» Posts Tagged ‘manchild’
Last week I posted AMATEUR, the prequel to my forthcoming feature MANCHILD, and the response to the short has been downright amazing. Thank you to everyone who has watched it! If you haven’t seen it yet, it is embedded below, and if you have seen it, here’s how two seconds of your time can make a big difference for the project: More »
AMATEUR is a short prequel demonstrating my vision for MANCHILD, the feature film we’re making next. I’ve never been so excited to release something, so I hope you like it! If you like the short and want to see the feature, please head over to our just-launched website for MANCHILD and share it. I’m releasing this directly online, and that’s how this short will spread — every tweet, facebook like, and share makes a BIG difference. Thank you! More »
UPDATE: the application form is now closed for this round, thanks!
We’re working hard on my feature MANCHILD and the associated short, and we’re looking for some extra hands on deck. I’d like to think this is a good opportunity; you’d be working directly with myself and other folks like Gotham Award-winning, Spirit Award-nominated producer Chip Hourihan, as well as some of the best post houses and web startups around. Read on if you’re interested in interning and you’re in New York City: More »
Why Make a Short? Why Run a Kickstarter Campaign So Early? The MANCHILD Q&A
In the comments section of my more-contentious-than-I-expected post about making a short that ties into my forthcoming feature MANCHILD, there were a lot of questions about my project, as well as the overall wisdom of making a short in order to fundraise for a feature. Reading through the comments, I realized I could’ve delved deeper into the timeline of what’s happened since my Kickstarter campaign. So, to answer some of the questions posed in the comments — as well as to generally shoot the shit about filmmaking — I sat down (virtually) with NFS editor Joe Marine for an wide-ranging video chat. More »
UPDATE: In response to some of the (heated! opinionated!) questions and comments on this post, we did a long video Q&A as well.
I wrote recently about finishing the screenplay for my feature MANCHILD (for now… ), but it’s been a while since I talked about what else is going on in the trenches of first-time feature filmmaking. The title of the post gives it away: we’re making a short. Why are we doing this? And why do I think this strategy makes a lot of sense for other first-time feature directors? Because there are millions of people with a screenplay, all trying to figure out how to get from here (words on a page) to there (actual finished movie). If your goal seems impossibly far off, that’s when it’s time to bite off a smaller chunk and show what you’re capable of. More »
A few months ago I finished the screenplay for my feature MANCHILD (for now, at least, until we move to the next stage and start making changes for talent/locations/budget/etc). I’ll have more updates on the project soon, but suffice to say there’s been a long rewriting process since I ran my Kickstarter campaign over a year ago. And while this wasn’t the first screenplay I’ve written, it’s certainly the best, and the one on which I’ve worked the longest and hardest. Over the past two years, here are the things that have helped my screenwriting process. More »
Don't Hire Someone to Run Your Kickstarter Campaign: Or, Why Attitude is More Important than Aptitude
First of all, I want to start this post off by saying I have a tremendous amount of respect for Lucas McNelly. Not just because of the articles he’s written for numerous websites, but also his A Year Without Rent project in which he traveled to work on indie films for free for a year, as well his free VODO film Blanc de Blanc (I haven’t had a chance to see his other work yet). As someone who did my own year without rent, I feel an affinity for Lucas despite never having met him, and I think he’s great for the indie film community. Lucas, this is not a personal attack on you by any means, and I’d love to get a beer with you at some point should we ever find ourselves in the same city or at the same festival. HOWEVER, I want to take this opportunity to talk about Lucas’s criticisms of some Kickstarter campaigns — mine included — and how I believe attitude and criticism affects creativity and productivity. I’ll also talk about the rise of the professional crowdfunding consultant. This is going to be a long, rambling post with a high risk of TL;DR — don’t say I didn’t warn you. More »
It’s been a while since I’ve had an update on my feature Man Child, as I haven’t had any major news to share. Last week, however, the Tribeca Film Institute announced their 2012 All Access grantees, and I’m incredibly honored to be among them. In addition to sharing my own good news, I’d also like to raise awareness about a pair of Tribeca programs currently open for applications: the Tribeca New Media Fund and the Tribeca Film Fellow program. First, here are the details on All Access, and then I’ll share details on the other programs, as well as more about the current status of Man Child. More »
In a post about the new RED SCARLET-X, I mentioned that I ordered the camera myself. First of all, some context: I’ve been a “professional” in video (since apparently we need to distinguish between professional and amateur) since I was hired as a video editor in 1999, at the age of 18. Since then, save my four year stint in college, I’ve made my living in and around the industry, shooting, editing, directing, producing, designing, etc. for hire (here’s a resume). Yet I’ve never owned a “professional” camera. So I got all excited on Twitter about the prospect of finally being able to own and operate a camera of the SCARLET-X’s caliber, after twelve years of working my way up to this point. But I’ve been surprised at the number of people who have left comments questioning this decision, accusing me of misspending the Man-child Kickstarter funds, or writing critiques with me at the center. So here are a dozen points of clarification: More »
Here’s what I learned from running a $125,000 Kickstarter campaign for my feature film Man-child, which became the most funded project in Kickstarter’s narrative film category — for just one day, it turns out. More »
The Kickstarter campaign for Man-child ended successfully at 108% funded: $125,100!!! Thank you all so much — it’s been a dream come true. If you missed the deadline, you can still back the project here! According to Ustream we had over 1,300 views of our live video stream of the concluding party — the archive of the video is below. Thank you all for making this possible, from the bottom of my heart! Now the real work begins… More »
'Man-child' is 100% Funded -- and I'm Going to Make My First Feature Film -- Thanks to You!
