Tag film festival

This week’s guest is your humble host, Alex Ferrari, known for his film making blog and podcast Indie Film Hustle. With his 20 years of experience in the industry Alex dishes the straight line on making it in the film business. He shared his experiences with us as a film maker, making the rounds at every film festival imaginable and why film festivals may or may not be a good idea for film makers. This year he put his money where is his mouth is and shot the micro budget feature film This is Meg starring Jill-Michelle Melean who also co-wrote the film with Alex.

Indie Film Hustle Roots And Why Alex Started the Popular Film Making Blog

• Alex talks about escaping Miami to Hollywood and cutting his teeth as an editor. Remember what cutting ¾” tape was like?
• He talks about running garage sales as early as the age of 10 and walking around with a wad of cash
• Listening, watching, reading for a year Alex studied the business of an online business, creating content and SEO
• His rise was quick his content on Indie Film Hustle was resonating because Alex wasn’t afraid to tell filmmakers the truth.
• Providing value is his number 1 priority because he was tired of seeing filmmakers get beat up and ripped off in the film industry.

Where do You Find Time To Create That Much Content?

• Alex admits he has 150 unpublished blog articles and 50 videos just waiting!
• “There’s a lot of time in the day”
• Over the course of 2 years he’s learned how to process all of the content efficiently. Alex says he can put together a podcast in 2 to 2.5 hours.
• If he didn’t have a family, Indie Film Hustle might be even be bigger.
• Alex puts in 10 to 12 hours a day and rarely works weekends. When he does work, Alex says he’s efficient. He stops every day at 6:30.
• Ask most high achieving entrepreneurs and they’ll admit what Alex did to us. He says, “I feel like I’m a slacker, I feel like I’m not doing enough. I feel like I could do better, like I could do more.”

How Do You Feel About Film Festivals For Film Makers?

• Alex has been to every film festival you can imagine totally upwards of 500 festivals including Sundance.
• Quote: “If you’ve never gone through the experience, it’s magical. The first time you go to a festival and see your film projected, it’s the most amazing thing ever.”
• When do you that 500 times and spend a lot of money you realize what its worth.
• Alex doesn’t like the cost to many film festivals and feels like they are ripping off the film makers.
• After spending $1000 on 35 film festivals he learned how to get into festivals for free and his movie Broken ended up in 150.
• If you live in a small town, do it every year because it’s the only place you are going to connect with other local filmmakers, producers & investors.

Watch the Interview with Alex Ferrari on YouTube:

Sundance Film Festival: Alex recounts his experience

• His first time at Sundance he had just finished Broken and walked around with a laptop asking people if they wanted to watch a movie
• Sundance was like Disneyland. He would just take pictures with every celebrity he could.
• Name dropping time!!

What is your opinion of The American Film Market?

• This is Meg is going to be screened at The American Film Market
• Alex has been to AFM once before but this is the first time he’s heading upstairs with the big boys.
• Right now AFM is still the way to do international sales. It’s all about relationships.
• Quote: “You can sense that energy when somebody comes up to you and they just want to take and suck from you.”
• The bottom line is give more than you get.

Where did the concept for your feature film This is Meg start?

• Watch This is Meg on Amazon
• Find out what a scriptment is and why film makers use them.
• Alex was tired of waiting for permission to make his first feature film.
• He called his co-producer Jill-Michelle Melean and said, “I wanna make a movie and we are gonna do it this way and this is story I want to tell. I wanna tell your story as a comic and actress who is not 21 anymore and who’s been a little famous but is not a household name and what it’s like for you.”
• 1 week later Jill had a scriptment for This is Meg, 3 days later they locked up the cast and were shooting a few weeks later. This is Meg was shot in 8 days total over 6 weeks.
• Alex talks about how much he loved the process because he put absolutely no pressure on himself about the outcome of the film. And never even shot more than 6 to 8 hours.
• This is Meg was the most effortless project he’s ever been involved in.

What the trailer for This Is Meg

What was the distribution plan for This is Meg?

• Alex admits This is Meg is a dramedy that’s may not be for everyone.
• We have wonderful actors that you’ll recognize but we have no bankable stars.
• I created a lot of content around the process of making it so I’d be able to sell it to my audience which brings in revenue.
• I made a relationship with Distribber to be able to self-distribute the film which can now be seen on Hulu, iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, Google Play & Vudu.
• Oddly enough, it sold to China, South Africa and have a pending UK deal. Little by little it’s made some money and was a great proof of concept.
• If you don’t have an audience there’s no point in self-distributing with something like Distribber.
• Alex made a movie within the resources that he had. A lot of filmmakers become too ambitious too early.

