This year the event will mark Filmmaker’s Collaborative’s 25th anniversary and takes place on Friday, June 8, 2012 at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. The conference will feature sessions on: New models of funding, collaboration and distribution; Media-fueled impact; Kickstarter and other models of crowd funding; Speed dating for new strategic partnerships; and the ever-popular Art of the Pitch, an opportunity to observing media makers pitch their projects and listening to the feedback from the panel of industry decision-makers. If you’d like to pitch your own project, the deadline for submitting proposals is May 11th.

Visit the Making Media Now conference page for more information and to register for the event (you will save money if you register on or before May 11th).

If you’re an independent media maker working in New England, this is where you will want to be on Friday, June 8, 2012!

In 2010, the last sardine-canning factory in the United States—the Stinson Seafood cannery in Prospect Harbor, Maine—closed its doors, devastating the already economically depressed area and laying off 130 workers, some of whom had worked at the facility for 40 years or more. Enter Antonio Bussone, an Italian immigrant and owner of a Boston-based seafood company, who decides to buy the factory and convert it into a lobster-processing facility. Where others see the end of an era, Antonio sees opportunity: not only to build a new business, but also to bring exported jobs back to New England and revitalize a region. In a time when most US industries have moved offshore, Antonio’s idea seems almost foolhardy, but it galvanizes the community and makes him into a local hero. Still, Antonio will have to overcome small-town politics and overwhelming financial odds to see his dream to fruition.Girl Model meditates on numerous relevant issues: the demise of American industry, the struggles of the small-business owner, and the plight of an aging workforce that can’t afford to retire. But what makes the film truly riveting is the stalwart vision of the many colorful characters—from the proud factory laborers to the grizzled lobstermen to the outsider willing to sacrifice everything—who rally together and try to keep a sinking ship afloat. Directors David Redmon and Ashley Sabin will be in attendance. { Film description by Kristina Aikens, courtesy of Independent FIlm Festival of Boston }

Links: IFFB Film Page | Official site.

Lyda Kuth is feeling anxious. Her only daughter is preparing to leave home to begin a new phase of her life in college, and Lyda finds herself stuck in neutral, worrying about what the future holds for her and her husband as new “empty-nesters.” Rather than suppressing these anxieties, Kuth allows them to inspire her and, with a camera in hand, begins to formulate questions about love, loss, and long-term commitment that lead her on an intellectual journey of her own. Love And Other Anxieties is a thoughtful meditation on the motivations and challenges of love in the 21st century. The film asks: What drives us to attach ourselves to others? Does the meaning of love change from generation to generation—or is it universally understood? Kuth interviews family members and friends, as well as filmmakers and writers such as Kyle Jarrow and Stephanie Coontz, in an effort to answer these complex questions. What she discovers is something more fulfilling and deeply personal than she ever expected. Director Lyda Kuth will be in attendance. { Film description by Amy Woodbury Tease, courtesy of Independent FIlm Festival of Boston }

Links: IFFB Film Page | Official site.

Despite a lack of obvious similarities between Siberia and Tokyo, a thriving model industry connects these distant regions. GIRL MODEL follows two protagonists involved in this industry: Ashley, a deeply ambivalent model scout who scours the Siberian countryside looking for fresh faces to send to the Japanese market; and one of her discoveries, Nadia, a 13-year-old plucked from the Siberian countryside and dropped into the center of Tokyo with promises of a profitable career. After Ashley’s initial discovery of Nadia, the two rarely meet again, but their stories are inextricably bound. As Nadia’s optimism about rescuing her family from their financial difficulties grows, her dreams contrast with Ashley’s more jaded outlook about the industry’s corrosive influence. Girl Model is a lyrical exploration of a world defined by glass surfaces and camera lenses, reflecting back differing versions of reality to the young women caught in their scope. As we move farther into this world, it more and more resembles a hall of mirrors, where appearances can’t be trusted, perception becomes distorted, and there is no clear way out. Will Nadia—and the other girls like her—be able to find anyone to help them conquer this maze? Or, will they follow a path like Ashley’s, having learned the tricks of the labyrinth, but remaining unable to escape its lure? Directors David Redmon and Ashley Sabin will be in attendance. { Film description by Callista Burns, courtesy of Independent FIlm Festival of Boston }

Links: IFFB Film Page | Official site.

Paul Simon’s album Graceland was released to acclaim as well as criticism in 1986. Recorded in conjunction with local musicians in Johannesburg, it is an ebullient hybrid of western rock, pop, and a cappella infused with theisicathamiya vocal style and mbaqanga music indigenous to South Africa. The album went on to sell over 14 million copies. Twenty-five years after its release, filmmaker Joe Berlinger chronicles Simon’s journey to South Africa to reunite with the artists including Ladysmith Black Mambazo who collaborated on the opus declared by Time Magazine to be one of the top 100 albums of all time. Simon recounts the album’s tumultuous origins, the ground it broke musically, and the charges made by detractors who accused him of breaking a political boycott at a time when South Africa was still bound under the abhorrent apartheid policy of racial segregation. These opponents suggested that Simon was a cultural opportunist exploiting these African musicians and perpetuating colonialism. Conversely, he also garnered praise from others for showcasing the work of musicians subjugated under apartheid, who would otherwise never have been heard. Under African Skies reflects on the complicated collision of art and politics as it explores the role and responsibilities of artists in society. The recollections of Simon and his musical partners reveal the context and magnitude of their achievement and its long-lasting influence on the world-music movement. { Film description by Callista Burns, courtesy of Independent FIlm Festival of Boston }

Links: IFFB Film Page | Official site.

David Tamés: How did you get involved with Septentrional in the first place?

Whitney Dow: I got involved with Haiti because a friend of mine, Jane Regan, who is also one of the producers on the project. She lived there for a dozen years, and she and her partner, Danny Morel, who’s also a producer on the project, had come to me after the fall of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and they had all this footage. They had traveled with the Cannibal Army and wanted to know if we could develop some films together.

