2008 Screenwriting Expo

If you're in LA November 13-16 consider the 2008 Screenwriting Expo if you're looking for a roller coaster of how the insiders churn. Early registration is $94.95 with any number of extras depending on your greed / impulse purchasing power / sleep depravation at the time of one-click shopping.

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse of "Lost" will be headlining the guest list, with $5 additional how-to seminar classes by industry leaders.

Most interestingly, there's a $20,000 Screenplay Competition with deadlines and entry fees to be determined going on around the same time.

Get your crayons situated and pick up some nice yellow legal pads and a four-pack of Redbull to chase the dragon on that fat line of zeros - if indeed they do end up mounted happily on your oversized little dream check - minus of course the 50-50 split with Uncle Sam.

Eh, that's still a nice vacation to Walden.

Get cracking.

FILM DREAMERS

Shot in Park City January 05, Film Dreamers is the result of an unsanctioned behind the scenes shoot of the Sundance Film Festival.

Given access by key Sundance personnel, Tara Golden was able to create a 20 minute short doc that celebrates the passion, creativity and recklessness of film-making. A colorful smorgasbord of the filmmakers, fans and support team, Film Dreamers will take you on a journey into the heart of film-making.

Hollywood and the existing studio system continues to shut out all newcomers

An entire new generation of new media filmmakers is on the outside of the film industry today.

Having bought a digital camcorder and/or graduated from film school, their only sins are that they want to get their films made and they are new to making a living in this field.

Steven Soderberg pioneered a new trend with "Sex, Lies and Video Tape" and he probably best represents the beginning the this independent filmmaking craze and spirit. Since producing "Bubble", he has given many new media filmmakers the idea of making their movies, going straight to DVD and talking to retail stores and outlets, like Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Circuit City, Blockbuster, NetFlix and countless others.

New media films can be advertised and marketed not only through television and the Internet but also through the giant retail stores. The market will not disappear but as more and more people turn to streaming video and Internet downloads, the market will probably evolve and change.

Many believe that it's only a matter of time until the new media filmmakers of today become the next "studio owners" of this new form of entertainment.

©2008, Stanley Lozowski. All rights reserved

DRACULA on Film in Philadelphia?

FACT: More independent filmmakers make horror films than any other genre.

FACT: More horror films and TV shows feature vampires than any other type of monster. One reason is that the "vampire" (as originally described by Bram Stoker in his novel "DRACULA") is in the public domain. The vampire is a creature that has haunted the artistic imagination for centuries—it both literally and figuratively refuses to die.

Like other creatures in Gothic literature, such as Frankenstein’s Monster or Mr. Hyde, the vampire is a locus of cultural ideology, reflecting the social, economic, and psychological anxieties of its historical moment. Bela Lugosi has left a film legacy that appears to be immortal.

Bram Stoker’s late-Victorian novel, "DRACULA", acted as the catalyst for the twentieth century’s cinematic obsession with vampires, spawning over 200 feature films about this most beloved bloodsucker.

Now, there is a course that will introduce students to the literary tradition of the vampire that culminated with Stoker’s novel, and focus on the myriad film adaptations that followed. The films include (but are not limited to) F.W. Murnau’s German Expressionist masterpiece, NOSFERATU, Francis Ford Coppola’s audaciously imaginative BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, and others.

Symphony of Horrors: Dracula in Literature and FilmTaught by Alice Bullitt, M.A., Programming Manager, Bryn Mawr Film Institute

Class Meets: Wednesdays, July 9, 16, 23, 30, 10:00am to 1:00pm
Optional Field Trip: Wednesday, July 2, 10:00 am to 2:00 pm
Fee: $100 (course only); $110 (course and field trip)

To register, click here or call 610-527-4008 x105.

FILM EDUCATION INFORMATION: http://www.brynmawrfilm.org/08_Dracula_NEW.html

"Yes, The Sky Really Is Falling."

On Saturday in Los Angeles, Mark Gill declared provocatively, "Yes, The Sky Really Is Falling."

Speaking at the L.A. Film Festival's Financing Conference, the CEO of The Film Department (and former President of Miramax Films) detailed a litany of challenges currently facing all independent film, yet offered his audience a happy ending. His complete prepared remarks are included below:

Good Morning,

Last week, an old friend who is a director called to catch up. It almost seemed as if he was seeking reassurance.