What did you shoot This is Meg on?

• Blackmagic Cinema 2.5k https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/855879-REG/Blackmagic_Design_BMD_CINECAM26KEF_Cinema_Camera.html
• Mastered in 1080p (you do not need to master in 4k)
• Edited on Davinci Resolve https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/

Indie Film Hustle Episode Recommendations

• Making a Micro Budget Film That Cracks iTunes’s Top 3 with Julian Galea
• Watch Love to Paradise on Amazon
• How to Make 250K Indie Film Look Like $25 Million Blockbuster with Gaelan Connell
• Watch Blood Sand and Gold on Amazon

Watch The Director’s Series on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtBderQpMjs&list=PLHw-MoPtkleeOcuaZAXVNHOh5M5EfWLaW

This week’s guest is Bill Ostroff, the First Glance Film Festival Director who tells us how indie film festivals have evolved in the past 20 years. Bill shares his insights on festival submission trends, storytelling, camera technology and most importantly marketing. First Glance Films is the creator of the hashtag #SupportIndieFilm that has engaged and united thousands of indie film makers around the world.

William Ostroff, the FirstGlance Film Festival’s creator and director, is a Producer, Independent Media Consultant and DGA Assistant Director who has worked on over 100 film and television productions. He graduated from Temple University in 1993 with a degree in film and video and has since worked with major studios such as Disney, Warner Bros, Universal, Dreamworks, and Paramount on feature films and television series.

As the FirstGlance Film Festival Director, he has produced 37 film festivals to date, has watched over 20,000 indie films and is hands on with programming and decision making of all aspects of the Film Festivals. In 2013, he created the World’s Largest Traveling Comic Con Film Festival, which has screened genre indie films to over 5 million attendees over the 1st fours year in 2 countries, with plans of taking this concept global.

Submit Your Film to First Glance Film Festival: http://firstglancefilms.com

Follow First Glance Films on Twitter: http://twitter.com/firstglancefilm

When did you start the First Glance Film Festival?

This is our 20th in Philadelphia. We’ve been doing this since 1996. I wanted to work in movies and I had started the film festival right out of college. When I moved to Los Angeles to make movies I said I’d try to keep the Philly thing going and I did and then I was in LA and said we may as well do one here too.

How has the film festival evolved since you started the First Glance Film Festival?

When we first started it, we would screen on projectors that would run reels of celluloid. Having to mail those back and forth would be very expensive. We would cut and paste our program, literally, cut and paste with Elmers glue and tape. We actually advertised in newspaper and when we started we were pretty much the only independent film festival in Philadelphia. There was no one else here. At the time there was the Festival of World cinema which turned into the Philadephia Film Festival. It’s funny to me because the Philadelphia Film Festival says its 25 years old but it’s not. It’s only 5 years old because it used to be the Festival of World Cinema which forced us to change our name.

I don’t think people really get confused between us and them. We are the Slamdance to Sundance. We are the separate indie arm and don’t get mistaken. It would be nice if a big sponsor would.

Where has the First Glance Film Festival progressed to?

It used to be interesting because every year I’d have to go to IKEA to add to the shelves for the VHS collection. Then the VHS collection turned into the DVD collection. Now almost the entire screening is on a thumb drive. Between DCP’s and thumb drives I figure in the next couple of years we will figure out to stream directly to the projectors. The problem is because we’re an indie film festival we don’t always use state of the art venues. We try to use venues that have great screens and sound but may not be up to snuff with major corporations.

How did you come up with the idea for First Glance Film Festival?

When I was at Temple University I started a theater company with three friends of mine and I was kinda the behind the scenes guy saying we should do something film. I started brainstorming and looking at the film festivals that were around. Sundance was always one that I wanted to go to or have my film in and then Slamdance came. I said to myself I need to come up with something that has a feel like Slamdance or Sundance so we don’t just call ourselves the Philadelphia International Independent Film Festival of America. In my mind and most filmmakers know, the longer the title of the film festival, probably the smaller the venue or they don’t actually exist.

I had a couple of films in school and tended to make things more commercial than the professor wanted. I always seemed to lose out to the slow motion opening of the petal of a flower. You know I’d really like to show my stuff to people instead of classmates. The venue we were showing musical theater in was an underground space. I just decided I have 3 short films I’d like to show and put ads in the newspaper and made flyers and we ended up with about 30 films. This way I didn’t feel like it was my film festival it was their film festival. We screened for 3 nights and I thought that was going to be it.