Tamés: What films did you develop?

Dow: We developed three films: this film, one on democracy, and a third on betrayal that’s going to be about Aristide, the gang leader, based on Julius Caesar. I’m not sure if the third one’s going to get made. When I was down in Haiti making the film about democracy Jane and Danny introduced me to the band. I was really interested in the idea of making a film bout something in Haiti that worked, this band that’s been around for 60 years.

Tamés: And so you filmed the band, their performances, and touring?

Dow: I started to make a film about the band, and I thought it was just going to be about the band, just about music, and when I cut the film and showed it to people, it was boring. It didn’t have any context. So their talk about things being tough sounded like whining because the imagery was so pretty that things did not look so tough.

Tamés:What year was this?

Dow: I think I finished that cut in late 2007.

Tamés:So then what happened?

Dow: In 2008 I showed it to a lot of people. I took it back to the funders, and we talked about it. And I went back to the drawing board and decided to make a film that was about two stories, the rise of Nicole, the main character in the film, and the fall of Aristide and compare and contrast their leadership styles and what makes a successful leader. And I made that film and it was pretty good, I thought, and then the earthquake happened.

Tamés: And what happened in the wake of the earthquake?

Dow: It did two things. One, people wanted something about Haiti, you had to have the earthquake in it, and, Two, it made me realize that what I was doing by making the story about Aristide was again reducing Haiti to a particular component because before the earthquake, Haiti was Aristide. Before Aristide, Haiti was Duvalier. Before Duvalier Haiti was an American occupation. Before that it was colonialism. It’s always being reduced into this thing, and I said, in effect, if I want to get the earthquake, all these things have been earthquakes. Columbus was an earthquake. Colonialism was an earthquake. Slavery was an earthquake. The revolution was an earthquake. The American occupation was an earthquake. Duvalier was an earthquake. Aristide was an earthquake. All these earthquakes built up to create the conditions for this massive natural disaster to take place that was really, in effect, a human disaster built over 500 years.

Tamés:Part of what made it so devastating was the infrastructure was unprepared for any kind of disaster. It was so fragile to start with.

Dow: Yes. There’s no state in Haiti. I mean, it’s actually one of the things I like about Haiti, especially post-9/11 where the state is more and more intrusive into our lives on a day-to-day basis, how we could travel in the air, driving our car, what you can take pictures of. And you go to Haiti, and there’s no state. You have to enter this organism, which is the society, without a safety net. There’s 3,000 police for seven million people. There’s no one to go to, if there’s a problem. You have to figure out a way to navigate it yourself, and it’s an incredibly freeing, yet scary feeling to spend time in that environment.

Tamés: In the film you begin the earthquake sequence with stunning surveillance camera footage. Tell me about that. How did you find that footage?

Dow:I was looking for a way to tell the story of the earthquake, and I felt — and we’ve all seen so many images of disasters, news footage and everything, I was trying to figure out how do you tell the story so it doesn’t feel rote or disconnected or how do you make emotional connection? And a friend of mine, Mario Delatour, who also worked as one of the field producers on the project, was in the camps one day and this guy came up to him and said, “Mario, I crawled into the wreckage of the palace, and I found the hard drives from the security cameras. Do you want this footage? I’ll load it onto your laptop.” And he said, “Of course.”

Tamés: That’s an incredible scenario.

Dow:Yes. So he then gave it to me and said, “This was just amazing footage, You should look at it, Whitney.” And I was really stunned by it because it was the first time I felt an emotional reaction, a very, very, personal emotional reaction to earthquake images through these objective computer-generated images by the security things. Because there was nobody behind the camera, it had much more impact just seeing those images.

Tamés: I was filled with a sense of fear and empathy for that person in the view of the camera trying to find a way out.

Dow: And you know what it is also because you know someone’s not behind the camera. You know he’s alone. You’re so used to — when you see a camera, you’re like — some people I hear say, well, there’s a guy with him. There’s a crew. There’s someone around, and he’s dying alone and you’re watching.

Tamés: There was that sense of helplessness. That footage really got me. It hit me in the gut.

Dow: The first time I saw it raw brought me to tears. I mean, I was stunned by it, and the other thing that was interesting about it is that as you watch the film — the palace is a recurring shot. You see the palace throughout the history of the country, and then you see it destroyed as a metaphor for the country. Seeing this constant in the country utterly destroyed is also very devastating.

Tamés: What led you to weave together the story of the band and the history of Haiti? In many music films there’s only a little, if any, context but with When The Drum is Beating it feels like I’ve seen two films in conversation with each other. There’s a film about Haiti’s history and there’s a film about these musicians and there’s a beautiful ballet between the two.

Dow: That’s exactly what I think it is; a conversation between the two films. This idea about context and context is something I constantly think about, the context of how I lived in America, the context of our conversation, the context of everything because content is driven by context. And I think that many times people confuse context with narrative or context with that people are their context. And what I wanted to do was show two things, this immediate context of Haiti today in the aftermaths of the earthquake but also this broader context of history, the events that you’re watching now doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

Tamés: So what we watch connects us with the world?

Dow: It’s part of a point on a continuum, for me that was the epiphany moment in my development as an adult. I remember so clearly being in school and taking a course and suddenly realizing that everything I learned was one thing, that art was connected to history, was connected to politics, which connects to architecture was connected to music. And up until then I thought I was learning these individual disconnected ideas but without the certain political events … certain paintings don’t exist without the context of these things, it was all one thing. Going back to this idea, context provides a way of understanding the crisis de jour. I think it’s also an altruistic thing. When I did a film a few years ago called Two Towns of Jasper, I remember getting down to Texas after this murder, and I was so consumed with figuring out what happened. Well, the guy left here and he walked here. He was picked up there and they drove him. It was 2:00 O’clock in the morning. They dropped him off. And suddenly I realized, I think that by understanding what happened, I’m going to understand why it happened, and they’re two different things. What happened doesn’t really matter at all. Why it happened is a much more complex question and a complex investigation, and I immediately pulled off the case, essentially, and went into the community and started talking to the people. And again, that’s what I feel about the earthquake in Haiti. What happened in Haiti doesn’t interest me as much as why and the real why. You can’t take steps to go after [the story] until you can understand the why. You often hear people say, we must remember so this never happens again, but nobody really wants to remember. They don’t want to know. If you talk about September 11th, people don’t want to talk about the causes of September 11 since cause can implicate.

