Short Horror Films By Independent Film Studio Fewdio
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on August 1, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Sunday, August 1st, 2010Fewdio cashes in on the often overlooked fact that horror films are typically 90% setup to bring you studio-quality, witty horror film shorts. And they’re FREE.
The fact that so many films can be summarized in about 90 seconds is probably one of the reasons I enjoy short film so much. Why spend 120 minutes of your life doing something that can be accomplished in five? What is fairly easy to do, and is done a lot in this genre, is comedy. Which is why it was refreshing to run across Fewdio , an extremely talented and polished group of professionals who had been working in the studio system and decided they wanted to do something where they had complete control, and without a huge budget and production cycle. They cashed in on two facts that are largely overlooked regarding horror: first of all, that the best segments of horror films often stand up on their own and are strung together with setups, and secondly, that no-one was really doing quality horror shorts. As Fewdio’s Drew Daywalt points out in this Shock Till You Drop interview, it’s a very viable and largely unexplored format. As he puts it: “You end on a scare and bang, you’re out…it’s a good model to aspire to. Twilight Zone is formulated that way. Set up, continued set up, expected left turn, roll credits“. All of Fewdio’s films (and there are around 50) have fairly high production values, a clever concept, and exceptional attention to details that are often overlooked in independent productions, especially their attention to sound, probably one of the most powerful tools at a horror filmmaker’s disposal. You can watch most of their films on their YouTube channel, or buy the Nightmare House – Volume 1 DVD on their site. Watch a few below. Read the rest of this entry »
VODO: A Cool New Idea For Distributing & Funding Independent Film
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on July 5, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Monday, July 5th, 2010Watch out Hollywood. The future is arriving.
I have a number of friends who derive their livelihood from the mainstream, Hollywood-centric film industry, so if you find me dead in a ditch soon, it may be because of some of the things I’m about to say. In much the same way that record labels created their own demise a decade ago by desperately trying to hold on to a juicy business model that let them charge twenty bucks for a twenty minute CD (by doing things like suing customers and artists alike), the floundering and litigation-addicted film industry has been doing much the same thing for a while. They’ve used lawsuits, melodramatic anti-piracy clips, and distorted claims about how piracy has stolen billions in wages and thousands of jobs from Hollywood. Even the US General Accounting Office has called their bluff. So while it may have taken a few years for the indy music scene to evolve into the hodgepodge of profitable distribution channels that it is today, in the end we have more great music – and at a better price – than we’ve had in decades. And it seems that price is at most a dollar a song. So watch out Hollywood. Your days of multimillion dollar productions are numbered. And your demise will be at the hands of clever ventures like VODO, an ingenious new funding and distribution plan that coordinates the world’s largest torrent trackers to distribute artists’ films, and then facilitates funding them. You get a high-quality and original viewing experience for free, the artist gets massive distribution and a source of revenue based on perceived value, because you pay as much as you feel like paying, if anything at all. VODO has also partnered with MOFILM for a contest with over $100,000 in prizes. VODO’s currently highlighted project is a “hard sci-fi” series called Pioneer One. The series pilot cost just $6,000, which was raised through the micro-funding platform Kickstarter. Pioneer One was produced by the same team that created Vodo’s biggest success to date, a film called Lionshare. Having watched both Lionshare and the Pioneer One pilot, I have a lot of enthusiasm for where this could go. In spite of some occasionally wobbly acting, writing, or production in both projects, the material is largely pretty solid, and VODO has many other films to explore. All for whatever you feel like paying for them. Check out the trailers for Lionshare and Pioneer One below. Read the rest of this entry »
Red Letter Media – Brilliant, Hilarious, and… Annoying?
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on April 6, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010It would just be silly for us to review a preview of a review of a movie, so we’ll let you decide for yourself what to think about YouTube celebrity critic Red Letter Media.
