream interest with the rising profile of artist film-makers such as Andrea Arnold and Steve McQueen, the following article will trace the path of Davies’ career and explore the legacy of Britain’s alternative art cinema.

Terence Davies’ memory-realism
Terence Davies was born in Liverpool in 1945, the youngest child in a large working class family. After working for ten years as a clerk and bookkeeper, he enrolled in Coventry School of Drama in 1971. It was here that he wrote the script for his first film, Children. The film was produced in 1976 with backing from the British Film Institute, in what was to be the beginning of Davies’ long working relationship with the BFI.

Children became the first part of trilogy of semi-autobiographical short-to-medium length films chronicling the life of Robert Tucker, a gay working-class Catholic Liverpudlian – and Davies’ alter ego. Tucker’s relentlessly bleak life would be tracked through middle age in Madonna and Child, Davies’ graduation film from the National Film School in 1980, and terminal illness in Death and Transfiguration, which was made in 1983 with funding from the Greater London Arts Association and the BFI. The themes of the trilogy, such as sexual guilt and the stringency of the Catholic faith, would recur throughout the director’s work.

Davies made his feature debut in 1988 with backing from the BFI’s Production Board. Recalling the life of a working class family in Liverpool, Distant Voices, Still Lives developed a distinctive cinematic language to explore the process of memory itself. Composed of events and situations re-told by different family members, the film is constructed almost as a series of vignettes, juxtaposed with references to pop songs, popular culture and religious iconography. The narration, like memory, is cyclical, repetitive and ambiguous.

Distant Voices, Still Lives was remarkable in that it combined the social concerns of much British cinema with elements normally associated with European art cinema: an emphasis on the personal and on sexual or religious themes, for example, as well as narrative ambiguity and a distinctive visual style. Terence Davies’ adept pairing of style and content in Distant Voices, Still Lives would cement his reputation as one of Britain’s most imaginative and accomplished film-makers.

Experimental cinema and the BFI
Terence Davies, like many of his contemporaries in the 1970s and 80s, was to find support and financial backing from the BFI Production Board. The Board was established in 1965 to take over from the BFI’s early involvement with production through the Experimental Film Fund, a scheme that was intended to support artistic innovation and enable promising new film-makers to make their first short films such as Lorenza Mazzetti (Together, 1956), Michael Grigsby (Enginemen, 1959), and Ridley Scott (Boy and Bicycle, 1965).

The Production Board was intended to offer more comprehensive support to new and un-commercial filmmakers, with the aim of recouping at least some of the cost of the films on the independent ‘art-house’ cinema circuit. In 1971 the Board received an increase in funding to enable the BFI to fund low-budget feature-length films on a regular basis, alongside shorter “featurettes” running up to an hour. Terence Davies’ Children was one such beneficiary of this initiative.

The 1980s and early 1990s were a golden era for the Production Board, in which it nurtured the careers of major British auteurs, including Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman and Sally Potter, amongst several others. Greenaway made a mini- feature, A Walk Through H, with the Production Board in 1978, a relationship that would continue through his first three features, The Falls (1980), The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) and A Zed and Two Noughts (1985). A so-called philosopher of cinema, whose work addressed the changing status of the image in the contemporary world, these features saw him make the transition from obscure avant-garde experimentalist to one of British cinema’s best-known arthouse exports.

Derek Jarman was the “maverick radical” of the British cinema during the 1980s and early ‘90s, producing a highly idiosyncratic form of avant-garde art cinema sustained by his personal reputation as an auteur and an enfant terrible. Though already well established as a film-maker, in 1986 the Production Board supported the production of Caravaggio, a long-cherished project of the director and one of his best known works. Elsewhere, Sally Potter’s The Gold Diggers (1983) was produced through the fund with an all-female cast and crew, a radical undertaking at that time in an overwhelmingly male-dominated industry.

The Production Board was not without its critics, who accused the BFI of ‘trying to imitate Wardour Street’, whilst low budgets meant that crews were often paid below agreed minimum rates in exchange for a share in the profits. Indeed, following a change in government in the late 1990s, the Board was abolished and its functions absorbed into the UK Film Council. Nonetheless, it played a key role in nurturing an alternative British art cinema, the legacy of which can be seen in the film-makers it supported who are still practicing today.

A new new wave?
Terence Davies moved on from alternative British cinema in the 1990s, with two high-profile novel adaptations – 1994’s atmospheric account of 1940s life in the Deep South in John Kennedy Toole’s The Neon Bible, as well as an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (2000) that referenced the visual aesthetic of John Singer Sergeant and Johannes Vermeer. However, he returned to his low budget roots with the documentary-memoir Of Time and the City, a film composed of archive footage of the post-war years in Liverpool.

“I wanted to capture what it was like being Liverpudlian,” said Davies of the film, which was made after Davies entered a competition for film funding organised to coincide with Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture celebrations. “It was made with the most modest of intentions and with a budget of only £250,000. I’ve always made a film for the money I could afford to raise.” The poetic, emotional and highly personal documentary was released to widespread acclaim and remarkable word-of-mouth success in 2008.

The release of The Deep Blue Sea marks the end of the director’s eleven year hiatus from fiction film-making and comes at a time when art cinema in the UK is experiencing a resurgent popularity in the mainstream film industry. The critical and commercial success of film-makers such as Joanna Hogg, Andrea Arnold and Steve McQueen are leading some commentators to suggest that we are in the middle of a British art-cinema “bonanza”, characterized by film-makers united by a radical spirit of adventure, and a refusal to conform to industry norms. What is clear is that these film-makers belong to a long tradition of art cinema in the UK that has regularly proven that there is more to British cinema than period adaptations and urban Brit grit.

Much Ado About Whedon

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave takes a short look at the career of Joss Whedon,the director of The Avengers and now a micro-budget adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, that he shot in twelve days in his backyard.

What started as a humble script-editing career in television soon brought Joss Whedon to fame with his hit Emmy-winning series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and his later series Firefly, has now brought him onto both bigger and smaller things; With the highly anticipated release of what is sure to be one of next summer’s biggest blockbusters- the first instalment in The Avengers series, Whedon has also shirked the multi-million budget level for a more modest film that most people (other than hardcore fans) may miss- a low budget production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

As evidenced by his body of work, Whedon’s true passion lies in writing, so naturally there would exist a predilection for The Bard, but why shoot an adaptation on such a small scale, and why now when he’s in the middle of making such a big budget Hollywood studio film? According to Whedon in an interview with Entertainment Weekly,

“Well, it’s not a bit secret that I’ve done these [Shakespeare] readings before, and I always had a vague notion of shooting Much Ado. But I didn’t really have a take on it. And then, for some reason, I kinda sorta did. As we were finishing The Avengers in New York, my wife and I were planning our vacation for our 20th anniversary. And she said, “Let’s not take the vacation. Make a movie instead.” I was like, “I’m not even sure if I can adapt the script, cast the movie, and prep it in a month.” And she was like, “Well, that’s your vacation time, so you do it.” And so I did.

Whedon and his crew shot the film in twelve days at his home in Santa Monica. Much Ado marks the first production by Bellwether Pictures, a micro-studio founded by Whedon and his wife, Kai Cole. Not much is known about this company yet; they don’t even have a website. But according to the Much Ado press release, Bellwether is “a micro-studio for the production of small, independent narratives for all media, embracing a DIY ethos and new technologies.” The next project being produced by Bellwether is the Whedon scripted In Your Eyes, and will be directed by Brin Hill (writer, Learning to Fly).

Whedon started his career doctoring scripts and writing for the US sitcom Roseanne. His feature script for Buffy the Vampire Slayer was produced in the early 1990’s, and years later re-imagined as the popular TV series with Whedon at the creative helm, which spawned a spinoff in the form of the series Angel, as well as a few comic book series for both Buffy and Angel. Whedon later created two more series, Firefly (and the spin off feature film Serenity) and Dollhouse. During the 2007/08 Writers Guild of America strike, Whedon wrote and directed the acclaimed online miniseries Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. He also has few writing credits you probably don’t know about for movies you do: Toy Story, Alien: Resurrection, and Captain America.

For his hugely successful twenty plus year career, The Avengers marks the first truly significant foray into more mainstream directing for Whedon, so it will be interesting to see where his career goes from here. It is clear that whether a big Hollywood studio budget, or a shoestring passion project, Whedon’s main passion is good story-telling and whatever the budget, Whedon remains one of the most versatile story-tellers in the industry.

Like a naughty auntie who’ll tip gin into your tea

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave’s fourth feature The British Guide to Showing Off premieres across the country on Sunday 6 November with special ‘Dress up’ Previews, with a bigger release from 11 November at selected UK Cinemas

Like a naughty auntie who’ll tip gin into your tea
Grayson Perry on Andrew Logan

The fourth Microwave feature to secure distribution in the UK is The British Guide to Showing Off, a documentary by director Jes Benstock which takes us under British Artist Andrew Logan’s glittering wing to take a joyous look at this most quirky and exotic subculture event, The Alternative Miss World.

Following a successful and glamorous premiere at the International Rome Film Festival last week, The British Guide to Showing off will have its UK Premiere at cinemas across the UK on Sunday 6 November, with the documentary released on 11 November 2011. The British Guide to Showing Off is receiving rave reviews from critics and audiences alike, and we’re delighted to be listed in the Film Distributor Associations Top Ten Autumn releases.

The anarchic and utterly outrageous Alternative Miss World Show, a spectacular costume pageant and fancy dress party for grownups, is perfectly visualized through live action footage, archive and cut out and collage animation by Andrew Savage. Now fans of the show can transform themselves with Distributor Verve’s very own SHOW OFF facebook app which gives fans the opportunity to turn themselves into their very own Alternative Miss World Contestant!

Loved the world over by celebrities and misfits alike, Logan has hosted the Alternative Miss World Show since 1972 – a living sculpture spanning 40 years of art and culture and his most important artwork to date. Over its history, the show has both reflected and informed British arts and culture, pulling off the amazing feat of being beautiful, glamorous and kitsch all at the same time. Memorable highlights include artist David Hockney judging the first one, musician David Bowie not being able to get into the second, film director Derek Jarman winning the third and triumphing in a court case against the Official Miss World (with a little help from a young Tony Blair).

Featuring contributions from Brian Eno, Ruby Wax, fashionista Zandra Rhodes (who designed all of Andrew’s hostess costumes), Richard O’Brien, Nick Rhodes and Grayson Perry, The British Guide to Showing Off was filmed over 5 years, charting the mounting of the 2009 Show, bringing to life its history through newly discovered archive, exuberant animation, and plenty of offbeat humour from contestants old and new.

Raucous, liberating and sexually charged, The British Guide to Showing Off speaks to the outsider in all of us. For anyone who has ever wanted to break out.

See below for all the Dress Up Preview and General Release dates and locations

SPECIAL PREVIEWS -DRESS UP AND SHOW OFF!
NOVEMBER 6

Tyneside FT NEWCASTLE
Grosvenor Hillhead GLASGOW
Cameo EDINBURGH
Belmont ABERDEEN
Showroom SHEFFIELD
Watershed BRISTOL
Duke Of York BRIGHTON
Ritzy BRIXTON
Picturehouse HACKNEY
Chapter CARDIFF

NOVEMBER 13
Picturehouse LIVERPOOL

GENERAL RELEASE
NOVEMBER 11
ICA Cinema LONDON

NOVEMBER 18
Showroom SHEFFIELD
Pictureville BRADFORD
Tyneside FT NEWCASTLE
Lexi Kensal Rise LONDON

NOVEMBER 20
Watershed BRISTOL

NOVEMBER 25
Ritzy BRIXTON
Picturehouse HACKNEY
Shortwave BERMONDSEY
Chapter CARDIFF

5TH DECEMBER
Phoenix OXFORD

6TH DECEMBER
Picturehouse HACKNEY
Little Theatre BATH
Ritzy BRIXTON
Duke of York’s BRIGHTON
Cameo EDINBURGH
Picturehouse GREENWICH
Picturehouse EXETER
Picturehouse STRATFORD, EAST LONDON
Cinema City NORWICH
Abbeygate Picturehouse BURY ST EDMUNDS
Picturehouse YORK
Stratford Picturehouse STRATFORD-UPON-AVON
Regal Picturehouse HENLEY
Harbour Lights SOUTHAMPTON
Belmont ABERDEEN
Picturehouse CAMBRIDGE
Gate NOTTING HILL
Picturehouse CLAPHAM

9TH DECEMBER
MAC BIRMINGHAM
Picturehouse EXETER

12TH DECEMBER
Cinema City NORWICH

23RD DECEMBER
Gulbenkian CANTERBURY

Horror and Homage

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0000

For our Halloween special Microwave returns once more to this potent genre with a look at a key auteur of horror’s 70s golden age, tracing the patterns of influence, homage and collaboration through to the genre’s present day incarnation

Horror is a perennial favourite with independent film-makers. Many are drawn by the low barriers to entry the genre affords – a clever concept and imaginative use of resources are often far more effective than a slick CGI production. Others are enthused by the aesthetic potential of the horror movie, from the cold, creeping psychological thriller to the gaudy, blood-soaked gore-fest.

Master of the Macabre

Italian film director Dario Argento established a cult reputation in the 1970s as a “master of the macabre” for his ultra-violent, highly stylized pulp thrillers. His willingness to upset accepted definitions of cinematic taste and push images of violence to the limit have led him to be recognized as a key influence on influence on modern horror and slasher movies.

Argento began his career as a film critic for Rome newspaper Paese Sera, before becoming a screenwriter for popular 60s genre films such as Sergio Leone’s Once Upon the Time in the West. His rising profile led to the development of his first film as a director, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, which was made on a budget of $500k in 1970.

Although now more commonly known as a horror director, at the time Argento’s work was located within the giallo genre. The term is derived from an Italian series of pulp novels recognized by their yellow (giallo) binding, and was later used increasingly to describe Italian genre thrillers in the film world. Argento’s early work in this arena was characterized by its convoluted plotting, excessive visual style and unconventional gender twists. In The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, for example, the “male” point of view used by the camera to stalk and survey future female victims meant that the unmasking of a female assassin provided a genuinely shocking revelation in the film’s finale.

Argento is best known however for his 1977 film Suspiria. This semi-surreal horror classic contains some of the most grisly murders in horror history, ensuring maximum shock value and instant cult status. Forever controversial, Argento has gone on the record as being ‘interested in aggressiveness, violence and the colour of blood… I am fascinated by the aesthetic of it.’ _Suspiria_’s distinctive visual style was achieved through the vivid use of lighting and primary colours, whilst the use of outdated Technicolour stock gave the film a fairy-tale like quality. Disorientating camera work and a near-hysterical soundtrack captured the director’s wish to take the genre to new heights of sensory experience.

Horror and Homage

The late 1970s and early 1980s are often looked upon as a golden age for low budget horror by audiences and film-makers alike. At this time directors such as Dario Argento, David Lynch (Eraserhead, 1977) and Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, 1981) were dealing in innovation on miniscule budgets, and were rewarded with cult followings and unprecedented box office success.

Perhaps the biggest indication of the brillance of these film-makers however can be seen in the extent to which their influence can be traced through the history of the horror genre. For example, Halloween, John Carpenter’s 1978 movie about a knife-wielding psycho was referred to by the director as “my Argento film”. A highly profitable influence, given that Halloween has to date grossed $47m from its $375,000 budget. Argento was also rewarded with high profile roles as script consultant/producer on celebrated gore classics such as George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1986). Meanwhile, David Lynch’s Eraserhead was one of director Stanley Kubrick’s favorite films; before beginning production on The Shining (1980), Kubrick screened Eraserhead for the cast to convey the atmosphere he wanted to portray.

Though the horror genre has always rewarded directorial homage and collaboration amongst peers, in recent years the trend has taken on increasing momentum. Indeed, film-makers such as Eli Roth have formed whole careers on the back of it. Beginning with his feature debut, Cabin Fever (2002), Roth has sought to bring back a return to the R-rated violence and low budget ethics of classic 1970s horror movies. Cabin Fever drew from many of Roth’s favourite horror films such as The Evil Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Last House on the Left, whilst the financing of the film itself owed much to the attachment of David Lynch as an executive producer.

The incredible theatrical success of Cabin Fever ($35m worldwide on a $1.5m budget) established Roth as a new star in the horror genre and earned him a mentor in Quentin Tarantino, who referred to Roth as “the future of horror”. Roth went on to future success with the Hostel franchise, which grossed $80m in worldwide box office and $180m in DVD sales from an initial budget of $4m and was credited with the creation of the horror sub-genre “torture porn” for its excessive nudity and violence. Roth was to also find himself part of a group of film-makers dubbed “The Splat Pack” because of their relentlessly violent horror movies which reinvented the genre for the modern age.

Today, Roth himself has become a mentor to emerging film-makers: he has been cited as “creative godfather” on two new horror titles for Cross Creek Pictures and Vertebra Films, and has co-written a script with up-and-coming director Paul Solet that apparently “makes Cabin Fever look like a Disney movie”. Elsewhere, a contemporary remake of Suspiria slated for 2012 demonstrates the enduring appeal of Argento’s ultra violent legacy in horror’s present day.

Strawberry Fields at London Film Festival

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0000

All the distribution and exhibition news on our latest Microwave feature Strawberry Fields.

Strawberry Fields is the latest film from Film London’s Microwave scheme to be released, premiering at the 55th BFI London Film Festival this coming Tuesday 18 October. Drawing thematic inspiration from Tennessee William’s classic play A Streetcar Named Desire, Strawberry Fields tells the story of Gillian, a young woman on the run from her oppressive sister Emily. She meets Kev, an attractive strawberry picker and quickly accepts a job working in the strawberry fields. Things are going very well for Gillian, but her paradise is lost when Emily shows up. Shot on location in the gorgeous Kent countryside, the film takes place over the course of a few days over one hot English summer.

Written and directed by Frances Lea and starring rising talents Emun Elliot (Game of Thrones and Ridley Scott’s upcoming Prometheus) as Kev, Anna Madeley (In Bruges, Brideshead Revisited) as Gillian, and Christine Bottomley (Vera Drake, The Arbor) as Emily, Strawberry Fields has been well received by the likes of Simon Beaufoy (Academy Award winning writer of Slumdog Millionaire) who called it

“Fearless film-making –bold, visceral, beguilingly beautiful with performances that are utterly committed to unravelling the complexities of love in its many forms.”

Frances Lea’s film-making career began when she trained at the Bournemouth Film School, after which she wrote and directed films for ITV, BBC, and Channel 4. She was recently named one of the UK’s Stars of Tomorrow by Screen International, an accolade previously awarded to Strawberry Fields star Emun Elliot.

Strawberry Fields recently secured UK distribution from indie-film distributor Soda Pictures under its New British Cinema Quarterly platform, a scheme designed to support young British film-making talent. Other films that have been distributed by Soda Pictures include Howl and Norwegian Wood. This deal continues Film London’s Microwave’s 100% success rate in securing UK distribution for its films. Strawberry Fields will be released through NBCQ In April 2012.

Catch Strawberry Fields at the 55th BFI London Film Festival on the 18, 19 and 21 of October. For tickets visit the BFI Website . Become a fan of Strawberry Fields on facebook

For more information and the latest releases from Soda Pictures’ New British Cinema Quarterly, visit their website

Microwave Announces Shortlisted Projects

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave has unveiled the list of 12 titles shortlisted for the next round of the scheme.

Microwave has unveiled the list of titles shortlisted for the next round of the scheme. 12 film-making teams have been selected to attend Microschool and enjoy seminars, masterclasses and personalised advice from recognised directors, writers and producers.

Following Microschool, and new to the scheme this year, selected projects will then go onto enjoy an intensive four month development period. The final greenlit projects will be announced in early 2012.

The shortlist is formed by the following projects:

Benefield
Produced by Trent Simpson and Ally Gipps; written by Ross Sutherland and Chris Hicks; directed by Kim Albright

Cornered
Produced by Bruce Robertson; written and directed by Jim Cartwright

Death of a Pirate
Produced by Lisa Williams; written and directed by John Hardwick

Gone Too Far
Produced by Christopher Granier-Deferre; written by Bola Agbaje; directed by Destiny Ekaragha

Kingsland
Produced by Michael Elliott; written and directed by Tony Grisoni

Lies Fibs Porkies
Produced by Jessica Levick; written by Andrew Callister; directed by Samantha Harrie

Lilting
Produced by Dominic Buchanan; written and directed by Hong Khaou

Night Haunts
Produced by Nicole Stott; written and directed by Eva Weber

Panic Buddy
Produced by Tom Leggett; written by Duncan Barrett; directed by Robert Mckillop

The Carer
Produced by Asif Kapadia; written and directed by Victoria Harwood

The Secret of Jean Baptiste
Produced by Rob Watson; written by Gabriel Vallejo; directed by Nicole Volavka

White City
Produced by Ian Prior ; written by Aaron Anderson; directed by Martin Stitt

The confirmed industry professionals who will mentor the shortlisted film-makers are:

Al Clark (London to Brighton, The Cottage)
Clio Barnard (The Arbor)
Colin Pons (Hush)
Jane Wright (Glorious 39, Easy Virtue)
Jay Basu (Monsters 2, Song of Songs)
Josh Appignanesi (The Infidel, Song of Songs)
Kate Leys (Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Full Monty)
Pete Travis (Dredd, Vantage Point)
Peter Ettedgui (Unmade Beds, Kinky Boots)

Documentaries at the Cinema

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0000

As Microwave’s fifth Feature, documentary The British Guide to Showing Off releases news of a distribution deal with Verve Pictures, Microwave talks to Mia Bays, Microwave Creative Exec and Freelance sales and distribution consultant about her recent work on Fire in Babylon and the why a number of documentaries are starting to find success in the cinema.

Documentary films have often struggled to gain theatrical releases, being more likely to be screened on TV or at Film Festivals than in cinemas. More recently, the tides seem to have changed as a number of documentaries have broken out and gained theatrical releases, becoming box office successes. Man on Wire (James Marsh), Cameraman: The Life and Works of Jack Cardiff (Craig McCall) and Fire in Babylon (Stevan Riley) have all found theatrical releases and critical acclaim, proving that the right documentary can make it into the cinema. Film London Microwave’s documentary The British Guide to Showing Off, which premiered in competition at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival this month, has just signed a distribution deal with Verve Pictures, becoming the fifth Microwave feature to get a theatrical release in the UK.

The British Guide to Showing Off is a unique exploration of artist Andrew Logan and his outrageous and provocative costume pageant, the Alternative Miss World Show. Described by many as a living legend, Logan founded the Alternative Miss World Show in 1972 and describes it as his most important artwork – a living sculpture that spans 40 years. Over its history, the show has reflected and informed British arts and culture. Memorable highlights include artist David Hockney judging the first one, musician David Bowie famously not being able to get into the second and film director Derek Jarman winning the third.

Featuring Brian Eno, Zandra Rhodes, Richard O’Brien and Grayson Perry, The British Guide to Showing Off was filmed over five years, charting the mounting of the 2009 show, bringing to life its history through newly discovered archive, exuberant animation and plenty of offbeat humour.

Microwave talks to Mia Bays, Microwave Creative Exec and Freelance sales and distribution consultant about her recent work on Fire in Babylon and the why a number of documentaries are finding success in the cinema.

What do you think is the reason for a number of documentaries struggling to get a theatrical release?

There are a myriad of reasons why documentaries struggle to get to cinemas – not least because a lot of the audience (especially internationally) see documentary as the domain of TV and don’t want to pay to see this kind of film in a cinema. But because of some great titles coming through, it’s always possible, with good marketing and PR, to find the audience. And companies such as Revolver Entertainment and Dogwoof are using smart ways to do this. If the films are great, you will find an audience – it is that simple, as it is with fiction. Just look at SENNA (Asif Kapadia)’s recent UK theatrical figures, they are astounding. It’s a great film and they did a big campaign and it worked.

Critically and commercially, Fire in Babylon did exceptionally well, what was your role in the release of the film?

I am the worldwide marketing and distribution consultant on the film – I’ve worked on it since late states of the edit and advised on festival platforms and then sales. We’ve done well – UK cinema release, North American VOD and cinema run (happening now) and sales to West Indies, Australia and several other territories. I was part of the UK team overseeing the release here too, which was a ton of work but we got a good result: £208k box office and 30k units sold after just 4 weeks of release, which is really good for a documentary.

What is it about recent documentaries such as Man on Wire, Jack Cardiff and Fire in Babylon which makes them so successful as theatrical releases?
Man on Wire became more of a phenomenon and transcended being just another documentary release, by virtue of its subject matter and the way it was made and then sold – it felt like a great piece of fiction. Jack Cardiff, Fire In Babylon and our upcoming The British Guide To Showing Off all have clear audiences, or have a number of potential audiences who you can immediately target via special interest groups (e.g. cricket clubs for Fire In Babylon, film schools/students for Jack Cardiff). And of course it’s much easier to find them now online. Event releases really suit documentaries – delivering a special event for the audience is a key draw, so you aren’t just showing the film on its own. Dogwoof have really made that work and it was a key to the success of Fire In Babylon and will be a marketers dream on The British Guide To Showing Off as it’s all about an event, so it’s a natural one to do something special in cinemas.

What was it about The British Guide to Showing Off that made Microwave decide to greenlit it? What was its theatrical potential?

The reason we picked it was because the team were clearly talented and also, as has transpired with the finished film, it was clear to see who the audience for this film might be from the get-go, and that there WAS an audience and it could be reached. That is vital for Microwave – we need to know it can work in cinemas, and for it to be cinematic. The idea has a joy and exuberance to it, which the film really has too – it’s such an unusual reaction to feel that in a documentary, so that was another attraction, and we are so proud of the film achieving this feeling in so many viewers thus far.

What advice can you offer to independent documentary film-makers looking to distribute their documentary features?

I would say focus on who the audience is and define that early, before you decide to shoot the film. Ask yourself ‘will people really spend £10 going to the cinema or buying this on DVD or am I kidding myself?’ a lot of documentaries, however good, can’t pass this test and are much better suited for broadcast – TV has a strong tradition in supporting documentary in many territories

Also it is vital to find the right distribution partner and work WITH them not against them. You have to work as hard as they do if you want to find your audience and recoup for the investors. It will be a year of hard work to get the film out internationally and in the home territory and be prepared for that and don’t slack off!

Man on Wire, Cameraman: The Life and Works of Jack Cardiff and Fire in Babylon are all available to download or buy on DVD. Follow www.twitter.com/FL_Microwave to find out when The British Guide to Showing Off will be hitting cinemas.

On the Shoulders of Jackson

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0000

The American Film Institute has described New Zealand cinema as “one of the wonders of the world, an unparalled success story.” The international success of its homegrown output, and the number of New Zealand film-makers capturing the world’s attention, are well beyond what you might expect for a country with such a small population and such a distance from major metropolitan cultural centres. Microwave looks at the ever-growing film industry of New Zealand.

The American Film Institute has described New Zealand cinema as “one of the wonders of the world, an unparalled success story.” The international success of its homegrown output, and the number of New Zealand film-makers capturing the world’s attention, are well beyond what you might expect for a country with such a small population and such a distance from major metropolitan cultural centres. Though the industry has undoubtedly been transformed by the world renowned Lord of the Rings trilogy, there is far more to New Zealand film-making than Peter Jackson.

The Lord of the Rings effect

Buoyant since the 1970s, New Zealand film began to earn serious international attention in the late 80s and 90s with Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993) and Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994) premiering to widespread critical acclaim – and in Campion’s case, a trio of Oscar wins. The work of female and Maori film-makers also gained increased recognition at this time, with Melanie Read’s Trial Run, Tama Poata’s Ngati (directed by Barry Barclay) and Merata Mita’s Maori released to critical acclaim and some box office success.

Despite the increasing success of local cinema, at that time New Zealand regularly lost its film-making talent to overseas migration. Wellington born Peter Jackson, however, was a crucial exception to the rule. A cinema buff raised on Ray Harryhausen and Monty Python, he began his own film-making career in the late 80s with the low budget creature feature comedies Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles. He also helped to initiate the growth of the special effects company Weta Workshop, which contributed to Heavenly Creatures and grew to incorporate digital and physical effects, make-up and costume. The skill and originality of Weta’s workers would be key in convincing Hollywood that Jackson and New Zealand were right for the long-mooted The Lord of the Rings adaptation.

The three films of The Lord of the Rings trilogy were shot concurrently between 1999-2003, at over 150 locations in New Zealand’s conservation areas and national parks. The state of the art models, architecture and special effects were realized at the Weta facilities in Wellington. Although mostly financed by Hollywood (with an advantageous tax break from the New Zealand government) and a primarily international cast, Jackson used a largely Kiwi production crew, helping to create an enormous skill base within the New Zealand film industry.

The effects of this continue to be seen today. The English/ Kiwi genre horror The Devil’s Rock, released this month in the UK, was written and directed by Weta alumni Paul Campion. Campion worked as a texture painter on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, creating digital textures for the Balrog, Fellbeast and Shelob.

New Zealand Film Festival: A Platform for NZ film-making in the UK

The Lord of the Rings woke up the world to the possibilities of filming in New Zealand, and in coming year’s films such as The Last Samurai, The Chronicles of Narnia and Avatar would be attracted by the country’s locations, film-makers and facilities. However, local content also significantly increased during this period.

The Barbican’s upcoming New Zealand film festival, taking place from 1-3 July, showcases some of the brightest and best work by recent Kiwi writers and directors. The festival launches with a screening of Academy Award nominated director Taika Waititi’s coming of age tale and box office hit Boy.

Maori born Waititi cut his teeth in the film industry as an actor in the low budget film Scarflies, before graduating to make his own short films. His 2003 short film Two Cars, One Night, earned him an Academy Award nomination. His first feature, Eagle vs Shark, was workshopped at the Sundance Film Festival’s Director and Screenwriters Lab in 2005. Part financed by the New Zealand Film Commission, the film was shot entirely in New Zealand on a budget of NZ$1.8 million (US$1.35 million). The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and introduced Flight of the Concords actor Jermaine Clement in the lead role.

Developed alongside Eagle vs Shark, Boy was to become Waititi’s second feature. Once again premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, the film went on to smash several records at the New Zealand box office. The film earned more on its opening day than any other New Zealand film, and grossed nearly $900,000 in its first week. It has since become the highest grossing New Zealand film of all time.

Also showing at the Barbican’s New Zealand Film Festival is emerging film-maker Roseanne Liang’s My Wedding and Other Secrets. The film is based on the director’s real life cross-cultural romance, adapted from her 2005 documentary Banana in a Nutshell. A New Zealand Chinese director, Liang was named SPADA New Filmmaker of the Year Award as well as the Film and Television ‘Woman to Watch’ at the New Zealand Women in Film and Television Awards. Her most recent short film, Take 3, has won awards at the Berlin and Valladolid Film Festivals.

The festival’s other films include Leanne Pooley’s award-winning 2009 documentary The Topp Twins, a portrait of the all-singing, dancing and yodelling twin sisters and lesbian comedy duo Lynda and Jools Topp. The film is one of the top ten highest-grossing films of all time at the NZ box office. Ian Sharp’s Tracker (2010), in which Ray Winstone plays an ex-Boer war guerrilla on the trail of a Maori man wanted for murder, and In My Father’s Den (2004), director Brad McGann’s critically acclaimed feature debut, will also be shown during the festival.

The Barbican New Zealand Film Festival is supported by the New Zealand High Commission, the New Zealand Film Commission, New Zealand’s Ministry for Culture and Heritage and is part of the City of London Festival.

Low budget film-making: New Zealand Film Commission’s Escalator Scheme

The New Zealand Film Commission was established in 1978 in order to encourage and assist in the making, promotion, distribution and exhibition of films made in New Zealand, by New Zealand film-makers, on New Zealand subjects. The NZFC provides financing to New Zealand film-makers, as well as being active in the sales and marketing of New Zealand films, and assisting with training and professional development within the industry. The importance of their support can be evidenced in the stratospheric ascendance of Peter Jackson, whose first four films were supported by the commission.

In 2010 the Film Commission established the Escalator Scheme, an initiative that offers four teams of talented filmmakers a fast track to make a first feature film. Based on Film London’s own Microwave scheme, the intention is that each of the four films will act as a stepping-stone to bigger features for writers, directors, producers and crew.

Similar to Microwave, from the first round of Escalator applications 12 teams are selected attend a bootcamp of intensive workshops on seminars on every aspect of the low budget mindset. After the bootcamp teams work on one of their ideas and then submit a second stage application, after which an independent panel made up of four filmmakers and one NZFC representative selects the four teams that will each receive up to $250,000 to make their film. Last year’s bootcamp included a masterclass with the film-making team behind UK low budget feature Shifty, made through the Film London Microwave scheme in 2008.

The films greenlit by Escalator in 2010 include Juliet Bergh’s Existence, Gerard Johnstone’s Housebound, Guy Pigden’s I Survived A Zombie Holocaust and Sally Tran’s Timeslow. Could one of these film-makers be New Zealand’s next award-winning export?

The New Zealand Film Festival takes place at the Barbican from Fri 1 – Sun 3 Jul. visit their website for more information.

Russian Pioneers

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0000

Russian cinema, being heir of the great Soviet film tradition, is still considered rare to the rest of the world. Despite the opening of the borders and an increased interest in Russian culture, Russian film, particularly the work of contemporary film-makers, is not easily accessible to the general movie-going public. Soviet films are often culture-specific which means that audiences without an understanding or experience of Russian culture find them difficult to understand. Many auteur directors were more concerned with artistic success than with economical success which contributed to the creation of a large number of more philosophical and poetical films that did not necessarily translate outside of Russian audiences. The past few decades has however seen a serious boost of interest in Russian cinema within the film industry. Russian film legends such as Eisenstein and Tarkovsky are well known all over the world, but a vast film history beyond this is still waiting to be discovered. In recent years, more and more Russian films have been selected to be screened at major international film festivals, win awards and gain critical acclaim.

A Short History of Russian Cinema

The Russian film industry was established in Tsarist Russia at the end of the 19th century when many Russian photographers quickly managed to learn the new craft of film-making. Initially they shot simple documentaries, with fiction films coming through some years later. In 1908 Alexander Drankov shot the first Russian feature film Stephan Razin. Film directors of that time created a quite competitive genre cinema, with a number of adaptations of Russian classics, as well as melodramas, action movies, detective thrillers and mysteries

After the October Revolution of 1917, the situation changed dramatically. A new generation of activist film-makers inspired by a dream of a world uprising of the proletariat, influenced world cinema with the novelty of their cinematic language. At that time, Kremlin ideological censorship focused on content rather than style which led Sergei Eisenstein to experiment boldly with his “Montage of Attractions” in his most famous films Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927). Their obvious political commitment has not prevented their wide popularity in the West. Open any history of world cinema and you will find a chapter on the cinema of Sergei Eisenstein and his famous contemporaries: Lev Kuleshov, Under the Law; Vsevolod Pudovkin, Mother; Alexander Dovzhenko, Zvenigora; Dziga Vertov, Man with a Movie Camera. It is worth noting that in 1919, the First State School of Cinematography in the world was established in Moscow. Alongside the “Kuleshov effect” of editing and “montage of attractions” there were more commercial films being made, such as Jacob Protazanov’s Tailor from Torzhok and Konstantin Eggert’s Bear Wedding.

The arrival of sound films in Russian cinema, starting with Nicholas Ekk’s Road to Life (1931) almost coincided with the advent of “socialist realism”. Stalin’s totalitarian regime was in a hurry to control almost every unit of the film industry ensuring all films belonged to the community as a whole, in line with the Socialist Realism ideals, with films seen as powerful propaganda tools alongside other art forms. Favorites of the 1930s were the directors who managed to not only learn the new expressive possibilities of sound, but also to create the ideological myths of the Great Revolution. Vasilyev brothers (Chapayev), Mikhail Romm (Lenin in October, 18-year old Lenin) and Friedrich Ermler (Great Citizen) managed to find favor with the regime and adapted their talents to the stringent requirements of the times; highlighting class struggles and mass repression of the era. At the same time Stalin understood that cinema repertoire could not consist of only ideological hits. Eisenstein‘s assistant Grigori Aleksandrov (Jolly Fellows, Circus, Volga-Volga) became the official King of Comedy of 1930’s, with his wife, Lyubov Orlova the main star of the screen.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, The Khrushchev Thaw, Russia’s liberalization policy, during which the repression and censorship of previous years were partially reversed, saw a sharp increase in film-making. The most prominent figure in those years was Grigory Chukhrai (Forty first, Ballad of a Soldier). However, the older generation of film-makers was in no hurry to leave. The Cranes Are Flying, a true masterpiece by director Mikhail Kalatozov and cameraman Sergey Urusevskiy, deservedly won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes festival, becoming the first Russian Film to be awarded a prize at Cannes.
The rejection of grand pomp in favor of the problems of ordinary people was encapsulated in the modest melodrama of Marlen Khutsiev’s Spring on Zarechnaya Street and Two Fedors. But the attempt of Khutsiev to reach the level of critical reflection on modernity (I am 20 years old, July rain) caused a sharp opposition from the authorities, which led to something of an artistic silence from Khutsiev. The most famous victim of censorship became a legendary film by Andrei Tarkovsky Andrei Rublev which was instantly suppressed, deemed too experimental, too frightening, too violent, and too politically complicated to be released. It is only recently that Andrei Rublev has been released fully, previously only existing in shortened, censored versions.

Notable films to come out of the 1960s period were Vladimir Menshov’s melodrama Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, which received an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and the thriller Pirates of the twentieth century by Boris Durov. It is also worth noting the sensational film adaptation of the world classic and Oscar winning War and Peace by Sergei Bondarchuk, which took seven years to complete and was released in four parts, totaling seven hours. Film critic Roger Ebert says of War and Peace: “Considering its cost and the vast effort that went into its making, such a film can be made only once in our time. The wonder, indeed, is that it was made at all”. Fortunately for the director, all his hard work paid off and War and Peace became the first Russian film to win an Oscar.

Since 1985, Perestroika, a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union made an attempt to liberalize the new communist regime which has caused the gradual weakening of the censorship oppression which was in part helped by the removal of the prohibited list of film themes and genres. Little Vera by Basil Pichul became the first Russian film which included explicit sex scenes, but unfortunately by this time, Russian cinema had lost many loyal viewers. Neither Little Vera nor the scandalous Intergirl by Peter Todorovski had been able to affect the overall situation of the decline in attendance at cinema’s caused by video distribution, competition from the revived television and intensive imports of American movies.

Russian Cinema going Worldwide

The BFI has launched a Russian film season Kino: Russian Pioneers Season, dedicated to the early Soviet classics, invcluding a screening of the originally restored version of Battleship Potemkin. As well as Kino: Russian Pioneers Season, a new Mediatheque collection has been introduced. Both the film season and Mediatheque collection are offering a unique opportunity to watch the films that were not only banned from being released in the UK previously, but also films which are significant pieces of art that shaped the whole era of great Soviet cinema. For example, The Battleship Potemkin is recognized in the world for its novel editing style and transformation from storytelling film language to a metaphorical one. Vertov’s Man With The Movie Camera had a big impact on the formation of the world cinematography. BFI’s recent Russian reflections emphasize the role that these movies still play in the world of contemporary film-making and offer its audience an opportunity to come and see that Potemkin is not only about the famous Odessa stairs.
As well as the BFI’s Russian Pioneers season, audiences looking to extend their knowledge of Russian cinema need look no further than the annual London Russian Film Festival, which was established in 2007. Its aim is to present the works of modern Russian film-makers to an English speaking audience. The festival offers Londoners an opportunity to watch critically acclaimed Russian films which have received attention in both Russia and worldwide. Previously the festival has programmed in a retrospective of classic films for the lovers of Soviet cinema, and to diversify their programme, they ensure a selection of films from fiction to documentaries to animation, will be screened.

In addition to these retrospectives and festivals, the work of contemporary Russian film-makers is coming to the fore by being screened at major international film festivals across the globe. These films are often low-budget and independent auteur works focused on the harsh realities of lower class people and everyday Russian life. For example, the recent movie Salient Souls not only received a standing ovation from Quentin Tarantino at last year’s Venice Film Festival, but also won a FIPRESCI award and Osella for Best Cinematography.

At this year’s Cannes Festival, two Russian films were competing in the Un Certain Regard programme and Andrei Zviaguintsev’s Elena received the Jury prize. Zviaguintsev is a favorite of European festivals. His debut film The Return received several awards at Venice Film Festival in 2003, including a Golden Lion. As opposed to Zvyagintsev previous works, Elena appeared to be more easily understood not only by the festival public but a wider cinema-going audience. Another movie representing Russia this year at Cannes was The Hunter by Bakur Bakuradze.

How I Ended This Summer by Alexei Popogrebsky is perhaps the most talked about Russian film of recent years. It hit Berlin Film Festival in 2010 and received a Silver Bear for Best Actor and Outstanding Artistic Achievement in cinematography. Some critics claim that it is the first time that Russian cinema has created a convergence between documentary and action films and Pobogrebsky is just one of the film-makers converging these techniques. The invasion of documentary aesthetics into the territory of fiction films, has seen a development in cinematic language, particularly within low-budget genre films coming out of Europe, which has led to positive box-office results. While making How I Ended This Summer Pogrebsky takes away unnecessary narrative commitments and as a result, it leads to a renewed understanding of the actors’ natural play and significance of the plot.

After the success at Berlin, How I Ended This Summer consolidated its achievement by winning the Best Film Award at the 2010 London Film Festival. Explaining their choice, the jury called How I Ended This Summer “the most original, intelligent and distinctive filmmaking in the Festival”. Among other Russian films presented at the 2010 London Film Festival were Silent Souls, Svetlana Proskurina’s Truce and The Book of Masters, the first Russian Disney movie, highlighting just how prominent Russian cinema is becoming in the programming of major film festivals.

The Future for Russian Film-makers

Nowadays Russian cinema is in unique position. With the collapse of the USSR at the beginning of 1990s and following the fall of the well established film state funding system, Russian film industry was facing serious problems. Among the leading representatives of the film industry there were serious disagreements as to which direction Russian cinema should take in ensuring its durability. Some argue that the heritage of ground-breaking cinema represented in the Soviet era films should be carried on; others say that film-makers should seek to develop themselves in all spheres of production by mastering the craft and pushing boundaries.

In 2009, the Russian government decided to change the financing system of the national cinema. Previously, film-makers received the main means through grants and programs of the Ministry of Culture, but now state funds are distributed through the Federal Fund for Social and Economic Support of Russian Cinema. Much of this money goes to support the projects of film companies and producer’s who are considered leaders in television and cinema distribution. This fund has existed since 1995, but it was granted a special authority and significant funding for its own projects only 14 years later. In 2010, the Fund was distributed among the eight major companies and twenty separate, so-called “Socially significant” film projects but in 2011, only seven market leaders were chosen to be granted money. In addition to this funding, a recent announcement was made by Russian media holding Sistema Mass Media and Chinese company Huawei who have created their own Film Fund. The first project of the Fund will be the film about Soviet and Russian pilots in 1950, and there are also plans to make a movie about Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. The Fund aims to strengthen the ties between Russia and China.

Interestingly, only one government-supported film, Christmas Trees by producer Timur Bekmambetov became a box office success. However, the quality of the domestically produced films does seem to be getting better and better, with it becoming clear that if a film is made to Hollywood standards, it is more likely to attract the public and make money. This growing awareness of creating a mainstream and commercial cinema alongside the auteur films which ensure Russia is still receiving widespread critical acclaim means that Russian Cinema is maintaining the reputation it created with its early Soviet era history, as one of the leading national cinemas in Europe, whilst hopefully creating a sustainable film industry.

BFI’s Kino: Russian Film Pioneers 1909 – 1957 runs from 3 – 30 June 2011 at BFI Southbank.

The Russian Film Festival in London runs in autumn. More information can be found on their website.

Low-Budget Love-in

Fri, 20 May 2011 00:00:00 -0000

In honour of Valentine’s Day, Microwave takes a look at some of the more unusual love stories emerging from the low budget sector this year.

Jean-Luc Godard once said that “all you need for a movie is a girl and a gun”. Now, apparently, all you need is a girl and a computer. This year has seen some refreshingly original takes on the traditional love story from the low budget sector, from emerging talents who have eschewed conventions of genre and gender to tell often highly personal stories.

Monsters

One of the most talked about low budget successes of the past year, Gareth Edwards’ Monsters is not your average creature feature. Edwards had the idea to make a monster movie set years after the initial invasion, when life is going on and people have become blasé about shocking situations and events. He compares it to present day Afghanistan or Iraq, where ‘it’s years later, no-one cares, it’s somebody else’s problem’. Above all, he wanted to make a monster movie where characters and storytelling superseded spectacle.

Within that frame, Monsters evolved into something between a road movie and an indie romance. ‘It became a love story… my inspirations for the film [were] things more like Lost in Translation and Brief Encounter, which are very subtle and quite poignant. It’s funny, because it was conceived as a monster movie first, road movie second, love story third, but it plays as love story first, road movie second, monster movie third.’

Monsters was put together using standard equipment and off-the-shelf computer software, for less than $500,000. With just a four person crew, the team travelled through Central America picking locations and shooting them as they found them with little or no specific plan. Edwards explains: ‘We’d see a place that looked amazing or unusual and work out what scene we could shoot there and just do it’. A veteran of creating special effects for film and TV, Edwards added in the monsters, the crashed planes and the ruined buildings retrospectively in his bedroom.

One of the keys to keeping the film as true to life as possible was improvisation. Gareth gave certain guidelines on what would happen in a scene and what character developments should be between particular stages of the story but then left the actors to it. Casting for the film was another area Edwards felt very strongly about. He wanted a real life couple for the two lead roles who would have believable chemistry on screen. Well known to the film’s producers from his role in 2007’s In Search of a Midnight Kiss, actor Scoot McNairy jumped at the chance of working with his then girlfriend Whitney Able on the project. The two got married after their experiences on the shoot.

Blue Valentine

Blue Valentine, the sophomore feature from writer and director Derek Cianfrance, displayed a similarly unorthodox approach to both the method and the moral of the traditional love story. The film, an emotional and intimate portrayal of a relationship unravelling, is a true anti-Hollywood, anti-love story. The film closes in on two days in the lives of married couple Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams), in which Dean makes a disastrous attempt to rescue their failing romance – serving only to hasten the relationship’s end. The narrative shifts back and forth in time to show the circumstances of their falling in love, and to ask: where did the love go?

Emerging alongside Winter’s Bone as one of the gem’s of 2010’s Sundance Film Festival, the film has gone to garner widespread critical acclaim and an Oscar® nod for Michelle Williams’ candid performance as the jaded Cindy. Though the film took several years to get off the ground, Williams and Gosling were attached to the film as early as 2003, and contributed their own ideas and experiences to the screenplay. Furthermore, during filming Cianfrance encouraged the pair to improvise, resulting in a painfully real love story in which the two actors inhabit their characters wholly, resulting in a deeply affecting experience for the viewer (or voyeur).

The on-screen chemistry between the two actors was heightened by Cianfrance’s unusual shooting methods. The director scheduled a one-month break between filming in which the production paid for the two actors to live together as their characters (minus the sleepovers) in a small house – creating memories, shooting home movies, having arguments. The art direction was also carefully judged to mirror the emotional journey of the characters. The ‘past’ scenes were shot on handheld super 16mm film, reflecting the physicality and youthfulness of the couple. The present was shot on two RED cameras affixed to tripods, in which long lenses were used to achieve suffocating close-ups in order to mirror the entrapment the characters faced in their own lives.

Heartbeats, Submarine

Coming soon to UK screens are two romantic films in the coming of age genre, both released this March. Heartbeats is the English title for Les Amours Imaginaires, the second feature from precocious Quebecois film-maker Xavier Dolan. Made for an estimated CAD$600,000, the hyper-stylised film is part farce, part exploration of love and obsession in which two friends, one male, one female, both become infatuated with the same mysterious young man who teases and taunts them into rivalry. Slow motion and powerful music are used to extend crucial scenes and moments.

Heartbeats premiered in the Un Certain Regard category at the 63 Festival de Cannes in May 2010, and won the top prize at the Sydney Film Festival in June. Formally a child actor, the 22 year-old gay film-maker regularly stars in his own films. For any other film, he reasons, ‘I might be told you’re too small, too tall, too young, too old. I know what I want, it’s my movie’. Dolan first attracted international attention when his first film as a director and screenwriter, J’ai tué ma mère, won three awards from the Director’s Fortnight program at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

Submarine, the debut feature from the UK’s Richard Ayoade, is another film from an actor-turned-writer/director. Based on the novel by Joe Dunthorne, it is perhaps the most straight forward of all of our low budget love stories, following 15 year old Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) through the impending break-up of his parents’ marriage and his first relationship. It has been described as Rushmore meets The Squid and the Whale. Though its quirky style is often compared to Wes Anderson, Ayoade’s own fresh touch has garnered rave reviews – The Telegraph called it ‘the most refreshing, urgent and original debut the British film industry has seen in years’. Funded in part by the UK Film Council, the film was a smash at Toronto Film Festival and sold to the Weinstein Company for a million dollars.

A long way from the traditional rom-com, these four very different films hint at the myriad ways to tell the story of boy-meets-girl. Almost all from first- or second-time directors, they also prove the wealth of talent currently residing in the low budget sector.

Heartbeats is released in selected cinemas on Friay 11 March and Submarine is released in selected cinemas on Friday 18 March.

Palestinian Film Comes to London

Fri, 20 May 2011 00:00:00 -0000

The capital recently played host to the London Palestinian Film Festival, the latest edition of a long-running initiative dedicated to confronting conventional Western understanding of Palestine today and to encourage the development of a Palestinian cinema. The London event is one of several around the world focusing on Palestinian film, with cities such as Sydney, Houston and Toronto holding similar festivals designed to connect audiences to the Palestinian narrative. Microwave takes a look at the festival and its audience, as well as the recent surge in the popularity of international film festivals in the UK.

“We have no film industry because we have no country”

The first London Palestinian Film Festival took place in 1999, organised by The Palestine Society at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). The festival provides a platform for Palestinian filmmakers from the West bank and Gaza, Israel and the Diaspora, but is open to all films about Palestine. It plays a major role in introducing Palestinian films and film-makers to UK audiences: since its inception in 1999, more than 320 works have been shown, nearly half by Palestinians.

One of the primary functions of the festival and its global counterparts is to create a mechanism to support Palestinian filmmakers and artists who have to undergo tremendous obstacles to produce their works and get them shown around the world. “We have no film schools and we have no studios,” said actor-director Mohammed Bakri in 2006. “We have no film industry because we have no country.”

Indeed, the development of a Palestinian cinema has to take into account that the nation has one of the largest refugee populations in the world. A key premise of the London festival in particular is to universalise Palestine, and to forgo the confines of a traditional “national cinema” series for an unmistakably internationalist one. By way of illustration, the 2011 event showcased 30 works by artists working in 12 different countries, across genres from video art to biopic.

The 2011 London Palestinian Film Festival opened with a UK premiere of Zindeeq, the latest work of pioneering Palestinian auteur Michel Khleifi. It tells the story of M, a Palestinian film-maker living in Europe who returns home to Ramallah to film witness accounts of the Nakba (the displacement of Palestinian citizens following the creation of Israel in 1948). It not only explores the events of that tumultuous era, but places them in context with the uncertainty and tension of present-day Palestine.

Also receiving UK premieres at the festival were Vibeke Løkkeberg’s Tears of Gaza, an account of the human impact of the 2008-09 war in Gaza; Simone Bitton’s Rachel, an exploratory essay into the killing of US peace activist Rachel Corrie in Gaza in 2003; and Mahmoud al Massad’s cutting-edge documentary This Is My Picture When I Was Dead.

The festival also contained a body of work from a new generation of film-makers. May Odeh’s Diaries enlists the perspectives of three young woman living in Gaza to bring audiences a rarely captured view of women facing a “double siege”: one emanating from the Israeli occupation, the other from the quasi religious authority that controls the torn city of Gaza today. My Name is Ahlam, from Rima Essa, is a profoundly moving portrait of mother and daughter and an exploration of strength under enormous duress as a Palestinian woman fights for her daughter’s right to receive adequate treatment for leukaemia.

On the shorts front, Abdallah Al Ghoul’s documentary Ticket from Azrael charted the efforts of a group of young Palestinian men digging a tunnel extending from Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, through to Egypt. Shot in low light and with minimal technical support, the film provides an unvarnished glimpse into the terrifying conditions and strong sense of camaraderie that characterise the life of the young workers.

Developing audiences

Dania Majid, one of the main organisers of the Toronto Palestine Film Festival, describes the event as a way “to connect Toronto audiences to Palestine and the Palestinian narrative”. This statement immediately raises the question, exactly who is this audience? With much of its budget raised by the expatriate Arab community in Toronto, the support of this group is one of the festival’s key goals.

“It is very important to keep the history of Palestine alive and to let the younger generations know about this history,” says Toronto festival Rafeef Ziadah. “Last year was the sixtieth anniversary of the Nakba, and we wanted to do something to say that Palestinians in the diaspora still remember Palestine, and that we are still fighting for the right to return.”

Nitin Sawhney, an advisor to the Toronto Palestine Film Festival and founder of the Boston Palestine Film Festival, says that the events are also a way to break the Western cycle of viewing Palestinians only through the lens of terrorism or pure sympathy. “What’s missing is what’s in between, which is everyday Palestinian lives, culture, history, love, traditions, music and everything else that doesn’t fall into those two buckets,” Sawhney says.

Similarly, Cherien Dabis, the Palestinian-American director of 2009’s Amreeka, says that her involvement in film is a response to “Hollywood and the American news media perpetuating stereotypes of Arabs”. The films, video installations and exhibits at Palestinian Film Festivals offer nuance and depth to the narratives of Palestine and the diaspora so often simplified in the West, exploring several dimensions of Palestinian identity through cinema.

A further function of the festival to consider is political. Elle Flanders, director of Road Movie, examines what she describes as “Apartheid roads” because they are only accessible to those holding Israeli identification. For Flanders, the film is part of her work to find “a cultural way to put an end to conflict and end the occupation”.

International film festivals in the UK

The London Palestinian Film Festival is not the only festival in the UK experiencing a surge in popularity. International film festivals are thriving across the country, with around three dozen foreign film festivals around the UK. Are they evidence of the British population’s growing appreciation of foreign cinema? Or are they popular because they can count on sizeable audiences of native speakers in multicultural Britain’s immigrant communities?

A recent Guardian article explored this phenomenon, examining the audiences of festivals such as Kinoteka, London’s leading Polish film festival. “At first the audiences were maybe 90% Polish,” said festival producer Anna Gruska. “Now we have long-term partnerships with various British institutions so we target the British audience much more directly.” By careful programming – mixing the best of new Polish cinema with slightly less challenging comedies, and throwing in retrospectives, shorts, exhibitions and youth events – Kinoteka is broadening its appeal, with its 8,000-strong audience approaching a 50-50 balance. The London Spanish Film Festival, meanwhile, claims 4,000 audience members of the two week event, of whom a third are British, whilst the Russian film festival’s audience stands at currently 48% Russian, 51% British.

Richard Mowe, director of the French and co director of the Italian festivals, believes that the horizons of British cinephiles have expanded dramatically over the past couple of decades. “They’re now incredibly discerning punters,” said Mowe, “very aware of what’s out there, and very aware festivals are going to be their only realistic chance of seeing a really good range of [foreign] films.”

The bigger festivals from countries with large ex-pat UK populations certainly make money, whilst others are unashamedly more grassroots affairs. Vedide Kaymak launched the London Turkish film festival 17 years ago while working at the Rio cinema in Dalston, east London. “It started purely for my community,” she says. “There were refugees, Turkish Cypriots, Kurds, Turks from the mainland – and none of them connecting. I thought a festival would be a good thing.”

Whether community-inspired or artistically minded, international film festivals such as London Palestinian Film Festival go a long way towards educating Western audiences and challenging conventional perceptions of Britain’s immigrant communities. Furthermore, that such festivals are flourishing can only be a positive contribution to the development and support of independent international cinema in the UK.

The Myth of Malick

Mon, 16 May 2011 00:00:00 -0000

Terrence Malick: one of cinema’s greatest directors and without a doubt Hollywood’s most reclusive. With his latest project, The Tree of Life finally premiering at Cannes Film Festival this week, Microwave examines the development of Malick’s unique style and cult reputation from his early low budget work to his latest epic.

Terrence Malick: one of cinema’s greatest directors and without a doubt Hollywood’s most reclusive. The mysterious film-maker has made only four films in 32 years, with a twenty year gap in between Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998). He has never had a studio photo taken, and has held only one interview in the last 30 years. With his latest project, The Tree of Life finally premiering at Cannes Film Festival this week, Microwave examines the development of Malick’s unique style and cult reputation from his early low budget work to his latest epic

Formative Years

An academic by training, Terrence Malick studied philosophy at Harvard before continuing his education at Magdalen College, Oxford. He has translated Heidegger’s “The Essence of Reasons” into English and taught philosophy at MIT. By his own admission, his transition into film-making was a somewhat arbitrary decision. “I was not a good teacher; I didn’t have the sort of edge one should have on the students, so I decided to do something else,” said the director in 1975. “I’d always liked movies in a kind of naive way. They seemed no less improbable a career than anything else.”

The director moved to Los Angeles in 1969 to study at the American Film Institute. Lanton Mills, the short film he made at the AFI, landed him some lucrative work rewriting film scripts. He is credited with the screenplay for Pocket Money (1972), and he wrote early drafts of Dirty Harry (1971) and Great Balls of Fire! (1989). After one of Malick’s screenplays, Deadhead Miles, was made into what Paramount Pictures felt to be an unreleasable film, the director moved into directing his own scripts.

Malick made his feature debut in 1973 with Badlands, a story loosely based on the 1958 killing spree of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate. Starring Martin Sheen and launching the career of the young Sissy Spacek, Badlands is hailed as the greatest debut by an American director since Citizen Kane.

The film is narrated by Holly (Spacek), a naive teenage girl living in a dead-end town who meets Kit (Sheen), a rebellious young greaser who leads her on a cross-country killing spree. Holly’s narration, describing her adventures with Kit with romantic clichés, is juxtaposed with the grim reality of Kit’s sociopathic appetite for grisly violence. Malick’s film does not attempt to explain the cause of its protagonists’ violent behaviour, focusing instead on their experience of alienation from the world they inhabit and its values. Malick believes Badlands calls to mind Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Swiss Family Robinson, all of which involve an innocent in a drama over his or her head.

Unlike his later films, Badlands stands as Malick’s most pre-planned, taut and disciplined piece of storytelling, thanks to the economy its small budget imposed. Working with a non-union crew and little money (between $300,000 and $450,000, depending on the source), Malick indicated that the actual filming of Badlands was “somewhat painful”.

His impulsive, idiosyncratic filming style alienated the crew and drove many away. “The shoot went on forever because the crew kept quitting,” said actress Sissy Spacek. “They’d be setting up one shot over here, then Terry would look over in the other direction where the moon was rising up and he’d go, ‘Let’s shoot over there!’ There were other setbacks, including the destruction of every camera on the production during a fire sequence in which in Kit (Sheen) burns down Molly’s (Spacek) family home. The scene in question is one of the most beautiful and chilling in the entire movie; a portrait of a burning house in twenty shots.

By the end of the shoot, Malick was $35,000 over budget, forcing him to take on more rewriting assignments before the picture could be edited. However, those who stayed with him on the production were rewarded with an original American classic. Badlands went on to draw rave reviews at its premiere at the New York Film Festival, leading to Warner Bros buying distribution rights for three times its budget.

Malick’s mise-en-scene

Following the success of Badlands, Malick made his second film, Days of Heaven, with Paramount Pictures for $3m. The film, which is widely recognised as one of the landmarks of 70s cinema, marked the point at which Malick really began to establish his unique approach to film-making. A tragic love story that develops on the croplands of the Texas Panhandle in the early 20th century, the film emphasises powerful symbolic imagery over conventional narrative. The cinematography was modelled on silent films, which often used natural light, and drew inspiration from turn-of-the-century American painters such as Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth.

The films of Terrence Malick are intensely visual, abounding in beautiful natural imagery. The director employs a meticulous, artisanal approach to film-making that often sees him abandon his actors to spend entire days documenting local birdlife, or grass swaying in the wind. For Days of Heaven, Malick and his lead cinematographer Nestor Almendros shot most of the film in the 25 minutes before sunset, which gives the movie its slanting light and evanescent glow. This tactic won the film the Best Cinematography Oscar®, but drove it considerably over schedule and budget. The editing process alone took two years to complete.

A phrase often used to describe Malick’s work is ‘poetic’, and when making a film, Malick regularly speaks to his collaborators in poetic images. Rather than explicitly direct the composition of the shots, the philosopher film-maker asks those who work with him to inhabit a state, a mood, or a feeling. To Martin Sheen in Badlands he said: “Think of the gun in your hand as a magic wand.” To the post-production team on his meditative masterpiece The Thin Red Line (1998), he advised: “It’s like moving down a river, and the picture should have the same kind of flow.”

Story is frequently the last thing on Malick’s mind. He feels his way into a film, perusing endless reels, finding the film later in the edit. Indeed, he is notorious for cutting actors’ performances from films in the edit room, regardless of status. Mickey Rourke and Billy Bob Thornton found their roles in Malick’s 1998 war epic The Thin Red Line relegated to the cutting room floor, whilst George Clooney (whose name appears on the films billing) has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it 66 seconds of screen time.

The Myth of Malick

Badlands and Days of Heaven established Malick as an important artist and a true legend of 70s Hollywood; indeed, he was offered a “carte blanche” by studio Paramount following the ecstatic critical and commerical response to Days of Heaven. Malick’s ensuing twenty year break from the industry following the film’s release, then, was unprecedented and bewildering – what he got up to in those years before 1998’s The Thin Red Line is anyone’s guess. It is known that he moved to Paris, tinkering away on abandoned projects including Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, and a project called Q that may be an early incarnation of his upcoming film The Tree of Life.

It is suggested by some that the beauty of Malick is in his unpredictability. Despite his unusual methods and unwillingness to participate in the Hollywood publicity circus, his word of mouth in the industry is rapturous. When asked why he wanted to act for a man nobody really knows anything about, The New World star Christian Bale replied ‘he’s such an unusual and rare bird that you want to do it”. Bill Pullman describes Malick as “genius”, whilst Sean Penn (who stars in the upcoming Tree of Life) reportedly said of the offer “give me a dollar and tell me where to show up”. Indeed, even with only four films under his belt, it is widely believed that the director has yet to make anything less than a masterpiece.

Even now that the wait for a new Malick project is closer to two years than twenty, the fevered anticipation preceding a new release has the religious quality of an ecstatic unveiling. The legacy of his wilderness years, the secrecy with which his projects are enshrouded and the sheer quality of his filmography lends his work and his persona a tantalising mystique. Brilliant, enigmatic, and undoubtedly perverse, his grand ambition and uncompromising methods continue to make him one of Hollywood’s great auteurs.

Stereoscopic 3D

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0000

From recent blockbusters and opening up to new audiences, to thinking about covering the skills base needed for such projects, is the 3D revolution really taking place? As the trend of 3D TV continues to rise, Stereoscape takes a look at its progression and gaining popularity in an ever busy and competitive technological market.

A 3D revolution?

Hyped vigorously by Hollywood studios and 3D TV manufacturers alike, the current wave of stereoscopic 3D has been hard to miss. Currently two fronts have lined up to argue whether it is just another short-lived trend or if 3D might for once stick it out a bit longer and invade the mainstream.

Looking back at film history it is tempting to conclude that 3D will fade away as it has many times before. So what will make the difference this time around?

Today 3D technology benefits significantly from the development in digital media production and distribution. New compact digital 3D cameras and rigs make production more flexible and the digital format gives us the possibility to adjust our 3D input on set as well as undertake corrections in post production. With digital we can also convert entire 2D sequences to 3D without the use of a second lens.

We have gone from red and blue cardboard glasses and bulky headgear, to much lighter models and even delicate designer 3D glasses. The promise of glasses-free 3D is hanging in the horizon, but for now only a few uses have been perfected and so far regular consumers are only benefiting from autostereoscopy in smaller handheld devices.

Sky and Virgin Media where the first to deliver 3D content directly to 3D enabled television sets in Britain in 2010. For the first time in history we have the ability to deliver and broadcast high quality 3D content via digital TV signals, on Blu-Ray disc, as well as over the Internet. Consumers can create their own stereoscopic 3D content and share it with the world on online video platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. And even here the antiquated red/cyan images are slowly being replaced by higher quality formats as users upgrade their screens.

3D Skills Wanted

Despite the progress in digital 3D technology, there is a great shortage of skilled stereoscopic 3D professionals. Jim Spencer, line producer of Street Dance 3D, has been calling for more training opportunities. More and higher-skilled experts could bring the industry to a point where costs can be controlled and quality kept at a high level, ensuring audiences enjoy the 3D experience every time. Some big Hollywood productions have been hurried through a tight 2D-3D conversion pipeline, with terrible results. Others decided to shoot in 3D at the last minute, giving no or little emphasis on the adaptation of the 2D script for a third dimension.

Script-writing is key here. Without a great story, there is no great film, no matter how immersive the 3D effect may be. Integrating depth in dramatic storytelling at script level requires that film-makers learn the 3D language.
Given a continuous drop in 3D production costs, there is now an opportunity for more and more independent 3D art house films to surface in the coming years, teaching us how 3D can speak to us as more than just a fun effect.

The Avatar Effect

Film director James Cameron is strongly advocating the use of 3D. Although Avatar arguably wasn’t known for its innovative script, the 3D certainly was innovative and the film is credited for triggering the buzz that made both industry and audiences alike believe in the attraction of 3D again.

Although human beings are by nature equipped with binocular vision, the limitations of previous 3D technologies made most of us think of 3D as a nauseating but fun gimmick and it has kept us generally fixated in front of 2D content.

Cameron, who is one of the biggest and best known stereoscopic 3D enthusiasts in the film world, has been an important player in developing new, better and cheaper production methods. After finishing Ghost of the Abyss in 2003 he publicly announced that he would concentrate on stereoscopic production from then on. Cameron has also predicted that others will follow in his footsteps, making 2D film-making obsolete.

“It took 25 years for colour to replace black and white films. The 3D transition won’t take 25 years – too many market forces are involved now”, Cameron told the Seoul Digital Forum, Spring 2010.

The jury is still out, but Cameron is not the only one excited about 3D.

Opening Up New Worlds to Audiences

German film veteran Wim Wenders says he waited 20 years for the development in stereoscopic 3D to reach a point where it became the perfect option for his portrait of choreographer Pina Bausch. Wenders wanted to take the audience beyond the stage, which he thought impossible with 2D production methods. “With 3D you share the presence and aura of the dancers. You’re really involved,” the film-maker explains.

Wenders didn’t know 3D was the option he was looking for until watching the premiere of “U2 in 3D” in 2007. He immediately put the production in motion, but then had to wait almost two years until the technology was at a standard where the quality would do the dancers justice. In an interview he speaks of 3D as the only way he could imagine making films in future. Wenders’ was especially looking forward to seeing how 3D would change his way of working with a fiction film.

Like Wenders, fellow German film-maker Werner Herzog also considers the use of 3D imperative for his documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a film exploring the world’s oldest known cave paintings. The climate of the caves is so delicate that they are only accessible to researchers for a very limited amount of time per day. Herzog and his film crew were granted unique entry by the French Government and had to be extremely creative with small handheld 3D rigs and special lights that didn’t damage the wall paintings once they were inside. Herzog successfully managed to capture the beauty and spark the imagination, with both stunning 3D images and his own musings about the artists of the past.

Pina Bausch and Cave of Forgotten Dreams premiered in Berlin in February, providing two great examples of how, with the right story to tell, 3D has the potential to be a lot more than a trick to get more revenue out of ticket sales.

Islands: Q&A

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0000

The latest release from Soda Pictures’ New British Cinema Quarterly (NBCQ) initiative is Island, a psychological drama based on the acclaimed novel by Jane Rogers. Microwave talks to co-directors Elizabeth Mitchell and Brek Taylor about their experiences working on a low-budget

The latest release from Soda Pictures’ New British Cinema Quarterly (NBCQ) initiative is Island, a psychological drama based on the acclaimed novel by Jane Rogers. Directed by Elizabeth Mitchell and Brek Taylor, the film-makers combined their diverse experience in film development and theatre to write and direct their debut feature.

Shot on an ambitiously low budget on location in the Isle of Mull, Island attracted a stellar cast including Academy Award nominee Janet McTeer, Natalie Press (Ill Manors, My Summer of Love) and Colin Morgan (Merlin). A haunting tale of retribution and redemption, Island tells the story of Nikki Black (Natalie Press), a young woman scarred by a lifetime in care who decides to confront and kill the mother (Janet McTeer) who abandoned her as a baby.

Microwave caught up with Elizabeth and Brek to find out more about their experiences of adapting their first feature, shooting on location and working to a restrictive budget.

‘Island’ is based on a novel by Jane Rogers – did you find it hard creating an adapted screenplay that complimented both the novel and the screen?

EM & BT: It wasn’t hard to compliment both novel and screen insofar as we had a very clear vision of how the story would ‘look’ on screen and how the main characters and tone would translate before writing the screenplay. However, during the course of writing draft after draft – often with assistance from Jane Rogers – things do reveal themselves as potential issues: plot logistics, character back stories and motivations (the book is all first person narrative), chronologies etc. One of the best decisions we made early on was to work out the fundamentals of the story’s and characters’ ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ as this informed what we did and didn’t take from the book.

What advice would you give to writers looking to adapt a novel into a script – what is a good starting point?

EM: The novel has to grab you and not let you go. You will be with the bloody thing for years, so make sure it keeps your interest! Having a good relationship with the author (where possible) is also key.

Island seems to have dark elements of the psyche at play. What drew you to adapting this novel for your feature directorial debut?

EM: For me, it was the idea that a woman the same age as me could feel such anger and rage towards someone she had never met. It was a challenge to enter, and sustain, a world like that.

BT: And for me it was the power of the landscape and its unnerving relationship with the characters. I was fascinated by the idea of using landscape as a character to help tell the story.

As co-directors, how did you find working together and is there any advice you can give to film-makers in a similar situation?

EM & BT: Love it! We broadly split the work between script/actors/performance with visual/camera/edit but there is a constant dialogue between us, like an automatic sounding board. There is also no ego to get in the way as you both want to do what’s best for the film in the circumstances. And it’s definitely more fun sharing the work load, as it frees your head up to think about and get excited by possibilities (which, when on set, being asked 30 questions a minute can prove tricky).

What were your stylistic influences in making the film?

EM: Movies like Les Diabloliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955), Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973), The Return (Andrei Zvyagintsev, 2003) and Keane (Lodge Kerrigan, 2004) were big influences in their depiction of paranoia and tension. Whilst we worked in collaboration with Scottish landscape artists and the amazing illustrator Orly Orbach which influenced the palette and lighting.

BT: We liked the idea of an isolated, timeless island removed from reality and brutally disrupted by our heroine, so we researched thoroughly fairy story themes and imagery like Angela Carter and Hans Christian Anderson. Our artist collaborators’ work helped when we were storyboarding and Orly’s work in particular resulted in the animation sequences that book end the film.

What opportunities did filming in a remote location offer you?

EM: Opportunities?! Challenges are probably a more appropriate word. But seriously, shooting on a remote island in the middle of winter had a profound effect on cast and crew – almost like some kind of communal sensory exercise. There were single track roads only, no mobile phone signal, intermittent ferries and a lot of empty space. All perfect for the film.

BT: The space and ever-changing light were perfect and enabled us to create a story world removed from reality. Speaking of which, returning to London from Mull was weird, and neither Liz nor I used the tube for a week as the lack of space freaked us out!

As a low-budget film, what were some of the ways you created funding?

EM: We ran an Enterprise Investment Scheme for investors, friends and family with no minimum spend so people weren’t intimidated to chuck anything in; we approached every last regional screen agency time and time again for cash or support in kind at every step of the film’s process (including festival funds); we asked for in-kind support from bigger facilities houses like camera and lighting; we kept returning to the bigger potential investors with updates – (stamina is really important!)...we cajoled, begged, and borrowed on credit cards…The usual.

BT: One quick and effective tip is to hold a night when you screen your work and present to potential investors your finance plan. We asked ours to bring along their investor friends so there was a supportive crowd, and if you can ply them with free drinks, all the better!

What were the main challenges of working on a small budget? Would you have done anything differently on a larger budget?

EM & BT: Island had two shortish principal photography shoots with almost a year’s gap in between because we ran out of money. We learnt a lot from the first shoot and implemented our hard won knowledge for the second but even so, it was a tremendously stressful time.

Departments also have to work in challenging conditions and with less equipment than they would usually require, accommodation is basic, hours are long and it’s always a 6-day week. You rely a great deal on goodwill which can run out fast if you don’t respect each other. Managing everyone’s expectations is key.

A larger budget would have meant more time, more people and less compromise.

What would your advice be to film-makers looking to move from short to feature low-budget films?

EM & BT: Choose a project you can stick with for YEARS. Also, unless you are unbelievably lucky, it is very unusual to be offered the opportunity to direct, you will have to make it happen yourselves. Don’t just write, or direct, or produce…learn how all the roles work. And don’t give up.

What is your experience of gaining distribution for a low-budget film?

EM: Strangely, it was quite straightforward for us, as Soda came on board before we even shot Island, following some meetings with Ed Fletcher and the team in Cannes. Having said that, we had worked very hard to present the project in a well-thought-out way: knowing our audience, emphasizing the benefits of Jane Rogers’ market, a script that would appeal to high end cast, a budget that made sense, personable filmmakers…! Our biggest piece of advice would be not to expect to get one early on, but to keep them posted on developments so they feel they’re ‘tracking’ its progress through to delivery. A couple of high-end cheerleaders also helps. Chris Paton at Fortissimo and our exec Anne Sheehan are ours and their support, spreading good word of mouth was much appreciated and invaluable.

What next?
EM: We are building up our slate of features and taking ISLAND to as many festivals as we can. I’ve just finished a WW2 epic screenplay about the Bismarcks, and we’re about to start on My Soviet Kitchen, a rom com set in 1994 Moscow, with Zephyr Films (The Last Station).

BT: We’re also holding workshops and Q&As galore as we’re very keen to share with film-makers what did and didn’t work for us. We appreciate every film has different needs, but there are some basic tips we feel it’s imperative to pass on. Come!

Island will have its London Premiere on Monday 25th April at the Curzon Renoir. Email info@tailormadeproductions.com to find out about any future Behind the scenes talks.

The NBCQ initiative is designed to nurture British film-makers by taking original and distinctive films from the major festivals and touring them to reach audiences around the UK. Past films released as part of NBCQ include Bifa-nominee Brilliantlove and Michael Powell Award Winner Skeletons. You can find out more about New British Cinema Quarterly on their webpage

Kelly Reichardt: The Female Perspective

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0000

Meek’s Cutoff, the fourth feature from American director Kelly Reichardt, is a significant film in a number of ways. Microwave looks at Reichardt’s career progression, and casts a spotlight on female film-making.

Meek’s Cutoff, the fourth feature from American director Kelly Reichardt, is a significant film in a number of ways. It is the most ambitious work yet from a director who has won acclaim for her minimalist narratives, executed as much as possible outside of the film business and on micro-budgets. It is a radical film in that it redefines the conventions of the American Western by prioritising the female perspective in a genre built on swagger and machismo. It is also the latest in a series of refreshing, innovative releases by female film-makers to receive international recognition against a backdrop of depressing statistics concerning female involvement with the film industry.

Early work

Though her name is not well known to the British cinema going public, Kelly Reichardt’s intimate character studies and narratives of the road are amongst the most accomplished films to emerge from independent American cinema in recent years. Her measured, minimalist aesthetic has won critical acclaim and awards success since the release of her first film, River of Grass, which was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 1994. Her second feature, Old Joy, was similarly well received, winning the Sarasota Film Festival Jury Prize, the Rotterdam International Film Festival Tiger Award and the Los Angeles Critics Association Independent Film Award.

