What ever happened to the #EsuranceSave30 stunt after the Super Bowl? There was a winner, but Esurance also released the stats of their marketing stunt, which included 1) 5.4 million uses of the #EsuranceSave30 hashtag, 2) more than 200k entries within the first minute of the Esurance commercial airing, and 3) 1.4 million hashtag uses […]
Just under 1% of the 12,146 films submitted were screened at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Here is a recap of the films whose creative and business acclaim caught my attention: Big winners Updated 1/30/2013: First Showing has a breakdown of all the sales at Sundance, including one of the highest sales ($9.75 million) for […]
[UPDATE: “The Surrogate” was re-billed “The Session,” which is nominated for the Academy Awards.] Producer Doug Blake’s most recent film, “The Surrogate†— which he co-produced and stars John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, and William H. Macy — premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and took home an Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize […]
Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, whose 25-minute short “Successful Alcoholics” premiered at last year’s festival, completed four bumpers for Sundance 2011, which ended up not getting any play this year. Instead, officials decided to play the Sundance snowflake logo in front of every single film. It’s commonplace at festivals for these credited, branded bumpers before each program. […]
Early birds: parking galore in Park City before 9am Wi-Fi is hit-or-miss outside lounges and libraries, which are sure things Political groups and activists counter some of the celebrity gossip Bistro 412’s upstairs bar and Java Cow’s back room offer escapes from the crowd Everyone’s shooting video; only a select few beam it up to […]
The digital bulletin board called Pinterest has flourished for a lot of generalists (e.g. foodies, fashionistas, et cetera), but I’ve found a few ways it can work well for filmmakers. 1. Mood Boards When I don’t have the luxury of face-to-face production meetings, explaining ideas in e-mails, documents, or even PDFs can be cumbersome. Instead, […]
I was recently asked if short format work could lead to big picture deals. Instead of laughing off the incredibly unlikelihood, I looked at the data. If you exclude filmmakers who just make a killer short film and subsequently get notoriety thanks to their name or affiliation (e.g. Disney’s “Paperman” by John Kahrs, who is […]
I was recently asked, “which film festivals should we submit our film?” Picking where to send your film is hard when you consider scheduling for the coming year and vetting individual festivals. These are two of the shortcoming of Withoutabox, the popular pick for consolidating paperwork and knowing deadlines, which I’ve written about in the […]
Across 34 articles on film, web, and design — including many from contributing creative professionals — here are my favorite subjects covered this year on this blog. The Tech Behind Bob Dylan’s New “Like A Rolling Stone” Video The combination of a web platform alongside a large quantity of quality video was a game-changer for […]
OK, you want to finance your latest and greatest film project, you say? I’m sure you’ve thought of the basics… ask your rich benefactors, call your family, start a Kickstarter, encourage your friends to ask their friends, did into your savings account, post and re-post on social media, et cetera. But what else? Grant funding. This can […]
Last night at a preview screening of “Bellflower” at the Museum of the Moving Picture, director Evan Glodell did a 30-minute Q&A skyping from a friend’s kitchen with chief curator David Schwartz and the audience directly, which FWD:labs member and screenwriter Eric Szyszka attended. The auteur, who made this first feature for $17,000, claims to […]
I first met director Doug Pray shooting an interview in 2009 for UCLA Theater, Film and Television, while his film “Art & Copy” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Last month, he shared his 7 basic rules about making documentaries with Jonathan Wells at Flux, a creative community similar to ours here at FWD:labs. Here […]
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