THANK YOU ALL!!!
Thank you for supporting my first feature film. Thank you for spreading the word. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for bearing with me as this site got a bit overrun with campaign promos. And thank you for reading! I’ll have a better write up in a while when I have a chance to decompress and edit a post, but in the meantime — Man-child hit 100% with 10 hours left, thanks to you guys. I sent out a last email to NFS readers and the campaign jumped so fast that I couldn’t refresh the page fast enough. Come join us at the party tonight in NYC, or here online live at 9PM EDT!
If you’re not subscribed to the newsletter, I wanted to share with you a story I included in my last email about the campaign. The concept for the NoFilmSchool newsletter has been to write letters to myself that would’ve helped me avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made so far in my career. I’m not constantly selling stuff in the newsletter and so I run it at a loss. But the idea is that if I can genuinely help people, regardless of short-term dollars, somehow it all comes back around: and the success of my Kickstarter campaign is exhibit A! Here’s the email: More »
Exactly 24 hours left in the Man-child campaign, and we’re so close! Despite this screencap from my Twitter campaign video, I haven’t had a team to help. But what I have had is help from a lot of other websites! So in addition to writing a dozen posts about Man-child here on NoFilmSchool, participating in Independent Film Week, Facebooking and Twittering almost non-stop, and writing my own Press Release — all while simultaneously trying to post the latest helpful news about filmmaking here, as usual — I’ve also thankfully popped on a lot of other web sites. Some of these were guest posts, some were interviews, and some were posts written by others out of the simple desire to help the campaign. This has been a community effort that has made it this far thanks to, literally, thousands of people. I can’t say it enough: thank you so much for helping. It takes a village! As I say in the post title — and to use a sports analogy — I’ve left it all on the court. Now we’re on the cusp of making history together. Here’s a list of appearances elsewhere that I’ve been able to keep track of over the last 37 days: More »
NoFilmSchool reader @truphtooph took to Twitter recently to offer up some reasons to back my campaign to make my first feature film, which ends tomorrow night. Man-child, I don’t need to remind you, will raise nothing if the campaign falls short! Also, I had nothing to do with these tweets — it was a simple act of unprompted generosity. My favorite reason of his has to do with American Movie — and what could happen if Man-child ends up sucking!
Here are his six reasons: More »
I’ve learned a lot over the past 36 days of running a potentially record-breaking Kickstarter campaign for my film Man-child. The clock has switched from “days” to “hours” remaining and we may or may not make it! I’ve tried to share what I’ve learned about crowdfunding along the way, including a Ten Must-Read Posts Before Running Your Own Crowdfunding Campaign post. Here’s a second compilation of valuable posts.
One thing I learned after the first couple of weeks: I implemented an unsaid rule for my twitter account that I wouldn’t mention my film campaign (or retweet the mentions of others) unless I had talked about something else since my last mention of the campaign. There’s a balance between talking about yourself and remaining relevant. And while that might balance might have shifted over the past few days — there are only 2 days left, so my sense of urgency is overpowering the desire to show self-promotion restraint — this Twitter lesson is included in one post below.