Tamés: It hits too close to home?

Dow: It hits too close to home (pause).

Tamés: What has been the band’s reaction to the film?

Dow: There’s been two reactions. One, they’re incredibly proud that a film was made about them, they were a little confused by the film because they thought I was making a film just about the band, and they didn’t know what to expect. The younger guys, loved it. I had them literally in tears over talking about it because they were so overwhelmed by seeing their story played out the way it does, one member said, “I’m so proud of this film. It doesn’t matter that I’m in it because my band’s in it. My country’s in it and it tells a story. I want this to go out to the world and people can see it.” I think some of them recognized that a story just about the band is not going to be that interesting, you need a broader context to bring people to the table. So in their mind the broader context brings people to their music. Maybe in other people’s mind the music brings people to the broader context. But they probably will never tell me what they really thought about it, because of my relationship to them. Oh, we love it. It’s great. Michel Tassy (vocalist) refuses to see the film.

Tamés: Really? Has he given you a reason?

Dow: He came to New York for the Tribeca Film Festival and wouldn’t come to any of the screenings. He didn’t want to watch it. He said, “I’m a singer, not an actor.” He said, “The movie business is for other people. I’m a musician.” All the guys would say, “Well, you’re the star of the film — one of the stars of the film,” and he likes that. When they came to New York, Tribeca had them play at the drive-in. I think his voice is slipping. He doesn’t want people to see that, if you hear the old music in the movie, his voice was just beautiful, I mean, just phenomenal. And now, it’s still the most interesting voice in the band, but it’s a different voice. It’s the voice of a 70-year-old man who smokes, as opposed to a 30-year-old man who doesn’t smoke.

Tamés: It is what it is.

Dow: Yeah.

Tamés: The film is currently in the festival circuit. It got very positive reception at Tribeca and the audience here at the New Hampshire Film Festival loved the film. What are your plans for the film? How are you going to get this out into the world beyond film festivals?

Dow: Everybody wants their films to be seen, and I’ve been lucky enough to make this film. It’s been at a number of really great festivals, Silver Docs, Hot Docs, Traverse City, and a couple Korean festivals. It’s going to IDFA. It’s doing as well as a documentary can be doing, and because of that I’ve had two offers. First Run Features has picked up the film, and they want to put it in the theaters in February, and PBS is going to put it on Independent Lens in April, however, there’s a caveat: I’m in deficit on the film, and I need to raise money for rights clearances. I need to raise money to clear the archival footage because I never thought I was going to have so much archival footage in it. I also made a deal with the band that if the film was done and we got distribution, I’d pay them a fair rate to the rights to their music used in the film.

Tamés: So how are you going to raise the money you need to get the film into distribution?

Dow: I’ve started a Kickstarter campaign where people can go and contribute to the campaign. In return they can get rewards that include downloads of the music, DVDs, albums, tickets to the premier, depending on your level of contribution. I feel this is a context setting film, and I hope, when people see it that it helps them see Haiti and, by extension, places like Haiti, differently, and that they see the people not necessarily as helpless victims of their circumstances, but people who live their lives within those circumstances, not who are defined by it. I remember so clearly the War in the Balkans, you’d see Sarajevo on the news and two women crouching in doors with kids with snipers shooting at them, and I was asking, why are they there? Why don’t they leave? Why are they staying there? And it wasn’t until September 11th, I live in Lower Manhattan, and my first reaction was Goddammit, these motherf*ck*rs, I’m not going, did you think that I would leave my city? I’d been in New York 20 years at that time, when I first really felt like a New Yorker. This was an attack on my city, and there was no way that I would leave there. Now, I don’t think I necessarily did a good Kickstarter pitch in that answer.

Tamés: Perhaps not, but this conversations is not just about Kickstarter. My wife and I have a friend who lives down in the Wall Street area. I remember standing on her roof deck and looking over at the World Trade Center only a few blocks away. We were visiting her only a few weeks after 9/11 And I can relate to the reaction so many people I know in New York had at the time, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Dow: Yeah. It’s like, this is my home, dangerous smoke or not.

Tamés: Let’s get back to Kickstarter, why is it so critical to get funding from your audience?

Dow: People think of movies as sort of this business, and in a sense the documentary world is not a traditional market the way a Hollywood movies are. It’s more like the non-profit world where you get money from PBS for a film, they’re not looking for a financial return on it. They’re looking for me to create something that communicates a message and gets something out, and I think that that’s how now you have to look at these films, that it’s not a market. And so because of that, we, as filmmakers, are now put in this position. We’re always been fundraising, but the traditional avenues of fundraising are getting more competitive and shrinking. And this great thing about the Internet is now you can avoid gatekeepers and be your own gatekeeper and go out to bring your project to the world. So I hope that people will visit the When the Drum is Beating page on on Kickstarter and look it over and if they think it’s a valuable project and a valuable message, that they’ll consider contributing to it and help get the film out there. The deal is, if I can raise this money, it will be seen by millions of people. It’s a sure bet. I’m not someone saying, fund my film. When I get it done, it’s going to be great. I have these offers on the table from PBS and first run. If I get the money, it will be seen by millions of people.

Tamés: So there’s a high likelihood of success in this campaign if it resonates with enough people. [Disclosure: I have contributed to the campaign.] Success from the point of view that if I donate, you’re going to achieve your goal?

Dow: Yes. The film is finished. It’s won awards. It’s been to a number of festivals. It’s doing well, and how many documentaries get actual distribution and national hard feed broadcast slots? There’s not that many slots out there. So to have that opportunity and be able to take advantage of it is something that I’m really hoping will happen. I think it’s important.

