How Digital Cinema Works

Distribution
For the business side of the movie industry, the most compelling aspect of digital cinema is distribution. In today's system, production companies spend a lot of money producing film prints of their movies. Then, working with distribution companies, they spend even more money shipping the heavy reels of film to theaters all over the world, only to collect them again when the movie finishes its run.

Because the distribution costs are so high, production companies have to be extremely cautious about where they play their movies. Unless they have a sure-fire hit, they take a pretty big risk sending a film to a lot of theaters. If it bombs, they might not make their money back.

If you take the physical film out of the equation, things get a lot cheaper. Digital movies are basically big computer files, and just like computer files, you can write them to a DVD-ROM, send them through broadband cable or transmit them via satellite. There are virtually no shipping costs, and it doesn't cost the production company much more to show the movie in 100 theaters than in one theater. With this distribution system, production companies could easily open movies in theaters all over the world on the same day.

The digital distribution system also helps out the individual theaters. If a movie sells out, a theater could decide to show it on additional screens on the spur of the moment. They simply connect to the digital signal. Theaters could also show live sporting events and other digital programming.

Projection
TO the audience, the most important aspect of digital cinema is the projection system. This is the final piece of technology that controls how the movie actually looks at the end of the line.

Pretty much everybody agrees that a good film projector loaded with a pristine film print produces a fantastic, vibrant picture. The problem is, every time you play the movie, the film quality drops a little. When you go to a movie that's been playing for a few weeks, you'll probably see hundreds of scratches and bits of dirt.
Many critics hold that a projected digital movie is inferior to a pristine film print, but they recognize that while a film print gradually degrades, a digital movie looks the same every time you show it.

Think of a CD as compared to an audio tape. Every time you play an audio tape, the sound gets a little warped. A CD's digital information sounds exactly the same every time you listen to it (unless it gets scratched).

READ MORE…by Tom Harris
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/digital-cinema.htm

WRITING TIPS for SCREENPLAY WRITERS

Don't ever allow your "reading time" to exceed your writing time.

Having an intellectual understanding of screenwriting isn't enough. You need to get on the mat and start grappling with your writing.

Don't worry about the quality of your writing. That will come as you spend enough time writing screenplays. If you really want to be good, you simply need to apply learning strategies to actual screenwriting.

My favorite learning strategy is "info, action, info, action, info, action," etc.. Make a promise to yourself that you'll ALWAYS write a scene with each piece of new information you learn.

If you read a chapter about characters in some book, create a character RIGHT THEN. That way, you will have applied the info you learned and turned it into experience. Do that enough and you'll become a great screenwriter.

Reading real scripts will give you a good idea of what actually goes into a well-written screenplay. And it will give you an unconscious model to emulate as you write.

You can get hundreds of free scripts online. Here are a few sites that you can download from:

http://www.script-o-rama.com
http://www.movie-page.com/movie_scripts. htm
http://www.simplyscripts.com/movie.html

READ MORE from SCRIPT FOR SALE NEWSLETTER Editor: Hal Croasmun...
http://www.ScriptForSale.com

Screenplay Writer-Artist: Angel Boligan - Cagle Cartoons, El Universal, Mexico City

'The YouTube War'

Online Video Has Transformed How Soldiers and Politicians Wage Their Wars

Ditect from the frontlines of the war in Iraq to the political battleground of the 2006 midterm elections, the surge of online video has changed everything. In both campaigns, a piece of tape can be quickly uploaded, and seen by tens of thousands of viewers in a matter of hours.

The war in Iraq "is the YouTube war," said Ana Marie Cox, Washington editor of Time.com. "It's a war where communication is instantaneous."

Soldiers in Iraq aren't just shooting weapons, they are shooting videos and they are posting them on the Internet. Whether mounted on vehicles or carried to gather intelligence, cameras are rolling, and tape or digital images can easily be edited and uploaded from laptop computers.

Several Web sites, including YouTube, IFilm, Liveleak.com and Military.com, GreenMarines.com, show videos shot (and sometimes edited) by soldiers or their friends and family back home that are being downloaded over and over. Both the soldiers and the people who monitor the Web sites say that the videos offer a realistiv, raw, first-hand view of the war.

'Here's What's Happening'

"It's not a perspective you usually get when you're watching the nightly news," said Marine Cpl. Scott Lyon, who spent seven months in Iraq stationed in Ramadi. He and many members of his platoon carried cameras when they went out on missions.

READ MORE...
By JON MEYERSOHN for ABC News

Hollywood's Profits, Demystified

THE REAL EL DORADO IS TV.
Multiple-Choice Quiz
Is Hollywood's biggest money-maker:
a) Movies?
b) DVDs?
c) Television?