Old Joy is the story of two friends, Kurt (Will Oldham) and Mark (Daniel London), who re-unite for a weekend camping trip in a forest near Portland, Oregon. The movie was shot in less than two weeks on a budget of $30k. Rather than being a limitation, the minimal budget was a positive choice. “I tried hard to keep the film-making from being distracting. By keeping the apparatus very small, it was invisible to us when we made the film. It’s just six people in the woods. We tried to create a place and an intimacy in the film-making where [the actors] would feel comfortable to respond accordingly as they started figuring out who these characters were”.

In much of Reichardt’s work, restrictions of budget are turned on their head to serve the film and add to the fragility of the story. She actively operates within the lower-budget spectrum, finding it more conducive to both her film-making aesthetic and her personality. “I don’t enjoy a lot of film business, so I’m just trying to make films outside of the industry as much as possible,” she confesses.

There were 12 years between Reichardt’s first two features, River of Grass in 1994 and Old Joy in 2006. The break was a result of difficulties that the director ultimately puts down to old-fashioned sexism. “I had 10 years from the mid-1990s when I couldn’t get a movie made,” Reichardt said in a recent interview with The Guardian. “It had a lot to do with being a woman. That’s definitely a factor in raising money”.

The facts are undeniable. A study of the top 250 grossing films in the United States in 2010 found that women accounted for seven per cent of those films’ directors, ten per cent of their screenwriters (83 per cent of them had no female writers), 24 per cent of their producers, 18 per cent of their editors and two per cent of their cinematographers. In the UK in 2009 (a banner year for female film-making), 17 per cent of films were written and/or directed by women.

Disillusioned but not deterred, the director returned to making short films on Super 8, such as 1999’s Ode, also shot in Portland. “There’s something great about having privacy when you’re making a film… it’s good when there aren’t any extra hands in the pie and no one is imposing false deadlines on you”. A further benefit of working on such a tiny scale is that no one gets involved unless they’re into it for all the right reasons. Reichardt cites the example of Michelle Williams, with whom she worked on both Meek’s Cutoff and an earlier film Wendy & Lucy, who despite her A-list credentials will do her scene and then assist in carrying props and set decoration wherever they need to go.

American landscapes and female perspectives

Wendy & Lucy, released in the UK and US in 2008, was the film that began to bring Reichardt’s work to public attention. The film is centred on the escalating hardships of Wendy (played by Michelle Williams; Lucy is her dog) whose car breaks down in a rural Oregon town en route to a well-paying summer job. Presciently arriving on the heels of global economic decline, the film showed how seemingly minor setbacks can lead to devastation. The harsh beauty of the rural American North West is a fitting backdrop to this spare, contemporary tale.

American landscapes are a key theme of Reichardt’s work. In Meek’s Cutoff the director returns to rural Oregon, but this time the setting is the stark, arid world of the 19th century Portland-Oregon pioneer trails. The film is a modern take on the American Western, combining the cruel desert landscapes with an intimate survival drama. In an unusual take on the genre, the film’s point of view is aligned with its female protagonists.

The year is 1845, the earliest days of the Oregon Trail, and a wagon team of three families has hired a mountain man, Stephen Meek, to guide them over the Cascade Mountains. Claiming to know a short cut, Meek leads the group on an unmarked path, only for the group to become lost in the dry rock and sage. When the stranded settlers meet a Native American wanderer, they are torn between trusting their own guide and taking a leap of faith.

The Western is historically an extremely masculine genre, a world of cutthroat bandits and whiskey drinking sheriffs. Woman are usually the objects, relegated to the bar or whorehouse. Though there have been a handful of westerns that have tried to address this, for example Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead (starring Sharon Stone as a deadly sharp shooter), and Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar, in these films the women are merely shapely versions of the macho anti-heroes on which the Western is built.

Researched from original diaries of women on the pioneer trails, Reichardt’s film challenges this genre convention by prioritising the female perspective. “I was just wondering what it would be like for a woman on the outside watching all that macho posturing,” said the director of her inspirations. “When you read these accounts you see just how much the traditional male viewpoint diminishes our sense of history. I wanted to give a different view of the west from the usual series of masculine encounters and battles of strength, and to present this idea of going west as just a trance of walking.”

The film’s framing reflects its feminine gaze. While the men are off making decisions the camera lingers with the women as they go about their arduous daily routine of collecting firewood, darning clothes and preparing meals from their meagre supplies. This focus on day-to-day struggles was a device first explored by Reichardt in Wendy & Lucy, in which the drama comes from Wendy’s quiet desperation – there is no cataclysmic event that brings her to breaking point, but rather a series of small but ultimately devasting events. In Meek’s Cutoff, too, the pacing is slow, the tension building as the women have no choice but to follow their men over an uncertain horizon.

Despite her recent explorations with gender and history, Reichardt denies that she is a feminist film-maker. “I just think that it’s important that not all cinema is shown from a white, male perspective,” she clarifies. “Do we have to absolutely label it as something specific as opposed to being a different voice?”

A renewed spotlight on female film-making

It is true that recent months have seen a series of high profile releases from female film-makers, shining a spotlight on women’s film-making on a global level. Winter’s Bone, Debra Granik’s 2010 film about an unflinching young girl (played by Jennifer Lawrence) trudging through dangerous social terrain in rural Missouri as she hunts down her missing father won both the dramatic competition Grand Jury prize and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The film went on to earn the young Lawrence an Oscar® nod for Best Actress, placing her alongside such industry veterans as Helena Bonham-Carter and Natalie Portman.

The Oscars® also celebrated world-leading filmmaker Susanne Bier’s In A Better World, a beautiful, breathtaking exploration of two families struggling to contend with grief and conflict in an increasingly violent world. The film picked up the gong for Best Foreign Language Film at both the Academy Awards® and the Golden Globes® this year.

In the UK, director Joanna Hogg has won much acclaim for her intelligent depiction of an unsuccessful family reunion, Archipelago. British female directors are also making strides in the documentary field, with Lucy Walker earning an Oscar® nomination for her feature on the lives of Rio’s rubbish-dump dwellers and the art project in which they feature, Waste Land. Meanwhile, Film London supported artist film-maker Clio Barnard brought a well-received and refreshing take on the documentary with her film The Arbor, a hall of mirrors tour through fact and fiction presenting the life of urban playwright Andrea Dunbar in which actors lip synched along to interview material from Dunbar’s friends and family.

It could be that this renewed focus on female film-makers is a symptom of Hollywood’s changing economics, in which a dearth of financing in the “squeezed middle” is resulting in an increased recognition of lower budget fare. Films made by women certainly seem to thrive in this budget level – even Kathryn Bigelow’s record-smashing Oscar® winner The Hurt Locker was made for a mere $11m. Perhaps, like Reichardt, female directors are more comfortable in the independent sector where they can retain full artistic and financial control over their project. Whether this is a conscious choice, or whether a chauvinist culture persists in the industry remains to be seen.

Meeks Cutoff is screening in selected cinemas from today

25 Years of London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0000

As the flowers began to bloom and spring arrived in London, The BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival was drawing to a close.

The LBGFF ran from March 31 – 6 April 2011. One of the largest specialist festivals in the UK the LBGFF, which has enjoyed 24 years of success, celebrated their 25th Anniversary with a bang.

BFI budget cuts meant the acclaimed festival had to drop from its usual 11 days to just a week, but with films selected for the programme shot in locations ranging from San Francisco to Berlin this hasn’t hindered the value of this electrifying event. With over 25 feature length films and documentaries, over 30 shorts, and numerous events, including a discussion with inspiring British Novelist Sarah Waters, it has been an exciting week for any lucky festival goers.

One educational event worth noting was the Absolute Beginners workshop, for new LBGT filmmakers focusing on film-making with few resources. In association with Skillset, the LBGFF producers put together a workshop in which film-makers from the festival gave advice on micro-budget filming. This advice was based on actual scenarios encountered while producing their own low budget films. Speakers included Break My Fall’s director Kanchi Wichmann, and producer Alex Thiele, among others. After exposing their personal tips and tricks on how to get past common filming difficulties, there was a discussion and Q&A which allowed new film-makers to interact with the panelists. Afterwards they held an informal networking event, which provided a fabulous opportunity for LBGT beginner filmmakers to learn and interact with the industry in a specialized way.

With the countless amounts of features and shorts, here are Film London Microwave’s Low-Budget picks for the festival this year:

Spring
Funded by Film London’s own PULSE funding scheme and filmed in London, this thrilling tale was written and directed by Hong Khaou, who has previously directed two other short films. In this nail biting short a young man gets a rude awakening when visiting an older secret lover interested in his own kind of S&M play. For the festival this year, Spring was shown as a part of the “Perhaps a Man Like You…” shorts viewing, which featured shorts representing hidden relationships and passions that may be more common than some think.

Kill the Habit
Already receiving rave reviews, Kill the Habit is a comedy blended with a lesbian love story about a spiral of unfortunate events that may prove to be too much to handle. After accidentally killing her drug dealer, Galia must work to hide the body and cover up her mistake, all before making it to her brothers Bris Mailah (a Jewish circumcision ceremony). Written and directed by Laura Neri, this is her first feature film, made on a budget of only $300,000.

Heartbeats
With just $CAD600, 000, Heartbeats was written, directed, and starred 21 year old inspiration Xavier Dolan. It is a not so classic love triangle involving best friends Francis and Marie, who find themselves vying for Nicolas, the new man in town. Passionate yet subtle love scenes riddled with humour make it an engaging battle and no-one ever really knows who’s winning the tense, unspoken competition. Dolan is the writer and director of I Killed My Mother, which has won numerous awards, including Best Foreign Film of the 2010 Cesar Awards and the Best Canadian Feature Film Award at the 2009 Vancouver International Film Festival. Having acted in over 10 titles, 3 of which he both wrote and directed, he is truly one to watch.

Break My Fall
Made with a real micro-budget of £40,000, Break My Fall is about music and love intertwined. Filmed in East London, this drama is about two lesbian lovers in a roller coaster relationship and in the same band. With a soundtrack including, Scout Niblett, Wet Dog and The Raincoats, this is an exhilarating story told through sound and scenes of passion. Written and directed by British director Kanchi Wichmann, this is Wichmann’s first feature film. She has previously worked on several music videos, documentary and shorts dating back to 1995.

Sasha
Written and directed by Dennis Todorovic, Sasha is a subtle comedy about a young man who falls for his piano teacher, despite his parents aspirations for him to marry and have a family. Tables turn when he can no longer pretend that his best friend is his girlfriend, and his family begins to discover his secret. Well-received critics, this proves to be a well-acted coming out story. Sasha is Todorovic’s second feature as a director, his previous feature Love of Fate won the Audience Award at the Dresden Film Festival.

Open
In this gender based drama non-professional actors are used to tell the raw story of two travellers in parallel cities. As they look for love, they both caught in the mess of the evolution of love, passion, and sexuality. Written and directed by Jake Yuzna, this is Yuzna’s first feature, after directing two shorts. Open has already won the Ted Jury Award at the Berlin International Film Festival for its specialization in an LGBT topic.

The Night Watch
Dated in a post-World War II era, this made-for-TV movie follows the lives of a tangled web of lesbian lovers who are all connected through their experiences during the war. Directed by Richard Laxton who has previously directed over 25 titles, including several TV series and TV movies, The Night Watch was made on a budget of £1.4 mil.

While these micro-budgeted films are sure to reach levels of success, also be on the look-out for the major films that have shown, including Gigola, a French feature about a lesbian gigolo in 1960s Paris, and the documentary We Are Here, a riveting tale of the 1980s Aids epidemic in San Francisco. Be sure to follow www.twitter.com/FL_Microwave and www.twitter.com/Film_London on twitter for updates on these festivals, and more!

The Evolution of the Creature (Feature)

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0000

According to Screenplay Guru Blake Snyder, ‘don’t get eaten’ is the main commandment for characters in a creature feature, but within the genre there is a lot more room for manoeuvre.

The creature feature seems like a fairly straightforward genre: a group of characters are at risk of appearing on the menu of a large monster which is heading their way. It can be anything from Godzilla consuming Tokyo, to a great white shark in Jaws, an Alien intent on procreating or a handsome vampire that needs blood to live. The creature feature may have strict genre rules, but as you can see, those rules can be stretched and manipulated more than the victims of The Thing.

Early Classics

The monsters of the 30s and 40s were often based on classic horror literature. Universal Studios, famous at the time for their penchant for low budget creature features, were at the forefront of the horror genre in the 1930s. Frankenstein’s misunderstood creation evoked more sympathy than horror, after all, it wasn’t the monster’s fault he was how he was. Then there was the charming Count Dracula, who seduced his victims before sucking them dry – one of the first vampires whose modern relatives are helping the Vampire to undergo a massive renaissance through the Twilight series. RKO took it further and bigger with the first King Kong in 1933. By the time The Wolf Man arrived in 1941 there had already been a Werewolf of London (1935), Frankenstein had been married and had a son and The Mummy had been tripping over many different bandages since 1932. Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi loomed large in the majority of them. Clearly this was a genre with a future – Simple, cheap, but effective – particularly when it came to bringing in the box office cash

Things from This or Another World

By the 1950s a certain amount of post-war nuclear paranoia had crept in and we were convinced that giant ants or 50ft women would appear on the horizon. Sci-fi had come to be the monster movie, spawning a whole new set of scary beasts. Them!, in which mutant ants with a sugar fetish terrorise a small desert community, is inventive – not just because of the ants themselves, but the strange sound they made as they approached; Click, click, clickety-click – an easy vehicle to create big tension.

This is the decade where the monsters could take on any form – factor in developments in space travel and splitting the atom and you had a wealth of unknown forces intent on bearing down on the human race. Godzilla, a monster created by nuclear bombs and a metaphor for their destructive powers, rampaged his way through Japan. In fact, Godzilla made so many appearances, his name entered common usage as ‘something bent on destruction’.

It is therefore interesting that such an old franchise is currently being given a huge breath of life – starting with Cloverfield’s homage to this Japanese icon. This film is a perfect example of how you can be scared to bits before the monster has even appeared – a great method if you just don’t have the money for big special effects. Shaky camera close-ups of terrified revelers can be just as terrifying as the eventual chase sequences. Witness how the shark became less frightening when it became more than just a cello in Jaws.

They’re Here

Monsters, the low budget feature debut from Gareth Edwards due for release today, cost a reported $200,000 to make, but looks like it cost a whole lot more. Though sold as a creature feature, the story is as much a love story set among monsters, but is a thrill ride all the same. It echoes last year’s hit District 9 which also dealt with aliens who are living on earth in ghetto-like conditions after landing here (or being brought here) accidently. Both films are making a deeper comment on our society, with both providing a subtext on ethnic cleansing politics – though it is less pronounced in Monsters.

Made using guerilla-style tactics, Gareth shot Monsters in Mexico with a crew made up of just himself and a sound recordist. The film wasn’t fully scripted – Gareth gave the only two actors cast in the film outlines of actionson black pages (e.g. losing passports, getting drunk) and emotions and revelations on blue pages. Shooting footage for a full seven weeks meant that Gareth came away with hours worth of footage in which the characters developed and revelations were made multiple times, giving Gareth and his editor the opportunity to decide where these emotional moments were best placed: crafting the movie as much in the edit as in the ‘script’.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect in Monsters is the seamless effects. Gareth’s experience with computer graphics meant he could undertake the special FX himself, which ensured he saved lots on his budget. See for yourself how Gareth made Monsters on such a low budget with the Best Buys Monsters Making of Featurette.

Skyline, another recent indie creature feature, cost a lot more than Monsters at $20m, but was still made as an independent feature outside of the studio system – so the film-makers could have full creative control of their vision Directed by brothers Greg and Colin Strause, Greg commented on the efficiency behind the making of the film, stating that “only about five people were making decisions”.

With a slightly bigger cast and crew than Monsters, but still relatively modest for a film with such big release ambitions, only 120 people made up the cast and crew. In some instances, crew often doubled up roles, with one of their screenwriters also working as a cameraman, as well as the animation supervisor. The majority of the film was shot on and around the Strause’s apartment building in Los Angeles’ Marina neighborhood ensuring that the film-makers saved plenty of money on location costs.

Again Skyline uses character studies and limited effects – for example, lights behind blinds on windows – to tell an alien invasion story.

Initially conceived as a low-budget genre which would draw in the crowds and the cash, the creature feature has evolved into a genre that entertains as much as it reflects on the contexts and fears rife within the time in which it was made. Monsters and District 9 have both taken the genre and given it a moral twist, a depth of story in which humans learn more from the creatures than how to run and hide, which is perhaps why they are so enduring in their popularity.

Celebrating the Contenders of Indie Film Awards

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0000

With Raindance’s British Independent Film Awards taking place on 5 December in London, Microwave takes a look at some of this year’s nominees.

Set up by Raindance founder Elliot Grove in 1998, the British Independent Film Awards (aka the BIFAs) celebrates British film-making – particularly the achievements from the independent sector – whilst helping to promote British films and film-makers to a wider public. The ceremony also honours new talent through the Douglas Hickox award, which was set up in recognition of talented debut feature film-makers.

This year’s jury is headed up by chair Duncan Kenworthy, producer of British box office hits such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually. Kenworthy is joined by a panel made up of leading British film-makers and industry figureheads including: Claire Binns, Programming Director for City Screen; Producer Finola Dwyer (An Education); Director Franny Armstrong (The Age of Stupid); Production Designer Gary Williamson (Submarine); and actress Gemma Jones (A Tall Dark Stranger).

Proving what can be said to be a particularly successful year for British films, both debut film-makers (Gareth Edwards, Chris Morris) and stalwarts of the industry (Mike Leigh, Matthew Vaughn) have receive multiple nominations.

The King’s Speech, the second feature from director Tom Hooper (The Damned United), leads the field with a groundbreaking eight nominations. Starring England’s national treasures’ Colin Firth and Helena Bonham-Carter, alongside Geoffrey Rush and Guy Pierce, the story of King George VI’s struggle to overcome his stutter has impressed both critics and audiences alike. Unsurprisingly, all four actors have been nominated for their performances, with Hooper up for Best Director. Topping up the nominations are Best Screenplay for Writer David Seidler, Best Technical Achievement for Eve Stewart and, of course, Best British Film.

Black comedy Four Lions from Enfant Terrible Chris Morris has received five nominations including Best Film, Best Screenplay (Sam Bains, Jesse Armstrong and Chris Morris), as well as two Best Performance nods for Riz Ahmed (Shifty) and Kayvan Novak respectively. Chris Morris, no stranger to controversy following his television series Brass Eye, has caused quite a storm with his on the edge comedy about suicide bombers which has also been nominated for the Douglas Hickox Award.

Newcomer Gareth Evans (_Monsters) has secured six nominations for his debut sci-fi/romance/road movie – earmarking him as a new Director to watch. Made on a rumored £200,000, this low budget film is set to be released on Friday and has already garnered a lot of column inches. Employing guerilla style film-making techniques, Gareth carried out all the effects and CGI himself. This decision seems to have paid off as nominations have been secured not only for Best Film, Best Director and the Douglas Hickox Award, but also Best Achievement in Production and Best Technical Achievement. One of the only two actors in the film, Scott McNairy, has also been nominated for Best Performance.

Another newcomer also nominated for the Douglas Hickox Award is Clio Barnard – a film-maker who has previously been supported through Film London’s Artists’ Moving Image Network. Barnard has received four nominations for her experimental documentary film based on the life and work of playwright Andrea Dunbar. The Arbor is nominated for Best Achievement in Production, Best Documentary, Best Technical Achievement and Best Performance by an Actress in a British Film (Manjinder Virk).

At the higher end of the budget scale for an indie film is Kick-Ass, Matthew Vaughn’s colourful and controversial superhero movie released early in 2010. Made for a rumored $28million, Kick-Ass took on some of the big studio films to gross $48m in America alone. Kick-Ass is nominated for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Screenplay for Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman.

Other films nominated include Never Let Me Go by Mark Romanek (six nominations), Another Year by Mike Leigh (four nominations) and Made in Dagenham by Nigel Cole (two nominations). For a list of all nominees and the full jury line-up visit the British Independent Film Awards website: http://bifa.org.uk/.. The Awards take place on Sunday 5 December 2011.

Raindance, the organization behind this annual salute to industry movers and shakers, has been supporting aspiring indie film-makers through their programme of training courses since 1992 – which have been attended by, amongst others, Matthew Vaughn, Christopher Nolan and Guy Ritchie. Access the online course catalogue to discover more at www.raindance.co.uk

Lo Budget, Hi Quality

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0000

With just one month left to apply for the 5th round of Microwave, why not check out the first three chapters of Josh Appignanesi’s Lo Budget, Hi Quality, which provides insight into translating the practices of low-budget film-making pioneers when developing your own low-budget film .

If you’re going to make a micro-budget film, don’t pretend it’s anything but that. In fact use when it is and what that means, and think about how useful it can be to let the audience know that’s what you’re doing.
- Josh Appignanesi

Microwave have enlisted director Josh Appignanesi (Song of Songs, The Infidel) to share his knowledge of low-budget cinema history, and his experience of independent film-making, to translate how these learnings can be used to develop your own micro-budget feature. This five-chapter resource is released monthly and to date, Microwave have shared the first three chapters, with the fourth due for publication next week.

In Chapter One,, Josh Appignanesi, looks at how pioneering film-makers used the technology available at the time to create ground-breaking and innovative films which allowed them to show audiences new ways of looking at themselves and change their idea of what the world could be.

Chapter Two takes us forward to the Digital Revolution of the 70s and 80s when new technologies allowed zero-budget film-makers to launch themselves into the world of film and American Independent Cinema was born. Josh touches upon the idea of ‘authenticity’ in low-budget films and how this can ensure low-budget film-makers work with, instead of against, their limitations.

In Chapter Three, Josh takes first steps into a more in-depth approach at how might you develop a premise, an idea, a style, an approach to production, an approach to directing, and ultimately a screenplay in a ‘micro budget’ way.

Next Week, Microwave launches the fourth chapter of Lo Budget Hi Quality – Developing your Premise part Two: Some Approaches, in which Josh asks “if there was a similar film to yours made for the same budget, what would distinguish yours? “And looks at how you can use genre confines whilst still breaking boundaries.

In the meantime, for those of you preparing an application for Round Five of the Microwave fund, why not check out David Morris’ (Director, Mr Right) tips on a low-budget scriptwriting.

If you are interested in applying for the Microwave fund, please visit the Film London website for more information, including the Microwave Guidelines. Deadline for Applications is Tuesday 3 May 2011.

Top Festival Picks this Spring

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0000

A round up of festivals to look forward to this spring, here are some top picks and interesting industry events.

With the year fully under way and as we say goodbye to this prolonged winter season, let’s take a look at the festivals we have to look forward to this spring..

The Birds Eye View Film Festival returns this year with its seventh offering. The launch, coinciding with International Women’s Day, the festival will run 8-17 March.

Celebrating and highlighting the role of women in the film industry in front of and behind the camera, BEV is a regular fixture on the London film festivals calendar. Spanning across three venues, the BFI Southbank, ICA and the South Bank Centre, this year’s festival looks set to continue the diverse themes taken on by women in the film industry. Live scores, events and training are intertwined amongst great programming.

South by Southwest has become a major stalwart on the independent film scene since its inception in 1994. Starting off as a music industry event, SXSW has evolved to cement its status in all aspects of media. Taking place 11-19 March this year, competition for screening time and categories are generally very tough. Those that do make it are granted exposure and brilliant networking and training opportunities – perfect for aspiring film-makers

Birds Eye View – Top Picks

Containing a BEV-y of strong contenders vying for your cinematic attention, we take a look at selected screenings which reflects the diversity of films on offer. In the Horror genre, contributions by women are celebrated with an exciting line-up with plenty of blood and gore. Part of Sound & Silents, Birds Eye View have commissioned live scores by female musicians to accompany groundbreaking work on such silent films, a true exploration of visual and aural perception.

Join FLAMIN-supported artist Gillian Wearing and some of the film’s participants for the Q&A following a screening of her innovative debut feature Self Made. Sourcing her cast from the general public, she explores the personal with often revealing and disturbing results.

The London premiere of Susanne Biere’s Oscar winning film, In a Better World has found other accolades amongst the Academy Award. A film about a family coming to terms with conflict and grief, In a Better World is a reminder of the success and high acclaim a film can reach even if shot on a low-budget. Another premiere finds itself in the form of Post 9/11 documentary, The Imperialists Are Still Alive, and a Q&A after with director Zeina Durra.

SXSW – Top Picks

Amongst the big hitters, there are names with small budgets. Super, starring the likes of Ellen Page and Liv Tyler makes its US premiere. This quirky take on the seemingly saturated super hero movie genre looks set to be well received, if accounts at the Toronto Film Festival are anything to go by. Finding critical success at Sundance Film Festival – Win Win is another which manages to find the balance between credibility on a modest budget with familiar faces (Paul Giamatti, Amy Ryan). Playing with drama and comedy, it is an example of human emotion and relationships, a tried and tested matter in all forms.

In a crowd of US films in the Narrative Features Competition, an Irish gem finds itself embedded in the line-up. Independently financed by Writer/Director/Producer Terry McMahon, and conceived on Facebook, Charlie Casanova recounts the tale of a sociopath whose morality knows no bounds. Road movie Natural Selection charts the journey of a woman who goes in search for her dying husband’s illegitimate son. Her tenacity to fulfil his dying wish is a poignant story in which she no doubt faces her own past.

Training and Industry Events

Lucy Walker, Oscar nominee for low budget documentary Wasteland, is set to conduct a Masterclass at Birds Eye View, alongside an exclusive preview screening of her new film Count to Zero. Branchage are also offering drop in sessions, no appointment necessary. In the Open Surgery, film-makers are able to come by and share their ‘work-in-progress’ short film for advice or general feedback from experienced Surgeons including Philip Ilson (Director of the London Short Film Festival), Hannah Patterson (Film writer, Time Out, The Guardian, Sight & Sound) and Ben Blaine (short filmmaker, Charlie Productions).

If you were after something more laidback and the chance to mingle, Shooting People, with BEV, are offering an opportunity for you to Meet the Filmmakers. Here you have the opportunity to observe and network over a cup of tea and some cake.

Across the pond, It may be a bit daunting when faced with a list of countless industry events, but here we have picked a handful at SXSW that may prove to be indispensable, or informative at the very least.

DIY Distribution covers the realities of the ever changing world of distribution, with industry experts discussing different strategies. With the achievements of independent films in festivals, awards and in the mainstream, Indie Success looks at how this has developed, taking into account various films for case study. Money issues and alternative ways to raise the cash for your film, Crowd-sourcing Microgrants shows you how to take advantage of the web tools that allow you to engage with your funders and keep connected. DIY Production Contracts tackles the legalities and fundamental features of the contracts when producing your film. In continuing the theme of engaging with the internet, Online Marketing Makeovers discusses the approach and importance of having in place the correct strategies and marketing tools to fully realise its potential.

And so…

Whether you’re taking your film to festivals or are an enthusiastic film-goer, do keep these dates in your calendars. The Bird’s Eye View Film Festival programming can be found here, and you can also follow them on twitter. South by Southwest may be far away, and you may not be attending, but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep an eye on the films on offer and follow on twitter.

The Rise of Aronofsky

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0000

Critically acclaimed film director Darren Aronofsky has delivered some of the most thought provoking and visually arresting films in recent years. Microwave looks at the rise of Aronofsky.

Ambitious and uncompromising in his vision, Darren Aronofsky regularly alternates between big budget and low budget films, whilst always ensuring that he has full control from start to finish. Never one to play the studio game, Aronofsky has carved a reputation as a director unafraid to challenge the status quo.

Early years

Brought up in a conservative Jewish household in urban Brooklyn, Aronofsky’s youth was defined by the hip hop culture of his surroundings. His upbringing was to play a key role in his early work. He graduated from Harvard in social anthropology and film in 1991 alongside a number of his future collaborators: his roommate Dan Schrecker later became his special effects supervisor; another friend, Sean Gullette, would go on to be the star of his first feature, Pi.

Filmed in black-and-white, Pi featured Gullette as an obsessive mathematician searching for the secrets of the natural world in the realm of numbers. It was inspired by Aronofsky’s experience with two highly disparate groups – Hasidic Jews, and a number of his acquaintances who were working the stock market – who were both in their own way trying to find order in chaos. It took him five years to raise the film’s $60,000 budget, generated in the end when Associate Producer, Scott Franklin, came up with the idea to ask every person they knew for $100 to help complete the film – with the promise that they would each get $150 in return if the film made money. Advertised in a spray paint campaign, the film became 1998’s most talked about debut, winning Aronofosky the Best Director award at Sundance Film Festival and grossing more than $3m at the US box office.

Following Pi’s financial and critical success, Aronofsky found himself at the Sundance Lab where he began to develop his next movie, Requiem for a Dream. Based on the Hubert Selby Jr. novel of the same name, the film observes the effect of addiction on a group of friends. It was here that Aronofsky developed his signature fast cutting style, coining the term ‘hip-hop montage’ to describe the technique of portraying a complex action (in this case, drug use) through a rapid series of simple actions in fast motion accompanied by sound effects. He also displayed what was to become a typically uncompromising attitude with regards his creations when he refused to remove a fleeting image of graphic sex in Requiem’s final reel, resulting in an NC-17 rating from the MPAA that restricted the film’s possible audience. Nevertheless, the film was once again a critical and commercial success, grossing more than $7m worldwide on a $4.5m budget.

Courting the studios

Despite his relative inexperience, in mid-2000 Aronofsky was hired by Warner Bros to revitalize one of Hollywood’s biggest franchises: Batman. It was hoped that the young director (and long time comic book aficionado) would return the franchise to its roots. Aronofsky wrote a script based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel Batman: Year One, but studio heads deemed it too violent and their interest waned. When the project was later resurrected Aronofsky turned it down, preferring to concentrate on an ambitious new project of his own – The Fountain.

The Fountain was to comprise three storylines told non-linearly, each separated by five centuries. The same actors were to play all three sets of characters: a conquistador and his queen, a modern-day scientist and his cancer-stricken wife, and a space traveler in the future who hallucinates his lost love. Aronofsky originally planned to direct The Fountain on a $70 million budget with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in the lead roles, but Pitt’s withdrawal seven weeks before shooting was scheduled to begin and cost overruns led Warner Bros. to shut down production.

Though Aronofsky began to develop other films, he felt closer to The Fountain creatively than any other and decided to write a “no-budget” version of the film. Warner Bros eventually resurrected the project with a much reduced budget of $35 million, with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz in the lead roles. However, critical response was damning (the movie was said to be overambitious and lacking focus) and disappointing box office returns meant that the film is widely considered to be a flop.

Back to his roots

After the failure of The Fountain, Aronofsky returned to his roots with a much smaller production – The Wrestler, developed at Fox Searchlight for $6 million. The film was a comeback movie by all accounts; both for troubled movie star, Mickey Rourke, in a jolting return to form as the forgotten sporting hero, and for Aronofsky himself. The Wrestler received awards nominations across the board and grossed $44,674,354 worldwide, making it Aronofsky’s highest grossing film to that point.

Black Swan, released this week in the UK, was similarly restrained in terms of financing. Though the initial development phase ended up taking longer than planned because no studio wanted to make a psychological horror ballet flick, the movie’s long road to financing gave lead actress Natalie Portman additional time to train for the role as a talented ballerina pushed to lose herself and “find her dark impulse” so she can fully inhabit the sensual Black Swan.

Aronofsky had a 40-day shooting schedule and just a $13 million budget. The pressures of this were telling; for example, when it came to filming the climactic performance of the four-act “Swan Lake,” they had one day to shoot each act. Mornings were spent working out lighting. Then they’d shoot the taxing ballet scenes in the afternoons and late into the evening, after which a turnaround crew would come in, strike the sets and prepare for the next day.

“I’ve never had enough money, and I’ve always appreciated it because it sticks you in a box and allows you to create within that box,” Aronofsky says. “But this time, we really did not have enough money and the box was too small for what we needed to do.”

What next?

Aronofsky has confirmed that his next project is to be The Wolverine, a long awaited foray into the superhero genre for the comic book fan. Though the decision to make a big Hollywood action movie seems somewhat leftfield given Aronofsky’s history of gritty psychological dramas, the director is keen to emphasize that his process will remain the same – he has said, “I am being hired to do what I do”. In interviews he has spoken of his desire to make something that is “very different” from the rest of the X-Men franchise, and says that the film is not be a sequel in the conventional sense, but a one-off, stand alone movie.

Aronofsky has also signed a new, two year deal with Fox under which his company, Protozoa Pictures, will develop and produce films for both Twentieth Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures. The deal solidifies Aronofsky’s relationship with Fox, who distributed both of his recent films, Black Swan and The Wrestler. Emma Watts, the president of production at Fox said of the new deal that “we take great satisfaction that Fox, irrespective of the size of his films, continues to provide a home for his extraordinary talent.”

Speaking of his decision to return to the studio route following his recent low-budget excursions, Aronofsky downplayed the abruptness of the departure. “I’ve been the only person in the room who wants to make the movie for the past five movies, and I’m exhausted by it. So I’m excited to make a movie that everyone wants to make. People think I’m crazy, but everyone thought I was crazy for working with Mickey Rourke and then for making a ballet movie. I like the challenges that come with change.”

Black Swan is released in cinemas nationwide today

The Buzz Around Gondry

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0000

Director Michel Gondry brings his own distinctive style to his latest Hollywood blockbuster The Green Hornet but for Gondry it is about freedom as much budget

Known for his visual and often surrealist style, French born director Michel Gondry has produced some of the most eye-pleasing and entertaining work in the industry today, influencing a generation of music video directors. Starting off a director of music videos, Gondry was soon discovered by Bjork and his career in the music video world took off. From the animated Lego world he created in the White Stripes video Fell in Love With a Girl to his iconic Daft Punk video for Around the World, Gondry soon carved out a niche for himself making colourful, visual videos which became early viral hits.

The enduring popularity and iconic nature of Gondry’s early work is evidenced by the DVD release which showcased his early music videos alongside his short films highlighting his whimsical, vibrant, and fascinating visuals in all their aesthetic and technical glory. Gondry straddled the line between commercial music video director and idiosyncratic auteur through his distinctive and personal body of work – which lead to his smooth transition into the world of feature films.

Thorn in my Heart

Gondry’s directorial debut Human Nature was an eye-opening experience for Gondry. Having previously had directorial control on his music videos, Gondry was initiated into a world where he had to explain himself and talk people into trusting his ideas rather than his experience in music videos where, in his own words “I just explain my idea and people a lot of times don’t understand them, but they feel, “Okay, it would be good, we trust him”. At the time of release, when asked if producers would be less lenient on his next project, Gondry responded: “I hope so. On the other hand, maybe I will be a more important person. I would have more money and less freedom. But I’d rather have 100% freedom and people who think it’s crazy. This time I think I did the movie I wanted to do, but I had to explain and talk people into it.”

Its comments like this which make us aware of Gondry’s desire for creative freedom, which perhaps explains why, having made several bigger budget films he recently went back to his low-budget roots to shoot documentary Thorn in my Heart on a mere $5k budget. A very personal film, Thorn in My Heart sheds light on Gondry’s family and provides insight into where his inspirations have come from. According to Gondry, The film was also a cathartic and positive experience – “It’s really the other side of the spectrum of film, the opposite side of The Green Hornet. It’s something that means a lot to me.”

Colourful Characters

Talking about making documentary Thorn in My Heart, Gondry said of film “You don’t get to see so much real people onscreen, it’s usually about fantasy to try to capture audience attention. To spend an hour and half with this character who is really, deeply human is really refreshing.” Famed for the fantasy world he creates in his films, it is interesting to look into Gondry’s fictional characters, characters who are often on the edge of society, gamely fighting to preserve or recapture their way of life.

Be Kind, Rewind has at its heart two characters rebelling against encroaching commercialism. Miss Falewicz (Mia Farrow) describes the re-made films as full of heart and soul and the same can be said of Gondry’s work. He knows whom he is making his films for and gives his characters warmth and an eccentricity which pulls you into their stories and makes sure you are on their side.

Human Nature looks at man as Neanderthal and how he might interact with and affect modern life. In The Science of Sleep dreamer Stéphane escapes his mundane job by mixing dreams with reality, giving Gondry the opportunity to play with two different worlds. Gondry’s next hotly anticipated release, The Green Hornet, deconstructs the super hero with his visionary stamp. And with an estimated $90,000,000 budget, there can be no doubt that Gondry will be pulling out all the stops.

Handmade Effects

Gondry is perhaps best known for his alternative reality or subconscious desire represented through his visual effects – almost as though we are inside the mind of the character. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind looks at a couple who can’t make their love work and who would rather remove all memories of their relationship altogether than cherish the beautiful moments whilst enduring the heartbreak – but even the most cutting edge brainwashing technique can’t force their subconscious to forget. Part way through the brainwashing treatment, Joel (Jim Carrey) realises the preciousness of these memories and struggles to store them in hidden parts of his brain whilst his memories are erased. Visuals such as the house they stayed in on the beach collapsing, and library books slowly disappearing are representative of him losing his battle. Perhaps the film which reminds us most of Gondry’s music video past is The Science of Sleep, which shows the true depth of Gondry’s imagination, with many of the effects mimicking the protagonist Stéphane’s childlike inventions through his dream worlds created from cotton wool, cardboard and cellophane.

Superheroes

It might seem an odd combination at first – Seth Rogen playing a superhero character instead of his usual lovable idiot, Michel Gondry directing a Hollywood blockbuster rather than his quirky hand-made indie hits. According to Rogen, for whom The Green Hornet is very much a passion project, when he approached Gondry to ‘do some of your weird people made out of string and s**t like that” Gondry responded with ‘No, I don’t want to any of that. The fact that you think I want to do that drives me crazy and makes me never want to do anything like that again.’

Rogen confirms that Gondry hates being predictable and repetitive and doing what has been done before – as soon as he starts to feel like he’s expected to do something he doesn’t want to do it at all. So it will be very interesting to see how Gondry’s style has evolved when The Green Hornet is released nationwide in cinemas today.

2010: The Year That Was

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0000

From resurgence in documentary film-making to suspense and horror, 2010 has certainly embraced a diversity of form and content in the world of micro and low-budget cinema. Amongst political and religious climates and alien monsters, no stone was left unturned. We take a look at the movers and shakers in 2010 and what we can look forward to in 2011

Microwave

The Microwave scheme saw success for its film-makers in 2010. Shifty writer and director, Eran Creevy received a nomination for the Carl Foreman Award at BAFTA for outstanding debut, as well as critical acclaim for his debut feature. Eran is currently working on his next feature, Welcome to the Punch with the same production team involved in Shifty. 2010 also saw the multi-platform release of Kolton Lee’s Freestyle. In an attempt to challenge the American market in the world of teen romance movies, Kolton tells the story of the love unfolding in the midst of freestyle basketball.

2010 also saw the development and production of a number of its greenlit films. Both documentary The British Guide to Showing Off and Strawberry Fields which shot in the summer, have been completed. With Plan B at the helm for his directorial debut, Ill Manors which also shot in 2010, and two more features (Foxglove, Borrowed Time) going in to production in early 2011, fans of the scheme should keep an eye out for more microwave films in 2011

Innovative Documentaries

2010 has seen a rise in the Documentary Film, with directors experimenting with the form more than ever. So what has given rise to this? Accessibility in technology most certainly plays an integral part in this with affordable high-end digital cameras providing physical access on location without the need for bulky equipment. Monte Hellman’s Golden Lion nominated Road to Nowhere is a key example of this, exploiting the potential of unobtrusive, high quality hand-held cameras.

British documentary film-making has proven to be as innovative and diverse as ever. Previously supported by Film London through the Artists’ Moving Image Network, Clio Barnard has received much credit for her award-winning experimental film The Arbor. Banksy’s mockumentary Exit through the Gift Shop premiered at Sundance Film Festival and was the recipient of Best Entertaining Documentary at the Grierson Awards. Gillian Wearing’s Self Made, premiered at the London Film Festival, providing a quirky take on personal fantasy and how we live out our lives through the personal journeys documented.

Waves of Controversy

Both Latin America and Iran have continued to make a splash creating personal, and at times controversial, stories. Continuing the theme of documentary film, a new wave of Latin American film-makers managed to blend fact and fiction to engage the audience by giving additional depth. Y Tu Mama Tambien actor,Diego Luna saw his directorial debut Abel screen at the London Film Festival with the film released in the UK on 7 January.

Still from Abel

Both Latin American and Iranian cinema was celebrated in 2010 through the 20th London Latin American Film Festival and the 1st London Iranian Film Festival, both in November.

With a view to bringing Iranian film to a new audience, the festival proved to be an education in Iranian culture through a variety of screenings, events, Q&A sessions and music.

Making a Killing at the Box Office

General preoccupations with the horror genre did not need to be about blood and gore to make a killing at box office. Like many other genres, horror relies on an often unknown, low key cast, keeping in line with believability, engaging with the audience in a believable way. Whether it be the ‘found footage’ technique employed by films such as Paranormal Activity 1 and 2 or first-person narrative via the protagonist in The Evil Dead, it is evident that low budget is not a barrier in innovation in telling a story.

Indeed, as the case with films such as Paranormal Activity, clever marketing is also key in the successful delivery in the consciousness of the audience and the need to continue to be innovative. The release of Paranormal Activity 2 saw it as a strong contender against the big budget studio films, reflected in the box office sales. The same can be said of mockumentary horror, The Last Exorcism, which similarly to Paranormal Activity, used a viral campaign as a crucial hook and knocked bigger budget studio releases off the top spot at Box Office

In the UK, Salvage was commissioned by North West Vision + Media micro-budget film-making scheme, Digital Departures. Directed by Lawrence Gough, this successful execution of low budget horror only serves to reiterate you do not have to compromise on quality and story-telling in order to deliver on a budget.

Festival Finds

Indicative of what is to come; festivals no doubt play an integral role in identifying and highlighting new talent as well as celebrating what more established film-makers have to offer both internationally and at home.

It was the rise of the Brits in 2010, with British film-makers thriving both in the UK and internationally. Gareth Edwards’ Monsters garnered much attention having screened at South by Southwest Film Festival, with its UK premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival. The creature feature, with its flawless special effects just goes to show just how slick one can make a film with skill on a low budget. With 6 nominations at the British Independent Film Awards, Gareth won in 3 categories, including Best Director. The BIFAs continued to highlight the wealth of talent in the British pool; others were recognised for their achievements, including Chris Morris for his debut, Four Lions and Clio Barnard for The Arbor, Industry stalwarts Mike Leigh and Matthew Vaughn both received nominations for their continuing work in Another Year and Kick-Ass respectively. The King’s Speech had similar critical success in bagging the People’s Choice Award at Toronto International Film Festival. Directed by Tom Hooper, much painstaking research went into ensuring its historical accuracy and the film-makers were paid off when the film took almost £3million in its first weekend of release in the UK.

Across the pond, Darren Aronofsky’s latest offering, Black Swan premiered at the Venice Film Festival, to critical acclaim. Starring Natalie Portman, the film is already surrounded by Oscar buzz. Post debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009, French film A Prophet was well received, going on to being nominated for an Academy Award in 2010 for Best Foreign Language film.

2010 has indeed been a challenging year in film and with money and budgets even tighter, the need for innovation has never been greater. As technology advances, low budget film-making has reached new heights and the ways in which new audiences are reached continue to be explored. Here’s hoping we see a year where boundaries are pushed even further and film-making is taken to new levels, challenging film-makers to better the last film.

Edgar Wright vs. the World

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0000

With the latest film from cult director Edgar Wright due for DVD release on 27 December, Microwave takes a look at his enviable rise from the hills of Somerset to the hills of Hollywood

“Everything that I’ve done so far has had a bigger budget than the last, but I’ve never ever felt the benefit of the bigger budget because the ideas always exceed the budget.”

Since his first super-low budget feature, A Fistful of Fingers (1994), Wright has paid homage to his roots. From zombie horror legend Sam Raimi to computer games, Wright has consistently played with traditional genre conventions to create his own unique vision. Wright doesn’t shy away from displaying his filmic influences; he exhibits his references through his ‘Homage-o-meter’ – a device which displays his directorial nods made within his films.

Spaced

Wright first gained cult status through the TV sitcom Spaced, written by and starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Hines. Spaced was unique for a sitcom of the time in its use of dramatic camera angles and movements borrowed from Wright’s love of the visual language of sci-fi and horror films.

Often modelled on the rapid camera movements and smash cut edits seen in the Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona and Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, Wright carved out his own distinctive visual storytelling style. A hit with British audiences, Spaced led to his feature film debut, also written by and starring actor Simon Pegg – Shaun of the Dead.

The Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy

Shaun of the Dead sees Simon Pegg attempting to win back his girlfriend whilst saving his friends and family from a zombie uprising. Coining the new genre type rom-zom-com, Shaun of the Dead used tropes of both the romantic comedy and Wright’s beloved zombie horrors to create a highly successful film which earned $30million dollars worldwide, becoming an unexpected hit in America. Not bad on a mere $6m budget.

Following the success of Shaun of the Dead, Wright teamed up with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost again to create Hot Fuzz, a satirical homage to over the top action films such as Bad Boys II and Point Break. Set in Somerset, home town of Wright, this rustic, rural comedy made more than $80million worldwide – securing not only Wright, but Pegg and Frost as ones-to-watch both in the UK and internationally.

The financial successes of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz have lead Wright, Pegg and Frost to team up one more time to finish their ‘Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy’ (all films feature a different flavour of Cornetto ice cream) with the long-awaited follow-up entitled The World’s End.

Hello Hollywood

According to Dave Itzkoff of the NY Times, ”the emotional yearning stirred up in certain young men — and sometimes women — by the cultural artifacts of their not-too-distant childhoods is a phenomenon that Wright is fluent in… He has harnessed it in his horror-comedy hybrid Shaun of the Dead and his action-comedy cross-breed Hot Fuzz, and used it to propel himself from a sleepy British suburb to his first big-budget Hollywood movie – Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.”

Scott Pilgrim is a prime example of Wright’s signature style, synthesizing comic-book, video-game and indie-rock influences, in yet another of his hybrid ‘genre-bending’ films. Wright’s juxtaposing of homages to animation, SFX and computer games ensures that Scott Pilgrim doesn’t isolate Wright’s current fanbase by ‘going Hollywood’, yet allows new audiences to enjoy an overload to the senses. A love story, comedy and superhero mash-up means that Scott Pilgrim can appeal to the geek in all of us.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is released on DVD in the UK on 27 December 2010. Find out more about Edgar Wright through his official website: www.edgarwrighthere.com.

Iranian New Wave

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Learn more about the history and the controversy behind the new wave of film in Iran – revealing a rich history of budding talent, as well as daring insights into this rich culture.

With a rich history and a culture filled with considerable potential, Iranian cinema was offered a new UK platform for its film-makers in the form of London’s first Iranian Film Festival. The event symbolized the birth of a new wave of Middle-Eastern talent that had waited patiently for the opportunity to share their voice within the film industry. Iranian cinema has gained global popularity over the decades and its long-awaited arrival in the UK will continue to provide well-deserved opportunities for its emerging talent.

London’s Introduction to Iranian Film
The UK Iranian Film Festival (19 – 26 November 2010)) launched a space for unknown artists to showcase their feature films, documentaries and shorts to a brand new audience. The festival hoped to enlighten UK film enthusiasts about the intricacies of Iranian cinema, while focusing on fulfilling entertainment and educational goals. Not only did the festival bring its audience screenings, Q&A sessions, seminars and exhibitions, but it introduced traditional Iranian music to viewers in hopes to help them fully immerse themselves in this rich and diverse culture.

Talent comes naturally from the depths of the Iranian film industry and some of the world’s most renowned directors have come from the Middle East, including Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Kandahar, Sex & Philosophy) and Abbas Kiarostami (Crimson Gold, the Koker trilogy). The London-based platform offered an opportunity for new audiences to celebrate such inspiring work. For example, one of the most anticipated documentaries of the festival was The Glass House, a powerful documentary about young Iranian girls struggling to find empowerment in modern-day Tehran. Many more of these films have helped to carve an identity for the Iranian people on the world stage.

Back to the Roots
Iran has risen in its global rankings, becoming a revered name according to today’s influential film critics. In the beginning of the 20th Century, early Persian cinema began with the works of Mirza Ebrahim Khan Akkas Bashi, who was appointed as the official photographer of the Shah from 1896. Since then, many pioneers have shot footage of the Persian royals, with others establishing new movie theatres across the nation, or building the first film school in Iran.

Pioneers of New Persian Cinema
Looking at the history behind Iranian cinema reveals that the foundation for a new film trend began in the 1960s, when the annual production of commercial films increased on average from 25 to 65 films. Certain domestic conditions influenced the ease at which the films were produced – intellectual and political movements especially played a large role in affecting the growth of Iranian film.

A developing romantic climate within the arts and the rise of a socially committed voice also reached a peak during the golden age of contemporary Iranian literature. Finally, the importation of different types of foreign films helped diffuse many cultures and principles among Iranian audiences. A new wave of French and Italian cinema transmitted trends throughout the nation and it wasn’t long before local film-makers followed suit.

The Film Revolution Begins
The FILMFARSI, a movement which oversaw the production of a series of Iranian films largely thought of as vulgar in content, continued to contribute to the growth of Iranian cultural cinema. The group produced films that rivalled foreign productions in its use of nudity and obscenity. As a result, three pioneering films were created as a backlash against the trend.

These three films set the stage for the rise of Iranian film: The Cow (1969, Dariush Mehrjuyee), Qaysar (1969, Massoud Kimyayee), and Calm in Front of Others (Naser Tagvaie). Kimyayee depicted the ethics and morals of the romanticized poor working class of the Ganj-e-Qarun genre through his main protagonist in Qaysar. All of these films generated a hybrid of genres in Iranian popular cinema, which included tragic action drama, and led to the introduction of alternative films. These films echoed a determination to provide intellectual content to the Iranian people.

Courting Controversy
Notable Iranian new wave directors include Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Gabbeh), Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry), Jafar Panahi (The Circle), Ali Reza Raisian (Deserted Station), Majid Majidi (Children of Heaven), and Tahmineh Milani (Two Women). Specifically, Jafar Panahi, in particular, is a talented director known for his directional debut with The White Balloon. In 2001, The Circle proved to be a confident piece that sparked controversy when it was banned in Iran: the film concentrates on the unfair treatment of women in Panahi’s motherland. Also, his fourth feature film Crimson Gold introduced a not often seen in-depth look into the way Iranians live.

The film-makers made recent news headlines when it was announced that Panahi was denied the right to attend the Venice international film festival. Earlier this year, he was imprisoned and released for his depiction of what was perceived as “anti-regime” in his latest film. The entire story created an international outcry among the world’s most notable actors and directors. The Iranian government places a strong filter system on the production of films – due to censorship laws, great Iranian films may not even be accessible within the country. Instead, the country exports these works to other festivals and nations around the world.

Interestingly, Iranian audiences still demand the right to better quality products, especially as they continue to learn more about the film industry from a consumer’s perspective. After the initial new wave in the 1960s, the public began to realize the process behind film-making and became further educated about the role and power of the director. During the late 1970s, many writers and intellectuals also began to seriously consider adapting their revered works for the screen. Whereas previously, people believed literature and drama were the only true forms of art, there has definitely been a positive shift in attitude.

Perspectives will continue to change, the growth of the Iranian film industry will persist and hopefully long may an international audience gain a greater insight into the identity of the Iranian culture through the moving image.

Is Documentary the New Fiction?

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0000

With advances in digital technology lowering the barriers to entry, hosts of film-makers are exploring the form in new and subversive ways.

Are we experiencing a golden age of documentary? Hussain Currimbhoy, curator of Sheffield Doc/Fest certainly thinks so. “There is a definitely a new energy out there. We are living in a moment when film-makers, and young film-makers in particular, are increasingly turning towards documentary as a way to make sense of the world they live in.”

Do-It-Yourself Documentaries

Behind the rise of the documentary is the coming of age of affordable high-end digital cameras like the Canon 5D Mark 11 and Canon 7D. Essentially stills cameras, these digital SLRs are capable of filming in High Definition for up to 12 minutes – longer even than the standard 35mm reel. You do not need a permit to film with these cameras, making them perfect for impromptu shots or filming in areas where permission is difficult to obtain. Two recent documentaries on the war in Afghanistan have utilised the Canon 5D to this end: Obama’s War for PBS and Danfung Dennis’ The Battle of Hearts and Minds. Elsewhere, cult film-maker Monte Hellman’s Golden Lion nominated feature, Road to Nowhere, was shot on the 5D – once again demonstrating its theatrical potential.

With the tools needed to make a documentary now available in a much more democratic fashion, the pool of potential talent is widening and becoming ever more diverse and global. Documentary is flourishing in the Middle East, where a vibrant community of film-makers is emerging, made up of people who need to tell their stories who can suddenly afford to do it on film. The Sheffield Doc/Fest made the Middle East a particular focus of the festival, screening low budget docs about life and politics in the region including Hope (Rodi Yüzbasi), 12 Angry Lebanese (Zeina Daccache) and Fragments of a Lost Palestine (Norma Marcos).

Quite apart from the advances in camera and software technology, YouTube and the proliferation of social networking have made it possible for just about anyone to get their story heard. Kevin MacDonald, director of The Last King of Scotland and Touching the Void is currently working on the first feature-length documentary to be made entirely of user-generated content. Made up of footage shot in a single day by contributors from 190 countries and then uploaded on to YouTube, the film (called Life In A Day) is an exercise in crowd sourcing on a grand scale. It is currently being edited down from 5,000 hours of footage and will premiere as a three-hour documentary at next year’s Sundance festival. The experience, MacDonald says, has been groundbreaking, not least because the participants are often showing incredibly intimate things that you could not get in a traditional documentary unless you spent months filming. What is also interesting is the sheer potential of Web 2.0 for film-makers and story-tellers; as Annemarie Dixon-Barrow puts it, if there were a thousand stories in the naked city, how many more are there in the networked world?

Breaking with Convention

Alongside the surge in campaign films and real-life stories made possible by the increased availability of cheap technology, there are also a host of smaller, stranger documentaries being made – many of which seem to push the boundaries of the form almost to breaking point. An event at this year’s London Film Festival (British Film: Breaking With Convention) focused on the new British films which are taking documentary to the next level, challenging the conventional notion of narrative and documentary form and merging fact and fiction in interesting ways.

Robinson in Ruins, the long awaited sequel to Patrick Keiller’s two ‘90s films London and Robinson in Space, is the third in a trilogy of metaphorical explorations (and critiques) of British society. The work purports to be constructed from footage recorded by Keiller’s fictional alter-ego, the peripatetic researcher Robinson. Striking images of nature and marginal sites (military bases, opium fields, lichen growing on a traffic sign) are paired with a narrator (Vanessa Redgrave, assuming the role of the previous narrator’s former lover) who recounts Robinson’s progress through the south of England and his musings on, among many other subjects, agriculture, architecture, the collapse of late capitalism and the extinction of the planet.

John Akomfrah’s The Nine Muses is another cine-essay merging documentary and poetry on the themes of memory and migration, using BBC archives as a starting point to explore attitudes, assumptions and understandings about life in the West Midlands during a key moment in Britain’s immigrant history. Akomfrah has used the nine Muses of Greek mythology (Epic Poetry, Tragedy, History, Music, Sacred Song, Astronomy, Comedy, Erotic Love and Dance) as an ordering device for nine tone poems which explore each theme as it relates to migration, and interweaves archival footage with contemporary ‘portraits’ of Birmingham and a remote snowy landscape. His intention is also to question memory and suggest the possibility for endless re-interpretation of historical events.

Still from The Nine Muses

A common thread between both of these films is their concern with representation and their attempts to engage the audience by reminding us that what we are watching is a construct. Equally remarkable in this respect is Clio Barnard’s innovative new film The Arbor, an almost-documentary which takes a series of interviews with friends and family of the playwright Andrea Dunbar (the writer of Rita, Sue And Bob Too, 1982), and presents them as a fictional piece, with actors lip synching to the interview material. The film is a hall of mirrors tour through fact and fiction, with Kevin Costigan (who played the eponymous Bob of Rita, Sue…) starring as one of Andrea Dunbar’s lovers and Gary Whittaker, an actor who went to school with Dunbar, appearing as himself. In part this is a device to protect Dunbar’s daughter, who was imprisoned for manslaughter and now lives under a new identity. It is also an interesting example of how in today’s world all human life can now be reassembled or even reinvented by contemporary film-makers.

The Blurred Line Between Fiction and Documentary

Documentary is essentially structured reality. The only real breaking point is when documentary actually becomes fiction. The ever blurring line between reality and artifice is becoming a key theme of many documentaries being made today, including some of the most high-profile – consider I’m Still Here, which purported to document the breakdown of actor Joaquin Phoenix and his transition from the acting world to a career as an aspiring rapper. Phoenix remained in character throughout the filming period, including a famously incoherent appearance on the David Letterman Show in early 2009. The fact that the events of the film had been deliberately staged was not disclosed until after the film had been released. According to Phoenix, this incredibly elaborate hoax arose from his amazement that people believed reality television shows’ claims of being unscripted. By claiming to retire from acting, he planned to make a film that explored celebrity and the relationship between the media consumers and the celebrities themselves.

Another film exploring similar territory is Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s Catfish, a film about narcissism and self-delusion in the social networking age. It chronicles the odd relationship between a hip New York photographer (film-maker Ariel’s brother Nev Schulman), and Abby, an eight-year-old who sends him a painting of one of his published photographs, and her beautiful sister who flirts with Nev through texts and email. As the Guardian reported, almost everyone in the film seems to live lives that are mediated by the grammar of reality television and docu drama – they know how to act on camera and how to emote formally, whilst real feelings are hidden. As a result, the film says more about the emotional shallowness of the culture it documents than may have been originally intended.

There is a sense in the world we live in that grand narratives are gone and that people are now living in an age of uncertainty, and documentary increasingly reflects that, says the film-maker Adam Curtis (It Felt Like a Kiss). That is perhaps the reason why the boundaries of documentary are currently being stretched – to keep up with the increasing unreality of the real world.

The Rise of the Theatrical Documentary

Catfish has made more than $3m from its $250k budget and is number six in the top 50 grossing documentary films of all time released in 2010. Perhaps the reason that documentaries are doing so well theatrically, now more than ever before, is that fiction films are using the ‘look’ of documentary. From horror movies taking a cue from Blair Witch’s ‘found footage’ aesthetic such as Paranormal Activity to Gaspar Noe’s first person POV in Enter the Void, a number of dramatic films, studio and indie fare alike, are borrowing from documentary practices.

When the Academy’s Best Picture list was extended to ten nominees last year, one of the potential bright sides was the new opportunity the Oscars had to include types of films that rarely made the big line-up: foreign language films, animated films and documentaries. No documentary has ever been nominated for Best Picture, and indieWIRE suggests that it will probably take a cultural phenomenon (a box office smashing Michael Moore-esque campaign film or a March of the Penguins) to do so. From examinations of artistic and popular culture (Exit Through The Gift Shop), to unique explorations of challenged nations and communities (The Red Chapel, Last Train Home), to thorough discussions of the economic crisis (Inside Job, Collapse), to worthy additions to the canon of docs themed around war (Restrepo), 2010’s docs have offered seemingly endless examples of the genre’s possibilities. It would be a shame if such a watershed year for documentary didn’t find representation on Oscar’s big ten for 2010.

Lukas Moodysson: Talking About the Mammoth in the Room

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0000

The recent phenomenon around Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy novels has exposed Sweden’s dark underbelly, but one experimental film-maker has been exploring similar territory for several years.

Lukas Moodysson, the Swedish enfant terrible whose latest film Mammoth releases in UK cinemas today, regularly takes on the challenging, unpopular and often unglamorous subjects of sex-slavery, small-town bigotry, the negative side of globalisation and spousal abuse. However, he does so without ramming the message down your throat, instead using his eye for character detail and the words that are not said to get his message across.

Playing with Traditional Narrative Structures

Mammoth is Moodysson’s return to narrative form after the more experimental Container (2006). With the marked difference in their narrative approach you would think these character studies would be polar opposites, but through Moodysson’s unique vision they are remarkably similar. The latter manages to follow the disjointed exploits of a tubby, belligerent cross-dresser, the container of the title filled with a haunting voiceover of Jena Malone. The protagonist thinks with the voice of a vulnerable teen and the film is completely lacking in any narrative structure. However, Moodysson actually manages to turn this dislikeable protagonist into a sympathetic character. As with Container, Mammoth deals with characters that you would not instantly empathise with, in this case the rich, materialistic white New York have-it-all family, who can’t seem to see outside their own ‘luxury loft’ box. Again, Moodysson manages to give them depth, without using histrionic overacting.

Character Studies across Continents

Moodysson specialises in introspective characters in all of his films and challenges issues usually only covered by documentary film-makers. He uses the same style as fly-on-the-wall film-makers such as Nick Broomfield ? hand-held cameras, natural lighting – to tell fictional stories that could have been covered by those same documentarists.

Moodysson’s third feature film, Lilya 4-Ever (2002), dealt with the kidnapping and sex slavery of a young girl from the former Soviet Union to his native Sweden. Abandoned and ignored by those who should protect her and exploited by those who are all too ready to do so, it is an extremely low-budget film and it pulls few punches. Strangely, Oksana Akinshina who plays Lilya looks like a younger Michelle Williams, the aforementioned rich mother in Mammoth. The haunted look and desire for more from life are the same, and they are subjects Moodysson specialises in.

Mammoth is Moodysson’s first big-budget film which was shot with a reported $10 million. It also spans different countries which suggests that most of the spend went on location shoots, from New York to Thailand and The Philippines. The actual story is told in his customary claustrophobic close-up style, meaning that the characters cannot hide their faults nor their feelings.

Taking on the Critics

Since his debut feature, Show Me Love (1998, originally titled Fucking Åmå, Åmål being the aforementioned small town), Moodysson has been a bit of a critic’s favourite. However, Mammoth was booed at the Berlin Film Festival last year. In his own words he says “This film is about families. It’s about parents and children and how we behave towards children, our own and other peoples. It’s about how all of us on this planet are connected with each other, whether we like it or not. And how we need each other.” The film moves at a slow pace, and not much seems to happen, which may explain the negative response, but it is an interesting film which tackles the perils of globalisation in an intelligent way.

Moodysson has achieved popularity with audiences Åmål had to take on the behemoth Titanic at the Swedish box office and held its own ? and one of his peers, Ingmar Bergman, called Åmål a masterpiece from a young master. But his experimental films, including Container and A Hole in my Heart, have not won him many friends. Moodysson himself talks of his lack of favour. “Sweden’s a very small country and it’s very easy to be disliked,” he told Sight & Sound in 2001. “I suppose I’ve criticised other directors and the general climate of the industry in a way that’s not always been polite, but I think it’s important to express your feelings. Then there are little jealousies because I’m successful.”

Moodysson’s second film, Together (2000), is said to be influenced by Bergman. It looks at what is commonly thought to be the idyllic, liberal lifestyle of a commune, but shows how that just isn’t the reality. The characters constantly argue and exploit each other. Cryptically though he describes his inspiration for Together as wanting “to make a film about people who had beards. And then it turned into something.”

His scripts are also strangely prescient. In Together one of the left-wing hippies tackles a part of the system that is today’s bête noire, the banks. “The bank has some power” says the bank manager’s son, “but if everyone took out all their money the system would probably collapse”. Fighting talk indeed.

Swedish Support

The small production house Memfis has been behind all of films, including Mammoth, as has the Swedish Film Institute through Film i Väst – the regional resource and production centre in the North West of Sweden. Film i Väst co-produces half of all feature films made in the country every year, including those by Moodysson’s Danish contemporary Lars von Trier.

The support of such bodies is important since Moodysson does not shy away from significant issues, but treats them in an extremely humanist way. Sex tourism is a big issue in Mammot _which harks back to Lilya’s story. With Lilya he knew he was tackling a contentious issue. He identified an injustice – human trafficking from Eastern to Western Europe – and made a film about it that does colour coat things. When the film came out he arranged for copies of the movie to be sent to women’s groups in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, and appeared on public panels to discuss the issues raised by his film. He highlights the issues, but at no point does he pretend that he knows what should be done about it. As a film-maker, that is his job.

A Mann Made Feature

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0000

An avid film fan from a young age, it seems like Scott Mann has finally hit the big time with the impending release of his first feature – The Tournament.

Scott Mann’s work is seemingly defined by the darker side of life. From his award-winning first experimental short film (The Sneeze, which was shot in the comfort of his own kitchen), his visual style has hinged upon the gritty and raw. Establishing this strong on-screen tone early in his career appears to have put the determined director ahead of the game, as he has just witnessed the release of his first feature film – The Tournament. However, his path to success has been a particularly long and winding one.

After winning the National 48 hour Film Challenge and Best Short at the London Sci Fi Awards 2004 for Chaingangs – a clever short film about a sceptical businessman who ignores an ominous chain email and has to suffer the consequences – Mann was offered a director’s job by Granada TV executive. He was only 17. While attending Teesside University in Middlesbrough, Mann and his friends and frequent collaborators, Jonathan Frank and Nick Rowntree, came up with an idea for a film about a group of the world’s most psychopathic and brutal assassins who take part in a deadly tournament and must kill, or be killed. This was eventually to become the synopsis of The Tournament – Mann’s first foray into the world of feature film-making.

A Short Approach

Looking back at the making of The Tournament, Mann said that the process was “always troublesome” and at times even “a nightmare”. He added: “Everyone says that! And in the early days I would shrug it off as a bit of ball breaking… But it turned out to be true. Oh. So. Painfully. True.” Inspired by Joel and Ethan Coen’s approach to their making of Blood Simple, Mann decided to make a test trailer and have the script for The Tournament completed before the Cannes Film Festival.

The trailer received positive reviews at Cannes and even secured a producer, Keith Bell, and an international cast consisting of well-known actors including: Robert Carlyle (28 Weeks Later), Ving Rhames (Day of the Dead) and Kelly Hu (X-Men 2). Mann remarked: “I focused shooting only what we needed to see – the vital snips of low tech action that when pieced together would create an illusion of something much bigger. It seemed to work and ultimately I carried that same concept forward to the feature film itself; trying to be extremely efficient, shooting only what was needed- always ‘putting the money on the screen’.”

Highs and Lows

Hopes were high and it looked like the project was ready for take-off. Unfortunately, the production ran into problems not uncommon in the independent film landscape. “An industry veteran recently pointed out that ‘normally most productions suffer one type of catastrophe – a star being fired. Money drying up. Big lawsuit. Murder, etc… One major event that defines the production of the film,” Mann said. But, it seems, with The Tournament, they literally had everything go wrong. After running out of money twice (which left Mann stranded in Bulgaria), and enlisting a new cast, the production finally received enough funding to finish filming.

The Tournament was chosen to open the 2009 Screamfest Horror Film Festival – a choice indicating that Mann had managed to successfully pay homage to films from his childhood, such as Battle Royale and Terminator 2, which played an influential role in shaping him as a director. After a limited DVD release in the US, Mann was delighted when The Tournament was picked up for distributors in the UK. “Once you deliver a film all you get is snippets of information and you are not involved in its distribution, so I had no idea if it was coming out on general release in UK cinemas,” he said. “Then the other week I was stunned, over the moon, to see a trailer for my film when I was at the Odeon in Manchester… It was fantastic. It was really weird because I have waited so long for it to come out in the UK. I was getting to the point where I thought the release may never happen.”

All Out Action

In The Tournament, a violent and often gory action film about a group of assassins who must kill or be killed, Mann succeeds in downplaying the clichés of the genre: the extravagant use of special effects, unnecessary camera tricks and slow-motion. As evidenced by the absence of CGI effects and “the fresh spectacle of real action” which Mann said helped to “capture something real, as opposed to recreating something from a technician’s head”. In veering away from the excessive use of CGI, which plagues most big budget action flicks, The Tournament manages to provoke, shock and entertain, in a refreshingly candid, no-frills manner.

Mann’s roster of forthcoming projects runs along the vein of sci-fi and action. His production company, Mann Made Films, will be teaming up with The Works International, to make The Drought, an environmental horror film set in a post-apocalyptic world. Mann is also set to direct the $20 million adaptation of Balefire in true Hollywood fashion – it seems the low budget director managed to get his happy ending after all.

The Tournament is screening all week at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square.

Celebrating British Talent

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0000

The London and Raindance Film Festivals highlighted a welter of new indie talent from Britain and beyond.

Another year. No. it’s not a statement of ennui now that Raindance and the 54th BFI London Film Festival (LFF) have just finished, it is a sparkling, emotional new film from Mike Leigh. A beautiful example of what indie British film-making is all about, Another Year attracted glowing reviews from audiences and critics alike at the LFF and just proved to highlight the wealth of old and new talent on show during the festival. Its familiar territory for Leigh, friendship, family and the poignancy of loss, and it’s another source of inspiration for up-and-coming film-makers on what can be done with a reasonable budget and a lot of vision.

Another indie star’s film closed the LFF. Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours, based on the horrific fight for survival of Aron Ralston who did the equivalent of gnawing his own arm off to escape from under a rock. It is simple story, however in Boyle’s hands has become a study of not just the will to survive, but the overwhelming reasons why you would want to. Granted at $30m it was not a low-budget film, but Boyle’s Shallow Grave roots show through. He shows the loneliness and longing of Ralston’s situation using simple close-ups like that of a water bottle. It’s also a great example of how not to self-censor. There is no point in telling the story of the life-changing moment in Ralston’s life without showing what that moment actually entailed.

Up-and-Coming Film-makers

Snapping at the heels of these more famous indie directors is a host of film-makers with budgets from £30,000, telling stories as varied as solidarity among the homeless in Treacle Jr. to a moving docudrama of playwright Andrea Dunbar in The Arbor. Previously supported by Film London for her film Road Race (2003), director Clio Barnard won Best British Newcomer and also took the Sutherland Award for the most original and imaginative feature debut at the London Film Festival awards ceremony.

Treacle Jr. is the second feature from director Jamie Thraves, whose first feature, The Low Down, won Aidan Gillen Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Festival in 2000. Gillen again stars in Treacle as an ever-cheerful homeless man, who meets Tom, a man who has walked out on his wife and child, and finds himself living on the street. The film had already been well-received at the Dinard Festival.

Female Directors

Another film-maker showing work at the festival was Turner Prize winner Gillian Wearing. Previously supported through the Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network feature (FLAMIN), Gillian’s feature Self Made began when the artist posted an advert in newspapers inviting people to explore their fantasy selves through acting classes – with the film following these volunteers through their journey.

British female directors were particularly well-represented at both festivals this year. Five Daughters, directed by Philippa Lowthorpe, is another emotional feature which again garnered an award; the film took best UK feature at Raindance for its harrowing tale based on the murders of five prostitutes in Ipswich in 2006.

Another female director, Carol Morley, saw her film Edge screening during the LFF. The film, which was developed in part through Film London Microwave’s Microschool, looks at a group of lost souls who have all made their way to a hotel in a remote cliff-top location in winter. Morley was inspired by a trip to the East Sussex coast and it is again a low-budget, character study comparing the slide in their lives to the look of the hotel itself, as it seems to slip towards the white cliffs.

New Talent

New talent was well represented too. Richard Ayoade (Moss from The IT Crowd) screened his accomplished directorial debut, Submarine, during the LFF. It was supported by Warp Films, Film4 and Film Agency Wales and is based on Joe Dunthorne’s novel told from the point of view of a 15-year-old boy who must save his parents’ marriage whilst also struggling through his own ‘first love’ relationship. Another comedian making his directorial debut was Ben Miller whose feature Huge screened during Raindance. It’s a bittersweet drama about a feuding double act trying to make in the cut-throat world of stand-up comedy. As one half of the comedy duo Armstrong and Miller, it’s a world he knows well. He told The Times that he has been trying to make a film for the past eight years, so it’s positive reception was welcomed.

There was a lot of new talent joining him during Raindance. Do Elephants Pray, directed by Paul Hills, is about an advertising executive, Callum Cutter, who meets a free-spirited French girl who isn’t quite all she seems to be. Raindance also hosted some unusual films including Jackboots on Whitehall, a satirical alternative view of the history of World War ll where the Nazis seize London and the English must stick together to fight back. The animated tale was made for around $6m and features the voices of Ewan McGregor, Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant. Peter Boyd Maclean also screened his first film, Lummox, at Raindance, a comedy following his fly-on-the-wall documentary about a multi-media performance artist.

Music Documentaries

Another British passion, indie music, was also well covered at both festivals. The early years of Creation Records, the label behind Oasis and Primal Scream set up by Alan McGee, were brought to the LFF screen in Upside Dow,_ directed by Danny O’Connor. The Ballad of Mott the Hoople also documented a favourite British band during its screening at the London Film Festival, covering the band’s reunion concerts in 2009 before which they hadn’t played together for over 35 years. Raindance screened the music doc All I Ever Wanted showing The Airborne Toxic Event playing a special homecoming show at LA’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in December 2009, following their meteoric rise to fame and nearly two years of non-stop touring. The band also played at the opening night party.

It would seem both festivals celebrated all the best of our British film-making talent both old and new – further proof, especially given the current economic climate, that we’re still making very British films to be proud of.

Low Budget Horror Makes a Killing

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0000

With the release of Paranormal Activity 2 and Halloween around the corner, Microwave takes a look at the enduring cult appeal and remarkable profitability of low budget horror films.

The saying goes in the film industry that “nobody knows anything”. Coined by Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman in the early 80s, it describes the extreme uncertainty surrounding box office success – nobody, not even studio execs, can predict what will guarantee a hit, and a winning formula isn’t often repeated. In spite of this, there is one genre that regularly wins big at the box office, defying conventional wisdom to bring home record-breaking returns on shoestring budgets.

From the classic horror-noir Cat People, which grossed $4m from its $140,000 micro-budget in 1942, through to cult favourites like Night of the Living Dead ($40m worldwide from $114,000), Halloween ($47m) and The Evil Dead ($30m and counting from various releases and re-releases), low budget horror has long held a reputation for making a killing at the box office. This is true today more than ever: Paranormal Activity, the most recent low budget phenomenon, has now made a record smashing $200m box office return on its original $15,000 production budget, whilst the sequel has scared up takings of almost $68m during its first week on release. And back in August $1.8m mockumentary horror The Last Exorcism made $20m on its opening weekend in the US and knocked A-list blockbuster The Expendables from the top of the box office charts.

In the Eye of the Beholder

It seems the secret to the genre’s success is in its audience. Horror enjoys a devoted and highly discerning fanbase with established set of demands and traditions, an encyclopaedic knowledge of subgenres and a thirst for new product. The invention of the internet has resulted in a plethora of online communities that has connected this once disparate fanbase and allowed for a subculture of fandom that can propel a film to worldwide recognition and global success on word of mouth alone. Horror is also hugely popular with teenagers and young adults, one of the key cinema going audiences, and for whom the internet is part of everyday life. One of the reasons Paranormal Activity did so well was its clever release campaign, which invited internet users to ‘demand’ screenings of the film in their home town through the website eventful.com – the first time a major motion picture had used such a service to virally market a film. The studio announced that the movie would be release nationwide if the film got 1 million ‘demands’, a target that was achieved just two weeks after the film’s initial release.

The reason that low budget scores so well with this audience is that it appeals as an antidote to the studio genre flick. It is often the case that a low budget results in a more realistic and in-your-face horror experience; in The Evil Dead, for example, Sam Raimi’s minimal budget meant that he was unable to use expensive camera rigs, instead having the camera take on a first-person perspective of the evil force terrorising the protagonists. The Blair Witch Project is another case in point; an oft cited study, it was nevertheless the first horror film to utilise the ‘found footage’ device to create a disturbing and highly effective sense of realism. Filmed in one location with a three person cast, this original and inventive film was able (through a brilliant and admittedly expensive marketing campaign designed to convince viewers the film was a real documentary) to become one of the most profitable films of all time, earning a worldwide gross of $248m from it’s $60,000 budget.

