Indie filmmaker gambles with 'Mahjong' 06/13/2010
 'Mahjong' Crime story made for only $60,000 By Jonathan Landreth SHANGHAI -- On the sidelines of the 13th Shanghai International Film Festival, a darkly comic story of a foreigner caught up in a Chinese love-triangle and a vicious game of mahjong highlights the grit it takes to get an independent film made these days, even in cash-rich China. Although China's film industry is increasingly described as "booming," Beijinger Donald Li, a Cal State Fullerton graduate, made "Close Encounter of Mahjong," which he wrote, produced and directed for $60,000 raised largely by star A Wei, well-known for his roles in China Central Television dramas. Shot almost entirely around a gaming table, "Mahjong" -- which co-starts Tang Ke, the only other professional in the cast -- will be finished in July. It grew out of a short film Li made and then passed around at SIFF in 2008. Li is hopeful he'll manage himself to sell the film to a Western buyer visiting SIFF. Pacing the lobby of the festival hotel, the Crowne Plaza, for takers, Li pitches a film inspired by the small-time crooks of the Coen brothers' films. "This film won't ever show in China. It's too much about crime and trickery," said Li, the son of a stage director and an opera singer who encouraged him to study business and computer science but failed to talk him out of filmmaking. "But this is the only thing I can do," he said: "make films." Li said translating the "Mahjong" dialogue for English subtitles took him three months, even despite speaking English competently. He said he got help from Hollywood veterans he met in his seven years in L.A., such as "Friday the 13th" writer Victor Miller and Barry Glasser, executive producer of the 2009 China release "Diamond Dogs," starring Dolph Lundgren and Chinese actress Yu Nan. "Mahjong, traditional medicine and feng shui are all hard to translate for the common English speaker," Li said. "Mahjong" was made in association with 22Film Studio, run by Li Zhe, sound director to many independent Chinese films, and with help from Xing Xing, a Beijing-based digital animation company that recently provided special effects to films such as Disney's "High School Musical China," company president Wang Lifeng said. "They're doing all the little cool shots of close ups on mahjong tiles that cost money to make," said Li, noting that he hopes the film will sell on the story alone. "There's a murder, double-crossing affairs and then a desperate salesman who provides the comedy," he said. Of Li's debut effort, Hawaii International Film Festival Director Chuck Boller said, "It's tough to make an indie film in China. But I liked this one very much and look forward to seeing the finished feature." Source link: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/world/news/e3icd5f9626039b502c5359254c5f06e433  The AK-HC3500 HD studio camera is a native high-definition studio camera system for studio/direct-to-air switcher facilities and electronic field production. Incorporating three high-performing 2/3" 2.2-megapixel IT CCDs, a newly developed 38-bit digital signal processor, and a 14-bit A/D converter, the HC3500 delivers exceptional HD images in 1080/59.94i and 1080/50i. It's bare bones price is 56,000.00, fifty six thousand dollars! Or you can go with a Walmart 40 dollar Cam Corder. That's the point and great thing about the times we live in. You don't need millions of dollars to make an Independent Film and become famous! If your planing to show your movies on the Internet, a 40 dollar cam corder will do the trick. But if your planning to show your film at a film festival or have private showings and have it distributed your going to need a higher quality camara for it to be shown. Filming for the big screen requires a cam corder with the definition close to 35 mm film. That's where the 56 thousand dollars comes in with the camara above. A bit of history, Independent Films Independent Films came about due to the control that Hollywood had on the Film Industry. This total power over who made Films and Movies shut everyone but a select few out of the business. What really toppled this control were people like Robert Redford and others that gave an outlet to the public, a choice of Films not made in Hollywood. These not made in Hollywood Films and Movies were called independent films and movies. The cost of a full length film was very costly. The cost of the raw 32 mm film could run into the hundreds of thousands even millions of dollars. A camera could run close to a million. This allowed the large film producers total control of the industry. But with the advent film festivals, giving an outlet to people that were entering into un chartered waters a chance to have the public at large view their independent films and movies. These films were shot with 8 and 16 mm film that was still costly but much cheaper then 32 mm film. These independent films were also a lot shorter then a full length film. What really changed the movie industry was the video