The best-kept secret in Hollywood, especially from Wall Street, is that the movie studios' biggest profit center is not theatrical movies, or even DVD sales; it is TV licensing. If the details of the profits remain clouded to outsiders, it is no accident. The studios purposely blur together their three principal revenue sources—the box office, video sales, and television licensing—into a single portmanteau category called "studio entertainment" in their quarterly and annual reports. Keeping audiences in the dark may be a time-honored Hollywood tradition, but this breakdown can be demystified by consulting the studios' internal numbers, which they furnish to the Motion Picture Association on a confidential basis.

Last year, the six major studios—Disney, Fox, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal, Sony, and their subsidiaries—had total revenues of $7.4 billion from world box-office sales, $20.9 billion from world video sales, and $17.7 billion from world television licensing. Revenues, however, are what companies record, not what they earn. And, in the case of Hollywood, the revenues from movies, DVDs, and TV yield very different earnings.

Once upon a time—before the TV and VCR—studios earned virtually all their profits from a single source: the theater's box office. Nowadays, in the new Hollywood, the world box office is a money loser: In 2004, the studios lost an estimated $2.22 billion on the $7.4 billion they took in from the box office. (Click here to see a table of this data.) This sad reality is not a result of the high cost of making movies, inefficiencies, or of any sort of studio accounting legerdemain. The simple fact is that the studios pay more to alert potential audiences via advertising and to get movie prints into theaters than they get back from those who buy tickets.

Consider, for example, Warner Bros.' movie The Negotiator, with Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey. It was efficiently produced for $43.5 million, scored a world box office of $88 million, and appeared to be a modest success. In fact, Warner Bros. collected only $36.74 million from its theatrical release after it had paid check-conversion and other collection costs, the theaters had taken their cut, and the MPA had deducted its fee.

Meanwhile, to corral that audience, Warner Bros.' advertising bill was $40.28 million, and its bill for prints, trailers, dubbing, customs, and shipping was another $12.32 million. So, after the movie finished its theater run, without even considering the cost of making the movie, Warner Bros. had lost $13 million. Why? For every dollar Warner Bros. got back from the box office, it shelled out about $1.40 in expenses, which was about average, if not slightly above par, for studio movies.

READ MORE… By Edward Jay Epstein
http://www.slate.com/id/2124078

What is BloodSpell?

BloodSpell is Strange Company`s first feature-length Machinima animated film.

Episode 1 and onward are available now for free viewing!

It is a story of a world where men and women carry magic in their blood, and spilling it can unleash terrible power.

Where these "Blooded" hide in fetid slums from the Church of the Angels, commanded by their divine masters to "cleanse" the Blood Magic.

Where choices are fraught, alliances rarely safe, and blood is all.

A young monk named Jered flees the Church when his own Blood Magic is released. Now he must survive the pursuit of the Church, the gladiatorial pits of the Blooded underground, and the hidden truths of the ancient struggle. The choices he makes will tip the balance of the war between Church and Blooded, and change his world forever.

Mixing a vivid world with fast-paced action and punk attitude, we think BloodSpell will be like no film you`ve ever seen.

It is made using the game Neverwinter Nights, and is written and directed by Machinima pioneer Hugh Hancock.

To The Site...
http://www.bloodspell.com/

After Effects Tutorials

These online training modules by well-known After Effects experts Chris and Trish Meyer of CyberMotion are designed to jump-start your creativity as well as quickly get you up to speed on important technical aspects of motion graphics and video. These are not just paint-by-numbers recipes; Chris and Trish make sure you have a deeper understanding of the underlying concepts so that you can easily modify the techniques to your own projects.

Each subject has been broken down into easily digestable QuickTime movies that are clearly indexed for quick access to the information you need, including chapter markers that allow you to jump straight to a particular subject or tip. Extensive text annotations help explain important concepts and spell out time-saving keyboard shortcuts. An accompanying project file and footage allows you to try out the concepts you see demonstrated.

READ MORE...
http://www.studiodaily.com/store/it_ae.html

The MERGING of MOVIES and GAMES

The Gaming Year Ahead
Another busy gaming year has gone by. Games are looking more like interactive movies and they are playing more like movies. And many games are being adapted from movies and vice versa.

But before we reflect on the many events and titles that have gone by, we've decided to take this opportunity and show you what's in store for 2007. So, while you're stocking up your favorite games for the long and cold winter ahead, you might enjoy a foretaste of various promising projects that are on the horizon.