"You good?" he asked.

My answer was simple: "How good can I be? I work in independent film."

He laughed. And then he wondered aloud: "Do you think maybe Chicken Little was right--I mean, about independent film."

Leave it to a director to hope Chicken Little might be a cinephile.

And again, my answer was simple: "Yes, the sky really is falling."

The last thing I heard him say was "I have to go throw up now."

Unfortunately, he's not alone in that feeling these days.

There's a glut of films: 5000 movies got made last year. Of those, 603 got released theatrically here. And there's not room in the market--as there used to be--for even 400 of those.

Maybe there's room for 300. So everything else just dies. Most of these pictures are pre-ordained flops from independent distributors who forgot that their odds would have been better if they'd converted their money into quarters and taken the all-night party bus to Vegas.

READ MORE by Mark Gill at http://www.indiewire.com/biz/2008/06/irst_person_fil.html

Free 2008 Summer Shorts Competition

StudentFilmmakers.com is offering a free Summer Shorts competition, accepting narratives, documentaries, music videos, PSAs, experimental films, thesis films and anything else you manage to "accidentally" record with your laptop quick cam from your neighbor's open blinds.

Registration is quick and the entry deadline is September 1st, 2008.

I'm keeping my blinds closed 'till then.

Website resources for the film industry

Posted online by Sean McKnight is a list of the top industry resource websites from Moviemaker Magazine.

The list varies. The sites are geared towards different areas such as: acting, writing, production, distribution, business, as well as filmmaking in general.

If anyone else knows any other good resources, please list any resources you'd like to share.


The Actor Pages - www.actorspages.org

Association of Talent Agents - www.agent-association.com

Backstage - www.backstage.com

Call Box - www.callboxlive.com

Createspace - www.createspace.com

The D-Word - www.d-word.com

Digital Juice - www.digitaljuice.com

Drew's Script-O-Rama - www.script-o-rama.com

Dvolver - www.dvolver.com

Entertainment Careers.Net - www.entertainment-careers.net

Eyespot - www.eyespot.com

Film Budget - www.filmbudget.com

Film Festivals.com - www.filmfestivals.com

Film Specific - www.filmspecific.com

Film Staff - www.filmstaff.com

Filmtools - www.filmtools.com

Firstcom Music - www.firstcom.com

Global Image Works - www.globalimageworks.com

Gotham Writers Group - www.writingclasses.com

HTMarket - www.htmarket.com

Independent Filmmaker Contracts - www.independentfilmmakercontracts.com

Indiepix - www.indiepix.net

Indieshares - www.indieshares.com

Indiefilms - www.indiefilms.com

The Internet Movie Script Database- www.imsdb.com

Istockphoto - www.istockphoto.com

Mandy - www.mandy.com

Movie Forms Pro - www.movieformspro.com

Moviemaker Magazine - www.moviemaker.com

Non Stop Music - www.nonstopmusic.com

Omnimusic - www.omnimusic.com

Productionhub - www.productionhub.com

Rumblefish - www.musiclicensingstore.com

Screenstyle - www.screenstyle.com

Scriptfixer - www.scriptfixer.com

Shooting On Location - www.shootingonlocation.com

Shutterstock Footage - www.footage.shutterstock.com

Sir Groovy - www.sirgroovy.com

615 Music - www.615music.com

Smartflix - www.smartflix.com

Spiritual Cinema Circle - www.spiritualcinemacircle.com

Studio Daily - www.studiodaily.com

Underground Film - www.undergroundfilm.com

Video 100 - www.video100.com

Vimeo - www.vimeo.com

Whorepresents - www.whorepresents.com

Withoutabox - www.withoutabox.com

The Writers Store - www.writersstore.com

YOUTUBE PLANNING TO SHOW FULL-LENGTH INDIES

For the first time, YouTube plans to allow full-length movies to be presented on its website.

Saying that it hopes to act as a showcase for films from independent producers who have been unable to find distributors, YouTube announced that beginning next week it will present four new films a week on its "screening room," many of them spotted at film festivals.

Filmmakers will be able to attach a "buy-now" button to the presentations and will receive a percentage of profits from all films presented on the website.