What’s one half brilliant comedy, one half insightful critical analysis, and one half annoying? The movie reviews by Red Letter Media, that’s what. Yeah, I know that’s three halves, but the math just feels right. I’ve never been a big fan of critics and movie reviews; there’s something intrinsically annoying about someone who doesn’t know how to do something sitting around telling you how someone who does didn’t do it right. We’ve mentioned the “meta” nature of recent pop media before, and this is where the Red Letter Media reviews of films like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace shine. If you haven’t seen them before, the reviews are a strange mix of childish complaints mixed with brilliant insights, delivered with a simple-minded but self-aware lowbrow humor. All read in a contrived voice that sounds like a cross between Strong Bad and Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs . The reviews are sometimes almost as long as the movies they’re skewering, and sometimes worth the marathon, sometimes not. It would just be too meta even for my tastes to review a review of a movie, so I’ll let you decide for yourself. So who’s behind this madness? Surprisingly, it’s not some tormented nerd with a video camera like CopperCab, it’s an indy film actor/director/writer named Mike Stoklasa, who apparently collaborates with fellow indy filmmaker Jay Bauman. Read an interview Stoklasa here, and explore the reviews on Red Letter Media’s YouTube channel. Read the rest of this entry »
Life Is Short – Films Should Be Too
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on March 31, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010The internet is one big film festival, and you can be the judge.
 Tokyo/Glow Is Gorgeous, Simple, and Short |
One of my only disappointments regarding the recent Ann Arbor Film Festival was that I didn’t catch enough of it. Which is a little amusing, since I had a press pass*, and it’s a festival comprised largely of short films. Which are coincidentally kind of a fetish of mine, largely because of my goldfish-like media attention span. I regrettably missed winner’s night, but was confident that I could cleverly find a lot of the films online like I had with some of the opening night entries. How wrong I was. What I quickly learned googling the festival winners was that there are two distinct schools of thought on distribution of these festival-oriented works: one that believes in the new economy of “release it free and cash in later” (as in Chris Anderson’s book Free), and one that maintains its cachet mainly via scarcity of distribution. Ah well. I guess I’ll just have to spend more time in real theaters, watching real films! Until then though, there’s a never-ending film festival online. The biggest problem ultimately is sorting through the astounding number of indy shorts out there to find that genuine gem. Which is – as I just learned – precisely one of the reasons to go to a festival. So with all my complaining about being short on time, it’s rather ironic that I spent as much time as I did to find some sites to share with you. Of the dozens of sites I perused, two that I found that seemed to have the highest density of quality films were probably NZShortFilm.com and CoffeeShorts. My search is only just beginning though; if you have any suggestions, feel free to share. Read the rest of this entry »
Indy Film Alive & Well At The 2010 Ann Arbor Film Festival
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on March 24, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010One of the world’s most respected and longest-running indy film festivals is in the tiny college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and if opening night is any indication, this year’s festival promises to be a winner.
I always think of myself as film lover until I find myself surrounded by the passionate fanatics that will comprise a festival like the amazingly long-lived Ann Arbor Film Festival, now in its 48th year. It’s quite a feat filling a classic venue like the 1700+ capacity Michigan Theater on a Wednesday night, especially showing short films that no-one has heard of, but the AAFF did well on their opening night; I didn’t check the balcony, but there were very few seats open on the main floor. I was a little anxious about attending a full evening of indy film festival shorts; the luxury of time-shifted viewing and Internet access to an amazing variety of indy media has made me something of an on-demand media monster. But the festival didn’t disappoint, which is another impressive feat. The double-edged sword of creating a successful festival like the AAFF is that – yes, of course, you’re guaranteed a lot of quality submissions from around the world – but as the festival’s Executive Director Donald Harrison pointed out in his introduction to the festival tonight, their screeners and programmers had to sift through over 2500 submissions this year. I get a headache just thinking about what that must be like. Combine the sheer quantity with the multiple media formats and preparation required for simply projecting the material, and if the festival takes place at all, a monumental task has been accomplished. Think about that if you happen to be lucky enough to attend the festival this year. If you aren’t able to attend the festival, a surprising number of the films are readily available on line. Of course nothing compares to seeing them on a huge classic theater screen like the Michigan, but below are a few highlights from tonight’s entries for your perusal. See the AAFF’s YouTube channel for more previews, and their web site for the week’s schedule and other festival details. Read the rest of this entry »