Co-Directing

How does a married couple work together on set? ;

Maddy Z

We met Jenna D'Angelo on the set of Mattson Tomlin's DREAM LOVER. You may remember the video of her. She was the woman covered in blood.



Well, now she's got a new short film out, and we figured we might as well point you to it. So…clear 17 minutes from your schedule and check out Jenna in Chris Shimojima's MADELEINE ZABEL on Vimeo.



Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

Nick vs. a Tree

There's a lot of ways you can shoot day for night, and one of the easiest is to block out the windows. This is not one of the easiest ways.

VOD, FTW? (Part II)

Not too long ago, I wrote about the process of putting my feature debut on VOD. It's not a bad little blog post, and I encourage you to read it, if for no other reason than for context on this post.

I kind of figured the issue of VOD would be settled for a bit. Dynamo makes a good, clean player. Now all that was left to do was sit back and let the money roll in (right, Sheri Candler?). But it seemed like as soon as I hit "publish", the game changed.

Enter, Distrify.



Basically, Distrify is pretty similar to Dynamo, but with a couple of key features. Namely, you can up-sell DVDs, Merch, etc, inside the player.

Obviously, this is a great help, as you can get someone to embed the player on their site and the audience doesn't have to find their way back to your site just to buy something. It's all in one easy-to-manage embed code. It's one of those things that really should have been standard a year ago. But, better late than never.

It's also really, really easy to embed on Facebook.



That's not even the important part. Distrify lets you set up people (or, rather, let's them set up themselves) as affiliates. Basically, if you host the embed code of my film on your site, you get a cut of the money when someone rents via that player. The implications are obvious. What's a better motivator than money? (Answer: almost nothing).

If I'm understanding it correctly, you can even get paid on Twitter/Facebook referrals, which is pretty awesome.

The minimum affiliate fee is 5%. Distrify does a 70%/30% split overall (which is pretty much standard now), and they'll actually 50/50 split the affiliate fee with you, which is nice.

I set my Affiliate cut at 30%, which is really high, mostly because our goal is to see what does and doesn't work in advance of UP COUNTRY. So if you got your audience motivated, you could make some beer money with not much work.

Players

Thing is, your average audience member doesn't care about all that. For them, the experience is key. What does the player look like? What does it do? Let's see.

Here's the Distrify player.



And here, for comparison, is the Dynamo player:



Basically, what you've got here is form vs. function. The Dynamo player looks a hell of a lot better, but the Distrify player does a hell of a lot more. So right now, my guess is it'll come down to what your priority is.

Or, one of them could adopt from the other. That'd be nice.

Stats

As promised, let's look at some stats. The Distrify player has just gone live, so we don't have anything substantial there, but Dynamo has been up since May 25th. Not a lot of time, for sure, but it's something to look at.



Obviously, we're not going to be buying any sports cars just yet. The player loads kind of make things hard to read, so let's zoom in.



Again, not good numbers. Then again, is anyone really sure what good numbers are? Honestly, I haven't got a clue if we're doing well or not, compared to what our expectations should be. And that's kind of the point of this.

We'll keep you updated. In the meantime, it'd be really great if you checked out the movie. It's a hell of a bargain. And the more rentals we get, the more motivated I'll be to post more updates (hint, hint).

Or, better yet, why not trying out the player on your blog and see if you can't rake in some affiliate cash?





Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

They Say It's Your Birthday

The cast and crew of TERMINAL LEGACY were nice enough to surprise me on my birthday. Awwww

Increase Your Sex Appeal

Designed by myself, Adam Woods, and Jamie Calder, these shirts are the foremost indicator of indie street cred and cool. Women (or men, if you prefer), will literally fall over each other in an attempt to tear it off you.

That's how awesome they are.

Our $50 and up Kickstarter backers will already be receiving these shirts as part of their perks, but now you can get one too and pretend that you were a supporter of A Year Without Rent way before it was cool (and then, of course, you can claim it got too cool and stop wearing it).

The shirts are on sale for $15 (plus shipping, of course), this week only. Then, they'll revert to the normal price (we think $20). So get 'em while they're hot.

Sorry, the sale is over, but you can still buy one.

Men's SMen's MMen's LMen's XLMen's XXLWomen's SWomen's MWomen's LWomen's XL

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

Day 2 of Kris & Lindy Boustedt's THE SUMMER HOME

It's a sunrise call for the first shooting day of THE SUMMER HOME. The first scene, as we saw yesterday, involves a shoot at first light on a dock.



Almost immediately it starts raining. Welcome to Seattle.

The dock we're on is maybe 5 feet wide. There are no posts securing it in the corners--just a big post at the end--and the entire thing pivots on a line from the shore to the post like a big see-saw. So picture that dock and how, um, unstable that could be. Now, put a RED camera on it, along with six people, actor Paul Vitulli on a chair, sound equipment, and a monitor. In a misting rain.



Well, make that five people, as it took Eric the sound guy exactly 30 seconds to decide he'd be much better off just standing in the ankle-deep water. I'm not sure I blame him.

