I was VERY TIRED last night when I posted this thread......and am CERTAIN to have missed acknowledging many other FReepers who were at this historic (and LONG!) event.
All OTHER FReepers who were at this film festival, please report in!What did YOU think?
LIBERTY FILM FEST: Morning Report (10/02/2004)
Self | 10/02/04 | David H Dennis
Posted on 10/02/2004 10:07:19 PM PDT by daviddennis
Conservative Filmmaking 101: Seminar
The Conservative Filmmaking 101 seminar featured filmmakers Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo, organizers of the Festival, James Glennon ASC and Victor Elizalde of Sony Pictures.
Govindini, who I will abbreviate as G from now on, is the charming star of Terminal Island, a conservatively-themed film noir that takes on the war on terror as a theme. Judging by the trailer, it has some very stylish shots and a nice dash of humour, but my interest in it was pretty low due to the level of violence that existed. That's just personal taste and I'm sure a lot of us would enjoy the film. It's impossible for us to argue against the idea of a war on terror themed film, since it's the major political issue of our lives, and yet the majors have ignored it completely. This was mentioned by G with her forceful Italanite flair, and that leads us very nicely into ...
Victor Elzilde of Sony pictures. He was there to tell us the nuts and bolts inner workings of a studio, and he succeeded to a point. I'm satisfied that he was sincere in his convictions and beliefs, but he left out important components of the story.
He started with the theme that the producers of films are responsible to their shareholders for the performance of their productions. As a result, there is a huge bias against risk, and so Finding Nemo 2 is almost guaranteed to be made, while films that might be much better will be left unapproved.
He then mentioned that the film industry has rules. If you conform to their required structure, you will be more likely to have a film approved than if you don't. He emphasized that if you're a Stanley Kubrick, you can ignore this rule and make what you want, since someone of your talent WILL be discovered. But for most people, it would be easier if, for example, your movie was two hours or less -- easy to show in theaters, easy to fit on a DVD, and even easy to get on television with its rigid schedules. For some reason he never got around to mentioning any other rules (at least not that I remember). I would have liked to have heard some more guidelines, since I know that even if I was as brilliant as Kubrick, I'd still want to make it as easy as possible for someone to green-light my film.
He told us that there are two types of executives: Creative executives, who come up with ideas to produce, and finance executives, who focus solely on nuts and bolts. He was a finance executive, so of course he focused on the nuts and bolts end. He fervently insisted that there was no bias.
G said that he was flat-out wrong, that there was a ton of evidence just in the way she was able to shop around her film.
I think both people are right. We're talking to the wrong people here; itt sounded to me like he was talking about him and his fellow finance executives; the creative executives are the people who are coming up with ideas, and it seems to me that it's there where conservative themes get killed. So when G has meetings with creative executives, well, you know what happens.
Concerning the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, G had some excellent ideas that are well worth sharing...
CLICK HERE for the rest of that thread
How was the turnout for the festival, Ron? Most of the films were shown during our holiday of Sukkos and Shabbos so I couldn't come.
Besides the film itself, I really enjoyed the friendly emvironment of a room filled with like-minded people.