Bully for Her - Making an Invitational Short

Julia Camara (website) has shot her entry for the alumnae invitational, Bully for Her. I hope the rest of you are thinking about making something for this year. Remember, there's no entry fee and you're guaranteed a slot. What better workshop for your craft?

The Making of a Short Film
I’m the process of editing my invitational short for the 2009 Broad Humor film festival. This was my third experience directing a short and I couldn’t be happier with what we’ve accomplished so far. Our two-day shoot went very smooth. We had no personality clashes, no brokenequipment, no damaged property or bruised egos. We were a well-oiled filmmaking machine.

The only set back I had was losing my location a week before the shoot. I actually didn't lose the location, my contact just stopped returning my calls and emails. But as my husband and filmmaking partner, Tim, said, it turned out to be for the best. The location we ended up using was beyond perfect.

I also had my first experience directing children. It surprised me to see what great instincts they have. Toward the end they were telling each other to match their actions from take to take and where their "marks" were. They also fully got how sometimes you cheat they way you look at the camera and where your eye-line should be.

They are natural born actors and I really hope they get signed to an agency very soon. As much fun as it was, the scene called for the kids to get pretty loud and crazy, so at the end of the day we were all exhausted. As, I'm sure, was their mom, who doesn't really allow them to get that rowdy very often. These are the best behaved kids I've ever seen, and I'm not just saying that. Stay tuned for their screen debut this summer in my short film entitled “Never Odd or Even.” (Notice how the title is a palindrome.)

Directing adults was much easier. I ended up with a pretty talented bunch, I must say. I asked two of my friends who are actresses and one of them found my third actor.

Everything has fallen into place for this project. Before I had a shoot date and a location, I was goofing around on Craigslist and found an ad from a DP looking to partner up with a writer. Later, I posted an ad on Craigslist looking for a location, and got several answers. The owner of the office I ended up using, a production company in Hollywood, told me she also runs a Mexican restaurant and was on Craigslist looking for a Margarita machine for her restaurant when she saw my ad. Our lunch on the day of the shoot came from the exact same Mexican restaurant...

Now, I’m talking to a musician, recommended by one of my actresses, and almost ready to lock in the picture. I have a feeling my female bully will be a crowd pleaser this summer.

This process has really reminded me of how much of a collaborative medium film is. To get something in the can, you have to get out there and meet people. You’ll be surprised how many people are willing to help you just for the fun of making a movie with you. Bottom line is, no bad economy can stop you from being creative. Creativity is one of the few things that are still free, and for everything else there’s Mastercard.

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Moviemaker Writing and Promo Opportunities

Moviemaker Magazine has three ways you can contribute to the magazine or website, sharing your experiences and promoting yourself through their magazine and blog at the same time. The Moviemaker blog, with entries written by indie filmmakers and entrepreneurs who share their stories and lessons, looks to be a good read.

And you can be a part of it in a number of ways. (Notice that for the festival writing, we are not one of the festivals they will be featuring, but many of you have been to some of the other ones. And you can always point out to them that we are unique and fun and should be written about!!)

So here's the info on contributing to the Festival Beat, the Tales from the Trenches, and Coming Attractions.

Working the Festival Beat
MovieMaker Magazine is looking for a few moviemakers to help us revamp our always-extensive festival coverage by letting us know, firsthand, what the festivals were all about. If chosen by our editorial staff, you will be asked to write a short piece about the festival, detailing the festival winners, noteworthy screenings, most memorable events and general atmosphere. We want those who couldn't make it to the fest to feel like they did.

If you—and your movie—have attended any of the following festivals, drop us a line at festbeat@moviemaker.com and let us know which festival(s) you'd be interested in reviewing for us. Be sure to include a short writing sample—no matter how informal.

Upcoming festivals to be profiled in MovieMaker include:

AFI Dallas
Ann Arbor Film Festival
Appalachian Film Festival
Black Maria Film & Video Festival
California Independent Film Festival
Crossroads Film Festival
Cucalorus Film Festival
Florida Film Festival
Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival
Haydenfilms 4.0 Film Festival
Indie Short Film Competition
International Family Film Festival
LA Comedy Shorts
Magnolia Film Festival
Poppy Jasper Film Festival
Red Rock Film Festival
Sedona International Film Festival & Workshop
Starz Denver Film Festival
Trail Dance Film Festival
Whistler Film Festival

If you have/are planning to attend any of these fests with your film, we want to hear from you. And we're adding new fests all the time!

If selected and published, your contribution will be noted in our Festival Correspondents section, where we will include a short bio of you and mention of your movie as well as your e-mail and URL information.

Submit your request today to festbeat@moviemaker.com. Be sure to include the title of your film, the festivals you've attended and a brief explanation as to why we should pick you as one of our Festival Correspondents. We look forward to hearing from you!

Don't Forget!
We're still accepting submissions for our new Tales From the Trenches and Coming Attractions features at MovieMaker.com.

Tales From the Trenches
MovieMaker wants to hear your production nightmares—your struggles with cast and crew, your technical pitfalls and (most importantly) the steps you've taken to reign the project back in—for an all-new weekly feature called Tales from the Trenches. Submit your story today (no more than 1,000 words) to tales@moviemaker.com. Who knows, you just may be the next featured writer at MovieMaker.com, reaching out to our more than one million readers!