Tamés: It’s great you have those slots waiting for you. Now, it’s up to us through Kickstarter to help you get there.

Dow: Absolutely. Have you been involved in other Kickstarter campaigns?

Tamés: So far only as a donor to several projects. I know a number of filmmakers who have used Kickstarter to help fund their films, it’s rewarding to see someone you have contributed to reach their goal and know you helped make that happen. I hope to do one for a documentary currently in development that I’m involved with, but that’s a ways off. I think it’s important to demonstrate that the funds you are contributing will result in a project being completed, getting into distribution, some major milestone.

Dow: What’s interesting about Kickstarter, one of the nicest thing about it for me has been the community, for example, the guy who’s really running the Kickstarter campaign, started a music festival in Florida on Kickstarter. Raised the money for it. Called me and said, “Can I have your film?” And I looked at what he was doing. I said, “Sure. Of course you can have the film and show it.” He really liked the film, and now he’s helping me run the campaign. He said, “I love what you’re doing. I love the film. I want to help it succeed. I’m not really doing much right now. I’ll work on it. I’ll help you.” He’s been my coach, gave me a list of 10 things I have to do every day, and I’m meeting people who are in the same boat. If you donate to me, I donate to you. We can build this community to support each other’s work. I’ve helped him, and he’s helped me.

Tamés: Well, the good thing about movies is just because somebody watches your movie doesn’t mean they’re not going to watch my movie. I mean, people watch a lot of movies.

Dow: Exactly.

Tamés: It ties into what Tiffany Shlain was saying a while back about how independent filmmakers have to start thinking of themselves as interdependent filmmakers and help each other out because there really are two film businesses. There’s Hollywood, and then there’s the rest of us.

Dow: Hollywood is a franchise, basically it’s a marketing program with story grafted on top of it. So you can’t get stuff made in Hollywood without having all the marketing tie-ins built into it first and the product base and all that stuff. And then the stuff is retrofitted with an action movie or romantic comedy, and that’s not to say there aren’t some great films that come out of Hollywood. I think that there is, but in general that it’s a very different thing that people are doing in Hollywood than independent filmmakers. Whether they are documentary filmmakers or narrative filmmakers, it’s a very, very different thing that we’re doing.

Tamés: I hope your Kickstarter campaign is successful and When The Drum is Beating gets the release it deserves.

Dow: And thank you for coming to the film. Again, I hope that I can find a way to position it so that it does find an audience.

Tamés: Will there be a soundtrack album?

Dow: I’m trying to raise money for that as well. Branford Marsalis has agreed to produce an album, if I can raise the money.

Tamés: That would make another interesting Kickstarter project. Before we wrap up, let’s get back the film. I’d like to hear more about why this topic, why this approach?

Dow: I had the opportunity, I had access that nobody else had in Haiti. I wanted to make what in my mind was a big concept film. While doing the first film I read a ton on Haiti. I read tons of history. I watched tons of things. I saw movies and books and everything, and it was a big epic story. And I felt that it was a story that hadn’t been told before. When I thought of the idea of music and history, it scared me, something I haven’t seen before, and my thought was, I don’t know if I can pull this off, but, if I do, it’s going to be amazing. And I really took it as a personal challenge that to try and undertake this idea. Haiti’s history was a big canvas.

Tamés: And why you, as an outsider?

Dow: I’m very wary of perspective, I look at myself and ask, who am I as some middle-class white guy to think he can tell some sort of definitive story about Haiti? Why should I do that? And I feel I’m very, very sensitive to this idea of white people telling black stories, and I was — and I’m — sort of doing films on race, I’ve thought a lot about this and that why — who am I to be telling this? And I got a lot of push-back originally. What do you have? And I really sort of felt like it was more for me in a selfish way an artistic undertaking that I really wanted to tackle as a way of challenging myself as a filmmaker. A big portion of my body of work is on race, and I think about it. It’s one of the things that fascinates me. It’s something that I constantly think about and am working at.

Dow: I think also that race is — I’m not the first person to say it, but race is — a fault line in America that we’re constantly navigating and constantly look at. That’s the reality that we live in. And I also think that our experiences living in the world as white, black, or Latino are so fundamentally different that we are fundamentally different. Under the skin we’re not the same. Our experiences are so different that we’re living in a fundamentally different reality, and so of course we’re different. We have different experiences but we’re attracted to the difference. We’re attracted to what’s different about us. I’m attracted to difference. That’s what excites and interests me, as opposed to being attracted to something that we share. I’m not so much interested another film about some horrible thing that white people did in the past or the current.

Tamés: We could talk about this for another hour, but I know you need to get on your way to New York. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me about your film.

Dow: Thank you.

David Tames: What was the impact of Who Killed the Electric Car? from your perspective?

Chris Paine: The film told the story of what happened to about 5,000 electric cars out in California that most people had never heard about. That motivated a lot of people (including me) to keep the pressure up for change and that in turn motivated a lot more people both inside and outside industry.

Tames: How did Revenge of the Electric Car evolve?

Paine: We started hearing rumors that the car industry was rethinking its decision to quash electric cars. High gas prices in 2008, national security pushback around oil dependence, and people fed up with gas car impact also played a role. We had some connections so we decided to go inside the system and see how things can — sometimes — change from the inside out.

Tames: What’s different this time around as far as electric cars go?

Paine: Most people understand that oil is finite and putting it in cars is not smart when you can use electricity and get a better result. Technology costs have come down and a lot more people know about them. You also have some incredible people leading the charge.

Tames: How did you decide to focus on the people you did end up focusing on in this film?

Paine: We started with about seven folks and over three years, narrowed our focus to four of the most fascinating who we were able to stay in touch with.

Tames: Were there some people you spoke with that did not make it into the film?