Luckily, it's not a complicated scene, so we're in and out (out and in?) pretty quickly. And most of that stuff discussed in the video? That whole discussion about match cuts? Tossed.



But isn't that essentially what figuring out a scene is all about? You come up with the scene when you write it, and in your head it looks perfect, but your DP sees it differently in his head. Your actor too. And in order to get everyone on the same page, you go through the scene, beat by beat, trying to figure out the best, most efficient way to do it. Very often you'll have 3 or 4 versions of that. Sometimes (rarely) you get it right the first time. But the important thing is the process, because it's there that you really dig into the scene. The deeper you can dig, the richer the final product will be, even something as simple as a guy sitting on a dock at sunrise.

If you're working a film like THE SUMMER HOME, where there's fewer than 5 lines of dialogue, then it becomes even more important. There's no exposition scene where Character A tells Character B something Really Important, so you really have to know not just what narrative points you're trying to get across with a scene, but whether or not they'll be noticed by the audience. Easier said than done.



For the rest of the day we're pretty much in the bedroom. The location has a garage, which we've cleaned out to function as a staging area, so while the house is small, we're able to at least move around more or less freely.

Plus, we've got a fiery Executive Producer who demands attention at every opportunity. Seriously, Falcor has more energy than the rest of the cast and crew combined.



It's a long day, wrapping late in the night and the turnaround is short, which is far from ideal, but it's the film everyone signed up for. And Wonder Russell brought lots of beer.

You can ask a crew to do a lot if you supply beer.





Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

The DREAM LOVER trailer

The first project in our project has a trailer. And holy shit it looks cool.



http://www.facebook.com/DreamLoverFilm

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

Ouch

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

I Slept Here #28: Newark, DE

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

Directors Be Crazy

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

Godard said it best

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

Memorial Day Wrap-Up

While a lot of people take Memorial Day weekend off (and for good reason), we don't. Actually, we posted quite a bit of content. And since someone asked, I'm guessing other people might appreciate it being, well, summarized for them, especially since some of it has fallen off the front page. So…

Video

Part Five of our interview with Kris & Lindy Boustedt, an interview that at least I found really fascinating and helpful.



Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Articles

+ A Visit With Kevin Fox -- Without a single review from a film critic and virtually no festival buzz, Kevin Fox is successfully self-distributing DVDs from his house. And he's doing it with magazines. Yes, magazines.

+ Look At Me, I'm Popular!!! -- Just for fun, we took a look at our most-viewed content at the 3-month mark.

+ Day 1 of Kris & Lindy Boustedt's THE SUMMER HOME -- We're a little slow starting this, and it's really Day 0, but it's our introduction to this short that filmed on Lopez Island.

+ Seattle International Film Festival -- In which I snuck into one of the largest festivals in North America, then snuck into the VIP section, got drunk with Phil Seneker, and took pictures of actual VIPs (and a movie star).

+ VOD, FTW? -- I took a look at the process behind putting one of my own films on VOD, with the hopes that it might help someone else wade through the muck.

Photos

+ The Greatest People in the World #8
+ I Slept Here #25
+ I Slept Here #26
+ I Slept Here #27


Oh, and I travelled across the country. I'm now in Delaware.

And you are now caught up. Stay tuned!

Seattle International Film Festival

Old friend (and project regular, it seems) Phil Seneker sends me a message on Twitter saying he's got an extra ticket to the Opening Night of the Seattle International Film Festival, if I'm going to be in town and feel like going. I've got a couple of days until I have to be at the next project, so I figure what the hell.

The plan is to meet him at the event's Will Call area and the webpage says the event starts at 5:30, so I spend the day editing UP COUNTRY in some Seattle coffee shops. Around 3pm, I give Phil a call, but there's no answer. 4pm, no answer. I jump on a bus and head downtown to the event (which is more or less next to the Space Needle). I walk by the Red Carpet, where Ty Migota (THE SUMMER HOME) is shooting footage for something, but no Phil. Nor is he at Will Call. His phone rings and rings. No answer. Twenty minutes or so pass. Nothing.

Huh.



Finally, I figure Phil's not going to show and go looking for someone who's working, which isn't actually that hard. They pass me up the line. I explain who I am and who I write for and, simple as that, I've got a General Admission pass and two free drink tickets. Because, really, if I can't talk my way into a film festival, then there's really something wrong with me.

I'm inside maybe 5 minutes when I run into Phil, who's headed out to give me my ticket. Turns out he's actually working the event.



I figure I might as well help him out, since he's actually working, which involves very little. Mostly I keep track of his shotgun mic for him and point it at the podium during the introductory speeches.





One pretty interesting thing they're doing this year is partnering with Starbucks to offer a selection of SIFF shorts over Starbuck's in-store digital network around the country. Essentially, until the end of the festival (June 12), you can go to any Starbucks. Log into their Wifi and it'll take you to the digital network (it's easy. I do it pretty much every day) and you can watch SIFF shorts right there. It's a pretty fantastic way to get some of the shorts out there to a wider audience and actually provide some additional value for filmmakers.