Coming Attractions
Speaking of publicizing your movie, we're also looking for your help with our new Coming Attractions section. We want to keep our readers up to date on all the hottest upcoming movies—including yours! Send us a few choice photos from the movie you're working on right now along with all the pertinent info (director, actors, synopsis, completion/release dates, etc.) and you may just see it posted on MovieMaker.com for all the world to see. Send all photos and information to photos@moviemaker.com (and be sure to include any photographer credits).

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Welcome to the Footage Firm

Well, we've got a great new sponsor for our filmmaker prize packages. They are giving us their royalty-free stock footage DVDs to pass along to our winning filmmakers. In addition to the DVDs they sell, they have launched a new website: StockFootageForFREE.com where video editors can download stock footage clips from around the world absolutely free. Here's the info Joel at Footage Firm sent me on the site.

StockFootageForFREE.com provides completely free stock footage from around the world that can be downloaded instantly and incorporated into any type of video editing project (commercial use is okay!). There are absolutely no fees-just register for free and start downloading an unlimited amount of footage! http://www.stockfootageforfree.com

This is a great deal, folks. Check it out. Read More...

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J.J. Abrams' Mystery Box

Browsing the TED archives, I came across this video of J.J. Abrams talking about his love of mystery. Along the way, there are some fantastic lessons about story and narrative, as well as a powerful challenge to filmmakers near the end. Watch it here. Read More...

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Susan Emshwiller - A Winning Broad!

Susan Emshwiller, an alumna of Broad Humor Film Festival whose film, "In the Land of Milk and Money" opened the very first festival, has just won an award from the Environmental Defense Action Fund for her film, "Cap It." We all give her a huge cheer for her work. Read More...

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2009 Festival Call for Submissions

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Comedies by women? You must be joking!

THE BROAD HUMOR FILM FESTIVAL PUTS OUT THE CALL

Los Angeles, California, Jan. 24, 2009 - The Broad Humor Film Festival (BHFF) gears up for its fourth annual weekend of fun with a call to all women with a sense of humor and a camera. Film submissions are now open for the festival taking place June 12-14, 2009 at the Electric Lodge Performing Arts Center in Venice, California. Comedy screenplays written by women are also being accepted for the writing competition.

Brainchild of Susan diRende, the Broad Humor Film Festival began in response to the lack of attention given to women-generated comedy and is today he only festival in the world to put the spotlight on women's onscreen humor.

"As our broads in the trenches of the indie world have been demonstrating for years, women are suddenly being recognized for being, yes, funny." Today, high-profile funny women are getting attention and accolades, but it is still an uphill battle for most.

BHFF accepts entries of films and screenplays in three length categories: under 20 minutes/pages; 20-60 minutes/pages; over 60 minutes/pages. Documentary, narrative and web films are all welcome so long as all writers and directors are female and humor is an important part of the story. But it doesn’t need to be the whole story.

“We love the ways that women create humor,” says diRende. “We’ve found that women prefer to create ‘blended genres.’ If a serious movie has lots of laughs or plenty of smile moments important to the story, we want to see it.”

Competition categories exist for both experienced filmmakers and for no-budget novices working on a shoestring.

The June festival will have screenings of selected films and scene readings for screenplay finalists. Participants become a permanent part of the BHFF community with a free invitational screening for alumnae every year thereafter.

go to festival website Read More...

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Social Networking Works for You - Yes, YOU

Broad Julia Camara wrote to share some thoughts on how the internet and social networking are changing how we do business. A lot of our participants are internet shy, can list all the reasons why the connections made there are not 'real' and why they do not believe it will help them. Julia, clearly, is not one of those.

I just had a fun dinner with a friend who’s an actress and as we talked about the amount of progress we were making with our careers, she mentioned how she’s constantly meeting producers and agents at her day job, and how they started saying they’re going to look her up online and see what kind of clips of projects they could find.

It occurred to me how even casting is changing these days. When I went to film school casting our projects was done by placing an ad in backstage west, getting a million head shots, sorting through them, and then calling the people you thought had the right look.

Nowadays you can put an ad on craigslist, or myspace, or facebook and not spend a dime in ad costs. Actors can submit electronically, which takes a whole five seconds; you don’t have to wait for the submissions to be delivered via snail mail. (Sometimes I’m surprised the US Post Office is still in business.)

When I first started submitting screenplays to whoever would accept them, competitions, production companies, agents and managers, you had to mail them. There was no other option. Email was around, I’m not that old, but it just wasn’t heard of to email a script. I know writers who refuse to send anything but a hard copy, but I’m not one of them. Having read hundreds of scripts on my computer screen, I’m glad to save space in my tiny overpriced condo, and some trees.

So, this little trip down nostalgia lane made me think about how important for all of us artists it is to have an online profile that is accurate and portrays us in the best possible light. Myspace and facebook aren’t just for kids or people looking to hook up, we should never post drunk photos of ourselves or anything we wouldn’t want our work community to see. I can’t tell you how many potential collaborators I’ve met through social networking.

I realize some of this might be common knowledge since these days employers are looking at job applicants myspace profiles so you should always have your best side out there. You never know who’s looking.

Check out Julia's website here. Read More...

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