Paine: Hundreds. You meet so many interesting people of all kinds in the course of a long form documentary and eventually you have to decide how many your audience is going to be able to track in 90 minutes. Better known people include Shai Agassi who we tracked in Israel, Dave Barthmus, GM’s corporate spokesman in first film, Simon Peres, Rainn Wilson, the President of Iceland, a couple getting married on electric bikes and on and on….

Tames: Are there some people you wanted to talk with who would not talk with you about their work?

Paine: Plenty. We approached many car companies at first and few would take the risk of letting our crew in.

Tames: What are you driving right now? How do you like it?

Paine: I traded in my Prius and bought a Chevy Volt, for full price I might add. Got to know the car over its development and it won me over. 40 miles electric then turns into a 38 mpg car for longer trips. My girlfriend drives a Leaf and that’s pretty great too. And of course, I still have the very early edition Tesla I bought after finishing the first film.

Tames: What do you hope viewers will take away with them?

Paine: I hope they take the time to test drive or if they can afford it, buy one of these new generation plug-in cars. What got me going on this originally was how emotionally thrilling it was accelerating in all electric mode. If the film inspires that, I’ll be happy. It really makes for a better future if we continue to use cars.

Tames: What was the most challenging moment while making the film?

Paine: End of 2008 when markets collapsed and all the characters we were following hit the wall. Like them, you have to pick up the pieces and keep moving…

Tames: Are there filmmakers or other artists you draw inspiration from?

Paine: Everyone I work with – my co-writer Peter, my producer Jessie, my editor Chris, our composer David, and on and on. I get the credit for a big team effort. Outside of our crew, I really like the wit of Kurt Vonnegut and almost anyone making really entertaining films that don’t rely on a gun to move the story forward.

Tames: What has been the most dramatic change in terms of making a film back when you were making Who Killed the Electric Car? and now with Revenge?

Paine: Aside from the digitalization of the entire production process, I’d say it’s the changing nature of the audience and distribution of films. Documentaries can reach people in more and more ways even without the theatrical launch we’re lucky enough to have and marketing via social networks (like yours) makes the difference between success and failure.

Tames: How did you get started as a filmmaker?

Paine: My 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Landreth. “Gold Rush – SUtters Mill” class movie. Super 8. Hooked me.

Tames: That’s amazing, for me it was my 5th grade teacher, Miss Beachum, we made a film in class about the American Revolutionary War, Super 8, that hooked me too! So what happened as far as filmmaking after 4th grade?

Paine: My friend Roger (a producer on both Who Killed the Electric Car? and Revenge), and I made short films in high school and then in college I spent a summer at Stanford University’s documentary program. That led to a semester at NYU and a summer job at AFI. I had a turn with an MTV pilot series the wake of the Velvet Revolution and several other TV jobs So a bit here and there leading to an assistant job for Michael Tolkin (The Player, The New Age) who impressed me with his brilliance. If I was going to stay in LA, I had to work for someone really smart. Eventually one of my old friends the UK pulled me into his documentaries, and somewhere in there, I decided to try my hand directing a feature documentary.

Tames: What advice would you like to share with the next generation of documentary filmmakers?

Paine: Find amazing people, build trust, let them tell their stories without interrupting, ask hard questions, listen.

Tames: The film is now showing in theaters. What are your hopes for the film from this point forward?

Paine: That more and more people hear about it and see it and get inspired. For me it’s much more than a film – though my job as story teller is first.

Tames: Filmmakers always have to kill some of their darlings, is there something you left out of the film you wish you could have covered?

Paine: One of the biggest users of electricity in the country is the oil industry – simply to refine gasoline from crude oil. Wish I could have fit that story into this film. Maybe the next one. All we need to do is put that electricity directly into our cars and bypass the oil.

Tames: Sounds like we have a lot to think about. It’s been a pleasure talking with you today.

Paine: Thanks for doing this!

Links:

Revenge of the Electric Car (Official Site)

Who Killed the Electric Car? (Official Site)

Flying investigates these conversations, in a manner that is, in Fox’s words, “intensely interested in the two-way conversation women have and the horizontal nature of it. I had decide that I couldn’t ask other women to be intimate if I was willing to share and put myself on the line equally.” And thus she began to experiment with “passing the camera” back and forth with her friends, “almost like a traditional talk stick, except the person talking didn’t have the camera, the person being the witness held the camera [...] we just ‘passed the camera’ back and forth in conversation.”

Fox found that the technique created some powerful effects in the people involved in the process, “it seemed to immediately make people relax because they were not put on the spot alone, but also the technique is so simple and the camera so small [that the] camera actually becomes part of the conversation.” Flying is highly personal, however, it did not start out that way. Through the process of making the film, Fox realized she has to put more of herself into the film, “as filmmakers, we cut interesting stories that occur between the filmmaker and the subjects out, or we don’t film those moments.” But she could not do that in this film, knowing that, “in order to make a film about women’s intimate lives, I couldn’t pretend that I was not in the picture, I couldn’t pretend that I knew nothing about the subject, how could I ask women to tell me about their intimate life if I wasn’t willing to put my own private life on the line?”

Fox began shooting Flying in 2002 and ended up with 1,600 hours of video, which took an additional year and a half to edit. The result is a personal journey to discover what it means to be a woman today. It’s nice to watch a documentary that is as long as it needs to be, rather than shoehorned into a standard broadcast slot of 60, 90, or 120 minutes. Flying provides a depth of experience that is very rare in documentary cinema. I watched the film when it first came out and recently recommended it to my documentary students (since I only had time to show a short clip in class). The response of those who watched it was resoundingly positive. I hope more documentary filmmakers will consider breaking the boundaries of traditional broadcast time slots and make documentaries as long as they need to be. Flying proves that there’s a place for long form documentary in our increasingly diverse media ecology.

Note: The quotes in this post are from an interview with Jennifer Fox by Alice Apley and I conducted at MassArt in Boston on April 18, 2008 when Fox was in town for a screening of Flying at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Image Credits: 1. Photo by David Tames, 2. Photo courtesy of Zohe Film Productions.