camera. In the beginning these cameras would still cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, they opened the world to TV. Though they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars they still could not be use for big screen movies because the quality could not come close to the quality of 32 mm film But as time went on these video cameras became better and cost just droped to a point where any one could become an independent film maker. With software programs that ran on PCs peoplewith little or even no budget could produce indie films. The quality has become so good that today many of your full length films are made with video cameras. Independent films and video movies are now a part of our everyday life. No one understood the power of indie films better then Google who now runs the largest indie film site on the World Wide Web, "Youtube.com" now features millions of independent films or videos, if you want to call them that, to the world for free. Anyone with a PC video cam can produce their own independent film and up load it to the world in seconds for free.  Usually I am asked on a regular basis about motion picture soundtracks and the role that they play in getting your independent film completed. Recently I spotted this article from an independent filmmaker Sid Kali. Check out what he has to say about getting your music done. Our team went through a similar process to secure the music for Real N' Raw. In our csae, the key was linking the film to a charitable trust, Fruit For Our Children. A majority of indie filmmakers, myself included, do not have the flush production budgets to hire a well known music supervisor or professional composer to score their movie. Let alone can we afford to license or pay royalties to top musicians to use their songs or tracks on the soundtrack. I had produced a urban action movie, Consignment, that had a very limited amount of money to spend on music. Turns out after some additional post-production expenses I had even less than expected. Movies need music. There really is no way to argue against it. Good music adds impact, emotion, and mood to a film. Tartantino has made amazing use of music in his films. Many viewers have commented that the music is like a character itself. I was faced with the choices of putting the completion of Consignment on hold indefinitely until more money could be raised for the soundtrack or trying to find quality music that I could get for free or as close to free as possible. Not wanting to put the movie on hold I set out to shake some trees for music that moved me. It was a gamble I hoped would work. I checked out some companies on the internet selling royalty free music in all types of genres from rock & roll to world beat for very affordable prices. Type 'royalty free music' into a search engine to listen and shop around. I listened to tons of sample tracks. Most didn't fit the feel of the urban action movie Consignment. A few tracks I did like were out my budget. A cool thing I did discover is there are some filmmaker friendly sites that will allow you to download free original music to use in your movie. All they ask is that you properly credit the creators behind the music. Sonny Boo offers this on his website. I did not end up using the free downloads, but I think it's good karma they put it out there. The anxiety and stress of not finding the right music was becoming a mental drain. Nothing worse than the thought of your movie not getting done. I decided to try a different approach to getting the soundtrack squared away. I was going to contact independent bands, artists, and musicians directly with the chance to get exposure on a independent films soundtrack. Indie artists from the music and movie arena collaborating sounded like a win-win. There's many places to find independent artists and record labels looking to get their music heard. What better way than to be featured on a movie soundtrack? I religiously set aside hours everyday to listen to music from up and coming artists. After I had a narrowed down list of the tracks I wanted to use on Consignment I tracked down these artists and record labels contact information. My independent music campaign was launched. I emailed, phoned, and faxed my pitch to the people on my list. I was excited about adding music I believed would add tremendously to the overall viewing experience of the movie. It was a tougher sell than I thought to get independent artists and record labels to contribute to an indie movie soundtrack. My pitch was truthful about only offering credit for their music. My advice is not to BS people. Be upfront. I let them know this was a indie movie without big names or a Hollywood budget. Here's the rundown of how it played out for me using this approach. I was able to land the music of two artists I felt was perfect. Another artist was interested, but was honest enough to voice their concerns about not knowing how the movie would look when it was done and decided not to contribute to the soundtrack. After