It is often the case in horror that the restrictions imposed by a low production budget are less of a drawback than in other genres. For example, a low budget has an obvious impact on the level of cast a film can attract, a crucial factor in getting the project off the ground – you are more likely to find investors and sell your film internationally with a ‘known’ element on board. In horror, however, audiences can engage more with an unknown cast, who are more believable when in peril. Film-makers may also find themselves far more able to ‘push the envelope’ conceptually without having to take into consideration the sensibilities of an A-list cast – you are unlikely to find Angelina Jolie agreeing to be the middle section of a human centipede, for example. Nor should restrictions of location lesson a horror film’s impact – consider the claustrophobic tension created with the single locations used in the first Saw for example, or in Paranormal Activity , filmed in director Oren Peli’s own house. This freedom to experiment, to go scarier, and edgier, or to push at the boundaries of taste, gives horror audiences the freshness and originality they crave.

Communal Experience

The social aspect of the horror genre is a key determinant of its popularity at the box office. There is an undeniable enjoyment in the communal experience of being scared witless in a packed cinema, as evidenced by the emergence of the ‘midnight movie’ phenomenon in 70s America. In the larger urban centres, such as New York, there began the practice of screening off-beat, low budget genre pictures at midnight, in order to encourage social interaction and repeat viewings – thus building a cult film audience. The low-rent horror was also a staple of the American drive-in movie theatre, popular with its primarily teenage crowds.

The idea of marketing horror movies as an ‘event’ continues to inform the release strategies of film companies today. The marketing campaign of Paranormal Activity hinged on selling the film as an experience, showing little footage of the actual film in TV spots and trailers, in favour of showing audience’s reactions to the movie itself. It also comes as no surprise that the latest instalment of the Saw franchise, as well as Paranormal Activity 2, are both releasing just before the Halloween weekend – capitalising on audiences looking for a suitably spooky way to spend their time. Nostalgia also sells to the horror aficionado, as with Eli Roth’s recent Cabin Fever – referencing classic 70s horror movies in the isolated cabin setting, as well as using songs from the soundtrack of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972). The movie has so far made $30m worldwide from its $1.5m budget.

Scary Showcase

It seems that we are currently in the middle of a low budget boom, brought about in the most part by a continuing decline in worldwide feature film production. As it gets harder to finance pricier films, high-concept, low budget horror is delivering the sort of film the market wants – theatrical releases at reasonable prices. Sitges, the worlds foremost fantasy and horror film festival held each year in Spain, has this year seen an outpouring of highly polished, theatrically targeted micro-budget horror films showcasing distinctive takes on the genre staples. In a recent interview with Variety, Sitges festival director, Angel Sala, reported on an emerging “golden age of B movies”, marketed not on gimmicks and gore, but on the cinematographic experience.

The growth in the number of horror film festivals is a further indication of a surge in the genre’s popularity, with the UK’s most notable including Abertoir in Wales and Dead by Dawn in Scotland – and the daddy of them all, Film4’s Frightfest. The festival has hosted many UK first screenings such as Pan’s Labyrinth, Shaun of the Dead and Hoste, as well as helping to launch the careers of British horror auteurs, such as Christopher Smith and Simon Hunter. It continues to go from strength to strength, moving in 2009 from its original home at London’s famous ‘grindhouse’ cinema, the Prince Charles, to one of the UK’s biggest cinemas, the Empire Leicester Square. Crucially, it attracts predominantly young audiences, many of whom travel from all over the UK, and beyond, to attend.

The Long Tail

The profitability of the low budget genre extends far beyond the box office. The first Saw movie, for example, made on a budget of $1.2m, went on to make three times its original box office gross of $52m in DVD sales. Indeed, the first low budget horror boom of the 80s was due in large part to the explosion of the home viewing market, with the UK ban on unregulated “video nasties” (low budget American horrors with lurid and provocative cover artwork such as Cannibal Holocaust or I Spit On Your Grave) only serving to further increase demand for product.

Also integral to the ‘long tail’ bankability of the genre is franchise potential. Nightmare on Elm Street went on to spawn nine sequels, Friday the 13th has twelve films in the series, and whilst Saw has to date generated only five sequels, it has surpassed its predecessors to become the most successful horror franchise of all time – grossing over a billion dollars worldwide. Paramount were quick to commission a second_Paranormal Activity_, whilst a third Blair Witch project is slated for release in 2011, despite the lacklustre returns for Blair Witch 2. Of course, research shows that each sequel generates diminishing returns as the original idea is diluted, wholly unsurprising given the need for innovation that the core audience demands.

In terms of home grown product, Microwave’s own Mum & Dad has been embraced by the UK horror audience and has been a strong and consistent seller on DVD since its release – with the added value of being the UK’s first completely multiplatform release. It has now reached the point where it is one of the most successful horror films that distributor Revolver has released on DVD, selling in excess of 45,000 units. Mum & Dad is riding the crest of a new wave of low budget British horror films whose gritty realism is the envy of the industry, kick-started in 2002 with Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and carried on by emerging film-makers with The Descent, Creep and The Disappeared – which all released in the last ten years. Finally, in 2009 the unique British zombie film Colin found its way to UK cinemas and a wide DVD release on a budget of just £45, with the simple twist of showing the movie from a zombie’s point of view – proof if anything that success can be achieved in this genre on the smallest of scales with a clever concept and a guerilla approach.

Index

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Want to keep abreast of micro-budget news from around the globe and all the latest developments on our Microwave feature films?

Access a back catalogue of previous news articles, ranging from interviews to think pieces…

An Audio Guide to Architecture

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Harriet Lawrence, presents a simple breakdown of Britain’s rich architectural history – specifically focused for those interested in the field of location management.

In the world of the professional, and especially in the life of a location manager, the most expensive thing is time. Harriet Lawrence, who has been a location manager for almost 15 years, discusses her tips and facts about how to make the most of this crucial resource.

In the latest Film London Microwave podcast, Finding Architecture, Harriet discusses the details of British architecture throughout the decades – describing this information as vital to the knowledge bank of a serious location manager. The large span of architectural study can seem daunting at first, but Harriet expertly outlines the distinct traits of each period while explaining how this knowledge can benefit a location manager during production. Her discussion includes lessons on the Gothic, Elizabethan, Baroque, Victorian and Modernism periods.

The main highlights of this fascinating podcast include:

An explanation on which architecture publications are a ‘must have’.
Showing how periods of architecture are closely linked to social history.
Developing photography skills to suit the job.

To learn more about architecture and location management, please visit our podcast page – download directly, stream straight from the website, or download from our iTunes page.

Did you know, you can also keep up-to-date with all the latest micro-budget and indie film news, on our Twitter?

Latin American New Wave: Where Documentary Meets Fiction

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0000

From humble roots, Latin American films and film-makers are now making their mark on a global scale.

Going Global From Your Laptop

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave looks at how portable devices are changing the way we watch films.

Digital distribution and marketing have been tried, tested and found to deliver at blockbuster level, but the web is also a huge boost if your funds are limited.

The web has already changed how we watch films. With the range of current digital devices including smartphones, e-readers and not forgetting good old-fashioned laptops and the proliferation of file sharing and app options, films can go with you anywhere.

This is a gift to low-budget film-making, no argument there. Let’s start with marketing – no sense in making a film if no-one is going to see it. Virus may well be a dirty word when used in the same sentence as computing, but viral, well that’s a whole different mouse game. Need proof? Cloverfield, Snakes on a Plane, and the scary mother of them all, The Blair Witch Project prove just how effectively you can take no-budget to a global audience. Though Snakes on a Plane was made on a bigger budget, the web was used to develop its plot (however scant it turned out to be).

But even these examples are dinosaurs compared to what you can now do digitally. Social media is the obvious way to get your movie out there. It’s easy to create a page on Facebook, Bebo or MySpace or to post away to your heart’s desire on Twitter. The most important thing is to make sure someone out there is actually taking notice. There is now a whole market of people offering digital marketing solutions to promote all types of creative media. But once you get the attention of your target audience, how can you allow then to consume the product you are offering?

Online Consumption

What happens if you have a whole load of people who want to see your film, but you can’t afford a cinema release? What do you do? There are now lots of delivery methods as wide and varied as the marketing strategies that accompany them. Matt Dentler, who works for FilmBuff – the VOD distribution label of Cinetic Media, the company responsible for securing distribution for Little Miss Sunshine – said recently of the on-demand culture, that “film distribution, just like music industry learned and the book industry is learning, needs to be accessible in an on-demand function”. Once your film is released on DVD it can make its way onto the web through file-sharing sites, but it is surely better to control that yourself.

YouTube is the obvious option, however it has no fee module attached and is more suited to shorts or trailers. Uploading your film to iTunes to make watching it on the iPad possible is an attractive prospect – as it has a bigger screen, so lends itself to communal viewing. But even though you own the distribution rights to your own film it can be difficult to get iTunes to list you and it is by far the biggest marketplace. There are alternatives though.

The Sony Ericsson Aspen and the HTC Touch both run Windows Mobile 6 the OS which defaults to Amazon Unbox Player, the download marketplace that makes it easier for individual film-makers to upload films. It is a way round the more complicated iTunes system of distributing film, though there are reports that iTunes is becoming easier to access for independents film-makers. However, in general, Apple does prefer to deal with major studio or music labels.

Time magazine covered free distribution in December last year, looking at Finnish film-maker Timo Vuorensola’s movie Star Wreck – a parody of Star Trek, which he released online. Time says Vuorensola used a Finnish social networking site to build up an online fan base which contributed to the storyline, made props and even offered acting skills. In return for the help, Vuorensola released Star Wreck in 2005 online for free. He made his money out of merchandising. T-shirts and collector’s editions of the DVD have since generated $430,000 on a film that cost $21,500 to make.

Of course, film rental and VoD sites like Netflix, LoveFilm and Babelgum are also viable options for releasing your film on the web.

Marketing on the Go

The trend in recent years is to provide a consumer with anything they want ‘on the go’ from food, to news, music, and now also films. Don’t discount smartphones, like the iPhone or some Nokias, as a canny way of finding an audience just because the screens are smaller – you don’t think twice about watching a film on the back of the seat in front on an air journey; though they are unlikely to replace your flat-screen in the living room. These portable devices are ideal for train journeys now that most rail networks offer free WiFi, so you can download directly to your device. It also helps that most trains now have a power point, so battery life could be less of a problem if travellers choose to watch a whole feature.

With film consumption ready for people on the go, marketing techniques are not far behind. Studios now regularly create apps for smartphones to accompany their tentpole releases. These often include news, updates, games etc. connected to the films. For example, the latest Toy Story 3 official iPhone app included games and greetings, as well as the ability to launch the official movie website to access local film times and trailers.

Your potential audience have so many options online, but if you give them something to play with you can hook them in. With an online quiz, perhaps with each question they get right you could reveal another scene from your trailer? It’s a particularly useful device to start gathering essential contact details. Ask if viewers would like to see the whole film and, if so, would they like it pushed to their phone. If you eventually make the film free to download for phones or laptops, then you still have contact details to make money out of merchandising attached to the film.

These apps are a huge opportunity that independent film-makers have begun to tap into. The iPhone gives you the opportunity to create your own app for a film. Finnish film-maker Kimmo Kuusniemi created one for his documentary film Promised Land of Heavy Metal, about the history and philosophy of the heavy metal movement in Finland. The only cost was for the development of the app. These apps can be a crucial way for independent film-makers to target their niche audience and drip feed release news to increase the impact of word-of-mouth marketing.

Films have even been directly released through an app, such as Sally Potter’s drama Rage, starring Jude Law and Dame Judi Dench. The film was available to view via a free application for iPhones and iPods offered by Babelgum last year.

Interactive Consumption

Other apps in development are geared towards the shared experience of watching film, rather than watching solo. Sharing SMS messages in cinema might not be to everyone’s liking, there is really nothing more annoying than the little light on a phone in a darkened cinema. However, there could be a use for it if you decide to preview your film in a private screening. Equip everyone with an app to allow them to share their impressions of the film or give notes on scenes. If it’s a private preview screening audiences are more likely to tolerate the intrusions.

Steve Carell’s new cartoon Despicable Me was released in America with an accompanying iPhone app. If audience members downloaded it, they receive an English translation of the gibberish spouted by the film’s little yellow characters. Sounds irritating, but younger audiences might not think so.

More interactive apps are now being developed, such as The Touching Stories app which gives viewers the opportunity to interact with and change the outcome of live action video. There are four stories designed specifically for the iPad. By touching, shaking and turning it, you can navigate, unlock and reveal unexpected variations in each of the stories.

Just as the music industry had to evolve, the growth of digital delivery is the obvious evolution of films. It is better to embrace it, than be left behind.

David Lynch: An American Surrealist

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave takes a look at the work of David Lynch and his appreciation for all things micro-budget.

Eraserhead is one of the most original and disturbing films ever made and its creator is now one of the world’s most loved cult film-makers who continues to search for the unique.

“Lynchian”. If that term is used to describe a film then you know what you’re about to see. Well, up to a point. Characters might talk backwards, circus performers could arrive unannounced and six-foot talking rabbits might be conducting life in an online soap opera, but somehow there is a film-maker who manages to pull it off. David Lynch is the master of wrapping the disturbing and strange in his version of realism, particularly if it’s set in middle America.

The Emergence of Lynch

But where did it all start? Well, with one of the most famous cult movies of all time, Eraserhead. The word alone conjures up images of the dancing lady behind the radiator, chicken dinners oozing with who knows what, and the wonderful Jack Nance with his electric shock hair. The film was so original when it was released in 1976, critics and audiences did not know what to make of it, but there was no denying that it was an important work from an exciting new film-maker who refused to compromise his vision. Time Out calls it “a singular work of the imagination, a harrowing, heartbreaking plunge into the darkest recesses of the soul”.

It is fitting that this year Lynch will be the first ever Guest Artistic Director of American Film Institute (AFI) Festival in November, as it was the AFI that gave him his first grant of $10,000 to make Eraserhead. The phrase labour of love is overused when it comes to making films but in this case it is the perfect description of Lynch’s first film. He took five years to make it, because shooting stalled several times when he ran out of money and, quite literally and just as surreally, went back to his paper round. In Lynch on Lynch he tells the editor Chris Rodley that Eraserhead is his “Philadelphia Story. It just doesn’t have Jimmy Stewart in it!”

In the film, Nance plays Henry Spencer who lives in an industrial town where giant machines expel smoke and noise constantly. Lynch says the film was his way of escaping that life, which he thinks might have been his fate if he had not become a film-maker. It is hard to see how Lynch could ever end up with a life in a factory considering he is such a polymath: writer, director, painter, artist and producer.

To make Eraserhead, Lynch had to borrow sound equipment from his friend Alan Splet who was a sound engineer, and he more or less squatted in some disused stables, which became the home of Eraserhead. The original script was only 25 pages long, but he always knew it would be a full-length feature. It was to be all about the visuals.

All of this means it was a deeply personal experience for the director who has some great memories of making the film. Lynch says that films are made too fast now and that back then he had time to relish the experience. Maybe this is one of the things that makes him keep returning to his low-budget roots. His latest feature as a producer, made on a micro-budget, is directed by fellow micro-budget lover and famous auteur Werner Herzog. My Son My Son What Have Ye Done which premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival this year, is based on a true story of a man who had a psychotic attack and assaulted his mother with a sword. It is, as you would expect, an unusual film, but has moments of Lynch’s dark humour. It is perhaps significant that the Lynch’s highest budget film, Dune, was his least successful. It’s tempting to imagine how it might have looked if Lynch had been allowed to stick to his own vision. Following Dune, he quickly returned to the relatively low-budget world with his next feature Blue Velvet which is now widely regarded as one of Lynch’s finest works.

David Lynch on set of his film Blue Velvet

Independent Vision

Lynch has also always been loyal to his talent and used family and friends in his work even as his power in the film industry could have given him access to established names. Nance was his friend and muse for years, appearing in all of his films apart from The Elephant Man. Charlotte Stewart, who played Henry’s girlfriend Mary X, was also in his ground-breaking, dark soap opera Twin Peaks 14 years later along with Nance once again. His first wife Peggy Reavey and their daughter Jennifer Lynch both appeared in Eraserhead.

Lynch has been an auteur ever since his directing his first student film with which he steadfastly refused to compromise even if it meant making a film that would not appeal to mainstream audiences. Yet this independent vision has given the director a true sense of integrity and a great deal of respect from the industry. His most commercial film is probably The Elephant Man, executive produced by Mel Brooks who asked for him after seeing Eraserhead, which he made only four years after his debut movie. By then he was already a director who was causing a stir. The film was nominated for eight Oscars and seven Baftas.

Lynch is a true original. He is always searching for new ways to express his vision on film. He describes the creative process best himself in Lynch on Lynch. “A film isn’t finished until it’s finished,” he says. “Anything can come along and you realise that it’s almost like the thing knows how it will be one day. You might discover some parts of it at first – become excited and fall in love and go – but the thing knows that you haven’t seen the whole yet. Will the person discover those other things? The only way is to stay in there, and be watchful and feel it. And maybe they’ll pop into your conscious mind. But they’ve always been there somewhere.”

Moving With the Times

Lynch utterly embraces technological developments for cinema. He sees them as opportunities to continue to experiment with film. Lynch was one of the first film-makers to embrace the web as a distribution tool. DumbLand was an animated series originally only available on davidlynch.com, as was the aforementioned Rabbits sitcom. In print, The Angriest Dog in the World was a long-running cartoon which appeared in the Los Angeles Reader and New York Press from 1983 until 1992. It was a the same four images with only the text changing and dealt with a dog which was so angry it could not move. Lynch has said that it was inspired by his own anger management issues before he discovered transcendental meditation. He now has his own foundation to promote meditation in schools.

David Lynch is a true champion for the micro-budget film-making ethos. In his own words, “it’s much better to make a small budget film, I guess, because the pressure is less. I like the idea that film is an illusion and to make the illusion really an illusion, sometimes it doesn’t take all that much money. You don’t need to build a set out of real bricks to have it look like a real brick set.” What more inspiration do you need?

Plan B Put into Action

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave’s sixth feature, ill Manors, directed by Ben Drew (aka Plan B) begins principal photography.

ill Manors directed by Ben Drew (aka Plan B), Film London Microwave’s sixth feature, has recently begun principal photography at 3 Mills Studios and on location across London. The film is a multi-character story set in the tough streets of Forest Gate in East London where Drew was born and raised. With a focus on four core characters, this is a gritty urban drama about respect and survival that will draw from Drew’s musical background. Drew has said “the beauty of this project is that it is a collection of short stories that spill into one another, thus allowing each music video section to be different from its predecessors in terms of style.”

Produced by Atif Ghani, who previously made the award-winning film The Last Thakur for Artifical Eye and More4, ill Manors stars some of Britain’s finest acting talent including Natalie Press (Red Road, My Summer of Love) and Riz Ahmed – who picked up a BIFA nomination for his role in critically-acclaimed Microwave feature, Shifty. The film also has a talented crew including director of photography Gary Shaw who worked on recent British success Moon.

Director Ben Drew is most well known for his music career with this year’s smash hit album The Defamation of Strickland Banks. However, Drew has built a wealth of experience working in the film industry from directing the short film Michelle – which was a pilot for ill Manors – to his acting career working in films such as Harry Brown alongside Michael Caine, and Noel Clarke’s Adulthood and 4.3.2.1. In 2009 Drew was selected as one of Screen International’s ‘Stars of Tomorrow’. ill Manors follows Microwave’s previous successful releases including: Mum & Dad, released in 2008 courtesy of Revolver Entertainment; Shifty, which was nominated for both BIFA and BAFTA awards and was released in April 2009 courtesy of Metrodome; and Freestyle, released in February 2010 courtesy of Revolver Entertainment. A further two Microwave features, The British Guide to Showing Off and Strawberry Fields are in the final stages of completion and the final features on the Microwave slate, Foxglove and Borrowed Time, will go into production in early 2011.

Microwave has gone from strength to strength in recent years – Film London recently announced an extension of its partnership with the BBC to make an additional 3 films, bringing the total slate of films to 13.

Sign up to the Film London weekly newsletter and the Microwave Twitter feed to find out more about the next call for applications.

A Very Perry Film

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave finds out more about independent Black film-maker Tyler Perry and his first release on this side of the Atlantic.

Tyler Perry isn’t quite a household name on these shores, but the award-winning Black American writer/actor/director/producer has definitely started to make his mark. Having carved a career in the theatre, Perry turned his attention to the silver screen. And his level of determination has paid off – this past weekend saw the first theatrical release of one of his films in the UK.

Why Did I Get Married Too? tells the story of four couples, whose relationships come under scrutiny over the course of a weekend in the Bahamas. It’s a ‘typical’ Tyler Perry film in regards to casting and storyline and also shares another similarity with his existing slate of work – it’s been made outside of the Hollywood system. Critics may hate his films, but audiences still flock to see them – so the proof is in the box office pudding.

Film London Microwave talks to Priscilla Igwe from Rapture Film Club about reaching niche audiences and achieving success beyond the mainstream.

The typical target audience for Tyler Perry films has been cited as “predominantly black, female, church-going Americans”, but Rapture Film Club has been lobbying for his films to be screened in the UK for some time – do you believe there is an appetite for his work here?
Definitely! We have been screaming for Tyler Perry for the last five years. We have been watching his films on US import for all this time whilst frustratingly waiting for his appearance on the big screen. The thing is that Black culture originating from the African diaspora is quite universal. He is speaking to the Black British ‘sista’ as much as her US cousin and faith plays a huge part in our community over here too.

When I first established ‘Rapture – Films for the Faithful’ I kept getting requests to show Tyler Perry films. Little did they know that his films inspired the film club in first place! It also told me that faith and film-making did offer a potent mix that spoke culturally to Black people. I was heartbroken not being able to secure his titles when I launched the film club through Film London’s Audience Development Fund last year, but my faith was rewarded when I met the man himself whilst promoting his UK release with Janet Jackson.

He picked up one of my flyers at a press junket and even did a shout out for Rapture at the event. I can tell you he is a very nice man, who was also initially doubtful of there being an appetite for his work here. He was convinced by Will Smith to come over and thought Janet Jackson would give him extra currency internationally.

Selling out at the Rapture Film Club screening of Why Did I Get Married Too? demonstrates that people are really putting their money where their mouth is.

Tyler Perry has previously described his audience as being “invisible” to mainstream Hollywood. Do you think his target audience feel as strongly?
Another big yes! His audience are my audience. We are forgotten, overlooked, misplaced. I just hope that the distributors will invest in this ready-made market and that they look to Black PR specialists, exhibitors and The New Black network (born out of a joint Skillset and Film London initiative) to alert the community that this is not a flash in the pan like the days of blaxploitation movies.

Even though we are in the 21st Century, we still feel starved of seeing Black images on screen and hearing our voices. Times are changing with the recent wave of successful Black Hollywood films and the likes of Tyler Perry joining forces with Oprah Winfrey and Lee Daniels to bring the adaption of Precious to life.

Tyler Perry is an American actor, director, playwright, screenwriter, producer, and author – do you think he has had to embrace so many roles because of the lack of opportunity he has faced in the mainstream?
This is what you have to do to combat the glass ceiling. You have to take yourself out of the game and reinvent it for your own world. He chose not to be a victim of circumstance or take ‘no’ for an answer. The next revolutionary step is to see more Black British films and people like Noel Clarke getting studio success.

Some critics, including notable African-Americans, have claimed that Perry’s work perpetuates negative racial stereotypes – would you agree?
Tyler Perry’s films offers up a smorgasbord of Black characters. We are lawyers, doctors, bus drivers, single mothers, newlyweds, loud, quiet, funny, sad and everything in between. And that’s because we are not a lone token character in a film and therefore bearing the weight of representing a whole race. Yes, he washes some of our dirty laundry, but that is why we flock to his films. It’s about the realness and the sense you can kick off your shoes and culturally relax, laugh and cry. It is good that he provokes varying opinions of his work and as Black people we don’t all have to agree. However, the box office is what speaks for the majority.

Themes of love, abandonment, domestic abuse and spiritual fulfilment are predominant in his work – do you think these more human-led stories are even more necessary in a technology-driven society?
We have become slaves to our iPhones, to work and to the gym and I am sure there are many more shrines that we worship that I have yet to mention, so it is no surprise that Tyler Perry fills a hole in our hearts. We can get too busy for family and relationships as the economy hits us hard. His films remind us of our innate need and loneliness that we all experience from time to time. There are also some taboo subjects that remain closed in our community, so his work is vital as it can be the rare occasions that we get to talk about such issues – albeit indirectly. Usually the moral of the story is that we deserve better and that is where he touches a cord.

Why Did I Get Married Too? is currently on general release and Tyler Perry has just finished shooting For Colored Girls Who Have Consider Suicide When The Rainbow was Enuff. There is already an Oscar buzz around his next film – which is set to come over to the UK in January and has a stellar cast including Janet Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg and Thandie Newton – so it seems the inspirational entrepreneur continues to forge his own path of success.

Keeping it Carbonated

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Soda Pictures, champion of indie film, talks to Microwave about the distribution landscape.

Independent distributor Soda Pictures has been part of the British film scene for only eight years. Yet in that time the company has built up an impressive catalogue of world cinema titles and talent-driven independent films, as well as established themselves as a champion of British micro-budget cinema and independent film-makers.

Founded in 2002 by co-directors Edward Fletcher and Eve Gabereau, Soda has been responsible for bringing to the British screen such titles as Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, Tetro and Wendy and Lucy, as well as low budget British gems such as Skeletons, Mad, Sad and Bad and the forthcoming Brit comedy SoulBoy. Speaking about the motivations behind setting up the company, Edward Fletcher told us, “You see great films and you think, ‘others will want to see them too if only they were brought into distribution’”. Given the niche appeal of many of Soda’s titles he continues, “this is both the greatest driver and the greatest mistake when looking for a gap in the market”.

As far as their policy for choosing films goes, Soda has found their remit is constantly evolving. Public demand plays a role of course, as well as the need to work with others in the industry: “We have our own direction, but there is a certain level of ‘acquisitional consensus’”, Fletcher attests. As with larger distributors the key festivals in terms of acquisitions for Soda are Berlin, Cannes and Toronto, whilst smaller festivals such as Rotterdam are highlighted as being good for watching up-and-coming talent. The company also participates in co-production markets such as Cinemart where they meet with project teams at various stages of production.

Shimmy Marcus’ SoulBoy, the most recent title to emerge from the Soda Pictures stable, goes on general release today. At heart a boy-meets-girl coming of age story, the film is set within the northern soul culture of 1970s Wigan. Smitten with beautiful blonde hairdresser Jane, 17 year old Joe is swept along by a tide of sound, pulsating dance and lust, becoming embroiled in the darker side of the soul scene that puts his friendships to the test and forces him to choose between his heart and his soul.

Soda has been involved with the film since script stage as part of a wider production partnership with North East production company Ipso Facto. Fletcher imparts that they were drawn to the film’s “great up-and-coming cast”, and the fact that it “was always going to get audiences up and dancing!” The most enduring of all musical sub-cultures (the 6T’s soul club at London’s 100 Club has been running now for 31 years), northern soul continues to inspire contemporary British artists from Amy Winehouse to Janelle Monae, and has a perennial appeal that is sure to result in a sizeable audience for SoulBoy on its theatrical release.

It seems Soda Pictures feels a particular responsibility towards independent British cinema, as earlier this year they launched the New British Cinema Quarterly. This programme seeks to showcase and celebrate Britain’s film craft by taking the most distinctive and original British feature films from the festival circuit each quarter and bringing them to the UK’s flagship independent cinemas. “The initiative arose out of a need to find a viable way to get more independent British films in cinemas, as well as incentivise audiences into cinemas by attending Q&A programmes” remarked Fletcher.

In 2010 the scheme launched 1,2,3,4, a witty and affectionate take on rock’n’roll dreams; No Greater Love, a documentary that takes a look inside the world of cloistered nuns living in the heart of Notting Hill; and Skeletons, a surreal black comedy about a mismatched pair of traveling salesman in the business of cleaning skeletons from closets. Though as yet formally unannounced, Soda revealed to us that the fourth film will be erotic love story brilliantlove, which premiered at Edinburgh International Film Festival.

As befitting of a young company, Soda strives to be at the forefront of new technologies and social media, keeping in touch with their audiences through their irreverent blog and Facebook presence – they even have a Spotify profile for users to listen to soundtracks and film-related playlists. Whilst the company maintains that a strong online presence is extremely useful for getting public reaction to their films, as well as for monitoring trends and the ways in which audiences watch films, they caution that “it can be challenging to get the balance of promotional tool and connection with the audience quite right… there has to be a genuine interaction with users, rather than endlessly re-posting links about your films.”

Soda sounds a similar note of warning about the prospects of online distribution as a viable alternative for the micro-budget film-maker. “We do not believe the model will work outside of the major brands such as iTunes, Amazon or Tesco. Ultimately, when you are competing with the pirates online it is better to concentrate on working with platforms that are accessed on TV via set top boxes or games consoles.”

Looking to the future of independent distribution, Soda Pictures foresees that there will certainly be evolving distribution models, and the definitions of who does what will change. Above all, however, they believe that “good films will still be made, and that at least remains a constant”.

Listening to Sound Advice

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Find out more about the process of including music in low-budget films with this new Microwave podcast.

In the latest Microwave podcast, Film Soundtracks: Music Issues, composer Christian Henson (Chasing Liberty, Dirty Pretty Things, Severance) and music supervisor Alison Wright (Beyond the Gates, The Brothers Grimm) from Air-Edel Associates discuss their respective roles in the production process, as well as offer advice on how low budget film-makers can make the most of their music budget.

This podcast offers descriptions of the roles of both a music supervisor and composer and breaks down the process of including music in film. Topics include:

Finding the right composer: creating a relationship between image and sound, cues to a rough cut and eliciting an emotional response with music
How to liaise with a music supervisor: a consideration of availability, previous experience and film budget
Gaining clearance for existing music: approaching a publisher, approaching a record label, and paying contracted musicians and the music union
The benefits of using unknown music versus commercial tracks
Music clearance: music performance on and off camera
Synchronization licences: soundtrack albums/ master rights
Ownership: approaching talent agencies or musician directly. Getting clearance from the record label and agent
Copyright: avoiding issues by using a music supervisor’s catalogue.

The discussion also features appearances by Pete Travis (Vantage Point, Endgame) and Tom Hunsinger (Lawless Heart, Sparkle) who share their knowledge as directors on how best to work with music in film.

To learn more about the world of micro-budget film and its position within the film industry, please visit our podcast page – download directly, stream straight from the website, or download these invaluable words of wisdom from our iTunes page.

Did you know, you can also keep up-to-date with all the latest micro-budget and indie film news, on our Twitter?

Venice vs. Toronto 2010

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Two international festivals kick off next month and there is no shortage of top titles to look forward to.

Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival are widely regarded as two of the most prestigious and important festivals in the industry calendar. Above all, they are considered essential for promising independent films and acquisition titles to find a platform away from Cannes’ packed screening schedule and the hustle and bustle of the Croisette.

With Toronto now joining Venice in a new September calendar slot, the next month is set to be an extremely exciting time for independent film. Despite the industry gloom following 2009’s financial market meltdown and subsequent indie film downturn, hope holds firm among festival organizers that deals will still be done in what is very much a buyer’s market. Here we present the highlights from the two festivals, with plenty of low-budget titles to watch out for.

The Venice Film Festival (1 – 11 September)

Twenty-three films, including a surprise title yet to be announced, will compete for the prestigious Golden Lion award at the world’s oldest film festival – with director Quentin Tarantino leading the jury to decide the winner. Previous Golden Lion winner Darren Aronofsky returns to his low budget roots to open the festival with Black Swan, a dark, psychological thriller about rival ballerinas starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis.
Meanwhile, six years since The Brown Bunny, eccentric film-maker Vincent Gallo marks his return into the indie film circuit with his self-financed Promises Written in Water, about a young girl who is terminally ill and planning to end her life. In typically renegade fashion Gallo shot much of the film on the hoof, with improvised or naturalistic acting and deliberately askance continuity editing. “What I have tried to do in this movie is to make choices as if this was the first movie ever made and not to buy into the story of what cinema should be,” Gallo explained in an interview with The Independent. Gallo also takes the lead role in Polish director Jerzy Skolimowksi’s Essential Killing, pitting himself against the veteran film-maker in competition for the Golden Lion.

Other festival highlights include Greek born Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg and western drama Meek’s Cutoff from Kelly Reichardt, the director of last year’s low budget gem Wendy and Lucy. As part of the Venice Days sidebar, films such as La Vida de Los Peces from the Chilean director Matias Bize, Italian director Antonio Capuano’s L’Amore Buio and Paul Gordon’s The Happy Poet will be among the 12 films that will be screened. Although a non-competitive strand, the sidebar selections will still qualify for the Venice Film Festival’s collateral prizes.
The Happy Poet, which is Paul Gordon’s second feature film, definitely made the most of limited resources by setting his film in a food stand. When reflecting on the low budget nature of the production, Gordon said: “Not having much money seems to be the main challenge in general, but I actually find it fun to adapt and find creative ways of doing things without spending much money.” IndieWIRE described the film as “cheerily conventional, save for Gordon’s hilariously monotonous delivery, an ironic performance that incessantly contradicts the movie’s title”, while Karen Valby from Entertainment Weekly said that it was her “favourite movie so far at this year’s SXSW”.

Still from Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech

Toronto International Film Festival (9 – 19 September)

This year’s line-up for the 35th annual Toronto International Film Festival is sure to make for yet another exciting event. The festival is typically known to mark the beginning of awards season and considered to be a launch pad for award contenders, as well as a space for strong world and independent titles to make their debut.

Roughly half of the festival’s 270 to 280 films this September will be eyeing US distribution, claims the Hollywood Reporter, with Robert Redford’s The Conspirator generating considerable buzz. Other high-profile acquisition titles include Emilio Estevez’ The Way, Barry Blaustein’s Peep World and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Biutiful, which earned a Best Actor prize for Javier Bardem at Cannes.

Another highly anticipated title is Blue Valentine, Sundance darling Derek Cianfrance’s directorial debut featuring the powerful performances of Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. “A lushly touching, wrenching, and beautifully told story”, the film has been twelve years in the making. ”No movie I’ve seen at Sundance this year conjures the possibilities — or the current, gloom-and-doom marketplace environment — of independent film more powerfully than _Blue Valentine_”, reported Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Glieberman.

Fans of Ryan Gosling’s break-out film and low budget hit Half Nelson will be pleased to see Canadian film-makers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden return to Toronto to premiere It’s Kind of a Funny Story, a comedy-drama starring Keir Gilchrist, Emma Roberts and Zach Galifianakis – in which stressed-out teenager Craig checks himself into a mental health clinic and finds himself in the adult ward. Elsewhere, in the documentary genre, director Thom Zimmy’s Bruce Springsteen documentary The Promise: The Making of Darkness at the Edge of Town, Oscar-winning director Errol Morris’ Tabloid, and the hotly anticipated 3D feature – a first from acclaimed director, Werner Herzog – Cave of Forgotten Dreams, are just a few of the gems reported as part of the programme by IndieWIRE.

British films also make a strong appearance at Toronto with Stephen Frears’ Tamara Drewe, Nigel Cole’s Made in Dagenham, Mike Leigh’s Another Year, and Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech – all of which received backing from the UK Film Council. Described as a “modern comedy of manners”, Tamara Drewe (starring Gemma Arterton) tells the story of a woman who returns to her hometown no longer the ‘ugly duckling’ she once was growing up. The IFC called it “Sassy, slick, slight and speedy”. Made in Dagenham, starring the mesmerizing Sally Hawkins, focuses on the story of sewing machinists at the town’s Ford car works who walked out in 1968 when they were denied equal rights in the workplace. Adding to his strong portfolio, Tom Hooper, director of the critical and commercial success The Damned United, brings to the big screen the story of King George VI’s struggle to confront his stammer in The King’s Speech (starring Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Michael Gambon and Timothy Spall).

“The Toronto Film Festival line-up is always strong, and this year it somehow seems even stronger,” declares Los Angeles Times’ Steven Zeitchik. What is clear from the recent crop of announcements for both festivals is that despite the industry activity of late, quality of the films finding a home in Italy and Canada is as high as it has ever been.

Making Movies the Smart Way

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Smartphones and digital cameras now have all the bells and whistles needed to make film-making on the go a reality.

Mike Figgis recently gave a rallying cry to film-makers saying digital equipment has made it possible for everyone to just go out and shoot their films: “We need to begin thinking about the new reality and using digital technology to our advantage…the next period is going to be interesting – be there – record it.”

One of the digital devices he is referring to is the smartphone that you may have in your pocket. Most new phones have larger screens, improved video cameras and web access, so you now have a chance to make movies on the go and send them to video sharing sites.

Shooting

The recently released iPhone 4 has caused quite a stir with its upgraded cameras, both front and back, and the possibility to add the iMovie app to edit video film on the phone’s touchscreen. iMovie has been part of the iLife bundled software with iMacs and laptops for a few years now but the app has now been adapted for the latest edition of Apple’s famed handset.

Director Michael Koerbal’s short film, Apple of My Eye, was shot and edited in 48 hours on the new phone and footage of the behind the scenes making of the film makes for interesting watching. He shows what can be done with these devices. For instance, he attaches it to a dolly and has made what is ostensibly an action movie, albeit a model train action movie. These techniques can provide inspiration for would-be film-makers using any smartphone or small camera who can edit their films at home on a laptop or PC.

Another handheld that is breaking ground in ‘shoot on the move’ technology is the Flip camera, which can shoot up to two hours of video in HD and has a built-in USB connection which flips up to plug into a PC. It can also feed directly to a TV using an HDMI connection. Also available is The Veho Muvi Atom – which measures just 4cm, and claims to be the smallest digital video camcorder in the world. These devices often inspire movie ideas through their usability. The Flip feels like fun, so lends itself to lighter features where show, don’t tell, is paramount. However, if you fancy a Donal McIntyre style documentary the Muvi Atom is better capable of those candid expose-style shots.

The apps available online also provide additional functionality for smartphones to make them more than just cameras. The KDDi Pico projector has been designed to connect to the KDDi G9 phone and can handle small presentations or home movies. Samsung are even launching a phone with a smart projector built in, so with progressing technology the possibilities seem almost endless.

Writing

The new array of ‘smarter than average’ phones are probably more useful for the fact that you can shoot something right away, rather than agonising over how the scene should play out – but they are useful for writers too. The industry’s favourite script writing software, Final Draft, is developing an app for the iPhone and iPad, however the limitations of the keyboards will make it more useful as an updating or editing tool. Scripts Pro is another app that can import Final Draft and Celtx scripts, although you’ll need to use the latest version of Final Draft to be able to create the .FDX file format it accepts.

Several reviews have mentioned how e-readers have no editing or notes facilities, so the iPad which has been generating queues down Regents Street in London, already has an edge on those. Scrolling up and down pages in the iPad, as opposed to turning them, is likely to hamper the chances of this coveted gadget being used to read full scripts. However, the WiFi features on these devices, including smartphones, could be used to send notes and script updates to the rest of the crew which would be extremely useful for last minute changes. Software is not always essential as Windows phones too can import word documents, including ones written on the Windows screenplay template.

Technical Gadgets

Gradiest which is an application being developed for the iPad turns the portable device into a multi-touch colour correction controller for Cineform’s First Light, and there is no reason why the interface can’t be developed for Final Cut Pro. It claims to make colour correction a more immediate process as it works without rendering. Gradiest may be a prototype, but is likely to be released at a fraction of the price of other colour correction hardware.

With most of the apps in their first incarnation or in beta stage you can assume that smartphone film-making can only improve with time. It will be interesting to see how these new devices will be used by low-budget film-makers to get the final vision on-screen at a fraction of the cost of present hardware.

Too Cool for the Old School

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0000

La Nouvelle Vague (The New Wave) is over 50 years old, but the ideas are just as fresh and rebellious as they were in the ‘60s.

“All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun” was the advice of the young Jean-Luc Godard. Great advice for a low-budget film-maker but can it really be that simple? Well it can, if you throw in passion.

Add to the initial idea thousands of cigarettes and you have the concept of Godard’s first feature A Bout de Souffle, or Breathless as the world has come to know it. The film is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and it doesn’t look a day over 25. Godard’s much-studied masterpiece breathed new life into cinema. It gave a whole generation of film-makers the confidence and passion to break the rules that had until then dictated how films should be made. “Le cinéma du Papa” (old-fashioned “Dad’s Cinema”) was swept away by La Nouvelle Vague.

Breaking the Norm

Godard, along with fellow critics-turned-directors François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol, had started to make films that were young, hip and fast-moving. The directors were as young and good-looking as their films, almost painfully cool. And they delighted in breaking the rules as long as it meant their vision made it to the screen. Truffaut had himself launched an attack on traditional French cinema in an article in ‘Cahiers du Cinéma’ in 1954 (Une certaine tendance du cinéma français) and praised the auteur theory, which proposed that a director’s films reflect his or her personal creative vision.

For their first features they took ideas and styles from their favourite American films, and auteurs that they had championed in Cahiers, and added a chic French touch. Humphrey Bogart, Nicholas Ray (director of Rebel Without a Cause) and Alfred Hitchcock, were only some of those who had homage paid to them by the New Wave. They inserted movie posters that would drive the action forward, or use their characters to take on traits and reference some of their favourite American actors.

Like Marlon Brando’s character in The Wild One, when asked what they were rebelling against the answer would have been “What have you got?” Truffaut reserved most of his criticism for French screenwriters saying they had taken all the emotion out of literary adaptations, which made up the bulk of French output after the war. He also railed against the return of the bourgeoisie, which he felt was ruining French cinema.

Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, which won him best director at Cannes in 1959, and Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge (1958), pre-dated the release of Breathless – but it was Godard’s pacey thriller, starring Jean Paul Belmondo as Michel and Jean Seberg as Patricia, that brought the movement global attention. In the preface to his book ‘Everything is Cinema’, Richard Brody says Godard eventually “fulfilled the promise of the French New Wave – to turn movies into an art form as sophisticated and as intellectually powerful as literature and painting”. Impressive praise indeed for the poster boy of the French New Wave.

French Style

So the New Wave were auteurs from beginning to end. They wrote, directed and edited their films to give them their single vision. For instance, there was no script for Breathless. Every day during the shoot Godard would sit Belmondo and Seberg down and go over the lines he had written for the day, if he hadn’t written any they did not shoot that day. He would shout lines at them during the scene for them to repeat. The spontaneity is something the New Wave were so passionate about that they left their actors hanging, they quite literally did not know what they were going to say next.

Their films were emotionally deep, but sometimes had extremely simple plots: The 400 Blows is a story about a neglected young rebellious boy who fills his days with petty crime and, of course, sneaking into movies. In Breathless a rebellious boy/man finds love with a strangely vacuous American girl. In Le Beau Serge two men are mirror images of each other, but both are rebels. There is no traditional narrative to speak of in any of these films. Breathless is girl meets gangster on the run, they fall in love, then gangster meets his comeuppance thanks to girl’s betrayal. We’ve seen that plot a million times from the US before and since. However, it’s the conquest of style over story that sets the film apart. Michel and Patricia are true fashion icons.

Low-budget Ethos

Low-budget was not just a necessity to these film-makers, who were largely very inexperienced; it was part of “la politique des auteurs” (like many French words politique means more than politics, it can also mean policy or programme) which again Truffaut had coined. Low-budget film-making was a way to stick in their left-wing heels against a growing capitalist and consumer conscious society and the, ‘sock it to the man’ idea.

The commitment to low budget meant they had to be inventive to get their shots. For Breathless, the first take was the one that made it to the finished film unless it was completely unusable. The cinematographer Raoul Coutard recalls that they only shot 8,000 metres of film, as opposed to the norm of 20,000-30,000. He himself had just returned from covering the French Indochina war in Vietnam as a photojournalist and had exactly the reportage style that Godard wanted.

They all used another technique that budding film-makers worldwide find a necessity – they used the help of all their friends and colleagues (including fellow film-makers) as cast and crew. Breathless was written by Truffaut, and Jean-Pierre Melville – the so-called Godfather of the French New Wave – has a cameo appearance. The 400 Blows stars Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine Doinel, who went on to play the same character in five more of Truffaut’s films. Coutard was a favourite on the scene, the cinematographer of choice for the New Wave working with Godard on all his films during the decade, with Truffaut on Jules et Jim and Jacques Demy on Lola.

One of the most important changes they made was in editing – however, this is where some of the best rumours come in. Where did the idea for jump-cuts come from? Reports since have said Godard couldn’t afford the film stock to finish scenes in Breathless so they just stopped shooting and moved the camera. Not true said assistant director, Pierre Rissient, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. “The jump-cutting was conceived in editing, not during shooting,” explains Rissient. “Godard and his editor, Cécile Decugis, hit on the idea that jump-cutting could be used to [disguise] flaws in the lighting, or even in the acting. Then they began to use it as a device. It became the method.” Reports say continuity staff members were brought to tears having to work alongside Godard.

The Legacy

It could be argued that Quentin Tarantino would not have had the gall (or should that read Gaul) to put the final act of Pulp Fiction in the middle of the film without the rebellion of the New Wave behind him. Directors including John Woo, Martin Scorsese, Francis Fort Coppola and Steven Speilberg are just some of the contemporary talents who have paid tribute to the New Wave, not only vocally, but in their film-making as well. Trufffaut can be found making a cameo appearance in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, rather fittingly shown as an expert in communication.

However, it’s not just film-makers who have been influenced. Seberg’s style was seen on the red carpet earlier this year as Carey Mulligan sported a neat little blond cut at the Orange British Academy Film Awards. Seberg’s black and white striped T-shirt and pedal pushers have become shorthand for the chic Parisian girl.

To commemorate the 50th birthday of Breathless there is an exhibition in London of the photographs by Raymond Cauchetier, who chronicled the film-makers on set from Breathless onwards. Again, showing how the style has not aged one bit. La Nouvelle Vague. Iconic New Wave Photographs by Raymond Cauchetier is on at the James Hyman Gallery (5 Savile Row, W1S 3PD) until 28 August.

The 50th anniversary edition of Breathless is now available on DVD as part of the Studio Canal Collection.

Micro-budget Market Place

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0000

New Podcast on the benefits of the market place for Micro-budget films

In our latest podcast, Piers Nightingale Head of Development at High Point Films with Mia Bays the benefits of the market place and festival screenings for showcasing micro-budget films, and examines selling Microwave feature Mum & Dad.

Piers and Mia discuss _Mum & Dad’s unique release from High Point’s initial involvement as sales agents, through to Revolver’s international distribution.

Download the podcast to find out about the importance of proper market place positioning of a micro-budget feature, and discover strategies and tips to achieve the best results in the current economic climate, including:

• Creating a buzz for your film at festivals:
- Festival hierarchy
- Choosing the best festivals
- Maintaining ‘premiere’ status

• Finding the right distributor for your film:
- The importance of a home-territory distributor
- Highpoint’s tracking of Mum & Dad
- Highpoint’s sales pitch and Revolver’s distribution pitch of Mum & Dad

• Changes in the current micro-budget Market Place:
- The current state of the sales market
- The benefits of social networking

For two decades, the top international multi-media company High Point, has specialized in the sales, financing, packaging, marketing and production of talent driven feature films, compelling television drama, high concept TV movies and event factual productions. Current films on their roster include: A Passionate Woman, Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff, Freestyle (a Film London micro-budget feature film) and Last Chance Mumbai.

To learn more about the world of micro-budget film and its position within the film industry, please visit our Podcast Page –download directly, stream straight from the website, or download these invaluable words of wisdom from our iTunes page.

Did you know, you can also keep up-to-date with all the latest micro-budget and indie film news, on our Twitter?

Herzog: A Force of Nature

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Herzog returns to his low-budget roots with his latest film My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done.

Werner Herzog, famous for being an obsessive film-maker, has just returned to his low-budget roots with his latest film My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done.

There has always been a theme running through Werner Herzog’s films. Nature is ultimately in control and almost homicidal in its dealings with humans. Whether he defies nature by dragging a paddle steamer over a hill in the middle of the Peruvian rain forest in Fitzcarraldo or documenting Timothy Treadwell’s obsession with Alaskan bears in Grizzly Man, Herzog has always managed to bring the story to the screen on a minimal budget.

Herzog’s back catalogue reflects his commitment to and success in making films on a low budget. Aguirre, Wrath of God, one of Herzog’s earliest films, set the standard for Herzog’s later work. It was made with a crew of eight and a 35mm camera that he stole from his film school, a crime he admits to as it was necessary at the time. “I don’t consider it theft — it was just a necessity — I had some sort of natural right for a camera, a tool to work with.” Herzog also used local people as crew and even the worst of his surrounding locations as key elements in his storytelling. During the shoot, the rafts they were travelling and filming on started to sink in a flash flood. Herzog used the footage in the film itself. The realism allowed Herzog to make the film on the lowest possible budget but also allowed him, as he believed, to convey the passion on screen.

Herzog’s genius is in his empathy with obsessives. He understands them and brings them to the screen to display all the eccentricity and courage with which he approaches his own work. Fitzcarraldo, the story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an extremely determined man intent on building an opera house in the jungle, is quite plainly a work of physical and mental exertion, not just from him but from his amazing crew. As that 300-odd tonne paddle streamer inches up that hill — pulled by a bulldozer, no expensive special effects here — Herzog creates a real feeling of elation. It is not in any way dissimilar to the quest by Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald himself to bring opera to the jungle.

Herzog’s most famous collaboration was of course with his mad muse Klaus Kinski. His documentary, My Best Fiend, is one of the most entertaining biopics of an actor ever made. It covers everything from conflicting reports on who first pulled the gun on who on the set of Aguirre, to the story that Herzog threatened to shoot Kinski, then himself, if the volatile actor left the film. There is also a memorable scene when a local tribe offered to bump Kinski off during filming, but Herzog, with what seems total seriousness, told them he wanted to finish the picture. Kinski himself was obviously the predatory side of nature Herzog loves so much embodied in human form, he let him go to the worst extremes at times. Some of the violent scenes in their films together show Kinski flying into one of his egomaniacal rages as Herzog kept the camera running. You can learn everything you will ever need to know about dealing with difficult actors by watching this film, though let’s hope you never have to look down the barrel of a gun.

Herzog’s career has seen him at the helm of more so-called mainstream big-budget films such as Rescue Dawn and recent release Bad Lieutenant. However, his commitment to low-budget film-making is clear in his most recent project, My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done. The film, which comes out of a collaboration with David Lynch, was screened recently during the Edinburgh International Film Festival and is, as you would expect with those two personalities involved, an original, off-the-wall piece of work. The film is based on a true story of a man who kills his mother after experiencing mystic signs and is a great example of Herzog’s collaborative and improvisational way of working. Herzog has taken actors who are famous for their experimental roles – including Willem Dafoe, Brad Dourif, Chloë Sevigny, Michael Shannon – and created another study of obsession.

Herzog’s commitment to keeping costs down led him to experiment with new digital equipment so he decided to shoot My Son with RED ONE cameras but has said that it was not a good experience. Typically controversial, he said this state-of-the-art piece of kit was not as flexible as traditional cameras. “Sometimes something is happening and you can’t just push the button and record it,” Herzog told DGA Quarterly. “An assistant cameraman said this camera would be ideal if we were filming the National Library in Paris, which has been sitting there for centuries. But everything that moves faster than a library is a problem for the RED.” It’s harsh criticism indeed from a film-¬maker with such an experimental nature, but maybe more of a comment on his immediate, impatient way of working.

There is a story that goes more than a little way to explain Herzog’s passion for film and his quest behind it. He famously walked from Munich to Paris when his mentor, film-maker Lotte Eisner, was reported to be dying: he was convinced that his sacrifice would save her — she lived on for another nine years.

In his book about the pilgrimage, Of Walking on Glass, he describes the bleak landscapes, the unrelenting cold winter weather and the stares of local villagers in a way that makes us feel his alienation. He also uses the experience as advice for budding film-makers. He tells them to go and experience something similar to his walk before they go to any film school. If you heed this advice it might be worth investing in a strong pair of walking shoes if you want to follow in his steps. He is undeniably an inspiration.

Find out where you can watch Herzog’s recent release Bad Lieutenant in a cinema near you.

The Free Cinema Manifesto

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0000

We take a look back to the 1950s movement that still influences independent film-making today.

“In making these films, and presenting these programmes, we have tried to make a stand for independent, creative film-making in a world where the pressures of conformism and commercialism are becoming more powerful every day. We will not abandon these convictions, nor the attempt to put them into practice…”

The above quote was from one of the Free Cinema programmes shown at the NFT between 1956 and 1959. The programme had been organised by a group of film–makers, amongst them Karel Reisz, Walter Lassally, Lindsay Anderson and Lorenza Mazzetti. It was a reaction to the way that big studio films were financed; their aim was to operate on a smaller budget gained from organisations such as the BFI. Their films were characterized by “a belief in freedom, in the importance of people and the significance of the everyday”, as the movement’s father Lindsay Anderson put it in their manifesto. They wanted their films to be shot on location rather than studio based, and to attempt to break free of the stranglehold that the big distributors had over the industry at that time. They were arguably the worlds first guerilla film-makers and their legacy is evident everytime an amateur film–maker picks up a DV camera and records a personal, location-based film.

Although many films were shown over the three year period at the NFT, the movement was initially formed to distribute O’ Dreamland, Momma Don’t Allow, and Together. These films are a good example of what was to follow. Tony Richardson’s and Karel Reisz’s 16mm Momma Don’t Allow was based in a Jazz Café in Wood Green, London, and provided a personal, unpatronising glimpse into the social lives of 1950s youth in a way that had never been seen before. The camera neutrally records the private moments of teddy boys and shop girls as they break free from the monotony of their lives. The financing for the film came from the BFI Experimental Film Fund and by the standards of a present day Channel 4 documentary, the absence of patronising commentary seems original and unobtrusive.

O’ Dreamland by Lindsay Anderson, about a Margate funfair, was made for just £100 of privately raised funds. In the fifties the 16mm film cameras and sound equipment which Anderson used were, although much easier to carry and more lightweight than those used in the 1940s, still more cumbersome than today’s digital cameras. But Anderson’s perseverance paid off and his tenacity may be a lesson to many an aspiring film–maker with access to very few funds, as he managed to get his films made and distributed (although only at the NFT) at a time when it was even harder for independent film–makers to get their films distributed than it is now.

Lorenza Mazetti’s fiction film, Together, was about two deaf/mute dockers in London’s East End and another typical example of Free Cinema. The film was financed by the BFI Experimental Film Fund and partly made by unpaid technicians and actors (the two main protagonists were Mazzetti’s college friends) and despite many production problems, managed to be shown to an audience, the queue of which was even longer than those for the Festival of Britain. Despite being shot on 35mm, it is an example of a film collective working together on a tiny budget to make a very impressively shot film, and it is an inspiration to any guerilla film–maker today that she managed to get her film completed.

The huge interest in the programme managed to tap into a feeling in the national cinematic consciousness that change was taking place and led on to the production of a variety of other films, such as We are the Lambeth Boys, which went on to shape the cinematic style of British cinema – leading all the way to present day. The fly on the wall, shaky camera, typical of Free Cinema films informed the shooting style of Ken Loach’s films and has now become the staple of many mock documentary dramas and comedies, such as The Office.

Lindsay Anderson admitted that the Free Cinema programme was not initially intended by those who created it to become a movement, but rather a way of showing the three films by himself, Mazetti, Reisz and Richardson to a larger audience. However, it outgrew its initial purpose to become a showcase for films if they subscribed to it’s manifesto for change in the way films were shot, produced and distributed. This movement was the precursor to the modern day independent film festival, in which an amateur film–maker who has picked up a DV camera and made a personal and original film can have it shown to a considerable audience. The concept of the film collective also began here and over the last decade the idea of the collective has had a new lease of life with the creation of Shooting People and other film networking opportunities as well as newer collaborative film-making initiaves.

In Britain, independent film is a strong and growing medium, which gained momentum during the Free Cinema period and continues to struggle against the tide of the big studios to this day. Despite coming to an end in 1959 the influence of the movement stretched throughout the 1960s and 70s in British cinema and the reverbartions of Free Cinema can be felt in the films many of our great directors. Ken Loach’s hand – held camera and use of non – proffesional actors is a definate nod to the Free Cinema period, and Mike Leigh’s personal, improvised, but down – beat slice of life style bears many similarities to Mazzetti’s work. This style has evolved a gritty, earthy, personal, low – budget, unglamourous but ultimately compassionate and humane vision of life which has become the mark of British cinema. Even Patrick Keiller’s location shot, avant – garde documentary film-poem London, made in 1993, takes a look at the importance of the mundane in a way which would have been a proud addition to a modern day Free Cinema programme at the NFT…now there’s an idea.

To download the Free Cinema manifesto, the programmes and to learn more about the Free Cinema movement visit www.bfi.org.uk/freecinema.

Edinburgh Welcomes the Young Guns

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0000

The world’s longest running film festival has grasped its own identity. It no longer collides with the more famous arts festival in August and takes in a new venue, the Festival Theatre.

Tam the Gun was a famous Edinburgh character. He fired the cannon at one o’clock every day from Edinburgh Castle, scaring the bejesus out of everyone in Princes Street. In itself, this totally surreal moment could belong in a movie. Tam passed away a few years ago but his story could provide inspiration for new film-makers. He had exactly what low-budget film-makers need: he was committed to his project, he knew how to handle the equipment and ultimately he had a huge, if unsuspecting, audience. That’s what you should be shooting for.

Tam’s home town is about to host a film festival that can really help the low to no budget sector – an event that allows you to get up close and personal with the talent and industry. The venues for the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) are at manageable distances to each other, as are the pubs. It attracts some of the best film-making talent and gives you great access to UK professionals. Even Werner Herzog couldn’t resist the urge to bring his latest, and low budget, film to Edinburgh – My Son, My Son, What Have ye Done?

There are also a few prizes worth winning. Moët & Chandon is sponsoring the Moët New Directors Award, which is awarded to a first or second time film-maker in the Rosebud and British Gala sections, with a cash prize of £5,000. The Michael Powell award is sponsored by the UK Film Council and carries a prize of £15,000 – one of the largest film awards currently available in the UK. It rewards imagination and creativity in British film-making and 2009 saw Duncan Jones win the award for Moon.

Real-life Superheroes

One of the films creating a buzz this year is the 81 minute documentary Superhero Me which started out as something Steve Sale shot on a mobile phone. In it he documents his own efforts at becoming a superhero, with hilarious results. With the success of Kick Ass, this film looks like it will capture some attention, if not the bad guys.

In the Under The Radar strand which focuses on ‘raw, risk-taking work from the cutting edge of new movie-making’, two underground films from the US are also causing a stir. Rona Mark’s The Crab and Vacation! by Zach Clark. The Crab, which screens on 21 June, is the touching story of a verbally abusive man born with two enormous, mutant-like hands, while Vacation!, showing on 20 June, tracks four urban girls let loose in a sunny seaside resort down South. Both Mark and Clark previously screened their debut features at EIFF, so neither of them is a stranger to the festival – Mark’s Strange Girls screened in 2008 and Clark’s Modern Love is Automatic screened in 2009.

Another new British talent director, Wayne Thallon, is screening A Spanking in Paradise – which shot in just over three weeks in January on a micro-budget. It is the story of a young man who takes over a brothel in Edinburgh. The kind of subject matter indie film-makers do very well with an insight into the capital city’s underworld and billed as a dirty, dangerous and hilarious walk on the wild side.

Advance Party Feature

Kate Dickie stars in the second feature to emerge from the Scottish-Danish Advance Party project, after Andrea Arnold’s acclaimed Red Road. Featuring in the Rosebud strand, which consists of first and second features from directors to watch, is Donkeys directed by Morag McKinnon. The film is a tangled tale of family secrets and forgiveness, enlivened by a strain of dark, eccentric humour. The film is based on characters created by Lone Scherfig, who was part of the original Dogme95 concept, and directed the Oscar nominated An Education.

Edinburgh is again the location for Outcast, an intelligent horror which caused a stir at the South by Southwest festival. The Colm McCarthy directed film has another appearance by Kate Dickie and a menacing James Nesbitt. Reports claim it rips up the rulebook for UK horror.

Training Day

This year’s training sessions include Make a Film in a Day and An Intro to Directing for new Film-makers. There are even creative workshop sessions for younger film-makers (14-19), including Make-up for filming, Camera Skills and Editing on Laptops – the latter of which has a particular relevance to the low budget sector.

The full training programme offers the chance to hear from experts talking about themes ranging from filming in Scotland to animation and casting. EIFF will also feature a panel session for producers looking to finance their first feature film, with the participation of Maggie Ellis – Film London’s Head of Production & Talent Development, responsible for Film London’s Microwave programme for micro-budget features.

8 to 10 Days Later

Edinburgh is always fun – the informality of the event combined with direct input from industry professionals is a winning mix. This year’s most eccentric event has to be the one cooked up by Tilda Swinton and Mark Cousins’ 8½ initiative. Their previous projects have been original and fun, including taking film on the road across the Highlands of Scotland in 8½ days.

This year they plan to have an open dance event celebrating Laurel and Hardy’s lovely little soft-shoe shuffle from the film Way Out West to At the Ball. On Saturday 26 June at 11am the music will strike up in Festival Square and the public will be asked to join in the dance. They even have a link to www.laurel-and-hardy.com showing people how to do the routine. As well as being fun it is also planned to launch the 8½ Foundation a project that aims to bring children and film together.

The film festival kicks off Wednesday 16 June with a gala screening of Silvain Chomet’s animated “love letter to Edinburgh” The Illusionist and runs until 26 June. Read the full programme online: www.edfilmfest.org.uk.

A Micro-budget Kickstart

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Director Lindy Heymann talks to Microwave about her latest micro-budget feature release, Kicks.

Digital Departures, the micro-budget scheme that challenges film-makers to make features for £250k, is set to release its third feature in cinemas nationwide. Previous films include Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City and Salvage, directed by Lawrence Gough. Director and Microwave mentor, Lindy Heymann talks to Microwave about her latest micro-budget feature release, Kicks.

What in particular drew you to the script of Kicks?

I was immediately hooked by the ‘folie a deux’ premise – two teenage girls bond over their mutual crush on a celebrity footballer – and what starts as a typical teenage infatuation slowly spirals out of control. It doesn’t always happen, but I could really ‘see’ the finished film, it made me very opinionated about the direction I wanted to take and thankfully the producer (Andy Stebbing) and the writer (Leigh Campbell) agreed.

How was the experience of working with Digital Departures on such a tight budget and with the time constraints involved?

I won’t lie – it was really challenging, the film was commissioned as one of three films to celebrate Liverpool being European City of Culture, so it had to be screened in Liverpool before the year was out. The entire process, from treatment to delivery of the finished film was a year, so we had strict deadlines and time constraints right from the start.

In terms of working with Leigh, the writer, it was actually quite enjoyable working on the screenplay, knowing that we would actually be shooting the film, she rose to the challenge magnificently. The deadlines meant there was less procrastination and reflection.

The shoot was tough, the biggest thing was losing a week from the schedule in order to make it work – we were forced to shoot the movie in 20 days. It was the punishing schedule and we had a lot of nights too. Having said that I loved working with the actors and my crew were incredible.

Would you have done anything differently with a larger budget considering the film looks at the obsession with celebrity and WAGs, who are themselves branded with designer labels? Or was it in fact a bit of an opportunity to show this world in a different light?

A larger budget would have allowed us to have a longer shoot and certain aspects of the script would have been developed further. We never set out to make a film about WAGs or football as such, so the designer label thing was never a consideration – we certainly saw it as an opportunity to look at the way society has embraced the media obsession with fame, celebrity, wealth and materialism.

Celebrity obsession is only one of the controversial elements in the film: life as a teenage girl, unusual or dysfunctional families, a brother in the armed forces and the opulent lifestyles of uber rich footballers? Did you have any concerns about tackling any of those subjects?

Only in that I wanted to avoid making a gritty, Northern, urban handheld drama; or a sensational TV style representation of Liverpool – as in Footballer Wives or Hollyoaks – both risks of low-budget digital film-making in the UK. But I was clear about this from the outset, and my approach and choices of key crew members, such as using a European DOP, (Eduard Grau,) using musicians rather than a conventional composer (Dan Glendining & Ladytron) for the soundtrack, as well as other decisions meant that we successfully avoided this happening.

Do you think there were ideas that you brought to the script as a woman that meant you did things a little differently?

People have asked me that a lot. I am sure there are differences, although I’m not sure what they would be. I know that I wanted to make a film that focused in on the idea of obsession and the interior worlds of the central characters, rather than make it about the outside world and turn it into a plot driven thriller.

Kicks deals with its subject matter in an original way and has a specific look. Was there a film or film-maker which influenced the style of your film?

There wasn’t really one specific film or film-maker, however Edu Grau, my DoP and I spent a lot of time discussing the film that we wanted to make, we were extremely aware of what we didn’t want it to be. I love photography and I showed Edu and the key Heads of Department many stills as references for lighting, framing, production design, art direction, colour, costume etc. Edu and I made several key decisions as a consequence of this, such as deciding to concentrate on telling the story from Nicole’s ‘outsider’ viewpoint – this led to the decision to dispense with dolly and track.

The film is set in Liverpool, a city famous for its football obsessions. Did that help or hinder the way you tackled the subject?

It helped in one way because it meant that the story was immediately believable. Celebrity footballers are accessible to their fans in a city like Liverpool (everyone drinks in the same clubs and bars) in a way that celebrities wouldn’t be in bigger more anonymous cities such as London.

What next?

I am working on several scripts at the moment and the experience of making Kicks has given me the desire to make more films.

To find out more about Kicks visit the official website

Transmedia: The Buzz Word in Cannes

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0000

From online distribution, innovative marketing and shooting digitally, the rejuvenation of low-budget film-making was the talk of the world’s biggest film festival.

Robin Hood, the film that opened the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, features a character famous for his inventive way of raising finance. Now, that is not to suggest that micro-budgeters should copy his methods, but it may surprise you how many opportunities the world’s most famous film festival affords aspiring film-makers. The buzzword at this year’s festival was “transmedia” and the new opportunities afforded by expanding digital delivery methods.

It was certainly the hottest topic at the event dedicated to micro-budget film-making hosted by Damon Wise, contributing editor to Empire magazine, in a packed UK pavilion. The panel included: Sandy Lieberson, Chair of the Board at Film London and the brains behind the creation of Film London’s Microwave initiative; and Kolton Lee, director of Freestyle, Microwave’s third theatrical feature release. The panel all agreed that the digital revolution is opening up a world of possibilities. They also said that one of the most interesting things about low-budget film-making is the degree of spontaneity and experimentation it encourages. You have full creative control and as you do a lot of the jobs yourself it means you can tackle and solve problems as they arise. There is very little lost between idea and finished product.

Helen Grace of Left films (Colin) pointed out that making low-budget films means you avoid “development hell”, the famous ‘Catch 22’ situation that many film-makers find themselves in, as their projects go from one department, one producer, one writer to another as the big studios try to guarantee their returns. And sometimes the film just does not get made.

Online Distribution

Robin Kershaw is another advocate of new forms of distribution. The founder of xtvn.com, an online distribution model, was at the festival to promote and explain how the innovative distribution would work. He intends to launch the website with his own film, The Booze Cruise. Kershaw said people have been talking about portals on the web for a couple of years now, but he has seen flaws in that model from the beginning: primarily that “no-one goes to the cinema to see the cinema”. Portals spread all their advertising spending across their whole catalogue, which would not work for his stand-alone film.

There are still a few details to work out, but he says “now that it’s possible to make features for less than the cost of a TV commercial, let’s get advertisers to pay for them. Of course, in return you have to give them eyeballs.” As they developed the marketing strategies for The Booze Cruise Kershaw and his team realised they were bringing large numbers of demographically targeted people to a single website, a huge consideration for advertisers. As Kershaw explains: “If we can bring people to one place then there are targeted marketing opportunities, which are valuable enough to advertisers to pay for a micro-budget film.”

Deborah Hadfield, a UK film-maker looking for a distribution deal, took her low-budget film The Kindness of Strangers to the Cannes market this year and says that it was a thrill. She commented that although they were working with a small budget, at least they were there, taking part; “It is not easy to get a screening at the festival, but it is very worthwhile.” Hadfield is now in talks with dozens of distributors, sales agents and buyers from all over the world. “What we hope to do now is find the right company to work with to get it to the public,” she remarked.

Low Budget, Big Accolades

During Cannes, it was announced that Microwave’s funding deal with the BBC was extended for the next three years, highlighting the buzz around low-budget film-making and away from the red carpet. The official selection itself was greeted with a loud “ho-hum” from critics and industry alike. Mike Leigh’s Another Year and Xavier Beauvois’ Of Gods and Men attracted the best reviews, but the Palme D’Or winner, Uncle Boonmee who can Recall his Past Lives by Apichatpong Weerasethakul was said to be beautiful, but, for some, unwatchable. Though, obviously that was not the opinion held by the official jury.

However, there were a couple of standouts in the sidebar strands. Gregg Araki was said back on form with Kaboom, an odd mix of the sci-fi and college romp genres. Araki said of his selection: “Like the protagonist of my movie, I was a film studies major in college and I never even dreamed that one day a film of mine might show in the Palais where all the legendary auteurs I’ve admired and idolised over the years have screened their films.” Kaboom went on to win the inaugural Queer Palm award.

Les Amours Imaginaires, by 21-year-old Québecois director Xavier Dolan, was another of the low-budget films attracting good word of mouth. The film, a modern take on Godard’s Jules et Jim, was picked up for distribution by IFC Films.

Zombie Women

A couple of other ultra low-budget films took inventive, and cheap, marketing strategies out onto La Croisette. Rubber managed to be mentioned in most news and blog reports because its star, a telepathic tyre called Robert, was a guest on the red carpet and photographed with several A-listers. The film was picked up by Magnet Releasing. The other media blitz to knock rivals aside was from Zombie Women of Satan with its eponymous stars ever present during the first couple of days. They seemed to favour the ice cream bar opposite the Palais, leading many to speculate what flavour zombies eat if fresh flesh is not an option!

This kind of madness is part of the whole Cannes event, which Hadfield encourages all potential film-makers to experience. “Sometimes just finding another film-maker who has experienced what you’re about to undertake can help, as it makes you realise it is all possible – whatever the obstacles you face,” said Hadfield. “The best advice I got from a very experienced producer on my first visit to the festival was that many people will be rushing around manically, but remember, you are just as important and have every right to be there too. My advice is – have fun, enjoy the spectacle and don’t hesitate to seize every opportunity, you never know where it will take you.”

Microwave's Bright Future

Mon, 17 May 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave’s latest two features are announced as the scheme is extended for another three years.

Film London and BBC Films have committed to a further three years of partnership to continue producing micro-budget films through its award-winning film-making scheme Microwave, it was announced from the Cannes Film Festival.

With films like the BAFTA-nominated Shifty and teen romance Freestyle already completed and released in the UK, Microwave has established itself as a scheme which supports emerging talent move from short to feature film-making, championing creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. The extension secures yet more opportunities for emerging film-making talent in the UK and brings the total number of features made under the Microwave banner to 13.

The training-through-production scheme today also confirmed two new greenlit titles from the last round of applications. Ill Manors is a multi-character and music-led story, and the feature debut by musician and actor Ben Drew – aka Plan B – and produced by Atif Ghani. Also now part of the Microwave slate is Borrowed Time, from London Film School graduates Jules Bishop, directing, and Olivier Kaempfer producing, a comedy about rediscovering youth. As with previous years, each project will be produced on a budget of no more than £100,000 with up to £60,000 cash funding from Microwave and the remaining finance raised by the production teams. All projects also benefit from the scheme’s extensive mentoring and training programme.

Now in its fourth year, Microwave’s success to date confirms it as a unique, commercially minded training and production opportunity and a launch pad for UK film-makers. A clear example of this is writer and director Eran Creevy, who was nominated for an award at this year’s BAFTAs for his ‘outstanding debut’ Shifty, alongside names like Sam Taylor-Wood (Nowhere Boy) and Duncan Jones (Moon). Creevy is currently finalising finance for his next feature, Welcome to the Punch.

During its short life, Microwave has inspired production programmes with a similar spirit around the world and has enjoyed outstanding results. The scheme’s three completed features Mum & Dad, Shifty and Freestyle, have seen UK theatrical releases and sold abroad. Moreover, with Microwave’s fourth film, The British Guide to Showing Off now in post production, Strawberry Fields currently shooting and Foxglove scheduled to shoot later this year, the scheme and the talent it supports are expected to make a lot of noise in the coming months.

To keep up to date with information about Microwave, follow us on Twitter.

To find out more about the Microwave slate, visit the Get Inspired section.

Discussing Distribution

Mon, 10 May 2010 00:00:00 -0000

UK marketing and distribution models are top of the agenda for the latest Microwave podcast

In the latest Microwave podcast Revolver’s Managing Director Justin Marciano and Microwave Creative Executive Mia Bays discuss the distribution strategy for Mum & Dad, and their daring marketing campaign for UK low-budget hit Kidulthood.

With the rise of social media as a marketing tool and the changes to traditional distribution methods, distributors are constantly working hard to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to gaining audiences.

Revolver Entertainment, one of the UKs leading independent distributors, is known for ground-breaking and innovative distribution methods. Pioneers within the industry, Revolver were the first distributor to release a live action digital 3D movie (U2 3D), and the first to collapse all windows simultaneously with the release of Microwave feature, _Mum & Dad – a British horror movie, currently available across every platform – (theatrical, VoD, PPV and DVD).

Download podcasts directly from the Microwave site, or sign up for regular updates through our dedicated iTunes page.

Did you know, you can also keep up-to-date with all the latest micro-budget and indie film news, on our Twitter?

Indies on the International Circuit

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0000

A look at the movers , shakers and films hitting recent festivals worldwide.

Hollywood studios are largely motivated by profit – to make money on multi-million dollar films, studios are required to ensure their films reach the widest possible audience. This usually means ‘unpopular’ subjects are avoided or diluted to within an inch of their original story. Studios are not queuing up to make contentious films – the edgy, the politically sensitive, or those dealing with human rights or other controversial issues – and this is where independent film-makers come in. Despite being forced into the low-budget end of the market, the vibrant and individual voices found in independent cinema are becoming louder thanks to the digital revolution in cameras and post-production, to name but two areas.

Festivals have always been the first point of call for these film-makers in finding their audience and gaining exposure for their film, and recent festival programmes have shown their continued support to this sector. One successful example of a film that has found its audience on the festival circuit is the micro-budget feature Engkwentro, which won its Filipino director, Pepe Diokno, the Best Debut Award at the Venice Film Festival last year. It has gone on to play at several festivals since and is soon to play in Asia at the Jeonju International Film Festival in South Korea, which starts on 26 April.

Here we look at some recent and upcoming festivals in which independent micro/low-budget features are finding their voice.

South By Southwest 12 – 21 March

SXSW has long been a supporter of innovative and independent feature film-makers. As well as a wide range of screenings from film-makers across the world, the festival also held over 80 sessions covering indie marketing and financing with names as intriguing as ‘Directing the Dead’ – a panel including Robert Rodriguez and Ti West, and ‘Nobody Wants to Watch Your Film: Realites of Online Film Distribution’.

This year’s winners at the SXSW festival were Tiny Furniture by Lena Dunham and Marwencol by Jeff Malmberg. Tiny Furniture, a debut feature for the director who also stars in the film, tells the story of a sister and daughter who revisit a family life they may well have wanted to leave behind. Marwencol is a documentary about Mark Hogancamp and the fantasy world he creates out of miniatures in his backyard as part of the recovery process from a brain injury.