There will be plenty to look forward to, both for PC and console gamers. Bearing in mind the surge of MMO games, we were thrilled to see that most developers and publishers are also willing to work hard to improve classic game genres. Persistent efforts by creative designers and hard-working programmers, perpetually breathe life into the RTS, single-player CRPG and other traditional game genres. As 2007 draws closer, gamers will surely keep watch for any Vista-ready games that were promised by Microsoft and several talented and well-known development teams.

We'll kick off by taking a peek at the future strategy projects. Throughout the year we've managed to catch a glimpse of various upcoming real-time strategies, but for the time being we'd like to single out Supreme Commander and Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. EA is taking their time with this one, patiently ironing out the details and adding a few important changes to the renowned C&C series. Apart from that, programmers are tweaking the AI, allowing users to set opponent behavior according to their own skills. EA's also developing an Xbox 360 version, as part of their ambitious campaign to bring the RTS genre closer to console gamers.

READ MORE by Ure "Vader" Paul...
http://www.actiontrip.com/features/thegamingyearahead2007.phtml

INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARIES THAT BITE

Who Killed the Electric Car? -- is both a critical and inspiring film...

but it is also a documentary that only an independent filmmaker could have made.

In cases where big business can conrol events and how things are marketed, look for more independent documentary filmmakers to speak out since this is the forum where everyone can freely express their ideas and opinions. And if your theme is shocking or relevant, it can bring you money and fame.

WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? chronicles the life and mysterious cancellation of the GM EV1, examining its cultural and economic ripple effects and how they reverberated through the halls of government and big business.

It was among the fastest, most efficient production cars ever built. It ran on electricity, produced no emissions and catapulted American technology to the forefront of the automotive industry. The lucky few who drove it never wanted to give it up. So why did General Motors crush its fleet of EV1 electric vehicles in the Arizona desert?

The year is 1990. California is in a pollution crisis. Smog threatens public health. Desperate for a solution, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) targets the source of its problem: auto exhaust. Inspired by a recent announcement from General Motors about an electric vehicle prototype, the Zero Emissions Mandate (ZEV) is born. It required 2% of new vehicles sold in California to be emission-free by 1998, 10% by 2003. It is the most radical smog-fighting mandate since the catalytic converter.

With a jump on the competition thanks to its speed-record-breaking electric concept car, GM launches its EV1 electric vehicle in 1996. It was a revolutionary modern car, requiring no gas, no oil changes, no mufflers, and rare brake maintenance (a billion-dollar industry unto itself). A typical maintenance check-up for the EV1 consisted of replenishing the windshield washer fluid and a tire rotation.

But the fanfare surrounding the EV1's launch disappeared and the cars followed. Was it lack of consumer demand as carmakers claimed, or were other persuasive forces at work?

READ THE WHOLE STORY...
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Eco-technology/2006/07/24/01215.html

Documentary: “Independent America”

Two filmmakers embark on a 'two-lane search for mom and pop.'

Sometimes the “big” story is in the “little” stories…

"Independent America," by independent filmmakers Hanson Hosein and Heather Hughes, asks if small, independent businesses are a thing of the past in modern America.

In 2006, filmmakers Hanson Hosein and Heather Hughes set off on a cross-country journey with an unusual goal: shunning "big box" outlets and chain stores, the couple would only do business with "mom and pop" shops.

In this documentary feature series, scenes from "Independent America" are highlighted along with excerpts from a discussion with Hosein about making the film, his experiences and lessons.

SEE & READ MORE… by the Hot Zone Staff
http://hotzone.yahoo.com/b/hotzone/blogs17327

NYCfilms.org

NYCfilms.org is a website dedicated to showing short films about New York City. You can explore the Big Apple by watching short films (most are a few minutes) uploaded by many NY filmmakers. You can also share your own NYC films with viewers.

The Amateur Gourmet is a two-minute film in which a famous blogger samples the food in Soho taking on dogs, nuts, and the ice-cream truck.

Filmmaker Daniel Baer frequently works as a documentary editor, which tends to mean lots of hours in front of the computer screen. So getting out and making short films was a nice change of pace for him – kind of like taking a bike ride around Manhattan. He started making films in the documentary program at Stanford and, after 10 years in the Bay Area, moved to New York in 2003.

SEE THE SHORT FILM...
http://www.nycfilms.org/video/The_Amateur_Gourmet-v12.html

How a Complicated Web of CG Work Brought Charlotte and Friends to Life

Six Visual Effects Studios Pushed the Boundaries of Reality in Charlotte's Web's Barnyard

Visual effects are rarely relied on by filmmakers to tell humble stories, but the gentleness of the new film version of Charlotte’s Web depended largely on the artists who made the talking live-action and CG animals believable.