Consignment was done I sent them a DVD. They liked it and agreed to compose an original track for my next movie for free. Most of the record labels ignored my requests or said no money meant no go. I respect that. One record label representative took the time to speak with me at length and made a point that stuck with me. He basically said until you have a name or a movie you've done to show your work people will be skeptical about lending their music to your indie movie. There not against cross-promotion and exposure. There against being associated with terrible movie and bad exposure. That made a lot of sense. With a few tracks secured that I liked I decided to go directly to the people to find the rest of the music. Consignment being a urban action movie I wanted some hot hip hop tracks. I started hitting websites that had hip hop forums where people could list links to their demos, post beats, and battle other hip hop artists. I posted open calls for artists to submit their tracks for an urban movie. I got a huge response, but it was chaotic dealing with the amount of tracks that came in. Plus their were obvious copyright infringements and looping done by some contributers. Last thing you want is music on your movie that causes legal problems for your movies release when you sign on with a distributor. I wasn't making a bootleg underground movie to sell out of the trunk of my car. I was going for mainstream rental and retail outlets. I took the time to get all the releases, clearances, and paper work on the movie. I was going to do the same for the music. After seeing my post I was contacted by the fellas at Jackin4Beats.Com about helping me out. They streamlined and organized the submission process. They posted calls for music on their website for free. Their efforts increased the quality of the submissions ten fold. They only forwarded me tracks that were free and clear to use on the soundtrack with no legal worries. All music clearance forms were signed on the dotted line. The buzz was there. Next a rising independent music label specializing in West Coast hip hop wanted to be on the soundtrack. They headed into the studio with the synopsis of the movie and cut an original track with the same name as the movie. This song brought and hit hard. I used it on the opening and closing credits of the film. Then I got some tracks from some emerging East Coast rappers with a latin edge that put the soundtrack over the top. These talented artists music rounded out the soundtrack. They understood it's about exposure. I wanted to touch on my experience and they way I got the movie soundtrack done. There's a lot of avenues for you to land the right music for your movie. Obviously the more money the more choices, but money doesn't have to cut you at the knees making you put bad music on your movie. There's talented artists and upstart record labels in the same boat as you grinding it out to make in the entertainment business. Everyone is looking for a break. Sometimes you can get it together to make it work and sometimes you can't. Just keep fighting to get what you want. Never settle for music you hate for the sake of completing your movie. You will regret the end product. It won't be easy to secure music you love, but isn't your movie worth the effort? You're damn right it is. About The Author: Slice of Americana Films was launched in 2005 by Sid Kali to produce red-hot urban movies that are gritty, intense and fiercely genuine in the portrayal of strong subject matters. In 2006-2007 Slice of Americana Films completed the powerful urban drama CONSIGNMENT and stylish crime thriller IN WITH THIEVES. Real N' Raw, almost there!! 10/08/2009
 Matthew Wilson (The Director of Real N' Raw)! Well it finally happened. After reviewing over 400 hours of video, fourteen months and three countries (New Zealand, America and Costa Rica), Real N' Raw is in the final stages. Matthew Wilson, has been an amazing artist to work with over the past year. Here is a write up that Tim Lynch, a world class radio broadcaster wrote about Matthew Wilson........ Matty was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis at age 5 after being ill for two years. At age 12 he was told if he did not have his bowel removed and replaced with a colostomy bag he would have cancer by age 19 and not live to see 30. Today he is 35 and is a picture of health. This is his story. By eating raw foods which includes grass and virtually every thing like weeds that we find growing in our back lawn, such as clover, kikuyu, puha, plantains, dock, dandelion etc he was able to cure his disability. What Matt also found is that the wider the spectrum of leafy greens we eat, the greater the protection from being burnt by the sun. And that humanity maybe being affected by sunburn, because of excessive intake of mass produced, heated, powdered, packaged and tinned foods etc when nature outside gives us phyto-foods to sustain us and enable us to remain protected from the suns ultra violet light among 'many other things.' Matt who is also a top NZ animation artist, working with Warner Brothers and trained by one of Disney's top animators is a co-founder of Animator Inc, his own animation company, and has recently completed and directed an independent film called " Real N Raw" about reclaiming your health using simple and easy to access solutions. Listen to how other peoples globally have actively lived to very old ages, by eating raw foods, close to the land, on their own doorstep. So you want to know a secret? If you go over to the realnraw web site and sign up to be able to watch the film for free. You'll love it! Indie Filmmakers: China’s New Guerillas 09/26/2009