These films reflect the diverse programme of the festival. Though, as with many independent film festivals, certain genres regularly show their popularity. Janet Pierson, film conference and festival producer at SXSW, told Microwave that “low-budget horror is a perennial – and there’s a vocal fanbase for it.” Janet went on to say, “_Monsters_ (the feature debut from Gareth Edwards) actually was picked up by the distributor Magnolia during the fest, after its world premiere.”

Pierson was extremely happy with the festival line-up this year saying “the program was warmly embraced overall – which thrilled us. It was a widely diverse program, and acclaimed just for that diversity. We had strong films from every kind of genre and budget line. Films that were entertaining in a conventional way, as well as off-centre, and films that were deeply serious. I guess the trend would just be that there’s strong film-making in every corner, at every level.”

Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Film 7 – 18 April

Understandably, this festival hosts a large section devoted to Argentina, the most prolific production market in Latin America, but also screens a huge selection from other countries in the region. The festival attempts to showcase “cultural expression and gathers acclaimed directors and new talents”.

Many of the films in the 2010 programme dealt with the years of political uncertainty and disappearances in Latin America region. Los Labios (The Lips), which has been a labour of love for its directors, Ivan Fund and Santiago Loza, tells the story of three women who descend on the hamlet of San Cristobal, Santa Fe, to act as doctors and social workers. They soon find out the hard way what life is truly like in these out-of-the-way communities. It is uncompromising, stark, and is already garnering accolades for the film-makers being chosen for official selection in the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes this year.

The documentary feature debut by Mexican Dariela Ludlow, One Day Less, is a fly-on-the-wall film which looks at her two ageing grandparents. The film concentrates on their lives over one year, New Year’s Eve to New Year’s Eve, and is a hilarious comedy looking at the interaction between the two of them in their Acapulco apartment. However, Carmen Cortes Deloya and Emeterio Deloya, aged 84 and 97 respectively, don’t sit lamenting the passing of time. The dialogue is sparkling while the film’s title shows why Ludlow thought she should capture these wonderful personalities on camera before it’s too late.

The Buenos Aires Lab (BAL) also took place during BAFICI. BAL is one of the world’s biggest markets for Europeans to find Latin American co-production projects, offering a look into new films and works in progress for producers to enter into co-production deals.

London Independent Film Festival 15 – 27 April

Now in its seventh year, the London Independent Film Festival is now screening at five different venues: the Roxy Bar & Screen, Rich Mix, Curzon, Apollo and Shortwave cinemas. LIFF 2010 opened with Jan Dunn’s The Calling, about a woman who feels she has to become a nun, but all is not quite as clear cut when she enters the order. Dunn used the prize she won in 2008, a post-production deal with Prime Focus, to finish her new film.

In his LIFF blog, Erich Schultz, the Festival Director, points to another couple of films worth looking out for – Ben O’Connor’s Ana Begins, a character piece set in the stark landscape of Exmoor, and Forget Me Not, a 24-hour love story set in London. Borges and I, directed by Yoni Bentovim, is another films that has been gathering momentum before its screening at the festival.

Tribeca Film Festival April 22 – May 2

David Kwok, director of programming for the festival, explains that is hard to predict what films might break out in any year. However, a couple of films that have already been mentioned by critics are Snap from Ireland, a psychological family drama, and the UK film The Arbor, a documentary about the troubled British playwright Andrea Dunbar. Kwok explained that both of these feature debuts from female directors are interesting as they use narrative and documentary devices to tell their stories. Some others that have created festival buzz include William Vincent (also titled In Praise of Shadows) starring James Franco, Dog Pound by French director Kim Chapiron and the documentary Sons of Perdition.

Looking at trends, Kwok says there is a definite move towards the blending of narrative and documentary: “There are many films that are playing with fine line between narrative and documentary and exploring expectations of form. It will be interesting to see where this goes. It’s not making films as a mockumentary. The film-makers are using the two forms to great effect to drive their stories. Some of the films that do this include Snap, The Arbor, and Buried Land.” He also says there are a few films in the biopic genre coming through. “Throughout the program, there are many films about real-life people. We have biopics like Gainsbourg, Je t’aime…Moi Non Plus about Serge Gainsbourg and documentaries like Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage about the Canadian band Rush.”

As for where film-makers go after the festival, Kwok explains that one of the panels during the festival would focus on distribution. “Obviously with Tribeca launching Tribeca Film, our distribution division, and Tribeca Film Festival Virtual, there is much to discuss. In the US – as well as in the UK – people are trying new things with Video-on-Demand, self-distribution, and online distribution.” He believes that this will be a subject that will continue to be expanded.

Hot Docs 29 April – 9 May

Karina Rotenstein the programming manager for Hot Docs, explains that their programming mandate is to show everything that documentary is doing. “Throughout our programming process,” Karina says, “we enjoy scouring through the 2,088 submissions to find some breakout indie/low budget films that may have screened sparsely on the festival circuit, or have been overlooked altogether that we’d like to draw attention to.”

Some of the films that they are championing include: When I Rise, about the fight against racism by Barbara Smith Conrad, a gifted African-American singer, directed by Mat Hames; Soundtracker by Nicholas Sherman, an attempt to capture the sounds of nature; B1 by Felipe Braga and Eduardo Hunter Moura, following the intense training of Antonio Tenório da Silva, a blind professional judo athlete; Steam of Life, a study of Finnish men discussing life and death in the sauna, by Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen; and Marwencol, by Jeff Malmberg, which has already won an award the SXSW festival.

Local Canadian films in the programme include Land by Julian Pinder, looking at a land deal in Nicaragua; Dish: Women, Waitressing and the Art of Service, where Maya Gallus dishes the dirt with waitresses; and Mark by Mike Hoolboom, about his friend and colleague who committed suicide.

There are some indie films, which have already been making waves on the circuit and that Hot Docs think will continue their momentum throughout the festival, including: Chico Colvard’s Family Affair, which deals with incest in his own family; The Oath, an examination of America’s war on terror, by Laura Poitras; Budrus, about a peaceful protest in a small Palestinian village, by Julia Bacha; Thunder Soul by Mark Landsman, about the Kashmere High School Stage Band; and Canal Street Madam by Cameron Yates, dealing with the FBI raid on Jeanette Maier’s infamous family-run brothel in New Orleans which destroyed her livelihood.

“In terms of content, we’re seeing a lot of personal documentaries, and in particular this year,” says Rotenstein, “a lot of films around: bad fathers, everyday heroes (shown in Small Acts, our thematic programme for this year), the politics and business of new environmental policies, and the four Finnish films we have in the festival leave us to wonder ‘what is going on with masculinity in Finland?’. This year, we’re doing a soft launch of a symposium called ‘Ripping Reality’, developed by Sean Farnel (Director of Programming) acknowledging that in the last 10 years there has been a documentary new wave, and basically, we’re trying to document and capture the impact of creative explosion in documentary film-making.”

The festival also hosts a half-day networking and educational event for emerging and mid-career film-makers, called Kickstart, which takes place on Wednesday 5 May. This year it offers sessions on funding, story development and production tips, and how to sell your film.

Cannes Film Festival 12 – 23 May

Los Labios, as mentioned above, which created a stir during the Buenos Aires festival, is now in official selection at Cannes, in the Un Certain Regard section. Lodge Kerrigan, the US indie film-maker, is also back on the Croisette with Rebecca H. His last visit was in 2004 with the claustrophobic Keane starring Damian Lewis. Sophie Fiennes’ biopic Over Your Cities Grass will Grow, about the work of Anselm Kiefer is also showing as one of the special screenings.

Cannes also holds numerous workshops, seminars, networking and pitching sessions which can be a valuable way for indie film-makers to get their project out there. It may be the biggest festival in the world, but there are still opportunities for the low-budget film-maker to find some exposure.

Religious Aspects

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0000

This Friday sees the release of two religion-based films from Microwave mentors

Freestylin’ the Facts

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Get the low down from the cast and crew of Freestyle with the latest Film London Microwave podcast

The cast and crew of heart-warming teen romance Freestyle recently took part in an open exchange at the London Film School and you now have the opportunity to listen in!

With the latest Film London Microwave podcast you can get the inside scoop on the challenges faced by basketball aficionados and key Freestyle cast members Arinze Kene (Leon) and Lucy Konadu (Ondene). As relative newcomers to the silver screen they take you behind the scenes, exposing the struggles and accomplishments they experienced during the making of this micro-budget film.

Producer Lincia Daniel and Director Kolton Lee also discuss the ups and downs of bringing Freestyle to fruition within limited means. The topics they cover in this download include: casting; training their talent; the short shooting schedule; minimizing costs and maximizing locations; and troubleshooting along the way.

Freestyle, the Film London micro-budget feature, is now available on DVD. Find out more before you add it to your basket, or get the background on the film you’ve already enjoyed, by downloading the podcast now!

Did you know, you can also keep up-to-date with all the latest micro-budget and indie film news, on our Twitter?

New Blood In British Horror

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave talks to Lawrence Gough about horror film, Salvage, his directorial feature debut.

Today sees the release of micro-budget horror film Salvage, directed by Lawrence Gough. It is the third film to be released through Digital Departures, North West Vision + Media’s micro-budget feature film-making scheme. Digital Departures draws direct parallels to the Film London Microwave initiative. Previous films under the Digital Departures banner include Terence Davies’ Of Time And The City and Kicks, directed by Lindy Heymann.

Microwave talks to Lawrence about his experiences working on a micro-budget and how this opportunity has helped him further his career.

What experience did you have in the film industry prior to working on Salvage?

My background is in acting, mainly in theatre in the UK and abroad. However, I wanted to direct so started off with direct corporate videos. I also started to make short films and went down that route for 2-3 years, getting money that, thankfully, went up in increments. However, I reached a point where I had exhausted all funding opportunities for making shorts, so I made the conscious decision that the next film would be a feature. I didn’t know how that would happen, but I made that significant psychological shift.

How was your experience working with the Digital Departures scheme? What did you learn?

Digital Departures is a scheme funded by North West Vision to support local debut feature film-makers make micro-budget features with a maximum budget of £250k to be shot in and around Merseyside. Getting the opportunity was really about going through the selection process, which involved a number of panels to see whether your project would be feasible on the micro-budget. We felt we came to the table with a strong project, a low-budget horror film that knew what it was doing, had an identity, and knew where it was headed. We were lucky enough to work with Lisa-Marie Russo (Brothers Of The Head, Insomnia) who oversaw all the selected projects. She did not destroy our ideas but help us focus our ideas to make it achievable within the constraints of the scheme. We were able to find the core essence of the story and get rid of all unnecessary elements that would only add to the budget requirements.

It has been said that Salvage “redefines the genre” of a conventional horror film? Why and how did you make it different?

Of course there are conventions within film, especially when you are working within a specific genre, but hopefully you can find a fresh way of evolving it. Horror has recently got a bad name because of certain films that have dealt with torture. For me, and I know it is all subjective, but I believe those films don’t do justice to the horror genre as they make people believe horror is seeing people chopped in half and screenwriters just think about the worst way for people to die. However, films like Rosemary’s Baby and The Haunting represented fears and anxieties of the time and that is what interests me the most. That was an element of what we were tapping into with Salvage. Yes, we were breaking conventions of the horror structure to a certain extent, but we were also trying to embrace the contemporary fears of terrorism and how people react when faced with adversity. Horror is a great way of jumping into that type of thinking.

Were the topical plot and themes of terrorism and fear always central to the concept of the film?

Yes, it’s a device in order to see how people react to fear, and when that is pushed to the extreme, how people could potentially turn on each other – a quality in us all. Horror to me is the best way to tap into that. In all my short films I have used an external catalyst to see how people react to new situations.

What were your stylistic influences in making the film?

I think I have lots of influences as a director but none of them had a direct impact on Salvage. The film is an amalgamation of my life, films that I have seen and director’s whose films deal with subject matters that I like. Certain modern films like Then, the 2006 French film, uses the notion of the unseen and less is more. It has a small perspective focusing on one or two characters in a room or house and never jumping to other perspectives. These ideas helped as creative tools to help tell the story within the constraints of the budget.

Still from Salvage, a Digital Departures film directed by Lawrence Gough.

What were the main challenges of working on a small budget? Would you have done anything differently on a larger budget?

I suppose I would like to pretend that I can say no to that. But, yes we could have had additional scenes – the prologue that I wanted was a scene set on a beach and would have been a great opening to the film, but we had to omit it. We could have shot on 35mm film and used all the lenses that I wanted and used weather and fire effects as well as cranes, but ultimately all these things don’t affect the core of the story and the constraints of the project weren’t a problem. However, my training as an actor meant I knew that creating the right environment was crucial. We needed rooms, bathrooms, back doors, alleyways, gardens and woods and were lucky enough to use the set of Brookside Close. This allowed us to shoot long takes, use available light and allow actors to inhabit the space and not hit marks but allow the camera to find the actors and make use of hand-held footage. The actors were given the space to live and breathe and I think this really helped get the performances I needed from the actors.

What opportunities did filming in the North West offer for you?

I’m not sure whether the film is about Merseyside in particular, it could really be anywhere. But I don’t think we could have shot all that material in 18 days if it wasn’t for being able to use Brookside Close. We just couldn’t have done exteriors in one place and interiors somewhere else and matched them. I hated the idea of using the set initially because it was so closely associated with TV, but once I saw the place, I realised using the set was the only way we were going to be able to make the film.

What would you like your audience to walk away thinking after seeing the movie?

I suppose I’m trying to start a career of being a genre film-maker, so I always hoped that I was creating something within the genre that had a brain. I wanted to try and root the film in some sense of meaning to us as humans and who we are and how we behave to each other. I hope that the audience understand that and that there is some emoting going on with the characters on screen. Ultimately I believe that’s the only thing you can achieve in watching film – some kind of emotional connection – I think that’s what you take away when you walk out of the cinema as opposed to sequences and moment, an emotional response. If you do that then I think that’s an achievement.

What next?

I can’t say a great deal, but I am working on an ecological horror set in the UK called The Drought. A family are forced to survive in a drought, they travel into London and find a subterranean existence going on in the underground, in the water system. Robert Jones and The Works are involved, so it is turning into quite a big film. I’ve got five films I want to make by the time I am 50 – they are all ambitious but I am pursuing them all.

Salvage is released in selected cinemas nationwide today through Revolver Entertainment (who also released Microwave horror Mum & Dad) on 19 March 2010.

View the trailer.

Justice League Of Their Own

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0000

A look at the increasing popularity of social issue films and how they find and inspire audiences.

In the impassioned world of micro-budget film-making, there has always been a place for both documentary and fiction films tackling issues of civil rights, social conscience and social injustice. Independently financed micro and low-budget features by indie film-makers are often capable of stepping outside the mainstream media’s ratings-fuelled agenda and focus on the credibility of their film’s argument and the crafting of a compelling, truthful message.

In recent years, there have been a range of micro/low-budget films that have transgressed a niche audience – providing inspiring opportunities for compassionate activists and the dispossessed to voice and disseminate their often urgent message to the wider world. With growing possibilities online regarding audience building, fundraising, marketing and distribution, there has been an increasing trend in the success of these issue-based films.

Finding An Audience

The increasing popularity of social issue films amongst audiences has meant a number of recent initiatives have emerged to help film-makers connect with audiences. Film festivals have been the first to pick up on this new trend and a number of festivals in recent years have developed strands and events to promote social justice film-makers.

This year’s Sundance Film Festival showed its support to social issue films by programming a variety of eco-documentaries. The festival also created a focus on the work of activists through a series of panels, involving a number of philanthropists, activists and artists who support the festival’s goal of using art to effect social change. These included the likes of micro-finance pioneer Muhammad Yunus in collaboration with education reformer Geoffrey Canada and environmental visionary Lester Brown discussing new social and economic paradigms. Another panel discussion featured author and activist Naomi Klein, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, Bob Lynch from Americans For The Arts and Michael Ratner, President of the Center For Constitutional Rights.

This year’s fast-approaching Tribeca Film Festival is following in a similar vein to Sundance. It has been reported that they are aiming to “reach out to social justice film-makers” withTribeca Film Institute hosting The Good Pitch. The project is a Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation in partnership with the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program that has called for applications from film-makers involved in social justice film projects. Indiewire reports that: “The Good Pitch is a one-day live event bringing together specially selected foundations, NGOs, social entrepreneurs, broadcasters and other media people to expand the resources aimed at maximizing the impact of social-issue documentary. Eight film-making teams pitch their project and its associated outreach campaign with the aim of creating a unique coalition around each film in order to accelerate its impact and influence”.

Social justice films are not only finding strands in festivals but their popularity has led to the creation of dedicated festivals in order to service the demand from audiences. Many of the best films exploring social justice and instigating direct action around today’s most pressing issues have received preview screenings and premieres at the twin Human Rights Watch Film Festivals in London and New York. The London-based festival is about to kick off (17 – 26 March) and its 14th edition with 28 films from 20 countries and numerous special guests. This year’s three distinct themes have been announces as being – Closed Societies: Iran and North Korea, Acountability and Justice, and Development and Migration.

Alongside the collective experience of festivals, audiences are now being offered an increasing number of methods to view films by film-makers harnessing the potential of online distribution. A new initiative was recently launched by British actor Colin Firth which aims to host films of social conscience. Partially conceived by Firth, Brightwide is an online service that acts as a bridge between film-makers, campaigners and the audience. They state their aim succinctly: “watch think link act”. If you’re moved by one of the films have made available free online, viewers can read up on the issues, join charity campaigns, become a volunteer, or donate to the cause. Amongst the variety of films they show is In This World, Michael Winterbottom’s 2004 Golden Bear award-winning docudrama, and McLibel, the inspirational story of the postman and the gardener who took on the might of McDonald’s and won.

Robert Greenwald, the film-maker and activist behind the high-profile feature documentaries Outfoxed, Wal-Mart The High Cost of Low Cost and the upcoming Rethink Afghanistan has also created a website to connect social justice films with their audience. Brave New Films claim they are “are at the forefront of the fight to create a just America…Using new media and internet video campaigns, Brave New Films has created a quick-strike capability that informs the public, challenges corporate media with the truth, and motivates people to take action on social issues nationwide…Using YouTube, bloggers, networking sites, and strategic partnerships with both national networks and local activists, we are reaching millions and getting results.” The site for Brave New Films also aids the distribution of films by kindred spirits such as documentary film-maker Michael Moore. They collaborated with him on the promotion of his film Slacker Uprising which documents Moore’s tour of colleges and universities from 62 cities throughout the US “battleground states”, attempting to motivate the apathetic ‘slacker voters’ and turn out young US voters to defeat “W” Bush in 2004.

Engaging An Audience

Websites that go beyond the message of the film and enhance audience experience by providing more information and inspiring viewers to take action have become the standard for most social justice films. Viewers are able to engage with the issues highlighted in the films and often get involved in campaigning and raising awareness beyond the reach of the film.

Some recent examples of such films include Burma VJ, which became the first film ever to be officially screened for elected leaders and guests at 10 Downing Street by the Prime Minister’s wife Sarah Brown to raise the profile of the human rights atrocities perpetrated by the military regime in Burma. The film’s website provides a whole host of further information relating to the cause and encourages audiences to take action by spreading the message, campaigning and donating to the cause. Recent release Crude, directed by Joe Berlinger, is a film about the most controversial environmental lawsuits on the planet which “subverts the conventions of advocacy film-making, exploring a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus”. Again their website encourages viewers to learn more about the issues and get involved with the various supporting organisations of the film.

Similarly, The End of Poverty used their online presence to encourage audiences to engage with the issues, but this time with a specific aim: to sign the petition of 10 Solutions to End Poverty. Fans were also asked to promote the film and its ideas on a local basis. Director Philippe Diaz has said the film’s aims to engage in social justice were central to the concept of the film, stating that The End of Poverty “is about injustice…and inequalities which grow wider and wider every year, and about answering the daunting question: Why, in a world of so much wealth, do we still have so much poverty?” Diaz explains his film-making ethos: “I created Cinema Libre Studio to produce and distribute movies that can make a difference and we see everyday that it is possible. One of the major goals of the film is to educate people and make them realize that what they thought was right because they have been taught so may not be the case”.

This idea of focusing on social justice issues and promoting a sense of activism through film has been most successfully executed by Participant Productions in the US. The company has shown the importance and popularity of social issue films to cinema audiences worldwide by being the driving force behind big-budget movies that crossover to the mainstream such as Food Inc., Syriana, An Inconvenient Truth and recent Academy Award winner The Cove. Uniquely, the company is completely focused on issues of social justice and promote themselves as “entertainment that inspires and compels social change”. They believe that “a good story well told can truly make a difference in how one sees the world” whether it is a feature film, documentary or other form of media. As with many of the indie film-makers profiled above, Participant is a company seeking to entertain audiences first, then to invite them to participate in making a difference. To facilitate this, Participant creates specific social action campaigns for each film and documentary designed to give a voice to issues that resonate in the films. Participant claim that they “team with social sector organizations, non-profits and corporations who are committed to creating an open forum for discussion, education and who can, with Participant, offer specific ways for audience members to get involved.”

Poster for Food Inc. produced by Participant Productions

Inspiring An Audience

A number of films and organizations go beyond raising awareness amongst their audience and seek to make the audience a part of the film-making process and give them a stake in the film, often through donations.

One of the most successful examples of this has been The Age of Stupid, a docu-drama starring Pete Postlethwaite as a man in a climate change-affected world in 2055. The film was financed using a ‘crowd-funding’ model where over £500,000 was raised from a number of small donors who each invested between £500 and £35,000. The film went on to be released in 2009 and generated huge media and public interest. It also spawned the 10:10 campaign, a UK-wide initiative encouraging everyone in Britain to reduce their carbon emissions by at least 10 per cent during 2010. Director, Franny Armstrong conceived the 10:10 campaign to complement the ongoing promotion of her film and says that “while The Age of Stupid is primarily aimed at raising awareness of climate change as a pending global humanitarian crisis, 10:10 is presented as a strategy for people to take positive action in the face of such an urgent and daunting problem. Although 10:10 and The Age of Stupid activities overlap in their aims and tactics, they are run as two distinct organisations, with separate teams of staff and funding structures”.

The film-makers went a step further to ensure the film was seen by its audience by launching their Indie Screenings model, a new form of film distribution which allows anyone, anywhere, to buy a license to hold a screening of the film – with the price set according to the screener’s means – and then, crucially, to charge for tickets and keep any profits for themselves. From November 2009, Indie Screenings has subsequently become available as a facility to host films by other film-makers.

Brave New Films has followed a similar micro-financing model and, via their website, they encourage their over 1 million members and 50 million viewers to consider supporting them with a one-time donation or as a monthly subscription to help them “continue to create and distribute cutting-edge political campaigns that result in action and victories”.

It is interesting to see the popularity of films with a clear social message reach a wider audience and generate open debate around the important issues raised. It is an exciting time for film-makers to actively engage with audiences to go beyond telling a story, and also inspire free-thinking individuals to participate in speaking out against injustice and improving the lives of people otherwise blighted by infringements on their basic human rights or the destruction of the environment. Film-makers are now able to create an ongoing legacy for their message, online, beyond their films initial theatrical and ancilliary releases, and directly into the lives of the audience.

Freestyle on DVD

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Win a copy of Film London Microwave’s latest feature!

Select cinemas across London and the UK played host to the screen debut of Freestyle on Friday. In celebration of the film’s DVD release today, we have 5 copies of Freestyle to give away.

The latest release from Microwave, Film London’s groundbreaking micro-budget feature film fund, is a heart-warming tale set in the fast-paced world of freestyle basketball.

Ondene (Lucy Konadu) is beautiful, talented, and destined to study law if she gets the required A-Levels. Nothing less will satisfy her domineering mother, Hyacynth (Suzann McLean). When a basketball court is set up near her private school, Ondene is charmed by a charismatic, good-looking freestyle basketball player, Leon (Arinze Kene), and they decide to enter a competition.

From a deprived background, Leon dreams of going to university and needs to win to pay his way. Ondene deceives her mother to be with him, and romance blossoms, only to be crushed when Hyacynth finds out. Balancing her future prospects and her newfound passion, Ondene has to make tough decisions about her family, education, and the man she loves.

Featuring a fresh cast and a hot UK urban soundtrack selected by Bashy, Freestyle is an exciting, funny and heartwarming story that showcases the best in new British talent.

If you would like to get your hands on a copy of Freestyle, then simply answer the following question:

Ondene is set to study law, but which university does she apply for?

Send an email entitled ‘Freestyle DVD Competition’ to microwave@filmlondon.org.uk with your name, mailing address and answer. Winners will be picked at random on Monday 8 March.

Find out more about Freestyle in Get Inspired.

Freeing Arinze’s Style

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Freestyle releases in cinemas today. Microwave talks to the film’s star, Arinze Kene.

Microwave’s third film directed by Kolton Lee releases in cinemas today. Freestyle is a heart-warming teen romance set in the exhilarating world of freestyle basketball. The film follows Ondene, a beautiful and talented student who has spent her life obeying her mother Hyacinth and is set to read Law at Oxford. However, in the lead up to her final exams, Odene’s attention is swayed – she discovers the new and interesting world of freestyle basketball and meets Leon who offers to coach her to enter a national competition – an extra curricular activity that is sure to meet her mother’s disapproval.

A number of the cast were non-actors who were found in a nationwide audition process called ‘Search For A Star’. Run by Freestyle’s distributor, Revolver Entertainment, in partnership with social networking site Bebo and the NBA, casting sessions were held in London, Manchester and Birmingham. The aim: to gather a multi-cultural cast of young men and women with impressive freestyle basketball skills and a raw talent to play principle and supporting roles in the film.

The audition winners joined a more established cast of actors including Colin Salmon, Danny John-Jules and up-and-coming star Arinze Kene. Microwave talks to Arinze to find out more about his experience on Freestyle.

What previous experience did you have in both acting and freestyling before you were cast as the lead in Freestyle?

Before I was cast in Freestyle, I had already done a few stage plays including playing Simba in The Lion King so I was already very comfortable with acting. The freestyle experience I had prior to the movie was mainly from when I was younger. I actually won the Nike/MTV Freestyle Challenge.

What kind of training/rehearsals did you have to go through to prepare for the shoot?

We trained for a few hours a week on our freestyle routines, it was quite intensive. We had to make sure the basketball scenes looked real as well. It was great because I was able to brush up on my skills before the shoot. We also had a few rehearsals with dialogue and so on to prepare with the rest of the cast who were largely non-actors.

How did you find the whole experience of being involved in a feature film? What did you learn?

It was terrific! I loved it the whole way through. The crew were great to work with and so were the cast. As filming progressed I got more relaxed into my role and had an even better time. It’s given me good experience of being in front of a camera.

Much of the cast of Freestyle had never acted before – did you all support each other through the production?

There was this unspoken rule that if you knew someone was having difficulties somewhere, you could step in a give them a little help. I helped where I could with lines and so on. It was great working with such talented non-actors. Many of them have raw talent to act and have proved great on screen.

What kind of tips were you able to pick up from more experienced professionals such as actor Colin Salmon and the crew?

We had an awesome conversation with Colin when he spoke about why he said yes to doing the movie and how much he helps out where he can. He gave us acting tips as well. He was so calm in front of the camera and its because he’s been there a thousand times before, but that’s the main thing I took away from Colin, just to be calm each time.

How quickly were you able to create the on-screen chemistry with the other lead in the film Lucy Konadu? Was it easy?

It was easy because Lucy was such a star to work with. I knew her before, through basketball, which helped. From watching the movie, we’ve proved to be a wonderful couple on screen!!

What appeals to you about the story of Freestyle? Do you think its positive message will appeal to the kids who will watch the film?

Every young person who has watched it has absolutely loved it. I think it appeals to our youth especially. The messages in the movie are positive. My character, Leon’s central story is that he’s aiming to go to university to become a sports journalist. Lucy’s character, Ondene, works too hard and when she finds basketball it helps her to release stress. We both live this schizophrenic life between academia and Freestyle. It also sends out a message about individuality and being artful.

You are also a writer as well as an actor and we understand you will be appearing as principle character Connor in BBC 1’s Eastenders – what else are you up to next?

Well, I have now shot Eastenders, and with the release of Freestyle, I hope they bring me more work. In the meantime, I’ve been focusing on my playwriting and gaining experience in the directing field. One of my major goals is to create a successful theatre and production company. One that celebrates inner-city characters and urban youth, as myself.

Read more about Freestyle in the Get Inspired section.

Visit the official Freestyle website to listen to exclusive tracks and follow the film on Twitter and Bebo.

Freestylin’ on Friday

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave’s latest feature, Freestyle, releases in cinemas on 26 February.

The Film London Microwave slate is going from strength to strength with the latest feature, Freestyle, about to go on general release nationwide this Friday. Freestyle is the third film supported through the micro-budget scheme to hit cinemas, following successful theatrical and DVD releases of Film London Microwave’s first two features Mum & Dad and Shifty.

Freestyle, directed by ex-basketball pro Kolton Lee, is a heart-warming teen romance set in the exhilarating world of freestyle basketball. The film follows Ondene, a beautiful and talented student who has spent her life obeying her mother Hyacinth and is set to read Law at Oxford. However, in the lead up to her final exams, Odene’s attention is swayed – she discovers the new and interesting world of freestyle basketball and meets Leon who offers to coach her to enter a national competition – an extra curricular activity that is sure to meet her mother’s disapproval.

Life and Lyrics

The film was always going to be an ambitious project, but even more so considering the £100,000 budget and 18-day shoot of the Microwave model. This was a task that the director, took in his stride: “We wanted to provide a look and flair, colour and energy but we only had three weeks to shoot the film. That’s hard work and this is not a conventional British film. My biggest challenge was to make this tiny budget look expensive and spread the money much further in an effective way. We fostered the sense that this is a project worth fighting for, that this is a project worth making good.”

Starring newcomers Lucy Konadu and Arinze Kene, alongside established actors like Colin Salmon and Danny John-Jules, the film also features a hot new urban music soundtrack including tracks from Plan B, Toddla T and Lethal Bizzle. Director Lee comments that “the music was always going to be important because of the age group of the target audience. From the beginning, we were rehearsing to the kind of music that we wanted for the film – grime, reggae, jazz, soul and hip-hop. We were always going to use very urban music, but it was key that it should definitely be British.” Artists such as DaVinChe, Killa Kela and JME also feature in the film. Check out selected tracks on the Freestyle website.

Breaking Free From Convention

Lee had the early vision to make Freestyle a uniquely positive story for urban teens. Whilst acknowledging the path marked by previous urban British films like Noel Clarke’s Adulthood and Kidulthood, Lee was keen to present a more uplifting take on youth culture in London, a viewpoint that attracted key cast to the project: “I think it’s quite an inspirational story. I think the fact we’re looking at class within an inner city culture is quite an interesting take on it and I didn’t see a gun in it which is always a joy” explains Colin Salmon, who plays freestyle competition promoter and judge, Joel Carter. As Lucy, who plays Ondene, puts it: “I think the difference is in the individual’s grounding and also family values – it is not about race or class anymore. I come from a very humble family in East London but then I sit next to Princess Beatrice at my university library. This is what Freestyle is about – the blending of class and race.”

The team behind Freestyle always planned to create a film that, whilst retaining its British spirit, would have a lot to say to international audiences too. The film-makers’ ambition is for Freestyle to kick-start a new British tradition of upbeat teen films – a market the US has traditionally monopolised. As the director acknowledges: “London’s diverse and edgy multicultural society provides a unique backdrop for the film – showcasing an intriguing aspect of life in one of the world’s most famous cities. [However] the dilemmas of the main characters will resonate with young people around the world who also have to juggle the complexities of growing up, falling in love, and studying, whilst trying to make important life choices.”

In finding its audience, Freestyle is set for a multi-platform release through Revolver Entertainment. Similar to Mum & Dad_’s unique multi-platform release, _Freestyle will be available in the UK in selected theatres (Empire Leicester Square, Ritzy Brixton, Rich Mix Bethnal Green, Stratford Picturehouse and Genesis Mile End), on iTunes, LoveFilm, FilmFlex and Sky Box Office from 26 February and on DVD from 1 March.

Find out more in the Get Inspired section.

Read interview with director Kolton Lee.

Talking Direction: Kolton Lee

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave interviews Kolton Lee, director of Freestyle.

Microwave’s third feature – a heartwarming urban romance set in the world of freestyle basketball – is set for release in cinemas nationwide on 26 February. In anticipation, Microwave speaks to Kolton Lee, director of Freestyle, to find out more about his micro-budget filming experience.

How did you first become involved with the project? What drew you to this story?
I first became involved with the project when the script was sent to me. Lincia (producer) had seen and liked my first no-budget film, Cherps, in Cannes and thought I could do a good job with this script. What drew me to it was that it was different from many of the types of projects that were being sent to me – with black leads and tending to have a similar narrative that included guns, gang violence and knife crime. Freestyle was first and foremost a sweet love story, but the message at the heart of the story was a positive one about the value of education – which made it very different. The other thing that drew me was the basketball. Being a former basketball player myself, this element definitely appealed to me.

What were your stylistic influences, and how did you plan/manage to translate these to a micro-budget production?
Since Freestyle is a genre film, my stylistic influences were very similar to the US films that are made in this genre. Having said that, because my budget was so low I tried to be creative with certain scenes and give them a style and slickness that would work for this audience, but also hide the fact that the budget was low. In the end, when you are working low budget you will never be able to do all the things you want to do, so I had to be strategic about where I would spend my money and which scenes I wanted to stand out for their look. I picked three key moments in the film where I wanted to wow the audience.

Where did the Search For A Star idea come from? Had you always planned to work with non-actors? What was the experience like?
Initially when casting the film we were looking in the traditional places and going through agents to actors. However, we quickly found it was impossible to find actors who could do all the basketball scenes the freestyle scenes convincingly. So the idea for Search For A Star came out of this problem. We decided to look for ballers and freestylers who we thought had the potential to act. That meant casting the net far and wide, but, in the end, I personally think we did a pretty decent job!

What kind of pre-production preparation was needed for such an ambitious project?
Once we had our young and inexperienced cast, many months of acting, basketball and dance rehearsals followed to make sure they were up the standard that would be required for a film such as this. As the director, I needed to keep the whole team focused on our objective. The kind of audience that Freestyle was being made for would not tolerate sub standard basketball or freestyle performances on the understanding that this is a micro-budget. They weren’t going to be interested in that. All they want to see is a good film and so I made sure this idea was instilled into the cast. And so they all worked their socks off to make sure they were as ready as they could possibly be by the time we started shooting.

How important was music in conceptualising the project?
The music was always going to be important because of the age group of the target audience. From the beginning, we were rehearsing to the kind of music that we wanted for the film – grime, reggae, jazz, soul and hip-hop. We were always going to use very urban music, but it was key that it should definitely be British.

In your opinion, what were the main challenges of the shoot?
The main challenge of the shoot was working so quickly, especially with such an inexperienced cast. The tight schedule was always going to be a challenge, but dealing with both issues made the margins for error in making this film extremely narrow.

How and why did you make the decision to shoot on RED? Did this affect the editing process?
We decided to shoot on the RED camera because the end results are amazing! The RED camera is basically a computer with a lens on it. This means that in capturing images, the camera captures masses of digital information, but more than most digital cameras. How much or little of this you want to use can then be made at your leisure in post-production. It’s one of the best digital cameras on the market and is a good alternative to 35mm film if your budget is low. The downside to this camera is that it’s bulky and awkward to use in small spaces or to use hand-held, and it can be temperamental. But for me, the advantages outweighed the disadvantages with this film.

What next?
I’m currently adapting a book called East of Acre Lane for the UK Film Council. The story is essentially a family drama that takes place in Brixton, south London in 1981 – the year of the Brixton riots. I’m also just starting to market my latest screenplay called First Love – a contemporary revenge thriller set in West London.

To find out more about Freestyle visit the Get Inspired section.

Revolver Evolves

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Revolver Entertainment release their newest low-budget feature Tony

Revolver Entertainment, one of the UK and Ireland’s largest independent distributors, has a unique approach in managing its edgy slate of film and DVD releases. Unafraid to break convention, they have led the way in regards to access to content for the viewing public.

The first Film London Microwave feature, cult horror Mum & Dad was released by Revolver and followed a unique strategy as the first film in the UK to be released simultaneously in selected cinemas, on DVD, Pay-Per-View (PPV) and Video-On-Demand (VoD). Shattering the standalone window for theatrical release back on Boxing Day in 2008 – the release strategy for Mum & Dad has since laid the groundwork for other films to follow suit.

This Friday, Revolver Entertainment is releasing their newest low-budget feature Tony- taking the audience through a week in the life of an alienated psychopath with severe social problems, an obsession for action films and a horrible moustache (played by Peter Ferdinando).Director Gerard Johnson and producer Dan McCulloch spent over a year working on the film, despite the shoot lasting a mere twelve days. According to Johnson, working with limited budgets and film stock forced them to be “on top of our game in relation to how we could nail the scenes, and we had to be quite guerilla in our methods on such a low budget”.

Due to the cost of a solid stretch of cutting time, editing Tony took over a year. The film-makers worked around their day jobs and the availability of cutting rooms, though producer Don McCulloch notes that this soon became an advantage, as every time they revisited the most recent cut they bought a fresh pair of eyes to it.

Despite the financial challenges of making Tony on a low-budget, the film-makers worked hard with lead actor Peter Ferdinando to develop the script through work-shopping with all the characters – which helped to flesh out the scenes. Ferdinando comments that “even though it [the script] wasn’t set word for word, we knew we had certain beats we had to hit in each scene. But that still allowed it to be loose on set, keeping it spontaneous and fresh every time. Shooting in chronological order was brilliant for me, a luxury for any actor”.

On 5 February Tony goes on general release in cinemas in London and key cities across the UK. That same day, it will also be available on Sky Box Office, iTunes, LOVEFiLM and Film Flex – with a DVD release date set for just three days later.

Next on Revolver’s slate for release is Microwave’s third feature Freestyle an uplifting love story set in the exciting world of freestyle basketball. Freestyle is set for theatrical release on Friday 26 February, swiftly followed by a DVD and VoD release on Monday 29 February. To view the trailer and find out more about Freestyle, visit our Get Inspired section or follow the film on Twitter

Watch It Now!

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0000

How audiences can find and watch films legally online.

Industry leaders acknowledge the huge threat that piracy has on the future of the film industry, particularly file sharing sites that enable the illegal copying and distribution of feature films online. Establishing legal film streaming and download sites that work effectively – not just for audiences to view films, but for film-makers to promote and control access to their own films via the internet – is getting more and more important. A wealth of exciting technological innovation online is being harnessed by the key terrestrial broadcasters, film rental/retail outlets and the world of social/professional networking. This evolving technology across a range of platforms has particular relevance to indie film-makers building a profile and marketing their films to audiences and in building a sustainable independent film and TV industry.

Audiences In Control

The proliferation of online streaming services has meant that audiences are increasingly able to watch films as and when they want to. Terrestrial broadcasters in the UK have already begun to make the most of online streaming to allow audiences to access content with a greater degree of flexibility. Services include BBC’s iPlayer, ITVPlayer, 4oD and Demand Five, all of which have become popular by making content (including feature films) available live or for a limited period (commonly between 7-30 days) after broadcast. 4oD in particular also includes a catalogue of previously broadcast films, allowing audiences access to a wider range of films and giving the films an opportunity to find a broader audience online.

A new internet television service combining content from a range of UK broadcasters will launch in March 2010 called ‘SeeSaw’. It has been reported that 50 made-for-TV movies from the US producer RHI Entertainment will be made available when the site launches, representing the first of many more film deals to come. To be the first to hear more, check out the latest SeeSaw progress updates posted on Twitter.

Finding That Film

There are now a number of well established sites that allow audiences to stream independent feature films online. Some of the most popular sites include:

iTunes-UK
BlinkBox
LOVEFiLM
Indie Movies Online
joiningTHEdocs
The Auteurs
IndiePix
SnagFilms
EZTakes
AMC B-Movies
YouTube
Internet Archive
National Film Board of Canada

With such a range available, a number of companies have appeared aiming to track and aggregate all available legal online features to make it easier for audiences to find genuine, good quality film streams/downloads free of illicit, punitive associations.

In Britain, the UK Film Council is leading by example with findanyfilm, which caters specifically to the UK market, listing both legal film downloads online alongside all other formats. Legal online film search engine SpeedCine 2.0 has a similar service and has just recently announced its expansion and increasingly global reach. SpeedCine is possibly the most powerful search engine for finding available (legal) movies online. It tells users where and how films are available (free, to rent, buy, or via LOVEFiLM ‘Pay As You Go’). IndieWire Blog Network reported in January 2010 that the SpeedCine “site carries 23,000 films in its database, with 80,000 links to various websites.”

Film-makers In Control

The increasing numbers of non-exclusive, free online professional and social networking sites available to emerging film-makers has meant it is now much easier to attract an audience for a film and create a fan-base to follow film-makers’ progress.

Alongside the iPlayer, the BBC also host a site for talented emerging film-makers to get their short films streamed online – the BBC Film Network. Film-makers can create profiles and rate each other’s work, as well as connect with like-minded talents across the UK. The site also has the latest news in independent and short film-making and contains a wide range of resources including case studies on established film-makers, ‘how-to’ reports on various aspects of film production, and ‘behind the scenes’ peeks at what really happens on feature film sets.

Similarly, ExposureRoom provides both an opportunity to upload your films as well as interact with other members to develop a following for your films. Additional uploads such as music, scripts, photos and artwork allow members with profiles to network with each other and share ideas. Blip.tv is a site that has the additional feature of an interface or ‘Dashboard’ that acts as the central hub of the site. It is the central location for an uploaded ‘show’ from where director/producers can co-ordinate and keep track of: their episodes, distribution, players, community, statistics and advertising revenue.

Of course, as well as these sites which host more specialised content that targets film-makers in particular, there are of course a number of popular sites that host a huge range of user-generated content such as YouTube, Vimeo and Joost.

Monetizing Your Content

It is interesting that Blip.tv, being closer to a broadcast model, makes the monetizing aspect of its site explicit right from the sign-up page. This is something that other sites such as YouTube are increasingly moving into with initiatives such as the YouTube Partner Program. This is an opportunity open to frequent users of YouTube, with adequate to substantial viewing numbers, to monetize their content with in-video ad placement. This creates a new revenue stream (and an added incentive to film-makers to attract viewers to their YouTube content). It also takes YouTube a step further in enabling their users on the Partner Program to upload films with a longer duration, in 16:9, HD quality. Programmes such as these, alongside other cross-media partnering, show the gradual process of convergence in film and the media in action. Increasingly, sites with content are partnering with popular social networks to maintain relevance in the increasingly converged digital domain.

The importance of partnerships and online resources which track popularity of films across the net are also increasingly relevant to film-makers looking to generate revenue streams from their online film content – one successful example being TubeMogul. Not only does uploading films to TubeMogul allow film-makers an immediate presence on most of the top video sharing sites, but users also benefit from simple to use, yet powerful tools to analyze and document the exposure and popularity of their uploaded films. Therefore they can keep track of any revenue made through the sites on which their film is playing (specifically the sites that pay revenues derived from advertising that gains exposure by internet traffic driven by their film’s online presence).

The Future

With rapid technological advancement, the focus is slowly turning to providing accessibility on a number of devices and platforms. Though capacity for feature films is still limited at this stage (especially for mobile phones), when it comes to locating and supporting independent film-making, there are thousands of new companies ready to cater to a range of different viewing devices and audiences. zzizzl is a London-based, short film and video distribution platform, selling independent short films and videos to people worldwide via mobile telephones. Their distinctive approach is that they immediately share the profit of each sale 50/50 with the creators/rights holder for the films. Their aim is to “offer quality and diversity and enable film-makers, artists and musicians to focus on what they do best – creating”. The ease of using their service with a ‘drag and drop’ process of transferring film files to mobile phones illustrates a company with a refreshing clarity for both film-makers and viewers.

With the recent launch of Apple’s iPad, the streaming of feature films on the go has reached a new phase. Variety reported that inevitably “it’s how many movies and TV shows that the iPad can sell that will impress Hollywood the most”.

The ease of accessibility is a significant step in the battle with the file sharing piracy of the movie torrent sites. Independent film-makers and audiences are increasingly able to connect with each other through these digital forums. However, ease of use across a range of devices, strong marketing, and attractive pricing, will be crucial to the future success and sustainability of legal feature film streaming online.

An Outstanding Debut for Shifty

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Eran Creevy, alumnus of the Film London Microwave scheme, is announced as a BAFTA contender

Get Prepped for Post Podcast

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0000

Post Production and Sound Podcast

Female Foundations

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0000

A retrospective of some of Hollywood’s most significant female trailblazers.

In a largely patriarchal industry perennially shaped by the taste of male film executives, the question of how to redress the extreme inequality of female representation in key creative and technical film-making roles is frequently provoked in awards season. At the beginning of a new decade we can see that inequality still exists. The Celluloid Ceiling, an annual study that tracks women’s representation in the top 250 domestic grossing films of each year, has stated that only 7% in the last decade were directed by women. Indiewire’s report on Box Office of the ‘00s: The Top Grossing Female Helmed Films noted that “as expected, the numbers show the appalling state of the role of women in the film industry. Over the past ten years, 241 films have grossed $100 million. Five of them (Twilight, What Women Want, The Proposal, Mamma Mia! and Something’s Gotta Give) were solely directed by women, while an additional two (Shrek and Shark Tale) had women as co-directors. That amounts to roughly 2%, an absolutely ridiculous percentage when one considers just over half of the world are females. More over, only 31 films directed or co-directed by women grossed over $20 million. Over 1,000 films directed by men did the same”.

However, as we approach awards season there seems to be a sea change – a more positive outlook for women in film. An array of nominations is likely for talents such as Jane Campion, Kathryn Bigelow and Lone Scherfig amongst others. In celebration of this significant year for women, Microwave takes a look back at the earliest female pioneers who opened the doors for contemporary talent in film and helped to shape the language and industry of cinema.

Alice Guy-Blaché

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the innovative film works of the Lumiere Brothers and Georges Mélies were emerging from France. Alice Guy-Blaché was a French pioneer film-maker and the first female director in the motion picture industry. Alice Guy-Blanché joined the newly formed Gaumont Film Company when Léon Gaumont bought out the inventory at which she had worked as a secretary. This initiated a pioneering career in film-making lasting more than twenty-five years and involved her directing, producing, writing and/or overseeing more than 700 films.

From 1896 to 1906, Alice Guy was Gaumont’s Head of Production, and is generally thought to be the first film-maker to systematically develop narrative film-making. In 1906, she made The Life of Christ, an ambitious project for the time which included 300 extras. Always an innovator, she was a pioneer in using sound recordings in conjunction with the images on screen using Gaumont’s “Chronophone” system. She also experimented with the incorporation of special effects, using double exposure masking techniques and running a film backwards.

Mary Pickford

Through the emergence of ‘Early Cinema’ in the US, and subsequently amidst director D.W. Griffiths’ development of narrative form, film star Mary Pickford or “Little Mary” became possibly the most famous woman in the world. Throughout her career, Pickford starred in 52 feature length films and hundreds of shorts. Her most significant contribution to cinema (aside from her acting) was in helping to reshape the film industry itself. She steered her choice of films away from the creaky “canned theatre” approach of reproducing Broadway plays for the camera, and helped popularise instead material and a performance style uniquely suited to cinema. According to The Mary Pickford Foundation, she “oversaw every aspect of the making of her films, from hiring talent and crew to overseeing the script, the shooting, the editing, to the final release and promotion of each project”. Pickford was also a talented writer and wrote a number of screenplays alongside fellow female pioneer Frances Marion who went on to became the first female to win an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1930 for the film The Big House.

In partnership with her future husband, Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffiths and Charlie Chaplin she later went on to co-found United Artists in 1919. This distribution company freed independent film producers from the creative interference that studios could often impose through their control of theatre bookings for the movies they distributed. Producers who signed with United Artists were true independents, producing, creating and controlling their work to an unprecedented degree. As a star actress, producer and co-owner of Pickford-Fairbanks studio, Mary Pickford became possibly the most powerful woman ever to work in Hollywood.

Photo of Dorothy Arzner on a film set

Dorothy Arzner

In a directorial career that spanned from late 1920s to 1940s, Dorothy Arzner was possibly the only female film director working in American film. She got her first break as a screenwriter at Paramount Pictures. She later progressed into film editing and her work was of such quality that she received official screen credit as an editor – a first for any cutter of any gender. Director James Cruze (The Covered Wagon, The Great Gabbo) was impressed by her technique and hired her as both a writer and editor for several of his films. These films alongside fifty other films for Paramount allowed her to negotiate a directorial position at Paramount in 1927 (she had threatened to move to rival Colombia Pictures). In the following three years she directed films featuring aggressive, free-spirited and independent women, typical of films made prior to the introduction of the puritanical Hays Production Code. On leaving Paramount in 1932, Arzner embarked on a successful career as an independent director, working for various studios and launching the careers of many stars in Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’ including Kathryn Hepburn, Lucille Ball and Rosalind Russell. In 1936, Arzner became the first woman to join the newly formed Directors Guild of America.

Ida Lupino

Often referring to herself as “the poor man’s Bette Davis”, Ida Lupino developed a reputation for her strong female characters in hard-boiled roles on films like They Live By Night (1940) and High Sierra (1941), both with Humphrey Bogart. She worked as a character actor throughout the 1940s, leaving Warner Bros in 1947 to go freelance. Known as a headstrong woman who would turn down weak roles despite her studio contract, Lupino would use these punitive periods of ‘suspension’, to spend time on set observing the crew. This led to Lupino and her husband establishing an independent production company, The Filmmakers, which gave her the chance to write, produce and direct low-budget, issue-based films. Her first directing role came about on Not Wanted in 1949, when, mid-shoot, director Elmer Clifton had to leave due to heart problems. Lupino went on to become Hollywood’s only female film director of the time with a consistent style and attention to social issues of particular relevance to women eg. Outrage (1950), a film about rape. In other films such as The Hitch-Hiker (1953), Lupino subverted the ‘film noir’ genre, taking typically ‘femme fatale’ characteristics and transposing them onto her male characters, giving them the kind of dangerous, irrational force typically attributed to women in male-directed Hollywood film noir.

Many of these female pioneers in cinema history can continue to inspire emerging film-makers – reminding them what an integral part women have been in the development of cinema. Despite the news that Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, Focus Features and a dwindling Miramax all had zero releases by women directors in 2009, there are strong examples today of independent female voices re-defining for themselves what are important stories, as well as collaborating to bring their intuitively female aesthetics to the screen.

Watch out for Microwave’s celebration of women in our forthcoming 2010 awards round-up.

Micro Summary of the Year That Was 2009

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0000

A look back at some of the 2009 highlights in the world of micro-budget cinema.

Micro-budget films in 2009 received a surge in purpose and relevance internationally. An impressive range of frugal films emerged to reinvigorate world cinema amidst a financial climate of unease. Growing numbers of emerging indie film-makers embraced the initiative to build their own communities and audiences via inventive online campaigns – often utilising resources freely available online. Many established producers from the indie film community felt that 2009 saw the beginnings of a move from studio specialty divisions back towards film-makers and companies genuinely committed to their independent visions. Here we look back on the most interesting micro-budget films to emerge in 2009.

The ‘Independent’ Studio

This year’s most successful micro-budget film has undoubtedly been Paranormal Activity. The immense success of the $15,000 film that has gone on to gross more than $100 million in the US alone has started a major shift in thinking for the studios this year. The year closed with the huge announcement established Hollywood studio Paramount Pictures’ are setting up a micro-budget feature film slate, aiming to finance 10 to 20 features budgeted at around $100,000 per year. It was reported that the micro-budget funds will be targeted at both unknowns and established film-makers, with the goal of increasing the studio’s ability to find new voices and ideas. In addition, the initiative’s aimed at giving Paramount a more diverse portfolio of titles at a time when Hollywood’s devoting most of its resources to mega-budget pictures such as the Transformers and Star Trek franchises. This may be good news for film-makers but inevitably, some indie film-makers doubt whether a Hollywood studio can enable the kind of ‘hands-off’ freedom to make micro-budget films by contrast to their usual committee style production methods.

On the indie side, one possible new model for an indie film studio emerged in 2009 with the announcement that established producers Ted Hope, Ira Deutchman, Jennifer Fox, Glen Basner and Scott Free were aligned with a major independent film venture. The new company, dubbed DF Indie Studios, is uniting veteran producers with sales and distribution experts. DF Indie Studios (DFIS) will fully finance as many as a dozen films per year. Significantly, the movies will also have guaranteed US theatrical distribution through the company. “Indie Style, Studio Dependability” is the slogan for DFIS, underscoring an effort by those involved to apply some studio concepts to cost-effective independent film production.

The Re-invigorating Effect of Micro-budget Production

2009 has seen the return of micro-budget cinema as the film-making mode of choice for a number of established directors. The appeal of micro-budget film-making led British director Shane Meadows, tired of the drawn out process of conventional feature film production, to make the move back into micro-budget film. He said: “After taking two life sapping years to make This is England, I decided it was time to get back to my roots as a guerilla film-maker. So me, producer Mark Herbert and our miniscule team decided to stick two fingers up to the establishment and make a film with our own money in only five days. Oh yeah, and we had to somehow get 50,000 people in our final scene for free.”

Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee tells the wry, knock-about tale of roadie Le Donk (aka Nicholas) attempting to launch the career of Nottingham rapper Scor-zay-zee and come to terms with his ex-girlfriend and the birth of their child. The charm of the film lies in its flawed but likeable protagonists, satirical swipes at the film and music industries and it’s improvisatory energy. Producer Herbert added: “The making of this film was a road-trip in itself. It had all the intensity of a six week shoot but condensed into five days. It was riveting, terrifying and a laugh from start to finish. Basically whilst waiting for lawyers to sort out our next film we went off in a van and made Le Donk.” Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival 2009 and went on to a limited 5 day release in cinemas, followed immediately by a DVD/ download release to capitalise on the buzz generated by the theatrical release. The release strategy echoed the 5 Day Features approach with which they hoped to inspire other indie film-makers to kick-start their projects and make films with pure energy and whatever limited means they have available.

Another film-maker reviving his sense of freshness in film-making was Steven Soderberg with his new feature The Girlfriend Experience. Set during the run up to last year’s US presidential election, the film juggles events from five days in the life of Chelsea, a high end $2,000 per hour escort, who provides not just sex, but the casual illusion of intimacy, through kisses, caresses and attentive, docile reactions to her clients’ panic over the impending financial crisis.

Soderberg’s intermittent return to lower cost productions allows him the opportunity to explore stories and production methods that are the advantages of working with a smaller budget. The release of The Girlfriend Experience was also another example of Soderberg utilising low budget feature films as an opportunity to experiment and develop new ways to reach audiences. In the US the film was released as a digital download on Amazon three weeks prior to its theatrical release. This is an interesting model that micro-budget film-makers could learn from and potentially discover new sustainable methods of both production and distribution in the fast evolving uncertainties of today’s increasingly digital film industry.

Distinctive Debuts

Shifty, Microwave’s second feature was released to critical acclaim in April in the UK through Metrodome Distribution – with a successful DVD release following later in the year. Both writer/director Eran Creevy and stars Riz Ahmed and Danny Mays received widespread recognition for their affecting portrait of friendship amidst London’s urban sprawl. Creevy has been named as one of Screen International’s tops stars of 2009 and the film has been talked of as a serious BAFTA contender in the upcoming awards season. Read the latest on Shifty’s ongoing success.

One of the most uncharacteristic, wild and surprising micro-budget films of 2009 was Katalin Varga. This debut feature by UK director Peter Strickland tells a classic tale of revenge with incredible use of landscape, minimal dialogue and a special sensitivity to the expressive possibilities of sound design. The film’s imaginative soundscapes and music combine to lend a powerful, elemental force to the fatalistic tale. The film was financed by an inheritance that Strickland opted to invest in his debut feature and has received acclaim at many international festivals and received distribution in various territories, especially across Europe.

Still from Shirley Adams – the debut feature of London Film School graduate Oliver Hermanus

Shirley Adams is both the graduation and film and debut feature of London Film School (LFS) Graduate Oliver Hermanus. The film has been backed by film-maker Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000BC, Independence Day) who has also supported South African student, Oliver’s studies at LFS. Set in Mitchell’s Plain in Cape Town, South Africa, it is the story of a mother who struggles to rehabilitate her son after he is paralyzed by a gunshot wound.

Greek Pete premiered at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. This indie Brit film exposes the world of male escorts in London. Director, Andrew Haigh, spent a year observing and interviewing young working men as they shared the details of their dramatic lives including complicated relationships, calculated business decisions and unexpected hardships. Haigh focuses on Pete, a darkly handsome son of Greek immigrants who arrives in London with a simple goal: “I just want to make as much money as possible.” The film follows Pete as he meets new clients and friends, managing the chaotic world of sex and love while concentrating on his financial gain. Filled with intimate conversations and heartfelt confessionals, Greek Pete is a fascinating portrayal of one man’s struggle for riches and acceptance in a vibrant, yet unsettling subculture.

Eastern Plays is the debut feature of Bulgarian director Kamen Kalev. Shot guerlilla-style on HDV cameras and a skelton crew, with an immediacy and bold visual style – this impressive feature premiered at the Cannes Director’s Fortnight and subsequently went on to win Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor at the recent Tokyo Film Festival. Following in the wake of recent new waves in Romanian and Turkish cinema, Eastern Plays reveals a director similarly adept at capturing the life and environment at the periphery of contemporary Europe. The film follows the lives of two brothers, one an addict committed to a methadone programme that enables him to lead a routine yet emotionally non-committal life and the other who is drawn into the right-wing gangs in his neighbourhood. A violent incident involving a Turkish family visiting Bulgaria leads the two brothers on an eventual path to some kind of redemption and hope.

This year saw some outstanding micro-budget and low-budget features by talented emerging women film-makers. Humpday received international distribution following a successful festival run including Sundance and Cannes. Director Lynne Shelton created an improvisatory comedy of male bravado and one-up-man-ship exploring the limits of male hetero-sexuality. We follow two old friends who have to resolve a drunken bet to make a gay porn film together. Shelton’s sophomore feature utilises the affordable technology of compact digital cameras to capture spontaneous performances and an intuitive approach to storytelling.

Kicks, by UK director Lindy Heymann, showed a keen grasp of female obsession in this psycho-sexual tale of two Liverpudlian teenagers so devoted to their favorite football player that they resolve to convince him not to transfer to another team – by any means necessary – including fear.

Micro-budget Exposé

Micro-budget documentary also had a strong year in 2009. Documentaries made with limited means and small crews shed light on a range of topics and human experiences.

The Age of Stupid by director Franny Armstrong is possibly the micro-budget documentary phenomenon of 2009. Its hugely innovative mission was to raise awareness of the effects of waste emissions and climate change in the run up to the climate summit in Copenhagen. Not only was the content of the film inventively and compellingly conveyed, but the film’s release from a “green carpet, inclusive premiere” to numerous innovative methods of online marketing and self-distribution showed the incredible pioneering potential of micro-budget productions to bring innovative ideas to the established film-industry.

Burma VJ, Anders Ostergarde’s micro-budget documentary released this year and was screened at 10 Downing Street by the UK Prime Minister’s wife Sarah Brown (in a precedent-setting event) – powerfully raised awareness of the oppression of the Burmese people by a dictatorial leadership and particularly the violent treatment of the peaceful protests by Burmese Monks. Assembled from ‘covert’ filming by a range of video journalists or “VJs” in Burma who risk their lives recording the realities of oppression, the film is a powerful indictment of human rights issues in Burma.
Sleep Furiously is the £200K micro-budget feature documentary in which Gideon Koppel used the stark rural landscape of the South of England, where he grew up, as the basis for his study of a declining farming community. He spent a year observing the life of a community and exploring distinctive creative combinations of digital video and Super8 film to convey the urgency of the communities’ decline with the majestic landscapes that surround them.

On a more humorous and yet still enlightening note, Three Miles North of Molkom is the vivid and funny debut feature documentary of co-director/producers Robert Cannan and Corinna Villari-McFarlane. The location described in the title of the film is a beautiful spot in the Swedish forest called Angsbacka – where the annual No Mind Festival takes place. As the festival progresses, the characters we follow through a range of alternative therapies – even the most skeptical – all open up to confront their issues, preconceptions and flaws in revealing and often hilarious ways. The rich visuals, created by cinematographer Joseph Russell‘s fluid use of a fig-rig and the imaginative use of sound and music sourced at the festival by sound recordist and 2nd camera Mike Hill, also add a great deal to the immersive sense of the ‘journeys’ undertaken by the main characters followed through the festival.

2009 was clearly a rich year for inspiring micro-budget productions and also for the industry to recognise the importance of this type of production. These films can achieve a variety of useful contributions both to film culture and the broader evolution of the film industry. Paranormal Activity’s overwhelming financial success has inevitably alerted the studios to the importance of research and development alongside their blockbuster juggernauts and indie film-makers are realising the innovative, pioneering strengths they can benefit from, both in terms of the means of production and the ability to build and sustain audiences for their refreshingly imaginative films.

Jim Jarmusch – Indie Icon

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0000

On the UK release date of The Limits of Control, Microwave takes a look back at Jim Jarmusch’s micro-budget feature roots.

Jim Jarmusch is undoubtedly an American independent cinema icon, who has retained a certain stubborn artistic integrity in his work. His 11th feature film, The Limits of Control, goes on general release in the UK today and in celebration of this, Microwave takes a look back at Jarmusch’s micro-budget feature roots.

Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Jim Jarmusch’s breakout feature, has in particular been a huge inspiration to, and influence on, the micro-budget and independent film-making scene. The industry at large applauded the film on the year of its release – it picked up innumerate prizes on the international festival circuit, including the Camera D’Or for Best Debut Feature at Cannes.

International film-makers as diverse as Spike Lee (She’s Gotta Have It), Roy Andersson (Songs From The Second Floor), Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll (25 Watts), Diego Lerman (Suddenly), Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Abouna) and Fernando Eimbcke (Duck Season) have also either openly acknowledged the sense of creative possibility this film invokes, or blatantly exude the influence of Jarmusch’s earlier films.

Stranger Than Paradise actually began as a half-hour short, The New World, shot on film stock donated by Wim Wenders (leftovers from The State of Things). Jarmusch and his actor/composer collaborator John Lurie (of the Lounge Lizards) came up with the idea of two additional chapters which expanded the film into a road movie of sorts. After raising further funds, Jarmusch finished this seminal micro-budget feature film that he described as a “semi-neorealist black comedy in the style of an imaginary Eastern European film director obsessed with Ozu and familiar with the 1950s American television show The Honeymooners.”

All of the 67 scenes in Stranger Than Paradise are single shots, separated by moments of black leader. It tells the story of Willie, a Hungarian émigré (played by John Lurie) and his NYC pal Eddie (played by drummer and actor Richard Edson), whose uneventful lives are disrupted when Willie’s young cousin Eva (the Squat Theater’s Eszter Balint) drops by to visit on her way to Cleveland. Following a lucrative card scam Willy and Eddie decide to hit the road – visiting Eva in a wintery Cleveland, and then heading on to a similarly bleak Florida. No matter where they travel, however, all the locations seem to share an oddly depopulated and sparse feel – at odds with the ‘New World’ the characters might have anticipated.

The apparent simplicity of form, witty dialogue, appealing characters, haunting cello score and luminous black and white compositions by cinematographer Tom de Cillo (who went on to become a successful director of low-budget independent films in his own right), are all part of the charm of Stranger Than Paradise. This multi-faceted combination of hipster cool all contributed to the creation of a compelling alternative to mainstream cinema, which in turn has become the American independent film movement on which institutions such as the Sundance Film Festival have thrived.

The kind of devotion that Stranger Than Paradise evoked in its admirers even extended to one particular Japanese gentleman who sent the director a polite letter explaining his affection for the film, as well as his willingness to help Jarmusch realise future visions. The same fan has gone on to be a major investor in many of his subsequent projects, which has, in part, enabled Jarmusch to maintain his fiercely independent approach to controlling the creative process on his films.

Still from Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise

The degree of credibility that Jarmusch has earned in pursuing his own approach to making films has manifested in his most recent film, The Limits of Control. Focus Features financed the film without seeing a full script. Jarmusch, partly thanks to the high profile cast attracted to working with him (Isaach De Bankolé, Tilda Swinton, Gael García Bernal), was allowed the freedom to improvise around his outlined premise of a taciturn hit-man encountering a variety of enigmatic characters as he closes in on his target.

Jarmusch has remained adamant that he maintain his directorial vision above all else and perhaps this is what determines his ongoing appeal. He resolutely believes in the artist and that “the production is there to serve the film. The film is not there to serve the production”. He acknowledges that “unfortunately, in the world of film-making this is almost universally backwards… the film is not being made to serve the budget, the schedule, or the resumes of those involved”. He adds, “film-makers who don’t understand this should be hung from their ankles and asked why the sky appears to be upside down”.

London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts pays tribute to Jarmusch around the release of The Limits of Control, by re-discovering three of his masterpieces alongside a season of films that inspired his work. Curated by Gaia Meucci, Jarmusch in Context runs until 23 December.

Here Come the Girls

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Following the recent Women in Film and Television Awards, Microwave looks at industry support for women working in independent film.

Despite a long-standing disparity between the numbers of women to men working within the film industry, as with many male-dominated industries, the balance is gradually being redressed. A range of new initiatives, events, awards, training schemes and collectives are emerging and attracting some inspiring new female voices and talents to both creative and technical roles in film-making and the UK film industry is keen to support this trend.

Last weekend, the Women in Film and Television (WFTV) Awards recognised established talents, such as actress Dame Helen Mirren – she was awarded the Working Title Films Lifetime Achievement Award. However, they also recognised a number of emerging talents, such as Franny Armstrong – director of The Age of Stupid and founder of the 10:10 campaign to reduce carbon emissions. The innovative ways in which Armstrong and her co-producer Lizzie Gillett found to both produce and distribute their film are contributing new ideas to benefit other indie film-makers and evolving accepted industry methods. Other WFTV winners included the young breakout star of Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, Katie Jarvis, who received the Pinewood Studios Best Performance Award and Paula Milne, who was presented with the UK Film Council Writing Award for her work on Channel 4 film Endgame and the BBC1 drama Small Island.

This growing trend in female pioneers was also reflected in the programme for The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival, which included an unusually high number of women directors and producers with a diverse range of outstanding films – An Education, Blue Beard, Cold Souls, Father of my Children, She, a Chinese, Bright Star, White Material, Calimucho, Women Without Men and Closing Night film Nowhere Boy to name but a few. As well as a strong contingent of films, this year’s festival, in association with WFTV and The Script Factory, hosted an event called ‘Snipping Away at the Celluloid Ceiling’, a discussion of the issues and experiences surrounding the emergence of particularly female directorial visions too place during this year’s festival. The panel members including Bright Star producer and longtime Jane Campion collaborator Jan Chapman, Precious producer Lisa Cortes, She, A Chinese director Xiaolu Guo, producer of An Education Finola Dwyer, and Kicks director Lindy Heymann, The collective assembled for a lively debate in front of a female-dominated audience moderated by director of The Script Factory, Briony Hanson.

The event aimed to explore the following: “It is well known that far fewer women than men direct feature films, but the general assumption is that this is a result of the macho sexual politics of the movie industry rather than any fundamental difference in aesthetic or ambition”. The panel was asked if this is really true, or “are the differences more profound? Does a female aesthetic in film actually exist? If it does, is it more evident in independent films than mainstream studio movies? What cultural factors are at play, and do different countries’ film industries treat their women (and their audiences) in different ways?”

Jan Chapman asserted the importance of female directors working in independent productions saying: “I spent my whole life as a producer trying to protect the visions of the directors that I’ve worked with. And that’s meant working independently, mainly. Not being part of a studio. Not having seventeen people tell you what their view of a scene was. I hold great store in independence, and I do feel that’s the way you protect, particularly female points of view. By just letting them have their point of view.”

Skillset, the industry body which supports skills and training for UK creative media, is also showing their support for women in film alongside WFTV with their new “Why Her?” report. This is a new, major contribution to the debate surrounding women’s opportunities across all creative and technical roles in film-making and provides insights and inspirational case studies by uncovering the key factors that have influenced the careers of successful women working in film and TV today. The qualitative research consisted of interviews with a sample of women who have succeeded in the male-dominated grades of: Camera, Sound, Direction and Screenwriting.

Further training opportunities and events for emerging women film-makers are promoted year round by the organisation Bird’s Eye View, who also run their annual film festival March, to highlight, promote and strengthen the profile of women in film. WFTV also provide numerous opportunities for women hoping to forge a career in film or television. They currently run the only all-female mentoring scheme for women working in the Film and TV industry in the UK, and have a range of on-going informative sessions such as ‘Meet the Commissioner’, ‘Writers’ Masterclass’, ‘Academic Lecture Series’, as well as Show Us Your Shorts (a short film screening series) and regular networking events.

The enthusiasm and sense of collective possibility these events create often inspires women film-makers with a renewed sense of collaborative opportunities. This, coupled with the recent influx of female-led creative projects, hopefully indicates a sea change in the industry – only time will tell.

The Soderbergh Experience

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave examines the low-budget enthusiasm and eclectic choices made by director Steven Soderbergh.

Director Steven Soderbergh’s wildly divergent filmography reflects a chameleonic mixture of both high profile Hollywood product interspersed with more low-budget arthouse projects. His choices range from the hugely profitable Ocean’s 11, 12 & 13 trilogy, to the epic scope of the two-part Che films, to his most recent low-budget release, The Girlfriend Experience.

Soderbergh, who also writes, produces, shoots and edits many of his projects, refutes the idea that the smaller films he directs are generally more personal than his bigger budget entertainments. He has said his films are all about things that interest him, “even the ‘Oceans’ films are about professionalism and loyalty and camaraderie, and those are things I take seriously…I can’t spend years of my life on something I’m not interested in, I just can’t”.

A Brief History

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Soderbergh’s first hit film, Sex, Lies and Videotape has recently been re-mastered for Blu-ray and was screened again at Sundance in January. It was at the Sundance Film Festival that the film first exploded onto the scene at the outset of the flourishing American independent cinema of the nineties and won widespread critical acclaim. Soderbergh went on to win the Palme D’Or at Cannes at the tender age of 26, and the film went on to become an international crossover hit. The director appeared in the film Made In The USA at the time which documented the resurgence in US indie scene. He expressed his concern over the freak commercial success of Sex, Lies and Videotape and the possibility it might create a damaging false expectation for emerging independent film-makers. He himself struggled to find critical and commercial success in his following three low-budget features, Kafka (1991), King of The Hill (1993) and Underneath (1995).

In 1996 Soderbergh made two micro-budget features, Gray’s Anatomy and Schitzopolis, a process he credits with freeing him up creatively and re-invigorating his film-making in the lead up to a key film in his career. He said in an interview earlier this year that “_Out of Sight_ (1998) was a watershed movie for me, because I had rebuilt myself after The Underneath (1995), using Schizopolis and Gray’s Anatomy, and now I was ready to take what I had learned and move into a bigger arena”. He explained that, “creatively the stakes were high because it was a studio film with big movie stars (George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez). I wanted to take the same approach as those smaller films and have it still work. The fact that creatively I felt that worked, even though the movie didn’t make its money back, that was the starter’s pistol”. Refering to his unusually prolific subsequent output he added, “everything since then has been me sprinting as fast as I can”.

Soderbergh did manage to turn his new-found favour with the studios into box office success with the exposé/family melodrama Erin Brokovich (2000), starring Julia Roberts, and the panoramic drugs trade thriller, Traffic (2000), starring Michael Douglas, which earned him an Oscar. His most commercially successful films to date have been the slick casino-heist caper movies Oceans 11 (2001), Ocean’s 12 (2004) and Ocean’s 13 (2007). These box office winners gave Soderbergh the freedom to pursue other more risk-taking projects, through his joint company with George Clooney, Section 8. These less commercial-minded films have included the Dogma-inspired Full Frontal (2002) and the adaptation of Stanislav Lev’s book Solaris (2002). Section 8 has also been successful in allowing Soderbergh to establish himself as a producer of daring and intelligent films by a range of other talented directors, including: Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia, Todd Haynes’ Far from Heaven, George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck and the debut film by Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton.

Making it on a (Comparative) Micro-budget

As a director, Soderbergh’s recent 2-part biopic about Che Guevara indicates the stark difference between his more commercial projects and his labours of love. The Argentine and Guerilla were both filmed in Spanish, a choice that posed difficulties in getting the film off the ground. However the director defended his decision saying “it’s a film that, to some extent, needs the support of people who write about films. If you’d had all these guys running around talking in accented English you’d [have got] your head taken off.” Eventually Soderbergh found finance in Europe amounting to $58m to cover a 76 day shoot for both films, a tiny amount considering the budget of Ocean’s Eleven being $85m for an 80 day shoot.

Soderbergh’s latest venture to enable him to pursue his smaller, more improvisatory style of digital film-making is his 6-picture deal with 2929 Entertainment partners Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner and their HDNet label. The first of the six low-budget features distributed simultaneously in theatres, on cable and DVD was Bubble (2005), which cast local non-actors in the drama set amongst the impoverished lives of a group of doll factory workers with a stark immediacy. Soderbergh has said “what’s fun about making the HDNet projects is that they have very defined parameters. It’s really important to have those; I need them. You have 16 days to shoot them, you have this much money, and that’s what it is – I like the discipline of that because it keeps you from being ‘precious’, you’re going on instinct and you’re not overthinking things”. These films are shot digitally, with Soderbergh operating a RED One camera himself and also doing his own editing.

The Girlfriend Experience (2009), due for release in the UK on 4 December, is the second of Soderbergh’s film’s to be financed through this HDNet deal. Set during the run up to last year’s US presidential election, the film juggles events from five days in the life of Chelsea, a high end $2000 per hour escort, who provides not just sex, but the casual illusion of intimacy, through kisses, caresses and attentive, docile reactions to her clients’ panic over the impending financial crisis. One recent review of the film proclaims that, “the smartest thing director Steven Soderbergh did in the making of The Girlfriend Experience was to cast Sasha Grey as the lead. For the role of the high-priced call girl, he went out and found a porn star; and the difference between Grey’s essence – that porn star essence – and the milder essence he might have found in a pretty Hollywood starlet, is the source of the movie’s impact”.

As with Bubble, the film was unconventionally scripted. The scenes were simply outlined by writers Brian Koppelman and David Levian, and dialogue was improvised on set by a cast, most of whom had no prior on-screen experience. Soderbergh’s aim was to allow the audience an opportunity to experience Chelsea’s life for five days, as opposed to constructing an overbearing plot. The non-linear construction of the film allows us to gradually attune to her timeline and the shifts in her power and self-esteem. It is an editing technique that Soderbergh has used imaginatively in many of his films and here to convey that Chelsea’s “interior life is not linear”. Non-linear storytelling appeal for Soderbergh is, he explains, in “trying to recreate that sense of how our minds are constantly shifting and filtering our experiences and we’re trying to connect stuff. Because we’re trying to organize this chaos and convince ourselves that there’s some sort of narrative here and we’re not going insane. And film can create that sensation almost better than any other art form”.
In terms of his impulses to make his films, Steven Soderbergh claims “I’m as interested in the formal aspects of a movie, as I am the pure storytelling aspects of a movie. So there’s going to come a point where I think I’ve tried everything I can think of, in terms of formal terms, and I don’t know what else to do. And at that point I’ll just stop”.

Let’s hope he has a few more films in him before that happens…

The Girlfriend Experience is released in the UK this weekend, hot on the heels of both the theatrical release of Soderbergh’s corporate whistle-blower comedy The Informant! (2009), and the UK DVD release of his two-part, Che biopic (2008).

Taking Your Talent to the Next Level

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0000

In our latest podcast, previous Microschool mentors offer advice on how to work with actors.

This month’s new podcast, Working with Actors, provides advice on getting results from talent – with insight from three successful British directors.