The adaptation of E. B. White’s classic children’s tale was brought to the screen by director Gary Winick for Paramount Pictures; visual effects supervisor John Berton wrangled the effects crews. Six VFX studios worked on the film, with Rhythm & Hues, Tippett Studio and Rising Sun Pictures taking the lead.

The circle-of-life story in Charlotte’s Web revolves around a young girl, a young pig, a motherly spider, and a bevy of barnyard residents. Rhythm & Hues created lip synch and some facial animation for Wilbur, the pig, and most of the barn animals including Ike the horse, Betsy and Bitsy the cows, and Samuel the Sheep. Tippett Studio created Templeton the rat in CG and also digitally enhanced the mostly live-action crows. Rising Sun got Charlotte, a spider who is always CG.

Rhythm & Hues, which would make most of the live barnyard animals talk, hadn’t yet signed onto the film during most of the principal photography. “We put in requests for the kind of information we needed, though, while we were bidding,” says Todd Shifflett, visual effects supervisor. “But not getting to go through our usual process for measuring the set and the animals was one of our biggest challenges.”

READ MORE...By Barbara Robertson
http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo/currentissue/7485.html

THE BLACK LIST

He's making a list for the holidays

In a town of industry players so lazy and/or addle-brained that they have to hire personal shoppers, Franklin Leonard should get a star on the Walk of Fame. Or at least a reserved parking space at Orso. Leonard has just compiled his second annual Black List of the year's "most liked" screenplays, and he slipped it into Hollywood's e-mail in-boxes right before the holidays so they'd know what to read in the hot tubs of Aspen.

The Black List began, as most things do in Hollywood, with self-interest. Last fall, Leonard, a creative executive at Appian Way, Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, informally surveyed people he trusted about what their favorite reads had been so he would know which scripts to take over vacation. The anonymous document circulated around town. Writers got meetings off their appearance on the list. And agents and managers started coming to him with scripts he should "keep in mind for next year."

Leonard was as surprised as anyone by the life it took on.

When previous insider lists of this type have circulated, they've generally focused on what people thought were the best unproduced screenplays, so they were great novelty reading tainted by the presumption that they were unproduced for a reason. But this new Black List (as opposed to the despicable HUAC-inspired variety) has taken off, and writers have benefited greatly.

This year's list, released last week, contains the titles of 87 screenplays, their writers and the writers' agents, "compiled from the suggestions of over 90 film executives and high-level assistants, each of whom contributed the names of up to ten of their favorite scripts that were written in or are somehow uniquely associated with 2006 and will not be released in theaters during this calendar year," as Leonard's cover sheet proclaims. "THE BLACK LIST is not a 'best of'
list. It is, at best, a 'most liked' list."

Here are the three screenplays from the 2006 Black List:

(1) "The Brigands of Rattleborge," by S. Craig Zahler, which netted 30 mentions. An ultra-violent western with touches of black comedy, "Brigands" has been stirring up buzz since the summer and even earned the writer a call from fan Steven Spielberg. Director Mark Romanek ("One Hour Photo") has been circling the Warner Bros. project for months.

(2) "State of Play," by Matt Carnahan, with 23 mentions. An adaptation of the popular 2003 British miniseries written by Paul Abbott about the intersection of politics and journalism in the wake of two murders, "Play" has long been one of Universal's hottest scripts and has Brad Pitt attached to star.

(3) "Rendition," by Kelley Sane, with 19 mentions. This political thriller is set up at New Line with Jake Gyllenhaal as a CIA operative in the Middle East and Reese Witherspoon as an American woman looking for her kidnapped husband. It explores the ramifications of the practice of extraordinary rendition in a story line that echoes the real-life case of Syrian-born Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who was abducted by American officials and shipped to Syria in 2002, where he says he was tortured for months before being released uncharged.

Several talented writers landed two screenplays on the list: Carnahan ("State of Play" and "Lions for Lambs"), Caleb Kane ("These City Walls" and "Untitled Richard Pryor"), Martin McDonagh ("In Bruges" and "Seven Psychopaths"), Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka ("Hairstyles of the Damned" and "Who the Hell Is Sanjay Patel"), Ned Benson ("In Defiance of Gravity" and "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby") and Allan Loeb ("A Little Game Without Consequence" and "Men").

A fascinating and unexpected aspect of the list is its reflection of the hierarchy among the agencies, at least in terms of screenwriters: CAA has 21 scripts on the list, UTA has 18 1/2 (one is co-written by a writer from another agency), William Morris has 17, Endeavor has 9 1/2 , ICM has seven.

Despite its humble beginnings, and a growing status that will surely lead to more aggressive campaigning for next year, Leonard is pleased by the unintended consequences for those most marginalized of Hollywood craftsmen.