 Zhao Dayong By KIRK SEMPLE BEIJING OVER the course of six years Zhao Dayong, an independent filmmaker from Guangzhou, China, spent many months living among the residents of Zhiziluo, an impoverished and forgotten village in the rugged mountains near the Myanmar border, and filming their lives. Using his own money and simple digital filmmaking equipment he made “Ghost Town,” a quiet, hypnotizing, three-hour documentary that provides an extraordinary and intimate portrait of Chinese life. Like independent filmmakers everywhere, Mr. Zhao worked with no guarantee of an audience, or even a place to show his work. By his estimates only a few thousand people have seen “Ghost Town” in China since he finished it last year. Several hundred more are scheduled to see it Sunday afternoon when the film has its international premiere at the New York Film Festival. But what makes Mr. Zhao’s commitment particularly noteworthy is that his project was apparently illegal. The Chinese government has decreed that all films must be approved by government censors before being distributed and screened, including in overseas film festivals. Mr. Zhao, 39, said getting the approval of the censors was never a consideration. “It’s like asking to be raped,” he said this month in an interview here. “The government certainly has its own agenda. They want us to stop. But at the same time we know we’re doing something meaningful.” This mixture of defiance and principle defines China’s nascent yet highly dynamic crop of independent filmmakers who pursue their art in apparent violation of the law. For decades the Chinese government had nearly full control over all aspects of the film industry, from celluloid filmmaking technology to financing to distribution and screening. An underground filmmaking subculture emerged in China in the late 1980s, but it began to flourish only about a decade ago with the advent of inexpensive digital cameras and postproduction computer programs that helped put filmmaking further out of reach of the government authorities. Many of this latest generation of Chinese filmmakers have no formal film training and shoot on minimal budgets, often with small crews, or alone. Ying Liang, whose films have won numerous prizes on the international circuit, shot his widely celebrated debut film, “Taking Father Home,” using a borrowed camera. Relatives and friends were his cast and crew. “Unlike in previous generations, the stars of this generation are not only Beijing Film Academy graduates,” said Karin Chien, a film producer in New York and president of dGenerate Films, a company she founded last year to distribute this new crop of independent Chinese films outside China. “They’re journalists, they work at television stations, they’re painters, they’re people who just picked up a camera and made a film for $1,000.” Output is still small. Several leading filmmakers put the annual production of unsanctioned, independent films at fewer than 200. But this work has provided unusual ground-level views of China that possess an unvarnished authenticity often missing from mainstream, government-sanctioned films. “There’s been an extraordinary explosion of young filmmakers — quite a few of them are quite talented — who are dedicated to record and tell the real story of what’s going on in China,” said Richard Peña, program director for the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which produces the New York Film Festival. “That story is really more fascinating than the story that the regime wanted to be told.” These achievements have come at a price. About 20 filmmakers have been banned from making films for two to five years, according to Zhang Xianmin, an independent film producer and a professor at the Beijing Film Academy. Others have received intimidating phone calls, had tapes confiscated or been detained and interrogated. But according to several filmmakers and film scholars both here and abroad, the government recently appears to have adopted a somewhat hands-off, though highly watchful, posture toward this film vanguard, leaving it to operate in an undefined gray area. It seems that as long as certain incendiary topics are not broached — among them the Tiananmen Square massacre, Tibet, the Cultural Revolution, the outlawed religious group Falun Gong — then independent filmmakers are allowed to work. Yet no one is absolutely sure where the