Pete Travis (Vantage Point, Endgame), Tom Hunsinger (Lawless Heart, Sparkle) and Lindy Heymann (Kicks, Showboy) offer sage advice on how to work with actors, including casting the right actor for the part and preparing actors for their scenes.

The trio of film-makers give hints on working with actors at various stages of their career – including children, and big-budget Hollywood stars. Using Film London Microwave feature, Freestyle, as a case study, Tom Hunsinger also discusses mentoring director Kolton Lee. These invaluable developmental sessions helped Lee bring out the best of the film’s young actors, such as first-time actress Lucy Konadu. To find out more about Lucy and the Freestyle cast, visit our Get Inspired module.

If you’re a new director and will be working with actors for the first time, then this podcast is for you. Otherwise, garner useful tips that you can put into practice on your next project.

To access previous Film London Microwave podcasts, please visit out our podcast page – they can be downloaded or streamed straight from the website, or downloaded from our iTunes page

Previous podcasts available for download include:

Casting Tips
Shifty Alumni Talk
Screenwriting for Micro-Budget Films

Shifty Down Under

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Shifty’s distribution deal in Australia reflects positive changes for the distribution landscape.

Microwave’s second film, Shifty, written and directed by Eran Creevy and starring Danny Mays and Riz Ahmed, has recently gone on to further success and secured a distribution deal in Australia. The newly set-up distribution arm of Curious Film, based in Sydney, will be handling the upcoming release. Deals like this signify both the increasing opportunities for independent films to reach audiences globally, as well as an overall positive change in the distribution landscape for the indie scene.

Mia Bays, Creative Executive for Microwave, was recently in Australia giving the keynote speech for the SPAA Fringe in which she gave her tips for making a little go a long way. The Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA) puts on the SPAA Fringe each year in Sydney with a hope of educating, connecting and inspiring film-makers. This year, Bays used the keynote speech to highlight the ways in which film-makers can get the best from limited resources whilst maintaining big ideas and grand ambitions. Her top tips urged film-makers to make sure they had a clear motivation, story and vision for their films and emphasised the importance of teamwork. However, she maintained that getting your film made is only the first step – “half your job is making the film, the other half is getting it out to the world”.

She takes an optimistic future view in finding an audience for independent film. In an interview with Rachel Turk, Sydney-based writer and former editor of Inside Film Magazine, Bays identified the potential that independent distributors are slowly tapping into. “In the US and several other territories (though not the UK), there is that big gap where the small, specialised, arthouse market is untapped but the audience still exists,” she says. “There are companies that are realising you can work out of your house; that the old model of taking films to Cannes and AFM with big overheads is dead for a lot of films. Because if you can make films like that you can certainly deliver them like that!“

The recent resurgence of micro and low-budget films and the innovative methods of both film-making and self-distribution is something Bays hopes will trickle down to the sales and marketing sector. “It’s all very well film-making becoming much cheaper and good quality being delivered for less – sales, marketing and distribution has to catch up”. She went on to stress the importance for micro-budget film-makers in finding innovative companies to work with to push boundaries and reach wider audiences. In doing so, Bays believes the indie scene can strengthen and sees a bright future for independent films and their film-makers: “Now independent film is back with the independents. Now we can start to do something interesting again.”

Maggie Ellis, Head of Production at Film London has a similar positive outlook and is proud of Film London Microwave leading the way with micro-budget feature film innovation. “Microwave was the first scheme of its kind in Europe, but now the micro-budget ethos is spreading rapidly all over Europe and beyond, with schemes springing up all over the world” she says. “Microwave prides itself in supporting the latest innovative distribution strategies. Mum & Dad’s unique multi-platform release strategy highlights this and we hope to follow in a similar vein with the upcoming release of the next Microwave film Freestyle in February 2010”.

Shifty is an action packed 24 hours in the life of a young crack cocaine dealer on the outskirts of London. It was released on 24 April in the UK through Metrodome Distribution and is now available on DVD. To date, it has received critical acclaim getting 5 British Independent Film Award nominations, amongst other accolades.

Find out more about Shifty in the Get Inspired section.

Watch the trailer on the Shifty website.

Smashing Borders: The Turkish New Wave

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave talks to Turkish director Huseyin Karabey.

In recent years, young Turkish film-makers have found new creative directions – making critically acclaimed films, and winning awards all over the world. This year’s Rotterdam International Film Festival even highlighted this vivid new wave of emerging talented Turkish feature film directors through a new strand called ‘Young Turkish Cinema’ which included films often made on micro-budgets.

The 15th London Turkish Film Festival (LTFF) opens today, celebrating a rich historical tapestry, as well as daring, varied and avant garde Turkish films, over a two week period. A selection of five new Turkish feature films from the full programme of features, documentaries and shorts will be in competition. The festival will award the most promising feature film in this year’s festival with the UK’s first ever Digital Distribution Award which will provide a release in the UK and Ireland. The winner will be announced by the LTFF Jury at the Opening Gala screening of Atalay Tasdiken’s The Bogeyman at BAFTA later this evening.

The film which opened last year’s festival was Gitmek AKA My Marlon and Brando by director Huseyin Karabey. It tells the impassioned story of one Turkish woman’s defiant journey, with many inventive insights into her relationship with a Kurdish man, as she attempts to be reunited with him despite cultural barriers, the instability of the region and it’s hostile borders. Microwave spoke to Huseyin about the process and motivations behind making his debut feature and his feeling about the emergence of a new wave in Turkish cinema.

My Marlon & Brando has a vivid sense of purposeful, impassioned film-making. What was the inspiration?

Actually it was my first feature film, but not my first film. I’ve made many documentaries and short films about the subject. I’m Kurdish myself and wanted to tell my own story which has not been seen on the big screen, especially in Turkey. I was angry, and instead of criticizing people I just decided to do it by myself. After 12 years I managed to make my first feature length film that explores the subject of Kurdish people in Turkey.

Did you feel that there were obstacles to you making the film due to your ethnicity?

No. Unfortunately, Turkish cinema only shows the very stereotypical view of Kurdish people. We are usually portrayed as terrorists, smugglers or the kind of characters who cannot speak Turkish very well, but never credible characters. So I decided to do this story of Aysha because she is a close friend of mine and I knew about her relationship with this Kurdish man. I thought her questions and her actions are really breaking all kinds of stereotypical ideas in terms of the portrayal of the Kurdish community in cinema.

The pace of your film is slightly quicker than many of the other films in the recent wave of new independent Turkish films. Did your previous experience making documentaries inform and influence your approach to shooting and editing the film?

It’s true actually, if you compare my film with other films from the new Turkish cinema it is a different way of telling a story, but I truly believe our way of expression is like this in Turkey. I don’t want to criticize my other friends’ films, but even if we want to talk about nothing, we talk – this is generally the way we express ourselves. I’ve had the chance to travel the world. I’ve been in Bali and Japan whilst I was a student shooting short films, staying with local families. This helped me discover many things about myself and my own country. If you look at our literature and poetry you can see many characters and how they behave. This distant expression of a very minimalist lifestyle is something we don’t have. So my inspiration was in just wanting to show the characters and how they’re living in real life. I didn’t want to create a new reality. One of the jury members in the Turkish National Competition told me something that made me realize I had done something right. He told me I didn’t deserve the Best Director prize because I didn’t direct the actors – they act as themselves. I use normal people and professional actors, but I deal with them in a very naturalistic way and he also said I didn’t create fiction with fictional characters, I just directed them to be as they are – which was unintentionally a great compliment.

Was My Marlon & Brando conventionally scripted or infused with a large amount of ‘captured’ and improvised scenes?

As a first time film-maker I had to convince financiers with my script, so I actually did 17 drafts of the screenplay. The script itself won three prizes (script grants) prior to going into production, but as a film-maker who has made many documentaries, I knew how to deal with a shooting situation where normal people are in dangerous places. I also had worked with actors directing theatre for 4 years (in fact, in the theatre featured in the film) just to learn about directing performances, so I knew how to deal with actors as well. I decided to use a different technique in the movie where some actors were used in scenes that much of the cast didn’t realize were acting. I choose people who really wanted to tell this kind of story, not only the talented ones. When you chose these type of actors they are willing to be part of anything, not only with their body but with their mind. An example is one of the first taxi driver scene with Aysha. That guy is a great actor. I gave him many different topics to draw from, and we did about one hour of improvisation and came up with lots of new stuff. In another car I gave all the directions. If you don’t have any problem with yourself as a director you can be open to new ideas.

What was your budget for the film and were there difficulties in raising finance for this film?

Initially, when I decided to make my first feature, I looked to my experience making several short films around 30 minutes long, so I thought I could just triple what it had cost to make a short. It actually ended up costing ten times the budget of a short! It took us 2 years to raise the finance. We had €200K in cash from the Turkish Culture Ministry, €100K from the Hubert Bals Fund at Rotterdam for post-production and Kodak processing, $10K from Global Cine Shift, and the rest was private investments and our own personal money. In-kind support came to about €800K. Raising the finance wasn’t too difficult, but the condition of accepting the Turkish Culture Fund money meant that we had to finish the movie within 6 months or I would have to give the money back. This meant I had to go into production early with only half the money I needed. Once the film was shot, it took one year to complete the post-production which indicates how long it took us to find the rest of the money.

What equipment did you use to shoot and edit the film, and how large was your crew?

The crew was actually very small. That was my only demand. I was very careful to choose the right kind of people who were ready to deal with shooting in sometimes very difficult areas. I don’t work with people who complain about the difficulties, but with crew who will see them as an experience. In total, there were 10 people on set including the lead actors. Aysha traveled with us, and we used actors based in the places through which we travelled. I used a very light HDV camera with 35mm lenses. This option gave us cinematic depth of field, but flexibility and speed. With other cameras it would be very difficult to catch the moment. We brought very few lights with us as the digital technology was sensitive enough to capture what we needed with little additional lighting.

Still from My Marlon and Brando

How long was the shoot and post-production of the film?

We shot for 8 weeks on limited funds in a difficult region. We spent 4 weeks on the way: 1 week in Turkey, 2 weeks in Iran and one week in Iraq. Only 2 or 3 crew went with me to Iraq. In Istanbul everyone stayed in their house, and on the journey we stayed in hotels. I shot a lot – in total about 100 minutes of footage. I spent 12 weeks on the edit, working with a really great editor who really helped me with the final cut. Thanks to the Hubert Bals Fund, we completed post-production in Holland with our sound mix, colour grading and online edit. In total, it took about 5 months.

Do you feel that Istanbul’s production/post-production facilities have been receptive to supporting new Turkish cinema?

Definitely. They are all very supportive, especially if you say it is your first movie – you can get a very reduced price. You can offer them the Turkish TV rights, so you don’t necessarily need cash. They know that if you are good you will return with more work in future. Though for My Marlon & Brando we initially edited the film at our own office on Adobe Premiere Pro, as it was the only facility available to us that had the necessary codec for the HDV footage.

My Marlon and Brando has obviously had great success at film festivals. Have you also had the chance to reach audiences via other forms of distribution in cinemas, online or TV broadcasting?

We released the film in Turkish cinemas, and following a long and successful festival run, we have been negotiating with various other territories. We are also packaging a number of Turkish films to sell to online distributors like iTunes and to attract further distribution opportunities.

Do you have an opinion about why the recent wave of often low-budget Turkish cinema has been so interesting and also appealing to audiences?

There are many changes taking place in Turkey, and many of the established film-makers’ films did not reflect this change. Many people wanted to tell their own stories. So after the first generation such as Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Three Monkeys) showed us that it’s possible – you don’t have to be very rich to make great movies. Our generation tried, and now we have become a role model for many young people in Turkey trying to push to do their own movies. Also, digital technology is making a wide variety of films available to young people and lets them see how other film-makers have made great films on small budgets, which is stimulating greater interest. I was personally inspired by director Shane Meadows and writer Paul Fraser (Somers Town, Dead Man’s Shoes). You see it and think okay, they speak a different language but it’s my story. Finally I met with Paul Fraser recently at a film festival and said, “although we’ve never met I feel like I’ve known you for a very long time through your films”. That’s how it is now. Film-makers making small films can inspire many young people around the world to do their own films.

What next?

My new film will be Come To My Voice, a smaller film than my first feature, with a stronger structure – about the dirty war in Turkey against the Kurds. It is a true story about the Turkish military coming to a Kurdish village and arresting all the men on suspicion of hiding guns. To free the men, an elderly woman has to set out to try to buy a gun to get her husband freed. It will have a strong sense of the absurd and yet make the tragedy of these people something an audience can empathise with and be moved by. I am also thinking about another project made up of several stories by directors from Turkey and the countries which border Turkey.

Watch the trailer for My Marlon and Brando.

Find out more about the London Turkish Film Festival. The 15th edition of the festival, offering audiences the chance to discover new and unfamiliar non-mainstream film, is supported by Film London’s Cultural Film Exhibition Fund.

Piracy and Innovation

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Finding a balance between hardline action against pirates and meeting consumer demand.

Following on from our last article about the difficulty in tackling illegal piracy within the film industry, we take a look at how piracy can also bring to light consumer demands that need to be addressed.

Sharing Content

Conor Dignam, editor of Screen International, responded to the hardline measures proposed by the government’s Digital Economy Bill which he felt undermined the right balance found by Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report. He explained, “creating legislation that too easily criminalises millions of people is ultimately unhelpful and runs the risk of alienating a generation of potential customers. Education and communication are key; legal actions and restrictions on web access need to be a last resort…There is no panacea for online piracy, and the film industry will need to be bolder and more creative in its thinking if it wants to turn illegal file-sharers into paying customers. It is a challenge that requires change to the market and the way that film companies and distributors think and behave. That means thinking about pay-services, release windows and the cost of watching a film in an online world. Anyone who believes illegal peer-to peer will disappear because of lawyers’ letters and the threat of internet disconnection is kidding themselves”.

The government’s proposed punitive legislation for those caught engaging in illegal file sharing has provoked an inevitable public as well as industry reaction. A number of observers have been incensed at the misdirection of energies against digital consumers as opposed to servicing their demands for content. The challenge facing new digital distribution services is their need to be reliable, good quality and value for money, whilst also negotiating territory rights. Illegal torrent sites have less of a need to focus on these criteria – when people aren’t paying for content they’re more willing to put up with poorer quality.

A number of new legal film and television download and streaming services (several still in ‘beta’ launch versions) have recently emerged and become successful including:

4OD
The Auteurs
BBC iPlayer
Hulu’s imminent introduction to the UK in 2010
Indie Movies Online
iTunes
ITV Player
LoveFilm
Reframe
Snag Films
Speed-Cine
Tesco’s Digital’s download service

Indie Film-Makers Innovate New Models

This new innovation for digital distribution has included the close interest and participation of film-makers themselves. Micro-budget and emerging independent film-makers/technologists like Brian Chirls have blogged about the new approach he is piloting to anticipate piracy. In Twitter Filesharing and Green Slime, Chirls writes about how he plans to acknowledge file-sharing when he makes his next film, while combating it by positioning his picture as a “premium brand” for which authenticity and a relationship with the creator are as much a part of the product as the digital file itself. One of the digital models that Chirls sites as an inspiration is the essay Better Than Free by digital writer and publisher Kevin Kelly. Chirls says, “when I release the film, I will probably put it online for free. By putting it out there myself, I can beat the pirates to it and make sure free copies are burned with a URL to my online store, and I can track how many people are watching it”. This is all part of building a community or audience with an ongoing interest in the film-maker’s work, maintained via a direct relationship with the creative voices behind the films.

Former Tribeca Film Institute’s CEO and consultant in new media, Brian Newman, has given a number of presentations at events such as DIY Days and Power To The Pixel in which he explores whether there are “better ways to deal with the threat from free content than clinging to an antiquated business model”. He also finds analogies with Kevin Kelly’s Better Than Free. Making content pay in the midst of so much free or often pirated content requires new paradigms. In a recent article in ScreenDaily Newman observes that too much effort is spent defending a model which is out of date. He cites Kelly’s argument that “in a digital world, making a copy is easy, there’s no scarcity. Value shifts to things that can’t be copied”- which Kelly refers to as “generatives”.

There are the 8 qualities that Kelly believes a consumer values and which encourage them to pay for content. Newman believes that they are all applicable to film and offer the beginnings of a business model that can satisfy consumer demand for free content, as well as returning profits. These include:

Immediacy
Personisation of Content
Extra Materials
Authenticity
Embodiment
Patronage
Accessibility
Findability

Newman elaborates that “as well as abandoning traditional windows, we should consider offering fans access to films, at a price, before they reach theatres or even festivals”. As fans often value content that is personalised to their needs or tastes, he suggests “we could create multiple versions of our content — one might be online for free but the extended cut, violence-free or ad-free version has a price”. Finally, he acknowledges that it will not be easy for the film industry to adapt, because new models undermine traditional practice.

DIY indie film-makers are always incentivised to take risks, exploiting the new technologies to get their film seen by the largest possible audience. New experiments are ongoing, such as Jamie King’s attempt to contact the pirate sites directly and get their support in promoting his independent films Steal This Film – Parts 1 & 2. Most recently, DIY pioneer Arin Crumley and UK film-maker/web-designer Kieran Masterton launched OpenIndie as a way for independent films to connect with audience demand for screenings.

It is exciting to consider how, with collective thinking, the necessary innovations will evolve to allow a diverse variety of films to reach educated audiences in the ways in which they want to view whilst still financially benefiting those who legally produce, distribute and exhibit content.

Halloween Horror Special!

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Why horror is a micro-budget genre favourite.

Micro-budget horror films have an impressive history of cross-over success from Hollywood studio B-movies, Roger Corman’s exploitation films and Italian Giallo to 70s British Horror, 80s ‘Video Nasties’ and more recent hits such as The Blair Witch Project, the cut-price festival hit Colin and current number one at the US box office Paranormal Activity.

Horror films made on limited budgets have a large, discerning and loyal fanbase that is less likely to be influenced by mainstream media and more by the established world of horror/fantasy festivals, publications and increasingly the proliferation of online methods of audience building and marketing. Horror is a genre that can keep production costs low, yet potentially make a massive return on investment, often raising awareness and creating interest in advance of their release by tapping into the ever-growing online social media revolution. When the mainstream media begin to pick up on the ‘story‘, small horror films are periodically rocketed into a far wider release, massive box office success and mainstream cultural awareness.

Ten years on from the release of The Blair Witch Project, the most successful micro-budget feature film in cinema history (costing the film-makers $30,000 and taking over $240 million worldwide) was reassessed in the No Budget Report, The Secret of “Blair’s” Success, an article posted by the No Budget Film School. It highlights how the unique ‘believability’ of the story and the film’s aesthetic was extended to the marketing and identified that “there were three secrets to Blair Witch’s success: Mythology, Methodology and Marketing. And that now more than ever, these three M’s were the key to any new indie film’s success”. The film generated such phenomenal buzz, particularly through the internet, that the film’s distributor, Artisan, knew they would launch this micro-budget feature on 1,500 screens in the US. The expectation was so great that rival studios began to call up requesting which weekend the film would be released so that they could avoid denting the profits of their multi-million dollar tentpole blockbusters for the year.

The backstory or “Mythology” that had been generated for the production of the film became the content of the website, with which fans began interacting and expanding on in fan sites which were spread amongst friends ‘virally’ as ‘user-generated content’. The “Methodology” that the film’s model followed was to emphasise its uniqueness, especially in its production methods. Finally the successful integration of the Mythology and the Methodology in the “Marketing” of Blair Witch was evident not just online but in first teaser trailers that echoed the film’s unique style. The first trailer used 28 seconds of black and 2 seconds of imagery from the film while the second used 28 seconds of footage not in the film followed by 2 seconds taken from the film. The story behind the film captured the public and media’s imagination and made the film a popular talking point with it’s inherent backlash only stoking further audience interest.

Periodically micro-budget features market themselves with the very story of their constraints. Debut feature director Marc Price’s zombie’s eye-view Colin generated huge press interest at Cannes Film festival in May 2009 (after an initial premiere at Abertoir in Wales). Claiming to have been shot for £45, most of the cast and crew were sourced through Facebook and MySpace. The appealing, DIY nature of the no-budget ‘story’ behind the film’s production and raw appeal of the film has translated into a successful run at various horror and indie film festivals including Frightfest, Raindance and Mayhem (which takes place this weekend and was co-founded by Steven Sheil, director of Microwave feature Mum & Dad).

Many of the social networking platforms available to indie film-makers fit perfectly into the enthused fanbase for horror films. Mindflesh is a low-budget horror feature film being used to create a blueprint for financial success through the use of www.Klatcher.com. Klatcher is a free to join resource through which you can create a web page and online store that is automated to link to all the leading social networking sites. It also optimises the name of the film in Google to attract the maximum potential internet traffic, in this case horror film fans, to download or purchase a DVD or other related merchandise via ads that are part of an easily customisable Klatcher site. Mindflesh director Robert Pratten praises the Klatcher platform for enabling film-makers like himself, “not only to put my movie online but to create their own brand universe and integrate it to the social web”.

Oren Peli’s $15K micro-budget supernatural horror, Paranormal Activity, is currently number one at the US box office having taken over $62.5 million thus far. Peli, a 39-year-old video game designer from California and self-confessed fan of The Blair Witch Project shot Paranormal Activity in 2006 with an unknown cast and his own house as the primary location. Similar to Blair Witch, Peli’s film utilises video footage, supposedly taken from the cameras that young couple Katie and Micah set up to record their house’s eerie goings on as they sleep.

The once-stalled, haunted house feature got picked up by an exec who had passed on The Blair Witch Project ten years ago, and eventually found it’s way to Steven Spielberg. He apparently became spookily locked in a room whilst watching it and considered financing a remake. This proved pointless when the terror of test audiences viewing the original film was deemed evident of the film’s huge cross-over potential. Alongside conventional marketing and the buzz ‘stories’, the release is also utilising a new technology that has been used for booking bands. “Demand It” allows people viewing the website and trailer on various related social networking sites to click through and request that the film is shown in their town, allowing Paramount to broaden the release to screens where a popular demand has been generated.

Microwave’s first release, horror film Mum & Dad, by director Steven Sheil and producer Lisa Trnovski has been continuing to scare and horrify audiences at various festivals around the world. Its cult success had much to do with its innovative multi-platform release strategy. This “choose how you view it” release expanded the audience, making the most of the marketing spend and proving particularly popular online as the number one download in the UK on its release on Boxing Day 2008.

The horror genre evidently lends itself to exciting, unique ways to build an audience and tap into the highly enthused horror fanbase. Social networking allows a spine-tingling, stomach-churning fear factor to spread, generating enticing hooks and marketing ‘stories’ that capture the public imagination. The subsequent potential for indie-chillers to attract a broad audience intrigued by the primal, grotesque and supernatural worlds of horror is huge and is particularly suited to the verisimilitude possible for films made on a limited budget and an unhinged imagination.

Find out more about the Mayhem Horror Festival.

Paranormal Activity is planned for a UK theatrical release on 27 November 2009.

Battle Against Piracy

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0000

The challenge of illegal online piracy and how the industry is trying to face it.

Illegal online piracy in the form of digital file-sharing or bit torrents is widely considered the most damaging threat to the film industry at present. Tackling it either with punitive legislation or fundamental changes to distribution models is a huge undertaking. The reality is that audiences are sharing films and gaining access to the content that they might otherwise consider inaccessible, over-priced or too slow to secure distribution on their choice of viewing ‘platform’.

According to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the worldwide motion picture industry lost around $18.2 billion in 2005 from internet piracy. Screen International reported in its piracy issue on 10 July 2009 that every year, 100 million illegal film downloads take place in the UK alone. Further UK film industry research, has suggested that almost $1bn (£612.5m) was lost in 2007 as a result of illegal downloading.

Education as Action

Government legislation has always been in place to try and combat piracy. Now various organizations within the global film industry are attempting to educate consumers about the impact of piracy and the appropriate response. The Film Distributors’ Association (FDA) launched an ad campaign in UK cinemas this summer appealing for audiences’ help to combat film theft which featured UK actors Martin Freeman and Matthew Horne. FDA President, Lord Puttnam, said: “These engaging messages are part of a wider initiative which aims to restrict the damaging impact of digital film theft and to celebrate the vibrancy of film and cinema – two sides of the same coin.”

Similarly, the MPAA has teamed up with Adlabs and PVR Cinemas in India in a bid to stop camcord piracy. This form of piracy is particularly rife in the region where “more than 90% of newly released movies that end up appearing illegally on the streets and on internet sites originate from illegal copies made in cinemas,” Adlabs Chief Operating Officer, Tushar Dhingra, said “with the advancement of technology, piracy is getting a boost but the same technology can also be used in order to curb the spread.” The Make A Difference campaign involves anti-camcord training for theatre employees as the first line of defence.

Public and Industry Opinion

The difficulty in adopting a strategy to tackle this piracy is reflected in industry opinion. The variety of opinion means there is no single approach that the industry has decided to adopt. Almost 90% believe the industry is not doing enough to encourage legal access and payment for rights owners, yet 70% of those participating in the survey do not make their content available online through paid for services. According to 65% of the respondents, the biggest immediate threat to the film industry is online pirated movies, while 84% believe that it is also the biggest long-term threat. “In my view, the biggest immediate threat is complacency and the biggest long-term threat is rejection by consumers,” one respondent to the Screen International survey said. “Both threats arise from the strong-arm tactics to preserve the traditional business model instead of trying to find one which works in the era of the internet.”

Other comments echoed this sentiment. “Piracy is here to stay,” one comment stated. “I am disturbed to be part of an industry that is so backwards that it does not understand the inevitability of infinitely replicable, ubiquitous content. We need to fundamentally innovate our business models in order to move forward, not punish people who are enjoying the content we produce.” While 56% felt that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should be compelled to hand over names and address of illegal downloaders and file-sharers to content companies.

Hardline Action and Litigation

Despite the difficulty in forging a strategy, in early September 2009 a group of leading UK trade unions joined forces with the creative industries in a bid to prevent thousands of jobs at risk from illegal file-sharing. The Creative Coalition Campaign has been formed by 16 unions spanning across the film, music, TV, publishing and sport industries including BECTU, Equity and Pact. The group aims to protect the 1.8m UK jobs from across the creative supply chain, including production, distribution and marketing that are potentially at risk due to illegal file-sharing. This new initiative follows previous industry attempts to curb piracy such as Fake Free London which began in December 2008 and was led by he MPA and UK Film Council, with support from UK Intellectual Property Office, FACT, London Councils, London Trading Standards Association, Film London and the Metropolitan Police.

The Creative Coalition Campaign plans to rally support behind government proposals that are leading the way to tackle digital piracy through technical measures, urging them to press ahead with plans to compel ISPs to implement the measures against repeat offenders. These measures include limiting internet access, reducing bandwidth and potentially more hardline tactics such as cutting access altogether.

These plans are part of the Digital Economy Bill, outlined by Communication Minister Stephen Timms in August 2009. Lord Mandelson, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills will oversee the implementation of the plans. Previous plans, outlined in June’s Digital Britain report, had suggested a softer approach which would start with a notification system and resort to technical measures at a later stage.

The coalition proposed three key principles to government:

The policy environment for the creative industries should be accorded top priority, especially given the current economic situation and government’s settled view that the creative sector can drive future growth in the UK economy and the creation of new jobs.
The use of technical measures should be recognised as an effective and necessary tool in encouraging the legitimate use of the internet and should be implemented without delay.
Measures aimed at changing the behaviour of illegal file-sharers should be graduated and proportionate and accompanied by a fair, fast and effective appeals process. Litigation against consumers should only be required as a last resort.

Striking a Balance

Martin Spence, Assistant General Secretary of media and entertainment union BECTU, noted the balance to be struck between protecting jobs and alienating consumers, stating “the rights of consumers and the rights of workers need to be given equal priority.” David Lammy, UK Minister of State for Intellectual Property, recently called for the UK and US film industries to work together to tackle illegal downloading. Lammy told the MPAA there is a strong demand for films online, but consumers need to be given an attractive alternative to illegal downloading and filesharing. Much of the UK film industry has subsequently welcomed the further moves by the government to rapidly toughen up measures to tackle illegal file-sharing.

Inevitably, UK ISPs have united to fight the hardline anti-piracy plans proposed by the Digital Economy Bill that ultimately threaten to penalize them and their broadband customers for what they consider the illegal file-sharing of a minority of their customers. The Chief Executives of the UK’s leading ISPs: Carphone Warehouse, BT and Orange, are protesting against plans to cut off users who illegally download content. They have said that they “are concerned that the government’s latest proposals on the ’how’ to reduce illegal file-sharing are misconceived and threaten broadband consumers’ rights.” They also object to the idea that ISPs and thus their broadband consumers should cover the cost of these measures to support the creative industries, stating that it is “grossly unfair since a vast majority of consumers do not file-share illegally.”

The recent guilty verdict found against the Swedish founders of The Pirate Bay torrent tracking site reflects the difficulty in solving the piracy problem. Though a high profile, precedent-setting victory for the global film industry, the site is still in operation. It is hoped that these hardline measures will empower the industry to clamp down on illegal downloading. However, this is not an easy battle to win in what seems to be an ongoing war.

Talking Talent

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Download the latest Microwave podcast with casting tips from Julie Harkin.

You’ve finished your micro-budget script and now you’re ready to start looking for talent – but where do you start? Casting for your film can be tricky, especially on a micro-budget, but we’ve got the lowdown on casting protocol in our newest podcast Casting Tips.

Casting Agent Julie Harkin (Scouting Book for Boys, The Infidel, Eden Lake) talks through the dos and don’ts of casting for your film including casting etiquette, securing talent and casting to please your producer and financiers.

Chaired by Mia Bays (Microwave Creative Executive), this podcast includes troubleshooting advice from directors Richard Kwietniowski (Love and Death on Long Island, Owning Mahoney), Mark Tonderai (Hush) and Gaby Dellal (On a Clear Day).

To listen to the Casting Tips podcast and our previous podcasts Shifty Alumni Talk and Screenwriting for Micro-budget Films, please visit our Podcasts page. You can listen to our podcasts online, download them from our site, or subscribe to regular updates on iTunes.

Next month: Post-production guru Joanna Gueritz discusses the importance of good planning for sound and post-production to maintain a tight budget.

Did you know, you can also keep up-to-date with all the latest micro-budget and indie film news, on our Twitter?

Festivals Present and Past

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0000

With the LFF about to kick off, we take a look at micro-budget films that have been dominating the festival circuit.

Despite theatrical distribution remaining a limited opportunity for most micro-budget features, festivals remain a vital arena for exposure and networking. By definition film festivals celebrate the rich diversity of cinema, encouraging audiences to experience the kind of film culture that they might not typically engage with. Film-makers have to be strategic about which festivals are likely to be the most receptive and the most advantageous for their films in terms of raising profile and attracting the attention of buyers.

Dinard’s Festival of British Films celebrates its launch event today and the 17th Raindance Film Festival is still going strong. One of the most anticipated events in the industry calendar also starts next Wednesday: The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival brings an international flavour to the capital – showcasing cinematic delights from around the world. Here we highlight what’s currently going on in the world of film festivals, as well as the successes of recent events past…

17th Raindance Film Festival (until 11 October)
As ever, the Raindance Festival in London has been screening a wealth of great, new micro-budget feature films amongst a broad selection of emerging indie talent. Opening night film, Lynn Shelton’s Humpday, was one of the undisputed hits of Sundance and Cannes Directors Fortnight 2009. Starring Mark Duplass, the film tackles the subject of amateur gay porno with wit and panache. Colin, the no-budget zombie movie that created a PR sensation at the Cannes market due to its alleged production costs of £45, was also screened on the weekend – in advance of its UK cinema release later this month. Debut UK micro-budget feature from co-director/producers Emily Harris and Yoni Bentovim, Borges and I, took part in the Raindance online festival – marking the third year of this exclusive streamed content. Raindance TV will be hosting shorts and features every night on this viewing platform until the close of the festival. Several informative seminars and panel discussions are yet take place this week: head to the Raindance Film Café for Meet The Sales Agent on Thursday 8 October (6-7pm); Music for Film takes place on Saturday 10 October (12-2pm) at the Apollo Cinema – where leading composers and film-makers will be discussing collaboration and negotiation.

Dinard’s Festival of British Films 2009 (8-11 October)
This year’s festival showcases several of the strongest recent UK micro-budget features previously screened at the Edinburgh International Film festival, including White Lightnin’, Le Donk & Scorz-ayz-ee, Kisses and Tony. Participants from last year’s London Film Festival, including Film London Microwave sensation, Shifty, and I Know You Know, will also enjoy their inaugural screening in France.

The Times BFI 53rd London International Film Festival (14-29 October)
Don’t Worry About Me, the directorial debut and micro-budget feature from British actor David Morrissey, will receive its world premiere in the New British Cinema strand at the fast approaching London Film Festival (LFF). The central characters in this boy-meets-girl tale are played with subtlety by the co-writers of the original play – who also collaborated with director Morrissey to adapt the material for the screen. Kicks by director Lindy Heymann and writer Leigh Campbell, is an intense micro-budget drama that explores contemporary society’s increasingly unnerving obsession with celebrity. Financed through Liverpool’s Digital Departures scheme, it will not only be screening at the LFF, but has also been nominated for Best British Newcomer – a new category for the first ever festival awards ceremony. Judging the inaugural prize will be Lenny Crooks, Head of the UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund; Christine Langan, Creative Director of BBC Films; Tessa Ross, Controller of Film4 and Drama, Channel 4; and Tanya Seghatchian, Head of the UK Film Council’s Development Fund.

Venice International Film Festival (2-12 September)
This established festival not only celebrates contemporary masters of cinema, but also offers the Lion of the Future (Luigi De Laurentiis) award for best debut film. At the 64th Venice Film Festival this was presented to 21 year old Filipino director, Pepe Diokno, for micro-budget feature Engkwentro. The film, which explores the violent gang life of two young brothers, also picked up a second major accolade – the Orizzonti. Diokno announced that he would use the prize money to clear debts incurred making the micro-budget film and partially finance his next “bigger and better” production. Engkwentro was praised by the jury – comprised of Haile Gerima, Ramin Bahrani, Giani Di Gregorio, Anton Fuqua and artist film-maker Sam Taylor Wood – for it’s stark social realism.

Toronto International Film Festival (10-19 September)
IndieWire reported that the “UK was completely shut out of Venice this year, and unleashed its autumn crop onto Toronto”. British low-budget abduction thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed by J. Blakeson is another debut feature that has excelled at maximizing its limited budget – it premiered at Toronto, and can also be seen at the forthcoming London Film Festival. Variety praised the film’s “crisp handling”, noting it had “some clever twists and a welcome streak of dry humour”. Toronto’s most bizarre and provocative film that played on its micro-budget, mangled VHS aesthetic was Harmony Korine’s latest. Trash Humpers eschews any attempt at conventionally beautiful ‘production values’ to create what Spout film blogger Karina Longworth termed a “78 minute artbomb”. Director Korine spoke of his aim to enable a more spontaneous, creatively free process for creating a feature length film, outside of typical industry practices. The ‘film’ – a definition some, including Korine, openly question – consists of raucous episodes that appear to be shot by a gang of grotesque elderly outsiders who perpetrate random acts of gleeful carnage and debauchery. Trash Humpers receives it’s UK premiere at the London Film Festival later this month.

Cambridge Film Festival (17-27 September)
The ‘Five Day Feature’ from micro-budget wiz Shane Meadows, Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee, came to Cambridge following it’s world premiere at Edinburgh. The spontaneously conceived and improvisatory film reignites the celebrated pairing of director Shane Meadows and actor Paddy Considine in the form of an hilarious faux-rockumentary. Cambridge also showcased some micro-budget classics from the irrepressible Kuchar Brothers, Mike and George, including the feature length The Naked and the Nude and recent short Midsummer’s Nightmare – a surreal exploration of a character with a creepy doll and a character in a cow mask lurking in a redwood forest.

Frightfest (27 – 31 August)
Colin’s zero-budget zombie-sympathizing tale also attracted eager audiences at this year’s Frightfest. Another one of the festival highlights was the presentation of some unseen footage from Jon Wright’s micro-budget teen horror film, Tormented. After the screening special effects experts Paul Hyett and Hugh Macdonald were joined by some of the key cast for a revelatory Q&A.

In these stark economic times, where emerging talent and independent film-makers rely on promotional activity to secure their success, it is heartening to see international festivals embracing an inspired array of micro-budget productions. Sundance Film Festival, for example, recently announced the introduction of the ‘Next’ section for their 2010 festival. They intend to focus specifically on micro-budget and under-the-radar films – lower profile projects that may have previously been eclipsed by the studio subsidiary indies. The distinctive and diverse voices inherent in these films are a crucial part of invigorating cinema’s enduring appeal.

The Changing Face of Exhibition

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0000

The problems and potential of experimenting with traditional distribution and exhibition models.

The widespread transition to digital technologies is effecting radical changes across the film industry. The world of cinema exhibition is no exception, with the UK’s Digital Screen Network having already equipped 244 cinema screens across the UK with digital projectors. The recent Digital Britain report brought these changes into focus and applauded the various pioneering new release concepts that highlight the exciting possibilities for how cinema-going and film exhibition will evolve in the future.

Film-makers, distributors and exhibitors are now continuously engaged in striking the balance between maximizing the exposure of a film to the widest audience using new and evolving platforms, whilst being careful not to compromise the popularity of cinema-going. A variety of exhibitors are adapting to the changing landscape by making decisions and deals that experiment outside of the traditional distribution and exhibition model.

Action by the Exhibitors

Exhibitors have already begun to take an increasing interest in the distribution of films. UK multiplex operator Vue Entertainment was at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival to publicise their groundbreaking deal with CinemaNX – the film financing and production venture. The deal means the films will bypass the involvement of a distributor, with Vue releasing three NX films in their cinemas across the UK. Richard Linklater’s latest, Me And Orson Welles, will be the first release through the deal this Autumn on 150 – 200 screens. Chairman of CinemaNX, Steve Christian, described how this allows a “total flexibility from theatrical release right down to VoD and all the ancillaries” in terms of determining how the films are monetized throughout their value chain.

Odeon – Europe’s leading exhibitor – has followed a similar path, with a collaborative move into distribution with pay TV company Sky creating the distribution company Odeon and Sky Filmworks. This joint venture will see the release of 6 films per year (Spanish horror smash REC being a notable hit) in cinemas, on VoD and DVD, and on television. This synergy allows for all the film releases to be “carefully timed to exploit potential gaps in the current film calendar” and means that films are marketed through both Odeon and Sky marketing channels.

The popularity of Sky’s innovative movie broadband download service – which has already provided well over 750,000 downloads – backs up the clear sense of a shift in film viewing towards new delivery methods. Odeon CEO, Rupert Gavin, also pointed out the positive benefit of Filmworks in that it provides another route to market for British film-makers. He also explained that Odeon will not compete with the other release windows for an audience but will actually “gain benefit for the first time from the value it creates in the theatrical window for product, by having a financial share in the subsequent release windows for films”.

The Theatrical Window

Exhibitors have to tread this path carefully. Inevitably, the exhibition sector can be very conservative, particularly in regard to protecting the conventional 17-week theatrical window. Given that the UK box office is currently one of the biggest markets worldwide, with admissions of £164.2 million in 2008, they are wary of films experimenting with concepts such as ‘day-and-date’ releases that collapse the separate windows into a simultaneous, or even reverse order. However, Mark Batey, CEO of the Film Distributors’ Association (FDA), points out that 92 different distributors released 531 films in the UK in 2008 and “inevitably, many of these titles – especially smaller ones – sank without trace”.

The restrictions create a difficulty for smaller micro and low-budget films to compete in the tentpole release world that dominates UK cinema exhibition. This is an issue addressed by ventures such as Nesta/UK Film Council’s Take 12 – Digital Innovation In Film. The interim findings discuss the new directions and methods open to UK indie films and follows the Digital Britain report in its assertion that it is crucial to create “digital test beds to promote innovation, experimentation and learning around creation and monetisation of digital content”.

Earlier this year, Lord David Puttnam, President of the Film Distributors’ Association addressed FDA members saying the industry needed to revisit the issue of release windows as “today’s audience demands access when they want it in formats that they want it in”, noting that “content on demand is not a genie that can be popped back into the bottle”. He said “this is an area where the industry has to come together – exhibitors have to come to the table. If there is no dialogue there will be no progress”. Puttnam warned that although he understood the concerns of some that “protectionism” was more appealing than “openness” in the current climate, this attitude failed to reflect what was happening with consumers and would ultimately be a missed opportunity.

Flexibility in the Traditional Release Model

Revolver Entertainment, participants in Take 12, decided to experiment with a release strategy for Microwave micro-budget feature Mum & Dad. They made a decision to follow a ‘collapsed windows strategy’ (i.e. simultaneously on theatrical, DVD and online platforms) on Boxing Day 2008. Revolver MD, Justin Marciano, explains that “with Mum & Dad, we took a micro-budget movie made for £100K, and instantly made it more accessible to a far wider audience than we could have done via the traditional route…it has turned out to be more profitable, because we just had one concentrated spend, as opposed to the traditional method, where you have to promote the film when it comes out in the cinemas and then when it is on DVD and the VoD”.

Steven Soderberg’s latest release The Girlfriend Experience, which is about to receive it’s UK premiere at Raindance Film Festival, is his second of 6 proposed low-budget features which will also reconfigure the release windows. For its recent US release, The Girlfriend Experience was made available to download on Amazon a full 3 weeks before it was released in cinemas. Sally Potter’s latest release, Rage, also experimented with a unique release strategy. It premiered on a free mobile phone application where the film was available for download in seven parts. The DVD release followed the next day. The theatrical release was limited to a one-off premiere in New York and London with the London premiere and Q&A session with Potter screened live in cinemas across the UK. Talking about unique release strategies, Potter has said “we need a new model for it, because it feels very antiquated to try to legislate against it, with copyright laws and so on…We have to think inventively about how to go with the flow and find a different way of bringing money back into the industry so that people can make more films and make them well, whether they go out on cell phones or in movie theatres or wherever. And I think what’s missing is that flexibility of thinking”.

Exhibiting Outside of the Cinema

Another recent innovative deal to provide an unusual new approach to exhibition is between HMV, the UK’s leading DVD retailer, and distributor/exhibitor Curzon Artificial Eye. Together they have launched hmvcurzon, which will see cinemas set up in several HMV stores, providing screenings throughout the day and into the evening. Chief Executive of Curzon Artificial Eye, Philip Knatchbull, was quoted in Screendaily explaining that “because of digital technology, we don’t need a box office and we don’t need a projection room”. He expressed the wish that these new cinemas would broaden the reach of Artificial Eye releases to new audiences, particularly local communities, schools and families, whilst also screening a range of cinematic, sporting, gaming and live music events.

This diversity of content alongside feature films is becoming increasingly popular, with live transmissions of football matches, concerts and comedy performances attracting enthusiastic audiences. Secret Cinema also create exciting and unusual cinematic events that incorporate live music, and an inspired range of venues for their imaginatively themed surprise ‘secret’ screenings advertised through a string of enigmatic emails.

Individual film-makers and small scale exhibitors often find interesting alternatives to the conventional approach to cinema exhibition. Tilda Swinton established the Nairn Film Festival in 2008 as a community based festival with eccentric taste. In its second year, the festival encouraged audiences and volunteers to drag a large truck containing their screening room between several Scotland villages. Another mobile oddity, Cannes In A Van, has parked up on the Croisette for the last three years for the duration of the festival to showcase classics and shorts including a premiere of The Age of Stupid as part of their mobile cinema experience in 2009.

Director Franny Armstrong and Producer Lizzie Gillet, the film-makers behind The Age of Stupid have developed one of the most elaborate and inspired recent approaches to exhibition themselves, by combining work with conventional sales agents and distributors, and also creating a website: www.indiescreenings.com to enable the request for grassroots screenings in cinemas and communities. This is all in order to alert people to the film’s climate change message prior to the imminent United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2009. The UK ‘inclusive’ premiere of the film involved the simultaneous screening of 64 screens across the UK. The international launch in 700 cinemas across 50+ countries linked by satellite and which included screenings in solar powered cinema tents made it “the biggest and greenest live film event the world has ever seen”.

It is inspiring to hear once again that one of the most innovative and pioneering approaches to exhibition has resulted from the engaged passions and ideas of low-budget film-makers, working in combination with industry to try out innovative ideas. Despite the multitude of proliferating handheld devices, online file-sharing services, VoD, DVD, Blu-ray formats and the latest cutting edge digital innovations and 3D imagery, the traditions of cinema exhibition ultimately all aim to do what cinema does best – which is to provide an inspiring, occasionally life changing collective/shared experience in the dark.

Collaborative Film-making

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave takes a look at the opportunities of collaboration in film-making.

Given the inherent collaborative nature of film-making and the kind of passion that film viewing provokes, it is unsurprising that along with advances in online communications, we are seeing an increasingly blurred line between film-making and film-enthusiasm. Audiences are now often encouraged to participate in helping shape productions, either via an online engagement or by physical involvement in the production and the marketing process. In micro-budget film-making, this kind of participation by friends and family has always been an integral part of getting films made. Today however, digital technology is enabling film-makers to expand their social networking considerably and make collaborations with audiences and film-making enthusiasts eager to engage in the film-making process.

The Faintheart Experiment

In 2007 the online social networking site MySpace launched My Movie Mash Up, a scheme to harness the collective creative power of their online community to make the “world’s first fully user generated feature film” with a proposed budget of £1million. MySpace in partnership with Film4, Vertigo Films and Screen West Midlands, gave MySpace users the opportunity to upload a short film to showcase their film-making ability. Over 800 entries were submitted and 12 individuals were shortlisted to pitch their idea of what My Movie Mash Up’s final feature should be via video upload. More than 500,000 MySpace users then voted director Vito Rocco the winner on the strength of his humorous pitch for Faintheart as well as his Film London funded short film Goodbye Cruel World. Faintheart (an original script by Film London’s PULSE film-maker David Lemon) is a comedy about fans collaborating on Viking battle re-enactments.

Audience involvement did not end there. During the Faintheart shoot, MySpace users who had uploaded auditions of their own were cast in supporting roles. As well as commenting on and advising the production, several people with production and editing experience were hired for assisting roles in the film, and in post-production, emerging bands who offered their music were selected to have tracks used on the soundtrack. As an incentive to all those directly involved in the production, all participants were invited to an exclusive preview screening. Throughout the process, Rocco and his cast and crew made video diaries allowing MySpace users to stay involved in every stage. MySpace and crucially users were encouraged to spread the word, promoting the film’s release throughout the internet and amongst their peers.

Due to its conventional industry financiers Faintheart relied on casting established actors for the main roles and chose a typical mainstream release strategy. Some reviews and reactions felt that Faintheart was a disappointingly conventional film that missed an opportunity to create something more innovative, both in its approach to its production and the resulting film. Variety deemed it a “standard-issue Britcom… amusing but seldom hilarious, blandly user-friendly, and cozily predictable”, and many saw the user generated aspect as a marketing angle to generate online buzz, more than a fully-fledged, inclusive collaboration. However, it signified a major leap in collaborative film-making and used a model that had never been tested.

A recent film that has taken certain principles from this model is director Zeke Zelker’s In Search Of, a twisted tale of people searching for love, power, revenge, family, belonging and primarily sex. Aside from selling his film directly from his website, Zelker described how the provocative nature of the film allowed him to make $10,000 by charging $25 per head for ‘event’ test screenings of the film’s rough cut. These screenings also included heated discussions and feedback sessions which contributed to the development of the film’s final edit.

Then Came the Swarm

An interesting comparison to Faintheart is Swarm of Angels, another ambitious project from an accomplished film-maker to produce a feature for £1million. In this case, the film which is likely to be called The Ravages will be financed by small donations from a projected group of 50,000 people or the ‘swarm’ as film-maker Matt Hanson refers to the contributors.

Similar attempts at so-called ‘crowd funding’ have been proven to be extremely successful. Recent release The Age of Stupid was entirely funded by a group of 228 people who donated £500 to £35,000 each totalling £530,000. Spanner Films, the production company, made details of their crowd funding approach available online to inspire other film-makers to find finance and support in the same way. Arin Crumley, one of the film-makers behind the inventive film/podcast Four Eyed Monsters followed in a similar vein. He established a company “The Co-Create” to develop collaborative approaches to a range of new media projects. As The Dust Settles is his latest film, shot around the Burning Man Festival in the US and involved 12 film-makers all producing a segment of a fiction/documentary for this initiative hybrid film. Part of the film was partially financed by a last-minute request through the new website Kickstarter, which hosted online video requests to invest in equipment for the productions in exchange for updates, screenings, DVDs of the finished project and a credit on the film.

Hanson’s film, if his Swarm of Angels scheme is successful, will be released under a creative commons license and developed through feedback from the 50,000 Swarm of Angels who fund it. Hanson refers to his Swarm of Angels film as “an open source feature film, and participatory film-making community. A new kind of film process and movement pioneering extreme collaboration and digitally-native cinema”.

Hanson is striving to actively reinvent the Hollywood model of film-making and create cult cinema for the internet era, making something audiences haven’t seen before both in process and final product. Hanson elaborates, “I will write and develop two scripts that the members of the Swarm can then dissect and improve upon (script doctor, and rewrite) via a wiki. They’ll then vote on the script to go with. This is what we talk about when we say as a member of the Swarm you’re involved in MAJOR creative decisions”. In its commitment to collaboration this project’s resulting film or films will be interesting test cases for the plausibility of this type of truly collaborative “open source film-making”.

Captive Crowd, Captive Audience

Director Chris Boyle’s mockumentary I Spit On Your Rave (a play on notorious micro-budget revenge drama I Spit On Your Grave) opportunistically harnessed the potential for ‘free’ crowd-sourcing of zombie extras at this summer’s Big Chill Festival 2009. The film tells a tale of the first post-apocalyptic zombie music festival. Thousands of zombie-costumed ticket-holders not only joined the cast, but also successfully entered the Guinness Book of Records for the “Most Amount of Zombies Captured on Camera”. The production process was documented on Flickr and YouTube allowing the participants to follow progress and spread the joy of their collaborative effort.

One of the most accomplished fan films of recent times is The Hunt for Gollum, a 40 minute film based on footnotes from The Lord of The Rings trilogy. The film made by Tolkein enthusiasts was made available to view online and viewing figures have already surpassed 3.2 million. The film-makers have an understanding with Tolkein Enterprises who allow the film to be released non-commercially through the internet and various film festivals. Produced by Spencer Duru and directed by Chris Bouchard, The Hunt for Gollum attracted a large group of film-making talent online, all looking for the opportunity to develop their skills to progress their careers or express their passion for Tolkein’s works. The film premiered at SCI-FI LONDON in May 2009 and continues to reach a huge audience worldwide hungry for such material.

Local Love

In a charming echo of its premise, the micro-budget romantic comedy The Husband Obedience Trials (currently in post-production) found enthusiastic collaborators throughout by appealing to the local village community it depicts, who took the project to heart. This approach is also creating a ‘production story’ to generate the right kind of publicity for the nostalgic feel of the film. Producer Simon Dando describes how the film covers three consecutive years of the village fete. The film tells the romantic story of Tom, a young gardener, and Hannah, a beautiful Polish au pair. The comedy stems from the villagers’ antics at the three fetes, and the advice the men of the village give Tom to help him woo Hannah.

More than 300 hundred people from the Oxfordshire village Kingston Bagpuize got involved in the 6 week production of The Husband Obedience Trials. The film employed 20 professional actors and a professional film crew, but all other resources were drawn from the village under voluntary and sponsorship arrangements, helped along by European grant aid. A generous amount of unpaid voluntary labour was required, which is why the village has a ‘Golden Share’ in the film’s recoupment plan. The ambition is that the sale and distribution of the film will allow the village to earn money and a collective vote will decide what the money is spent on for the benefit of the village e.g. pre-school, a mini-bus, tennis court etc.

On 3 September 2009, a DIY Days panel discussion in Philadelphia explored methods of collaboration by micro-budget film-makers, providing some illuminating examples of new ways of thinking about participatory and collaborative efforts that help to yield a finished film and an engaged audience. With potential that is largely untested, the field of collaborative film-making may have much to offer the film-making and watching community. As film-making, marketing and viewing methods evolve it is exciting to anticipate what new forms cinematic storytelling will take and how communities portrayed in films can actively collaborate to bring a rich authenticity to future films.

Fans Make Films

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0000

The Hunt for Gollum, made by a fanbase for The Lord of the Rings is available to view online.

Probably the most ambitious film ever made entirely by fans, The Hunt for Gollum is driven by the enthusiasm of a crew working entirely out of the love of cinema and, in particular, the films adapted from the books of JRR Tolkein. It rarely betrays it’s micro-budget with elaborate fight sequences, impressive vistas and CGI creatures, and proves to be an inspiring and rewarding training ground for the fans and emerging film-makers involved. Produced by Spencer Duru and directed by Chris Bouchard, The Hunt for Gollum premiered at the SCI-FI LONDON in May 2009.

Current online audience views figures exceed 3.2 million; and initial figures indicated that The Hunt for Gollum was among the five most viewed films in North America in May 2009. Microwave caught up with producer Spencer Duru to hear more about this forty-minute epic of fan film-making.

What inspired you to make a Tolkein ‘fan-film’ as opposed to an original idea – are there advantages to this for a first film?
Back in 2007 when we first started off, Chris Bouchard, the project creator already had an early draft of a script and some professional looking landscape shots of what he wanted the film to look like. The reason I came on board was to
a) learn how to make a decent film with high production values under relatively low pressure and
b) be apart of something that was going to be seen by people. It was clear back then that very few, if any, The Lord of the Rings fan films were out there and yet there was still a huge following. The idea was to get our names out there and to produce a film that shocked viewers into what could be done with very little resources.

What was the process of creating the screenplay?
The original story came from the appendices of the Tolkein books. The script had an incredible evolution, was written and re-written over 2 years (even during the edit) and was injected with some of our favourite characters. There was a healthy balance between bridging narrative holes and deriving inspiration from the footnotes.

How did you begin to assemble your crew of talented, enthusiastic people, across both production and post-production?
It was surprisingly straightforward to recruit talented crew members. We advertised on London film websites such as Shooting People, Mandy and Talent Circle. Our bulletins got a great number of responses once people saw what the nature of our project was. We had a link to our latest trailer at the time, trying to be professional, but also making it clear that no expenses were able to be covered. By the time we started recruiting CGI artists, sound designers, music composers etc. we had built up a bit of a name and so recruiting online became easier.

How many days was the shoot and how did you structure the shooting schedule?
We shot the whole film in 18 days. We filmed in bursts of 2-5 days because everyone had to work around their full time jobs. In between shooting, we had enough pre-production time to get locations, crew, cast etc. in place.

How long did you spend in post-production?
We had our editor on board at a very early stage (April 2007). During the final stages of the edit, we brought people on board at around December 2008. So in actuality you could say we spent about half a year in post.

What cameras did you use to shoot the live action sequences?
It was shot on various cameras. I believe the Orc fight scene we had 3 cameras rolling. We used the JVC GY-HD100E, Panasonic HVX-200 (which I own) and the Sony Z1.

I believe you did some ‘pre-visualizations’ of the more complex fight-sequences – how was this done?
Yes, for the main fight sequences, we spent months training up our lead actor sword fighting and got professional fighting actors to play our Orcs. We also worked with a couple of fight coordinators who worked with Chris to help understand how to shoot the action scenes. A lot of work went into this.

What was your final cash-budget and how did you raise this finance?
Chris Bouchard funded the entire film. The budget was £3,000, and to this day, after a couple of small donations, I’d argue that we kept it under 3k.

How much would you estimate the production was ‘worth’ taking into account in-kind and unpaid labour?
Good question. Chris and I think it would have cost around £150,000.

How have you spread the word about the completed film?
A lot of our PR was done by both Dailymotion and SCI-FI LONDON who worked very hard in getting interviews and footage out there on the web. Much of this work was done before the release I must admit.

What has the reaction been to the film since it’s completion, both amongst fans and the media?
The reaction has been wonderful. Apart from the odd comment, people have extended so many kind gestures towards this film. We do have a bit of a shield to hide behind in having made it with limited resources, but the media have shown they like the film regardless. One Total Film article was even entitled ‘Why Del Toro must see The Hunt for Gollum’!

How has the process of screenings and distribution been handled given the copyright issues?
Screenings were very limited, we had a premiere in the US and one in the UK. We had to have regular dialogue with Tolkein representatives regarding our online distribution methods. The conditions for the release were that we could not make any profit from the film nor could we allow Dailymotion (who had the exclusive for its 1st week) to advertise gambling or any other ‘untoward’ material. Apart from that, they were quite understanding.

Has this fan-film led to a production base of people you plan to collaborate with on future productions?
Most definitely, I intend to work with Chris and a lot of the crew on my next project. I have a couple of ideas in the pipeline but I feel it’d be foolish to make them public as they might not go ahead – but I need to get out there ASAP!

Find out more about the film-makers.

Watch The Hunt for Gollum online now.

Ease Your Anxieties in Angsbacka

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Revel in the alternative therapies of the No Mind Festival, through a new independent release and feature debut, Three Miles North of Molkom.

Three Miles North of Molkom is the vivid and funny debut feature documentary by co-directors/producers Corinna Villari-McFarlane and Robert Cannan. Set in the beautiful Swedish forest of Angsbacka, the location of the annual No Mind Festival, the film follows the experiences of a typical ‘Sharing Group’ of festival participants. We see them soothed, provoked, baked, steamed and challenged, both mentally and emotionally, by the various alternative therapies of the festival. As the festival progresses, the characters we follow – even the most skeptical – all open up to confront their issues, preconceptions and flaws in revealing and often hilarious ways.

Microwave caught up with first-time feature film-makers Corinna and Rob, the duo behind Three Miles North of Molkom, to hear more about the process and inspiration that went into making their film.

What was it that inspired you to make a documentary about the No Mind Festival in Angsbacka for your feature debut Three Miles North of Molkom?

Having worked in low-budget feature dramas since graduating, Rob and I knew how hard dramas were to finance and often, complete. We became very interested in documentary as a form, particularly in how, with a great story, some innovation, and a small crew, one could make a feature independently. When, by chance, I heard of Angsbacka and the No Mind Festival, I contacted Rob and we very quickly knew that it would be a great place to make our debut. The main reasons for this feeling were:

1. The unusual and varied events that went on there i.e. shamanic rituals and tantric sex to name but a few.
2. All the events took place in one location over the two weeks – very important in terms of budgetary considerations.
3. The location was the stunning heart of the Swedish forest, with twenty hours of daylight at this time of year and a four-hour “magic hour” at dawn and dusk where the light is fantastic for shooting.
4. The participants were international and each ‘Sharing Group’ was made up of strangers. In terms of character and the prospect of contrasts between them, this was very attractive.
5. All participants go there to undergo a deep process of spiritual transformation and growth. As with any good story, there is always an arc or transformation that each character goes through. As this was the main reason for the participants attending, we were safe in the knowledge that some interesting things might go on.
6. The form of the ‘Sharing Group’ (where each person talks to the group for five minutes about how the experience is impacting on them) meant that we could avoid too many talking heads that can sometimes feel contrived and could instead have a truer account of the characters experiences.

The contrast between being plunged into an immersive experience of the festival through your vivid use of camera and sound and the blunt skepticism of the bewildered Australian participant Nick was striking. Did your previous experience working in low-budget fiction film-making inform and influence your approach to ‘casting’, shooting and editing the film?

Participants arrive on the morning of the first day and by the end of that day they have found their ‘Sharing Group’. We therefore had only a few hours to scout through the new arrivals. We spotted a few people this way, but when the one thousand people gathered in the main tent to be welcomed officially and find their group, we stood up and explained that we were there to make a documentary and that were looking for a ‘Sharing Group’ made up of different backgrounds, with differing levels of experience in these alternative workshops, were of different ages, different sexes and included someone who was totally new to what Angsbacka had to offer.

From this brief talk that the organizers allowed us, we were approached by a small group of people and from these we very quickly knew the ones we wanted in our film. The cinematic style we were after was always to be as immersive and as experiential as possible. We set out to make a documentary that would be as immersive as a drama, and would also be the most obvious way to really take the audience through the Angsbacka experience. Therefore we steered clear of voiceover and used the novice as our audience’s way in. The fact that Nick, our novice, was the most hilarious Aussie was our most triumphant achievement in ‘casting’, if you could call it that.

How big was your crew and how long did you shoot for?

Although it may be hard to believe, we were four people: Joseph Russell the cinematographer, Mike Hill on second camera and sound (ideally you really do need a separate sound man), Robert Cannan and myself directing, producing and shooting extra bits when necessary. The shoot lasted the length of the festival with a couple of days either side for us to prepare and de-rig. So, in total, we were there for three weeks.

How did you structure your ideas for the shoot in advance – or was it a case of racing to follow the participants’ schedule of workshops and sessions set out by the festival?

We had the schedule of workshops ahead of the festival and already knew the key ones that we wanted to film, like the firewalk and the shamanic journey, so had planned how to approach these stylistically. In addition to this, we knew that every day at noon the ‘Sharing Groups’ met. This was our foundation schedule. On top of this, we did, as you say, have to be very alert and intuitive and able to follow at a moment’s notice any or all of our characters. The crew shot for about eighteen hours a day for two weeks non-stop.

How long did you spend on post-production?

As we made this film entirely on our own with no funds initially, we had to take paid work for six months after the shoot to raise the finance to be able to edit the 180 hours of footage we had shot. Through the eccentric contacts we made at Angsbacka, we ended up in contact with a cult in India that invited us out to film various interviews and events. Through our six months work for this Indian cult, we raised enough to leave work, our small cupboard office in Soho and our flats, to buy a car and some further second hand editing equipment and travel around Europe to various friends’ and families’ houses where we could house-sit in their absence. We’d basically set up our edit suite in their living room and even in the kitchen! If you want to make a film, you need to find any way you can to make it happen. The whole process, from the start of the edit to various festival screenings around the world and raising further finance to getting a sales agent and a distributor, took about eighteen months. This may sound like a long time but Rob and I have literally done all this on our own, in often what could only be described as the most challenging of conditions.

The festival and participants will appear strange and hilarious to many audiences. Given the bizarre situations and interactions that took place, were you wary of caricaturing your main participants?

The thing we are most proud of in our film is that though things are at times utterly hilarious, we never poked fun. There are so many documentaries on TV that do that sort of thing already. We fell in love with our characters from day one and didn’t need to contrive anything, or laden it too heavily with any slant; the truth of the events as we saw them is what we have put in our film. You have a huge amount of power in your hands when people trust you with their innermost truths and allow you to share in some deeply moving and shocking experiences – we understood this but never let it censor our edit. On the contrary, it made us even more sensitive to their stories and concerned to make sure that the audience could understand and even sympathize with even the most bonkers happenings.

How have the main participants in your film, the festival attendees and organizers reacted to the film?

When we returned to Angsbacka to show the film we were worried. The large barn was filled with a thousand people all eagerly awaiting the film, including most of the characters. Rob and I were very nervous indeed. The laughter bellowed through the rafters, people whooped, cheered, shouted at the screen and at the end we got a standing ovation. It was probably one of the greatest experiences you could have as a first time director. Rob and I were over the moon.

What has your experience been since the film’s completion in attracting the interest of sales agents and distribution companies?

This was a long process, but ultimately very educational and, as Rob and I never went to film school, was really a crash course in producing. More than most perhaps, we had to rely on being accepted into quality film festivals as a way to get the film seen by buyers, sales agents and trade press. We are very happy to be distributed in the UK with Metrodome and to have Goalpost Film as our international Sales Agent. This question really requires a much longer discussion, and maybe a double whisky! Rob and I will be hosting some panels on this in the near future, so if people refer to our website in a couple of months they can find out where they will be held.

What is your next project and would you say it is influenced by your experiences of making your first feature?

We have a slate of projects in development and are waiting for a green light. Yes, our experience undoubtedly has influenced our choices for our next projects. More than anything, we love making movies and regardless of how hard it has been (and it has at times seemed like we were climbing the most impossible mountain) we just can’t wait to get cracking on a project with finance in place from the outset.

Three Miles North of Molkom is released on 18 September in the UK with preview screenings on 16 September – including a live, satellite broadcast comedy performance at Cineworld Haymarket by Russell Howard to introduce the film.

For updates on the film’s release and for daily pearl’s of wisdom check out the film’s Facebook page .

Get Shifty

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave micro-budget feature, Shifty, releases on DVD today.

Following the nationwide UK theatrical release earlier this year, Eran Creevy’s urban thriller Shifty has now been made available on Blu Ray and DVD – with a whole host of exclusive extras.

Shifty tells the story of a day in the life of a Muslim crack cocaine dealer in the fictional London suburb of Dudlowe. Riz Ahmed (Road to Guantanamo, Britz, Freefall) takes the title role in the debut feature from director Eran Creevy. Daniel Mays (Atonement, Vera Drake, Plus One) completes the ‘bromance’ as his best friend, Chris. The impressive lead cast is supported by British TV regulars Nitin Ganatra (EastEnders, Holby City) and Jay Simpson (Foyle’s War, Ashes to Ashes), as well as prevailing features actor Jason Flemyng (Stardust, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Snatch).

The film premiered at The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival and has gone on to gain critical acclaim, especially for director Eran Creevy who has been compared to the likes of Shane Meadows and Noel Clarke. The screenplay was written by Creevy and was based on his real life upbringing in Harlow, Essex. He took inspiration from established directors, such as Woody Allen and Martin Scorcese, who have made films about subjects and locations that they know well. “Lots of people I grew up with have since passed away due to stabbings, or have gone to prison. Some of my own friends have got themselves into trouble, and one of my family members got addicted to heroin, so it does have a very personal feel to it”, says Creevy.

He began his career in film working as a runner and then assistant director on big-budget movies such as Layer Cake, Scoop and Wimbledon, before going on to direct commercials and music videos for the likes of Nike, Utah Saints, Sonny J and Natty. Growing up, Creevy used to love to watch films like The Goonies, Gremlins and Superman. “I’ve got quite commercial tastes”, he says, “I guess what I learned from watching those films was to try and keep the audience entertained. So with Shifty I wanted to keep it short and I wanted it to have a thriller element to it.”

Shifty is the second Microwave feature to be released on DVD following the unique day-and-date release of Mum & Dad across all platforms on Boxing Day 2008. Pick up your copy of Shifty today! The disc includes a Behind-The-Scenes documentary, commentary with the director and star Riz Ahmed, and a number of music videos. There is also a special edition DVD exclusive to HMV, which contains extended interviews with cast and crew, the original script and storyboards.

Creevy is excited about the release and has said, “I’m just hoping people enjoy it and it reaches an amount of success that means I can go on and make another film”. For a chance to listen to Eran Creevy in conversation, and to find out more about his experience of making Shifty, head to the Canary Wharf Film Festival this September.

Find out more about Shifty in the Get Inspired section.

Shifty Team Spill the Beans

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0000

In the lead up to the DVD release, download the latest Microwave podcast about Shifty.

In the lead up to the DVD release, download the latest Microwave podcast about how Shifty was made on such a tight budget

If you saw Shifty in the cinema and/or you’re rushing out to your local supermarket to pick up your very own copy on DVD next week, you may be wondering how such a critically acclaimed film was made on a micro-budget? Well wonder no more, as we have the lowdown from the creative team behind the film!

Producers Ben Pugh and Rory Aitken, and Director Eran Creevy, discuss the ups and downs of creating their film on a budget – including: working with their actors; their clever use of locations to minimise costs and maximise time; and troubleshooting along the way.

To listen to the Shifty Alumni Talk, please visit our Podcasts page. You can listen to our podcasts online, download them from our site, or subscribe to regular updates on iTunes.

The Shifty Alumni Talk is the second podcast of many – the first session was entitled Screenwriting for Micro-Budget Films. The next installment will be Casting Tips, in which Casting Director Julie Harkin (Scouting Books for Boys, Eden Lake) gives her top tips on finding the right actors for your film.

Shifty is available to buy from 24 August 2009 – pre-order your DVD now.

Did you know, you can also keep up-to-date with all the latest micro-budget and indie film news on our Twitter page?

Micro Scheming

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave inspires micro-budget film-making across the UK.

A range of micro-budget film funds and schemes continue to spring up across the UK and beyond, many inspired by the trailblazing presence of Film London Microwave. Microwave was the brainchild of Film London Chairman and maverick producer Sandy Lieberson in 2003. He saw a need in the UK for a burst of micro-budget entrepreneurialism in order to engender a new ‘can-do’ attitude in emerging producers that is already fundamental to the US indie film world.

The punk influence of Dogma ’95, Next Wave Films’ completion funds and InDigEnt DV features, all fed into an exciting sense of possibility for Microwave and the development of a best-practise legitimacy for micro-budget film-making in the UK. The scheme was launched in 2006 and has gone on to greenlight a slate of films. The first two features on the scheme, Mum & Dad and Shifty have already shown their success, with UK festival premieres and nationwide theatrical distribution. Shifty will be released on DVD in the UK on Monday 24 August with DVD extras including a behind-the-scenes documentary, director’s commentary and music videos. Microwave’s third feature, Freestyle will be released nationwide in October.

Since the launch of Microwave, micro-budget films and funding schemes across the UK have gone from strength to strength. Here are some of the more recent schemes/initiatives that have emerged:

Slingshot, the digital feature film studio funded by venture capitalists Arts Alliance, BBC Films and Skillset, have developed, produced and released a number of micro-budget features, including: Sugarhouse, Nick Love’s urban thriller, adapted from the hit play; Tormented, a satirical teen horror directed by Microschool participant Jon Wright; and French Film, a wry rom-com from greenlit Microwave producer Stewart Le Marechal.

Digital Departures from Northwest Vision and Media was launched in 2007. The Digital Departures scheme was devised together with its partners, the Liverpool Culture Company, the UK Film Council and BBC Films. Their aim is to produce 6 feature films, all at budgets of £250K. Completed projects that have been on release include Of Time and The City, Terrence Davies’ poetic documentary meditation on Liverpool. Their upcoming two features premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF). Kicks is a dark drama which explores controversial themes surrounding teenagers, celebrities and football by writer Leigh Campbell and director Lindy Heymann, and Salvage, is a claustrophobic, contamination horror by writer Colin O’Donnell and director Lawrence Gough.

Warp X is financed through the UK Film Council’s Low Budget Feature Film Fund in partnership with Channel 4 and Optimum Releasing. It launched with a similar ethos to Microwave regarding commercial considerations and new talent, despite higher budgets of between £400K – £800K for it’s proposed slate of “re-toxified” UK genre pics. These include: Donkey Punch, Ollie Blackburn’s, sexually charged teen slasher on a boat; Hush, Mark Tonderai’s taught horror; and All Tomorrow’s Parties – a leftfield music documentary produced by Luke Morris of Found Films. I Spit on Your Rave is Warp X latest low-budget feature, a Guinness Book of Records-baiting zombie music fest, which shot at The Big Chill Festival in August 2009.

Atomic Pictures from Northern Film & Media is a micro-budget feature scheme which launched in July 2007 to enable “one experienced North East production company to deliver a slate of between two and four micro-budget feature films over a two year period”. They ultimately chose to invest in Newcastle-based company Pinball Films whose slate include Fuckart and Dog Knife Wife.

Moxie Makers is another North East micro-budget film scheme, based in Newcastle and managed by Ipso Facto Films. Established producer Christine Alderson, a producer mentor at the first Microschool in 2006, devised the scheme. Moxie Makers aims to produce 4 films per year – “fresh, engaging, original films with commercial appeal that can be realised on budgets from £150,000 up to £500,000.” They will also handle sales and distribution of their own films. Mad, Sad and Bad is one of their first titles to be released, which premiered at the EIFF earlier this summer.

More and more micro-budget feature initiatives are emerging in the UK, for example, intended schemes in Wales and South-West England. The micro-budget films have created new opportunities, not only for film-makers, but also for independent sales agents and distributors. Given the reduced risk enabled by small budgets, distributors can afford to take risks exploring new approaches to digital marketing and release, such as Metrodome’s online viral campaigns for Shifty and Revolver Entertainment’s day-and-date release of Mum & Dad.

Outside of the more traditional/structured funding schemes, a new initiative that capitalises on ‘crowd-funding’ is proving popular. A number of web-based companies have emerged which source finance, by appealing directly to potential investors for a film. The Movie Mogul Fund launched in the UK in 2008 and describes itself as “a community-generated film fund which invites its members to select and back new film-making talent and claim their slice of the pie should that film become profitable”. They say that dependent upon how many units members choose to buy, “a feature film could be funded with less than 5,000 paying members”. Films set their target with a maximum budget of £100K and invite members to support them. The films get heavily promoted online and in print. Once a film reaches its targets, it will go into production with ‘in-kind’ industry support from participating sponsors. Membership is a free online process and members can purchase as many units (at £4.95 each) as they wish, and moving them around until the film reaches its targets and the budget locks.

IndieGoGo have less involvement in promoting films but instead provide the online tools for film-makers to crowd-fund and market independent feature films. They recently developed a Facebook application to further enable access to potential investors, or as they term it, a “DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) tool for film-makers to engage new audiences and fans to discover new projects”.

Perhaps as a result of recent interest and support in micro-budget film, the film-making community have been thriving in recent years with a number of significant successes. Earlier this year, entirely independent of established funds or schemes The Age of Stupid, directed by Franny Armstrong, crowd-funded their film at a budget of £500K. Their process and discoveries are available online for other film-makers to learn from. As an independently financed production, they had great freedom and control over their rights to the film. Alongside conventional film sales via Celluloid Dreams, and collaborations with UK distributor Dogwoof, they also developed an online application for screenings – www.indiescreenings.net – through which interested exhibitors/individuals can book the film. The website even provides an application to calculate what to charge for tickets if you want to break-even or take a profit away from the night. This is a free resource that can be used by other independent film-makers to DIY distribute their micro-budget features.

Depending on your location in the UK, there may be a number of funding opportunities available to you for your micro-budget ventures. If your project doesn’t happen to fit into these schemes then it is worth remembering that film-makers have been extremely successful by being entrepreneurial and raising money on their own. All you need is a great idea and then a little goes a long way…

For further information regarding funding opportunities, sign up for the Film London bulletin. Or if you know of any other micro-budget funding opportunities, then why not tweet us on our Microwave Twitter page?

Find more funding opportunities on the Brit Films’ Funding Information pages.

For more useful tips on film funding, have a look at The Film Finance Handbook – How to Fund Your Film

Pre-order your Shifty DVD now.

LLGFF On Tour

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0000

The London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (LLGFF) tours nationwide with a number micro-budget gems in their programme.

The London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (LLGFF) is currently on tour around the UK. A selection of 10 films are being exhibited at cinemas across the British Isles – from Poole to Glasgow, Dublin to the Welsh town of Mold – until the end of September.

Curated by the British Film Institute, LLGFF takes place in London in March/April. Its nationwide touring programme aims to show the best gay and lesbian films from around the world. Lesbian and gay cinema has an inspiring history of choice micro-budget features that have found broad appeal and a higher profile with audiences at festivals and independent cinemas. These films can often capture the freedom of expression and creative ingenuity possible with limited means and an independent production approach. Particularly in the ‘80s and 90s, fantastic micro-budget/indie films exploring gay themes began to emerge from now renowned and reputed film-makers such as Derek Jarman, Isaac Julian, Monika Treut, Tom Kalin, Todd Haynes and Rose Troche.

One of the films currently screening on the LLGFF UK tour is the micro-budget classic Nighthawks, directed by Ron Peck. This cult 1970s indie film chronicles the double life of a guarded and semi-closeted schoolteacher who spends his nights cruising bars and clubs in search of an unattainable Mr. Right. It is a carefully considered, quasi-documentary depiction of the transient mating rituals and unfulfilled longings of London’s gay scene.