READ THE ARTICLE>>

©2008 Contactmusic.com Ltd, all rights reserved

"Paprika" FREE SCREENING in New York, June 30th

PAPRIKA is a 90 minute Japanese animated science fiction feature film with English subtitles, based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1993novel of the same name, about a female research psychologist who uses a device that permits therapists to help patients by entering their dreams.

The film was directed by Satoshi Kon, animated by Madhouse Studios, and produced and distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment. The music was composed by Susumu Hirasawa, who also composed the soundtrack for Kon's award-winning film, Millennium Actress, and equally lauded television series, Paranoia Agent.

SEE THE FILM IN NEW YORK with a special guest appearance by the director: Satoshi Kon on Monday, June 30th

Doors Open: 6:15pm, Director Talks: 7:00pm, followed by Screening

The ImaginAsian: 239 East 59th Street, NYC


RSVP to http://www.newyork-tokyo.com/wp/paprika

Why I Don't Go to the Movies Anymore

Movie going has certainly changed tremendously in the last forty years.

I clearly remember the joy of going to an opening night for the latest James Bond or Woody Allen movie, or the latest epic such as “Dr. Zhivago”, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, and “Lawrence of Arabia”.

We all enjoyed such definitive sixties films as “The President’s Analyst”, “The Magic Christian”, “Easy Rider”, and “I Love You, Alice B. Toklas” and to feel better about ourselves (and to look cool and appear intelligent), we went to foreign films.

I remember being glued to my seat by the fascinating and horrific violence of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “El Topo”. Then there were films I loved simply by virtue of their titles. Can you beat “Can Heironymous Merkin Ever Forget Merci Hummpe and Find True Happiness?” or “Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?”?

I’ll never forget films like “I'll Never Forget What's'isname”. “M*A*S*H”, “Little Big Man”, and “The Graduate”. These faetures ushered in a new Golden Age of American Cinema—the seventies.

Our gang typically went to the movies on opening nights. We did not have multiplexes showing the same film simultaneously on five screens. Instead, every seat in these large houses was filled. We’d arrive early to avoid standing at the end of a long line (we hated lines), and sitting in the first few rows.

The theater had few empty seats and was alive with an eager anticipation of a new cinematic experience that was consistently justified. As the sixties evolved, so did our use of herbs prior to screenings. Was it the people? the era? the movies? our youth? the herbs? I don’t know for sure, but I do know and remember that it was easy, joyful, inspiring, educational, and, of course, entertaining to see a movie.

Times have changed.

There are still great movies to be seen, but the movie-going experience has become utterly miserable. I now have an encyclopedia of reasons I avoid going to the movie theaters. To begin with, we’re talkin’ talkin’. It’s an unreported epidemic, compulsive talking. People can’t shut up for fear of going stark raving mad, or for the narcissistic joy to hear the sound of their own voices. They also have cell phones today.

Whatever the motivation, I’m driven madly out of the theaters. And I’m not just talkin’ about kids. “Eyes Wide Shut”, an adult melodrama with less action than an Andy Warhol film, incredible hype, a full theater—and the couple next to us talked to each other throughout the entire film. This was a classic case of torture on top of torture.

READ MORE by Don Schwartz - http://www.pacificsun.com/square/index.php?i=3&d=&t=16>>

©2008 Embarcadero Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

WHAT'S HAPPENING in your script?

TWENTY BEST MOVIE TWISTS

To maintain audience interest, many writer's include story twists. Somewhere in the film, the unexpected happens and the audience must wait to see how things are resolved.

We don’t know what’s going to happen in "The Happening", but director M. Night Shyamalan has made a career of freaking out audiences with spine-tingling, knee-buckling, mind-blowing movie twists.

In honor of that, Yahoo! Movies is going to spoil some of the greatest movie twists ever.

READ MORE ABOUT GREAT MOVIE TWISTS: http://movies.yahoo.com/summer-movies/The-Happening/1809921595/photos/362/9401/#info

FREECORDING is a movement for EVERYONE

Freecording aims to rally against the conceived notion of camcording.

Freecording is not clunky handhelds, poor quality video, or ropy sound.

Freecording is an immersive experience when filming and viewing.

Freecording is crisp, clear and inviting, dynamic, inventive, and original.

Freecording is the freedom to capture life around you in a new way.

Freecording brings the viewer into the film.

Freecording is a way for us to capture the visual world around us in our own way, with our own style and our own view.

Freecording is living and shooting at the same time.