SIFF's Opening Night Film is Justin Chadwick's THE FIRST GRADER. Phil and I duck out as it starts, fully intending to watch at least part of it…until we realize that the VIP section is still open and still serving.



The movie ends (oops) and the VIP section fills up with, well, VIPs. I take a bunch of photos and Phil shoots some b-roll. When you walk around a VIP section with a camera, people pose for lots of photos. They figure you're supposed to be there. And I guess, in a way, I was.



From what I can tell, it's not a bad festival they put on at SIFF. It's not really the sort of thing that seems, from the schedule, to program a lot of indies, but if you're in Seattle, it's a nice way to see a lot of world cinema all in one place.

And, hell, I still have my drink tickets.



Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

Day 1 of Kris & Lindy Boustedt's THE SUMMER HOME

If you've been following along from the start, you'll remember that earlier this year I took a ferry out to Vinalhaven, an island off the coast of Maine, to work on Andrew Brotzman's NOR'EASTER. It was very cold in the North Atlantic Ocean in February, and I think everyone pretty much assumed that would be our only ferry film. Because, really, how many people film on remote islands?

That's why it was a little surprising to find myself back on a ferry mere weeks later, this time heading for an island off the coast of Washington State. Is it a sign of a new island film movement in indie film? Were we all so enamored with LOST that we just had to find our own little Dharma Initiative?

Probably not. My guess is it's just a coincidence.



The West Coast film in question is Kris and Lindy Boustedt's THE SUMMER HOME. Written by the Boustedt's and lead actress Wonder Russell (CONNECT TO), it's a small character drama revolving around two nomadic characters who come across a house on the ocean.

We're filming on Lopez Island (but the film isn't necessarily set on an island. I think we just need a shore), hence the ferry, in the summer home of someone in Wonder Russell's family. The cast and crew arrives on two different ferries. In the first one: myself, co-director Kris Boustedt, DP Ty Migota, and AC Nicholas Davis. None of us have ever seen this location before, or anything beyond a couple of photos of the exterior.

Think about that for a minute. How many times do you check out a location before you start filming? Three? Four? But if the location is decently far away and you're working on a short turnaround, you might not be able to do a proper location scout. And without a proper location scout, you're pretty much just flying blind.

And the house is, well, it's pink. Really, really pink. Grandma pink. I'm not sure photographs could have done it justice, even if we had them, but here's one.



The schedule calls for our first shot on Day 1 to be a single person on a dock at sunrise, only the dock is a little different than we thought--chiefly there's a big huge post in the middle of it. The sort of thing you can't exactly shoot around to get the effect they're looking for. Well, not easily. So maybe shooting around it isn't the best idea. Maybe you use it to your advantage.



It's pretty clear that despite not having seen the actual location, these guys are well-prepared. I sat in on a couple of pre-production meetings and watched them go over and over the script, trying to squeeze every last bit out of it.

So maybe that's a decent substitute for not seeing the location. Sure, it's a hassle, but you have to compensate by scouting out the emotional locations until you know them like the back of your hand.

Will it work? We'll see.






Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

The Greatest People in the World #8: Kevin Fox

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

I Slept Here #27: Brooklyn, NY

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

I Slept Here #26: Oakdale, CA

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

Look At Me, I'm Popular!!! (27 May)

No, not me. I'm stealing an idea from Film Courage and taking a look at some of our most popular content. So let's see, as of right now, what's most popular. At least, according to page views here. Who knows what's most popular on the sites we syndicate content to.

Articles:

1. Get Your Shit Together ... Well that's not so surprising. Turns out when you yell at lots of people, that gets everyone's attention. Seems reasonable enough.
2. VOD, FTW? -- Really? I guess it's not a shock, in and of itself. The big surprise is that the post has only been up a day or so. Still, people are mystified by the whole VOD thing. Anything that can shed a light on that is a good thing.
3. and they said it was impossible -- Quite simply, the graph of the Kickstarter campaign. Enough said.
4. Conversations with Lucas: Marty Lang -- I guess people really like Marty Lang. Or maybe Marty is clicking on it a lot to see the profile of his face. It's just one of our automated syncs from blip.tv.
5. I Slept Here #13: Erie, PA -- I shared a bed (but not at the same time) with a famous actress and she tweeted it. So that explains that.

Videos:

1. Q&A: Sean Hackett's HOMECOMING (part 2)
   
   


2. Running scared
   
   


3. Meet Jenna D'Angelo
   
   


4. Conversations with Lucas: @CriticalTodd
   
   


5. The DREAM LOVER waltz
   
   

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

Conversations with Lucas: Kris & Lindy Boustedt (part 5)

Married co-directors Kris & Lindy Boustedt talk more about the emotions of their $200,000 feature film falling apart and how they channeled that into something productive with their new short THE SUMMER HOME.