Another micro-budget gem amongst the LLGFF tour selection, that again follows the hybrid documentary/narrative form, is Greek Pete. This indie Brit film exposes the world of male escorts in London. Director Andrew Haigh spent a year observing and interviewing young working men as they shared the details of their dramatic lives including: complicated relationships, calculated business decisions and unexpected hardships. Haigh focuses on Pete, a darkly handsome son of Greek immigrants who arrives in London with a simple goal: “I just want to make as much money as possible”. Filled with intimate conversations and heartfelt confessionals, Greek Pete is a fascinating portrayal of one man’s struggle for riches and acceptance in a vibrant, yet unsettling subculture.

Other micro-budget films to catch on tour are:

Baby Love, a French comedy, directed by Vincent Garenq
Bandaged, a horror story about forbidden love, directed by Maria Beatty
Born in ’68, a special preview of the epic account of three friends from 1968 to now
Dolls, the debut feature from Czech director Karin Babinská
Dream Boy, a tale of young gay love in Louisiana, directed by James Bolton
Ghosted, an intimately shot love story fresh from its premiere at Berlin this year
Pedro, a powerful biopic from the USA of Pedro Zamora, MTV Real World Aids activist
To Each Her Own, the debut from Heather Tobin who scripted, produced, shot and edited the film

Gay cinema has had a number of crossover hits since the ‘90s, including The Wedding Banquet and Philadelphia in 1993, and more recently, Mysterious Skin (2004) and Brokeback Mountain (2005). It is vital that the vivid work of indie classics and emerging talent is given wider exposure to allowing a diverse array of gay and lesbian representations to reach UK audiences.

See the full list of LLGFF films, dates and locations on tour.

Find out more about The London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

For more information about Film London’s Jarman Award, inspired by visionary film-maker Derek Jarman, visit the Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network website.

Interacting with Independent Film

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0000

The growing surge in independent film clubs and societies across the capital has opened up new networking and collaboration opportunities.

With the proliferation of distribution models and methods, the options open to audiences, relative to how they engage with film content, is fast-evolving. There is a growing relevance and vast potential for film and media literacy, through independent film clubs/societies and other specialist groups, in deepening the understanding of our wider world. Independent film is an inherently vibrant part of the process of grasping and questioning formulaic approaches and homogenised mono-culture in cinema. In doing so, these groups open up possibilities to network and potentially collaborate with like-minded film-makers.

Film clubs and specialist groups are often the best way to find film-makers who have a similar niche interest in the independent sector. The ICA has recently set up their own group and host a monthly film club, The London Black Film-makers Group. They hold a range of screenings by established film-makers and emerging talent, and aim to become a “networking hub for Afro-Caribbean screenwriters, actors, producers, directors and crew members”. Join Facebook group to receive email alerts about upcoming events.

Indie distributor, Soda Pictures, has recently taken advantage of interest indie film audiences have expressed in events and previews, by teaming up with Apollo Cinema to bring you a new film club that showcases the latest and the best in independent cinema. By joining Club Soda, you become part of a select group who can see new films well before they hit the big screen. You can even help inform the release campaign by providing your feedback.

The recently opened Shortwave Cinema is a great new location for film-makers to watch films and discuss film-making. They offer free cast and crew screenings on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, as well kids screenings and classic movie screenings. With a café/bar open every day, it has become a great hub for film-makers to get together.

Of course, there are also numerous film networking and screening clubs for emerging film-makers that are springing up across London such as:

Film-Net in Islington
Kicking and Screening at Café Kick in Shoreditch
Kino London at The Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury
Non-Multiplex Cinema Film Club at the Curzon Soho on Shaftesbury Avenue
Rapture in Notting Hill
Short & Sweet Weekly Film Club in Bloomsbury
Today Is Boring at The Compass in Islington
White Noise Film Night & Network in Peckham

Communities outside the larger metropolitan areas or arthouse cinema circuits have less opportunity to access a broad range of film culture. However, it is in their power to establish a film club with the support of The British Federation of Film Societies (BFFS), the national support and development agency for the film society and community cinema movement (part of the global International Federation of Film Societies). The BFFS make available a range of current independent and foreign films available for screenings, as well as access to film posters, images, programme notes, advice on issues such as public liability and equipment loan and insurance, and guidance towards other advice and support publications.

So if you fancy joining a club or setting up your own, then you might just meet some fellow aspiring film-makers or get inspired to collaborate on your own project.

Let us know about your club on our Twitter page.

To hear the latest about film screenings and networking opportunities, subscribe to the Film London, Shooting People or New Producer’s Alliance bulletins. There are also online calendars that can show you full listings for your area.

Film and Media Literacy

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Independent film offers the opportunity to inform and inspire.

There is a growing relevance and vast potential for film and media literacy in enhancing the understanding of our wider world. Independent film can provide new stories, cultural insights and experiences, through which audiences can engage with issues and with each other.

In particular independent film has growing potential as an educational tool for young people to join together in discussion and collaboration.

An understanding of film and film-making can often be an enriching companion to every stage of education. Media literacy and film education programmes not only broaden the appreciation of what cinema can be beyond mass marketed products, but can also provide audiences and students with a greater understanding of culture and society. In the UK, Film Education provides a number of practical ways in which film studies can be combined with the National Curriculum to bring lessons and ideas alive. They can suggest inspiring ways to engage students in issues of language, history, culture and citizenship and improve their sense of empathy, interpretation and teamwork. Using young people’s familiarity with films can help contextualise issues that may otherwise be difficult to grasp.

Film Education’s prime example of this is National Schools Film Week, one of the largest events of its kind in the world. Their aim is to “address topical and challenging issues shown from a variety of different perspectives” through film. In 2008 they took 400,000 children to see 250 films at 2,000 screenings in 550 locations throughout the UK. This year, ‘creativity’ and ‘diversity’ are the themes relevant to both primary and secondary school children conveyed through selected current and forthcoming films.

Film Education resources also enable a rich appreciation of the breadth of cinema and the opportunities to learn the way in which film language and technique can be studied and practised. They often profile recent and upcoming releases to use as case studies for more detailed discussion about film-making style or techniques. Recently, they created a detailed case study of Microwave film Shifty. Interviews with the key creative team behind the film provide a clear picture of how they approached their debut, micro-budget feature film.

The Media Ed website is another online resource that is excellent for sparking the imaginations of younger school pupils. It gives them the opportunity to discuss film terminology and film-making before learning to produce short films themselves in an educational environment. Their work supports research that suggests that digital creativity offers teachers some strikingly innovative means of extending learning strategies in ways likely to inspire and motivate hard-to-reach pupils.

Filmclub is a free resource to give any state funded school in England the chance to set up an after school film club. It’s an opportunity for students and teachers to explore a “vibrant mix of vintage hits, international classics, blockbusters, art movies and all points in between, seeing films made years ago and others fresh out this week”. The discussion these films provoke can contribute to a broader understanding of the world, inspiring and motivating a wide range of young people in a very inclusive way to engage with their education. Surveys have shown that teachers support the idea of film clubs in their attempts to integrate isolated or disengaged children.

Cineclub also offers a range of programmes and projects for young people to learn about filmmaking. The young film-makers network trains professional film-makers and teachers to set up and run film-making workshops for young people. They aim to create a vibrant and thriving network of young film-makers who create, watch and share films with each other. One of their programmes provides a media mentor or ‘filmmaker in residence’ programme where an industry professional visits schools to help with GCSE or A-level practical coursework or any other curriculum project using film.

Regular film clubs, screenings and networking events, combined with free online educational resources, could be instrumental in widening the sense of aspiration and access to film-making across a diverse range of new talent. It may just help invigorate the future health of the UK film industry for both independent film-makers and audiences.

Visit Get The Resources for useful tips for aspiring film-makers.

Microwave’s Get The Knowledge is an online learning resource – access exclusive interviews with industry practitioners.

Digital Marketing and Promotion: Part 2

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0000

A further look at marketing methods, focusing on the DIY approach…

In follow-up to our recent news story ‘Digital Marketing & Promotion: Part 1’, we take a further look at marketing methods for micro-budget movies, including unconventional screening methods and online distribution.

Open source shelf web packages and low hosting costs have opened up a plethora of accessible options for self-promotion and even self-distribution of DVD or digital downloads. Sites such as Amazon WebStore and Neoflix, provide off-the-shelf services where you can customise the look and feel of your store and register your merchandise, whilst they take care of the day to day running of transactions and accounting of sales (for a modest 10 percent cut). This is the approach taken by the documentary Bomb It, a film exploring the international graffiti art phenomenon.

Jon Reiss, director of Bomb It, has pointed out that alongside extensive online marketing, micro-budget films, just like studios films, rely on theatrical release as primarily a promotional tool to market the subsequent release of the DVD, digital download and TV sales. But he points out that for micro-budget films, “there’s a whole world of ‘non-theatrical’, which is actually very theatrical. You have to think about how whenever you’re seeing a film with a group of people in a dark room, that’s theatrical. It can be in a museum, it can be in a theater, it can be in a parking lot, it can be in a gallery… I think a lot of film-makers now – before jettisoning theatrical completely – need to consider this”. He acknowledges that “theatrical is really expensive, you do lose money if you’re an independent, it’s very hard to break even at all. But if you expand the notion of what theatrical is… our most profitable screenings for my film Bomb It were one-day, two-day events, because people have to get down there – it’s an event… There are ways to do it that are much less expensive.”

Scott Kirsner, film blogger and author of the recently released book, ‘Fans, Friends & Followers – Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age’, notes that the increasing ease of access to engage in the marketing and distribution of your work also results in “the noisiest, most chaotic marketplace that creative artists have ever known”. Both in his book and his wiki, Kirsner explores how a film-maker can grapple with the paradox that “the attention of an individual audience member anywhere in the world is simultaneously easier to snare (a multi-million-dollar marketing campaign is no longer required) – and harder than ever to snare”.

In an interview with B-Side.com Kirsner was asked how film-makers can use real-world events like festival screenings to further their online marketing agendas. He responded that so many film-makers race to get their movie finished before the first wave of festival screenings that they often neglect their online presence. He suggests that a simple website is not enough. For Kirsner the festival circuit is often where films get their most attention and their first reviews. He advises that, “on your site, you want to have a way to capture peoples’ email addresses (and possibly their postcodes, too) so that you can let them know when your movie plays their city, or when it’s available on DVD or as a download”. He believes that it will become increasingly popular for film-makers to “sell DVDs of their film whilst it plays at festivals”. Intended as a companion to his book and blog, the aim of Kirsner’s new ‘Power Tools Wiki’ is to function as “a communal collection of the tools that assist creative artists with audience-building, collaboration, and commerce” and can help film-makers keep each other informed about the latest effective online tools for self marketing and promotion.

One alternative marketing and distribution strategy proposed by UK film-maker, Jamie King is to “Embrace A Pirate”. King and his collaborators produced a film entitled Steal This Film, a documentary about copyright and intellectual property. He opted to take his film directly to his audience. Through a promotional deal with a number of the top torrent tracker sites, King was able to secure various placements such as logo swaps and banners encouraging people to download the film for free. At the end of the film there was a call to action that encouraged viewers to make a donation to help support the film-makers’ next project. Steal This Film has received more than $30,000 in donations and in the process has been downloaded over six million times. Viewers were also encouraged to take the code for the subversive banner adds and add them to their websites, social networking sites and blogs, the result being that these banners blotted out the advertising ‘banners’ and ‘skyscraper’ advertisements that appear on such sites usually beyond the control of the average user.

This approach is clearly provocative yet ideally suited to this film and its sequel, which specifically explore the world of film piracy and torrent tracking. Yet director King hopes this provides an example for the future saying that “if Steal This Film II proves at all useful in bringing new people into the leagues of those now prepared to think ‘after intellectual property’, think creatively about the future of distribution, production and creativity, we have achieved our main goal”.

The DIY approach to marketing and promotion of course has its limits, and for those with the resources, using marketing expertise and knowledge may be more fruitful and appropriate. For those on a micro-budget however, identifying a unique selling point for your film and making the most of marketing your movie by being proactive can only have benefits in increasing profile and widening your audience. It is always worth a go…

Read our recent story Digital Marketing & Promotion: Part 1 about Digital Marketing & Promotion.

Download Me!

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Listen to expert tips and advice on all things micro-budget with our brand new Microwave Podcasts.

Feeling uninspired on your dreary journey to work? We have the remedy – top up your knowledge on all things micro-budget with our new Microwave Podcasts!

Each month we will be releasing a new podcast taken from one of the many Microschool sessions, which focus on different areas of micro-budget film-making.

Microschool provides a creative space for shortlisted teams on the Microwave scheme, to develop their projects through talks, discussions and workshops, facilitated by industry experts. Now you can gain exclusive access to this material with our monthly downloads.

Our first podcast looks at the best ways to develop a script suitable for a micro-budget feature, with insight and useful hints from three of our Microwave Script Editor mentors; Justin Trefgarne (The Interpreter, Hot Fuzz), Jay Basu (Song of Songs) and Kate Leys (Trainspotting, The Full Monty).

Podcasts to look out for in the coming months include:

Casting – Casting Agent Julie Harkin divulges her tips for successful casting
Post-Production – post-production guru Joanna Geuritz discusses the importance of good planning for sound and post-production to maintain a tight budget
Market Place – an insight into the micro-budget market from the point of view of both sales agents and distributors

To access the first session, ‘Screenwriting for Micro-Budget Films’, please visit our Podcasts. You can listen to this online, download it from our site, or subscribe to regular updates on our iTunes.

Did you know, you can also keep up-to-date with all the latest micro-budget and indie film news, on our Twitter page?

The Time Of Their Lives

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave interviews the film’s director Jocelyn Cammack.

Director, Jocelyn Cammack and Producer Hilary Durman, who made the subtle and moving new micro-budget film The Time of Their Lives, participated in Microwave’s Microschool developmental programme in 2007. Jo’s directorial talent was clear in her previous short films and her short DVD promo for this documentary. Her easy engagement with the subjects and participants of her films and her distinctive, evocative style were impressive. Through contacts made during the process of applying for Microwave, the film eventually found support from the UK Film Council and BBC’s renowned documentary strand, Storyville.

The Time of Their Lives is a provocative feature documentary, which opens up the surprising world of a small group of passionate, angry, young centenarians and the intriguing place they call home. Set in a north London residential home for the active elderly, this documentary paints a portrait of life at the Mary Feilding Guild and of three of its oldest residents. With a combined age of almost 300, Rose, Hetty and Alison continue to be powerfully engaged in their individual brands of activism – from journalism to anti-war demonstrations – whilst quietly negotiating the final years of their lives.

Jocelyn talks to Microwave about the process of getting the project off the ground…

The Time of Their Lives was short-listed for Microwave and you participated in Microschool. How was your experience of Microschool – did it help to develop your ideas for the film in any way?

I should confess that I was a bit cynical about Microwave when I first read about it. In this era of New Labour targets, forms seem to take such precedence over content, so I wasn’t sure how much real engagement there would be with the detail of each project. But I couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised. In the smaller, genre based sessions – only 2 teams in our documentary group – Hilary (that’s Hilary Durman, the producer) and I had lots of opportunity to spend time working on the idea itself. Much of this was writing and re-writing treatments and pitches, but it also involved a lot of talking and presenting within the group which was extremely helpful in honing our thoughts and forcing us to interrogate what it was we were really trying to say and achieve through the film. We were incredibly lucky to have Rachel Wexler leading the group, she has huge experience but also a deceptively hands-off and responsive style of working, nudging all the time towards the more difficult questions. For me it was fantastic, I really didn’t expect to be able to focus so intensively and rigorously on the essence of the project during the 4 days. Although lots of things changed over the following months, that process was extremely useful in clarifying and identifying precisely what I was wanting to do.

What was the process of eventually going into production and receiving financial support for the film?

We did a really confident pitch on the final day of Microschool and were very disappointed not to be selected but one of the questions that came up during the session (as we had anticipated) was what made this a theatrical rather than a TV documentary. I had lots of specific reasons why I believed it had theatrical potential, but one of the panelists – Steve Jenkins from BBC Acquisitions – who clearly liked the project a lot, said at one point that he thought it was a Storyville-type film. I later contacted him and he was able to introduce us to Nick Fraser. Storyville then asked us in for a meeting and the rest, as they say… The point being that it was getting the opportunity at Microschool to pitch the film that really resulted in the film being made.

Working with Nick and Jo (Lapping) was a dream; they understood right from that first conversation how I wanted the film to feel and what had drawn me to these particular people. It’s so refreshing to feel that your approach and your instincts are genuinely valued and that there isn’t pressure to conform to some agenda. This is partly because Storyville has no house style as such. It’s also because Nick and Jo are genuinely interested, not only in what film-makers have to say, but in how they want to say it; for example, no-one ever tried to persuade me to use commentary – as soon as I said the film wouldn’t need it, that was fine.

But because of their increasingly limited budgets, Storyville can only finance to a certain level – in our case about 50% – so we had the choice of agreeing to deliver on what they were offering, subsidising the project ourselves but getting it up and running properly, or delaying until we could secure the rest of the money. When 2 of your key subjects are 101 and 102, you don’t hang about, so we decided to work for nothing and get on with it. By this time I’d already been filming for almost a year, so we were really looking at covering some key crew days that I wanted to get shot by someone who knew what they were doing, and paying for post.

How did you find the Mary Fielding Home for the Active Elderly and the participants that you chose to follow throughout the film?

I read about it in the Guardian and thought it sounded interesting, so went up to see them thinking I’d be there about an hour. But I got on really well with Miriam – the then manager – and then learned that someone called Hetty Bower was about to go on a Peace March at the age of 101, so asked to meet her. And it was my meeting with Hetty that really did it – I couldn’t leave it alone after that.

She and I spoke – well she mostly – for about 3 hours, telling me about her life, her late-husband and love of her life Reg, her politics and her passions. At the end of it all she stood up, looked me dead in the eye and said, “You do know I want to die don’t you?”. Well no one had ever said that to me before and it’s kind of awkward especially when you’ve only just met them. The automatic reaction is to smile a lot, tell them they still seem so young and can’t possibly mean it – anything to avoid taking them seriously. But I knew in that moment that none of that was an option with Hetty; she did want to die, she still does. She’s tired, she has had enough and I later discovered that Rose also felt the same way. But it was the inherent contradiction between this very real desire and their insatiable lust for life that I found so compelling and what drew me particularly to them.

Over the next few months I met lots of the other residents too, many of whom have lived impressively accomplished lives and were really interesting and articulate people. But in story terms there was something in the connection between Hetty, Rose and Alison, and in the contrast between the three of them as characters; Hetty the campaigner, Rose the philosopher and Alison who is a wonderfully phlegmatic and direct personality as well as being incredibly witty and although a self-confessed “show-off” is actually entirely herself on camera.

How many days was the shoot and how was this spread out over the course of production?

There wasn’t really ‘a’ shoot as such. I was visiting the Mary Feilding Guild once or twice a week for about 15 months with my miniHDV camera and shooting things as they happened. This really was observational a lot of the time so it wouldn’t have been possible to do it with a crew on a small budget. But the Storyville money meant that we could schedule some specific crew days, for instance Hetty going on the Peace Demo in March 2008. Michael O’Halloran and Hugo Glendinning both came out on that day with us and there was a day shooting the kite footage on Hampstead Heath and a few others. I think we had 10 ‘crew days’ in total but I continued to do the odd bit of shooting myself several weeks into the edit.

How many crew did you have and how did you find the right people for the project, given the intimacy required to allow your participants to discuss their lives comfortably?

Normally the crew days involved camera, sound, me and Hilary. Most of the crew camerawork was done by Michael O’Halloran but the rather hap-hazard, short-notice nature of the schedule meant it wasn’t possible to use the same person on camera all the time. In fact I ended up shooting a lot of it myself which I didn’t intend. I started off thinking I’d just shoot some research footage that I could use as the basis for discussion about style and get residents and staff used to the idea of having a camera around. But in the 10 months or so before our deal with Storyville, I ended up shooting not only a lot of critical interview material but also some very key events – Rose doing T’ai Chi on the lawn for example, and an interview with her the day before she had her fatal stroke. It was through spending so much time with people that the sense of intimacy you’re talking about developed, although I didn’t really appreciate how important and apparent that was until I got in to the edit.

I think someone with more documentary experience might have been able to do this immediately, but coming from a drama background, I had to learn how to negotiate the ‘me-camera-person-moment’ thing from the beginning: when do you have the right to turn over as something unfolds in front of you?/ how do you handle needing to do something technical when someone’s talking about something really delicate?/ how do you maintain that fragile relationship with someone even though you realise they’ve just dipped out of frame and half your brain’s thinking?/ how do I solve this without doing some useless cutaway? and so on. In many ways, crew days were a real luxury as you can imagine, and at other times I knew it would be hard to get this stuff if it wasn’t for the fact that it was just me in the situation.

But the real answer is that I knew all the people I asked to work on with me and asked them because they’re great at what they do. We had the same sound man throughout – John Avery – who also did all the sound design and music and who’s worked on a lot of my films before. I like people who work instinctively and quietly and who drop fantastic ideas into your head that you’d never have thought of.

What was it that most inspired you whilst exploring the subject of your film and the lives of your characters/contributors?

Spending time at the Guild profoundly challenged my preconceptions of what it is to be ‘old’. The very fact that I was surprised by the people I met there said at least as much about my own preconceptions as it did about the people themselves. I think what struck me most is the deep sense of confidence they have in who they are as individuals. Maybe this is just me, but somehow I’d always assumed that because society has changed so radically, particularly in the last 15 years since the arrival of the internet and digital technology, that the whole psychology of modern life must be incredibly alienating if not a bit weird to anyone in their eighties+ and that it isn’t surprising if people of that age feel excluded or isolated these days.

But what the residents and staff at the Guild have allowed me to understand is that if you’ve been alive for 80, 90 or 100 years, your sense of who you are is so deep and so profound that you don’t really care if you say something stupid or mind what someone else might think of you, as long as you’re yourself. You know we’re all so obsessed with climbing ladders and steaming past the next milestone but if you don’t want to climb ladders anymore, you don’t have to convince anyone you can, you can just relax and be yourself.
That’s what’s been most valuable for me, to gain some insight into that quieter, more fundamental way of being in the world, which I think is what underpins their capacity to be so incredibly honest about the really big things in life – like death.

As the film does explore the thoughts and perceptions of its central participants/characters, there is inevitably a strong interview aspect of the film, but there was also some interesting, subtly experiential visual touches like the inquisitive roving close-up shots of them reading and utilising a magnifying glass – did you anticipate these things or was it a case of capturing what happened during your time with them at the Home for the Active Elderly?

It was always really important to me to not just introduce or present these people to the audience but to allow the audience to experience the world from their point of view, to really begin to feel what it might be like to be them at this age. And part of that psychological engagement was bringing the viewer closer to their sensory experience of the world, to the everyday, intensely subjective, perceptual details of their lives.

Many of the residents have failing sight or are hard of hearing and the three central characters are all registered either blind or partially sighted and are very deaf, which is easy to forget when you see Hetty storming off down Whitehall through a crowd of people. So the through-the-lens type footage and a lot of the sound treatment is a way of just reminding us occasionally that not only is so much of their experience mediated by physical things like hearing aids and magnifying glasses but that that affects how they interact with and how they are in the world. I know this because I’m partially-sighted myself so I have some sense of how shifted my own perspective is. I’m sure this is why I’m so instinctively attracted to certain kinds of framing and light play too, I’m always experimenting with lenses but it does have to be justified within the conceptual framework of the film.

Interestingly though, I don’t think it’s the optical, quasi-POV stuff that is the most subjective material. For me it’s the interview material which really draws you in, and especially the pauses. I think we dismiss or de-value the talking head far too readily. It became fashionable in the 90s and I think it’s back again. But in this film we’re getting to know people at a particular time in their life – how can you not look at someone’s eyes when at 101 they try to define the afterlife or tell you how they feel about war? It’s only in their face that you see the real history behind what they say.

How long did you spend on post-production?

I spent 9 fabulous weeks with a wonderful editor called Fred Hart who was perfect for this project. Not only was he hugely experienced as a documentary editor but he was also deeply interested in the people themselves and very open to messing around with formal aspects of editing and trying things out. Every morning we’d spend about an hour bouncing some new ideas around, transferring my overnight scribbles onto the huge wall chart I’d put up, talking about other films that illustrated a particular point, having a rant about whatever was in the paper and making a plan.

And then the cutting itself – even when we were working on an entirely new structural approach – would be done in 2 or 3 hours because we’d worked it all out on paper and in our heads. It was a huge job as I had about 170 hours of material in total. But it was a real joy to work with Fred, the focus was always on what was best for the film so we hugely respected each others’ opinions even if we completely disagreed with each other – which I think only actually happened once. Then I did about 4 weeks work with John on the sound before the online and dub. We spent most of the money on post basically.

That was all to achieve the 58 minute version for Storyville but I then had a further 2 weeks of working with Claire Guillon to expand the 58 minute version into a 70 min festival cut which was additionally paid for by the UK Film Council. Unfortunately Fred wasn’t available for that bit but I was very lucky because Claire and Fred have known each other for years and so she understood very well what had gone before while at the same time bringing a fresh eye to the project.

What has been the journey of the film since its completion in terms of festivals, markets and seeking an audience? Were theatrical screenings also an important part of your strategy?

The film premiered at Sheffield DocFest where it was really well received. Since then it’s played at South by Southwest in Austin, the Pompidou Centre where it was in competition at Cinéma du Réel and the Bird’s Eye View festival in London. It is also going to be screening at The Queen’s in Belfast next month, the Showroom in Sheffield and in Belgrade. And we’re also talking to buyers in Germany, France, the Netherlands and the US.

The theatrical screenings that I’ve been present at have been a real treat because the film always provokes a strong reaction from the audience. And on 2 occasions, Hetty (who’s now 103) and Alison (89) have done a Q&A afterwards and have enthralled people because they are still so engaged and involved with what’s going on in the world – politically, socially and philosophically.

For me, and this probably sounds trite, but I think the fact that I found a way of making a film I really wanted to make, the way I wanted to make it, was the most important thing. I went away and had a think – and got hooked on documentary.

The Time Of Their Lives will be broadcast on BBC 4 on Monday 20 July at 7.30pm.

Digital Marketing and Promotion: Part 1

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0000

A look at some marketing methods that focus on targeting your audience.

Marketing and promotional campaigns are one of the trickiest and most costly parts of the film business. This applies to Hollywood releases as much as it applies to the micro-budget indie sector. Recent research conducted by marketresearch.com projected that “in 2007, studios of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and their subsidiaries, spent $754 million advertising films online. By 2012 that figure will increase to $2.4 billion”.

Digital marketing and promotion is increasingly growing in importance as the main method of engaging with today’s audiences. Marketing has changed from an entirely top down system (of paid advertising, direct mail/email, and expensive PR) to incorporate a bottoms up groundswell system. This is an approach shared by the major studio distributors as well as the indie DVD distributors. Word of mouth has always been seen to be the most powerful marketing out there and now there are new ways to inform audiences and for them, in turn, to share this knowledge with their friends.

Targeting Your Audience

The ways in which movie marketing has to identify and appeal to the target audience is often integral to the content, style and genre ‘DNA’ of the film itself. Micro-budget films with a fresh sense of genre reinvention or ambiguity are often required to find unusual and inventive ways to hook an audience. This is increasingly creating examples wherein the film becomes the focal point of a whole ‘story universe’ that spans simultaneously across a range of both traditional and ‘new’ media. In this new world of convergence culture, micro-budget films can build a community and thus an audience by allowing them to feel a creative involvement in spreading the word about the film amongst their peers. There is now a wide range of ever-evolving digital options in which to do this:

1. Social Networking Sites
Sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Twitter are all typically involved in the digital marketing and promotion of most current feature film releases. Training courses such as Facebook for Film-makers, blogs like Film Festival Secrets and regular film festival panels like the recent Tools of The Trade at Tribeca Film Festival are useful for assisting film-makers in discovering how to maximize these free online marketing tools.

Collaborative sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, the Hype Machine, and Twine added weight to this type of self-marketing by further sharing and promoting online content. These sites have also been used to generate word of mouth promotion of films through preview screenings. For example, Cloverfield and current release Brüno have made use of MySpace Black Curtain. This initiative involves a MySpace user befriending Black Curtain as a top friend, printing off their profile and queuing for the opportunity to attend a pre-release screening of a highly anticipated film.

2. Competitions
Metrodome’s Shifty website offered free tickets to preview screenings in exchange for entrants providing their postcodes and email addresses, information which could then be used to aid the distributor in assessing the awareness of the film in different areas, whilst the free screenings themselves provide further potential to raise the film’s profile through word of mouth. Similarly, for Año Uña, a film by Jonas Cuaron made up entirely of still photographs, a challenge was set to create a short film using selected stills from the feature alongside personal photos. Prizes included meeting the film-makers, a screening of the winning short at the UK premiere of Año Uña and free cinema passes. A YouTube community was also involved in picking an audience winner, increasing the fanbase and word of mouth marketing for the film.

3. Viral Campaigns
Inventive ways of allowing audiences/consumers to participate in alternate reality games or humorous hoaxes are also a canny ‘hook’ to promote a feature release. Microwave film Shifty used an online consumer to consumer viral, Stitch Up a Mate, that irreverently blended uploaded photos of you or your chosen friends into fake, incriminating CCTV footage. In doing so, they could spread the word about an upcoming release to their target audience and wider social networks.

4. Widgets
Widgets are small graphical devices that perform highly focused, often single, specific tasks. They are now used as a widespread method in which people can spread promotional images, information, web-links and often the trailer for films they are keenly anticipating, by embedding them into personal blogs and the profile pages of their various social networking sites. At www.eventful.com film-makers can create a completely customizable widget to help promote screenings on their blog. They also offer a service called ‘Demand It’ which allows film-makers to determine the amount of interest for a specific event/screening in a specific area. For example, if a movie-goer wants a new film release to play in their area, using ‘Demand It’, the more interest generated the more likely the film will screen at a festival or cinema close to those expressing a ‘demand’.

Still from Water Lilies

Water Lilies and Tormented are films that have both used this online marketing tool. Water Lilies (pictured below), for example, used a widget that played the first 6 minutes of the film. This was embedded as a player that could then be shared on personal social networking sites or blogs. Tormented, a horror movie from Slingshot and Forward Films, made use of a widget which played forty short clips in the run up to release. Members of the principal cast were let loose in a ‘confessions booth’ – candid behind-the-scenes footage was captured and then broadcast as a teaser campaign.

5. Mobile Devices
iPods, PSP and 3G mobile phones are ideal ways in which to spread the availability of trailers, promos, related music and preview clips of forthcoming movies. They are increasingly becoming a distribution platform in themselves for viewing full-length feature films via Amazon Video On Demand or aggregators like B-Side and Shorts International who select films for iTunes.

Cross-platform Campaigns

The Blair Witch Project (1999) directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, is often credited as a significant early example of a micro-budget feature film that generated strong festival buzz following screenings at Sundance and Cannes, it went on to become a huge box office phenomenon due to it’s distinctive and original use of a predominantly online marketing campaign. Their inspired marketing ‘hook’, played out through the website, was to inventively suggest that the terrifying events depicted in the fictional world of the film were a record of real events. The Blair Witch Project was released by Artisan Entertainment on 30 July 1999, grossing over $248,639,099 worldwide, against a $22,000 budget. The film was featured in the Guinness Book of Records as having the highest profit-to-cost ratio of a motion picture ever, making back US$11,301.78 for every $1 spent.

Artisan not only pushed their website but also promoted the film with inventive trailers and a one-hour Blair Witch TV special which was broadcast repeatedly on the Sci-Fi Channel just before the film’s theatrical release. Fortune Magazine suggested that it’s “possible that the trailers, the cable special, the saturation media coverage, and the film itself drove millions to the website rather than the other way around… or at the very least that a kind of virtuous feedback loop was created” where each strategy benefitted the other, in turn rapidly increasing the film’s promotional reach.

The success of Blair Witch is not easily replicated as any kind of template for future successes. In many ways it was a ‘one-off’ phenomenon, but does show the inventive ways in which traditional and new media marketing began to interact, to engage an audience. Ten years on, this approach is now commonplace and Hollywood studio releases have built on the inventions and marketing innovations of such micro-budget and independent films with inspired cross-platform marketing campaigns, in particular the groundbreaking promotional campaign surrounding the 2007 release of Cloverfield. An array of enigmatic trailers, online clues and film character backgrounds built up through video virals as well as trailer-playing widgets and competitions to produce adverts for fictional brands featured in the film, were all orchestrated to engage a participatory audience in the process of generating huge anticipation for the Cloverfield release.

Micro-budget film-makers are repeatedly reinventing the wheel in marketing their films in inventive ways at minimal cost. Some of the strategies above are pulling audiences into an engagement with their films while traditional marketing methods are pushing their films’ profiles out into the world.

For more information on Digital Marketing and Promotion, watch out for Part 2: The DIY Approach coming soon….

For more on sales and marketing, visit our Microwave learning module Selling Your Film.

Microwave Deadline Approaches!

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0000

With the deadline looming, make sure you get your application in to Microwave as soon as possible…

Following the success of the first two Microwave films, Mum & Dad and Shifty, the scheme is now looking for more micro-budget features to complete its slate of ten.

So far, six films have been greenlit: recent releases Mum & Dad and Shifty; Freestyle and The British Guide to Showing Off currently in post-production; and Foxglove and Strawberry Fields now in development.

Set up by Film London alongside the BBC and with support from Skillset, Microwave challenges film-makers to shoot a full-length feature film for a budget not exceeding £100,000. This training-through-production scheme provides an intensive approach to film-making with an emphasis on original ideas, tightly focused scripts, short production schedules and commercial potential, and is open to London-based teams. Film London offers cash awards of up to £65,000.

If you are looking for an opportunity to break through from shorts to features, then this is the scheme for you.

Deadline for entries is 5pm, Friday 26 June 2009.

To find our more about the application process and to download all the relevant application forms, please visit the Film London website.

For more information about our current Microwave features visit the Get Inspired section.

Cutting Edge at Edinburgh

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0000

New cinema gems found ‘Under the Radar’ at this year’s festival.

The Under the Radar strand at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) returns, following last year’s packed screenings that included the first Microwave film, Mum & Dad, and micro-budget gem Bigga Than Ben. EIFF have announced their late night cinematic previews for this year’s festival. Alongside the Night Moves strand, Under The Radar explores an exciting range of mostly micro-budget features by emerging talent that they characterize as “the cutting edge, the cult and the undiscovered” of new British cinema.

The second year for Under the Radar again demonstrates the Edinburgh Festival’s adventurous programming. Featuring five films, including two world premieres, the subjects explored are daring and provocative, including Zach Clark’s wild sex satire Modern Love is Automatic. Zombies meet Shakespeare in the world premiere of Romeo and Juliet vs The Living Dead, while Dominic Murphy’s debut, White Lightnin’, depicts the Appalachian mountain dancer Jesco White as a crazed legend. The world premiere of urban nightmare Tony explores the sinister secrets festering in the lonely London existence of the titular character, and Robert Byington’s Harmony and Me is a self-styled “anti-romcom that tackles heartbreak, bad sex and the social rights of coma victims”.

A further new branch of the British micro-budget movement will be launched at the EIFF at a ‘Five Day Features’ event set up by Shane Meadows and Warp Films producer, Mark Herbert. They are inviting film-makers of all levels to shoot a film in only 5 days. Setting the example themselves, they shot the improvised comedy Le Donk, a rockumentary that follows Le Donk (Paddy Considine), a roadie and failed musician who finds a new sidekick in up-and-coming Nottingham rap prodigy Scor-zay-zee.

In an interview with ScreenDaily Meadows said that, “after taking two life sapping years to make This is England… it was time to get back to my roots as a guerilla film-maker. So me, producer Mark Herbert and our miniscule team, decided to stick two fingers up to the establishment and make a film with our own money in only five days. Oh yeah, and we had to somehow get 50,000 people in our final scene for free.” Le Donk, devised by Shane Meadows and lead actor Paddy Considine, will screen on 23 June. The screening is followed up with a talk on the programme by Meadows and Herbert on 24 June.

Other micro-budget gems to look out for at the EIFF include Lynn Shelton’s subversively funny ‘bro-mance’ Humpday which follows two old buddies’ macho dare to take their friendship to a whole new pornographic level and the oddly visionary documentary Big River Man, in which a famed Slovenian river swimmer tackles the Amazon.

The latest features to emerge from the Digital Departures micro-budget feature scheme, run by North West Vision & Media, will also be screening. Salvage (pictured above), from director Lawrence Gough and award-winning writer Colin O’Donnell, tells the story of a single mother who confronts a monstrous, neighbourhood savage in an attempt to rescue her daughter. Kicks is a thriller about obsessive female football fandom taken to extremes, as two girls confront the threat of losing a local star to a foreign transfer. Written by Leigh Campbell and directed by Lindy Heyman, the film focuses on society’s obsession with celebrity.

Kicks and Salvage are two UK micro-budget features for which key creative contributors are showcased at EIFF 2009 as Skillset ‘Trailblazers’. Screenwriter Leigh Campbell (Kicks), Actor Kerrie Hayes (Kicks), Director Lawrence Gough (Salvage) and Actor Kyle Ward (Salvage) are four of the 25 Trailblazers highlighted by the scheme, which Skillset Director of Film, Neil Peplow, has described as “a fantastic partnership between EIFF and Skillset creating a focal point for industry to spot emerging UK film-making talent.” EIFF Artistic Director, Hannah McGill, also elaborated that although this third year of Trailblazers “vary in age and background and experience levels, they’re united by the risk-taking work and their clear potential”.

Skillset will also be supporting emerging film-making talent at EIFF 2009 with their Skillset Careers Advice, a ‘speed-networking’ style session designed to allow new talent access to high profile industry experts to enquire about how to progress in the industry. There are also a range of short courses which will run by for both children and adults wanting to advance their fledgling film-making skills, including sessions on animation, slapstick comedy, Sound FX and screen make-up.

This year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival once again looks to have programmed an incredibly diverse range of film-making events and modestly budgeted feature screenings to complement the established names and glamour of the gala screenings from film-makers such as Sam Mendes, Peter Hewitt and Andrea Arnold. Have a look at the programme to check out films to inspire both audiences and film-makers of the future.

EIFF tickets are available to book online now.

Interviewing IndieFlicks

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0000

James Allison, editor of IndieFlicks, talks to Microwave about his website and indie film in the UK.

IndieFlicks, a site dedicated to independent film-making in the UK, launched in 2008. It aims to report on the latest low, micro and no-budget films that are being written, shot and edited by film-makers in the British Isles. James Allison, editor and founder of IndieFlicks, reveals all about the scope of the site, the film-makers he has discovered and his take on the independent film scene in the UK.

What was the spark of inspiration that made you decide to launch the IndieFlicks site – was it as a film-maker or an enthusiastic audience member?

A bit of both, really. I originally wanted to set up a blog to discuss the latest general movie news, but with so many sites out there doing that already, I thought it would just get lost in the crowd. At the same time I had been working and keeping in contact with a number of independent film-makers on both low-budget productions and training courses and really enjoyed the films they had been making. The problem we found though was that although there were festivals for them to showcase their work, there was no real website out there which spent time reporting on these lesser known productions. It felt wrong that all the hard work these film-makers had been putting into making their films was not getting the coverage they deserved. So, it made perfect sense to make a site dedicated to these guys instead of the ones who were getting all the coverage anyway.

Did you conduct any research prior to launching the site to see if there were any direct rivals to IndieFlicks, both in terms of online and offline publications?

Yes, a little. I looked around the net using a variety of searches to see if anyone else was doing what I wanted to do, and I asked fellow film-makers if they knew of any similar websites. There were a few sites which dedicated themselves or part of their web space to independent film-making, but none of them really focused specifically on the micro and no-budget films that are being made across the UK. Most of the time it seemed as if reporting on these types of films was an afterthought compared to the bigger budget films.

What are some of the more significant recent developments in the UK indie film scene that you have noticed since setting up the Indieflicks website?

The recession and the closure of a number of smaller distribution companies seem to have caused quite a few problems for indie film-makers. There are some great films out there that are currently in limbo because companies have folded under the credit crisis or cannot pick up any more films due to their current financial situation.

What do you think of the current health of UK indie cinema at present and what predictions might you have for the near future?

I think it’s doing pretty well considering the current climate. I thought the independent market would crumble after certain tax breaks were closed by the government, but you only have to look at the films showcased on the site to see there are still quality independent films being made. In terms of the future, I think digital distribution looks like it’s going to be big. By getting rid of the costs of producing discs and packaging, film-makers will be able to distribute their films on their own terms. This means those films left in limbo from not being able to acquire a distribution deal will finally be available to film fans which is awesome – that is what film-makers want, their films to be seen. Self distribution also gets around the extortionate prices film-makers have to pay the BBFC to rate their film. Hopefully they will see sense and re-evaluate their terms and prices for lower budget productions.

Who has impressed you recently, as exciting emerging talent to look out for in UK indie film?

James Watkins is someone I think we will see big things from in the future. His first feature film Eden Lake was a brutal film and was an amazing piece of work for a first time feature film-maker. Not only has it received positive reactions from audiences here in the UK but it really seems to have struck a chord with audiences over in the USA.

What feedback or contact with the indie film-making community have you had as a result of the site – anything you found particularly interesting or unexpected?

Most of the feedback I have received from film-makers about the site has been really positive. They like that there is now a site that gives their films the attention they deserve as well as making them aware of films that they may not have known about otherwise. There have been a few people hoping I would focus on independent shorts too, but with the amount of shorts being made each year, it would be a full-time job to report on these as well and I only have limited time to work on the site. It’s certainly something I hope to look into later down the line though.

What do you consider some of the top indie films to look out for this year?

There looks to be quite a few interesting films coming out this year but The Hide, Straw Man and Inner Calm are three films I think people should certainly keep an eye out for. Inner Calm was directed by a young first time feature film-maker, Becky Preston, and should be out later in the year. The Hide, which was directed by Marek Losey, has been picking up some excellent reviews and will be on release later this month and I’ve been hearing some great things about Straw Man, directed by Andrew Barker. What’s really fantastic is that all three films are from first time feature film-makers yet look as if they have been made by people who have been doing this for years!

Are today’s independent film-makers relatively accessible in regards to interview and providing other promotional materials, as they rely on a sense of online community in order to promote their film?

Once you find them, yes they are. All the film-makers that I have met and spoken to about their projects have been very cooperative in providing information about their films. The problem is that you first have to hear about these projects before you can report on them and because I set this site up to report on indie films since nobody else was really doing it, it’s been challenging. It has been through working on low-budget projects and putting out ads on sites, such as Shooting People, that I have found the majority of independent films and film-makers that feature on the site. It’s through these connections you learn about other projects that people have worked on, so there certainly is a community of independent film-makers, it’s just trying to get their voices heard that proves the problem.

How do you determine whether a film is ‘100% UK independent’?

It’s a bit of a grey area but the main thing has to be that the film is being made by film-makers living here in the UK. Funding from UK investors would be a bonus but I know how hard it can be for film-makers to find the money needed to get their projects into production, especially in the current economic climate. As long as the money didn’t come from a major studio of course!

What are your ongoing aims for IndieFlicks – do you see the site developing further, perhaps using social networking portals or other ‘new technologies’?

I certainly want to expand the site more into the social networking scene. There is already a Facebook group that keeps its followers up to date on news from the website and we are also on Twitter. I am hoping to get IndieFlicks onto MySpace too once I have some more spare time. In the long run, I would like to expand the news stories – especially the interviews with the film-makers, I’d like these to be video interviews, as I’ve found it’s easier for people to digest and pass around the information through a visual medium. Like I said earlier, I would also like to delve into the short film sector if I have the time. As a pipedream I would love to set up an IndieFlicks film festival to showcase the brilliant work being produced by film-makers, as well as produce a number of low budget films, but a lack of funds currently means that is probably a long way off. If the website grows in strength then who knows?

What do you think of the Microwave scheme and micro-budget film-making in the UK at the moment?

I think it’s a great scheme. Anything that helps film-makers to bring their projects to fruition can only be a good thing for the industry. With the technology available today you can make a film for relatively little money. I’ve yet to see Shifty, but I thought Mum & Dad was a cracking horror film and better than most of other films in its genre that have been released recently.

Visit the IndieFlicks website.

Find out more about the Microwave scheme – applications are now open!

New British Cinema Season at the ICA

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Institute of Contemporary Arts helps new British film-makers find an audience.

The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) introduces an exciting season of films. New British Cinema starts today and runs through until the end of the month.

The season aims to promote fresh voices in British cinema that have so far had limited access to audiences. Seven of the films to be shown are yet to secure distribution deals and three are feature directorial debuts.

The eight films that make up the full programme are taken from a wide range of genres including urban horror, rural drama, psychological thriller, affairs of the heart and experimental exploration.

Alongside the film screenings will be a complementary education programme, as well and forums and events focussed on industry development. There will also be a chance to meet the talent behind the cameras during several special screenings, accompanied by an introduction and Q&A session with the directors.

The programme of films includes:

The Hide
A crisp thriller set in the mudflats of Suffolk.

Summer Scars
Six kids play truant and their games in the woods become darker following the arrival of a mysterious drifter.

Soi Cowboy
Sophomore director Clay nods to Lynch, Antonioni and Apichatpong Weerasthakul, but remains his own man.

Crack Willow
Formally radical and displaying great empathy, the film deals with family, death, loneliness, rage, fear and the everyday negotiation of our own private mindscape.

The Disappeared
Debut director Johnny Kevorkian creates a dark mythology to transform familiar surroundings into something worthy of your nightmares.

Beyond the Fire
A powerful and tender drama about secrets and scars of the past threatening a new relationship. Winner of Best Film (UK) at the London Independent Film Festival 2009.

The Blue Tower
Mohan is caught between personal dreams and family pressures in this intriguing domestic thriller set in Southall. Winner of Best UK Feature at Raindance Film Festival 2008.

Dummy
A striking debut from Matthew Thompson – with three extraordinary young actors in the leading roles.

Book your tickets now to support new British film-making talent.

Micro-Cannes 2009

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0000

We take a look at some of the micro-budget films that made a splash on the Croisette.

Although Cannes’ main competition selection is most famous for premiering the leading established names of world cinema, the Director’s Fortnight (Quinzaines des Realisateurs) and the selection of films for Un Certain Regard is the place where some smaller, low-budget and occasionally micro-budget films can receive the prestige and subsequent exposure generated by a Cannes Film Festival premiere.

This year, there was enthusiastic buzz amongst critics for Kurdish Iranian director, Bahman Ghobadi. He previously won the Best Newcomer Award, the Camera d’Or, in 2000 for his first debut feature, A Time of Drunken Horses. At the 62nd Cannes Film Festival Ghobadi picked up the Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize for No One Knows About Persian Cats (Kasi Az Gorbehayeh Irani Khabar Nadareh). His latest, modestly budgeted, feature again blurs the line between fictional story and more captured documentary, but with a new, urban music context.

No One Knows About Persian Cats is a film about Tehran’s underground community of rock and heavy metal musicians who take western tunes and add their own politicized lyrics. ScreenDaily enthusiastically summed the film up as a surprise for “anyone who considers the Iranian Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi solely a practitioner of long-take chronicles about rural Kurdish life”. They noted that Ghobadi’s film “ventures brilliantly into new territory… (as) he blends the genres of concert film, social drama, comedy, and thriller into a cohesive faux-documentary, adjusting his style to insure a snug fit”. The film-making style for No One Knows About Persian Cats also echoes the spirit of its characters. It was, by necessity, filmed ‘underground’ (without any official permission) in just 17 days with an S12K digital video camera. In Iran, 35mm equipment is owned by the state hence the requirement for the film-makers to utilize more innovative technical solutions.

Other film-makers returning to Cannes’ Directors Fortnight with their second micro-budget feature film was New York City brothers Josh and Benny Safdie. Continuing the fresh whimsy of their debut The Pleasure of Being Robbed, they entered competition with their latest feature Go Get Some Rosemary. This film follows Lennie, a divorced father, in his struggle to control his two sons as he looks after them on their annual fortnight away from their mum. The film divided opinion amongst critics with both high praise and exasperation. The Safdie brothers’ own father was the inspiration for this spirited tale of an eccentric parent. The brothers were interviewed at Cannes and went to on talk about their reasons for recapturing their memories through improvisatory micro-budget cinema.

Making the small group of micro-budget independent features in the official selection at Cannes 2009 complete was Lynne Shelton’s Humpday. The writer/director who previously made My Effortless Brilliance and won the ‘Someone to Watch Award’ at the Independent Spirit Awards 2009 tells a buddy story of two college friends who reunite and decide to enter an amateur porn contest. Humpday has already been a hit at Sundance and will go on to play at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Alongside the often highbrow cinema in competition at Cannes, the Marche des Films is also full of genre re-inventions, re-treads and rip-offs. This year, UK micro-budget zombie feature film Colin caught significant attention at the market. This was largely due to the attention-grabbing claim that the production budget amounted to only £45 which the director said “was spent on a crowbar and some tapes”. The film takes a fresh approach to the zombie sub-genre by telling the story from the point of view of a zombie trying to understand what has happened to him, rather than a human trying to escape and survive.

The London Paper reported that novice director “Marc Price, originally from Swansea, but now living in London, has no formal training in film-making and said he picked up most of his skills from DVD extras – directors’ commentaries and the like”. Now two Japanese companies have made bids to distribute the film, and the 30-year-old is hoping for more offers after screenings at Cannes. “It’s a bit weird to be at Cannes,” Price said. “It’s just a movie shot on a camcorder and I have no delusion that’s all it is, but it’s nice that people watch it and it’s nice to see it play with an audience.”

Colin was shot on camcorder in Swansea and London over 18 months, and the film-makers persuaded actors and make-up artists to donate their services for free to create the necessary blood and gore. Horror fans have delighted in the film’s genre credibility, with D.J. Benz of Horror Talk praising Alastair Kirton in the lead role and the impressive production value achieved on the miniscule budget. Benz points out in particular the fact that director Price “has made use of some striking scenery, coupled with some beautifully composed shots” and goes on to call the film a gem of independent cinema and hopes an enterprising distributor gives it the release it deserves.

With such exciting micro-budget successes at Cannes, we are now looking forward to what the Edinburgh International Film Festival might bring us later this month.

Microwave Information Sessions

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Potential applicants to Microwave are invited to find out more about the micro-budget scheme.

If you would like to meet the Microwave team and get more information on the scheme, then why not attend one of our information sessions?

Microwave is Film London’s micro-budget feature film production scheme. It challenges London-based film-makers to shoot a full length feature film for up to £100,000 with cash and in-kind support. The scheme provides an intensive approach to film-making, with an emphasis on tightly focused scripts, short production schedules and commercial potential. The scheme is now open. Deadline for applications is 26 June 2009.

If you are thinking of applying to Microwave, but would like the chance to find out more and get your questions answered, then we are holding two advice sessions here at Film London. You will have the opportunity to meet the people behind the scheme and get advice on your application.

Surgeries will be held on Tuesday 9 June and Thursday 11 June 2009 at 12.30pm at the Film London offices.

Places are limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis. If you would like to book a place for ONE of these sessions, please use our online form.

For more information about the current Microwave slate, visit the Get Inspired section.

Nollywood Future

Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 -0000

A look at the opportunities and threats facing the production and distribution of Nigerian feature films in the digital age.

The Nigerian film industry, commonly referred to as Nollywood, is the third largest industry in Nigeria (behind the oil and telecoms sectors). UNESCO recently estimated that Nigeria produced 872 feature films in 2006, ranking it second in the world for feature film output after India. Although reliable figures can be hard to source, it is estimated that Nollywood titles each retails around 50,000 copies worldwide. Due to ultra-low production costs, this produces a staggering estimated total return on investment of around 150%. Even if these figures are not completely accurate, it is clear that opportunities in this area are vast both in Nigeria and Africa as a whole, as well as globally.

If you would like to learn more about Nollywood, then a seminar entitled ‘Nollywood – A New Era Of Opportunities’ is taking place at the Cass Business School (106 Bunhill Row, EC1Y 8TZ) on Monday 8 June (6.30 – 8.30pm).

Key panel members include:

Keith Shiri, African Film Programmer (Times BFI London Film Festival)
Tanuj Garg, Head of Europe (Viacom/TV 18, Indian Film Company)
Aubrey Owusu, Head of Europe (The African Channel) tbc
Zain Latif, Vice President Middle East & Africa (Goldman Sachs) tbc

The discussion will be moderated by Sanmit Ahuja, Chief Executive of ETI Dynamics Ltd.

There will be four key topics of discussion:

1. The potential to grow the Nigerian overseas market
How marketing to audiences could develop the already expanding transnational and diasporic spectatorship that is vigorously engaged with the world of Nollywood films.

2. What lessons can be learnt from Bollywood?
The impression that the industry is ranked 2nd in the world might be somewhat misleading. The Nigerian industry does not compare favourably to the Indian industry in the quality of work that is produced. It has been suggested that producers start concentrating on improving the technical proficiency of productions in order to reach a wider audience and leave the legacy of an enduring film culture.

3. What levels of funding are required to develop the sector?
In an article entitled ‘That Place Called Nollywood’, Naijahiphop stated that “the budget of Nigerian movies might range anywhere from a million naira (£4,000) to ten million naira (£40,000) but the essence is, speed and quality is often sacrificed on the alter of expediency”.

4. What role do Governments and international agencies need to play in the development of this sector?
Francis Nwafor noted in a recent article that in Nigeria, “like every other area of human endeavour, the video film industry is faced with challenges which if surmounted will contribute to her development and growth. These problems include lack of adequate sponsorship, participation of non professionals, poor distribution network, censorship problem, lack of legislation, lack of organisation by practitioners, lack of innovation and the existence of a cabal”.

To join the discussion, please register online.

For more details about the event please contact Tom Harberd on tom.harberd@etidynamics.com or call 07855 365 585 / 020 7760 6415.

Dead Set on Social Networking

Fri, 22 May 2009 00:00:00 -0000

With Tormented about to hit cinema screens we look at their gruesome interactive marketing campaign.

Tormented, produced by Slingshot and Forward Films, in association with Pathé, is a high school horror movie for the Skins generation. With the film squarely aimed at a young demographic, a lot of thought went into the publicity campaign – even before the cameras started rolling.

The film follows the story of Darren Mullet – an overweight and unpopular schoolboy who is bullied to death. His classmates feign shocked sadness, but the tears soon dry up and carnage ensues – Darren is determined to exact revenge and returns from the dead in order to complete his bloody mission. Forward Films producer, Tracey Brimm, comments: “Tormented is a contemporary horror with all requisite tension, ingenious deaths and horrific gore whilst cleverly tapping into the wit and humour of modern teen dynamics.”

Forward Films recognised the keen commercial potential of Tormented so they took the project to Slingshot Studios (Sugarhouse, French Movie, Faintheart), an all-digital British company dedicated to making good films, differently. “There’s a younger generation out there experimenting on all media platforms not hamstrung by preconceptions about what a British film should be. And a new technical paradigm in digital production and marketing is letting those more interesting pictures emerge”, remarked CEO of Slingshot, Arvind Ethan David.

Franki&Jonny, the web developers for Microwave Online, were brought in at the development stage, to deal with the digital marketing for Tormented. Their brief was three-pronged: to come up with ideas to generate content during filming; to package this content to make it suitable for viral and online marketing; and to build a central campaign website to house this media-rich content. Essentially two target audiences were identified for the Tormented website – those interested in an immersive experience in keeping with the horror genre, and those interested in a more blog-like experience – users who enjoy commenting, chatting and sharing. This latter audience lent well to the use of existing social networking sites.

It is a relatively cheap option for a film production to create high-value content during the shoot itself. With this in mind Frank&Jonny built a ‘confessions booth’ and gave all principal cast Flip cameras. This allowed the young and enthusiastic actors the chance to indulge their improvisational skills, as well as quickly generate candid behind-the-scenes footage.

The mobile booth of revelations (inspired by a DVD extra for Lars Von Trier’s Dogville) was continually moved around the set and themed around a school toilet cubicle. Complete with cistern, flush and downpipe, as well as CCTV camera equipment rigged to record when anyone entered the booth, the participants were encouraged to not only “confess all”, but also to vandalise the enclosure. A set of permanent markers were made available and the graffiti that was daubed on the walls even fed into the film’s title sequence – further building the film’s brand identity.

With this unique footage, approximately forty short clips were produced and the teaser campaign began – well before the recognized six to eight week window prior to theatrical release. The first phase of the Tormented website went live in January 2009, with just a player for the confessions cubicle clips. The cubicle widget, embeddable in third party sites and social networks, started with just a few clips which were released with increased regularity up to early May.

In March 2009, the full website was launched. Video gathered from the Flip cameras, where cast had been gradually creating the back stories for their respective characters, was edited into character-centric themes. A mobile phone interface on the website, dedicated to each of the key characters, housed the relative footage. Traditional film information, such as a trailer, cast and crew information, stills and a synopsis were also built into each phone, whilst keeping true to the interface. As with the confessions cubicle, each phone was a widget allowing a user to take the phone of their favourite character and embed it in their blog or social network page.

Throughout the entire campaign, an RSS feed allowed users to track updates. The content was also released on the same timeframe on branded YouTube, Facebook and MySpace pages and a podcast was made available though iTunes.

Heading towards the peak of the campaign, visitors to the Tormented site have been steadily increasing. On the eve of the film’s release a total of 100,000 unique visitors had been recorded – equating to almost 7,000 users per day. Statistics have so far indicated that there is roughly 50% repeat traffic on the Tormented website – proving there has been a maintained interest in the film. This should hopefully translate into box office returns when Tormented releases nationwide on 22 May.

Immerse yourself in the interactive online experience of the film by visiting the official site: www.tormentedthemovie.com.

Tormented was made with the support of the European Development Fund and Advantage West Midlands through Screen West Midlands. It was developed with the support of BBC Films and Skillset and in association with The Performing Arts Lab.

Convergence! What’s the Story?

Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:00 -0000

EM Media’s Talent Network present a Producer Forum event with a firm focus on convergence.

EM Media, the regional screen agency for the East Midlands, is putting on an event to get producers and writers together from various media platforms – to discuss how convergence is having an effect on the creative industries. Convergence is the changing relationship between entertainment, advertising, brands, and consumers in innovative and unexpected ways. This seminar takes a look at how convergence can work for you.

Producers can get an insight into the new ways projects are being commissioned, and writers can discover ways to exploit the range of media platforms that are in search of content.

Guest speakers include Neil Mossey, a comedy producer for the BBC who wrote on the second season of interactive drama KateModern and Melanie Martinez, lead writer on the interactive drama Sofia’s Diary and cross-media teen series Aisling’s Diary.

The session will be chaired by Alec McPhedran, who previously worked at Channel 4 and is a mentor for Creative Connections. Representatives from EM Media and Skillset will also be on hand.

‘Convergence! What’s the Story?!’ will take place on Thursday 28 May between 6 and 9pm at the University of Northampton. Tickets are £7.50 each.

If you would like more information, or would like to register, please visit the EM Media website.

Find out more about Convergence Culture.

Microwave Round 4: Applications Now Open!

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Film London Microwave launches today in search of three more micro-budget features.

Microwave Round 4: Applications Now Open!

Film London Microwave launches today in search of three more micro-budget features.

Microwave has gone from strength to strength with the release of Mum & Dad across all platforms in the UK on Boxing Day 2008 and the theatrical release of Shifty nationwide on 24 April 2009, both to widespread critical acclaim. Following these successes, Film London Microwave is now in search of three more features to complete its slate of ten.

To date, Microwave has greenlit seven features:

Mum & Dad, an intense horror about a murderous and perverse family that live at the end of Heathrow’s runway. Written and directed by Steven Sheil and produced by Lisa Trnovski. The film was released across all platforms in the UK on 26 December 2008.
Shifty, a thriller charting an action packed 24 hours in the life of a young crack cocaine dealer on the outskirts of London. Written/directed by Eran Creevy and produced by Rory Aitken and Ben Pugh. The film was released in cinemas in the UK on 24 April 2009.
Freestyle, an urban teen romance set in the world of freestyle basketball, written by Michael Maynard, directed by Kolton Lee and produced by Lincia Daniel.
The British Guide to Showing Off (working title), a documentary about the Alternative Miss World Show and its extraordinary creator Andrew Logan, directed by Jes Benstock and produced by Dorigen Hammond.
Analogue, a dark psychological thriller, written and directed by Suki Singh and produced by Daniel Jewel.
Foxglove, a tense psychological drama about two destructive urban teenagers on the run. Written by Ornette and Kate Spenceley, directed by Ornette Spenceley and produced by Stewart Le Marechal.
Strawberry Fields, a rites of passage film, bursting with energy, sex and humour. Written by Frances Lea and Judith Johnson, directed by Frances Lea and produced by Liam Beatty.

If you are looking for an opportunity to break through from shorts to features, then this is the scheme for you.

Deadline for entries is 5pm Friday 26 June 2009.

To find our more about the application process and to download all the relevant application forms, please visit the Film London website.

For more information about our current Microwave features visit the Get Inspired section.

The Language of Love

Thu, 14 May 2009 00:00:00 -0000

A look at the upcoming UK release of French Film, produced by Microwave film-maker Stewart Le Marechal.

Why is it that French lovers seem to have all the answers, whilst the rest of us have only questions? Could it be that French is the true language of love?

French Film, the new release from Slingshot, Met Film and JCF, is the feature directorial debut of award-winning commercials and short film-maker Jackie Oudeny. Written by BAFTA-nominated Aschlin Ditta (Scenes of a Sexual Nature), this original and intelligent comedy offers a wry look at the different ways the French and British approach love and romance.

Starring Eric Cantona as Thierry Grimandi, a French auteur and self appointed expert on the nature of love, French Film follows the love lives of two couples who are forced to re-evaluate their romantic assumptions. Jed (Hugh Bonneville), a journalist initially skeptical about the auteur’s views on love, begins to question his dismissal of the auteur when his long-term girlfriend refuses to marry him and forces him into couples’ counseling. The film also stars Anne Marie Duff, Victoria Hamillton and Douglas Henshall.

French Film is the latest movie by UK low-budget digital studio Slingshot Studios whose projects include Sugarhouse and the upcoming Tormented. It is released on 15 May 2009 by Vertigo Films at cinemas across London (Vue Shepherds Bush, Apollo West End, Barbican) and beyond.

The film was produced by award-winning producers Stewart Le Marechal and Jonny Persey. Le Marechal’s short film September, directed by Esther May Campbell, picked up the Best Short award at the 2009 BAFTA ceremony. He is currently in development with his Microwave project Foxglove, a tense psychological drama set on the outskirts of London, which follows two destructive urban teenagers on the run. Foxglove, written by Ornette and Kate Spenceley, was greenlit in December following the third round of applications for the Microwave scheme.

View the trailer for French Film.

Find out more about Foxglove and other Microwave features in the Get Inspired section.

Find out more about Microwave.

Microwave Goes Transatlantic!

Tue, 05 May 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave’s first feature, Mum & Dad, is released in the US on 5 May.

Following a unique multi-platform release in the UK on Boxing Day 2008, Mum & Dad is now heading to the US for a release on DVD and Download on Mothers’ Day (5 May).

The film premiered in the US at the Slamdance Film Festival on 18 January following numerous festival screenings around Europe including Edinburgh International Film Festival where it had its world premiere, Frightfest, Sitges International Film Festival and Leeds International Film Festival – where it won a Silver Melies.

Mum & Dad, starring Perry Benson and Dido Miles, is a tale of suspense and gore. It follows the journey of Lena, a Polish immigrant who is taken in by a perverse family living at the end of a Heathrow airport runway. The family live off the contents of supposedly ‘lost’ luggage, but the ‘family business’ is much more sinister. It is the directorial feature debut for director Steven Sheil and is produced by Lisa Trnovski.

Mum & Dad was the first film on the Film London Microwave slate and was made with support from EM Media. Film London Microwave activity has been gearing up in recent weeks with Freestyle going into production, The British Guide to Showing Off shooting The Alternative Miss World Show and Microwave’s second feature, Shifty released in over 50 cinemas across the UK.

Microwave challenges film-makers to shoot a feature film for a budget not exceeding £100,000. The scheme is still looking for more features to complete the Microwave slate. Keep checking the Microwave website or sign up to the Film London weekly bulletin to hear about the call for applications for Round 4!

For more on Mum & Dad visit the official website.

For more on our Microwave films visit the Get Inspired section.

Excess All Areas: The Alternative Miss World Show

Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave’s documentary feature gets ready to capture the glittering event on 2 May.

The British Guide to Showing Off, the fourth film on the Film London Microwave slate, is gearing up for its big shoot this weekend as the Alternative Miss World Show takes place at the historic Camden Roundhouse on Saturday 2 May.

Directed by Jes Benstock and produced by Dorigen Hammond through their production company, Living Cinema, The British Guide to Showing Off delves in to the world of unique artist Andrew Logan and his legendary Alternative Miss World Show.

The Show, launched in 1972, has become renowned as a celebration of art, fashion, music and performance, and has both reflected and informed British arts and culture. Its first outing was a backlash against the austerity of the early 70s. Since then, the Show has inspired and embraced glam, punk and new romance. It dazzled in Thatcher’s recession, flaunted itself in the AIDS crisis, became darker in the corporate 90s and decidedly un-Cool Britannia in 2004.

With unparalleled access to Logan, the film-makers have been following him and his extended family of friends in the lead up to the Show. The British Guide to Showing Off will capture the entire event, including exclusive backstage access as 20 hardcore exhibitionists compete through Daywear, Swimwear and Eveningwear for the ultimate accolade – the coveted title of The Alternative Miss World. This documentary will provide a unique insight into Andrew Logan’s world. As director Jes Benstock has said, “there has never been a documentary about Andrew Logan or a film that defines the Alternative Miss World Show as Logan’s most extraordinary work of art”.

The completed documentary will combine footage of the event with interviews, archive and exuberant animation created by Andrew Savage. Saturday’s Show will be the film’s centrepiece. Benstock has said “Logan talks of each show as a sculpture, and the whole history of the event as a sculpture in time, moulding itself around his life since the 70s. The Show is a great party, but it’s also a home and a haven for subculture, counterculture, and anything that doesn’t find expression in the mainstream”.

The British Guide to Showing Off is the fourth feature to be funded through the Film London Microwave scheme which was set up alongside BBC Films. The film is also supported by Film Agency Wales. Microwave challenges film-makers to shoot a feature film for a budget not exceeding £100,000. Previous releases have included Mum & Dad as well as Shifty which is currently in cinemas nationwide.

Buy tickets for the the Show at the Roundhouse website.

Visit the Alternative Miss World official website.

Find out more about The British Guide to Showing Off and our other Microwave features in the Get Inspired section.

Digital Distribution: Death of DVD?

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0000

A look at the rapidly changing field of digital distribution and its impact on micro-budget cinema.

The rise of the internet and online video has meant film-makers have been exposed to a plethora of new options for the distribution of independent films. We explore some of the key successes and obstacles to emerge from this still fledgling aspect of the film industry and take a look at how current discussions and initiatives highlight the contentious nature of new developments.

The Film-makers’ View of Digital Distribution

This year’s South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) hosted a panel entitled ‘The Future of the DVD and Digital Distribution’ which discussed the challenge of balancing the widespread awareness afforded by the internet with still-emerging revenue models.

Gary Huswit, Manager of DVD Label Plexi-Film, who was at SXSW with his new documentary Objectified, said that he earned as much as $60K in digital sales for his previous documentary Helvetica. Feeling that the traditional distribution model for independent films has been broken, his solution was that “the way to fix it is to go directly to the audience”. He asked “Why are we building other people’s businesses when we could be building our own business?”

Despite his success, he was cautious in his praise of digital distribution. “Digital distribution is not some magic bullet…It’s not that because the film is available digitally it does well. It’s because you do the work…because of that exposure, it did well.”

Film-maker Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me, Where is Osama Bin Laden?) was equally cautious noting that “the reason numbers aren’t released (for digital distribution revenues) is because the numbers are pathetic,” he said. “The numbers are sadly low in comparison to what we expect from film and television….If you’re looking to pay your rent, not so much, if you’re looking to pay your phone bill, you have a great chance. It’s getting to a point where it’s down the road from being profitable, but we’re just not at that point yet.”

Despite his dismay about current revenues, Spurlock still has some hope and agrees that “the exposure that these sites allow film-makers is gigantic (so) down the road, revenues will grow.” SnagFilms CEO Rick Allen also felt optimistic. He noted that his company’s widgets are available on some 20,000 websites and social network pages. Though fees were still small he thought it was positive that digital revenues are already on their way, they may not be much but they are hundredfold, a thousandfold, the size of the cheques that most independent documentarians have received from theatrical release.”

Some film-makers have their own ideas as to how traditional and online distribution companies could begin to work together in synergy. One idea that came up in the recent DIY Days in San Francisco, was an idea from digital distribution pioneer Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters), in a panel discussion he was hosting. The ideas was to perhaps create a more navigable landscape for independent film-makers to manage the digital distribution and promotion of their independent films, without constantly having to sign up for a myriad of disparate online services.

Photo of audience at DIY Days panel discussion

An Internet Full of Options

Due to the limited theatrical options for getting their films in front of audiences today, numerous micro-budget film-makers are exploring the internet as a direct outlet.

TubeMogul is a recent example of a pay service aiming to simplify uploading to multiple sites and track popularity of uploaded films or promotional video clips. It is the first online video analytics and distribution company, serving publishers large and small who need independent information about video performance on the internet and automated upload to the web’s top video sharing sites.

However, iTunes is currently the platform that generates the greatest revenues, although it needs to work in conjunction with an aggregator which typically purchases a selection of titles to create an attractive sale.

More approachable services such as Jaman, Hulu, Joost, Vimeo, YouTube and SnagFilms, as well as services ranging from LoveFilm and Amazon, are aiming to draw in film-makers with increased quality of streaming and downloads, and emerging methods of monetisation.

The variety and breadth of digital distribution methods are rapidly expanding, particularly online services with integral social networking aspects. Newamericanvision.com tracks and explains an ever-evolving list of digital platforms through a regularly updated blog. It is also a great resource that provides crucial site links.

Two sites already established in the US have made significant steps to expand into the UK film distribution market in 2009. Indiepix has been launched in the UK recently with the target of re-organising the economic distribution and commercial transaction of films, making productions more profitable for the film-maker and gaining greater access and visibility for the audience who want to see these films.

Users log onto the Indiepix website and pay to download a film from the extensive catalogue which is currently close to 3,000 titles – aiming to grow to 10,000 titles. Customers pay $15 or equivalent to buy or view the title in a simple one-touch transaction – $10 of this goes directly back to the film-maker, giving them immediate results and continued support and purpose.

Jaman is a website with a collection of 1,000 titles, which include international dramas, documentaries, shorts, Japanese animated titles and Bollywood films, that can be downloaded via a number of platforms including mobile devices. The Silicon-Valley based company, which was started in 2007, has teamed up with NESTA to support the Take 12 programme. Take 12 is designed to help small independent British film companies build on business growth opportunities through digital distribution.

Possibly the most significant UK investment in digital distribution is the UK Film Council’s new funding programme to help the industry make the transition into the digital age. Screen Daily reported that “the programme, called Accessing and Commercialising Content in a Digitally Networked World, has £5million to allocate for supporting new business models and services that maximise revenue streams for content creators and rights holders”. The initiative will include “schemes aimed at making it easier to identify content rights holders and to help them collect revenue. The fund will also look for innovative projects that allow audiences to discover film in new ways in the digital era”.

Poster for RiP! A Remix Manifesto

Micro/Low-Budget Films Blazing New Trails

In order to compete with the big studios’ strangle-hold on distribution, increasing numbers of international micro and low-budget films are finding original release strategies to attract audiences in new ways.

Revolver Entertainment ’s day-and-date release of Microwave film Mum & Dad, highlighted the fact that a smaller film can benefit from an unconventional release strategy, saving money on repeat advertising and maximizing its exposure and thus raising its popularity, particularly via digital download/Video on Demand.

For the first time, in March 2009, a new Israeli feature, The Life and Death of Gotel Botel, has been screened and distributed solely on the web. The film is an attempt to present Israel’s alternative world of sub-culture, which collapses time and again due to a more conservative reality. The ‘entrance ticket’ to view the film is a mobile phone text message after which the sender receives a code which enables you to download the film from the respective website. The cost of the text message is only 5NIS (1 Euro).

The main idea behind the internet distribution has been to reach the film’s target audience directly and with an affordable and attractive price. This strategy created a serious buzz and has proved to be an effective marketing and distributing tool.

RiP! A Remix Manifesto, directed by web activist Brett Gaylor, signed a multi-platform distribution deal ahead of the picture’s US premiere earlier this year. The film explores the issues of copyright and fair use in the information age by following the musical cut-up artist Girl Talk. It also looks at the history of copyright laws right up to their application to the digital age. Alongside a theatrical and DVD release, the picture will be streamed via opensourcecinema.org and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) website with the option of viewing or remixing.

The strategy managed to find a great deal of support. “This film, and the way we are distributing it, is about important issues that affect arts and culture worldwide,” NFB announced. “At the NFB we see documentary film as a platform to break through all types of issues. We want RiP! to foster growth and discussion for all artists and creators across the digital universe and are quite enthusiastic to make RiP! the most accessible film ever.”

When Wayne Wang’s feature The Princess Of Nebraska streamed for free on YouTube in mid-October 2008, it was not a leak, it was the official digital release – and world premiere – of the film. The YouTube experiment, which attracted 220,000 views in the US (access from elsewhere was blocked), was one of a growing number of innovative releases negotiated by Cinetic Rights Management (CRM), the new sister company to John Sloss’ New York-based indie film sales and financing powerhouse Cinetic Media. “The film made a lot of noise, much more than it would have as a DVD release or playing on one screen in New York,” says CRM head of programming and marketing Matt Dentler.

As we can see, an array of new platforms are challenging the conventional release windows of theatrical, DVD and broadcast, as technologies develop and converge. A film’s genre, subject or thematic content can now effectively influence the way in which it is released, as much as its budget, duration and target audience.

Read more about distribution strategies for the indie sector.

Take a look at an article on the effect of convergence culture on micro-budget film-making.

The Last Rites at LIFF

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Micro-budget film The Burial closes the London Independent Film Festival.

The London Independent Film Festival (LIFF) runs until 27 April 2009. It is the second year of this vibrant festival for international micro/lo-budget films, which offers an exciting opportunity for indie film-makers to showcase their achievements, raise their profile and engage with audiences and industry. This year’s festival is screening more than 115 new independent films and presenting an array of special events for film-makers and cineastes.

The Burial brings LIFF 2009 to a close with its screening on Monday 27 April (8.45pm, The Coronet, Notting Hill). The micro-budget black comedy is written and directed by Danielle Boucher and David Mills and is the feature film debut from Jack and Jill Films – a company which evolved out of the established UK theatre company Bedlam Oz. The project came out of a distinctive development process which involved taking an anarchic, French punk street theatre company, Cacahuete, and dropping them in an unsuspecting remote Scottish village.

The film tells the tale of three estranged brothers who gather for their mother’s funeral and embark on the last thing they expected – a family road trip. Their mother’s final wish was clear: to take her to the river and bury her alongside their father. The reluctant sons, a girlfriend and a coffin squash into a vintage hearse, and bumble their way from France to England. Only then do they realise that to bury the past there’s some digging up to do first.

It wasn’t all a smooth ride for the film-makers to get to this stage. The Burial suffered from unexpected obstacles as is so often the case for lo-budget film-makers. Just weeks before The Burial was due to begin principal photography, the key investor and production company dropped out of the project. Cast and locations were all in place in France and England however; so pooling their experience, Danielle and David surrounded themselves with an almost entirely European crew, many of them recent film school graduates, bought a vintage hearse on eBay and pushed on with production. The film was shot over 55 days during 2006.

In 2007, the unfinished work was presented to Christine Alderson of Ipso Facto Films. Christine raised the finance to complete the film’s post-production and brokered a deal with an international sales agent. The Burial went on to make its market debut at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and premiered at the prestigious 27th Fajr Festival in Tehran in February 2009. The LIFF screening will be its UK premiere.