People started calling and emailing and asking and we continued. I’ve kept continuing now 20 years later. As of next week I’ll have produced 37 film festivals and watched 18,000+ films. As a festival director I have and will always watch every single entry. I also have a screening committee I pull together. If it gets by me then I drop it into their boxes and have them watch a percentage of the films and grade them.

One of the things we do different. I want my screeners to take their jobs seriously. I don’t drop 100s of hours of film on them. They may watch 15 to 20 hours of film over 2 months. It’s not their job. The pre-screening committee and myself do nominations in a whole bunch of categories and we actually do them. Speaking of Film Freeway there are lots of scam festivals that will take your money. It may only be a $5 entry fee but they aren’t really watching your film and then you get an award for Best Costume Design and you’re like huh?

Don’t Miss The First Glance Filmmaker Roundtable with Dave Bullis

How has marketing the First Glance Film Festival changed?

One of the things I’ve always realized was we are not a huge film festival. We are a weekend independent film festival. Social media has been huge for us. I’ve learned how to use social media quite well including Twitter and Facebook. It’s not only how we cultivate filmmakers but we also teach them how to market. If you ask any of our alumni filmmakers, from the time of acceptance we will get to them and say here’s some of the things you need to do to market your film. People aren’t going to come to your film if they don’t know it exists. I want to educate people. A lot of filmmakers aren’t very good at marketing.

My goal when I was a filmmaker was I yes I want to have a film festival, I want to show my film but I want as many people to see it as possible. How do I make that happen? Before the internet the only way you could do that was call or invite people, make flyers or postcards. What I did was as I was learning Facebook and Twitter I would create a Facebook event and invite everyone. It was us working really hard doing it ourselves.

As we started to grow I knew if I could educate the filmmakers to use Twitter 1/10th as well as I do then they’ll be able to promote. Even if they can’t get people to First Glance if that’s their first showing, by the time they finish their festival circuit they’ll have full rooms and will have their audience. It’s one of the few ways you can build an audience without really spending. You have to spend time but you can build an audience.

When I came up with the idea #SupportIndieFilm hashtag this is when I noticed hashtags were sort of came into being. I noticed big companies like Pepsi using it. I need something to bring the community together to understand indie film is not the kind of indie film Hollywood is talking about made for $25 million and distributed by Sony Classics. LaLa Land is not an independent film.

We threw the hashtag out there and used it every single day. We have thousands of followers that have tagged #SupportIndieFilm in their profiles that use it every day. On average #SupportIndieFilm reaches 15 to 25 million people a day. In the last couple of years I’ve noticed big names starting to use it and companies starting to notice. I think we are on the cusp of something happening. There’s a lot of true indie filmmakers that are making them for $100k to $200k that would sell it to break even. These big giant 20 screen multiplexes and walk in any day and only find 5 people. If these megaplexes would open up one of their screens to someone like me I could put a new project on their screen every day.

What do you look for when screening independent film submissions?

Look at our alumni films on YouTube and watch the trailers. You’ll see a wide variety of content across genres. I’ve always been someone that enjoys all types of entertainment. I look at things for the production value, acting, sound, cinematography. A lot of people will ask if only accept film shot in a certain medium and it’s not about that. It’s about the storytelling. It could be shot on an iPhone and if the story is good and the acting is good and the sound is decent then there is no real criteria other than will an audience enjoy this film in some way. Will you laugh, will you cry, is this a great short film or cutest animation I’ve seen. Is this web series different or original?

When you have a finite amount of time to program it’s hard. I don’t think a lot of people have the knowledge I have. Watching the amount of film I have, I have an eye for it now. I get it, every filmmaker wants to be in a film festival. That’s why film festivals keep popping up left and right. Eventually your film will end up somewhere. Will it end up in First Glance? I don’t know. It depends on the other entries that come in and do we have the time? If it’s a 7 minute short film, it may be a better opportunity. If it’s a 109 minute feature film, it better be good. When we screen, we never screen just one film. We screen a program.

Do you see any trends in film festival submissions?

It’s cyclical. Because technology has made things easier and affordable, I think we are seeing more SciFi and Horror. We are seeing things that are extraordinarily topical. Back in the day when you would shoot on film and edit, if it’s an indie film it could be 2 to 3 years old before it went to festival. We are finding a lot of interesting voices and filmmaking. People are using all types of instruments to shoot.

We even get people who say they’d like to show their Virtual Reality film at the festival and we don’t have the capability to make that happen yet. The theater we are in isn’t going to be able to provide 200 headsets. We tried to do 3D a few years ago and it just didn’t pan out. It’s a hard process and I think VR is in that same position. I couldn’t even watch that Hardcore Henry that came out a few years ago.