"I think that writers are very much undervalued in Hollywood," Leonard says. "So I love the idea that if assistants, junior development executives, senior executives at a studio or a studio president take a look at this list and see that 18 people have recommended a script, maybe they'll take the time to read it. If you can heighten the buzz around these writers, maybe they'll start to be less undervalued.
That's the hope anyway. But that was never the initial intention; it was really just about finding more good stuff for me to read."

AN ARTICLE FROM THE LA TIMES: Edited by David Negrin

A video blog about video

This is my personal weblog where I ruminate about broadband and its impact on our lives.
-Om Malik Speaks: Cisco's Promise of Broadband is Here -- Next Year's Video Revolution will be About a Faster Network in the U.S.

The next big revolution in video will happen next year when the broadband connection speed increases in the U.S. He notes that high quality online video consumption is on the rise in countries with faster connectivity, such as France, Korea and Japan.

Its simple and powerful and Andy at beet.tv is breaking big stories on products, services, and people in the industry.
-Andy Plesser, founder and CEO of beet.tv
GO TO BEET.TV...
http://www.beet.tv/

PRE-PRODUCTION and all that jazz

"Well, if preproduction goes well, I am pretty much not very busy during production, and that is the ideal. Preproduction periods tend to be intensely geared toward organizing every single day as much as possible, all with an eye toward figuring out if our days are that organized, we'll be able to have a little time left." - Christine Vachon, Killer Films

Obtaining a Script and Rights
Stories for screenplays can often be found in our own lives, in the lives of our family and friends. These are stories that have made national news and they are usually bid on by several producers simultaneously.

Script Development
There is lots that should be kept in mind while the script is being developed, for e.g. if a fixed budget is established prior to starting the script, the producer must guide the writer in such a way as to ensure that the finished script is molded to fit the budget.

The Role of the Producer
No job in Hollywood is misunderstood more than the producer. This is partly because the role a producer plays varies from film to film.

Film Financing
Obtaining financing is often the most difficult part of making a film. Regardless of how you go about raising money, be certain that you are fully prepared to convince investors of the merits of your project before you walk in the door.

Creating A Budget
One hears all the time about pictures going over budget or over schedule. The production company blames the producer, who is turn blames the director, or the star or the cinematographer. Without question there are cases where these people contribute to the problem, but that does not come close to explaining why so many productions go over budget or over schedule.

Working with Designers
The Production designer works closely with the Director and the Director of Photography to establish the "look" of the film. He is also responsible for planning and supervising the overall visual appeal of the movie.

LEARN MORE...
http://www.ifp.org/filmmakerlib/category.php?catid=3

THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES

You may not know about Stephen and Timothy Quay, but you're probably familiar with their work — they're identical twin animators best known for stop-motion shorts that bring together the strange, the beautiful and the grotesque, and that have been ripped off by countless music video and art directors. Though not always the most accessible of artists, the brothers Quay have plenty of fans among critics, cinephiles and the other filmmakers — Terry Gilliam selected their 1986 "Street of Crocodiles" as one of the ten best animated films of all time.

"The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes" is only the second feature-length film from the Quays — it tells a Jules Verne-inspired story of the mad Dr. Droz (Gottfried John), who abducts a beautiful opera singer (Amira Casar) and takes her to his island filled with Victorian-style automatons. A piano tuner (César Saracho) summoned to care for the mechanisms becomes obsessed with rescuing her. I spoke to the Quays on the phone from London, where they live — the two tend to speak for one another and finish each other's sentences, and so have been treated as one entity below.

So "The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes" is your second film, and like your first film (1995's "Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life") it's mainly live action. Is this for practical reasons?

Oh, we would never enter into doing a feature-length animation. You know, you need a team of people for that. We don't invite people to animate for us, it'd be a labor of love and it'd be foolish, too big for us. It's like three, four, five years out of your life. I don't think anyone would trust us with a [full-length] film that wasn't live action — with live action they're willing to give you the benefit of the doubt now and then. Well, two times in our lives.

THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES is the breathtakingly beautiful and long-awaited second feature from the Quay Brothers. On the eve of her wedding, the beautiful opera singer Malvina is mysteriously killed and abducted by a malevolent Dr. Droz. Felisberto, an innocent piano tuner, is summoned to Droz’s secluded villa to service his strange musical automatons. Little by little Felisberto learns of the doctor’s plans to stage a “diabolical opera” and of Malvina’s fate. He secretly conspires to rescue her, only to become trapped himself in the web of Droz’s perverse universe...

