Want to watch Full Disclosure for free? Someone's pirating it on YouTube...if you can stand the quality.

I’m very interested in the future of in online distribution for independent films, so I’m trying a quick experiment. (This experiment isn’t pure science.  It has the potential benefit of clearing out a box of DVDs under my desk.  But mostly, it’s science.)

The other day I found a pirated version of Full Disclosure on YouTube.  It’s a really bad version shot with a camcorder off Italian television.  The sound is horrible, as is the image, (on the plus side, however, there are Italian subtitles!).  YouTube has a procedure for removing pirated content, but it’s arduous and I don’t have the time at the moment.  Besides, it’s the free availability of this pirated version that makes the experiment possible.  So for the moment, I’m going to leave it there.

There’s this theory going around that people pirate what they like but can’t buy when, how, or in the format they wish to.  Mostly, this theory comes from people trying to justify their illegal downloading of content, but it also comes from some really smart folks who think a lot about all things digital, like my friend Fred Chong Rutherford.  Personally, I have my doubts about this, theory, but hell, the only thing I know for sure is that I don’t know everything.  So I’m going to try an experiment. (continue reading…)

From my guest blog on IndieFlix.

Excerpt from 6 Ways to Make People Watch Your Movie – Part 2: Make Them Laugh.

We filmmakers need to get people excited about our films.  Rather than hoping to stumble across a successful marketing approach for a film, it’s better to plan one from the very start–ideally before you commit to making the film–and tweak it based on what really gets people to pay to watch movies.  “6 Ways” is about those things that motivate someone to say, “I’ve got to see that!”

So how do movies like Napoleon Dynamite or The Hangover rocket from obscurity to national reknown in the blink of an eye.  Is it the big stars?  The special effects?  The action scenes?   Actually, it turns out these movies are really, really funny.

From my IndieFlix guest-blog.  Read the rest.

When I was 15, my brother had a saying about me, “Sometimes right, sometimes wrong, never in doubt.”

I’m not sure it was a compliment…

There I am at 15...Not a doubt in my mind. (Or I'd never have taken this picture.)

However, it was a pretty good indicator that I was born to be a film director.  A director with a film in production makes, on average, 17 million decisions per day.  It’s a safe bet that he’s not going to be right on every one.  And that’s okay.  Being right a lot is overrated anyway—show me someone who’s right all the time and I’ll show you someone making safe choices based on avoiding past failures, someone who eliminates the possibility of being surprised by a wrong choice that somehow turns out right.  And that, my friends is the definition of genius—making the wrong choice turn out right.

(continue reading…)