The Good News and the Bad News

Sending your film to festivals is a lot like going to Vegas. In some cases, like at Sundance, your odds are actually better at Vegas (at least at blackjack if you have a good memory). But sharing your art might not be about odds. Or is it? With the barrier of entry so much lower than it was when I was fresh out of graduate school, the number of films out there looking for an audience has increased in exponential magnitudes. The good news is that the number of festivals has also increased. And... the number of films submitted is not increasing quite as fast as it had in the last five years. Maybe there is a point where the number of filmmakers making films independently starts to reach a critical mass and hovers at a stead number. Think about it a minute. It takes a lot of free time to make films when you are not getting any income for your effort (and few do). On the other hand, there is tremendous satisfaction to feel when you experience your film reaching an audience and impacting them with ideas that otherwise that audience would not have experienced. It's a balance between the pleasure of connecting with strangers, and the pain of working hard for free. That balance must have an effect on how many people are willing to live like an independent filmmaker. But then one more bit of good news. I have discovered how much easier it is to sell my films either by DVD or Video on Demand. More on that soon, another post will share what I found. But ease of selling will certainly effect the number of those making films.

Emotionally, the balance plays on your self-esteem and your conscience. You ask yourself, was it worth all that energy that I could have spent with loved ones? Am I exploiting too many people to realize my vision? Is what I have to share on screen worth everyone's time to watch it? Is it good enough? How much risk should I take in paying out festival submission fees for higher profile festivals that by sheer odds, are unlikely to accept my film. (Those festivals are more like playing roulette, rather than blackjack.) And then there is the question, is any of it rigged? And then, as you prepare yourself for the rejections, you steel yourself from the negative answers. Yes, your film is worth your efforts! Yes, the people you conscript, those volunteers, interns, friends and family, who give their time, patience, love and support, their efforts are worth "using" because your film is worth watching! And so what if the festivals are a little rigged. If some have better access to getting screened at festivals than others, we must remember, this is a social business. If you have a good film and you are fun at a party, why shouldn't a programmer choose your film over an equally good film made by someone who might or might not come to the festival and join the party? Best strategy: enjoy the party and get screened. Learn from the experience and try until you get tired of it, or go broke. Then try again...maybe.

It is said so often that film and music are businesses for the young. I say it can be a business and an art for all (just like Vegas!). Just pace yourself and expect nothing. Sure, having a child, or caring for an elder parent might compete with what time you need to get a film made and seen. But the fact that you have a chance to try, to share what you made, is a magnificent freedom. It might take longer than the career path of making films for hire at whatever crew position you might get. But, there are many places where such freedoms of personal expression are restricted or forbidden. A filmmaker in the free market has so much to be thankful for - that you can make films, that you can share them, and neither activity has to bankrupt or put you in jail.

 Ok. Next blog will announce the new festival submission responses: some real good news and bad.

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Website Launches for Portraits on the Malecón

Here it is, 2:47 AM and I am finishing for the night. The promotion of a movie takes as much stamina as making the film itself. In some ways, more. A whole part of the mind, the marketing and outreach part of the mind, makes you justify or retract your once spontaneous ideas. When once you made instinctive creative choices that pleased the heart and the senses, as a marketer of your own film, you must be strategic and tactical; you play chess rather than paint impressionistically. When I made Portraits on the Malecón, I kept thinking, there will be a break in the frozen Cuba-U.S. relations that will make this film easy to find an audience. Ice will melt. Perhaps at glacial speeds. That's about the speed of building a good website.

The website connects the film to audiences who care about Cubans in Cuba, and who care about their aspirations and imaginations. Finding images and words that express that in the archive of the movie is a monumental task. One must imagine the experience of a random person in the target audience learning about the film after many impressions. The press they read, the word of mouth they hear, a schedule at a festival they discover, or on the internet here, in a blog they read there... Each message has to be timed and thought out in the life of the launch of the film. Think of all of the exposure about a film, all of the campaign to get an audience, as a choreography of events that can be planned, orchestrated and timed.

I feel as if I am learning all over, like the whole art of advertising was a class I missed in school. And then, the new technologies, while so much easier to access, are very complex. Each tool has its own quirks and methods. There is no single over- arching tool that all elements join, like say a non-linear video editor, where all image and sound comes back to it until the video master is struck. Not even Dreamweaver, a tool I have used now for 12 years, is the center of the creative universe. There are just so many tools one must learn, and then be ready to dispose of after another one takes its place.