As I say in the introduction to the first ten, “luck favors the prepared.” And in setting out to run this campaign, I read a whole lot more than ten posts. So here’s a second set of ten posts to read when preparing your own campaign. More »
I assume by now you’ve seen my Kickstarter video, which features two of me composited into one shot. Everyone knows how to do this — set up the camera on a tripod, don’t move it between takes, and film both sides one after the other — but it’s not a very “good” effect if you’re trying to go for something that isn’t so obvious. One way to make the effect more subtly convincing is to make it a handheld shot, and while I didn’t take my campaign video this far, I thought I’d use the video to show one way of compositing two people into a more naturalistic, shaky shot using After Effects. Here’s the tutorial (which is pretty basic, but may be educational to anyone new to After Effects): More »
I’ll be live streaming/chatting the end of my Kickstarter campaign this Friday (September 23) here on NoFilmSchool starting at 9pm Eastern (the campaign’s deadline at 11:59pm). If you live in NYC or are here for Independent Film Week, though, here’s a great opportunity to meet and network with other filmmakers. With only 4 days left and a lot of ground to cover, I can’t say whether it will be a party celebrating the SUCCESS of the campaign — but either way it should be a fun time!
Come on down to the brand new bar/lounge/theater Indie Screen (pictured, though it should be a bit more full than in the photo!) in Williamsburg, drink and be merry, mix with other filmmakers and creatives, and share your own story (join me on-screen and let the rest of the NoFilmSchool community know what creative projects you’re working on)! We’ll kick it off at 8pm, start the stream at 9, and watch the countdown until midnight when we’ll see the Kickstarter ticker hit “0 hours left.” RSVP on Facebook please, as the venue wants to know how many people are coming and I honestly have no idea!
Link: Facebook Event
Only One Week Left to Make 'Man-child' a Reality, Plus New Rewards (Including a Blu-ray)!
I must be hitting the wall. It’s taking me forever to write this short post, which should be simple and straightforward since I already announced this over email and in the Kickstarter updates. Fatigue! Anyway, it’s the last week of my campaign to make my first feature film. It could make history, or it could make nothing. Pressure’s on! Last week, I only wrote one story about Man-child, but because it’s an all or nothing campaign, you’ll probably see a few more this week. Don’t forget my entire life has been leading up to this! When it concludes (Friday September 23 at 11:59pm Eastern) — successful or not — everything will go back to normal around here.
The big news for this last week: NEW REWARD LEVELS! There were some significant gaps in the project’s incentives, so I’ve filled them in by adding levels with some great new stuff, including a high-definition Blu-ray, signed DVDs, a download of the full shooting script, an on-set visit, and downloadable extras (upgrade from $10 to $15 for the full DVD experience… without the DVD!). As with the existing levels, these numbers correspond to a specific number of frames of Man-child that you’re enabling.
If you’re already a backer — thank you! — you’ll notice the original green “BACK THIS PROJECT” button has turned to a blue “MANAGE YOUR PLEDGE” button that will allow you to switch to one of these new levels, if see something you like. Thank you for your continued support these next few days!
Big news about Man-child today, thanks to you! Three things:
FIRST: with only ten days left in my campaign to make my first feature film, I just discovered that if we’re successful, we will make history. I didn’t start out with this goal in mind, but as I was exploring Kickstarter I found that if Man-child is funded it will become the single most funded project to be listed in Kickstarter’s narrative film category. Wow.
SECOND: we are officially most of the way there. Most of the way to making history, that is! 51% and counting. However, the campaign is ending next Friday. As you know by now, Kickstarter projects are all-or-nothing, so if we don’t make history we’ll make… nothing. Now is a great time to get on board!
THIRD: last week’s Twitter outreach campaign was extremely effective. Thank you to everyone who helped reach the basketball community — it was a classic case of “strength in numbers,” as I never could’ve done it alone. In fact, we now have a success story worthy of an official press release (after the jump). What happened? Well, we were able to reach none other than one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time: More »
As I say in the video, thank you guys so much for your support. We’ve gotten this far, but we’re past the halfway point and we’ve started falling behind. So I wanted to share a way you can help make the Man-child campaign a success — even if you don’t want to back the project (or if you already did — thank you!). Anyone who appears on the Twitter lists below is a prominent member of the basketball community. Let them know about this film — it’s a well-researched movie by an indie filmmaker who’s played basketball all his life (@ryanbkoo), it’s about part of the basketball world that you don’t normally see in the movies (the recruiting of middle schoolers), and it could really use their support! By reaching out to them as a community (and by talking amongst ourselves), let’s see if we can get #manchild trending this week on Twitter — together:
I’ve included some example tweets below. A couple more things: More »
Gene: I know this is off topic, but his movies Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours… 15 Golden Rules of Moviemaking from Director Danny Boyle
Observer: Great advice, and definitely true and important!!! Thank you ;) 15 Golden Rules of Moviemaking from Director Danny Boyle
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Joe Marine: I doubt they will say anything. They don't benefit from talking about it, … Luke Neumann on Canon 5D Mark III RAW Video and a Comparison with the RED …
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