SEE THE TRAILER...
http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/film.php?directoryname=pianotunerofearthquakes

READ MORE...By Alison Willmore for IFC News
http://ifc.com/news/article?aId=18313
Photo:piano

FREE CELTX scriptwriting software

CELTX - FREE! CELTX does all the basics. And it's FREE! Celtx is software for making media - film, video, theatre, and animation.

CREATE: Use the Location, Character or Scene development tools to start a dynamic story line. Augment your detailed descriptions with sound files, pictures and video clips to help build a media rich Outline.

Celtx has an industry standard screenplay editor with all of the features writers need to keep their fingers moving, like intuitive formatting, text auto-complete, pagination, script styles, CAPS selection, scene management, spellchecker, embedded notes, find and replace, and PDF generation.

Celtx also supports plain text document editing so you can write a poem, music lyrics, or your complete Novel.

PLAN: Complete a media rich breakdown of your project, tagging items like props, wardrobe items or cast members with notes, pictures and sound files to help give shape to your Media Project. Celtx automatically creates a database from the information you create in the process.

Use the built in Calendar and Reports features to keep your Project organized

READ MORE AND DOWNLOAD THIS FREE SCRIPTWRITING SOFTWARE...
http://celtx.com/

INDEPENDENT SHORT HORROR FILM TRAILERS

THIS IS THE SPOT!

Search a hundred independent horror film shorts and see their trailers ALL ON ONE WEBSITE!

This compliation stars with the film below made in Japan...

152 Official Website
THIS TIME THERE IS NO LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL...
"Three friends entered a tunnel on a bet, but they came out with something...unimaginable." This is the official website for the short film 152 - a supernatural thriller made in Japan.

See a hundred more...

SEE ALL..
http://www.horrorfind.com/Horror_Movies/Indie_Horror_Shorts/index.html

[Film Investment] Caveat Emptor

Be very wary of any Investor who wants to invest in your film but first wants you to give them money.

That is not the way it works. An Investor invests money in a film because they believe in the project, the filmmakers, the talent, the script, the business plan, etc.

They want the filmmakers to make the best film that can be made on a particular budget so it can make a profit and give the Investor(s) a good return on their investment.

No legitimate Investor who is interested in making a successful film would want to short a movie twenty percent or any amount of its production budget before one frame is even shot -- that's what someone would do if they had no faith in the film being completed
or making a profit.

A legitimate Investor is going to want to see your business plan with information on your film experience, your talent attached, your script, your budget, your production schedule, your completion bond, your distribution deals, etc.

Pay your entertainment lawyer to deal with your Investors, contracts, etc., but don't pay your Investors until your film is completed and earns some revenue.

Johnnie J. Young
Young Wolf Productions
Film Investment Group

Next Generation Video and Content Delivery

Consumers are embracing new methods of accessing and interacting with entertainment, propelled by their experience with the variety of content available on the Internet. Accustomed to choice, they want to access content when and where they want it and the Cisco Content Delivery System (CDS) allows service providers to meet these demands from today’s savvy consumers.

Offers Services to Any Device
With the Cisco CDS, you can offer VoD, network PVR, time-shift TV, and other services to your subscribers now, while establishing a platform that can deliver future services from a variety of sources to a multitude of subscriber devices. The CDS transcends traditional VoD solutions with a flexible, network-based architecture that helps you to deliver the next generation of personalized entertainment, interactive media, and targeted advertising.

Solution Components
The Cisco CDS consists of networked Cisco Content Delivery Engines (CDEs) that ingest, store, distribute, personalize, and stream content. CDEs can be grouped into arrays for storage and/or streaming, working together as a single logical system. You can easily expand capacity by simply attaching additional CDEs to the array, achieving virtually unlimited video storage and streaming capacity. This network of CDEs forms a virtual video platform designed to provide the following services:

Video on demand
Network PVR
Time-shift TV
Barker channels
Public-access, education, and government (PEG) channels
Targeted advertising insertion


Key Benefits:
Near limitless scalability: Unlike traditional VoD solutions that limit you to the capacity of the largest single video server, the Cisco CDS intelligent architecture achieves built-in scalability using techniques pioneered in scaling the Internet. Simply adding another Cisco CDE dynamically increases the pooled intake, storage, caching, and streaming resources available throughout the network.

Nonstop service availability: Cisco CDS resource pooling and load balancing allow Cisco CDEs to work together as a single logical pool of resources that can be reallocated automatically, in real time, across the network in response to service requests. If a CDE fails or is taken offline for maintenance, the platform continues to deliver uninterrupted video services to subscribers, without the need for idle standby units.

