Writer/Director Edward Burns sat down with us at the Sundance Film Festival 2013 to discuss why he loves the freedom that comes with microbudget filmmaking, the compromises that are involved when working with less money, why digital distribution interests him more than conventional theatrical, using social media (primarily Twitter) to reach his audience and why he enjoys it.
One company has sprung up in the last year to provide both distributors and filmmakers who are self releasing with a way to take the financial risk out of public screenings. Tugg.com is a web-platform that allows the audience bring movies they want to see to a local theater. A person in the community can search through Tugg’s library of available titles and choose one, provide details such as screening date and preferred location, set up the event with the help of a Tugg representative, spread the word to their friends in the local community encouraging them to buy tickets and, if enough people reserve their tickets to meet the minimum ticket threshold, the screening...
Director J.R. Hughto discusses his entry into filmmaking from being a photographer and graphic novelist starting with making short films, his new microbudget feature Diamond on Vinyl, and how he views the sacrifices filmmakers have to make in order to work within...
Director Andrew Bujalski on the red carpet for the premiere of Computer Chess at the Sundance Film Festival 2013. He is one of the leading figures of micro-budget filmmaking known as mumblecore. Bujalski used a 1969 Sony AVC-3260 tube video camera to give the film its period feel (and to show that video definitely doesn't look like film!). Computer Chess centers around a weekend computer chess tournament in the early 1980s at the dawning of the age of personal computers and well before technology was in the palm of our hands...
In our third (out of four) articles detailing the process of independent film making, I sat down once again with Jennifer Clary to discuss post-production on her first feature length film, The Silent Thief.
Friggin’ Aliens is the first feature film for Darringer Productions and they are trying something new and experimental with the ownership of their film. Darringer Productions has created something they are calling the Community Film Initiative. CFI is a program in which the cast and crew (including the producers and director) receive non-expiring percentage of ownership in the film itself. (While it's not uncommon to allow content creators to receive a percentage of profits to equal sweat equity, this usually has a monetary cutoff level or an expiration date.) This allows them to make the movie on a micro-budget, but also does something that is important to David Whitaker, Eric Henninger, and Lori Henninger (who make up Darringer Productions), and that is that it builds community. Eric Henninger says, “This is about more than just making a movie. It’s about building a community of creative and talented individuals and giving them a platform...