Startup Producer | being jordanm

This is cross-posted over at the Sentient Cinema blog.

We began our Kickstarter campaign to fund our short film, UPLDR, yesterday. So far, we have $1200 in pledges. We are trying to get $25,000 in pledges by December 28th. If you’d like to see our awesome teaser trailer and support a great project, head over to our Kickstarter page now.

To learn about why we used Kickstarter, continue reading below.

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Those of you either starting out in filmmaking or new to crowdfunding may be wondering why we chose Kickstarter.

Some background:

Kickstarter wasn’t the first on the scene with crowdfunding – IndieGoGo began a year before it, I believe. At the time, I was more familiar with the concept from the nonprofit sector with the examples of Kiva and Grameen Bank and their microloan programs and didn’t realize that there was a movement toward this idea of ‘crowdfunding’ within the arts as well. It makes sense though given the limited opportunities there are for financing independent films, especially in the US. It may be a brand new concept, but it sure beats what Robert Rodriguez had to go through with medical testing.

When setting out to start production on this film, we did our research and, more and more, Kickstarter seemed liked the right venure to try and source our funds through.

Why?

For one, it seemed more focused on the arts community and specifically helping to finance films. Though frightening at first, the idea that someone had to approve your project by hand, setting a higher barrier to entry, actually had some allure. Getting past that barrier meant that someone other than ourselves also believed in this project and that it could succeed. This curatorial nature may explain why Kickstarter projects have such a high rate of success and, as discussed here, maybe even powers the Kickstarter brand.

Another appealing fact of Kickstarter are some of the amazing stories that have come out of it, such as the Art Space Tokyo project that seeks to change contemporary publishing or the funding of TikTok, an iPod Nano case that went from concept art to near-million dollar success. There’s always the thought that if they could do it, so could we.

So we went with Kickstarter. We sent in our application and had a personal response within a day. The email even suggested one or two ideas for improving our incentives to being more successful. Seeing that assistance from beginning was a great feeling. After being approved, it was very easy to set up our project as the site has a great user interface to lead your through the steps and was overall a very uncomplicated process.

I’ll leave you with a few links:

First: Our Kickstarter page for UPLDR. Come on, you know you want to pledge!

Next: These will all be from Ted Hope’s amazing “Hope for Film” blog, an invaluable resource for filmmakers:

-Jennifer Fox on how she raised $150,000 on Kickstarter – Parts One, Two, Three, and Four
-The awesome Ed Burns – “On Learning To Love To Engage With The Crowd“
-Josef Astor, speaking truth on “The 4 Scariest Things About Kickstarter“

As always, thanks for reading. Comments are open.

-JM

Startup Writer: A Screenwriter’s Toolkit

Cross-posted from Sentient Cinema

The last in our three part series: A Screenwriter’s Toolkit.

I think that this one will vary the most from writer to writer as we each have a myriad of sources from which we hopefully pick the good parts, the parts that work, and discard the ones that don’t for us individually. I encourage all the writers out there to post their own suggestions in the comments section.

The Essentials

Books

The Hollywood Standard - Christopher Riley – If you don’t format your script properly it won’t be read. Simple as that. The Hollywood Standard is the most straight forward guide to formatting and style there currently is. It’s recommend by people far more successful than me so I think it should be ok for you too.

Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus – One of the most profoundly interesting and helpful books a writer, of anything, could purchase. It’s not your typical thesaurus as it has “enhanced” areas with word lists, style guides, and mini-essays. If you love words, you’ll love this book. If you get paid to write words, this could be a lifesaver.

The 101 Habits Of Highly Successful Screenwriters: Insider’s Secrets from Hollywood’s Top Writers - Karl Iglesias – Of all the books on craft and life as a screenwriter, I found this to be the most inspiring and full of wonderful advice.

The War of Art - Steven Pressfield – A slim and highly motivating little volume that I’ve returned to time and time again for a swift kick in the ass. Pressfield also runs a great blog where he has multiple inspiring series such as “Do the Work Wednesdays“, “Writing Wednesdays“, and “What It Takes“.