Freecording is all of this and more…

The world of Freecording is growing! See clips here. Want to know who made it and how? Check out behind the scenes. More Freecording clips are being added all the time, so pop back regularly to catch new material and LEARN MORE>>

© Copyright Canon 2008

The BEST just got BETTER! Celtx 1.0.

Celtx today announced the free public availability of version 1.0 of their software.

Celtx 1.0 new features include:

1. Adapt To - a single click now converts a fully formatted script of one type into a fully formatted script of another – for example a Stageplay to a Screenplay – displaying instantly the multi-media potential of your work.

2. Comic Book - a new editor to write properly formatted Comic Books, and a common framework for collaboration between writer and artist.

3. iPhone - now view your Celtx projects from just about anywhere with a display optimized for your iPhone.

4. Catalogs - a new organization and searchable dashboard view of all your story’s elements and production items.

5. Sidebar - annotate and break down each scene with notes, media (images, audio, and video clips), and production items through an easy to manage, thoroughly upgraded new sidebar.

6. Project Scheduling – has been vastly upgraded to fully integrate with the script breakdown and provide a Call Sheet and a host of new shooting reports.

7. Storyboarding - you can now choose from a variety of ways to view and manage your images, create a storyboard outline based on your script, and add shot descriptions to each image.

To download Celtx 1.0 FREE, please visit http://www.celtx.com/

And look at what it can do! http://blip.tv/file/948797

NO OTHER program does this much.

http://www.pixelheadsnetwork.com/2008/06/09/tip-43-celtx-new-features-in-version-10/

Show Me The Money

Storylink has a good analysis up right now on The Structure of Megahit Movies:

"In classic Hollywood story structure, after the climax scene we have a resolution scene in which all loose ends are resolved. The protagonist either obtains the unique object, or it is destroyed in the climax scene. The protagonist and the love interest are reunited, and the community celebrates their victory."

All of this is also discussed in the top screenwriting workshops touring LA an NY every few days it seems. Richard Stefanik, though, has made a name for himself by studying the formula of success in terms of box office clout, letting the audience decide what counts as worthwhile by voting with their wallets. He specifically studies films that had U.S. Domestic Box-Office Grosses of $250 million or more, meaning action/adventure in an almost exclusive category unto themselves.

Still, what the masses show with fist-fulls of money in front of million dollar movie promotions, so too can the starving artist pick up and apply when forming a new project ideas that better target audience expectation and mass appeal.

The Future is 3D

Responding to Hollywood's growing demand for 3D production and post-production, Stereoscope has opened its doors in Burbank, California to serve the creative community.

Powered with the new version of Quantel's Pablo 4K color grading system (which handles real-time stereoscopic post-production), the studio has been designed from the ground up to provide a full range of stereo3D digital content services, from development through distribution.

“We saw a marketplace in which there were many DP's knowledgeable about 3D, emerging 3D camera rigs, but no real focus on post,” says Cummins. “There are already about 800 3D digital cinema theaters now,” he continues. “Disney's Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, which was exhibited only in 3D, turned out to be a blockbuster. It demonstrated the incredible potential of the format.”

The twentieth century had its 2D films and animations. The future is in 3D.

READ MORE>> http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo/currentissue/9480.html
FILM & VIDEO © 2008 Access Intelligence LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Use Photo Story Platinum To Make Storyboards & Photo Slideshows For YouTube

Seven Steps to Easy Video from your Photos/Art creations for Youtube

These are the things you'll need:
1. Your digital photos or scanned artwork;
2. Digital photo album maker (Wondershare Photo Story Platinum is recommended);
3. YouTube ID (Free to register);
4. Your favorite music or dialogue (Optional, as backgroud music for movie).

Step 1. Start the program to add your favorite photos and music
Run Photo Story Platinum (Get free trial here: http://download.photo2vcd.com/psp_trial.exe), you will see the interface as below.

You can create your own album, and import your digital photos and background music. Besides drag and drop to add photos to your story board, you can also realize it by double click.

Step 2. Apply the animated styles
The big deal of Photo Story Platinum is "styles". The program offers 200+ animated effects styles to satisfy all your demands for any special occasion.

In order to create a stunning flash slideshow, you simply choose the dazzling styles you want to apply flash effects.

