Thank god for post-production. After the travails of casting, owning the director's chair and wrangling two unruly actors, the final shot is done. No more sets and arguments, it's now all about catching Zen in the edit room. Wallace Cotten begins to edit his masterpiece. Cotten recalls his favorite part of the post-production process and that means he doesn't have to see some particular people again - at least offscreen. Or does he? Much to his dismay, Don and Lizard Man are there to help out with "final cuts" and songs for the soundtrack. Watch it all play out in Episode 4 of Modern Imbecile's Idiot's Guide To Making Movies For Dummies presented by Slamdance TV!
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You've cast your low budget indie feature and navigated the ins and outs of directing a love scene. But how do you, intrepid independent filmmaker, wrangle two unruly actors bent on going off-script for the all-important emotional climax of your opus? Find out in Episode 3 of Modern Imbecile's Idiot's Guide To Making Movies For Dummies presented by Slamdance TV!
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So you've got your low-budget indie feature cast, for better and most definitely for worse. What next? Learn how to DIRECT the thing, Modern Imbecile-style, in the latest installment of Idiot's Guide To Making Movies For Dummies presented by Slamdance TV, in which Don and Lizard Man show Wallace the finer points of shooting a love scene.
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With indie cinema season kicking off next month in Park City, Slamdance TV is here to help with a five-part behind-the-scenes primer on making movies (for dummies) by Slamdance vets Kevin M. Brennan (It's a Disaster) and Doug Manley (Modern Imbecile's Planet World). First up this week, exclusively on Movieline: How to cast your low-budget indie feature, survive audition ad-libs, and find "yesterday's Robert De Niro, today."
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Every performer must pay their dues, but with this week’s old school-flavored ghost pic The Innkeepers character actor Pat Healy cashes in over a decade of memorable supporting turns and guest spots for the spotlight at an auspicious moment in his career. Having popped up in a number of great films over the years (Magnolia! Ghost World! Rescue Dawn!) Healy stars with Sara Paxton in the Ti West film as a sardonic desk clerk at the Yankee Pedlar Inn, where spooky happenings are afoot; meanwhile, Healy also earned writing credits on the award-winning In Treatment and recently took Sundance by storm with Craig Zobel’s controversial Compliance. And to think: It all began with the one-two punch of My Best Friend’s Wedding and Home Alone 3…
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"I'm trying to work in studio movies, but they won't hire me. I get feedback from my agent saying, 'She's too much of an indie queen.' And then on the other side, my name doesn't get the financing to do a movie over $1 million. And I'm called 'the indie queen.' So it's really a challenging path because I know so much about the indie side of the business. Because I grew up in it. It's like I'm back in junior high here at Sundance. There's John Cooper and Trevor Groth and we all grew up together, you know? But it's different times. And this stuff gets projected onto me. People are like, 'You're here every year, you do so many indie movies.' And I'm like, 'No, I did Broken English five years ago.'" [indieWIRE]
Some of you may be tempted to BitTorrent the latest new releases this week (Were you one of those Fast Five pirates? Admit it, rascal!), but let indie filmmaker Ti West bend your ear with a personal plea as his latest film, the spooky ghost tale The Innkeepers, hits VOD on Friday (December 30). "It's not the money," he writes, admitting that he still hasn't made a dime from his excellent 2009 film House of the Devil. Pay to see indie films like West's, he argues, "because if the movie makes money... that's tangible evidence of a paying audience out there for movies like mine. For independent films. For something different. Not just bland remakes/sequels or live action versions of comic books/cartoons/boardgames." Hear, hear.
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The indie filmmaking game (as in true-blue, studio-free indie filmmaking) has gotten to a point where even Francis Ford Coppola is following Kevin Smith into the great unknown of out-of-the-box distribution experimentation, but mumblecore vet Joe Swanberg (LOL, Hannah Takes the Stairs) has partnered with independent release label Factory 25 on yet another crazy idea: Selling four-film, one-year subscriptions to his fans for $99.95 a pop, like a film version of artisanal foodstuff and wine club models.
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