Online

JohnAugust.com – John is not only the amazing screenwriter behind such films as Go and Big Fish but very generous with his advice for aspiring screenwriters. Not only are the archives of johnaugust.com worth digging into for invaluable advice, but he and Craig Mazin do a weekly podcast, ScriptNotes, that is funny, smart, and informative. John and his assistant/tech people also contribute interviews with working writers and develop software to push forward the industry. His current pet project is a Q&A site for answering screenwriting questions, screenwriting.io.

WordPlayer.com – I’m going to go old school on you with this one. Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio’s site is probably one of the oldest online about becoming a working screenwriter. They’re the successful duo behind Aladdin, the Pirates franchise and a ton of other massive hits. I’ve revisited their essays over time and they still hold up. Definitely worth checking out.

Go Into the Story – Scott Meyers, a professor of screenwriting at my alma mater, runs this constantly updated site that covers a much broader range of screenwriting topics daily. He keeps tabs on spec sales, throws in a post on the business of screenwriting, and will follow-up by linking to an interview with a screenwriter. You never know what you’ll find each and every day.

Living the Romantic Comedy – For those wanting to introduce a bit of humor and romance into their writing. Mr. Mernit updates less frequently than he used to but I highly recommend going into his archives as the advice given is not only applicable to rom-coms, a genre he hopes to reinvigorate, but to writing good movies in general.

Scripts

You can’t be a good writer without reading and studying what has come before. There are plenty of places to find scripts online. If you’re in Los Angeles, you can also spend time reading them at the WGA Library or purchase them at these locations.

SimplyScripts –
http://www.simplyscripts.com/

myPDFScripts –
http://www.mypdfscripts.com/

TV Writing –
https://sites.google.com/site/tvwriting/

Charlie Kaufman Scripts –
http://bit.ly/krOsdr

Several screenwriters are generous enough to share copies of their works as well:

Tim Minear:
http://timminear.net/archives/cat_downloads.html

John August:
http://johnaugust.com/library

Something A Little More “Me” Specific

These are little more personal to me and what has influenced my thinking on how I go about my attempt at this writing thing. They are not necessarily specific to the craft of screenwriting, but an overall influence on shaping my approach in general.

The Paris Review Interviews - Either try and find the full interviews in the archives or buy the wonderful collections in paperback. While avoiding writing I like to read about how other writers avoid writing. Have a seat with Billy Wilder, Budd Schulberg, James M. Cain, or William Faulkner for a long chat and be fascinated.

In a different form, this time via podcast, you can sit in the audience as some of today’s best tv writers are interviewed over the course of an hour during weekly Nerdist Writer’s Panel.

A more direct influence on our upcoming short film, UPLDR, is the ‘mystery box’ TED talk from J.J. Abrams:

I also like to return to this profile of Tony Gilroy at the New Yorker every now and then and remind myself of “Tony’s Rules”:

1) Bring it within two hours.
2) Don’t be boring.

Another interview I’ve returned to many times is this one with Francis Ford Coppola where he talks about “risk, money, craft, and collaboration” available here.

Here’s a great quote:

“An essential element of any art is risk. If you don’t take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn’t been seen before? I always like to say that cinema without risk is like having no sex and expecting to have a baby. You have to take a risk. “

I tend to collect quotes like that, put it on a little sticky note with a Sharpie and place it on the wall directly above my monitors so my eyes will fall on them when I look up. Some are practical, some are mantras, some are to mull over internally.

A few others:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellent then is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

“We have a right to our labor, but not to the fruits of our labor.” – Krishna to Arjuna, Mahabahrata

“Show the world what they cannot go see first hand.” Joao Silva, photographer.

This has been a pretty long post to digest but I hope it has been helpful in providing not only essential resources to add to your physical and digital libraries but some other things to help encourage and entertain you in the pursuit of this craft.

