A Watched Pot Never Boils

No doubt every filmmaker wants their film projected to the big screen in front of a large audience.  We dream about it every time we sit watching someone else’s film, thinking, “Surely if they could do it, then so could I.”  That is 100% true.  You can and should.  Your film deserves it.  Every film does.  The big screen is where it’s meant to be.  But it may not happen in your time frame or in your way. It may take years for your film to reach even one theater, and often at a financial loss rather than gain.  The ‘screen’ may not even be the screen you envisioned.  The odds for a marketed film in the U.S. to generate financial gain is roughly 3%.  “Wow.  Thanks for being such a Debbie Downer,” you may say.  “Why don’t we tuck our tails between our legs and call it a day.”  But let’s get real: The San Diego Padres have roughly a 0.0% chance of making it to the playoffs, and the Colorado Rockies are close behind.  Odds say they should hang up their cleats and shut the team down.  The Padres haven’t entered the World Series since 1984.  Then again, the Padres went to the World Series in 1984.  So did the Rockies in 2007.  Who’s to say they won’t again?  But besides that, what keeps a ball player playing when the odds seem stacked against them and the years between keep stacking up?  The love of the game.  And even if they never made it to the World Series again, the teams keep playing games because, for one, their fans keep paying. 

So how does baseball have anything to do with filmmaking?  Nothing.  And everything.

"A League of Their Own"

We live in a magnificent time of opportunity and versatility with regards to exhibition and distribution.  Your film’s ‘premiere’ doesn’t have to wait for funding or the opportunity to theatrically release.  Instead, outlets like IndieFlix, Distribber, and Distrify provide platforms for streaming play and instant download, equating sometimes to instant revenue.  Aggregators such as these branch out to major players like Hulu, iTunes, Amazon VOD and other streaming services, delivering your content to a wide spread audience.  You could approach the outlets individually, of course, but that's your preference - your prerogative. This isn’t a new revelation, but a reminder that the resources exist to, quite frankly, eliminate excuses.  Men all over the country, including Major League ball players, were called away during WWII.  Did that mean baseball stopped? No. The league worked with what they had to “get done what they had to get doing.”  It was about the game - not about the player.  Here, it’s about the film – not the venue.   Some day you’ll have your theatrical release.  It’ll be amazing.  Your twenty-dollar tub of popcorn will have never tasted so… buttery.  But in the meantime, “get to doing what you gotta get done:” show your film.  Because, “There’s no crying in baseball.” (Columbia, 1992)

The Puritanical Debate: Film versus Digital

Since its inception, digital image capturing has faced serious resistance from film professionals - both in still and motion.  The argument being film tangibly preserves an image while digital is a simple rearrangement of ones and zeros. Yet digital is heralded as the next evolution of the art form.  My point of view is that shooting films on film is the highest form of the art because it requires a higher degree of professional expertise.  But when a top director, Martin Scorsese, not only shoots digitally but also in three-dimension (something many pass off as gimmicky), it makes me think twice.  Part of me wants to scream, “Sell Out!”  While the other part, the side that reveres Scorsese, gives him a pass.  There must be something to it if Scorsese, director of the gritty film Raging Bull, takes a leap towards it.

gizmodo.com

 Even so I still prefer film to digital.  Never mind that I own three digital cameras (DLSR, HDV and iPhone 4s).  Don’t judge me.  I have what I have because of production and post-production costs.  In managing a motion media product, I am constrained to my budget – or the lack thereof.  Had I the choice –and the means - I would choose film.  Is it more complicated? Yes.  Is it more costly and time consuming?  Yes.  But I’m a purist in my opinion that images captured on film are real.  Images captured on digital are not.  You catch a crappy image on film – it is what it is.  Honesty.  You catch a crappy shot on digital?  Just hit delete and no one will know.  Janusz Kaminksi, one of Steven Spielberg’s regular cinematographers interviewed with the LA Times, saying that digital makes for a lazy photographer.  I concur – from experience.  “When I was your age….” (and I’m only 30, mind you), I learned to shoot photography with a film camera.  My training took me from black and white, to color and then to slide film, working each in the darkroom and on the light table for hours.  The smell… the feel…. The frustration of seeing my mistakes slowly reveal themselves under the chemicals… It was a process to process. But that time spent made me a better photographer by motivating me to ensure I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.  Importantly, if not more in this context, is the fact that film capturing was a very organic experience. You could literally capture a piece of life, recording it into the emulsion of the film.  Photography and filmmaking are much different now.  