An Investor’s Perspective On Indie Film And Digital Media

The conference got off to a good start with Scott Kirsner (CinemaTech) moderating a fireside chat (sans fire, but the room did get warm) with Todd Dagres (General Partner of Spark Capital) and Lance Weiler (filmmaker and DIY Days co-organizer). Todd Dagres has a unique perspective on the funding of film and digital media. He’s led Spark’s investments in start-ups like Veoh Networks and EQAL and has also been involved in the production of several films including TransSiberian which was released by First Look Studios. Todd suggests that even though for a while it looked like technology was “king,” content is really “king,” and he chose to invest in creative properties because he wanted to be inside the circle rather than a looking from the outside looking in.

Scott asked Todd to share a painful lesson. Todd replied, “Once you’re done with your film you have to get it distribution, you basically give up control of the baby,” since distributors are people who “just want to make money, the second they believe they are not going to make money with your film they move on to the next film.” Todd sees lots of opportunity in disrupting the established industry and said, “the 30 second commecial is dead, TV programmed to a time of day is dead [...] I don’t watch TV when I’m supposed to, who watches commercials anymore?” And therefore he’s “investing in companies that are trying to break [the existing model].”

Scott suggested that all “these companies are still having trouble making a profit,” and Todd replied that we’re in the same place as the early days of TV, producing the content is expensive, sponsors are needed, and he said, “I can prove with data [that] monetization is not on par with what is being spent on the web.” And this creates a huge opportunity for people who figure out how to package stuff. Studios, for the longest time had a model based on extracting value from a library of content, and up until two years ago it was all about protecting the library, now they are broadcasting and allowing you to stream content, but still figuring out how to monitize their content, with a TV show you have ads. Todd mentioned that “on Next New Networks Obama girl gets more views [than most TV shows],” but Scott reminded us that “lots of gems are not there online yet.” Todd suggests that the networks are “still waiting to sell you the stuff in BluRay form.”

Lance suggested that community plays a big part, the new models have to be about viewer to engagement, the key to success on the web is community, if you are a traditional television or film person, you think of audience, you think of a demographic, that’s thinking in terms of a passive medium, people watch and then go somewhere else, Lance suggests, “forget the word audience, the new word is community,” and explained that content should be the seed that gets the community interacting with the content, and viewers must have some impact on what happens. It’s interesting that with most popular shows like Lost there are very active social networks with people talk with each other about the show, why would producers not want to foster that? Todd suggested that it’s because they are “still addicted to nielson ratings and ads,” since they can make a show for $3M and sell $4M in ads and make some more money selling figures and tie ins with McDonalds. What are the major barriers to new forms of distribution and reaching an audience? One of them are are guild and contract barriers, as Todd said, “great ideas can get bogged down by the Hollywood machines structures put in place by lawyers to protect them from other lawyers who are going to sue them.”

So in the end this creates many opportunities for doing shows in a new way, for reaching out to find your audience, or better yet community. It’s still very hard to convice investors they are going to make money with this, the odds are against you to be realistic about it, but you have to think out of the box. Todd brought up the example of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” which is one big product placement, they “almost pay for production” with the product placement. Very fertile ground for artists, not everyone knows what they are selling and how to sell it, Todd said, “the most relevant ad for me is content, things I care about and things I want to see,” which is good, but that seems to make more sense for episodic content, what about movies? The market is shaken, traditional models disrupted, things fragment, what happens is there is a natural consolidation to a few, that means we move from people with lock-in to people with new locks and then that wil be disrupted, but that will take a long time. How can we move to a new model so indie filmmakers can be more successful. Lance and Todd are suggesting that the community must start interacting more with each other and consume each other’s films, american idol of indie film, we could create a social network that would promote these films and share promotion and start to work on the problem of how to finance these things. It’s the same message I’ve heard ever since I first got involved in independent film in 1988, however, there is one thing that is significantly different now compared to then: the internet really does level the playing field. Instead of working through gatekeepers to find our audience, we can now find our audience directly, however, it’s not easy. It never has been. But building a relationship on your own allows you to capitalize on the relationship and own and control you own destiny. It still takes investors. And you still can’t promise anyone you’re going to make money. But I’d rather work on building a community than struggling to find a distributor whose agenda is at odds with my own.

If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead: Creating Value In A Spreadable Marketplace

Xiaochang Li and Ana Domb from the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium gave a presentation from an academic perspective how media spreads in the current landscape and how the audience engages with it. They suggest moving away from thinking about the “viral” and “sticky” metaphors because they strip users of their agency. Instead, they suggest a framework based on “spreadable media” which is in sharp contrast with older models that emphasize centralized control over distribution. They were hesitant to share their slides or research report because the research they did was supported by corporate sponsors, the very organizations that are being disrupted. Gone are the days when academics could share their ideas openly, now they give is brief overviews while the corporate sponsors get the juicy details. It was strange to listen to a presentation at a conference based on open source ideas and sharing that could not be shared with the participants. But this puts in sharp relief the tensions between private enterprise (which thrive on competitive advantage and secrecy) and professional organizations (that thrive on sharing of information and techniques among peers). Ana said that eventually the embargoed research will be made public. Of course the slides were videotaped, so you can get them that way, but no deck in digital form was forthcoming.

They spoke of viral concepts and memes as a unit of cultural dissemination. I’m surprised they did not mention Douglas Rushkoff, who has written a lot about these topics over the years, his Media Virus was one of my favorite books in graduate school and he’s written many others, and while some are now dated, they provide a valuable historical perspective on how this internet media distribution and media sharing thing has evolved since the early 1990s. But back to Xiaochang and Anna. They suggest more open ended participation in media distribution and that humans are part of the spreading equation, Social Networks, Web 2.0, Technology is an enabling agent for what people want to do. They provided a nice discussion of the moral economy, the gift economy, sometimes money takes the back seat (like professional conferences like this), sometimes money is front and center (like when research can’t be shared). My examples, not theirs.