-JM

Startup Producer: Location Location Location

Cross-posted from the Sentient Cinema blog

I hope you’ve enjoyed our short series about what resources we’ve been using to grasp our roles as director and producer. I’ll be posting the third part, about the Writer’s Toolkit, later this week. Until then, I’d like to speak about a topic near and dear to my heart and a pain in my ass: locations!

The old Hollywood dictum holds true: choosing the correct locations is an important, sometimes stressful, endeavour.

Despite the general helpfulness of the books I listed in my Producer’s Toolkit post, the most difficult thing so far has been finding affordable locations. We are trying to do this first project, UPLDR, on as small as a budget as possible while still retaining the highest level of quality. Unfortunately, quality locations cost, and cost a great deal.

Before even starting the search, I would recommend you find out about insurance and permits. The first thing every site manager has asked me is about permits and insurance so brush up before even calling.

Insurance is rather easy to come by. I did a search using some names listed in my resource books but an online search is just as useful. We’re going through a company called Truman Van Dyke, who has provided friendly customer service and prompt feedback. You can check them out here:
http://www.tvdco.com/

In regards to permits, since we’re planning to shoot in Los Angeles, we will more than likely need to go through Film LA for our permits. Their website is here but I would recommend calling. All states and most major localities have film commissions so it’s always best to check with them first if planning on doing formal location searches.

That’s the easy part.

The hardest so far has been finding actual locations to use. FilmLA has a useful site called LocoScout, which is your most affordable bet as a lot of it is state property and thus much much cheaper than private locations. For a broader service, that you can use nationwide, there is Reel-Scout. Much more hit and miss is using craigslist.

We are close to having all our locations in place though we are missing a key one in the form of our main character’s apartment. We’ll be shooting both day and night scenes there for about four days. Finding this one might depend on the most valuable resource, not only for film making but for support, our friends. Any of you visiting our site here and interested in supporting our efforts is considered a friend. So, if you know anyone in the Los Angeles area that might have an apartment / house available for shooting in January, please get in touch.

That wraps it up for this intro to locations. I’ll have a lot more info to give about the specifics once we start locking things down. Keep an eye on the blog the next few days as we have the “Writer’s Toolkit” post coming up with some invaluable links as well as ramping up to the release of our teaser.

Stay tuned,

-JM

p.s. If you’re enjoying these blog posts, please sure to share them on Facebook, Twitter, or your other preferred social media. Thanks!

Startup Producer: My Producer’s Toolkit

Cross-posted from Sentient Cinema

Our Toolkit

It’s very hard to get a grasp on all the things that one needs to do for a production. Luckily, there are some great resources out there. I thought it’d be helpful to others to put together a short list of all the books and sites that have been useful for me, especially in these beginning stages. This first part will detail what I’ve used to learn about the wonderful, crazed life of film production. My next will be on resources that have helped me as a writer.

My Producer’s Toolkit

Books:

The Independent Film Producer’s Survival Guide - This book is great for getting into nitty-gritty legal detail. For a book written by lawyers, it is highly accessible and takes you not only through the essentials of dealmaking and setting up your production but also discusses marketing, online distribution, and various other matters of interest geared specifically to indepedent filmmakers.

The Complete Film Production Handbook - Whereas the previous book is heavy on the legal side, this one covers the essentials of actual production. It’s a great reference with easy to copy example forms and is a wonderful compliment to the Survival Guide.

Fans, Friends, and Followers - Scott Kirsner (of Cinematech – http://cinematech.blogspot.com/)’s great book. He interviews artists that have tweaked the system of marketing themselves and their products. My first time through, I took two pages of notes – not only from the book but of new marketing ideas that seemed to explode in my head, triggered by the insights Kirsner and his interviewees provide. There’s millions of voices out there struggling to be heard and these creatives created singular ones for themselves to noticed above the masses. Though slim, the book forces you to ask yourself “How will you be heard?”

Websites/Blogs:

Scenechronize - I read about this in one of the books above and tried it out. It’s free, web-based production software that, so far, has been amazingly easy to use and understand. We have created strip boards and breakdowns from it without trouble and hope to take advantage of its other features when we get closer to production.