LEARN MORE By Celina for http://audiovideo.consumerelectronicsnet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=372867
� Copyright, 2008 Digital Media Online, All Rights Reserved

Insert Plot Here

Does a story cliché have a shelf life of 20 years before it becomes reusable? I don't know if it's always been this way or if its a case of suddenly realizing the same things people have been groaning about for years. After seeing several recent (very bad) attempts at reusable themes at the movies, and several more really terrible blunders in TV, one has to wonder if the whole process of story development has secretly gone the way of manatees with aquatic magnetic poetry, or some lame quotations database that while useful as a guide to what not to do again, has been turned on its head as a copy-paste substitute for anything remotely moving or innovative. Just because the original source material wasn't cited in research, it doesn't quite make for fresh dining if it's already been a catch and release a few times around the pond.

The results as far as I can see are cinematic disasters but to someone in desperate need of a writer who doesn't argue or do anything untested from prior investments, the results make an easy path from concept pitch to test screening.

In his Tribeca Talks Discussion in May, director Mike Figgis delves into this territory with no sugar coating, citing his own friction with Hollywood and the need for many in the business to try and milk investors for every penny first, and then look at the realistic market for the initial idea, but only as an afterthought to padded salaries and thinly planned production realities. He blames this mentality for the resulting films so common in the big budget category that screen like Frankenstein collections of so-so pitch ideas sprinkled around a small budget idea, without the glue needed to present a strong story as a whole.

Unlike the usual panel discussion which generally has guests spinning a harsh lit question into a diplomatically phrased truism while smiling to the camera, Figgis was refreshing in his honesty and his historic gripe about what he sees as an investment business that has taken over a creative process. He views the nostalgia of more recent generations for the golden age of film not with the expected purist's approach, but as a sign of industry lameness and cultural dysfunction in the inability to hold a candle in public consciousness to the old films and pop culture of the past. It's an interesting theory.

In most respects mainstream movies like music and other high-cost consumer entertainment have a target audience of affluent kids and young teens who will spend $20 on a video game, movie date, or CD/DVD to get low-maintenance entertainment without the guilt of anyone who's lived through a recession or has a memory that goes far enough back to know what good cinema looks like. In addition due to the lack of backstory younger generations have at their disposal, it's plausible that a long time cliché that lacks context now might just be a funny, if meaningless homage to that audience. Maybe this has always been the case.

Still, when you hear searing reviews like "this sorry sequel is so boring, so unimaginative, and so blandly by-the-numbers that it's almost like... [an affront] to the very audience members who made the original a worldwide hit" (Mike McGranaghan of Aisle Seat) and the original film in the comparison wasn't at all decent to begin with, you have to nod at least a little bit at people like Figgis who rant on the money pumped into big budget films that more often than not is never actually seen by the crews or concept people in charge of basic planning and operations. Instead another McMansion is born in the hills.

Hijacking characters and whole plot devices isn't new and in fact was done once with an open wink and nod, drawing the odd tense moment into a quick comedic effect to spice up the beat pattern of a darker content. Recently it seems the whole punch line quality of homage has been missed, and we get films that are openly stealing direct dialog word-for-word from the classics without so much as a batting of the eyelashes. There really is no punch line, and people really don't know the difference. How sad.

When a producer of a children's film says "there are creatures you've never seen before who can do things you've never seen before" about a film that's an obvious brew of every top-grossing film in the genre over the last five years, and yet has one of the best parody films in history in their pedigree, one has to wonder if the outright ripping was the result of a suggested homage by someone who knew what they were doing gone simply misunderstood and horribly awry by the end of the process. The elevator pitch "do something like 'Princess Bride' meets 'Harry Potter'" becomes steal Mandy Patinkin, insert Dumbledore and add in the flying scene with some gryphons with kung-fu dialog every ten seconds to liven the mindless CGI duplicated battling creatures that substitute trained (paid) actor voiceovers and cancel out the lack of legitimate scene turning. (Note: you can never gloss over the lack of dialog. When will focus groups stop being the point at which the emotional payoff considered?)

The shift seems to reflect a bigger industry problem where the difference between inspiration and lifting is no longer respected and so the whole formula relying on the understanding that a homage is meant to be funny no longer works. Whether it's a lack of basic understanding in how to respectfully cite source material in the research, or a simple effect of a tribe of us blogging before bedtime, or even a dose of outright laziness by full time journalists-turned-writers who are increasingly picking up AP wires and regurgitating them with one or two words tweaked to get back to their more favored projects as quickly as possible, the end result is a lack of any real commentary either in the films themselves or in articles about them.