LIFF 2009 takes place in venues across the capital including The Roxy Bar and Screen, The Coronet and Curzon Cinemas. This weekend sees a range of LIFF indie film events, with the Awards Party on Friday, Screenplay Afternoon on Saturday, then both the Buy a Credit Financing Presentation and screening of horror feature Scar Crow on Monday.

Festival Director Erich Schultz expressed his belief that “LIFF combines the best of UK low-budget films with inspirational micro-budget films from around the world, and mixes it up with relevant industry discussions and targeted social networking events. LIFF’s audience is London’s sizable independent film-making community. It’s an indie film festival run by and for London’s indie film-makers”.

For further information about the festival check out the LIFF website.

Tickets to all screenings are available through the LIFF website and audiences can also browse the Festival Programme and the entire Official Selection online.

Find out more about The Burial on the film’s official website.

Shifting Onto A Screen Near You

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave’s second feature Shifty releases this Friday 24 April.

The highly anticipated nationwide release of Shifty will take place this Friday amidst a flurry of positive press.

Faced with the challenge of making a feature film for under £100,000, Essex-born writer and director Eran Creevy went back to his roots with a gritty urban tale of friendship and drug-dealing set in the fictional London suburb of Dudlowe.

The film shot in just 18 days at Borehamwood/Elstree Studios and locations within a five mile radius. It is Creevy’s debut feature and has already earned him favourable comparisons with other successful British directors such as Shane Meadows and Noel Clarke.

Much of the critical praise that has been generated is directed towards Creevy’s fresh and authentic script, in which “the dialogue (is) often hilarious” (The Times). “The banter is inspired by how me and my mates spoke,” says Creevy. “Often when people make urban films they use a template of dialogue that’s just false”.

Also attracting attention are up-and-coming actors Riz Ahmed (Britz, Dead Set) in the title role and Daniel Mays (Atonement, Vera Drake) as his best friend Chris – “Both leads are terrific”, says Total Film. Creevy has described the plot as “a love story between two best mates”, and based the film on his own experiences and those of the ‘real life Shifty’, currently in prison.

To accompany the release, a Shifty music track is available for free download from the official Shifty website. The Shifty single features the film’s star Riz Ahmed as Riz MC alongside Plan B and Sway – it is produced by True Tiger. Make sure you check out the single’s music video, which is also directed by Eran Creevy.

The first film on the Microwave slate, Mum & Dad, was released on Boxing Day 2008. Steven Shiel’s intense horror came out in a unique simultaneous release in British cinemas and on DVD, Pay Per View and Video on Demand. The film will soon be hitting screens in the States – its US release is around Mother’s Day (5 May).

There is also a whirlwind of activity surrounding Microwave films commissioned through the second round of applications. Freestyle, a teen-romance based around the world of freestyle basketball, is shooting now for an October UK release by Revolver Entertainment. Jes Benstock’s Alternative Miss World documentary The British Guide to Showing Off is now in production with this year’s Alternative Miss World Show taking place on 2 May at the Camden Roundhouse.

Shifty premiered at The Times BFI London Film Festival in October 2008, and since then has shown at several festivals nationwide, as well as earning five BIFA (British Independent Film Awards) nominations. Book now to ensure you catch Shifty, hailed as the best British film of the year, at a cinema near you (tickets are already available for screenings from 24 April).

Find out more about Shifty and the other Microwave films in our Get Inspired section.

Visit the official film website for further information.

Microfilm Forecast 2009

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0000

A brief look at some of the micro-budget offerings on release this year.

With Shifty releasing in the UK on 24 April and Freestyle expected later this year, Film London Microwave is offering up some of the best in upcoming UK feature film talent this year. However, 2009 looks like it will be a great year for micro-budget film-making all across the globe. We take a look at some of the possible highlights for the coming year and beyond.

UK micro-budget schemes are going from strength to strength alongside Film London Microwave. The first film in the Eye Project, The Last Thakur, which had its world premiere at the Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival in 2008 alongside Shifty will be released in the UK on 26 June 2009. Co-financed by the National Film & Television School and Artificial Eye, The Last Thakur is an intense contemporary western directed by award-winning young UK/Bengali film-maker Sadik Ahmed and produced by BreakThru Films Tamsin Lyons. The film was shot over 24 days in December 2007 on High Definition cameras, a first for Bangladesh.

French Film, a wry, French-infused British romantic comedy, directed by Jackie Oudney and starring Anne-Marie Duff, is the next release for Slingshot Studios. The film received rave reviews at its premiere at Dinard Film Festival and will be released in the UK on 15 May 2009. Slingshot also has Tormented on its upcoming slate, which releases a week later. Director Jon Wright attended the first ever Microwave Microschool in 2006 with another of his projects. This horror comedy follows a bullied teenager who is driven to suicide only to come back from the dead to take revenge on his teenage tormentors.

Still from Slingshot Studios film, French Film

The film festival circuit has so far thrown up a wide variety of inspired, unusual and provocative titles that have taken creative risks and challenged audience expectations. One interesting example has been Andrew Bujalski’s latest film Beeswax which showed at Berlinale and South By Southwest this year. The film is one of the latest to fall into the Mumblecore sub-genre of films which divides critics all over the world, and Beeswax was no exception. Set in Austin, Texas, the film revolves around twin sisters – Jeannie (Tilly Hatcher) who has been a paraplegic since youth, and Lauren (Maggie Hatcher). Jeannie goes into business with her old friend Amanda and the film portrays the the personal and professional dramas of the three women.

Explaining the commitment required to get this kind of micro-budget, independent films in cinemas, Bujalski told journalists at the Berlin film festival “one of the reasons it took me four years to make Beeswax was that I spent a lot of that time being a distributor”. He continued that he is willing to do what it takes to get his film in front of an audience, preferably on a big screen. “If I’ve got to drive around to college towns, I will,” Bujalski explained, professing a “reverence” for seeing films on a screen, in a cinema. “If we can’t get it on hundreds of screens we can get it on dozens of screens”.

Another festival hit was Momma’s Man. Though it gained a limited theatrical release in 2008, the film is finally getting a release in the UK on 8 May through Diffusion Pictures, a distributor with a focus on independent film and a champion of Andrew Bujalski. The film is a wry and melancholic tale of thirty-something Mikey retreating from adulthood and is written and directed by Azazel Jacobs. Manohla Dargis has said of the film that “this is independent cinema defined”.

Still from Momma’s Man

Looking ahead to this summer, the month of July seems a hot month for micro-budget film releases. Both Frozen River and Cloud 9 will be released in the UK on 10 July. In Frozen River, Melissa Leo plays a mother struggling with moral choices for her family when her husband leaves and she discovers a world of immigration in her border town. Both Melissa Leo and the film’s writer/director Courtney Hunt have been singled out in awards season for their achievements on the film. Cloud 9 on the other hand is a tender and frank depiction of love, sex and deceit shaking the lives of an elderly couple in rural Germany. The film subtly explores the resulting incredulity, guilt and devastation with an often hand-held shooting style, utilising natural light. It is the latest feature from Andreas Dresen (Grill Point, Summer in Berlin).

UK distributor Dogwoof Pictures continues its support of iconoclastic documentaries, following their unconventional premiere and release of climate change film The Age of Stupid earlier this year, with the 17 July release of Burma VJ. The film recounts the efforts of a small group of independent video journalists who risked torture and life in jail to ensure the truth behind the country’s 2007 political uprising was broadcast to the world. Foreign TV crews were suddenly banned from the country, leaving undercover video journalists armed with small handicams to capture the truth behind the events. Utilising this footage, Burma VJ follows the efforts of Joshua, the 27-year-old leader of the Democratic Voice of Burma, as he and a handful of others counter the propaganda of the military regime. The necessity of micro-budget film-making methods results in an insightful and dramatic document of history as it unfolds.

Also out on 17 July through Vertigo is Dogging: A Love Story, the feature film debut of short film wiz and Sundance winner Simon Ellis. The film brings humour and an emotive eye to a troubled relationship tale set against the grubby world of elicit nocturnal trysts in Newcastle’s car parks.

Revolver Entertainment release John Maringouin’s Big River Man on 7 August 2009. This beautifully imaginative and strange documentary won the World Cinema Cinematography Award: Documentary at Sundance 2009. It is an expressionistic portrayal of charismatic Slovenian endurance swimmer, Martin Strel, whose latest river-long challenge is to swim the length of the Amazon to protest and highlight the state of the world’s polluted waterways. The film shows the wilder cinematic possibilities of using a minimal crew.

Still from Big River Man

Another micro-budget film that purposefully engages with Central and South American culture is the highly controversial political film Machetero written and directed by Vagabond. It continues its festival run and aims to reach a broader audience in cinemas and online later this year. The film is an exploration of the use of violence as a means towards liberation, using the specific example of the island nation of Puerto Rico as a springboard to delve into the broader and more complex implications of ongoing struggles against colonialism in general.

With so much to look forward to this year, make sure all the dates are in you diary and go and support independent micro/lo-budget film-making by booking tickets to screenings near you. Many of the films we have mentioned here are the lucky ones that have managed to secure a cinematic or DVD release and yet there are a great number of inspired micro-budget feature films that struggle to find acquisitions. This is partially why DIY distribution is becoming increasingly widespread and sophisticated and the new platforms for distribution are expanding in a variety of forms, all vying to establish the new paradigms to sustain independent and in turn micro-budget film.

We will be delving into the issue of digital distribution very soon – make sure you sign up for our RSS feed to keep abreast of all micro-budget and Microwave activity.

Freestyle Goes Into Production!

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0000

The third Microwave feature, Freestyle, starts principal photography on location this week.

After months of preparation and a nationwide Search For A Star, Freestyle began its three week shoot on Monday 6 April 2009. The film, which will be shot entirely on location in South London, will be directed by rising star Kolton Lee.

Freestyle is written by Michael Maynard and produced by Lincia Daniel as part of Film London’s Microwave scheme. It will be distributed in the UK by Revolver Entertainment, who also released Microwave’s first feature – Mum & Dad.

Freestyle tells the story of Ondene (Lucy Konadu) and her pushy mother Hyacinth (Suzann McLean) who is determined to see her daughter study law at Oxford. However, just as exams are looming, she is drawn to the world of freestyle basketball and a local boy from the wrong side of the track, Leon (Arinze Kene). Ondene is soon forced to make some tough decisions about her family, her future, and the man she loves.

The film, which features Colin Salmon, Danny John Jules and Alfie Allen, found much of its cast in a nationwide quest for undiscovered talent. In January 2009, ‘Search for a Star’ auditions were held in London, Birmingham and Manchester to find the best of the best in current freestyling talent. After fierce competition, Revolver Entertainment announced the winners through the social networking site Bebo.

Freestyle will be released in the UK this October. To find out more about the film, visit the Get Inspired section.

Visit the Freestyle Bebo site.

Have a Shufty at Shifty

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0000

As we gear up to its release, here is the latest from the world of Shifty …

As we gear up to its release, here is the latest from the world of Shifty…

Shifty hits UK cinemas on 24 April, but if you can’t wait that long and want to know more about the film, then here is your chance: the official Shifty website has gone live. Visit now to watch the trailer, win tickets to see the film, ‘frame a friend’ and even submit a music track remix…

Shifty will be the second Microwave feature to hit UK cinemas. Film London Microwave launched in 2006 to commission debut feature film-makers in the capital. It is a project for London-based companies to produce ten micro-budget feature films over a four year period. Mum & Dad was the first Microwave theatrical release and was released on Boxing Day 2008 (visit the official website for Mum & Dad), now it is the turn for Shifty to hit audiences nationwide.

ShiftyFilm.com is the online companion to Eran Creevy’s thriller. Riz Ahmed (Britz, The Road to Guantanamo, Dead Set) takes the title role of Shifty – a young crack cocaine dealer living on the outskirts of London. Over the course of an intense 24 hour period we see the sudden return home of his best friend Chris (played by Daniel Mays: The Bank Job, Atonement, Plus One), which sets in motion a chain of events that changes both of their lives forever.

Get online now and check out these great features:

Bedroom Producer Competition
Listen to original Shifty soundtrack composed by Molly Nyman and Harry Escott and download the stems to create your own track. Send in your remix of the title track to be in with a chance to win £500 and time in a studio to complete your track with a professional producer. Ten runners up will receive a signed copy of the Shifty soundtrack.

Frame a Friend
Are you always looking for ways to wind up your mates? This page offers the perfect opportunity to do just that! You can insert a photo into CCTV footage that you can post on your Facebook profile.

Befriend Shifty
Are you MySpace user? A Facebook? Hooked up with Bebo? Shifty has dedicated pages on each site so you can use your favourite channel to keep in touch.

A brand new uncut trailer presenting the new single “Shifty” by Riz MC (the star of the film) and DJ Stanza featuring Sway and Plan B is also available online. Stay tuned for the single’s release and music video directed by Shifty’s director Eran Creevy.

With Shifty rapidly gaining rave reviews and growing interest, make sure you book your tickets now to see the film on its opening night on 24 April. Check these play dates to see where the film is playing near you.

Or if you are in the Newcastle area, you can catch the film even sooner at a Microwave roadshow on 20 April where the film will screen alongside a seminar and Q & A session with the film-makers. For more information, please visit the Northern Film + Media website.

Visit the official Shifty website.

Find out more about this film and our other upcoming Microwave features in the Get Inspired section.

Mumblecore Mania

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Following the SXSW Festival premiere of Alexander The Last, we take a look at the growing indie cinema movement known as ‘Mumblecore’.

Alexander The Last, directed by Joe Swanberg had its world premiere at this year’s South By Southwest 2009 Film Festival (SXSW). The film, starring Jess Weixler and Justin Rice, is an ensemble drama about a married actress, her sister and their myriad sexual and creative temptations. It is a film that has come to be defined within the micro-budget sub-genre known as Mumblecore.

In fact, this year’s SXSW has featured a number of Mumblecore movies including new features from Andrew Bujalski, Kris Swanberg, and Ry Russo-Young. The Mumblecore trend, which only appeared within the last decade, with some pinpointing its origin with Andrew Bujalski’s 2002 film, Funny Ha Ha, has seen growing popularity in recent years.

A Mumblecore movie is typically hard to define. It is thought that the term was originally coined when Bujalski’s sound mixer Eric Masunaga attended SXSW and used the term to describe the film he was working on. Since then, the movement has steadily grown and was recently boosted when a feature about Mumblecore was published in the latest issue of The New Yorker written by David Denby.

Denby’s summed up the Mumbleore genre as “(films that are) made by buddies, casual and serious lovers, and networks of friends, and they’re about college-educated men and women who aren’t driven by ideas or by passions or even by a desire to make their way in the world. Neither rebels nor bohemians, they remain stuck in a limbo of semi-genteel, moderately hip poverty, though some of the films end with a lurch into the working world. The actors (almost always non-professionals) rarely say what they mean; a lot of the time, they don’t know what they mean. The movies tell stories but they’re also a kind of lyrical documentary of American stasis and inarticulateness.”

The term often causes reaction on all fronts in the industry. Denby applauds the genre saying “when the material is emotionally raw, and the nonprofessional actors show some strength, Mumblecore delivers insights that Hollywood can’t come close to.” Others however, do not agree, and many film-makers actively distance themselves from the movement. A blogged response to the piece has already emerged in Filmmaker Magazine in which the writer has said “some of us in the blogosphere may find Denby’s acknowledgement of these films, which have been bubbling up since 2002, rather tardy, [but] the real story here is the fact that the genre’s slow burn, its public cresting just as most of its practitioners have distanced themselves from the label, has leveraged major media play for films that premiere not in theatres but at festivals.”

Still from Mumblecore film Baghead, directed by Jay and Mark Duplass

Alicia Van Covering’s attempt to define the genre for Filmmaker magazine included identifying elements such as improvised dialogue and naturalistic performances, often by non-actors. In her opinion, “the films employ handheld, vérité-style digital camerawork and long takes. Budgets are tiny. The plots hinge on everyday events. The stories are often obvious reflections of the film-makers’ lives. Most characters are white and educated and pursue creative endeavors when not pursuing one another. They are sensitive. They are sincere…..A lot of tension ensues over the answering or non-answering of cell-phone calls. Characters frequently attend and perform in sparsely populated weeknight music shows. There is an abundance of road trips. Technology is ever present….above all, Mumblecore films are about trying to communicate.”

Whatever the definition, it seems as though Mumblecore movies are in some sense reviving American independent cinema. If Mumblecore is new to you, then here is Andrea Hubert’s introduction to its key players:

LIGHTS, CAMERA, INACTION
Mumblecore’s key moaners and groaners

Todd Rohal
Specialises in: A hotch potch of odd characters suffering from lactose intolerance, lack of transportation and lost possessions. Compounds indie creds with appearance of Will Oldham
As seen in: The Guatemalan Handshake

Andrew Bujalski
Specialises in: Irritating, laid back neuroticism and endless to do lists made by sweet ex-students wandering drunkenly into tattoo parlours for want of anything better to do
As seen in: Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation

Joe Swanberg
Specialises in: Barely scripted, mostly improvised tragicomedy on relationships between technology-obsessed men and men-obsessed women, with an emphasis on obsessions over exes
As seen in: LOL, Hannah Takes the Stairs

Jay and Mark Duplass
Specialise in: Bickering, baby talking couples on the brink of disaster and bizarre 24-hour marriages between strangers, all wrapped up in the pursuit of nostalgia via a reclining chair
As seen in: The Puffy Chair

Aaron Katz
Specialises in: Apathetic teens spilling all their darkest secrets to complete strangers in parks. Lost twentysomethings spilling all their darkest secrets to complete strangers on the subway
As seen in: Dance Party USA and Quiet City

Ry Russo Young
Specialises in: Sibling drama that doesn’t suck. Avoid if you like Hanging Up and In Her Shoes
As seen in: Orphans

Kate Dollenmayer and Greta Gerwig
Specialise in: A languid celluloid struggle over the indie princess tiara that Chloe Sevigny doesn’t wear anymore.
As seen in: Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation and Hannah Takes The Stairs

The Search for a Star is Over

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Following nationwide auditions, upcoming Microwave feature Freestyle acquires a talented cast.

Freestyle, Microwave’s third feature, has been gearing up for production with a nationwide talent search and a series of open auditions that took place in January.

Over 500 young freestyle basketballers took part in auditions in London, Birmingham and Manchester. Celebrity judges from the world of basketball and film included the cast of Kidulthood (Adam Deacon, Femi Oyeniron, Ray Panthaki and BAFTA winner, Noel Clarke), Sandy Kendrick(celebrity choreographer), and Steve Bucknall (the first Brit to represent the UK at the NBA). Alongside them were the film’s director, Kolton Lee, and producer, Lincia Daniel.

The team of judges were looking for young people who could not only act but also master a ball on the basketball court and the audition revealed an unprecedented amount of talent. The competition was tough and following the finals in London the panel selected the final 15 winners of both named and supporting roles.

The soon-to-be-stars make up a diverse group, including a medical student and a stand-up comedian, and hail from locations as far flung as Jamaica, Zambia, and the USA.

Freestyle tells the story of two teenagers from different worlds who are brought together through their passion for freestyle basketball. The film will shoot in April 2009 and is set for release later this year through Revolver Entertainment.

The next two Microwave features are Analogue, written and directed by Suki Singh which will go into production this summer, and The British Guide to Showing Off, a documentary about The Alternative Miss World Show which is currently in production.

To find out more about Freestyle, visit the Get Inspired section or the Freestyle Bebo site.

To find out more about Microwave, visit the About page of the website.

‘Crowd-funded’ Climate Change Crusader

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0000

A look at Franny Armstrong’s upcoming climate change documentary.

15 March sees the world’s largest ever official film premiere for The Age of Stupid in Leicester Square, complete with a green carpet and a specially constructed solar-powered cinema. Franny Armstrong’s latest docu-drama starring Pete Postlethwaite as a man in a climate change-affected world in 2055, will be simultaneously screened in 65 cinemas and has been labelled as “the people’s premiere”.

Franny Armstrong’s first feature, McLibel, documented the longest civil case in English history as McDonald’s attempted to sue environmental activists Helen Steel and David Morris. Her latest feature, The Age of Stupid, is a mix of documentary, drama, animation and archive footage from 2008 to highlight current climate change issues and ask the question: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?

Armstrong used an innovative method of raising finance for this film and developed the idea of ‘crowd-funding’. She raised her first £50,000 in one night at a bar in London. The rest of the money raised so far, £530,000, has come from 228 people who have each invested between £500 and £35,000 each. Selling shares of £10,000 has meant many of her investors have been groups of people that have included a hockey team and a women’s health centre. Everyone will get their money back if the money goes on to take £1million.

The team has devised a new strategy to ensure a wider audience. Each of their investors and crew are on a mission to make sure the film gets a second week at the cinema. Armstrong explained that “there are 228 investors and 108 crew: if each of us buys 10 tickets we will almost definitely have sold enough seats to expand into week two”.

They have also decided to test a new method of controlling the distribution of the film. As Armstrong has said, “the usual film model is that the distributor pays the producer a pittance called an advance – and for that takes all rights to the film. Which means it belongs to them. If the film-maker wants to have a screening of the film, they have to get permission from the distributor. So we came up with a new model whereby we employ the distributor, we keep all the rights, the money goes through us and we pay them a cut. This means we will be able to allow all sorts of small-scale school/church/campaign screenings which are not usually possible”, simply by licensing the film to anyone who wants to screen the film.

This innovative nature of film-making has extended to their use of volunteers to translate the film into more than 30 languages. The hope is that the film will be seen by 250 million people or more by the time the UN climate talks take place in Copenhagen in December.
Their campaign has already gained a great deal of interest from the likes of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Barack Obama’s thinktank, the Centre for American Progress. Armstrong, an ardent environmental activist, hopes the attention the film might bring might actually incite people, and thereby governments, into action. If she succeeds, she says she will stop making films, saying “they take me a very long time and make no money at all. If we succeed at Copenhagen then I will go and grow leeks in Wales or Cornwall”.

The Age of Stupid premieres on 15 March and will be released in cinemas nationwide from 20 March.

Watch a documentary about the making of The Age of Stupid.

Visit The Age of Stupid website to find out more and to get involved.

Micro Summary of the Year That Was

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0000

A look back at some of the 2008 highlights in the world of micro-budget cinema.

Micro-budget films in 2008 were as vibrant and diverse as ever. A good number of films whose imagination far outweighed their budgetary constraints connected with audiences, providing opportunities to imaginatively engage with cinema free from the blustering overstatement of homogenized, tent-pole ‘product’. Here we skim through a selection of the most interesting micro-budget films, news and opinion that made waves in 2008.

A wary yet defiant tone was set for micro-budget/ independent film in 2008 when, speaking at the LA Film Festival‘s Financing Conference, Mark Gill, CEO of The Film Department (and former President of Miramax Films) declared provocatively: Yes, The Sky Really Is Falling.

He catalogued the awe-inspiring accumulation of bad news in the independent film industry, particularly the studio subsidiary companies. However, he concluded with positive assertions tied to the survival of independent film: “The single biggest change should be to only make movies that we absolutely love. Not ones we like. Not ones we need to do as a favor. Not the ones we do because they seem like a good ‘piece of business’. In a word, we should only pick the films we’re passionate about – and that have an audience”.

He asserted that it is crucial to ‘come up with a great script. How will you know if you have one? That’s easy. It’s the day you stop chasing talent. Because everybody —from the directors to the actors, to the editors and costume designers — starts chasing you, and will show up and make the film for a little — or a lot — less. And if we do it for less, we can afford to make something that’s not a moronic, homogenized piece of lowest-common-denominator drivel’.

He concluded, ‘if we get all of that right, the sky might fall further than we like, but it won’t hit the ground. And the independent film business — leaner, harder-working, but still wearing black and drinking too much caffeine — will indeed survive’.

Rotterdam’s Tigers

Many leading film festivals in 2008 noted a resurgence in genuine independent film visions. So if the ‘sky is falling’, it would be on top of studio engineered ‘indie-films by numbers’. These independent films attracted festival audiences, critics and awards juries, often with multi-platform distribution deals following soon after.

Rotterdam Film Festival 2008 was again an opportunity to catch up with the emerging international voices of culturally rich, no-to-low budget film-making. Ultimately, Rotterdam’s three Tiger Awards went to two Asian and one Danish film including Flower in the Pocket by the Malaysian director Liew Seng Tat and Go With Peace Jamil, an honour killing drama by Danish film-maker Omar Shargawi.

The third Tiger Award went to Wonderful Town by Thai film-maker Aditya Assarat. Financed with help from the festival’s very own Hubert Bals Fund, the low-budget film premiered at Korea’s Pusan International Film Festival. It went on to win a number of festival prizes including Best Picture at the 18th Subannahongsa Awards, Thailand’s biggest film industry award where it was the first low-budget feature ever to win the top honour.

Wonderful Town portrays the village of Takua Pa in Southern Thailand, where a young hip architect from Bangkok comes to oversee the construction of a hotel on the tsunami-ravaged coast. Poised between art installations and Italian melodrama, Wonderful Town is truly what Rotterdam is all about, once again celebrating a challenging and creatively diverse range of films.

US Indie Cinema

American independent film in particular, produced impressive micro-budget titles in 2008, including Momma’s Man, which, widely praised as one of the best films at Sundance Festival 2008, found US theatrical distribution with Kino International. It has an imminent UK release through Diffusion Pictures. Director Azazel Jacobs cast his own parents (the renowned film-maker Ken Jacobs and artist Flo Jacobs) and their distinctive New York loft full of cultural bric-a-brac, in this tragic-comic tale. The film portrays a young married father Mikey, who during a business trip to New York, suddenly finds the home comforts of his parents’ place too appealing to leave. He retreats into an evasion of his responsibilities – to the bemusement of his parents and the growing concern of his wife back in LA.

Frozen River saw the taut dramatic debut by director Courtney Hunt. It gained wide festival success and a Film Independent Spirit Award and Oscar nomination for lead actress Melissa Leo. The film is a nuanced contemporary tale exploring the reluctant interdependence of two mothers, one white and one Mohawk, who become embroiled in illegal state border crossings.

A refreshing take on young black culture and relationships in a predominantly white San Francisco was seen in Medicine for Melancholy. The film, with influences ranging from Spike Lee to Italian Neo-realism and the energy of the French new wave, was the directorial debut for Barry Jenkins. Twenty-something African-Americans, Mika and Angela, wake up the morning after a one night stand; and despite initial awkwardness, spend the day walking, talking, cycling and dancing their way through the city, reflecting on their place in the world. Following a South By Southwest (SXSW) premiere and successful festival run, the film was picked up for US distribution by Independent Film Company (IFC).

Also, on a small, or DIY distributed scale, there were gems like Josh Safdie’s The Pleasure of Being Robbed, an oddly comic yarn about a philanthropic kleptomaniac named Eleanor. Starring both the director and co-writer, the film premiered at SXSW 2008 through the ‘Emerging Visions’ sidebar, and went on to be the only American film to screen at Cannes International Film Festival 2008 ‘Director’s Fortnight’. This film has also been picked up for US distribution by IFC.

We must not forget to mention the multi award-winning Sundance hit Ballast . The film was shot mostly in natural light by UK cinematographer Lol Crawley (who won Best Cinematography Award at Sundance for the film). Directed by Lance Hammer, Ballast is a fractured and elliptical drama that explores the emotional devastation of a suicide on a trio of characters living in the poverty of the Mississippi Delta. Hammer has gone on to become a ‘poster-boy’ for the DIY theatrical self-distribution route. Dissatisfied with the deals offered following Sundance 2008, he managed his own US release with the support of distribution consultant Steven Raphael.

From the recent awards season, it is also worth noting the John Cassavetes award-winner for micro-budget films made for less than $500,000 at Film Independent’s Spirit Awards. The worthy winner was the caustic romantic comedy In Search of A Midnight Kiss by writer/director Alex Holdridge. It is a raucously comic yet poignant ride through downtown Los Angeles following the disillusionments and desires of Wilson and Vivian, two cynical yet vulnerable characters looking for love on New Year’s Eve.

UK Micro-Budget Gems

Over the Atlantic in the UK, Slingshot Studios in London made interesting acquisitions and released two micro/low-budget features by emerging international female directors. The first was the French Water Lilies by Céline Sciamma, which explores the emerging sexuality of young girls in the world of synchronised swimming. Their other release was Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame, the subtle tale of a 6 year old Afghan girl’s quest for education amidst a community beset by violence, directed by Hanna Makhmalbaf, the youngest of the renowned Iranian film-making family.

Other imaginative micro-budget films that caught our eye were Shane Meadows’ modest and moving Somers Town. Also Suzie Halewood’s Bigga Than Ben, an energetic tale of Russian crooks ripping off a scuzzy London,
which wowed audiences at Moscow and Edinburgh Film Festivals, before it’s UK release through Swipe Films.

The Disciple emerged at the Black Film Makers Film Festival in London as a distinctive first feature in 2008. Self-financed by British director Rodney Charles, the film follows four trans-cultural friends: Pete, an American mid-westerner; Jud, a Black European; and Lisa, a first generation Polish-New Yorker, who share a house in Los Angeles. Together with their South African friend Mary, the group is coaxed into temporarily reassessing the complex lies woven through their lives when Michael, Jud’s estranged ex-military cousin, comes to visit from London.

Of course, here at Microwave, we saw the release of our first feature, Steven Sheil’s deranged horror debut, Mum & Dad. The film saw an innovative and successful multi-platform UK release by Revolver Entertainment on Boxing Day.

In terms of documentary, Full Battle Rattle was a festival hit. Premiered at Berlin Film Festival 2008 and SXSW, Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss’s doc explored the bizarre simulation of an Iraq War battleground in California’s Mojave Desert for troops preparing to go into real conflict in the Middle East. This surreally immersive documentary has gone on to be broadcast by the National Geographic Channel.

African Ambition

Although in many African countries, micro-budget productions are the majority (particularly in the ballooning Nigerian ‘Nollywood’ industry), new HD video technology is enabling film-makers in African countries to produce an increasing number of higher quality productions. Moderate budget films shot on film and HD are emerging for wider audiences such as Arugbe by Tunde Kelani and South African director Ralph Ziman’s Jerusalema.

In 2008, Ugandan feature film Divizionz by the Yes! That’s Us collective, a group of guerilla visual artists, received it’s premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. It went on to win Best Editing and Jury Prize at the Africa Movie Academy Awards in 2008 and screened at a number of festivals including The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Divizionz is an authentic portrayal of an African inner-city slum. Set in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, this film is the story of four friends from four different parts of Uganda, trying to make it in the capital as hip-hop musicians.

Latin American highlights

Latin America produced a number of distinctive micro-budget films in 2008, including Año Uña (Year of the Nail) , a formally adventurous feature film from Mexico inspired by the Chris Marker short La Jetee. Utilising only still photographs, creative narration and subtle sound design, the film conveys a sweetly perceptive tale of unrequited love.

Tony Manero, a bleakly humourous gem from Chile, found enthusiastic critical and audience reception at festivals including Cannes, New York and Turin. Directed by Pablo Larrain, the films is based on the original screenplay by Larrain, Alfredo Castro and Mateo Iribarren. A period film set in Santiago, Chile in 1978, it portrays a man’s psychotic obsession with the disco dancing character from Saturday Night Fever. Mixing violence and absurdity, the film’s bizarre shifts in tone, benefit from being grounded in the close handheld style of Sergio Armstrong’s grimy 16mm cinematography, and the jagged, jump-cut style of editing.

Given the exciting developments in 2008, and the strong programmes of micro-budget films at recent festivals and online initiatives, we are looking forward to 2009 and the next wave of intriguing micro-budget film releases. Keep checking the website for more news about this year’s micro-budget hits and Microwave’s upcoming releases.

Find out more about the Microwave films in our Get Inspired section.

Berlin Business: Part 2

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Liam Beatty, producer of Strawberry Fields, tells us about his experience at the recent Berlinale.

Strawberry Fields, one of the newest additions to the Microwave slate, is a film about two sisters and a love triangle – a rites of passage story bursting with energy, sex and humour. Written and directed by Frances Lea and produced by Liam Beatty, the film was selected in the third round of Microwave. The team were recently in Berlin taking advantage of office space in the Marriott Hotel courtesy of Film London. In his own words, Liam tells us about his first experience at the Berlinal Film Festival 2009:

Wednesday 4 February
Arrived late in Berlin – lucky the London snow didn’t delay us! Made it to our apartment, and finished some documents about Strawberry Fields. Work at home still required our attention despite our excitement to immerse ourselves in all things related to the Berlin Film Festival and the immediate urge to sample some local brew. However we soon got a drink and discovered a great local bar.

Thursday 5 February
Settled into our desk space at the Film London office in the Marriott hotel, efficiently arranged by Chloe Laing from Film London’s International department. We then met Helena Mackenzie (Head of International at Film London), who kindly gave me the insider’s lowdown on who to meet regarding Strawberry Fields. The Marriott is really in the centre of things with a great festival buzz. The lobby was full of ‘everyone’ discussing ‘buying’, ‘sales’ and ‘distribution’. Walk from one end to the other, or take the lift to one of the 3 floors accommodating sales agents, distributors and financiers in bedrooms that act as offices during the day, and you’ll inevitably hear debriefs regarding multi-million dollar deals. We picked up our festival accreditation, got our bearings, walked around the European Film Market (EFM) and tried, as best one can, to set up meetings in advance. Before you know it, it’s night and beer beckons…followed by a nice meal. Crashed at midnight.

Friday 6 February
Armed with Helena Mackenzie’s and Mia Bays’ (Microwave Production Executive) recommendations, Fran and I head for the EFM. En route in the festival shuttle, we practised our pitch to a visitor from LA. He was taken aback by our £100,000 micro-budget. Fortunately, we had fewer shocked and more really positive responses during the rest of the trip. We met with UK sales agents and financiers and set up meetings for when we got back to London. Ben Roberts of Protagonist (who are selling Shifty) passed on some handy production tips and gave us two tickets to Unmade Beds, one of the films they are representing which is competing in the Generation 14plus category in Berlin. This is director Alexis Dos Santos’ second feature and is produced by Peter Ettedgui and Soledad Gatti Pascual (previous Microwave Production Executive). It’s a gem of a movie and I recommend it highly. It has great directorial style and performances, and a wonderful soundtrack. Followed that with Sauerkraut and Wurst (plus beer) next to the cinema after the Q&A.

Saturday 7 February
Fran heads off to catch lots of movies, frustrated by the fact that you can only get tickets 24 hours in advance and most are gone! Thankfully she managed to see Lille Soldat and loved it. We eventually discover that we needn’t trek around the festival to get tickets for films, but that they’re available about 20 feet from our desk in the Marriott – the learning curve of a film festival! As Fran watches films to get inspired I work the EFM and speak with mainly French sales agents, distributors and financiers. They really like the project, and I’m glad to have anticipated all their questions in advance and can hand them our brochure for the film and Fran’s showreel. Many are already familiar with Film London’s Microwave scheme which is great. The Film London office is now full with people having meetings and it’s a good place to get away and check email, or just chat with like-minded producers. We catch up with Maggie Ellis (Head of Production at Film London) in the bar of the Marriott and chat to people involved in the Galway Film Fleadh about Strawberry Fields. We then head to a party at the Canadian embassy and meet the Raindance team. A late night.

Sunday 8 February
Returned to the EFM with Fran for more conversations, catching people I’ve been chasing for a few days. On some down time, I drop into the Weinstein Company to discuss the film. Left my card with a message…worth a try! Busy day as we have a full evening ahead of us, so caught a few ‘Wurst drive bys’ – eating on the hop. We go to see Bluebeard (Barbe Bleue), directed by Catherine Breillat. Like Lille Soldat, this film is about two women, and in particular about sisters – very similar to Strawberry Fields – so was curious to catch this. We’re then very kindly invited to the Rage premiere. There’s a real buzz around the Berlinale Palast cinema with full red carpet treatment for Riz Ahmed (Shifty), Steve Buscemi, Lily Cole and director Sally Potter. It’s a beautifully executed film with a simple set up – characters being interviewed by a schoolboy with bright colour backdrops. Wonderful!

Monday 9 February
More meetings in the morning, but we’re determined to catch a different side of the festival on our last day. We go to lunch at the launch of this year’s Film London Production Finance Market. Delicious food. In the afternoon we watch two films and later dash to the Scottish party where we chatted with lots of familiar faces. Then it’s time to head off to the Shooting Stars party. I was the only one minus a ticket, so Rachel Richardson-Jones, the producer of Brit horror flic Splintered, worked her magic and got me into a great party with a full on spread of more delicious food. A great night, and another late one. We fly back the next morning feeling a tad delicate – but well worth it!

Find out more about the Berlin Film Festival.

Find out more about more about Strawberry Fields and our other Microwave features in the Get Inspired section.

The Production Finance Market dates have recently been announced as 21 – 22 October 2009. Find out more on the Film London website.

New Microwave Projects Announced

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Two more Microwave projects have been selected in round three.

Another two projects have been given the go-ahead after a competitive third round of applications to Film London’s Microwave, supported by BBC Films. We are pleased to announce we will be working with directors Frances Lea and Ornette Spenceley on their respective projects, Strawberry Fields and Foxglove.

Strawberry Fields is a rites of passage story bursting with energy, sex and humour, written by director Lea and award-winning playwright Judith Johnson. Foxglove, written by Spenceley and his sister Kate, is a tense psychological drama following two delinquent teenagers on the run as they become imprisoned on a farm on the outskirts of London. Full project outlines for both can be found in the Get Inspired section.

87 applicants fought it out for a chance to participate in this round of Microwave. 11 of these made it through to Microschool, the four-day intensive development programme where industry professionals give advice to participants on how to get their projects from script to screen. Finally, the teams took part in a competitive pitch process, where these two films emerged successful.

Two of the films greenlit in 2008 (Freestyle and Analogue) are about to go into production, while the third film (The British Guide to Showing Off) has already begun. The first film to be completed through Microwave, Mum & Dad, had an innovative and successful multi-platform release on Boxing Day. The second film, Shifty, premiered at The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival in October and will continue its festival run at Glasgow this week. It is released in cinemas nationwide on 24th April 2009.

Film London Microwave also supports new film-makers through this website, which provides news, advice and links for those shooting on a low budget. The second learning module, ‘Legal Matters’, which gives details on issues such as rights ownership and contractual agreements, has now been launched. Sign up now to access top tips and advice from industry experts!

There are still three more films left to be selected, in order to make up the complete Microwave slate of ten.

Read more about all seven Microwave projects in the Get Inspired section.

Read the full press release on the Film London website.

Berlin Business

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Daniel Jewel, producer of Microwave feature Analogue, tells us about his festival experience.

Analogue, a dark psychological thriller influenced by David Lynch, is one of the Microwave features selected in the second round. The film’s producer Daniel Jewel travelled to Berlin for this year’s film festival – as one of six lucky producers given a desk in the Marriott Hotel organised by Film London. Representing Analogue and his production company Third Man Films, he attended the festival with Analogue’s director Suki Singh. In his own words Daniel tells us about his time in Berlin:

If Cannes is a ‘sunny place for shady people’ Berlin is a dark, moody town for
serious cineastes.

Friday 6 February

I set off from London early in the morning and managed to beat the snow and fly out of Gatwick on time.

I arrived in Berlin to a strange ‘Jason Bourne’-style message from the man who owned the studio flat I was renting in East Berlin. He said I should go to an office close to the Sconhauser Allee subway and pay in cash there. Then I was to proceed to the flat address where I would find a white box in the wall where I would find a safe. I was to punch in a code number he gave me. This all went without a hitch – the keys inside were in fact ‘safe’.

After settling in the flat, I jumped on the U-Bahn and headed into the centre of town and Potsdamer Platz, which the Berlin Film Festival is centred around. I arrived at the Film London offices at the Mariott Hotel, which were extremely luxurious and spacious. There was a large sign outside with all our company names and details, and Helena and Chloe from the International department at Film London were on hand to help us settle in.

From there I jumped into one of the people carriers that Berlin Film Festival lay on and headed to register at the Gropius building, where the main film market is. Here films are bought and sold like any other commodity and you can buy anything from South Korean panda movies to Estonian zombie films, to the latest art-house offering from Romania.

The daily trade papers are everywhere and my market bag was soon weighed down with a small forest of brochures and magazines about the festival. Screen International and Variety are in pole position and they are both great to read with market announcements of which films are selling and reviews of films shown just the night before.

Saturday 7 February

I held a busy day of meetings in the Film London office and the marketplace with a mixture of financiers, sales agents and international distributors. I touched base with Jeremy Baxter at Protagonist Pictures who are selling Microwave’s Shifty, along with some great upcoming films including Bronson.

Then it was time to hit the many film events and parties that are part of the buzz and glamour of any film festival of this scale. I met up with my producer colleague, Dhiraj Mahey, from Primal Pictures, who I have a feature documentary project with called Tehrangeles, and we hit the town. We started in India and ended up in Frankfurt…

First up was the UK Film Council’s Indian co-production party promoting collaboration between UK producers and Indian producers in the wake of the co-production treaty between the two countries. From there, we went to the Arte party (The German / French TV Channel) – as we wanted to meet the head of documentaries there. We managed to track her down and I did my best ‘elevator’ pitch to her. She responded well and having grabbed her details it was off to the next event.

Heading across the bridge towards East Berlin, we arrived at the Forty Second rooftop bar where we attended the Initialize co-production party, where we met both British and German producers looking to find co-production partners for their films. Gazing across the room you could pick out Fritz Lang’s Metropolis being projected on a small screen against the backdrop of Berlin. Its small moments like this that make coming to international film festivals special.

We jumped into a taxi to the Frankfurt Book Fair party which was in a building which I can only describe as a lighthouse tagged onto the 20th floor of a vast building. Coming out of the lift it was two more flights up a spiral staircase – and into a glass lighthouse-style room where the party was in full swing. We met loads of interesting writers, publishers and producers, the views from the roof were breathtaking.

Sunday 8 February

Today I headed to the marketplace to attend a series of talks at the Gropius Mirror Restaurant which is decked out like a circus tent – red velvet covering every surface.

One of the main topics of the day was ‘How to Finance Films in the Credit Crunch’. The panel discussions were good and several European film industry heavy hitters were present, including Jens Meurer from Egoli Tossell. They all felt that despite the crunch the best film projects would still attract finance.

The weird thing about attending film festivals as a producer is that your days are so full of meetings and what Larry David would describe as a ‘Stop and Chats’ with industry colleagues, that you often leave without having seen a single film. So I decided to remedy that and headed to the Berlinale Film Palast which can only be described as a temple to cinema.

As I arrived John Goodman of The Big Lebowski fame was finishing up a Q&A about his new film In The Electric Mist which was being broadcast on big screens outside the cinema.

My market badge gave me free tickets to films at the festival and I managed to grab a ticket to Lukas Moodysson’s new offering Mammoth. His star, Gael Garcia Bernal was on red carpet duty as I headed up to my seat in the top tier of the gigantic cinema. There was a huge feeling of excitement and sense of anticipation surging through the audience. As the lights dimmed for the start of the film, there was a heady atmosphere of the magic of film in the air – and I knew that this is where, one day, I want my films to be shown. An inspiring day.

Monday 9 February

Today Film London laid on a lunch at a German Regional Embassy for their Production Finance Market which facilitates face-to-face meetings between producers and financiers from the international marketplace and the UK, to encourage and foster new financing relationships.

After the lunch I headed back to the Marriott Hotel, where, although he wasn’t sporting his signature bow-tie (which is a bit like spotting Churchill without a cigar), I spotted the legendary producer, writer, Focus Features head and Columbia University Professor, James Schamus. As a huge fan of his work, I decided not to let the opportunity pass as I had him in my sights and I walked over and introduced myself… Again – these things can often go spectacularly wrong – but he was charm itself and seemed to know all about Film London’s Microwave scheme and said he was a big supporter of it. He knew that our project Analogue was greenlit and set to shoot later this year – which was amazing. A very nice man indeed.

In the evening it was high glamour all the way. I got a ticket for The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. The red carpet at the Palast was heaving with A-List talent from Keanu Reeves, to Robin Wright Penn and Blake Lively. I had a seat directly behind Wim Wenders.

Tuesday 10 February

I headed into town for my final day. After a few meetings and a final round of the sales stands, it was time to head back to London after five amazing days in Berlin.

Berlin is a great festival with a huge variety of screenings, talks, events and opportunities to meet financiers, sales agents and international distributors. As it’s not as frenetic and market-driven as Cannes Film Festival, you can get better access to the top companies whose schedules aren’t quite as pressured.

It also has a great balance between art and commerce and it’s a fantastic way to to remind you why you wanted to be a film-maker in the first place. I left Berlin full of energy and fired up for the productions ahead…

Find out more about the Berlin Film Festival

Find out more about more about Analogue and our other Microwave features in the Get Inspired section.

Mass Destruction on a Micro-Budget

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Previous Microwave applicant Christine Hartland talks to us about her new micro-budget feature, wmd.

Christine Hartland and David Holroyd, respectively producer and director of micro-budget feature wmd. describe their film as “first and foremost a story about an ordinary man with a mortgage, wife and kid, who unexpectedly discovers the answer to the big question we were all asking in 2002 – how real is the wmd. evidence?”.

David Holroyd, director of wmd., applied to Microwave in 2006 and participated in the first Microschool. It was clear that his determination reflected the attitude encouraged by the scheme and its mentors. Christine and David’s tenacity to break into feature films, following previous success in short films and television drama, has reached inspired fruition in their recent feature wmd. Both the film’s story and shooting-style were designed to aid the feasibility of a micro-budget production.

Here, Christine talks to Microwave about how she helped make wmd. – from finance through to sales.

What attracted you to the role of producing wmd.?

wmd. was written to be a micro-budget film and a first feature film. For me, the attraction was that it was feasible on such a low budget (assuming we could beg, borrow and steal lots!) because of the nature of it – minimum crew, cast, equipment and shooting on surveillance, CCTV and spy cameras. The aim of wmd. was to be different and intriguing so it would attract good crew, cast and later on, an audience.

How did you raise the finance?

I met Mark Watson-Mitchell, our executive producer, a few years back at the Cannes Film Festival and kept in touch. I knew he was looking for projects and I was hoping that wmd. would be his kind of project, which it was. The timeline was extremely fast. I met David in August 2007, we signed the contract with Mark end of November and started filming at the end of January 2008.

How many days did the shoot last?

It was a 28 day shoot, spread between mid-January and early March, as we had to take into account crew and cast availability. We also had two days in Berlin, two days in Rome and one day in Washington which all had a very, very, small crew. Overall the schedule was extremely tight so it was very important for the crew and cast to work fast and efficiently, and ultimately be very flexible.

How many crew did you have and how did you find the right people for the project?

We had on average, 15 crew. Only the 1st AD, DoP, sound recordist and line producers (Dana Wilson and Maria Goyal) went abroad where we had local fixers and some additional local crew to help.

Most of the people came on board via us or people we knew, and were either from a TV or short films background.

I think we were extremely lucky and had a great crew. For me, it is very important to work with people who are fully behind the project and lovely to work with. The film industry is, after all, a people’s industry.

How did you find the cast for the film?

Carolyn McLeod was already on board as casting director when I joined the project, which was great and definitely made my life easier. The brief regarding the cast was that they were deliberately chosen for being ‘unknown’ but experienced, so that they could portray a documentary authenticity without being recognised.

As the approach to the film was to shoot as if captured by CCTV and surveillance style cameras, did this lead to an improvisatory approach to scenes or was it quite fixed narratively?

David did follow the script although I know at times he was re-writing dialogue before certain shoot days. I think the most challenging aspect regarding the shoot was filming on CCTV, surveillance and spy cameras. They are not that robust, as they are not meant to be moved and fiddled with on a regular basis.

We used the actual CCTV/surveillance cameras but recorded on DV, so that in itself was already quite challenging. We also thought that filming on those cameras would save us money but we did end up spending more money than anticipated on them. However, the advantage of filming on those cameras was that it was very unobtrusive which meant that even if people saw us we did not look like a film crew. This allowed us to film in very public places with real people passing through the foreground and background, further adding to the realism. The cameras were really a key aspect of the concept behind wmd.

Were there any significant hurdles during the shoot or, given the subject of the film, any unwanted interest from the authorities/MI6?

We did have a few interesting moments indeed…
To start with, on day 1, our 1st AD was stopped and searched for behaving erratically – ducking and hiding behind pillars so he would not be in shot – but we were very near the MI6 building. At that same place a few days later, David was again stopped by the police, despite having the appropriate permissions to shoot.

But the most dramatic moment was when I received a call from Dana Wilson, the Rome line producer. She told me that they might not make the flight back to London as David was being interviewed by Italian police at the airport and all their passports had been confiscated. The prop briefcase, with copies of the real documents downloadable from the internet and so brilliantly re-created by our art department (James Lees and Tom Weaving) showing Iraq was buying Uranium, was somehow found. David was promptly arrested and questioned. He was asked if he was working for MI6. Trying to prove he was a film-maker by showing the rushes was naturally, far from helping due to the style of the filming. It was only when David was able to show some footage with the clapper board that he was released and everyone’s passport handed back.

And no, I did not have any contingency money for bail or additional accommodation in my budget. So I was rather pleased when the next call I got was that they would make it back to London on the scheduled flight!

How long did you spend on post-production?

I know Celia Haining, our editor, and David would say not enough! We had the Cannes Film Market as a deadline, which was for me, the only way I knew I could raise interest for distribution – and luckily it worked. Independent Film Company (London to Brighton, Hallam Foe, Adulthood) told us they really liked the film and we signed on the dotted line in the summer.

We were very lucky with the post-production because we managed to do it in a post house, Clear Cut Pictures. It was great to have all that support rather than do it in someone’s bedroom.

Similarly, regarding the sound post we were able to work very fast. We used already existing music from the composer Samuel Sim and Chris White, and, both Keith Tunney (the production sound mixer) and Steve Chase (the sound supervisor) were also very flexible and worked to our deadlines. When I think about it now, I am amazed we did pull it off… but I wish we could have had more time.

What has been the journey of the film since its completion?

For me it was key to carry on being a bit different and innovative. We knew there were some opportunities using digital platforms, and Eric Stevens from Independent was keen to follow that route. We are going digital to reach the widest possible audience as we feel so strongly about the subject and it also suits that platform.

I am very pleased to say that we have had much interest in the film, which is great. This is possibly, as some have told us, because it is the first film in the UK to launch initially on digital. In any regard, as a result of the very successful digital launch we have been very fortunate to now find ourselves in the position of being pursued by more traditional channels, like theatrical. I guess you could say we have turned the traditional release pattern on its head!

Regarding festivals, the film was screened at the Brighton Film Festival in December and will probably play at more over the year.

Also, something I am very pleased to say is that wmd. supports the charity War Child.

What has been the most surprising/interesting discovery thoughout the process of producing a micro-budget film?

For me, a very interesting and challenging aspect was the legal and insurance (E&O) aspects of wmd. I learnt an awful lot, starting from the contract with our investor to the legal and insurance clearance of the script and the film once completed. Due to the nature of the film, it was key for me to make sure we had a good legal and insurance cover prior to the release and it was probably one of the steepest learning curves I have experienced.

Working on a micro-budget film means you just never stop negotiating lower and better costs. Towards the end, it was a tad draining, but to my surprise, I was amazed how supportive people were and how eventually we did manage to make it work.

How can people see the film now or in the near future?

At the moment, the film is available on DVD and VoD on Amazon in the US, DVD on Amazon in the UK and rental and VOD on LoveFILM the UK. The guys at Independent have been pretty busy, so I know it is on a lot of other platforms as well, but those are the main ones. There will be some exciting deals announced soon, though, so watch this space…

To find out more, visit the wmd. website.

Paul Hardy’s Top Tips

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Author of ‘Filming On A Microbudget’, Paul Hardy, gives us his top tips on making a successful micro-budget film.

Author of ‘Filming On A Microbudget’, Paul Hardy, gives us his top tips and advice on making a successful micro-budget film.

Inexperienced film-makers often find it hard to access crucial tools and documents necessary for the film-making process, including templates for scripts, budgets and schedules. However, there are a number of available resources that you can get your hands on for free.

Paul’s top recommendation is Shooting People, which he has described as “the mother lode for this stuff, although you do have to pay and join to get access to it (but it’s not that expensive)”. He also recommends the BBC Writer’s Room, which “has a perfectly good set of templates called ScriptSmart. It is free but a bit out of date (especially for Mac users)”.

“But why go searching for stuff? It is easy to use word processing and spreadsheet tools to create what you need from scratch.

Script formatting is fairly easy to implement yourself in Word: you just need to figure out how Styles work, and then define styles for Action lines, Character lines, Dialogue lines, Sluglines, Parenthetical lines and Transition lines. Set up keyboard shortcuts for each of these, make sure it’s all Courier New 12pt and you’re there. If any of the above styles are a mystery to you, you don’t need a formatting program; you need to find out why formatting exists, what it’s for, how it works and why you need to use it. Get Googling.

Budgets are harder, although Shooting People has a template. Or do what I did back in 1996: type the budget from the Guerrilla Film-maker’s Handbook into Excel and use it to create your own budgeting system from scratch. It might seem like overkill, but you certainly end up understanding budgets…

So far as scheduling goes, there are lots of clever programs but Excel has everything you need. Make each row on the spreadsheet into an entry that describes an individual scene with all the info you need in order to figure out where it goes – characters, locations, day/night, interior/exterior, a summary of the action, any special requirements – and then you can cut and paste the rows to juggle them around and figure out what order they go in.

Another thing you can do is work as a lowly runner on a feature film production and use their paperwork as a template. They won’t give you their budgets, but you might get to see the schedule and you’ll definitely be given call sheets and movement orders.”

Once you have your tools in place, it may not be long before you face one of many hurdles as part of the film-making process.

Here is Paul’s list of most common problems to look out for:

Development
The biggest hurdle is writing the script. Or rather, not stopping before you’ve finished. It’s never good enough. Keep writing.

Pre-Production
Producing in general is a horrible job but it really, really needs doing. I always find there’s a point in this process where everything seems impossible and you just don’t know how you can make it happen – locations vanish, actors drop out, your computer dies – but keep going. All problems have solutions. Rewrite the script if you have to. It can be done if you keep at it.

Production
The main enemy during the shoot is time, which can only be defeated with good planning and willingness to compromise when necessary. The ability to compromise can be hard to find when you’re knackered from the workload and early starts, so having a good 1st AD is vital, as they’ll be the ones telling you when it’s just not going to work.

Speaking of time, you’ll find that directors perceive it differently to everyone else. For everyone else, it often seems to drag agonisingly because they’re always waiting for someone else to do something, but directors are always busy and always trying to cram more in. Bear this in mind when directing; you’ll be under hideous pressure, but it’s easy to forget that everyone around you is having a very different experience.

Post-Production
Time and exhaustion are enemies during production, and enemies again during post, but in different ways. The problem with time is often not the lack, but the abundance. If you’re not working to a release or transmission date, then you can easily get slack and let it all drag on forever. So set your own deadlines and get on with it. And while you won’t get physically exhausted, you might get tired of the whole project after months slaving away on it – if this happens, take a holiday from it for a week or two and come back with fresh eyes.

Distribution
And here comes the biggest hurdle of all for many of us: having to send this thing out when we’ve already worked our guts out and just want to move on to something else. There’s no easy answer. Just keep at it.’

Hoping you get over all these potential obstacles, you should have a finished film you are proud of. However, it is always a good strategy to maintain focus through the film-making process.

Paul has identified what he considers as consistent key features of successful micro-budget films in the past which include:

Technical Competence
I don’t mean CGI or special effects, I mean shot choices, lighting choices, editing choices, sound mixing, use of music etc. A good micro-budget film should not betray the fact that it’s a micro-budget film, at least on the level of basic film-making skills (unless of course that’s the whole point of the film, like The Blair Witch Project, for example). If you can get through the film without being distracted by horrible mistakes you know the film-maker did at least part of their job well.

Good Casting
Pick people who can actually act! One clunky actor can ruin the whole thing. And this may well mean wading through a lot of people to find that one person who just clicks with the character, but no one said it wasn’t going to be hard work. If you keep wading, then sooner or later you’ll meet the people who will just stun you with their talent as soon as they open their mouths. They’re the ones you want. Don’t settle for less.

Good Use of Resources
Everyone has something they can call upon, whether it be their own skills, the support of a particular community, parental support and connections – whatever it is, don’t be ashamed to exploit it.

Good Storytelling
This trumps everything. Massive mistakes elsewhere can be forgiven if you can manage this. Very few people can do it – and virtually no one can tell a good story with their first film. Partly it’s the script and being aware of structure and character and how the two dance together. Partly it’s the interpretation in the film, and the use of shots, lighting, editing, sound, music, effects and everything else to make sure that when people come out of the film, they talk about what they saw happen in the story, and not how it was done.’

Find out more about Paul Hardy’s ‘Filming On A Microbudget’.

Take a look at Microwave’s Top Tips for micro-budget film-making.

Training Opportunities

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Last chance to sign up for a free digital media course run by The Prince’s Trust and other upcoming opportunities.

Many people like to say that anyone can make a film now that digital video equipment is more easily available. The truth is that it still costs more than most young people have to spare! It also requires skills that take time to develop and contacts to help you move on as your skills and ambitions grow.

The good news is that there are now increasing numbers of free film and digital media courses and placement schemes within London. These training opportunities give young people the right skills and breaks to get started on their journey towards a career making films.

The Prince’s Trust – ‘Get Into Digital Media Course’
27 January – 10 February 2009

This free course is targeted at unemployed young people, aged 16 – 25.

Based in the East End of London, the course is a really good opportunity to gain industry experience and/or employability skills. Participants are given the opportunity to create their own short films from story boarding ideas through to filming and post-production editing. Final films will be screened to industry contacts at the end of the course. The Prince’s Trust even give 6 months of progression support into employment following the course.

What’s in it for me?

Training from qualified professionals.
At least one week’s work experience, where possible.
The chance to work in a team of up to 10 people.
Opportunities to make new friends.
Help and support towards getting a job after the course is over.

No need to worry if you are a complete beginner, you will be taught everything on the course.

If you are interested, please contact Katy Reiff on 020 7543 1457 or
katy.reiff@princes-trust.org.uk directly.

Hi8us Film-Maker Training Programmes

Hi8us organises hands-on training for young people, where they learn technical, creative and production skills as part of the process of delivering their productions.

Hi8us also offer:

Trainee attachment schemes for both short and feature films.
Placements – individual short-term attachments to both their own and external short film-making projects.
Artist development support for young music artists as part of the Beatz! Camera! Action! Programme to make music videos for emerging talents.
Arts Awards accreditation (Bronze & Silver, Levels 1 & 2) alongside existing projects or as stand-alone courses.

If you are interested, contact Sophie Critchlow on 020 7538 8079 or
info@hi8us-south.co.uk

For other training opportunities, take a look at the Skillset website.

For the latest news on funding and training, sign up for the Film London weekly bulletin.

Filming On A Microbudget

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Paul Hardy, author of ‘Filming On A Microbudget’ talks to Microwave.

Following the recent release of ‘Filming On A Microbudget’, the Pocket Essential guide to making a film on a micro-budget, Microwave gets the chance to talk to its author Paul Hardy. Here are some of his thoughts on getting a film made on a micro-budget, from script to distribution.

What inspired you to write the book ‘Filming On A Microbudget’?

The thing you find when making films for no money is that lots of people want to volunteer their spare time to help you out as runners and other assistants. And since they often don’t know very much, you find yourself having to show them how to do things, which forces you to think a bit about what you’ve learned about film-making – which means you learn more.

Getting into film-making relies on this cycle of learning and teaching. You can easily tell who’s good because they’re eager to pick up new skills – either that or they have skills that you need to learn and it’s time for you to be eager.

Having been through all this for a few years as an alternative to going to film school, I had a lucky break when I was asked to write a film-making book for the Pocket Essentials series – and it was going through this process that enabled me to do it.

Was there a particular film or film-maker that helped spark your realisation that making fantastic films was possible on limited budgets?

I suppose I could say that Leon the Pig Farmer made me realise how possible it was to get a film made on very little money. Those of you with greying hair might remember that this was the film that started the trend for deferred fees in the UK, a practice that has some seriously negative aspects.

However, it still left film-making itself as a mysterious activity that I didn’t understand. What really made it all clear was seeing the process in action. I can’t stress this enough: you’ve got to see films being made before you can go out and make them yourself. Reading books and watching making-of videos all helps, but there’s nothing like seeing the whole process from beginning to end to really get a gut feel for how the whole thing works.

Most recently, what micro-budget films or film-makers outside your own personal experience of making your films would you cite as great examples and inspirations for film-makers striving to achieve quality and vision on limited means?

I was at a film finance event in Birmingham not long ago, where Emily Corcoran spoke. She’s just done a movie called Sisterhood. Her story was the typical micro-budget one of using absolutely everything at her disposal to get a film made regardless of the personal cost, in her case making excellent use of the New Zealand expat community in the UK.

She was inspiring, awesome, and made everyone in the room just want to get out there and make movies.

Every micro-budget film that gets made is an amazing achievement; you learn an incredible amount from it which would be virtually impossible if you tried to learn to make films from within the mainstream industry (mostly because the mainstream industry is so damn hard to get into).

Although focusing on short film-making, how would you say that your book could be useful to film-makers embarking on a micro-budget feature film project?

First off, if you’re plunging into a feature film project (lucky you), it never hurts to have made a couple of short films first, just to get a sense of the whole process in miniature. You can even try out scenes or characters from your film if you want to. It certainly helps enthuse people about the feature project if they’ve already seen a short with the same characters in a similar situation. It can also help reassure the cast and crew that you’re not completely incompetent.

And, while my book could never hope to be as in-depth as anything with ‘Guerrilla’ in the title, it does have a lot of basic information in there that might turn out to be handy if you’ve never done any film-making before. The glossary in particular will be useful to shore up your knowledge – no such thing existed when I first wrote it, so I went all out to make it as informative as possible. And frankly, if you’re going into a feature project with no experience, you need all the help you can get.

How would you say the book might benefit someone focusing on a specific role on a micro-budget feature?

A lot of the book is about producing. Not for the deal-making and talent-nurturing side of producing, but instead for the hands on organisational making-sure-it-all-happens side of Producing. Because this is something that people tend not to think about so much when it comes to film-making – but it’s something that’s absolutely vital. People who say “sod all this talk about catering and transport- let’s just get out there and make a movie!” are usually the first to make accusations of incompetence when lunch doesn’t turn up or they get stranded in the middle of nowhere because there aren’t enough cars.

For virtually anyone going into film-making as a beginner, there’s something in there to get them started. Camera types will have the basics of camera function and camerawork explained; sound recordists will find the fundamentals of mics, mixers and what they need to record; editors will find the essentials of getting the shots together in a way that makes the movie make sense.

There’s a lot of multi-tasking implied in the book. Everyone wants to direct, but in order to do so you need to know about a lot more than just directing. If you understand how to organise a shoot, you’ll know what you can get away with as a director without making impossible demands; if you understand camerawork, you’ll have better ideas for shots; if you understand sound, you’ll have a better idea how to use it for better storytelling; and most of all, if you understand editing, you’ll understand a whole lot more about virtually every aspect of film-making. Editing is where you actually find out whether any of the stuff you shot works. You don’t need to spend your whole career doing all of these things, but it’ll help you a lot if you’ve done them a few times.

What developments if any in the fast-evolving world of the internet and mobile viewing devices would you highlight as particularly inspiring for micro-budget film-makers?

Just the fact that you can get people to see your work without them having to drag themselves to a cinema or the back room of a pub. That never ceases to fill me with glee. Some of my stuff is up on Icewhole.com, and getting feedback from viewers is always tremendously heartening.

And then to see online distribution start to become real and possible, and a way you might even make money from these films – that’s nothing short of incredible. Niche audiences are all the more accessible, and help sustain styles of film-making that would just die in the mainstream marketplace – that’s brilliant.

The thing to watch out for, though, is thinking that technology makes films better. It certainly makes them more accessible, and gives more people the chance to make them in the first place – but does anyone doubt that we still have the same ratio of good films to bad films that we’ve always had? We shouldn’t try to inspire people just with the fact that making films is easier – we should be inspiring them with good films that they’ll want to emulate.

Do you feel that aside from learning a craft or making career ‘calling cards’, micro-budget films have certain creative possibilities that larger budget films are less able to explore?

It’s true that there’s a lot less pressure, and that you’re less beholden to whatever is supposed to work in the market. You can do something crazy and experimental and it might just work. And if you’re really lucky, people will actually see it.

But just because you spend less money on a film, it doesn’t mean that the audience necessarily has lower expectations. They still want to be entertained, just the same as they do with a high budget film. Filming on a low budget gives you the chance to address a smaller audience with different tastes to the mainstream – but you still need to tell a story that works.

Filming like this gives you the chance to experiment, but never underestimate the importance of the chance to fail. Some people can manage to jump right in and do something wonderful while they can still get away with being micro-budget film-makers (Four Eyed Monsters being a good example), but most people need time to build experience before they can manage it. You could easily make three or four features and not stumble across your own voice until the fourth or fifth; it took me seven short films and three years just to realise I was best suited to comedy. Some people need time.

Don’t just learn how to make films. Don’t just learn the technology (although you should learn it, and learn it thoroughly). Learn how to make good films that people actually want to watch. Which is nowhere near as easy as it sounds.

‘Filming On A Microbudget’ is available in bookshops and online now.

Slamdance Festival Diary

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Lisa Trnovski, producer of Mum & Dad, updates us on the US premiere at Slamdance.

Mum & Dad, Microwave’s first micro-budget feature, premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival on 18 January. Producer, Lisa Trnovski, travelled with the film to promote its upcoming US release. Here, in her own words, is her festival experience:

Wednesday 14 January – Packing and Prep

Well, everything that I can do seems to be done – Revolver (distributor of Mum & Dad) have delivered quads and badges and screener postcards, so Steven (director) and I can do some hustling on Main Street; I have set up a few meeting with US distributors who might be interested in our next project and have familiarized myself with the map of Park City and how it all works. The only problem now is of the sartorial kind – what am I going to wear???!!! I hear it’s freezing in Park City and full of glamorous celebrities – so how can I successfully combine warmth and style without looking like the Michelin man? I finally decide to go for layers and a good hat and boots and figure that if there are lots of celebs in town – no-one is going to be looking at me!

Thursday 15 January – Travel and Arrival

Steven and I meet at 8am at Victoria to begin our epic journey to Park City. We see a journalist friend, Damon Wise from Empire magazine, at Gatwick airport. He was the first person to review the film at Edinburgh International Film Festival last year and gave the film a fantastic start on his Edinburgh blog. It turns out that the flight is practically empty, so we get to stretch out, watch some movies (Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Lakeview Terrace for me and Wanted and Tropic Thunder for Steven), and chat to Damon who is a bit of a Sundance/Slamdance veteran and fills us in on top tips for screenings and parties.

As soon as we arrive at the airport in Salt Lake City, we can feel the film festival buzz – there are loads of people milling around and paparazzi waiting for those celebs to arrive. At the airport we meet another Microschooler – Doug Coupland who pitched a doc in the 2007 selection. His film didn’t get through, but he has other projects and is covering the festival for his film review website.

We jump on our transport to our apartment and crash out – can’t wait for tomorrow!

Friday 16 January

Steven and I head into town to pick up our passes from Slamdance HQ and to hand in the quads and begin the guerilla marketing campaign for our screening on Sunday. Everyone is really helpful and friendly. We grab some breakfast (with Russell Simmons from Def Jam) and meet up with our friend, Sol Gatti-Pascual (former Microwave Production Executive) whose film, Unmade Beds, is screening in the World Dramatic Competition at Sundance. She has got us passes for Sundance, so now we have dual citizenship! We try and get some tickets for Sundance screenings at the main box office – there’s nothing available! Our only chance is to get up at 6am and queue at the box office or do the wait line at individual theatres 2 hrs in advance of any screening. Mad – you’re at a film festival and can’t see any films.

I go off to see some short films (which I had managed to book in advance) and Steven scopes out Park City, working out where the free computers and internet are, where the free water is, and bumping into Mariah Carey.

We meet later and go off to Slamadance HQ for some free drinks, where we meet another ex-Microschooler, Dean Fisher, who was at Microshool with us in 2006 with a project called Eddie’s Dead. He’s here with another film called City Rats which he has, funnily enough, just sold to Revolver for UK distribution. We chat to other film-makers and do some badge and flyer distribution before the Revolver “boys” – Justin, Dave and Seb come along for a couple of drinks. Then it’s on to Flannigan’s – a strange Irish bar to meet up with the Unmade Beds crowd and onto the Sundance Film-maker Late Lounge with them. By now Main Street is totally packed with film festival and party goers. I get the impression that there are just so many things going on that it would be impossible to do everything, but I am curious about the party scene. We do some mingling and chatting at the lounge and call it a night at 1am – wow, it’s been a crazy first day!

Saturday 17 January

I want to try and see some films today and I kick off with a great indie, relationship story called A Quiet Marriage which has me laughing, smiling and even shedding a few tears.

I meet up with Steven afterwards to do some flyering, emailing and a bit of souvenir shopping. And once that’s done, it’s already 5pm and time to head back to Slamdance HQ and grab the film-makers at the happy hour to drum up support for our screening which is looming. We try to get into a film called Weather Girl at 6pm, but it’s full. So we head for dinner and decide to come back for a thriller – Not Forgotten at 8.30pm. We are feeling a bit tired today and decide to get the last bus home as tomorrow is going to be a long day.

Sunday 18 January

Tonight’s the big night! It’s now seven months since we’ve been on the road with Mum & Dad. We’ve had good reviews, great reviews and really terrible reviews. We’ve had our UK release, done panels and press, played big venues (Odeon Leicester Square to 800 horror fans) and small venues (my living room with the biggest critics – my friends); but this is a new continent and potentially the biggest audience in the world, so it’s important that it is a success.

So, despite knowing it’s going to be a late one, I’m up at 6.30am and although I try to stay in bed for a while, I get bored and head off into town. I hang out at the cool coffee shop and earwig on a producer and editor who have a few films at Sundance. They reckon the town is very quiet this year and that business is definitely slower. Not a great sign for someone just making their first steps in the business, but I guess it’s never easy.

More fly posting, dropping off postcards and chatting before going to a movie at 12.30pm. Steven and I then meet up and go by our friend’s house to pick up our three remaining quads and then we’re off to explore some of the other Sundance venues. First up is the supermarket – Albertsons’s which as well as stocking all your food and drink needs, is apparently also THE place for late night meetings. Need to finance your film, or meet a Hollywood exec – go to the bakery section, actors are in fresh fruits and veg.

Next stop, The Yarrow, where the vast majority of press and industry screenings take place. There are a lot of journalists milling around in the lobby beside the huge log fire – the pressure is obviously on to see movies and file reviews back before the competition. We run into a film-maker friend, Alex Orr, who made a wonderfully funny satirical horror called Blood Car which screened in Edinburgh alongside Mum & Dad and has been a companion at quite a few festivals now. Alex and his girlfriend (who plays “Meat Girl” in his film) are working as volunteers at the festival. They opted for outside duty which means they do 4 hours work a day and then have the rest of the time to watch movies and hang out – and the festival puts them up and they can eat at the volunteer village – sounds great!

It’s getting really cold now and I am feeling the effects of my early rise. We bump into the Unmade Beds team. Seeing them are excited about the first reviews which are good, makes me feel a bit nostalgic for Edinburgh, when we first unleashed the film and got feedback – I guess that’s one of the things which makes you keen to do it again.

And now it’s time – we head up to Slamdance, putting up the last of our posters and flyers. On the way, I spot Robert Redford – he’s literally a breath away from me, strolling into the Egyptian Theatre – that’s definitely top celebrity trumps!

The screening is half sold and they are expecting a lot of last minute ticket buyers – fingers crossed!

In the end we are 3/4 full and everyone seems up for it. Steven does a quick intro and the film plays. Well, so far, so good – they laugh in the right places and groan and wince in the right places. There are no walk outs or fainting (they are a hardcore lot) and the film gets a huge round of applause and most people stay for the Q&A which is always a good sign.

So – America has had a taste of new British, micro-budget horror and they seem to like it – here’s hoping it bodes well for the US release in May.

Find out more about the UK multi-platform release for Mum & Dad.

Read Steven’s festival diary for the Mum &Dad world premiere in Edinburgh.

Find out more about Mum & Dad in our Get Inspired section.

The Changing Face of Festivals

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0000

As Sundance opens for 2009, we look at how festivals are adapting to an ever-changing climate and the impact it is having on indie cinema.

In the context of an American economy in recession and coinciding with the hope signalled for many by the inauguration of US President Barack Obama, the 25th Sundance Film Festival opened on Thursday 15 January. By its very nature as a festival established to champion smaller, so-called ‘independent films’ of diversity and risk, Sundance is a constantly evolving phenomenon.

Sundance Festival Director, Geoff Gilmore, tackled the issues emerging in the present climate and Sundance’s ongoing relevance, saying, “festivals have changed and the industry aspect of their existence is entrenched. If festivals are to remain relevant to what has always been their lifeblood (young people, new talent, and a new generation), their mission must continue to evolve. To this end they need to expand their accessibility and their creative focus and they need to take risks, to create the atmosphere for that aforementioned expansion of the sense of the possible. If festivals don’t continually rethink how and what to showcase for the future, even without abandoning their traditional cultural purpose and aesthetic standards, then the festival world will go the way of the dinosaur”.

Co-founder of The Sundance Institute, Robert Redford, kicked off the 25th Sundance Festival with news of a potential expansion oversees into Abu Dhabi and noted wryly that “it feels like Sundance has been celebrating its 25th anniversary for the past few years”. He re-capped the festival’s history for the press and confirmed the festival’s commitment to discovering new film-makers. As far as the festival and the prospects for the independent film community are concerned, he’s “hopeful”.

Following the significant drop in the number of acquisitions between Sundance 2007 and 2008, Variety noted that “a bleak economy, a shakeout among indie distributors and a sluggish track record among last year’s entries raise the question: Can even high-profile projects make a sale?” United Talent Agency’s Richard Klubeck claimed that it’s not just the loss of specialty distributors causing angst. “It’s also the fact that a couple of the buyers that are still around have reduced the level of commitment they’ll make to a film.” Creative Artists Agency’s Micah Green commented that his clients “are realistic on where the market is and are not expecting that the sales process is always as simple as ‘go to Sundance, screen your film, have a bidding war’.”

This more scaled back, cautious climate for sales at Sundance, chimes with changes in film-makers’ attitudes. Despite hopes of a distribution deal resulting from screening at Sundance, DIY release options are now more widely considered as a real distribution method. Indiewire reported that distribution consultant Steven Raphael, who worked closely on Lance Hammer’s release of Ballast in 2008, says using Sundance as a platform is a good idea in theory, but practically, it’s far more challenging. “Some people want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but we haven’t completely transitioned yet,” he says. “You still have to use the old-school methods.” If your average film-maker found out about their Sundance acceptance in November, they’d have just a month to get everything in order, says Raphael. “Are your theaters booked? Are your posters ready? Is your media set? Consultants don’t work on projects for four months just to get paid,” he adds. “You need four months.”

Ted Hope, an independent film producer, expanded on this central thread about the distribution and exhibition of ‘specialised’ films within a film industry in transition. He was invited to give the closing keynote address for the Arthouse Convergence, a gathering of exhibitors and others held in Salt Lake City, a week prior to the Sundance Film Festival.