Flexibility and fast service deployments: The Cisco CDS is the only video platform designed to effectively support centralized, distributed, and hybrid video networks. Based on intelligent, modular software, the CDS can evolve to incorporate new functionality and capacity without complex redesigns or service outages. In addition, both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/AVC are supported.

READ THE ENTIRE STORY...

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps7191/Products_Sub_Category_Home.html

SLAUGHTER DISC

The Carnal Morgue presents its first twisted tale of macabre erotica:

Mike loves porn. Unfortunately he is blinded by his addiction to XXX entertainment as it slowly eats away at every aspect of his life. One day a mysterious DVD arrives in the mail and Mike quickly begins to realize there is a much darker side to the world of adult entertainment.

Bondage, Murder, Self-Mutilation, Cannibalism, Necrophilia - these are just the icing on the cake of this journey into Hell.

Starring:
Caroline Pierce - Robert Williams
Jewels Mackenzie - Travis Lee - Albin Kinsey

Not Rated: Contains foul language, graphic violence, gore and explicit sexual situations (intercourse, masturbation, full penetration, ejaculation) .
Intended for audiences 18 and over.

Bonus Materials:
Behind the Scenes, Photo Gallery, Outtakes, The Curse of Slaughter Disc and a few extra special treats for those clever enough to find them.

LEARN MORE...
http://steelwebstudios.com/films/sd/index.php

Morgan Freeman Paz Vega movie coming to a PC near you

Morgan Freeman ambles into a mock-up of a digital living room wearing his right shoe and carrying his left one.

Today, Freeman's 2-year-old company, ClickStar, begins production of its first movie, 10 Items or Less. Freeman and Paz Vega will star. The director is Brad Silberling, who directed Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Some funding will come from an unusual source: chipmaker Intel.

When the movie is released, it will land in theaters and be available for download over the Internet on the same day, no doubt sending multiple studio moguls diving for their Zoloft.

There's been much chatter about Steven Soderbergh's movie Bubble, which broke Hollywood taboos by coming out on DVD, TV channel HDNet and theaters at nearly the same time. Directors and producers whined that their art will be diminished if people stop seeing movies on the big screen.

Imagine the tempest ClickStar will brew. Its 10 Items or Less will be a major-league movie — exactly the kind that would normally lure consumers to theaters its opening weekend. Except no one will have to go to a theater to see it or even drive to a Wal-Mart to buy the DVD. You could start watching it on your Internet-connected HDTV — which, OK, you're not likely to own now but probably will in coming years — within 30 seconds after clicking "buy" on the ClickStar site.

The movie industry makes almost all its money from theater tickets and DVD sales, and basically no money from Internet sales. So ClickStar scares Hollywood. That's why Freeman is doing it.

"This kid came up with Napster, and before that, none of us thought of content protection," Freeman says. Hollywood has a window of time to find a way to avoid getting Napstered. Pirates haven't yet succeeded in stealing movies on the scale they steal songs, because movies are such huge files. But that barrier will fall. Then the only way to get ahead of the Napstering, Morgan believes, is for the movie industry to create its own, superior marketplace first, before file-sharing of pirated movies takes hold.

"The studios are not going to do it until someone proves it will work," Freeman says.
"So that's what we'll do."


READ MORE by Kevin Maney for USA TODAY...

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/maney/2006-02-07-freeman-films_x.htm

Microfilmmaker WANTS YOUR SCREENPLAY

Hello, my name is Nicole Zalewski.

I am the advertising/PR agent for Microfilmmaker Magazine. I am on a mission to find talented scriptwriters for a new section of the magazine that is about to launch. This opportunity is solely for those individuals that have written scripts that they feel would make a good no budget or low budget film, as this is an independent film resource magazine.

Filmmakers would be able to read a synopsis and log line for your film and decide from there if they would like to turn your outstanding creativity into a film for distribution. Now this is on a contingency basis, you make the script available, the filmmaker contacts you directly and it moves along from there.

If you are then interested, you would make 8% of the purchase price of the film that utilizes your script and 2% of any additional profits thereafter. If you want to take a look at how this section is set up there are two web addresses you can take a look at.

One is ?Comics for Use in Micro-Budget Films,? and ?Music for Use in Micro-Budget films.? Each section is devoted to getting these people noticed and possibly getting their work into one of the no or low budget films I was referring to. The links for these pages are http://microfilmmaker... and http://microfilmmaker...

If you have any further questions you can pose them directly to me at nzalewski@microfilmmaker.com or the editor himself, Jeremy Hanke at jhanke@microfilmmaker.com Isn?t it about time someone recognized your talent and made it shine? If you are interested there are some specific items we would require from you.