It’s clear that big companies are freaking out, they are focused on commodity culture while people also engage in the gift economy, file sharing and piracy makes it hard for companies making sense of circulation of media. It’s not polite not to share what you have (social contract) when you can share it, but corporations want to sell you things again and again, they don’t want you to share a book, they want to sell a book to everyone. Producers work on economic dictates while many consumers work on social dictates. From an economic standpoint, companies think file sharers are stealing, but in a gift economy, not sharing would be socially damaging. This is all interesting stuff and I’d suggest reading The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler.

We are moving away from a filmmaker / distributor / audience model to a filmmaker / {Supporter, User, Consumer, Advocate, Investor, Fan, etc.} model. The relationship is becoming much more rich and complex. Media theorist John Fisk suggests that content is flows when it’s producerly, people can take the it as raw mateiral and communicate their own messages, so we have to start thinking of the things that we make as more open ended. Spreadable media good for active commitment, audience integral part of film’s success, online world of mouth, you can reach niche audience, communicate w/ audience in a way they want to be addressed and where they already are. This all results in building a stronger emotional tie with audience. As filmmaker Orlando Sena, a Brazilian Filmmaker suggests, “right now, imagination is much more important than information.” Mashups and remixing is huge part of this, giving audience a way to play with mashups, engage with the content, examples include Lance’s Head Trauma mashups, and sites like JumpCut and Kaltura that allow people to pay a part in editing your material and creating new things from it, our new role is to facilitate that process. Or, as Lance said, crete s seed from which to build a community.

Show Me the Money

Slava Rubin talked about crowdfunding and fan participation. Through a direct connection through social networks, email, blogs, house parties, twitter, etc. and a call to action, filmmakers can transform their niche audiences into a fundraising and promotional base. Slava’s own company, IndieGoGo, is helping filmmakers with a process they call DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) Funding and Filmmaking. They describe themselves very well on their web site, so I will not go into detail here. The film Flow, currently screening at Kendall Cinemas, was among the first films to use IndieGoGo as part of their fundraising and release strategy. In summary, Slava suggested filmmakers need the following to succeed in this new environment: 1. the medium by which you take your project viral, 2. the content has to be great, really great, and 3. a very clear call to action, what do you want people to do? Good resources for learning more include Kevin Kelly’s blog, Peter Broderick, Cinema Tech, IndieGoGo’s Blog and DIWO Guide Online, and the Workbook Project.

And then we broke for lunch. I’ll continue my coverage of the conference in a second blog post. Right now it’s time to go to sleep. It’s been a long, fascinating, wonderful day.

My photos of the event are on Flickr at: flickr.com/photos/kino-eye/sets/72157607770556279/ or check out all photos on Flickr tagged with diydays and boston

My notes from the conference are continued in two posts:

• DIY Days Boston, October 4, 2008 (conference notes, part 2) (added 9-Oct-08)
• DIY Days Boston, October 4, 2008 (conference notes, part 3) (added 13-Oct-08)

With a keen attention to multiple perspectives, Kirsner presents the view of industry executives who are reluctant to innovate, and contrasts their views with the innovators who have advanced the many technologies like projection, color, sound, non-linear editing, digital projection, internet distribution, etc. that have transformed the industry over a century of change and revived it over and over again for many generations of audiences. Inventing the Movies is a lively book of interest to innovators in any field, as well as people who love movies and want to take a look at the business and technological machinations behind the many screens in their life: cinema, television, home theater, personal computers, portable media devices, and video-enabled phones.

Last week I did an interview with Scott Kirsner about the book, how the project got started, and what he plans to do next. The interview is currently being edited will be posted on this blog sometime before September rolls around.

The book is now available from Amazon.com. The book is also available as an e-book from LuLu. Scott Kirsners blog post on the book is here.

Agenda and Announcement:
www.media.mit.edu/eventsreg/08gid-invite-fri.html

People interested in storytelling, entertainment, as well as new technologies will benefit in particular from this special event at MIT.

Space is limited, if you plan to attend please RSVP via email to: jk[at]media[dot]mit[dot]edu.

The Lowell Film Festival will presents a series of documentary and feature films on the subjects of globalization and immigration this year along with panels on filmmaking. Always an “immigrant city”, Lowell stands today in the midst of a population transformation no less profound than the one that shaped the city in the middle of the 19th century. Come and explore what globalization and immigration means through films, locally produced shorts, and discussions with the filmmakers involved in the productions.

The Opening Night Reception is on April 4, 2008 at 6pm and the festival runs all day April 5, 2008 and admission is free. The headliner film on Friday night is Sacco & Vanzetti, a documentary about Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrant anarchists who were accused of a murder in 1920, and executed in Boston in 1927 after a notoriously prejudiced trial. The screening will be followed by Q&A with producer Peter Miller. The headliner film on Saturday night is Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako, a fascinating film (which I saw a while back at the MFA) that deals with the World Bank and the IMF by telling the story of a trial court set up in the courtyard of an African home. Amidst pleas and the testimonies, life goes on in the courtyard.

This weekend at the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival I has the pleasure of seeing Shadow of the House, an intimate documentary by Allie Humenuk that presents a portrait of photographer Abelardo Morell. The film shows his process and daily life behind the work without interpreting it for you, presenting no experts telling you about the importance of Morell’s work, instead, you see that for yourself, as if you had walked into a beautifully mounted exhibition without placards or a program.

The narrative unfolds as a conversation between subject and filmmaker organically without a heavy hand, beautifully lensed, intimate in perspective, as the subject confront his identity and relationship with Cuba where he was born, yet he’s lived as an American since he came to this country at the age of fourteen in 1962. There are very few films made in which the filmmaker spends enough time with their subject over the course of years in order to develop depth and perspective, in Humenuk’s case she spent almost seven years making this film. In a medium that is crowded with self-indulgent personal documentaries, sensationalist polemics, and formulaic assemblages, Shadow of The House stands out as a rare and beautiful gem.

