Now that we’ve received our camera and Indie4K will soon be kicking into high gear, I felt it was time to step up and start posting here. I’m one of the other three in the three-man startup Chris mentions in the “About the Author” box. While Chris’s posts are mostly tech-oriented, I’ll be posting more cinema-related stuff, with an emphasis on independent filmmaking and how we as indie filmmakers can use developing technologies to tell our stories.
It’s an incredibly exciting time for the independent film community. Red has made high quality acquisition accessible to a segment of the market that could only have dreamed of it until recently. The camera and its raw workflow are going to give indie filmmakers unprecedented creative freedoms.
Part of what we’re hoping to do with this blog is form a support structure for independent filmmakers in the Red age. In the hopes of building that community, we’re looking to the example of the great independent filmmakers of the 70s who built up support structures for themselves and those around them, guided by a rebellious spirit and a deep love of cinema.
I am speaking of Francis Ford Coppola and his company American Zoetrope, of Jonas Mekas and the Filmmakers Co-op and of the godfather of American independent filmmaking, John Cassavetes. These guys wore many hats and were some of history’s greatest advocates for independent filmmkaing.
Coppola directed, produced, wrote and worked on developing and securing funding for his friends’ projects. After directing a musical for Warner Brothers called Finian’s Rainbow, a typical big-budget Hollywood shoot, he packed some film gear into a few station wagons and, with some film students and a few actors, he shot The Rain People. He liked the latter method more and set out to start his own production company with the talented people he met. These people included George Lucas, John Milius, Caleb Deschanel and Walter Murch. Coppola would go on to secure funding for a number of Zoetrope-produced films including THX 1184, American Graffiti, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now. In the process he developed new editing techniques, and many other innovations. (Thanks for 5.1 surround sound, Zoetrope/Murch.)
Jonas Mekas organized the avant garde filmmakers of New York City to create venues for exhibition and models for distributing films without obvious commercial potential. He was an advocate for the movement with his writing, creating the magazine Film Culture and writing the first film reviews in the Village Voice. He created the Anthology Archives and invented the diary film. At the age of 86, Mekas is still creating films. He fully embraces digital filmmaking and makes and gives away a film a day (in iPod format) as part of his 365 Films series. See his web site. Did I mention he’s 86?
John Cassavetes was a successful actor by the mid fifties. But he was frustrated by the roles he was getting and by the large size of the productions. He felt that Hollywood bureaucracy stifled individual expression. Encouraged by the light-weight 16mm equipment that was being developed, he began to make his own films, giving his actor friends roles that could never exist in mainstream cinema. He acted in, directed, wrote, produced and financed his own films. His first film, “Shadows” was scripted during an improv in his acting workshop. He solicited donations during a late night radio show and was able was able to raise $2,500 in one week (about $18,000 in current dollars). In the decades to come he would mortgage his house and take acting gigs that made his blood boil to make and even self-distribute the films he wanted to make.
Let’s move forward following their example, by helping each other along the way and by continuing to find creative ways to get our films out into the world.
“To me the great hope is that now these little 8mm video recorders and stuff have come out, some… just people who normally wouldn’t make movies are going to be making them, and – you know – suddenly, one day, some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart — you know — and? make a beautiful film with her little father’s camera…corder — and for once the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed. Forever. And it will really become an art form.”
– Francis Ford Coppola
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Sort of sad that Zoetrope had so much of their early equipment stolen and destroyed while on generous loans to filmmakers. I talked to someone who was there once who claimed the utopian dream hit a bunch of road bumps. Maybe that’s why he prefers the kids in Ohio to use their father’s camcorder instead of his own.