He announced, “In case you haven’t heard, our business is in the midst of a transformation from a limited supply gatekeeper entertainment economy based on impulse buys to a new paradigm based on creator-controlled content and an ongoing dialogue with the audience. This affects all of us: film-makers, exhibitors, distributors, and film lovers”. He reflected that “It once was that distributors generally only made available films that fit their pre-existing marketing model. Their marketing spend was not based on the film’s content – but their acquisition or production of a film was based on justifying that pre-set marketing spend. We (both the film-making and film exhibiting community) are now just learning how to determine, and to access, what an appropriate marketing spend — based on the film that was actually made – is. In the process, we are learning how to prepare for, access, and exploit what have far too long been under-utilized tools and practices: community, collaboration, and appreciation”.

Take a look at some top recommendations for this year’s festival, including some low-budget gems, from:

Variety

Spout

iTunes – Sundance Shorts

Mum & Dad Premieres at Slamdance

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0000

Mum & Dad continues its festival success, premiering in the US at Slamdance Film Festival on 18 Jan.

Following its unique multi-platform release in the UK on Boxing Day 2008, Mum & Dad, the first Film London Microwave feature is now heading to the US for its North American premiere this weekend.

The film has already showcased at a number of international festivals, including Edinburgh International Film Festival, Frightfest, Sitges International Film Festival and Leeds International Film Festival – where it won a Silver Melies. It will now be seen at Park City as part of the Slamdance Film Festival.

Check out the twilight screening of Mum & Dad at Treasure Mountain Inn 10.45pm, Sunday 18 January.

Festival programmers have described the film as ‘stunning, brilliant, and a must see’.

Mum & Dad is distributed by Revolver Entertainment and is set for a full US release around Mother’s Day.

The film, starring Perry Benson and Dido Miles, is a tale of suspense and gore. It follows the journey of Lena, a Polish immigrant who is taken in by a perverse family that live at the end of a Heathrow airport runway. They live off the contents of supposedly ‘lost’ luggage, but the ‘family business’ is much more sinister. It is the directorial feature debut for director Steven Sheil and is produced by Lisa Trnovski.

For more details about the US premiere, visit the Slamdance Film Festival website.

Find out more about Mum & Dad and our other Microwave filmd in the Get Inspired section.

Boxing Clever - Mum & Dad Release

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0000

The first Microwave-funded feature is set for multi-platform release on 26 December 2008.

Mum & Dad, the first project produced through Film London Microwave, the micro-budget feature film-making scheme, is set for a unique multi-platform release this Christmas. The film’s distributor, Revolver Entertainment, will be testing a groundbreaking release strategy, which has proved to be somewhat controversial. Mum & Dad will be the first film in the UK to be released simultaneously in selected cinemas, on DVD (retail and rental), Pay-Per-View (PPV) [Sky Box Office, Film Flex] and Video-On-Demand (VOD), on 26 December.

This will be the first time this release strategy has been seen in the UK and next year a similar strategy is planned for Mum & Dad in the US – cunningly hinged around Mother’s Day. The transatlantic premiere will be in Park City, as part of the Slamdance Film Festival.

Revolver Entertainment‘s Managing Director, Justin Marciano, explains that: “Being the first UK distributor to release Day and Date across all platforms enables us to be the market leader in offering consumers the ultimate choice to watch the film in the way they choose, whether this is at home, or on the big screen – or both.”

Mike Hewitt, Home Entertainment Marketing Manager at Revolver, adds: “By offering Mum & Dad a theatrical release, we are catering for the film fans who wish to see more of this product in the theatrical arena. Another strong reason for the multi-platform release is to try and help combat film piracy…Of course, we do not expect to see this strategy rolled out over higher-budget films, but for a small, UK independent film, we believe it gives the film a much wider recognition, which in turn can only help the British film industry.”

Mum & Dad, an intense horror set around London’s Heathrow airport, is the directorial debut of Steven Sheil. Featuring a talented cast, including Shane Meadows regular Perry Benson, the story is focused around a murderous and perverse family who live in a house at the end of the runway – right under the roar of the flight path. They live off the contents of supposedly ‘lost’ luggage, but the family business turns out to be much more sinister.

It is not the typical film you’d expect to find on this season’s schedules, but that’s exactly what makes it stand apart. Mike Hewitt continues: “With the majority of film releases over the festive season being of light, or family oriented fare, we are releasing Mum & Dad on Boxing Day to cater for the horror / genre fans who are often overlooked at this time of year.”

Lisa Trnovski, producer of Mum & Dad, comments: “We are very keen to see how the general public responds to the film. We’ve played at a few festivals and always had a great response. From mainstream festivals like Edinburgh to genre specific affairs like FrightFest – where the film was put to the test by 600 horror fans on the big screen at Odeon Leicester Square. That was nerve wracking – but they loved it! Hopefully other genre fans will too and will show their support on Boxing Day.”

With the availability of special Mum & Dad Christmas cards and wrapping paper, as well as the impending release, you can treat yourself to a frightfully good Christmas!

Watch the latest Mum & Dad trailer and register to enter exclusive competitions: www.mumanddadthemovie.com.

Read about the film’s success on the festival circuit so far in Get the News.

Find out more about Mum & Dad and the other Microwave films in our Get Inspired section.

Digital Innovation in UK Indie Film Companies

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Screen Daily chart the progress of Take 12 – a digital innovation programme from NESTA/UKFC.

A new initiative from NESTA and the UK Film Council was launched in Spring 2008, with the ambition to help drive growth in British independent film companies by encouraging them to take better advantage of new technologies. ‘Take 12 – The Digital Innovation in Film’ project has teamed up 12 independent British film companies with specialist partners to reach audiences in new ways.

The programme is specifically designed to help small independent British film companies embrace new business growth opportunities through digital distribution. At the project launch in March, John Woodward was explicit in his assertion that the scheme is not a production fund and would not finance new kinds of content, but was designed to help support the evolution of digital distribution primarily of feature films.

The 12 participant companies were selected from 50 entries and represent creative businesses at different stages – incorporating film production, distribution and sales. They have been teamed up for an 18 month period with specialist partners who are helping them to develop the content, marketing and digital distribution potential of their films to audiences around the world in new ways. Each organisation has a specially tailored programme which includes financial/business planning support, identifying and delivering opportunities for new forms of distribution, with the goal of improving the UK film business’s potential for growth and investment.

Although launched in March 2008 the Digital Innovation in Film Fund was also promoted at the Power To The Pixel event at The Times BFI London Film Festival, where they announced that starting in December 2008, Screen International’s Screen Daily will blog the developments of the companies mentored through this scheme by their respective ‘innovation partners’. This reflects the intention to share all the discoveries that the participant companies make with the wider industry.

Screen Daily reported that “the 12 film businesses have been paired with their innovation partners, who will work closely with them to devise a specific digital strategy”. These innovation partners are:

MTM London/Illumina Digital
Strategic consultancy firm, MTM London, has teamed up with multi-platform production company Illumina Digital to act as one of the innovation partners on the programme.

The six businesses attached to MTM/Illumina are:

Breakthru Films
Mosaic
Film Export UK
Metrodome
Zini Limited
Hollywood Classics

HUGE Entertainment
The second innovation partner is HUGE Entertainment, a UK digital entertainment agency focused on creating new opportunities for media businesses to embrace digital technology.

The six businesses attached to HUGE are:

B3 Media
Lux
onedotzero
Revolver Entertainment
Vod Almighty
Warp Films

The discoveries and innovations made and shared by these companies will undoubtedly set new precedents for the British film industry.

It will be fascinating to see how these various new digitally driven distribution strategies benefit the exposure of UK micro-budget features and the emerging talent behind the films.

Tongue Twisting Tale

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Año uña, the debut feature by Jonás Cuarón, is being released today by Unanimous Pictures at Curzon, Renoir, Ritzy and beyond…

It may be a tricky title to master, but apparently that’s the point. Writer/director Jonás Cuarón explains that the tilde in Año uña makes it unique to the Spanish language. A difficult sound to master for most English speakers, including his girlfriend, Eireann Harper, an American native who not only plays one of the lead characters, but also helped produce and edit the film. She remarks that it is “a play on all the divides that language can put before us”.

Año uña is a dual language subtitled film, switching between English and Spanish – with the action spread across two cities, Mexico and New York. Eireann plays the part of Molly – an American tourist who becomes enchanted by the sights and sounds of Latin American culture. In turn, Diego, a teenage boy she meets on her travels, becomes enchanted by her.

As a written synopsis this all seems to follow a fairly conventional storytelling pattern, until you realise how the film has been constructed. Jonás spent a year of his life taking still photos with a 35mm camera. He ended up with thousands of pictures and hundreds of different ways in which they could be hinged together. It was only after studying the pictures as a massive installation that identifiable themes began to emerge and Jonás embarked upon writing a screenplay.

“Well, when I was taking the photographs I didn’t really know what the story was going to be, or what the characters were going to be – at the end of that year when we started editing the photographs I noticed that the people I spent most of the time with that year with were my brother and my girlfriend – they’re the ones I photographed the most so they became the main characters. He’s a 13 year old Mexican boy and she’s a 21 year old American girl so I knew the story was going to be a story between them and that story interested me a lot because I live part of my life in Mexico and part of my life in the US, so the relationship between both languages and both cultures was something that I wanted to talk about.”

It is perfectly natural for Jonás’ brother and girlfriend to become the focus of the story, but maybe a little strange for the director to interpret a sexual undertone in the creation of his narrative? “I always thought it was funny and when they acted it they always, I hope, took it as a fictional acting job. I mean in a way, to help them, all characters in the movie remain with the names they have in reality – my brother’s name, Diego. Everyone kept their real names except her – I changed it from Eireann to Molly because I knew there was going to be many scenes where my brother had to sexual things about Eireann – so I thought he’d feel more comfortable if I changed her name.”

(Still from Año uña – Jonás Cuarón’s debut feature film)

There are multiple themes running through Año uña – all involving boundaries on one level or another. The relationship that blossoms between Molly and Diego highlights an “impossible love due to the boundary of age, language, culture”. However, there are also the constraints of time and place, and the sense of time passing. This is apparent in the segmentation of the film by season, the perceptible personal growth of the main characters and the change in family dynamic (Jonás’ grandpa unfortunately passed away during his period of documentation).

“Since the movie was done with still photographs I always knew one of the main themes was going to be one of time and the patterns of time and how nothing lasts forever. That’s why the photos I ended up taking after my grandpa’s surgery ended up being very important to set the theme and tone for the movie. Even though it’s not the main thing in the story, the fact that he dies, it kind of sets the tone to the idea that time is always passing and that nothing is forever…A photograph can only ever capture one moment.”

Wanting to “accentuate this feeling of time” the film starts in black and white and gradually becomes full colour – playing with the idea of a photograph representing a single memory. “For me, something that happened farthest back is more abstract and with less detail, and the closer you come to the present it has more colour and more texture. You remember it better.”

Watching a series of static photos can seem a little jarring, especially in a day and age that is saturated by the moving image. The idea was borne out of a thesis Eireann was writing about Chris Marker’s movie La Jetée – a short science fiction film from the 1960s, shot in black and white, telling the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. It is constructed almost entirely from still photos – the similar format offering definite parallels between this and Año uña.

Besides being influenced by this very stylized film, Jonás also “wanted to prove with this movie that you don’t always need a big production (budget) or studio backing. We wanted to find a way to make cinema kind of into the way writer’s always brag about their craft – which is that they only need a pen and a piece of paper. So we wanted to make a film where all that you needed was a camera and a computer”.

After a year spent physically taking photographs, they spent a further 5 months scanning them into a digital format and recording a basic soundtrack in a closet. The entire production budget for the first cut of Año uña was $8,000 – a cheering thought for all micro-budget film-makers out there!

“What was important to me was to get the first draft of the film and show that, to get support from people. I tried to get support before and ask advice from different director’s, but the problem is that it was such an unusual thing we were doing people really didn’t understand it, so they weren’t able to help us…I showed the movie to a sound designer I really admire, Martín Hernández (Amores Perros, Babel, City of God), and he immediately saw that the movie had a lot of range to experiment with the sound design. Since there’s no movement in the photographs him and I always knew the sound design was going to be probably one of the most important elements of the film.”

Jonás perhaps did have an advantage over your average film-maker – being the son of the critically acclaimed Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu mamá también, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men). However, despite Jonás having grown up around film sets, he originally shied away from following in his father’s footsteps. It was only the thought of creating a relatively unique project on a limited budget that inspired him.

Año uña received its national premiere at a festival in Mexico. In Europe, its premiere was in Venice, which is where Jonás met Mia Bays – the Production Executive for Microwave. She came on board as the film’s marketing consultant, offering invaluable input – “…she’s really known how to promote a film like this”. The film has been screened at festivals in San Sebastian, Helsinki, Oslo, UK, Latin America, as well as picking up an award at Thessaloniki Film Festival in 2007.

“So far it has sold in UK and Mexico – for me it is (best suited to) Mexico and English speaking territories because of the whole play between both languages. More than selling the film, taking it to festivals has been an opportunity to see how the movie plays with people. We started it as an experiment and it’s always good to see how the experiment worked.”

Año uña has a limited theatrical release in cinemas from today – for specific times and venues check out film listings on the Time Out website. For further information about the film visit IMdB.

Shifty Show & Tell

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Following the premiere at the London Film Festival, the team update us on the film’s exciting new progress.

It’s been a busy few weeks for the Shifty team – the producers tell us more about how things have been going:

“The film has had a great few weeks, which began with the The Times BFI London Film Festival (LFF). The screenings at the Odeon West End and The Ritzy went really well, with a great reception from both audiences, and real enthusiasm for the Q&A at the end.

We had some great reviews off the back of the screenings from Baz Bamigboye in the Daily Mail, Time Out included it as one of their three ‘Picks of the Festival’, Heat magazine called it ‘Ace!’, and The Observer reviewer wrote that his ‘personal discovery of the festival was a British pleasure called Shifty’.

But to cap off all the LFF excitement, we have also been nominated for 5 British Independent Film Awards! The nominations are for Best Debut Director (Eran), Best Actor (Riz), Best Supporting Actor (Danny), Best Music (Molly and Harry) and Best Achievement in Production (me and Ben). As you can imagine, we’re all over the moon about it, especially as we are up against films such as In Bruges, The Duchess, Hunger, and Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. We were the fourth most nominated film this year, against some big-budget rivals. The awards are on 30 November so keep your fingers crossed…”

Following the festival success, representatives from the Microwave and Shifty teams will be taking part in a panel discussion for British Creative Exchange on 27 November. Cultivating a season of events based on collaborative international creativity and talent, the British Creative Exchange touches on a number of different disciplines each year whilst annually focusing on selected fields and practice themes.

The panel discussion, which will include contributions from Maggie Ellis (Head of Production, Film London), Eran Creevy (Director of Shifty), Sandra Hebron (Artistic Director, LFF), Sara Frain (Manager Theatrical & Broadcast, Metrodome) and Dave Calhoun (Time Out), will discuss 21st Century film festivals.

To find out more about the event, visit the British Creative Exchange website.

Find out more about Shifty in our Get Inspired section.

Mum & Dad: A Festival Circuit Hit

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0000

With an upcoming theatrical release, Mum & Dad is gaining popularity and winning prizes on the festival circuit.

Mum & Dad, Film London’s first Microwave feature, written/directed by Steven Sheil, has become a festival hit in recent months and has been playing to audiences all over the country. Premiering at the Edinburgh International Film Festival to rave reviews, the film has gone on to show at numerous festivals including Frightfest, Mayhem Horror Festival in Steven’s home town of Nottingham and Leeds International Film Festival where it won their Silver Melies.

The Silver Melies jury agreed that ‘Mum and Dad was an impressive debut feature, and its twisted narrative, claustrophobic atmosphere and almost prosaic approach to torture, kept us talking! Despite its low budget the film had excellent production values, great performances from the cast and an overall feel of Britishness, which somehow added to its disturbing tone. An unsettling viewing experience, but a film which manages to successfully balance graphic violence with very dark humour’.

This intense micro-budget horror is set around London’s Heathrow Airport. A murderous and perverse family live in a house at the end of the runway right under the roar of the flight path. They live off the contents of supposedly ‘lost’ luggage, but the ‘family business’ is much more sinister.

Mum & Dad’s festival run continues at Northern Lights Film Festival. Get to Newcastle and check out the following screenings:

Wednesday 3 December: 21.00 at Tyneside Cinema

Friday 5 December: 21.30 at Tyneside Cinema

Book tickets, and find out more about the festival.

The film has also steadily been gaining international interest, being selected for screenings at Horrorthon in Dublin, Fantasy Filmfest in Germany, Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival and Sitges International Film Festival where it will go on to compete for their Golden Melies.

If you would like to find out more about the film and take advantage of an opportunity to meet the film-makers, then The London Film School holding an event for film students and industry guests on Tuesday 25 November at 5.45pm. A screening of Mum & Dad will be followed by a panel discussion including writer/director Steven Sheil, producer Lisa Trnovski, MD of distributor Revolver – Justin Marciano, and Microwave Production Executive Mia Bays.

Places are limited, and interest can be registered at the LFS website.

Mum & Dad, starring Perry Benson and Dido Miles, is set for a unique multi-platform release. Don’t miss the film in cinemas and on DVD in the UK from Boxing Day.

Find out more about Mum & Dad and out other Microwave projects in the Get Inspired section.

Sponsorship and Film Distribution

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0000

A look at recent developments in film sponsorship and its effect on distribution.

Sponsorship and product placement has long been bound up in the world of film production financing. But a recent development in the independent and low-budget film world has sparked discussion about the viability and integrity of sponsors actually funding the distribution, specifically the ‘theatrical release’, of films. A recent example of this phenomenon is Nike, the sportswear manufacturer, funding the US release of Sidetrack Films’ documentary Beautiful Losers made by Aaron Rose and Joshua Leonard.

The ‘independent’ nature of the documentary and its exploration of a youthful community of artists that sprang up in early 1990s New York City, contribute to the art/commerce debate provoked by Nike’s involvement.

The film-makers describe Beautiful Losers as a film that ‘celebrates the spirit behind one of the most influential cultural moments of a generation. In the early 1990’s a loose-knit group of likeminded outsiders found common ground at a little NYC storefront gallery. Rooted in the DIY (do-it-yourself) subcultures of skateboarding, surf, punk, hip hop & graffiti, they made art that reflected the lifestyles they led. Developing their craft with almost no influence from the “establishment” art world, this group, and the subcultures they sprang from, have now become a movement that has been transforming pop culture. Starring a selection of artists who are considered leaders within this culture, Beautiful Losers focuses on the telling of personal stories. It speaks to themes of what happens when the outside becomes “in” as it explores the creative ethos connecting these artists and today’s youth’.

The film-makers and Sidetrack Films considered the options offered from conventional distributors after the film premiered at Austin’s SXSW Film Festival early in 2008. Ultimately they opted to self-release the film with the financial backing and synergetic marketing clout of Nike. It was reported that Nike assisted in funding a five market launch for the film. The film won the Documentary Jury Award at 2008 Cinevegas and opened in August 2008 at New York’s IFC Center, before it’s wider release.

Documentaries seeking theatrical release can rarely count on traditional theatrical release and often need to investigate alternative methods. However, one blog asked if Nike’s involvement in partnering with Beautiful Losers is ‘a slippery slope into backdoor sponsorship or an ingenious distribution strategy? A “win-win” deal with a major multinational company or a “hold your nose” way for a film to reach an audience while helping a sportswear manufacturer gain street cred?’.

One perceptive response highlighted that Beautiful Losers would have ‘no print & advertising costs to recoup and the power of the Nike brand’s advertising and PR departments’, an advantage which no indie distributor could match. They asserted that film-makers should be encouraged to be curatorial about their sponsorship partners, stating: ‘There are many brands out there with positive attributes- it’s just up to the film-maker to seek them out and convince them’.

The film-makers of Beautiful Losers themselves responded, pointing out that ‘the conversation isn’t just about whether corporate sponsorship is good or bad anymore. Considering it’s our peers, the kids we grew up with in this culture and the kids with street cred, who are now working within the larger corporate machinery with an avid interest in wanting to promote art and culture that are working along with the independents like us… the dialogue can now be “hey, how do we all work together to make really amazing art and connect with audiences without stepping on each other’s toes too much?”.’

Another critically acclaimed indie documentary that has recently found an unusual sponsorship arrangement for its release is Patrick Creadon’s timely and topical I.O.U.S.A. The film outlines the US’s ballooning national debt in interviews with investor Warren Buffett and former Federal Reserve chairmen Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker. Through interviews and commentary, the film discusses the dangers of the US’s national debt, which, according to the Bureau of Public Debt, an arm of the US Treasury, is about $9.5 trillion. More than just sounding the alarm, I.O.U.S.A. also posits measures for a road out of the current fiscal crisis.

Peter G. Peterson, the 82 year old co-founder of the Blackstone Group LP, celebrated the launch of his foundation to raise awareness of the national debt with a screening of I.O.U.S.A. Peterson acquired the film as part of his proposal to spend $1 billion to ‘restore fiscal sanity’ amongst North Americans. The non-profit organisation helped promote the film’s release and offered free DVDs of I.O.U.S.A. to the public following its theatrical run. I.O.U.S.A. screened for the news media in Washington in July 2008 and opened onn 22 August in 400 theaters at 10 cities across the US, through the distributor Roadside Attractions. Patrick Creadon, who previously directed Wordplay, about crossword-puzzle enthusiasts, carries the hopes that his film I.O.U.S.A. will give as much notoriety and buzz to long-term fiscal policy as An Inconvenient Truth gave to environmentalism.

It was reported by Bloomberg that ‘Mr. Peterson’s foundation is planning an active Internet strategy, tapping bloggers and social networks to reach young voters, who typically pay little heed to far-off fiscal obligations. In early 2009, as the new president takes office, the foundation will try to draw attention with programming on public television, and possibly television advertisements and infomercials… It will also spend $5.3 million in grants to help young people learn about public and personal finance’. Mr. Peterson is also quoted as saying ‘you can buy a lot of airtime with $1 billion. People are going to hear from us’. Creadon’s modestly budgeted documentary I.O.U.S.A. found the ideal sponsor/partner to strengthen both its message and opportunities for exposure to a far wider audience.

The ways in which independent film-makers are working to get films into theatres, outside of traditional distribution companies is a rapidly expanding area of interest and innovation as Peter Broderick outlined in his two part exploration of the ‘New World of Distribution’ to which a commenter responded with a useful listing of current digital distribution resources. Ted Hope also highlighted in his recent talk ‘How The New Truly Free Filmmaking Community Will Rise From Indie’s Ashes’ at the Film-makers Forum 2008 in Los Angeles.

Watch the trailer for Beautiful Losers.

Watch the trailer for I.O.U.S.A..

I.O.U.S.A. is released in London and key cinemas nationwide on 14 November.

Power to the Pixel 2008

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Find out more about the points of discussion at this year’s digital distribution and film innovation forum.

Power to the Pixel, the digital distribution and film innovation forum, took place once again as part of the London Film Festival. For anyone interested in independent film seeking to anticipate the fast evolving new worlds of online financing, digital distribution, cross-media story-telling and audience-building this event is pivotal. This year the first day was full of presentations to a packed audience at BFI Southbank – with the follow-up day, a series of interactive seminars and informal group meetings with the guest speakers, at the Royal Society for Arts.

Day 1

Following the introduction by Liz Rosenthal, Christy Dena, the first speaker on Day 1, spoke from the point of view of a Narrative and Game Design Consultant. Her focal point was the new resonance film-making has in the cross-media age with a number of excellent case studies of “transmedia storytelling” to convey her ideas. She followed up this talk on Day 2 with an even more specific set of ideas on how to help structure and manage the coherence of a narrative – that whilst playing out in a conventional film production, is also conceived as a cross-media storytelling project right from the outset.

Christy discussed, again with relevant examples, the techniques to expand the experience of the narrative far beyond the film into other various media including internet forms such as web-series, podcasts, email, online social networking, online maps and gaming/experiential websites, mobile devices/phones, live-events, print, radio and television. These other media are now incorporated not just to promote the film release on various platforms, but also to expand the universe of the film (which often then becomes a mid-point in the ‘immersive experience’ of the narrative). The techniques Christy Dena discussed were often related specifically to how you maintain the audience’s engagement and provoke enough interest for them to follow a “call to action” and make the jump from one media to another in order to smoothly follow these new, fragmented narrative experiences where “reality is the new play space”.

The second speaker was Digital Strategist and Experience Planner Alex Johnson, whose talk reflected her grasp of audience behaviour and the logistics and strategy behind developing cross-media projects and what various niche audiences and demographics want. She discussed the sliding scale of projects from “extreme niche to mainstream” and how the use of “ambient techniques” can be developed, for example the location of the film can have ongoing connection with the project (as with Film London’s Movie Maps), or fictional characters can contact the audience real time during the film/show/narrative experience.

Part of the logistics that Alex Johnson discussed was the family as a focus group and the requirement to plan to engage an audience at the times of day when it is known that various types of audiences are most likely to access various media. She noted that in terms of online habits mum’s most often follow recommendations, dad’s connection is more transactional, and that a teen girl is more continuous in engaging with digital media, texting, downloading and making an identity ‘online’.

The next section of the day, The New Exhibitors, consisted of brief presentations by leading online innovators in the world of exhibiting non-studio movies: Brian Newman, President, Tribeca Film Institute (US), Cay Wesnigk, Founder, Onlinefilm.org (Germany), Sara Pollack, Manager Film & Animation, YouTube (US), and Fabio Lima, Founder, MovieMobz (Brazil).

These individual speakers then came together for a panel discussion moderated by Michael Gubbins (Editor of Screen International), who, along with most of the other panel members, felt some animosity towards the presentation by Sara Pollack with it’s emphasis on “branded entertainment”, i.e. developing and funding new content with branding that is overtly woven into the experience of the web-series and narrative shorts themselves. This was in sharp contrast to the ideas of Cay Wesnigk who’s www.onlinefilm.org aims to face the issues of piracy of independent films with a process and philosophy of fairness in which the film-makers bond together to create the marketplace on sites such as his which distribute films digitally with pay downloads, whilst sharing the bandwidth cost amongst those who upload their work for audience availability.

Many members of the Power to the Pixel audience were inspired by the idea of Fabio Lima’s company Movie Mobz. He is developing the idea of “Cinema on Demand”. This means an audience with limited access to theatrical screenings of more independent/world/specialised films can create the demand for a screening by ‘mobilising’ an audience on the Movie Mobz website. In towns where Fabio Lima’s Rain Network of cinemas exists they can then screen the films if the online audience generated demand is sufficient. Such initiatives as this inspire new hope that the future of the theatrical experience of cinema will not be reduced to mass-marketed blockbuster films at the expense of cinema’s rich diversity.

The New Cross-Platform Financiers: Audiences, Sponsors and Brands followed with a similar format of presentations and roundtable discussion moderated by Liz Rosenthal, Director of Power to the Pixel. The guest speakers for this were: Slava Rubin, Co-Founder, Indiegogo (US), and Adam Erlebacher, Co-Founder, Placevine (US). These discussions outlined the new models for film and cross-media project financing that are emerging online to help creative’s find funding and synergies with relevant brands who can support, promote, and potentially finance, projects.

The rest of Day 1 was taken up by a series of presentations by film-makers with various innovative strategies for making and distributing their films. M dot Strange vividly recounted his experiences taking his wild, animated film “We Are the Strange” to festivals, spurning weak distribution deals, and using blogs and YouTube to “crowd-source” and “audience build” an involved fanbase. He then went on to successfully sell his DVD direct to his audience and subsequently cut deals with suppliers for retail chains.

Timo Vuorensola gave an amusingly lackadaisical presentation about the spoof sci-fi feature he produced, Star Wreck: In The Pikinning, which has been downloaded 8 million times and how he plans to finance his forthcoming film through online donations that are rewarded by involving the audience in the process of production with exclusive updates, screenings and merchandise.

In sharp contrast Jamie King gave his more radical provocation regarding the distribution of his film Steal This Film, which sought distribution directly from the pirate, peer to peer film download sites that the film documented and has been downloaded over 6 million times. He sees his activities as a “resistance to propriety information” which he says is “supporting and buying into a system of domination that is really quite terrifying”. He said that resistance to the pirates was futile and that independent film-makers could “embrace the pirate” in the process of raising their profile online, as controlling the system of paying for pieces of information online was doomed to failure. Addressing the independent film-making community he said this meant that “we are all distributors now” and through peer to peer networks can invest in the promotion of our films. Finally, he proposed the idea of DISCO, a distribution coalition through which all the pirates could unite for one day to promote a specific film that would otherwise not have a high profile.

Lance Weiler spoke imaginatively and with an impressive technological clarity informed by the production and distribution of his own successful independent films. Hollywood agencies and studios are keen to anticipate the techniques he is already exploiting to develop audiences and transmedia narrative projects. He outlined his work in passing on his and other film-maker’s similar experiments through the “social open source project” for film-makers – The Workbook Project. Primarily he updated the audience on the activities of From Here To Awesome, the online film festival aiming to aid the democratisation of the discovery and distribution processes of independent film so that film-makers are less reliant on festivals and old models of distribution.

The day’s talks were rounded off by film-maker Arin Crumley who last year presented his film Four Eyed Monsters at Power to the Pixel which is well-known for innovating many new ways to engage an audience. Register now to access the learning modules in Get The Knowledge and see a full case study on Four Eyed Monsters in ‘DIY Selling Your Film’. This year Arin outlined his interests in the evolution of online editing sites, local server networks, open source social networking, standard meta-data for films and simplified rights for digital content. Also, in terms of approaches to film-making, he outlined his ongoing excitement with mixed media, subjective methods, participatory relationships with the audience with the presence of a two-way conversation and the idea of a “project universe” of which the film is one part.

Day 2

The second day had a wide array of smaller workshops that participants could choose from which delved more discursively into the work of the speakers who had participated in Day 1 of Power to the Pixel. This was followed by several of the film-making speakers pitching their cross-media projects to an audience of investors and Power to the Pixel participants at The Project Forum. This anticipates the more formal plans to establish The Project Forum at next year’s Power to the Pixel, which aims to be a “ground-breaking new marketplace for cross-media stories – stories that can span film, tv, online, mobile, gaming”. This will involve two days of one-to-one meetings and networking events, introducing the best new UK and international projects to the innovative financiers, distributors and promoters emerging around this type of work.

Videos of all talks are available on the official Power to the Pixel website.

Shifty Scores Five BIFA Nominations

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Second Microwave feature receives multiple nominations for this year’s British Independent Film Awards.

Nominations for the 11th British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) are in and Shifty ranks amongst the few projects that have received multiple nods.

The British Independent Film Awards celebrates achievement and honours new talent in independently funded British film-making. The BIFA pre-selection committee viewed more than 150 films from which the nominations were selected.

The second feature produced through the Microwave scheme crops up across several categories, from Best Debut Director to Best Achievement in Production. The full breakdown of Shifty nominations is as follows:

The Douglas Hickox Award for Best Debut Director – Eran Creevy
Best Actor – Riz Ahmed
Best Supporting Actor – Daniel Mays
Best Technical Achievement – Molly Nyman and Harry Escott
Best Achievement in Production

“We are ambitious for our films and so thrilled that the industry has honoured Shifty with BIFA nominations in such key categories. We are proud of everyone involved and biting our nails in anticipation of a win or two!”
Mia Bays, Microwave Production Executive and Marketing Consultant

The BIFA ceremony, hosted by James Nesbitt, will take place on Sunday 30 November at the Old Billingsgate Market.

Shifty is due for UK release on 10 April, courtesy of Metrodome Distribution. Mum & Dad, the inaugural Microwave feature, directed and written by Steven Sheil, will be released on Boxing Day 2008 in the UK and Mother’s Day 2009 in North America, courtesy of Revolver Entertainment.

Three more features have been greenlit by Microwave and are currently in various stages of pre-production and a further five Microwave films will be commissioned in 2008/09. Find out more about all of the Microwave projects in the Get Inspired section.

An additional three nominations have been received for this year’s BIFAs – find out more on the Film London website.

A Monster Release for Halloween

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0000

After creating a pre-release buzz at FrightFest, Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer is now available to rent – a horror must for this spooky season.

Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer offers up a classic hammer horror formula – man against beast. Green screen and CGI have been put to one side and old school techniques such as puppetry and animatronics have been employed. There’s plenty of bloody action, but also flashes of well-timed comedy.

Produced by Canadian enterprise Brookstreet Pictures, the film was in development for over a year before a gruelling 44 day shoot. Trevor Matthews, CEO of Brookstreet and Jack Brooks himself, talked to us about shooting a special effects-laden independent on a budget.

With an entrepreneur business man as a father it opened up a world of resources to Matthews and his team. Thankfully this alleviated the usual nail-biting worry regarding production office space and accounting. “I had a whole network of seasoned business veterans to go to. It was huge advantage to us – so we could focus on creativity. We were continuing on with the writing and artistic side of film-making.”

However, they weren’t handed everything on a silver platter. Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer was made with private equity, but only after the film-makers could prove they were worth the investment. “We were involved for a few years in making a slate of 5 or 6 different short films. All of our investors were really happy with this – were really excited to see the process. It was a whole new learning experience for them.”

“We made some sales with our short films and I think people would argue there is becoming a market for them. You might even be lucky enough to make something that finds an audience – finds a purpose. I always preach for independent film-makers to get out there and make short films – you can make good short films on a micro-budget.”

So what tempted them to choose Jack Brooks as their feature debut? “It’s a fun genre, a monster movie with the gore and a little bit of comedy in it. You don’t want to make Citizen Kane for your first feature – you’re gonna shoot yourself in the foot if you try too hard. I think it is also a really forgiving genre – even if the monsters look a little silly, it’s passable as there is enough action and pace that it’s still really entertaining. There’s a big demographic of people who enjoy this kind of movie.”

The monster madness was provided by David Scott – no stranger to special effects and specialist make-up, having previously worked on revered productions such as Dawn of the Dead and 300. Matthews explains: “Dave Scott came in out of nowhere – he said he would do the project for the same price or cheaper than anyone else is offering and work harder than anybody. It was the perfect place and time for both of us – we were looking to get a load of work done, go all out with that, and Dave wanted a project that could be a calling card for him.”

“Before we’d even said yes he was sending us drawings and long emails explaining how he saw the different approaches. He was all over it from square one. And he came through with flying colours…From the first email to the very end the guy was just a rock star – I have nothing but amazing things to say about Dave.”

As well as stellar talent behind the camera, the team knew they also wanted a “horror icon” in the lead role opposite Jack Brooks. “We wanted someone the fans could relate to. We wanted someone who could do some physical comedy. We put a list of names together and went to a really good casting agent.” They were lucky enough to get their first choice – Robert Englund.

Having an acting veteran and horror legend on set certainly ramped up the pressure for feature film newbie Matthews. “During development, for 2 weeks I stopped everything and watched 2 movies a day.” He watched the greats – Marlon Brando and James Dean. “Then I tried to watch some fun stuff – Bruce Campbell in The Evil Dead, Jeff Goldbum in The Fly, Indiana Jones, Gremlins, Back to the Future.”

His level of research, hard graft and attention to detail seemed to have paid off. So, does he have any advice to other aspiring film-makers working on a tight budget? “Don’t ever sacrifice quality – get the shots, get the performances, get the footage in the can.”

Find out more about Brookstreet Pictures and Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer on the official website: www.brookstreetpictures.com.

Shifty Premieres at London Film Festival

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0000

First round Microwave film, Shifty, is set to have its world premiere at the London Film Festival on 24 October.

Following the premiere of Mum & Dad in Edinburgh earlier this year, the second feature produced through Microwave is set to premiere at The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival – on Friday 24 October at Odeon West End at 9pm. A second screening will take place on Sunday 26 October at Ritzy Brixton at 6.30pm.

Shifty is a story about Chris (Daniel Mays – Atonement, Vera Drake) and his return to his home town to see his old friend Shifty (Riz Ahmed – Britz, Road to Guantanamo), who in his absence has begun dealing crack cocaine. This taut thriller, set over the course of an eventful 24 hours in an edgy suburb of London, was written and directed by Eran Creevy and produced by Ben Pugh and Rory Aitken.

Not only benefitting from a world premiere in the capital, Shifty has also been nominated for a FIPRESCI International Critics Award for best first or second feature. The Shifty marketing cogs are definitely turning and the team behind the production are also still hard at work. Rory Aitken, Shifty producer, tells us more about how things have been going in recent months:

“Ben, Eran and I have had an amazing month or so with the film. Shifty went down very well at our first screening (although we were sitting at the back sweating bullets). There were distributors as well as cast and crew at the screening. We had lots of good feedback, so had a follow-up screening the following week just for distributors, where we had a full house which was a good sign.

Following this, the London Film Festival invited Shifty to be part of their programme in October, which is very exciting. And we had interest from several distributors, which was even more exciting. We went to meet them all individually to discuss the film, and after some negotiations with them all, we went with Metrodome (a great UK distributor who did Donnie Darko, and Oscar-winning The Counterfeiters last year). They will be releasing Shifty in 2009.

We are also in negotiations with a great sales agent, who will sell the film to foreign distributors, so more news to follow soon hopefully. In the meantime, Eran has gained an agent, and is now busy writing his next film, which we hope to shoot next summer.”

Find out more about Shifty and Mum & Dad in Get Inspired. If you want to know about sales agents and distribution sign up now to use our online learning module – ‘Selling Your Film’.

Bigga than Ben: The Russians’ Guide To Ripping Off London

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Tom Kirk talks to writer/director Suzie Halewood about her upcoming feature Bigga Than Ben.

Bigga than Ben was the first project application to arrive through the post in the year that Microwave launched, but was already mid-shoot and at a marginally higher budget level than the parameters of the scheme. It sounded immediately like a sharp, compelling film by a team refreshing expectations for British independent cinema. Bigga than Ben later screened at Film London’s London UK Film Focus to an audience of UK Distributors. It premiered to sell-out audiences at the Moscow and Edinburgh Festivals, going on to take $500,000 at the Russian box office and win the prize for Best Feature Film at the Los Angeles DIY Festival.

Based on the award-winning ‘joint-diary’ Bol’she Ben by Pavel Tetersky and Sergei Sakin, Bigga than Ben irreverently follows the varied con-tricks and scams discovered by two self-confessed ‘pieces of Moscow scum’ intent on surviving in London long enough to save enough cash to either get married (Cobakka) or start a band (Spiker) back home in Russia. The film is an exhilarating and comical rampage through the crooked underbelly of London that through the central friendship ultimately resonates poignantly with the hopes, struggles and insights they gain from their time in the capital. Despite many of their dubious views and despicable behaviour the scruffy charm of the two leads Ben Barnes as Spiker and Andrei Chadov as Cobakka can’t help but make you warm to them as the story progresses. The budgetary constraints free the film up to capture comic details and immerse us in the multi-ethnic texture of London that puts countless bland, transatlantic portrayals to shame. A London familiar to many Londoners is imaginatively seen afresh through these Russian visitors’ eyes; a credit to the energetic direction, and inspired cinematography and design of the Bigga than Ben crew.

I caught up with the writer/director, Suzie Halewood to hear more about the process of making the magnificently micro-budget Bigga than Ben.

Was the joint-diary format of the book something that inspired the structure of the film or was it something you had to adapt substantially into a new narrative shape?
I hadn’t read the book by the time I got the rights, so it was a bit of a shock to find out that nothing actually happened. There were ‘moments’, but no structure – less and less as the book went on as they got hooked on a variety of drugs. I didn’t really try to add a story. It was more about getting the breakdown of their friendship in some kind of narrative order.

Do you feel that the film closely follows the book on which it was based or is the book a jumping off point for your script?
We only really made one thing up – and that didn’t make it to the final cut as it was so clearly a different tone. The writers said ‘don’t make us nice’ but it’s difficult not to feel sympathy for Ben Barnes and Andrei Chadov.

Did you have in mind a Russian and British/European audience when you made the film or were touches like the Cyrillic chapter titles to contribute to the texture of the Russian view of London?
We knew the best way of getting the money back was to cast a Russian star – and that worked. Didn’t expect Andrei to be quite so brilliant as he spoke no English, but he and Ben Barnes bonded and ended up living in the same house, which is lucky as Ben was sleeping on people’s floors up until then.

Was it a conscious casting decision or good fortune to choose a British rising star for one of the central roles who could pull off a Russian accent, but also bring UK star appeal off the back of a more widely publicised film like Ben Barnes and his Prince Caspian fame?
I needed someone who didn’t look English and Ben has black eyes and slavic cheekbones. His agent peter brooks had sent me some quick time movie of him being cast for an American role and he thought he was an amazing actor. He’s a seriously exciting prospect as an actor, and yes, the Caspian thing helps with PR – but everyone comments on how brilliant his performance is – including the Russians who have adopted him as one of their own!

One of the great sources of visual energy in the film is it’s fresh take on London with the exploration of ‘foggy Albion’. I came out of the film seeing London with refreshed eyes. Did you have a guiding principle behind the locations sought out for the film?
I live in Kilburn and Liz Holford (producer) lives in Wood Green, so both areas are pretty filled with people of all nationalities. What I hate in films is when someone decides to film in the Oxo tower because it’s a great view, when it has nothing to do with the scene. The great thing about filming in Kilburn and Camden is the natural rich make up of the background. This is the London I like.

The vivid style and formal playfulness of the film seems to reflect the subjective experiences of the characters, was there a progression that you were consciously keen to develop through the film in tandem with the characterisations?
In the end, the jumpy cutting was due to me being a control freak, wanting to re-cut and not being terribly au-fait with final cut.

What aside from the book were the thematic and stylistic influences on the film?
The style is entirely down to the Director Of Photography and Designer Ben Moulden and Damien Creagh. Ben and I initially thought we’d shoot it like those crappy holiday snaps tourists take, but you just don’t have the time. Coming from a promo background, Ben adds something that doesn’t fuss over close-ups and over-the-shoulder safety shots. He’d be sneaking in those 5mm lenses every time my back was turned!

Irrespective of budget I think it is a great film, but how did you finance Bigga than Ben and only if you don’t mind me asking at this stage, approximately what was the final budget?
Friends, VAT returns, remortgage and tax incentives all went towards our top secret budget.

For a smaller-budget film, how did you manage to get such great music for the soundtrack to the film?
Pockets from Strummerville bought on some great bands, as did Stewart from Videosonics. The first Editor James Smith Rewse put on Pete Doherty’s Albion – I didn’t think we’d get it, but it got a huge round of applause at the Moscow Film Festival. Other music came from friends of crew and the Mescaleros were supportive of us using the tracks they made with Joe Strummer. Isobel Heyworth was a friend of the loader Trevor – she’s a GP and should be signed immediately!

Read Liz Holford’s 6 top tips for micro-budget producers.

Make sure you check out Bigga than Ben on the opening weekend Friday 10 – Sunday 12 October and tell all your mates, too! The film will be playing all shows at the Apollo, Regent Street and selected shows at the Tricycle, Kilburn and Genesis in the East End. This being a truly indie movie, the release budget is small so an audience on opening weekend is crucial. Don’t delay your visit or you might miss it!

Film Independent's Film-maker Forum

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Film Independent’s fourth annual Film-maker Forum is set to be held between 26 and 28 September at the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles.

This year’s keynote speaker is scheduled to be Ted Hope (American Splendor, The Savages). Dawn Hudson, Executive Director of Film Independent has said ‘Ted’s insight into the film community is vast and unique. He is both a film-maker and an advocate for the independent community who continues to break down barriers in cinema.’

A sneak preview of The Brothers Bloom, written and directed by Rian Johnson will launch this year’s forum. Starring Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel Weisz, the film tells the story of two con men who take a woman on a romantic adventure around the world in pursuit of priceless artifacts desired by some of their rivals. This will be followed by a Q&A with producer Ram Bergman.

The forum is made up of panel discussions on topics such as ‘The Micro-budget Film As A Calling Card’, ‘Rethinking Distribution’ and ‘The Cost of Cutting Corners’, as well as networking opportunities and off-the-record talks with prominent indie film figures. 2008 forum speakers include Keith Calder, (producer, The Wackness), Davis Guggenheim (producer/director, An Inconvenient Truth) and Cara Mertes (Sundance Institute). This year, there is also a new documentary track with specialized sessions on making and marketing documentary features.

The awarding of the Film Independent’s Sloan Producers Grant Award, which carries an unrestricted cash price of $25,000, will mark the close of the forum. The grant is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which seeks to create and develop new scripts and films about science and technology and to see them into commercial production with national and international distribution.

Film Independent is a non-profit membership organization that champions independent film and supports a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation, and uniqueness of vision. They provide ongoing networking sessions for film-makers, cut-rate services for film-makers and a mentorship and placement scheme entitled ‘Project:Involve’. They also produce the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Spirit Awards.

The 2008 Forum is sponsored by Kodak, SAGIndie, Sony Pictures Classics, Directors Guild of America, Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, and IMDb.com.

Find out more about The Film Independent Film-maker’s Forum.

For more information or membership details visit the Film Independent website.

Somers Town – An Accidental Feature Film

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Tom Kirk on the micro-budget master Shane Meadows, and his latest feature Somers Town.

Tom Kirk on the micro-budget master Shane Meadows, and his latest feature Somers Town…

In recent interviews, British film director Shane Meadows often describes his determination; that regardless of budget, his working relationship with the actors is what is most crucial to his process of film-making. This is echoed in the production notes of his latest feature Somers Town, which describe how ‘every scene was carefully and extensively rehearsed and improvised with the actors before the film crew became involved, and the schedule was painstakingly structured to allow the director to shoot the whole film in chronological story sequence. Shane was particularly committed to allowing scenes to be filmed as one continuous take’. This is obviously a way of working that Shane has perfected. It is not necessarily suited to all micro-budget productions. Somers Town was largely shot in the London neighbourhood of its title, with most locations in close proximity to the production base – one of the key wisdoms of any micro-budget shoot.

Shane’s feature films share a spontaneous, ‘captured’ sensibility, which fuses a scrappily natural humour to darker emotional undercurrents. Each new film feels like a dramatic maturing of the approach he honed on numerous free-wheeling short films and video sketches made early-on whilst helping out at Intermedia Film and Video in Nottingham. These initial short films were shot with modest means, but already had an assured wit and engaging performances that inspired other emerging talents with a feeling that you could make a short film and get it seen based on good ideas and DIY determination. Keen to create opportunities for local film-makers, Shane helped set up ‘Six of the Best’ in Nottingham, a monthly screening of short films by local talent which showed his witty, knock-about crime spoof Where’s The Money Ronnie? (made for £250).

The London Film Festival screened a double bill of Where’s The Money Ronnie? and his 60 minute film Smalltime, in which – in a wry nod to Nottingham’s legendary outlaw Robin Hood – his petty crooks ‘rob from the rich to sell to the poor at half-price’. Despite the self-consciously ridiculous costumes of wigs and shell-suits, his improvisatory energy is effusively evident. Smalltime was funded on a budget of £10,000, but instead of delivering the appropriate length short film for broadcast on ITV, he defied expectations and pulled together a micro-budget feature that got screened in festivals, arthouse cinemas, TV and released on VHS; again in companion with his earlier short Where’s The Money Ronnie?.

New film, Somers Town, continues his vivid style and humour that in its natural awkwardness can be mistaken for amateurism when compared to more slickly scripted UK comedy dramas. This really just highlights the stale flatness of the performances in many of those other more conventionally scripted British films. A tale of the friendship between Marek, a Polish immigrant teen, and Tommo, a Midlands runaway, Somers Town has already won the two young leads a joint Best Actor prize at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival. Somers Town also received The Michael Powell Award for Best New British Feature Film at the Edinburgh Film Festival 2008 (now a cash prize of £20,000).

Shot in just ten days, after a short script by Shane’s friend and regular collaborator Paul Fraser evolved into a feature-length piece through Shane’s use of intense rehearsals and improvisation. Its achievements are all the more remarkable when you consider Somers Town began life as a short film commission from Eurostar. It again shows Shane’s inspired opportunism to make the kind of film he wants with limited means, almost by accident producing a feature length drama on a short film budget.

It has been reported that he was initially wary of working with a company such as Eurostar, that might have demanded crass product placement in exchange for funding. ‘My worry was that it was going to be shots of blokes in trains patting kids on the head and saying, “Have a nice day on the Eurostar!”’ he said in a recent interview. ‘I wrongly thought it was not going to be my territory’. Backing out of the project, Shane only reattached himself when he read Fraser’s script and saw that Eurostar was going to give him free reign to make his film his way.

The relevance and creative freedom that micro-budget features and short films still hold for Shane is something he has acknowledged, saying ‘Somers Town made me realise that I like working with undulation – a big one, a tiny one…A lot of directors I respect work like that’. Next, he’s planning his biggest budget project yet – King of the Gypsies – a story about the real-life bare-knuckle boxer Bartley Gorman, revisiting the subject of his earlier short documentary of the same title.

Shane’s website sums up his film-making spirit well, reminding us that his ‘limited-budget productions not only entertain, but are also there to inspire. Their raw energy and enthusiasm send out the clear message that any one can make a film with a little bit of talent, some borrowed equipment and a tenner for a raid on a charity shop’.

Somers Town is currently on general release in cinemas across the UK.

Watch the Somers Town trailer

Read more about Shane Meadows on Somers Town on the Film London website.

Microwave Films Secure Distribution

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Success for the first two Microwave films as Mum & Dad and Shifty are picked up by leading distributors.

The first two completed features made through the Microwave micro-budget film-making initiative, have secured international distribution.

Shifty, starring Riz Ahmed and Danny Mays, has been acquired by Metrodome for UK, Eire, and Eastern Europe. The urban thriller charting an exhilarating 24 hours in the life of an inner city drug dealer, is a debut feature for commercials director Eran Creevy.

Steven Sheil’s contemporary horror Mum & Dad, which was co-financed by EM Media, has been acquired by Revolver Entertainment for UK, Eire and North America.

This is a great start to the scheme, which was launched to champion and support visionary talent by challenging them to shoot commercial features for no more than £100,000 of cash and in-kind support. Claire Binns, Programme Director at City Screen, said: “the brilliant new Film London Microwave scheme bears its first fruit and shows what great young directing and producing talent we have in the UK”.

Three further Microwave films are currently in pre-production:

Analogue, a dark psychological thriller directed by Suki Singh.
The British Guide to Showing Off (working title), a documentary about the Alternative Miss World directed by Jes Benstock.
Freestyle, a teen romance based around the world of freestyle basketball directed by Kolton Lee.

Find out more about these greenlit projects in the Get Inspired section of the site.

The third round of Microwave is now open. To find out more, visit the Film London website. Deadline for applications is 26 September 2008.

Convergence Culture

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Tom Kirk, independent film enthusiast and one-time Microwave administrator, explores the effect of convergence on micro-budget movies..

Tom Kirk, an independent film enthusiast and one-time Microwave administrator, explores the effect of convergence on micro-budget film-making…

The issue of ‘convergence’ is having a significant impact on micro-budget feature film-makers. It is opening up vast new possibilities to profile and distribute work alongside established industry methods. A recent MIT seminar on ‘convergence’ outlined the ways in which media are merging, so altering the way in which a film reaches it’s audience. It also highlighted the way in which a narrative may transcend the confines of the feature film form with various cross-media storytelling strategies.

The MIT Program in Comparative Media Studies outlined the context for their research with a few clear definitions. They explained how ‘Cultural Convergence’ describes an “emerging pattern of relations bringing together entertainment, advertising, brands, and consumers in creative and often surprising ways”. They define these new relations through three key concepts: “transmedia entertainment, participatory culture, and experiential marketing”.

They claim that “this altered landscape privileges ‘expressions’ over ‘impressions’”; with engaged consumers drawing together information across multiple media experiences, creating new touchpoints for brands and properties. Finally stating, “convergence culture calls for a re-negotiation of the expectations of media content producers, advertisers, and audiences”. You can find out more about how this has had an effect in practice through our case studies in Get the Knowledge. And here below, are some of the most visible, contemporary trailblazers who are encouraging other film-makers to take up their ideas and harness the same cross-platform audience.

Lance Weiler

Lance Weiler is a film-maker and a self-distribution pioneer who recently participated in HotDocs newly formed Convergence Lab. Created by DocAgora, the lab focuses on a number of projects, bringing together producers, film-makers and interactive designers in an effort to develop cross-media strategies for their projects.

He has described how “cross-media (the telling of stories across multiple mediums, devices and platforms) is a topic that we discuss often – an exciting and mind-boggling concept that opens a digital Pandora’s box. It challenges the concepts of linear structure…and offers new ways to build audiences and with some work could lead to new forms of project financing”.

Weiler reflects “so how do you shake the shackles of the traditional and move into the next phase of what could prove to be a digital storytelling renaissance? There will be those who say I can’t be bothered and by all means I’m not saying that the story shouldn’t be the focus. It is all about story. I’m merely suggesting that you consider the new tools and outlets that are emerging. These developments allow you to tell your stories in new ways, larger ways, and in many cases more challenging ways”.

Read Lance Weiler’s top tips on cross media marketing in Get the Resources.

Learn more about Weiler’s Workbook Project, an “open source social experiment” for content creators.

From Here to Awesome

Lance Weiler, the film-makers behind widely self-distributed micro-budget features Four Eyed Monsters and We Are The Strange, along with an array of industry partners and sponsors, have come up with a cross platform “discovery and distribution” film-festival From Here to Awesome. The festival’s line-up of films is selected by the online audience, based on 3-minute pitch clips created by the applicant film-makers to attract an audience to their film. The most popular films get a cross-platform distribution deal.

Many micro-budget and independent films premiere at festivals where interest in them peaks in the days just before the festival and then plummets when they’re not immediately acquired. For these films and film-makers the eventual, limited, theatrical release a year or two down the line is often a big disappointment.

Weiler explains, “the democratization of the tools of film-making has been a big success story in recent years, but it’s led to a large surplus of films. Festivals are overtaxed with submissions, and the real hurdle for film-makers today is not getting work made but the discovery and distribution of that work. There’s a huge bottleneck in the distribution system, so Arin, M. Dot and I decided to apply the ways we’ve harnessed audiences for our work to build as much virtual foot traffic as possible for other film-makers.”

Films are given a ‘day and date’ release meaning they will be screened in live events in various countries around the world as well as streamed and downloaded from various digital distributors at the same time. The festival has teamed up with Mob Movie, who have 165 drivers in different parts of the world, and Brave New Theaters for the grassroots screenings. For the home viewer, films can be seen via Amazon Unbox and Vudu well as other digital distributors, through aggregator Heretic Films, which is providing Errors and Omissions insurance for the titles. Also, Miro, an open source technology creator, in partnership with Blip TV is giving From Here to Awesome a branded video player so audiences can download films directly from the film-maker’s own websites.

According to Weiler, the festival’s ultimate aim is to “let film-makers know about the digital labyrinth and teach them that they have some degree of control over it. We hope people will be able to realize the value of aggregating their audiences and cross-pollinating with other film-makers and realize the value of having their work available across multiple platforms. Our hope is that if we are successful with From Here to Awesome the festival itself will become obsolete because the things we are practicing will become commonplace.”

Find out more about how the festival works and its recent launch.

B-Side.Com

Another interesting company exploring new ways for independent film-makers to reach an audience is B-Side.com. B-Side is an entertainment technology company, capturing audience opinions at festivals around the world to discover hidden gems from the thousands of films produced each year.

They run the websites for more than 150 festivals, so are directly linked to the millions of festival attendees, providing them with the world’s largest film focus group. Accurately polling of festival audiences generates highly valuable information.

In a recent interview with Film Threat online film journal, Chris Hyams of B-Side discussed their recent success with the grassroots screening program for Doug Benson’s film Super High Me that made history in April 2008, setting the record for widest opening for a documentary. For the films they assist, Hyams says they have developed alternate marketing initiatives, that enable films “to generate the same amount of buzz as through a theatrical release in order to prime the pump for the ancillary services, where the money is made today in film”.

B-Side’s activities are described by Hyams as a response to the film industry’s existing distribution model which “driven by the economics of the industry, rewards minimal risk taking in film-making” and follows a “rote formula for commercial success”. He says, “focus today is on a film’s “marketability” versus its “playability.” As a consequence, mass audiences are only exposed to a limited number of proven film formulas, such as a story everyone already knows, a director with a proven box office track record, an A-list cast or the possibility of creating a franchise with multiple sequels. The established studios believe that the cost is too great and the risk too high to do anything else. As a result, of the 36,000 movie screens in the US, 30,000 are limited to the mostly banal top 10 grossing films. As in other industries, technology is poised to shake up the film business, from a production and a distribution standpoint”.

In relation to B-Side’s distribution success with Super High Me, Hyams says, “we created the phrase, “Roll Your Own Screening” to promote the grassroots screening program, and had overwhelming success. Just as we did with Before the Music Dies, we energized the natural constituencies of the film to get the word out. Similar to how Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are now providing music for free to create the buzz that drives future revenue streams, we were blazing a similar path with Super High Me. We had the focus of the program center on 20 April, which is well-recognized as a pot-smoking holiday, and we worked all the angles to get the word out to people and organizations interested in hosting screenings. It worked, and the film opened at 1,076 locations, setting the record for widest opening for a documentary”.

Talking about the kind of alternative profile raising that creates an equivalent to that generated by mainstream cinema’s theatrical releases Hyams says “it all comes down to generating the buzz and excitement for a film that translates into ancillary revenues such as DVD sales, cable, international distribution, etc. Theatrical releases currently are money losers for studios, with the primary purpose of driving these ancillary revenue opportunities. What we’re offering is a zero dollar investment to generate a level of buzz that is on par with the release of a film like Super High Me in the traditional theatrical model”. He estimates that more than 35,000 people had seen the film after one month on release and that the average number of people per screening has been 30. The DVD was released in June 2008, another measure of the success of the program.

Regarding other projects that B-Side is working on Hyams says “we’re continuing to nurture the relationships that we have with more than 150 festivals and we expect to sign up another 100 new festivals this year. We’re a key technology partner to them, and earlier this year we introduced four new services that will allow festivals to increase revenue while improving the experience for attendees. The services automate ticketing, sponsorship engagement, online streaming and Facebook community outreach”.

Whether or not your goal for your micro-budget feature film is the ever-elusive, lucrative ‘negative pick-up’ deal or coordinated sales to various world territories, the innovative, community oriented and DIY approaches evolved by indie distribution pioneers through new technologies are alternatives worth considering from the outset to maximise the awareness and exposure of your film.

Extra Microwave Advice Surgery!

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Due to popular demand, we are organising an extra Microwave advice surgery, supported by the Camden Film Office. Register now!

Would you like to hear more about Microwave?

Would you like to meet the Film London Microwave Production Team, alongside Microwave film-makers who have experience of the programme?

Do you have an idea for a micro-budget film and would like to hear whether your ideas would fit the scheme?

Microwave is open to all London film-makers. If you are a film-maker in the Camden area and would like to learn more about the Microwave scheme, then we are holding the following advice session supported by the Camden Film Office:

3pm Monday 8 Sept 2008

7th Floor, Meeting Room 2
London Borough of Camden
Town Hall Extension
Argyle Street
WC1H 8EQ

Places are limited for this session. If you would like to book a place, please RSVP to preethi.mavahalli@filmlondon.org.uk, including your name, contact telephone number and email address.

Find out more about Camden’s North London Film Fund.

Microwave Advice Surgeries

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0000

If you would like to meet the Microwave team and get more information on the scheme, then why not attend one of our information sessions?

If you are thinking of applying to the scheme, but would like the chance to find out more and get your questions answered, then we are holding two advice sessions here at Film London. You will have the opportunity to meet the Microwave team as well as our Microwave film-makers who can tell you about their experiences on the scheme.

Surgeries will be held on Wednesday 27 August 2008.

11. 00 AM – 12.30PM
2.00 PM – 3.30PM

Film London
Suite 6.10 The Tea Building
56 Shoreditch High Street
London E1 6JJ

Places are limited for these advice sessions and Film London is now taking bookings for attendance to these workshops.

If you would like to book a place for ONE of these sessions, Please RSVP to

tessa.inkelaar@filmlondon.org.uk

including your name, contact telephone number and email address
N.B. both sessions will be identical, please only book for one session.

From Budget to Blockbuster

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Following the success of Batman: The Dark Knight, we look at the more humble beginnings of its director Christopher Nolan.

Hollywood Blockbuster Batman: The Dark Knight has recently broken box office records to become one of the most successful films of all time. Taking over $150m in its first weekend, the best opening weekend ever in the US, it went to become the fastest film to pass $400m in North America. Critics have praised the hotly-anticipated film and its director Christopher Nolan.

However, the studio hit is a far cry from Nolan’s previous micro-budget work which made his name in the business. His debut feature was 1998 black and white thriller Following, about an aspiring writer whose voyeurism led to being framed for a major crime.

Following was truly micro-budget in its ethos. It was made for only $6,000, was shot only on weekends using non-professionals, and used a crew of four or five people. Nolan has said on the making of the film, that it “was always planned as an ultra-low budget film, so the substance of the film was both inspired by and planned around the shooting style which we developed to accommodate our limited resources.” Following won praise at international festivals such as San Francisco, Toronto and Slamdance.

The success of Following soon led to his next feature Memento, starring Guy Pearce as a man suffering from short-term memory loss who tries to solve his wife’s murder by tracking clues through notes, Polaroids and tattoos on his body. Memento was a huge indie hit made for only $5m, but went on to make $26m at the box office. Again, it received critical acclaim and Nolan went on to receive numerous honours including Academy Award, Golden Globe and Director’s Guild of America nominations amongst others.

Nolan’s next leap was to make the bigger budget movie Insomnia starring Al Pacino and Robin Williams. He has now been totally embraced by the Hollywood studios and was put at the helm of the reinvention of Batman for Warner Bros. It was, however, in micro-budget film-making where he cut his directorial teeth and first attracted the attention of the big players in Hollywood.

The Dark Knight is currently on nationwide release.

To find out more about Nolan’s experiences in micro-budget film-making, check out these Metro, and ifp.org interviews.

Find out more about his debut feature Following.

From Here to Awesome Festival Launches!

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0000

The first ever open-source discovery and distribution festival is now underway.

Founded by DIY film-making pioneers Lance Weiler (The Last Broadcast, Head Trauma), Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters) and M dot Strange (_We Are the Strange), the From Here to Awesome Festival (FHTA) kicked off in Los Angeles on 26 July.

FHTA aims to put film-makers in direct contact with audiences. The festival has no submission fees and film-makers retain their rights and earn direct revenue from various distribution outlets. These include mobile devices, online, theatres and living rooms as well as guerrilla drive-in screening events. A wide range of promotional partners and distribution platforms are on board including Current TV, Amazon Unbox, Netflix, Indieflix.com, Hulu, Joost, Hereticfilms.com, Vuze and VUDU.

The festival is also staging a series of events called DIY Days in Los Angeles, Boston, New York, San Francisco, London, Melbourne and Edinburgh, where film-makers will discuss new models of funding, production, distribution and sustainability.

Co-founder, Weiler says “the internet has provided all the tools needed for film-makers to make feature films, but the struggle to secure a distributor and to market their film is still a paramount obstacle.” FHTA aims to address the difficulties in getting films seen by an audience, by letting film-makers know that “getting into film festivals is not the end of their movie’s life but just the beginning.”

Audiences chose the 22 film line-up from over 100 submissions, which includes both shorts and features. To view more details about the 2008 showcase selection, visit the From Here to Awesome website.

To find out more about the festival, and the DIY Days, visit the festival blog.

Learn more about how the festival works.

Microwave Provocation

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Tom Kirk, an independent film enthusiast and one-time Microwave administrator, explores the concept of micro-budget film…

Tom Kirk, an independent film enthusiast and one-time Microwave administrator, explores the concept of micro-budget film – not only how it can be approached, but how it has been executed successfully by well respected industry figures…

Yes, Microwave funds micro-budget features…but the scheme also trains, inspires and mentors emerging feature film-makers to imaginatively gybe around the obstacles, skepticism and hostile waters of the film industry. It inspires you with the real possibility of making your feature film and reaching your audience.

It’s all down to you ultimately. How determined are you? How much entrepreneurial ingeniousness, impassioned persuasion and creative conjuring can you muster?

Whether or not you actually get greenlit, funded and mentored by Film London’s Microwave scheme is not the sole purpose of Microwave. Hopefully, Microwave provokes you into action and, via the resources available on the Microwave website, incites in you a defiant sense of optimism, credibility and wildly imaginative cinema – via strategically disciplined, frugal production and promotional methods.

We happily dispel the withering assumptions and excess energy spent on bemoaning the difficulty in and the credibility of micro-budget feature film-making by throwing down the provocation to film-makers to step-up and join the preceding micro-budget mavericks: John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke, Chantel Ackerman, Werner Fassbinder, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez, Guy Maddin, Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock and Christopher Nolan – just a handful who have jolted cinema audiences’ expectations out of the ‘formulaic’ whilst telling great stories with vivid characters and contributors.

Almost every pioneering film-maker who has evolved a fresh cinematic vision, initially explored their ideas in a micro-budget feature – inevitably out of sheer necessity. Often only once you have excited an audience with your distinctive vision are investors likely to feel driven to invest in your subsequent or larger budget projects. An inspired, UK micro-budget film that provokes praise or prizes and draws a passionate audience is a far better result than yet another mid budget flop full of compromised ideas contorted out of all recognition to placate the requirements of multiple, wily or wary investors.

Film director Shane Meadows has expressed this sentiment about his own experience making Once Upon A Time In The Midlands, which signaled a decisive turning point in his career back towards lower budget, but creatively richer projects like This is England and Somers Town.

If you doubt that micro-budget feature films ever produce any revenue and only further impoverish the film-makers then consider the Oscar winning Irish micro-budget musical romance Once (2007) that is sailing past a 10,000% return on the money invested in its ‘micro’ production budget. Fox Searchlight reportedly provided not only a $1million ‘negative pick-up’ deal, but also a subsequent series of revenue share cheques. Or recall the success of Pieces of April, Slacker, Tarnation and Pi (I avoid referring to Evil Dead, Bad Taste and The Blair Witch Project as people will often dismiss their success as simply the horror genre’s perennial appeal).

Following the progress of our greenlit Microwave productions and reading production notes and reports on a lengthy range of micro-budget films confirms that a truly micro-budget conception is often the key. You consider the resources and locations that you already know you have available to you and build your production around them. ‘Writing to scale’ is a concept familiar to every budget level but especially micro-budget features. Credibility is inherent in your tenacious, ‘can-do’ attitude, so multi-tasking in roles is crucial, balanced against the enthused teamwork of a tight, cohesive crew. Cinema with a fresh, captured sensibility regularly springs from the drive and spontaneity that can infect a small, agile crew.

Far from a world of airless formats and formula, these micro-budgeted but hugely impassioned feature films can nimbly illuminate a diverse range of ‘London’ or ‘British’ stories with facets of documentary, fiction, animation and artists’ moving image. A British cinema that defies and re-invigorates creative expectations for film-makers and audiences should be the aim: less grumbling at circumstance, more humbling magnificence.

If this has inspired you to enter the world of micro-budget film-making yourself, then why not apply to our Microwave scheme?

Deadline for applications is 26 September 2008.

Microwave Round 3: Applications Now Open!

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Film London’s micro-budget feature film scheme opens today to find up to 5 projects to greenlight.

Microwave challenges film-makers to shoot a full-length feature film for up to £100,000 including cash and in-kind support. It is open to film-makers working in documentary, fiction, animation, and to artists working with the moving image.

Microwave was launched in 2006 to commission 10 debut feature film-makers. It provides an intensive approach to film-making with an emphasis on tightly focussed scripts and short production schedules. It also provides unique professional mentoring from established industry professionals and a bespoke training programme.

If you are a London-based production company looking for an opportunity to break through, then this is the scheme for you.

Deadline for entries is Friday 26 September 2008.

Two Microwave films, Mum & Dad and Shifty, have already been completed and are coming soon. Our round 2 films, Analogue, Freestyle and The British Guide to Showing Off (working title), are currently in pre-production.

To find out more about the scheme and download application forms, visit the Film London website.

Get more information on Microschool, the developmental programme for Microwave short-listed applicants.

Four Eyed Monsters Q & A

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Talk to the film-makers about their experiences in micro-budget film-making and self distribution.

Following their recent DVD release, the makers of Four Eyed Monsters, Susan Bruice and Arin Crumley will be on Spout. They are making themselves exclusively available on this online community throughout July.

In 2005, Bruice and Crumley made a feature film about their real life relationship in which they initially communicated through artistic means alone. The film-makers were pioneers of new self distribution methods and the film soon became a cult hit.

Throughout the film-making process, the film-makers documented, via a video blog, how the experience was having an effect on their relationship. After premiering the film at Slamdance 2005, they went to release episodes of their video blog on iTunes. It went on to become the first video blog on MySpace and Four Eyed Monsters became the first full length feature released on YouTube.

To put your questions to the film-makers, visit the Spout website.

Get to know more about the film-makers at the official Four Eyed Monsters website.

Festival Diary: Mum & Dad

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Steven Sheil on his experience of the Edinburgh International Film Festival so far…

Mum & Dad, Microwave’s first micro-budget feature is premiering at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Yesterday saw the first preview industry screening.

Writer/director Steven Sheil is up in Edinburgh supporting the film and soaking up all the industry buzz. Here, in his own words, is the festival experience so far:

Sunday 22 June

The World Premiere of Mum & Dad was last night at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh – a midnight screening attended by a couple of hundred people, who all braved the rain to come and watch a low-budget horror film filled with wrongness. Myself and Lisa (Producer of Mum & Dad) did an introduction and also brought all the cast up on stage – Perry Benson (Dad), Dido Miles (Mum), Olga Fedori (Lena), Ainsley Howard (Birdie) and Toby Alexander (Elbie), all of whom had made it up for the screening. It was great to be able to present them at the premiere because they are all a massive part of the film and bring so much to it with their performances – there wasn’t a weak link amongst them.

The film went down well – people groaned in disgust, winced in sympathy and laughed in nervous repulsion. A few people also walked out, but it was always timed with a bit of horror, so I don’t mind that. A guy sitting next to us started off with a gasp, fell forward onto the seat in front clutching his hands over his face and moaning, and then at the most offensive part of the film, finally bolted for the door! It was interesting to stay in and watch it with a crowd, trying to gauge if they were staying with it, finding out what they reacted to. When the screen went black at the end there was a great round of applause and a few whoops – a massive relief for all of us.

We had a quick drink in the bar and spoke to a few people. Everybody was really nice about the film. I guess if they were going to be horrible they probably wouldn’t make the effort to stay around and do it (unless I’d completely offended them, which is always a possibility). My favourite reaction came from a teenage actor who came to see the film with his dad – he had the same look on his face that I probably had when I saw Halloween when I was his age – wide-eyed and adrenaline rushing. He just said ‘That was…fantastic’. Brilliant, I thought, hopefully there’s another horror film fan for life.

Thursday 19 June

This morning was the press and industry screening for Mum & Dad – I didn’t go, but Lisa (producer of Mum & Dad) did and said we had a pretty good crowd. I met her at an EM Media brunch afterwards and some of the journalists who had been to the screening were there. (This was obviously when I started most regretting the free Guinness at last night’s opening gala party.) We handed out our bloodstained fairy cakes (adorned with the film’s logo on rice paper) which seemed to go down well.
I spent quite a bit of time talking to a journalist from Empire, Damon Wise, who really liked the film – and a few hours later got a text from Chris to say that he had posted about the film on the Empire website. He also put up a photo of the cakes, which means that all of our friend Jeanie’s hard work didn’t go to waste. Now if we can only translate cakes in mouths into bums on seats for the premiere we’ll be all right.

Read more about Mum & Dad on Steven’s personal blog.

Read the full story about the Mum & Dad premiere in Edinburgh.

Edinburgh Goes ‘Under the Radar’

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) has announced a brand new strand devoted to “raw, risk-taking work from the cutting edge of new movie making”.

This year’s festival will host a new section entitled ‘Under the Radar’ to celebrate the spirit of ‘cult’ film. Taking inspiration from John Waters, one of the festival’s guests last year, the new section has selected films made with tiny budgets but heaps of inspiration. It is hoped that ‘Under the Radar’ will support low-budget and independent films that are more offbeat and unpredictable, including those inspired by experimental art, subversive comedy and extreme genre cinema.

Speaking at the launch of the programme, artistic director Hannah McGill said “the term ‘cult cinema’ has become mere marketing-speak in recent years. With this new section, we want to re-animate the spirit of the truly cult-worthy ‘midnight movie’, by showing films that take real risks with their ideas, their aesthetic choices and their humour. This is a diverse section, but it is all the work of film-makers with vision, creativity, and balls”.

‘Under the Radar’ will screen six feature film premieres. These include Edinburgh College of Art graduate Martin Radich’s feature debut Crack Willow. Made for £300,000 and shot in Blackpool, it is a highly original take on the psychological effects of social decay. Blood Car, another feature debut from Alex Orr, was a fringe hit in the US and was made for only £12,000. It is the story of an eco-car that uses red fuel rather than green fuel which leads to a small-town bloodbath – view the trailer.

Also screening will be:

Bigga Than Ben: A Russians’ Guide to Ripping Off London, a dark comedy based on the bestselling Russian diaries of Pavel Tetersky and Sergei Sakin and directed by S.A. Halewood;

Spike, a horror/romance which explores the darker side of fairytale mythology, directed by Robert Beaucages;

The Third Pint, an experimental travelogue which follows a man who became invisible after drinking three pints, directed by Luciano Podacaminsky;

Strange Girls, about twin sisters and their perverse passion for porn and trepanation, directed by Rona Mark.

Short films will also be supported in this section with daring works being screened with these features.

To take a look at the full programme, visit the EIFF website.

Microwave film, Mum & Dad, is also having its world premiere in Edinburgh – read the full story. To find out more about this film, visit the Get Inspired section.

Mum & Dad Premieres at Edinburgh

Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Microwave feature film, Mum & Dad, has been announced as part of the line-up for the 2008 Edinburgh International Film Festival.

The dark and twisted tale of horror, written/directed by Steven Sheil and produced by Lisa Trnovski will have its world premiere at a special midnight screening at Edinburgh’s 62nd festival. The screening, taking place on 21 June at the Filmhouse, will form part of the festival’s late programme, Night Moves.

The film is set around London’s Heathrow Airport and the murderous and perverse family living in a house at the end of a runway. It is a debut feature for Steven Sheil, best known for his cult horror short Cry.

Mum & Dad is one of fifteen highly anticipated world premieres at the festival. These include gala screenings of: John Maybury’s The Edge of Love starring Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller; Vito Rocco’s Faintheart starring Eddie Marsan, Jessica Hynes and Ewan Bremner; and Shane Meadows’ Somers Town.

This year’s festival will be taking place at the earlier dates of 18 – 29 June. Two of its patrons, Sir Sean Connery and Tilda Swinton, have been confirmed to be in attendance.

Check out the film and support the Microwave film-makers at one of its two screenings at the festival:

Filmhouse 1 – Saturday 21 June at 23.59pm
Filmhouse 2 – Wednesday 25 June at 22.15pm

Book your tickets here:

http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/films/mum-and-dad/

To find out more about Mum & Dad and the other Microwave films, take a look at the Get Inspired case studies.

Microwave Launches New Website

Thu, 15 May 2008 00:00:00 -0000

Welcome to the brand new Film London Microwave website, an online resource for micro-budget film-makers everywhere.

This site provides inspiration, support and information to aspiring film-makers on all things micro-budget.

Learn all about the Microwave projects currently in production and development; meet the film-makers and get to know more about the micro-budget filming process through our Microwave case studies. Access useful links and top tips in our resources section and find out more about Film London’s Microschool training programme.

To get the most out of this site, please register for our learning modules. This will allow you exclusive access to an interactive information portal containing in-depth advice on specialist areas of micro-budget film-making from industry experts.

Microwave is a Film London commissioning scheme, in association with the BBC, supported by the London Development Agency and the National Lottery through the UK Film Council. It was launched in 2006 as a project for London-based film-makers to produce ten micro-budget feature films in the capital.

Visit this section regularly to keep abreast of micro-budget news from around the globe and all the latest developments on our Microwave feature films. Need a nudge? Sign up to the Microwave RSS feed.