photo.net

Instead of perfecting exposure and camera control, shooters “Chimp.”   ‘Chimping’ is when a photographer shoots a shot, look at the LCD screen or monitor, shoot the shot, look at the screen… adjust settings (or just leave it on auto)… shoot.  Look at screen…. Etc.  It’s why Kaminski laments digital as “the death of the cinematographer,” and creates a co-dependent relationship between the photographer and the review button.  Kaminski continues, “If you see the image on the digital screen I think people become lazy, they get satisfied with just seeing the image, they’re not going for visual panache, not getting the story through metaphors… With film there is still mystery.”  Gone is the confidence that comes with knowing what, why and how a shot is captured.  I won’t lie and say it hasn’t happened to me.   My discipline died when I drank the ‘chimping’ punch.  A ‘sin’ I will never forgive myself of.

But you can’t ignore the fact that digital is here to stay, and professionals like Scorsese and Cameron are on board.  It would not be prudent to push against a bullish trend, but maybe converge the two artfully.  Newer digital cameras are capturing on 4K sensors and projecting “as-is” onto the screen.  Examining the process of traditional 35mm filmmaking and distribution, multiple duplications and projections actually downgrade the film to 1K by the time it reaches the screen.  Audiences have never really “seen” a 4K film in the theater.  Even so, there is still something organic about seeing a movie made from film.  But according to Filmmaker Magazine (Spring 2012 Issue), there is a new generation of filmmakers who hate the texture of film grain.  They are annoyed by small imperfections or the act of looking into a separate world rather than participating in it.  I don’t see that as a bad thing.  We often watch a movie to escape… to see and feel something not akin to real life.  Digital… just makes it too real.  Maybe it’s the way we “old-timers” (again… I’m 30 years old) grew up.  The story of film-making may soon be relegated to rocking chair conversations being reminisced from the front porch.

Pro8mm.com

Fortunately there are companies still trying to preserve the art of ‘real’ filmmaking, while at the same time marrying film and digital for more efficient post-production workflows. Pro8mm out of Burbank, California is a full-service procurement, rental and processing house for 8mm and 16mm film.  They stock a self-invented Super 8 negative film (16X9) along with Super 8 and Super 16 cameras re-engineered for practical use.  Pro8mm creates digital masters of the film while preserving the look and feel of its original capture.  No I do not work for Pro8mm and no I do not get a cut for ‘selling’ them.  More or less, I am selling the idea that film is not dead.   But Super 8?  Whoa.  Who talks about Super 8 anymore?  Apparently  J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg do. It may take a bit more effort to proselytize its enduring viability, but making films with film is still a valid and valuable medium to work with – a resource professionals persist in using when managing the product of their film.

Links:

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/19/entertainment/la-ca-oscars-cinematography-20120219

http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/news/2012/04/good-things-in-smaller-packages-large-sensor-motion-picture-cameras-a-year-later/http://www.pro8mm.com/our-mission.php

Film Tax Incentives: Roll the Credits!

State tax incentives and credits are a hot topic on the minds of all filmmakers these days.  A war wages between two perspectives: entitlement and excess, with each side arguing their views on incongruent grounds.  One side argues the tax credit is a waste of resources, calling for the elimination of film incentives all together.  The other side says without state incentives, film production would move out of state or out of the country – taking jobs with them.  Films take flight elsewhere for two reasons: artistic and economic.  Nobody can help the artistic factor of flight.  But if the states were to eliminate film incentives all together, the production would go to where the benefits are: other countries.  There is definitely an unhealthy “race to the bottom” between states vying for the filmmakers’ attention.  But because tax incentives are prevalent throughout the world, it would behoove the United States to create programs that encourage homegrown films.  After all, according to Select USA, the U.S. leads the world in film and music recording revenue.

