“GET A SCRIPT AND AN IPHONE AND START SHOOTING”, STEVEN SODERBERGH’S ADVICE TO FILMMAKERS…….DID HE JUST ENDORSE THE $10,000 FILM CON HOLLYWOOD 2018 SHORT FILM COMPETITION??!!!
It’s probably safe to say at this point that producing film/video/content/commercial is to the current era what coding was to 2008. To say anyone can do it is not just not an statement of fact, it’s actually those who cannot do it in two years who will have allowed the education inflation curve pass them by, probably having chosen to misuse their phone for lazy idling instead. Whether for sharpening a presentation, a tool of entrepreneurship, making a political point, or actually producing for television or film, the accessibility of the top-tier technology has never been so astonishingly streamlined as it is in the present environment.
Steven Soderbergh, one of Hollywood’s truly great film directors and arbiters of taste the last thirty years has been nothing short of enthusiastic in speaking of not just his most recent film, “Unsane” which he made on iPhone, but how excited he is of future plans to continue making movies exclusively on his iPhone. “I’d have to have a pretty good reason not to be thinking about that. There’s a philosophical obstacle a lot of people have about the size of the capture device. I don’t have that problem. I look at this as potentially one of the most liberating experiences that I’ve ever had as a filmmaker, and that I continue having. The gets that I felt moment to moment were so significant that this is, to me, a new chapter.”
Soderbergh had actually announced his retirement from film in 2013, until he says he became “reactivated”, his iPhone shot film more than any of the others offering a feeling of “very much like a return to a kind of filmmaking I indulged in when I was a teenager ….a pleasure.” The iPhone’s main advantage was that he could put the lens anywhere “in a matter of seconds”. “The ability to watch a rehearsal and then immediately go into shooting keeps energy level going,” he said. He added that it will be “tricky to go back to a more conventional way of shooting” and revealed that his next project, which begins filming next week, will use the same method. He didn’t, however, reveal which film he was referring to, whether he was discussing his forthcoming Panama Papers project or action thriller Planet Kill, the Studio 8 project written by Greer and Contagion’s Scott Z. Burns that he was reportedly considering directing.
Soderbergh is thrilled to share his viewpoint with anyone interested. Asked recently on a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session, a reader asked him for advice on getting financing for a film, Soderbergh replied “Get a script and an iPhone and start shooting. Seriously,”. Not only is his advice serious and straightforward, Soderbergh relentlessly mentions the joy of filmmaking having once again returned, remarkable talk from an Oscar level director who top Hollywood stars continually go out of their way to work with.
“I think this is the future,” Soderbergh told Indiewire at the Sundance Film Festival this week. “Anybody going to see this movie who has no idea of the backstory to the production will have no idea this was shot on a phone. That’s not part of the conceit.” The 55-year-old director added, “People forget, this is a 4k capture. I’ve seen it 40 feet tall. It looks like velvet. This is a game changer to me.”
Following last year’s “Logan Lucky,” a self-financed feature (primarily via pre-selling foreign distribution rights, as well as ancillary rights, and partnering with Bleecker Street on a service deal for the theatrical release) “Unsane” is the latest example of his desire to move beyond the studio arena for good. “I can’t imagine a scenario in which I’d get back and do that,” he said at Sundance, reflecting on his disdain for the studio model. “I don’t know what the upside would be. I don’t think they’re necessarily looking for what I bring and I don’t know that I’m looking for what they bring. There are things they do very well and they do them.”
Soderbergh’s liberties, reflecting the times, extend to marketing, and the decisions are endless, as is the learning process (particularly on the marketing side, where as the film’s financier, he now takes the lead), saying he would reverse the way that he promotes Unsane compared to Logan Lucky, which made $27.8M Stateside and close to $45M worldwide, and relied heavily on social media spending rather than television advertising. “I’m playing a long game here,” he said. “I’m trying to develop an approach to putting out a movie in wide release that makes some kind of economic sense for the filmmakers and the people that have a participation in the movie. It’s going to take a while.”
“What we learned [on Logan Lucky] was that, at my insistence, most of our marketing money was used to drop content into social media, that was my part of the experiment. We discovered that the people we were trying to reach, they would engage in the social media, but this turned out to be a discreet activity that didn’t turn into them buying a movie ticket. We’ve decided to invert that structure and I am actually doing the thing that I used to blame people for doing, to buy a lot of TV. When people don’t see your movie on TV, they don’t think it’s real.”