Every year it changes depending on the mood of the country. It’s interesting to me. The genre stuff is great and the production value seems amazing and they’ll go after the production value and special fx but the acting is subpar. As a filmmaker and festival director, one of the main things they should look at is getting the right actors before they shoot. If you have to postpone a bit, unless your grandmother is Jane Fonda don’t cast your grandmother in your movie. I understand with time and money but with the magic of editing, you don’t have to shoot grandma at the same time.

I think the trend is also people want to use the most high tech cameras and that doesn’t matter either. I’m looking at the story and I don’t mind if it’s gritty when it calls for it. I’m not dead set on a certain criteria for anything. I can pretty much enjoy anything. If it gets by me it goes to the screeners for the nominations and we go from there. As a backup we usually do a short online contest that runs for 30 days to give the opportunity to other filmmakers and the winner premiers at the next First Glance Film Festival.

Download The Melanie Wise Interview For Free:

An accomplished actress and stunt woman, Melanie Wise has been acting professionally for over a decade. As lead actress of the award-winning horror-action film, Hanah’s Gift,  Melanie won best actress at the IndieFest Film Festival. She is also an accomplished producer, video and sound editor with skills in sound effects, graphic design, 2D motion graphics, and specializes in polishing troubled projects.

Melanie is the founder of the Artemis Film Festival. Now in its 3rd, it’s more than your typical indie film festival. It not only celebrates women, but women who kick ass.  From female action heroes and stunt women to female activists and business women, the Artemis Film Festival features 3 days of action packed content in Santa Monica, CA.

Talking with Melanie we learn what it takes to run a film festival, what being a female stunt woman is like in Hollywood and why women kick so much ass!

Support The Artemis Film Festival:

Crowd Funding page:  http://www.WomenKickAss.com
Artemis Film Festival:  http://www.ArtemisFilmFestival.com
Artemis Motion Pictures: https://www.artemismotionpictures.com

Every Wednesday at 7pm PST join Melanie for the #WomenKickAss Twitter chat

Twitter Handle(s):
Melanie Wise, Founder @IamMelanieWise
Artemis Motion Pictures:  @ArtemisPics
Artemis Film Festival:  @Artemis_FF

Team Members:
Sean Newcombe, Co-Founder: @therealnewk
Megan Hubbell, Social Media Goddess: @MeganHubbell
Indus Alelia, PR & Outreach Mgr: @IndusAlelia

Watch The Entire Melanie Wise Interview

Read The Melanie Wise Interview Highlights

How did you get involved in the film industry?

I started out modeling and that was a non-starter which doesn’t make sense at my height. They say models have to be tall but in Los Angeles it was the bathing suit industry and all the models are 5ft tall. I eventually ventured into acting and I’ve always been physically inclined so stunts were a no-brainer. One of the first jobs I worked was a Sunkist commercial. They only hired me because I was big enough to tackle a guy.

It was a non-union with just a day rate, no residuals and no bumps for stunt hits and I was dumb enough to not know to ask for it. There were a pile of people jumping into this one thing and I would end up at the bottom every time we did a take. I was covered in bruises from one end to the other but it was fun. At the end of the day, I got paid for a day on the beach to tackle a guy.

Was that your first professional job?

It wasn’t the most professional, but yeah. Some people consider low budget film making, not very professional and I’m not sure I align well with that sentiment. Anytime you have less resources, the thing that you need to excel at is creative problem solving. I think that’s where the professionalism does show up.

How did you make the jump to film and stunt work?

I’ve done all of my own fight scenes and I love fight stunts. I don’t get into things like fire burns and high falls. I consider the stunts that I do to be the simplest version. When people call me a stunt woman it’s kind of a lie because there isn’t much an “oops” factor to it. If I screw up I might break a bone but in some stunts if you screw up you might be dead. I have a long athletic history so doing a fight scene is a long athletic dance.

Have you had any formal martial arts or fight training?

I do have some martial arts training, some boxing training and some stunt training. I want to start training on wire work.

What’s the craziest stunt you’ve ever done?

It wasn’t crazy, just difficult. The film Hanah’s Gift was shot from the point of view from one of the characters and in real time. The whole movie looks like a 90 minute cut. There is a fight scene in it that’s kind of short but the actual take was 9 minutes long. In most fight scenes you setup angles and takes and directions. For what we shot there were not cut-to’s. You had to nail it. We wound up taking that 9 times and when it was all said and done I had broken two bones.