 However, there are some sustainable truths to the arguments against film tax incentives.  Mark Robyn, Staff Economist for the Tax Foundation wrote that, in some states, a film tax credit is an excess expense.  “Though there are embarrassingly few of them, the studies that use more realistic assumptions and take into account more economic effects have always showed that states lose money on film tax credits. “   One of the main arguments for incentives is that they draw production business to states that would otherwise never see a film crew.  Robyn argues that whether there is a credit or not, films will still be made - especially in places like California.  Therefore, California should not be spending state funds on film incentives – especially in the economic position the state is in.  Another argument states that film productions should receive credits based on their being an economic multiplier.  This is a one-sided argument, seeing how economic stimulation from new business is not unique to the film industry.  So why shouldn’t new companies, based on this comparison, receive similar credit?

I argue that they do.  From the Small Business Development Center’s website:

“America’s entrepreneurs and small business owners continue to grow their businesses and create jobs due to unprecedented tax cuts that have been signed into law over the past two years. This includes billions of dollars in tax relief from laws such as the Recovery Act, the Small Business Jobs Act, the HIRE Act, the Affordable Care Act, and the Tax Relief and Job Creation Act.

Zero Capital Gains Taxes on Key Investments in Small Businesses

•   Capital gains taxes have been fully eliminated on certain small business stock – providing an incentive for key investments in small businesses.

The Recovery Act excluded 75 percent of capital gains from the sale of certain small business investments held more than five years. The Small Business Jobs Act went one step further – excluding all capital gains from these investments in 2010 after the passage of the Small Business Jobs Act from taxes.” (SBDC.gov)

http://www.enloop.com/blog/small_business_spotlight_davidson_films

The site page continues in listing nine other tax break or credit benefits as part of its “Fact Sheet: Tax Breaks for Small Businesses.”  So what’s the correlation?  Filmmaking is a business.  Each new film is, in essence, a brand new start-up small business, with the producer acting as lead entrepreneur.  Both take risk, and both suffer from a high rate of failure.  According to statistics, 96% of small business start-ups fail within the first year.  Only half of the left over 4% survive more than four years.  Alexander Malyshev, Former editor of Media Law & Policy wrote, “Put simply, most films lose money, but nevertheless hundreds of films are produced each year – almost in defiance of the laws of supply and demand.”  He’s referring to the roughly 600 films of which only a handful generates big-ticket success.  A little over 500,000 small businesses are registered every year.  96% of that is… 480,000, leaving a ‘handful’ still in existence.  Wisconsin Commerce Deputy Secretary Aaron Oliver says the number of jobs generated by film production is finite. “[It is the] ‘least effective’ economic tool… if we had to choose, we could get one full-time job on a film for one year or we could get twenty factory jobs that might last for 20 years.”  Our present economic reality says different.  To argue that the opportunity cost for government spending on film tax credits is a non-productive use can be applied just the same to small business ventures, given the rate of failure.  When 96% of start-ups fail after the first year, why shouldn’t the same employees of those failed businesses join up with a film crew that comes into town?  Their ‘job security’ will be about the same. 

Still… there are more accountability measures that keep small businesses responsible than there are for film productions.  I agree with Robyn in that the budgetary treatments of film incentives should be more transparent. However, I do not agree with Robyn that film credits should be lumped into education and public health spending categories.   Instead, registrations and answerability measures should be emplaced if filmmakers are to seek tax breaks.  I think a major factor in film revenue failures is that filmmakers do not treat the production as a business.  They do not value it enough as a product by which money is made.  A major factor of success in business includes not only money and crew, but also education, experience and a reason – or purpose.  Filmmakers would do well to learn something about business and how to plan for long term revenue goals ­in addition to cinematography, casting and craft service.  But how do you measure the intangible, or as OCU’s economist Kyle Dean says, “an inexact science?”  Implement tax liabilities and assign risk premiums based on track records of producers and production companies.  Then maybe filmmakers will think twice about pouring state money into a love-child film. 

There is nothing wrong with taking risk when creating art, just like there is nothing wrong with giving your best shot at starting your own business.  It’s the American Dream.  But there is something wrong with misusing taxpayers’ dollars.  That I can agree on.  It doesn’t help anybody to fuel the growing assumption that all film producers are solely interested in chasing the biggest and most lucrative tax incentive.  It also doesn’t help to argue predominantly on the ‘glamour’ factor that films bring to varying states.  In my opinion, that comes from a weak and condescending attitude.  Argue instead that you, as a filmmaker, are an entrepreneur.  Therein lies the entitlement to state and government support – just like a small business.  The clout and respect will come – only if you treat it like a business.