We need your e-mail address, a synopsis of your script, a log line (which is one to two sentences that sum up the synopsis), and a web address if you have one. I thank you for your time. We would like any submissions to be in to either Jeremy or myself by December 5th, 2006, so that we may get you into the magazine?s next issue.

Sincerely yours, Nicole Zalewski

http://microfilmmaker.com/

People Powered Film

His Fans Greenlight the Project

Robert Greenwald Tapped a New Funding Source: The Audience

Jim Gilliam is only 28 years old. In a previous incarnation, he was a venture capitalist and a chief technology officer. Now his voice is a old man's rasp and he does not have the strength to cook his own food. He is waiting for a double lung transplant. But sick in his bedroom, Gilliam had a revolutionary idea: Why not get the audience to pay for a movie before it gets made?

He calls it "People Powered Film." It could be the start of something.

Gilliam founded Brave New Films in 2004 along with Robert Greenwald, the documentary producer-director behind projects including "Uncovered: The War on Iraq," "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" and his most recent, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price." Greenwald fans applaud his work; his detractors, such as Fox's Bill O'Reilly, call him "a radical progressive who blames America first," as well as "a liar and an idiot."

Earlier this year, Greenwald was searching for a new subject/target. He knew he wanted to make a movie to be released in the push-and-shove of the coming midterm elections, when interest in his politically charged material might be high and when his film might help remove Republicans and insert Democrats (which, for Greenwald and his supporters, is the point).

When Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal advocacy group Campaign for America's Future, suggested to him the topic of "war profiteers," meaning American defense contractors in Iraq such as Halliburton, Greenwald recalls, "It was perfect."

But funding was a problem -- Greenwald's documentaries generate more heat than coin. Their take at the box office is tiny (mostly they're seen on DVD). "We weren't raising anything," says Greenwald, sitting on a recent afternoon in his office, located in what appears to be a converted motel behind the Sony Pictures lot, as his team rushed to complete the project for its debut next month.

The usual bankers of political documentaries -- left-leaning organizations and high-roller liberal donors -- weren't rushing to write Greenwald any checks. Greenwald doesn't know why. "Maybe I'm a lousy fundraiser," he says.

Then Gilliam had his idea. Robert, why not go on the Internet and just ask for the money? "I thought he was crazy," Greenwald says. "I thought this would never work."

READ MORE...By William Booth, Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/18/AR2006081800210_pf.html

$450,000 to make/$30-million in sales

Lifting the mask from 'Faces of Death'

Most adolescent slumber parties in the '80s began or ended with a video screening of the cult classic, pseudo-snuff flick Faces of Death. After the movie, no slumber came, only nightmares and debate.

"Did those people really beat that monkey to death and eat its brains?"

"How did they get that footage of the flesh-eating cult?"

"Is that electric chair execution real?"

Is any of Faces of Death real? What does the man who made it say?

"I'll never forget: All of a sudden on the news one night they're talking about Faces of Death!" says John Schwartz, who directed and wrote the movie and its sequels I through IV (there are now eight Faces of Death movies). The flick was intended as a Japanese-only release in 1979, but found its way to the United States, and the national news, a couple of years later.

"I almost fell out of my chair," says Schwartz in a phone interview. "Dan Rather on CBS was talking about these "incredibly horrible videos.' 'Cause everybody thought they were real!"

If anybody thinks Faces of Death is footage of actual deaths, it's because it says so on the video's box, right under the cheesy drawing of the hooded skull with the forked tongue and fangs. Schwartz and company did film real footage of slaughterhouses and autopsy rooms, but any other "real" deaths came from file footage.

"We traveled to all these different film libraries to see what we could find about death and disaster," says Schwartz. "I found this footage of this woman jumping off a building, and it was just incredible footage. But the part of the footage we didn't have was the aftermath. So we (filmed) inserts into the actual footage to match it."

READ MORE...By MICHAEL PATRICK WELCH
http://www.sptimes.com/News/102600/Weekend/Lifting_the_mask_from.shtml
© 2000, St. Petersburg Times

H6

The Hostel From Hell

Doing for Spanish tourism what Hostel did for Slovakia, H6: Diary of A Serial Killer is an unrelenting vision of horror from Spain’s newest auteur and the producers of Basic Instinct 2 and Sexy Beast.

Recently freed after 25 years for killing his girlfriend, Antonio Frau (Fernando Asaco) has just inherited an old motel from a relative he never knew. Old habits die hard and Antonio takes this as a sign from God to begin “cleansing” those who have lost the will to live.

He leads his naive victims to room 6 where he purifies them through excruciating pain and blood-soaked torture, while at the same time, continuing his everyday life next to his new wife.

SEE THE TRAILER...
http://www.gomorrahy.com/images/h6_diary.mov