Consistent with his embrace of the times, the advances in technology as realities to be celebrated, Soderbergh keeps his focus on his work and art, rather than the loss of theater going experience that has some Hollywood dinosaurs weeping, only punctuating their fading relevance ten years after the original correction.
“Getting upset about Netflix to me is like getting upset about the weather,” he said. “It’s just something that’s happening and we have to decide what we feel about it. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon. For as many instances as you can say, ‘Oh, they’re being destructive or cannibalistic in this space,’ they are absolutely providing eyeballs for filmmakers in another space that just wouldn’t exist, period. I don’t see any benefit on partisanship within this arena of storytelling and trying to reach an audience. You don’t make these things to be seen in a closet.”
With video being the #1 form of engagement on social media, the competition for quality clips has never been more important (in large measure because it has never been more accessible). The Film Con Hollywood Short Film Competition should be considered an exercise in quality content creation that challenges filmmakers/content creators to immerse themselves in to get good at creating quality and quantity content that reflects their particular aesthetic and voice, and a great way to assemble a library of video that can be used into the future. Important to note is that as any great filmmaker will tell you, there's no real way of knowing what will be a great film, video, or commercial until it is completed; that is to say, you have to keep trying, and something great will emerge.
One of the most anticipated stars at Film Con Hollywood 2018, scheduled for March 24, 2018, will be Ramaa Mosely, (herself a critically acclaimed filmmaker and activist who has directed feature films, hundreds of of award winning commercials), founder of Adolescent Content, a Los Angeles incubator dedicated to mentoring and guiding young filmmakers and videographers from around the country who have demonstrated precocious talent. In addition to matching them with opportunities and putting them in positions to succeed, Adolescent advocates for having young people create commercial spots and interactive electronic spots for major global brands whose products are aimed at audiences of matching age and mindset. “It’s not really revolutionary thinking, you’d probably think it’s common sense for brands who want to sell to a certain demo to have people who think that way organically doing their creatives and ads.”
With more Hollywood star names like Mosely being added to the incredible Film Con Hollywood 2018 lineup daily, opportunities to get discovered, learn, network, and find opportunity are baked into the cake. Perhaps the biggest challenge will be for those procrastinating, as brisk ticket sales are auguring a sellout of the 1,000 available Los Angeles Convention Center seats.
For the latest Film Con Hollywood 2018 news, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are the best places to keep pace with the latest breaking news relating to this one-of-a-kind Hollywood event.
Steven Soderbergh, one of Hollywood’s truly great film directors and arbiters of taste the last thirty years has been nothing short of enthusiastic in speaking of not just his most recent film, “Unsane” which he made on iPhone, but how excited he is of future plans to continue making movies exclusively on his iPhone. “I’d have to have a pretty good reason not to be thinking about that. There’s a philosophical obstacle a lot of people have about the size of the capture device. I don’t have that problem. I look at this as potentially one of the most liberating experiences that I’ve ever had as a filmmaker, and that I continue having. The gets that I felt moment to moment were so significant that this is, to me, a new chapter.”
Soderbergh had actually announced his retirement from film in 2013, until he says he became “reactivated”, his iPhone shot film more than any of the others offering a feeling of “very much like a return to a kind of filmmaking I indulged in when I was a teenager ….a pleasure.” The iPhone’s main advantage was that he could put the lens anywhere “in a matter of seconds”. “The ability to watch a rehearsal and then immediately go into shooting keeps energy level going,” he said. He added that it will be “tricky to go back to a more conventional way of shooting” and revealed that his next project, which begins filming next week, will use the same method. He didn’t, however, reveal which film he was referring to, whether he was discussing his forthcoming Panama Papers project or action thriller Planet Kill, the Studio 8 project written by Greer and Contagion’s Scott Z. Burns that he was reportedly considering directing.
Soderbergh is thrilled to share his viewpoint with anyone interested. Asked recently on a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session, a reader asked him for advice on getting financing for a film, Soderbergh replied “Get a script and an iPhone and start shooting. Seriously,”. Not only is his advice serious and straightforward, Soderbergh relentlessly mentions the joy of filmmaking having once again returned, remarkable talk from an Oscar level director who top Hollywood stars continually go out of their way to work with.