boundaries are, or whether the government will start to clamp down more fiercely. “You don’t know where that limit is,” said Zhang Yaxuan, a critic and documentary filmmaker who is organizing an independent film archive for the Iberia Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. “You have to try to touch it. In the process of trying, you know.” Huang Wenhai, a documentary filmmaker in Beijing, said that the process of filmmaking here “is the process of conquering your fear.” Despite this pressure and uncertainty, there are now at least four major independent film festivals around the country and at least two theaters, both small, dedicated to showing Chinese independent films. Meanwhile Chinese audiences largely remain out of reach. With cinemas and television off limits to their unsanctioned films, independent moviemakers are mostly restricted to screenings in front of small audiences in art galleries, bars, universities and homes. As a result the most accomplished filmmakers have found their largest audiences overseas, especially at international film festivals. “I feel very frustrated,” Mr. Zhao said. “I’m a Chinese filmmaker, and of course my audience should be the Chinese people, especially since my films are about ordinary working Chinese people.” He added, “That would be more valuable than winning an international film festival.” Mr. Zhao began his career in the fine arts. He studied oil painting at an art academy before dropping out and working as a professional artist and advertising director in Beijing and Guangzhou. He eventually founded his own advertising firm as well as a journal for contemporary arts, and he opened a gallery in Shanghai. His first documentary was “Street Life,” a portrait of recyclers on the streets of Shanghai, which had its premiere at the Viennale in Austria in 2006. “Ghost Town,” his second film, is a series of vignettes and scenes that explore the economic struggles, religious beliefs and relationships of the residents of Zhiziluo, which had once been a local county seat for the Communist Party but was largely abandoned by the government. Mr. Peña said he had heard about the film for some time but finally viewed it in the 11th hour of the festival’s film-selection process. “It’s one of those films that, when we saw it, there was little question in our minds that it should be included,” he said. “Ghost Town” is the first documentary from China’s new generation of digital independent filmmakers to be included in the New York festival. Mr. Zhao, who continues to support himself by shooting television advertisements, said he had no illusions that his films would ever make him much money. “For me, making films is a way of life, not the means to it,” he said. “And I really enjoy this life.” Zhang Jing contributed research. Hollywood Collapse Continues 08/21/2009
Written by Mitch Santell It was so exciting to learn of Stephen Spielberg's financing in India. Why? Because I took a risk and in July of 2007 traveled to New Zealand to launch my new soundtrack company. The past two years have been an amazing time here and my bet was that once the real estate market collapsed, it would affect commercial real estate and now the studio business. Then I realized I had to launch my own film company. Our first project at Transparent Pictures, Ltd. is an independent documentary that has been in the making since June of 2008 called Real N' Raw. We are now in post-production and the film is scheduled for completion by the first week in September A film studio is a real place. You need land, resources, team and capital. Congratulations on receiving 825 Million Dollars to launch another dream The magic fades away at Sundance Film Fest 01/27/2009
 From left, director Steven Soderbergh of 1989's ''Sex, Lies, and Videotape,'' with actors Laura San Giacomo, Andie MacDowell, and Peter Gallagher at this year's Sundance Film Festival. (Getty Images Photo / Andrew H. Walker) First an Intro by Mitch Santell Indie Film Blog On Making: Dreams Awake 01/17/2009
 This is very cool. Recently saw a blog sharing the true story of making the film Dream Awake. Check out the below the lessons learned through the process.  Independent Film is any film not produced by a major studio. Some are large budget and some are small budget. Clerks was produced for only 27,000 dollars on credit cards and was sold to Miramax for 1.5 Million Dollars. One film that played a huge role in the development of smaller budget films is sex, lies and videotape.  The producer credited with helping to launch the careers of Vincent Ward and Jane Campion says he would sell his films for $2 on the internet if it would get them to fans when they wanted them. | Mitch, Founder
Mitch Santell is a 3rd generation native Californian. He has been in the entertainment business since the age of 17. Mitch decided that there was too much Hollywood in Hollywood so he moved to New Zealand where he can focus on great projects. ArchivesMay 2010 CategoriesAll |
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