Hope for Film -
http://blogs.indiewire.com/tedhope/
- Ted Hope’s blog, now hosted at Indiewire, has been a great inspiration since I began reading it. He really is on the forefront of challenging the film community to higher standards and utilizing the myriad opportunities we all have these days to go out and tell our stories.

Filmmaker Magazine -
http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/news/
- I’ve also gotten a lot of good advice and examples from articles these folks post on their blog. Well worth subscribing to their feed.

Auteur’s Notebook -
http://mubi.com/notebook/
- Not a fan of the name but the blog is a great way to keep on what is happening in film worldwide as well as letting you know what new films mubi is hosting for free from festivals everywhere.

Self-Reliant Film -
http://www.selfreliantfilm.com/
- Updated infrequently but always informative and inspiring.

Promotion:

Of course, we’re using our handy-dandy blog to help inform and motivate others but we have other ways to that you can follow along with our progress:

Sentient Cinema’s Facebook Page.

And Sentient Cinema has its very own Twitter account as well:

@SentientCinema

That’s all for now. Until next time…

-JM

Startup Producer: Meetings & Motivation

Cross-posted from the newly created Sentient Cinema blog.

The best decision my production partner Tim and I made at the outset was to say that we would meet at least once a week. For once in my life, it has turned out that going to a meeting really got things moving. We’ve allowed for some volatility in our other lives but have kept to this plan since setting out on this first initiative. The meetings were so useful that we ended up having two a week, one on Wednesday nights and one midday on Saturdays.

Why so many?

Constant meeting and assessment has allowed for rapid iterative collaboration which has fueled motivation and kept the project moving forward in its infancy.

Our early sessions were spent shaping the script and digging into the business side of things. Neither one of us has done anything of this sort to this extent before but we not only wanted to craft the best story possible but also run a professional production. We may be low-budget now but that is no excuse for amateurism. The meetings compel us to keep pushing forward and lay the foundations of not only this film, but who we are and what we do as a production company. The discussions are open-minded and collaborative while still coming to conclusions on important decisions. It has been an extraordinary learning experience in a very short time and being able to check an item off our To Do list each meeting definitely helps keep us motivated. We are currently about a month and a half into pre-production and have gone quite far in getting this film, and our business, ready to launch.

As with any venture, it is built not only by having great ambitions but in breaking those goals down into their constituent parts and working steadily towards them. With many small wins, it brings us ever closer to the Big Victory. In our case, a productive, innovative film company which brings brilliant stories into the world.

Startup Producer: The Beginning

This is the first post on the new blog as well as in a continuing series I hope to maintain.

First off, what the hell does ‘startup producer’ mean?

As someone who has spent most of their life dabbling in the tech world, I’ve been enamored by startups and startup culture. I’ve tried to learn what I can from their business and mental models and apply the methods in my own life. I don’t limit this idea to only tech startups but to entrepreneurs and rogues of all sorts – people that strive to cut their own way through life and, most of the time, succeed at it.

Where does this fit in with being a producer? What exact kind of producer am I talking about?

Film, mostly. I could broaden that though and say ‘media’. I’m currently working with friends to begin a film production company and get a short film off the ground amongst other projects. My role as executive producer is to handle the nitty-gritty details of the production work such as budgets, location scouting, etc.

I’m hoping to bring some of the entrepreneurial spirit, creativity, and innovation into my pretty old school role and explore new options for creating exciting storytelling experiences. I like being a producer in the original sense of the word as well – one who produces. I hope to produce content through this series that will track my own progress as a newbie producer and inspire others with ideas as well forging connections with the film community at large.

Cheers

Jordan

being jordanm

los angeles + worldwide

Category Archives: Startup Producer

Launching Our Kickstarter Campaign

Startup Writer: A Screenwriter’s Toolkit

Startup Producer: Location Location Location

Startup Producer: My Producer’s Toolkit

Startup Producer: Meetings & Motivation

Startup Producer: The Beginning

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