I don’t know if I could live with myself if I was careless and actually hurt somebody. There was a fight scene I did with a guy and we choreographed and rehearsed. We know it was going to be dark on set going in. I’m supposed to swing a flashlight at him and for whatever reason he stepped into it and I rotated my hand and I actually clocked him in the head. It was just an extraordinary error. Looking back I’m just glad nothing serious happened. Simple simple things can cause big big problems.

What goes into choreographing and prepping a fight scene?

It depends on the difficulty level of it. Punches and kicks and basic throws aren’t bad to do. When we shot our crowdfunding video we shot 4 short action sequences. I think our entire shooting time for choreography and shooting was probably 12 hours. We choreographed and rehearsed on one day and shot on another.

When you choreograph you’re not necessarily doing it on location so you have to make some adjustments on the day of. It depends on the skill level and strengths of the people you have. You wouldn’t ask someone who’s not good at kicks to do a head kick.  Part of doing stunts is getting bumps and bruises.

Where did you get the idea for the Artemis Film Festival?

There’s a team of us. I’m called the founder but I prefer my title “Fucking Professional Picky Bitch.” I want to put Melanie Wise, FPPB but you know. All of us have known each other for a lot of years and love content that was action oriented with female leads. We struggled with putting that type of content into the world so we started our own festival. It’s a great thing and I’m honored we can do it every year but it’s a lot to do.

Our first year I thought we were going to get laughed out of the park but we actually got over 200 submissions from 25 different countries in 2 months. You get content that doesn’t fit but the majority was content with badass women in it including narratives, documentaries. Things about history that aren’t known from shorts to feature length films. We block together shorts that are similarly themed.

The regulation for the festival is that the film needs to feature a female in a leading or co-leading role in a physical action role or some type of activism. We don’t have distinctions that women need to produce or direct. On screen we just need to see empowered images of women.

What is your selection process like?

What’s interesting is, if you look at most film festivals, unless it’s a genre festival like horror or action, there’s not a huge number of festivals these films can play at. Most film festivals program documentaries, dramas and comedies. A lot of these films don’t have a good home and they should.

How many years have you been running the Artemis Film Festival?

We are in our 3^rd year. We are still very young and have been fan backed every year. I think it’s fair to say our fans like us. It’s been an amazing ride. I’ve had the belief for years that women in action is something that popular audiences are into. That’s true the world over because we are getting films from all over. Our first year we got a film from Iran about female empowerment.

What films standout as a favorite of yours?

I’m not a festival goer, I think it’s a yawn to me. We program exciting stuff. It’s not like you’re going to walk in and fall asleep. This year amongst our submissions we have a film that won Student Academy Award. It’s a period piece that features a female racecar driver. We’ve got a documentary from Tazmania of all places. The lady that actually brought the piece together and actually told her story through the events that happened. They took down a billion dollar logging company. Those kinds of stories are ones we really need to see.

When are submissions open for the Artemis Film Festival?

Submissions closed on December 15, 2016. For our 2018 festival we are getting ready to announce the submission schedule which we probably open in August. The festival takes place Thursday April 20 – Sunday April 23. Our red carpet will be in Beverly Hills and the last 3 days of the festival will be in Santa Monica.

What film makers inspire you?

One of my favorites is Joss Whedon. He does amazing action. From what I’ve read for Avengers is that he wrote so many female roles and fought tooth and nail and ended up with one female character. He tells amazing and brilliant stories and casts equal distribution of men and women roles.

Are women in film making headway in Hollywood?

I definitely think things are changing. I can’t look at it and say wow we’ve accomplished so much. The cool thing is TV is way ahead of film. We have a snobbery between the small screen and the big screen. The bottom line of it is cable is turning out some badass female characters. We still have a lot of room to make up in film and we aren’t anywhere we need to be.

I just participated in article discussing sexism in Hollywood. They included some quotes of mine and I read the stories from the others that were included. One lady talked about she was physically intimidated for saying something she didn’t say and tracked down to her by 4 men.

What’s in store for you in the future?

I’m trying to get a better sense of balance and either get my energy back to content making or something else. I really would like to see our whole team focus on making content. We’ve been working really hard behind the scenes. We have more honoree announcements to make for this year but I have so much on my plate I’m trying not to plan too much. Honorees this year include Tom Cruise and Nichelle Nichols, the original Lieutenant Uhura. The stunt people we have every year are legendary.

Herding film makers is like herding cats. The amount of people that make a film and don’t make cover art. When I start asking for deliverables like high res files and I don’t get what I need. We need Blu-Ray to be able to showcase their films or they come in with region 0 and don’t play in a region 1 DVD player. It’s a lot of work but it’s worth it but film makers need to start mastering the business side of things.