“I think this is the future,” Soderbergh told Indiewire at the Sundance Film Festival this week. “Anybody going to see this movie who has no idea of the backstory to the production will have no idea this was shot on a phone. That’s not part of the conceit.” The 55-year-old director added, “People forget, this is a 4k capture. I’ve seen it 40 feet tall. It looks like velvet. This is a game changer to me.”
Following last year’s “Logan Lucky,” a self-financed feature (primarily via pre-selling foreign distribution rights, as well as ancillary rights, and partnering with Bleecker Street on a service deal for the theatrical release) “Unsane” is the latest example of his desire to move beyond the studio arena for good. “I can’t imagine a scenario in which I’d get back and do that,” he said at Sundance, reflecting on his disdain for the studio model. “I don’t know what the upside would be. I don’t think they’re necessarily looking for what I bring and I don’t know that I’m looking for what they bring. There are things they do very well and they do them.”
Soderbergh’s liberties, reflecting the times, extend to marketing, and the decisions are endless, as is the learning process (particularly on the marketing side, where as the film’s financier, he now takes the lead), saying he would reverse the way that he promotes Unsane compared to Logan Lucky, which made $27.8M Stateside and close to $45M worldwide, and relied heavily on social media spending rather than television advertising. “I’m playing a long game here,” he said. “I’m trying to develop an approach to putting out a movie in wide release that makes some kind of economic sense for the filmmakers and the people that have a participation in the movie. It’s going to take a while.”
“What we learned [on Logan Lucky] was that, at my insistence, most of our marketing money was used to drop content into social media, that was my part of the experiment. We discovered that the people we were trying to reach, they would engage in the social media, but this turned out to be a discreet activity that didn’t turn into them buying a movie ticket. We’ve decided to invert that structure and I am actually doing the thing that I used to blame people for doing, to buy a lot of TV. When people don’t see your movie on TV, they don’t think it’s real.”
Consistent with his embrace of the times, the advances in technology as realities to be celebrated, Soderbergh keeps his focus on his work and art, rather than the loss of theater going experience that has some Hollywood dinosaurs weeping, only punctuating their fading relevance ten years after the original correction.
“Getting upset about Netflix to me is like getting upset about the weather,” he said. “It’s just something that’s happening and we have to decide what we feel about it. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon. For as many instances as you can say, ‘Oh, they’re being destructive or cannibalistic in this space,’ they are absolutely providing eyeballs for filmmakers in another space that just wouldn’t exist, period. I don’t see any benefit on partisanship within this arena of storytelling and trying to reach an audience. You don’t make these things to be seen in a closet.”
With video being the #1 form of engagement on social media, the competition for quality clips has never been more important (in large measure because it has never been more accessible). The Film Con Hollywood Short Film Competition should be considered an exercise in quality content creation that challenges filmmakers/content creators to immerse themselves in to get good at creating quality and quantity content that reflects their particular aesthetic and voice, and a great way to assemble a library of video that can be used into the future. Important to note is that as any great filmmaker will tell you, there's no real way of knowing what will be a great film, video, or commercial until it is completed; that is to say, you have to keep trying, and something great will emerge.
One of the most anticipated stars at Film Con Hollywood 2018, scheduled for March 24, 2018, will be Ramaa Mosely, (herself a critically acclaimed filmmaker and activist who has directed feature films, hundreds of of award winning commercials), founder of Adolescent Content, a Los Angeles incubator dedicated to mentoring and guiding young filmmakers and videographers from around the country who have demonstrated precocious talent. In addition to matching them with opportunities and putting them in positions to succeed, Adolescent advocates for having young people create commercial spots and interactive electronic spots for major global brands whose products are aimed at audiences of matching age and mindset. “It’s not really revolutionary thinking, you’d probably think it’s common sense for brands who want to sell to a certain demo to have people who think that way organically doing their creatives and ads.”
With more Hollywood star names like Mosely being added to the incredible Film Con Hollywood 2018 lineup daily, opportunities to get discovered, learn, network, and find opportunity are baked into the cake. Perhaps the biggest challenge will be for those procrastinating, as brisk ticket sales are auguring a sellout of the 1,000 available Los Angeles Convention Center seats.
For the latest Film Con Hollywood 2018 news, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are the best places to keep pace with the latest breaking news relating to this one-of-a-kind Hollywood event.
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