Do whatever you can to see this film in a theater, on the big screen, with an audience. This is one of the best films I’ve seen dealing with an artist, his process, and the life behind the work. The film won the award for Best New England Film at the festival, however, the film deserves much more than regional recognition, for me it was the best documentary at the festival, while I do concur with the Audience Award going to Beyond Belief, a beautifully crafted and important film.

Behind the Rhyme: A Hip Hop Documentary - Conducted over the period of two years in the city of Boston, this film is a collection of interviews and performances providing a look behind the scenes of lifestyles, concepts, and expression of hip-hop culture.

Bourbon – Frank and Joe, a couple of low rent gangsters, hatch a plan to make it big by trafficking drugs cross-country. But when Joe gets greedy and brings on his pal Vince to do his errands, things go bad and everything comes crashing down…

Hidden Wounds - Psychological wounds suffered by veterans returning from war may be as hard to overcome as the physical injuries of combat. Through three disturbing portraits of Iraq veterans, this powerful documentary highlights the issue of post-traumatic stress disorder, estimated to affect as many as one in five soldiers returning from Iraq.

Make Levee Not War – Plymouth filmmaker Ted Maguire’s short film about the effects of Hurricane Katrina in support of the ongoing recovery. Interviews and comparison maps of the Boston area to the devastated regions are used to help the audience better relate.

No Match – Plymouth resident and doctor at Jordan Hospital, Peter Pillitteri produced this short film about addition. When a busy photographer cannot find a match to light his cigarette, his day is substantially disrupted. Ordinary events taunt and entice him. His need for a smoke becomes desperate.

Remembering John Marshall - A portrait of filmmaker and activist John Kennedy Marshall who began his career in the 1950s documenting the lives of the Ju/’hoansi people of Namibia—among the last remaining hunter-gatherers. He made important contributions to cinéma vérité filmmaking and leaves behind an extensive ethnographic film archive including over 20 films on the Ju/’hoansi.

The Plymouth Independent Film Festival (July 18-22) kicks off with its opening night reception on Wednesday, July 18 at 7pm at the Memorial Hall Blue Room. Live Cuban band, hors d’oeuvres. $50/$75 (supporter level). Celebrate film at the Awards Night, Saturday, July 21 at John Caver Inn, 7pm. $25/$40 supporter level. Includes appetizers. For more information on PIFF and a complete listing of films visit www.plyfilmfest.org

Filmmakers Collaborative will present a full day conference at Boston University on Friday, June 1, 2007 consisting of master classes, panel discussions and keynote speakers focused on new technologies and the opportunities they create for film and media makers. A must-attend for cutting edge learning and networking opportunities for media, film, and video professionals throughout New England. Registration closes May 30, so register now! No walk-ins. For more information, call Filmmakers Collaborative at 781-647-1102 or visit the conference web site. Sessions include: Camera Seminar; Film Production Tax Incentives; Demystifying Digital Formats; Copyright Issues; Networking & Box Lunch; Welcome; Opening Remark; Where in the World Is Your Audience Now?; The Social Media Game; Making Content Interactive; Guide to resources on the web; and Case Studies.

If you live in the Boston area you will not want to miss the 17th Annual Pro Video Show sponsored by The Camera Company to be held Friday and Saturday, March 9-10, 2007 at Stonehill College, in Easton, Massachussetts (Exit 17B off Route 24). This annual event provides local media makers with the opportunity to check out new equipment, talk with fellow media makers, and attend a wide range of workshops and seminars. Yours truly will be presenting two of the seminars, “Delivering Video on the Web” and “Champagne Production Values on a Beer Production Budget.”

Here’s a description of my seminars:

Delivering Video on the Web
Learn how to make video available on the web, earn money with it, take a look at how it can be delivered to devices and web browsers, and examine the opportunities and challenges it presents. The launch of the video iPod, availability of video on iTunes, the explosion of viral video, Google’s purchase of YouTube, and the amazing quality of shows on blip.tv are all part of a tectonic shift in the media distribution landscape. Television producers, independent filmmakers, communications specialists, advertising executives and entrepreneurs will all learn how to benefit from the tremendous opportunities made possible by delivering their video on the web. Cost: $25. Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 12:00 NOON to 2:00 p.m.

Champagne Production Values on a Beer Production Budget
Video production budgets are tighter than ever, and the increasingly saturated media environment demands that your video must stand out from the rest. In this seminar, you will learn about the strategies, creative elements, and production tools that together deliver what viewers and clients often describe as “high production values.” Practical discussion and examples help you apply cost effective methods right away, resulting in champagne production values on a beer production budget. Cost: $25. Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Other workshops and seminars scheduled at this time (subject to change) include:

• Audio for Video (Sennheiser, David Missal)
• Planning a Production (Teja Arboleda)
• Editing Aesthetics (Eric Scott Latek)
• Apple Final Cut Studio, a Complete Workflow, (Alex Kaloostian)
• A Practical Comparison of DV, HDV & DVCPRO HD for FCP Editors (Alex Kaloostian)
• Docudrama (Eric Scott Latek)
• Final Cut Pro—The Next Step (Ed Krasnow)
• Lighting For Video Film Style (Tom Musto)
• Making History! Profiting from Biography and Same Day Edit Presentations (Hal Slifer)
• P2/Apple Work Flow (Bill Kennedy and Raj Lad, Panasonic Broadcast)
• Meeting of The Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers (SMPTE)
• HD Outdoors (Trevor Gowdy)
• Digital & HD 101 (AJA Systems)
• Adobe Premiere Pro Basics “Crash” Course (Eric Scott Latek)
• Digital Asset Management & Workflow (Focus Enhancements)
• Reflecmedia (Bogen Imaging)

Please keep in mind that all workshop attendees must check in at the Sally Blair Ames Sports Complex (main exhibit location) at least 15 minutes prior to class.

For more information call 781.769.7810 or visit The Camera Company web site. Seminar listing subject to change.