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Truly Free Film

You Want To Start A Film Production Co.? Why Not Make It A Non-Profit?

By Chris Mason Johnson

I don’t have any statistics on this, but from what I can gather anecdotally, forming a non-profit to make a fictional feature film is a pretty rare thing, but it’s what I’ve done for my new (second) feature, Test, and it’s been a great experience. Mostly great. At first I did have to endure snarky questions from my non-filmmaking friends, along the lines of: “Aren’t you just admitting your film won’t make any money?” Well, no… (more on that later). From my filmmaking friends the response was more of a blank stare, followed by: “I don’t know anyone else who’s done that.”

There are a lot of filmmakers out there who make one feature and then stop. They didn’t break through to that magical “next level,” and there’s no way they’re doing the same thing all over again. But for those of us who are determined to keep making films on a small scale, truly independently — and who actually enjoy it — it makes sense to explore new models in a distribution landscape that’s in the midst of its own creative destruction and reconfiguring.

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Truly Free Film

Without An Audience, It Can’t be Art!

By Emily Best

I hold this apparently really unpopular view that without an audience, it can’t be art. “Art” is a social label, a negotiation between the artist, the object (or performance) and the viewer.

This is history’s fault. Art was reserved for the rich or those with access to the rich. We didn’t see how it was made, conceived, choreographed, or staged until it appeared in front of us. And mostly, everyone liked it that way. Artists got to create with very little interference. Audiences had very little interaction with the artists or processes that created what they saw in museums, theaters, and on stage, so they were happy to pay their hard earned money to witness that “magic.”

But now we live in the age of the digital download.

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Truly Free Film

Diary of a Film Startup Part 14: Early Results

By Roger Jackson

Previously: Indie Film Inspiration

Quarter Million Views
I thought I’d share some results — as in numbers — for a feature that is having a nice run on YouTube Movies. The film is called Time Expired, and won a silver award for Comedy Feature at WorldFest Houston. It was submitted to KinoNation last week. And in fact the master ProRes file (71GB) is currently being uploaded by the filmmakers to our cloud storage servers. What immediately caught my attention is that Time Expired has almost a quarter million views on YouTube Movies since it was placed there by director Nick Lawrence 12 months ago. That’s the full length (93 mins) movie, not the trailer — an average of 20,000 per month, and accelerating. Nick has kindly agreed to share the extensive stats that YouTube provide. It’s interesting and quite instructive, I think, as YouTube Movies becomes an increasingly significant — and profitable — option for indie filmmakers.

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Truly Free Film

If You Want To Make Movies, You Might Well Be Insane

The link between madness and creativity is undeniably there.  If you are, or know anyone in the indie film world, you know this is true without needing to see any further proof: it just goes with the territory, right?  And every day I try to get more movies made, seen, and appreciated, I see it clearer and clearer still.

My best advice to get a movie made remains to keep doing the same thing again and again, and expect to get a different result — which I believe is one of the standard definitions of insanity. I take it a bit further with my metaphor though, because you aren’t doing it right unless it really hurts a great deal.  I suggest that if you want to get a movie made you have to do something akin to running full speed towards a brick wall, sans helmet or pads, and expect that wall to open miraculously.  That’s how you get a movie made: commit to do something that has no logic and expect your passion and commitment to change the outcome.  It’s nuts. But….

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Truly Free Film

Diary of a Film Startup Part 13: Indie Film Inspiration

By Roger Jackson

Previously: Doubling the Upload Speed
 
First Looks
This is an important week for KinoNation. Well, every week is crucial for a startup, but this feels extra critical. We’re submitting our first tranche of films to several video-on-demand platforms. We haven’t finished the dashboard for our VoD partners yet — that’s scheduled for December — so the submission process is old school. That is, we’re sending them a spreadsheet with details of films, trailer, IMDb link, festivals & awards, and the all-important written pitch. The results & feedback from these submission — whether VoD platforms accept 10% or 30% or 65% of the films we show them — will give us the early data we need to solidify our business model. I’ll keep you posted.

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These Are Those Things Truly Free Film

“Cinema Is The Ultimate Pervert Art”

‘Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn’t give you what you desire – it tells you how to desire’ – Slavoj Zizek

I want a third pill! A pill that would enable that would enable me to perceive the reality within illusion itself!

Buy the DVD here.  You deserve it.

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These Are Those Things

The History Of Punk Rock On The LES

Ever since I accidentally stumbled in to a show and found Jeffrey Lewis performing, I have found him one of the most inspiring, delightful, & Must Listen artists of any sort.  Music, comics, and history.  I have posted him many times before.

Today, give your self a history listen, of the music form that made me want to get camera.