Example: I had to figure what an RSS feed is so that this blog could appear on the website. It took me several hours and then I realized that one must use a configuration tool to create a Javascript page that would decipher the XML data that comes from this blog's server, and then displays it onto selected web page on the film's website. Figuring out how that works is quite a task while also trying to make exhibition copy for deadlines, creating electronic press kits, and trying to sell the film. It is a bit nerve-wracking. After some yelps at the computer screen (wife came wandering out to learn what new technology was confusing me), I managed to figure it out. Thank you RSSinclude.com. Then there is the minutiae of MailChimp - an email list configuration and management tool. Easy at first, but still yet another interface one must master with a lot of variations to remember.

The fun part is the design, photo editing, and finding the color and typefaces that will brand the experience. "Branding"... It is a not-so-inspiring idea after having worked for years at dignifying people as active subject in the media I create, rather than commodifying them. But branding it is - the art of creating an impression that connects an audience to a product - that will this time be the method of finding an audience for my film. Who is my audience exactly, and where do they live, work and meet? But this is the language of our times. Films become content elements in the marketplace of time for entertainment and edification. Many exist just to experiment with branding and marketing, and just to entertain or educate. I wondered with irony, if everyone is making films these days, and if everyone has to spend so much energy and time to attract an audience to watch, how much of that audience has time to watch new films? Why aren't they all at home building a DIY website to promote their own film? The snake eats its tail if its hungry enough. Thankfully, we get tired of our own artistic excrement and we have to take a break and watch each others films.

The website for Portraits on the Malecón has trailers and stills, credits and this blog. It has an electronic press kit archive for journalists to download with still, trailers and credits. You can join an email listserv to find out about the film's progress through festivals, and when it will be available for purchase or rental. If travel to Cuba is interesting, and urban architecture a curious interpersonal point of inspiration, watch my movie. While waiting for it to become available, meanwhile, check out the website and share the press kit. Here it is:

http://www.sheldonschiffer.com/mysteriouspictures/malecon

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Malecón Documentary Selected for Oaxaca Film Fest

I recently learned Portraits on the Malecón was selected for the Oaxaca International Independent Film and Video Festival in Oaxaca City, Mexico. It will screen on November 14 and November 18, 2011. It's a prestigious festival within Latin America. There are wonderful films in the line up. My task of the moment is to prepare the Spanish sub-titles for the English voice over. While I speak fluent Spanish, my Mexican friends advised me that the natural sound of my "mother" tongue, English, still sounds more precise than a translation of my own words to a language I speak well. I learned Spanish from grandmother. She lived with me throughout my childhood. Spanish is my "grandmother" tongue. But, living and growing up effects the way we speak and think. American English shapes the way I think and speak. And so, the transcultural journey for the film begins. I am along for the ride.

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Havana Malecón Documentary to Premiere at Miami International Doc Festival

After so many years of working on the documentary, I finally will share it with the world. I am very thankful to have the opportunity to show it close to the community I intended. Miami-based Cuban-Americans and Cubans throughout the world are curious as ever to see and hear how people are living their lives in Havana. So much of the journalistic coverage focuses on political and economic realities. Cuba is more than that. Political systems rise and fall, but architecture often outlives them all. The 7 kilometer seawall that runs along the seaside highway between Miramar and Old Havana is that sort of urban landmark. A product of politics, but an architectural work that provides solace for its location and design. It has already outlived its colonial builders, Americans of the very early 20th century, several Cuban presidents and dictators during the neo-colonial period. And, it survives the socialist system since the 1950s. As a great wall, it stands to give a prominent place for someone to stand, face the sea as one faces the unknown future, to escape the troubles of ones life, and to share in the private magic of the ever moving tide and sky. The highway separates you from the life you live in the moment from the life that you left on the other side of the highway, in the city.

My film, Portraits on the Malecón will premiere at the Miami International Documentary Film Festival on Sunday September 25, 2011 in the Juniper Room of the Doral Golf Resort and Spa. The address of the Doral Resort is 4400 NW 87th Avenue, Doral, FL. Here is a link to the film festival schedule: Schedule at the Miami International Film Festival: Portraits on the Malecón. I hope to see you there. I will be there with Clarissa Martinez, one of the subjects of the film - a poet, a linguist and an intellectual. She offers her poetic take on the seawall. She has emigrated to Miami, and she will share in presenting the film.


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