So how is it done? To break out of wallowing in old characterizations without losing the inspiration of what made those old stories great, dozens of great writers and directors have all suggested again and again a step back and incorporate less preconception about the synopsis and more interpretation. Many great filmmakers display a versatility and willingness to impart personal experience into the content rather than inverting their ideas for content in order to fit prior molds. Is it harder? Yes. Is it worth it?

Figgis quoted another director which he cited in his Tribeca Talks discussion in May, where he notes the key to loving old films of the past was often in the theater experience. Good films were rich in metaphor where upon a single viewing, the audience took away not the playbook of the film, but an experience as a theater goer that was richly applicable to their own life experiences. In time those experiences and the actual reality of the film would merge together in the mind of the audience. The characters represented so much more meaning than the actual film, behaving more as myth than entertainment devices. You cannot cut the characterization from the context and expect the same return.

Still, for all the rumbling that sales are hurt by all the additional competition that's out there now, the correction away from blatant lifting back to classic story design will never come from culling the field down to just a handful of vetted studios The technology culture simply won't accept it. Instead, as the filmmaking privilege opens up to more opportunities at the artisan level with cheaper and faster digital prospects and more ability of lateral networking via targeted, genre-based niche social networking, a reassessment of how we tell stories on film will continue. Such change is already beckoning a wide series of topics and discussions on how to bridge the classic independent mindset of "story first" to all the high-end stunts and aggressive effects blanketing the twitchy industry releases that stare wide eyed every time down the barrel of a good yarn.

Independent Filmmakers seek Distribution Via the Internet

But What Happens in 2012 if the Internet Ends?

Every significant Internet provider around the globe is currently in talks with access and content providers to explore the possibility of transforming the Internet into a television-like medium: no more freedom, you pay for a small commercial package of sites you can visit and you'll have to pay for seperate subscriptions for every site that's not in the package.

Almost all smaller websites/services could disappear over time and multinationals who are used to using big budgets to brute force their content into every media outlet will finally be able to approach the internet in the same way.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE>>

http://ipower.ning.com/

Local films loosen studios' global grip

Foreign fare completely trumped Hollywood's Stranglehold on the International box office last year.

For decades, studios releasing their films worldwide enjoyed the configence and knowledge that they would be eagerly devoured by movie lovers overseas.

Recently however, the slick Hollywood films have been surpassed by local filmfare. French phenom "Bienvenue les chez Ch'tis" (Welcome to the Sticks) has passed $203 million in only four markets, outpacing the entire international runs of such notable American film successes as "Ice Age," "TheDevil Wears Prada" and "I, Robot." France's "Asterix at the Olympic Games" passed the $130 million dollar mark.

In Turkey, the comedy "Recep Ivedik" passed all U.S. blockbusters to become the biggest smash hit of the year, taking in some $28 million.

In Italy, six of the year's top 10 are local productions, led by "Scusa se ti chiamoamore," a romance that grossed $20.1 million.

Russia's "Irony of Fate 2" smashed all box office records this year.

Outwardly, Hollywood executives are offering a positive spin, saying local hits are not affecting their film revenues, but expanding their audiences. Privately, they're more concerned that international audiences are not embracing their product the way they used to a decade ago.

At that time, nine out of the top ten films were from Hollywood. This year, during the same weekend, that number had dropped to seven out of ten. This is a new phase for the overseas market.

From the earliest days of the Hollywood studio system through the mid 1990s, international grosses were an afterthought. At one point, they turned into a bonanza with international boxoffice surpassing the domestic box office a decade ago. But last year, the foreign box office hit $17.1 billion almost doubling the domestic box office's $9.6 billion.

Hollywood's product is no longer a slam-dunk as foreign countries flock to their own pics in record numbers. Local production used to be defined by government-funded, deeply personal films too esoteric to become hits. Now as private funding becomes more and more available, local filmmakers must have have more commercial instincts and they are increasingly savvy about marketing and distribution techniques.

And building new plexes in countries like Russia has fueled the film-going public.

READ MORE>> By DAVE MCNARY for Variety http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117985028.html?categoryid=2520&cs=1


© 2008 , Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.