George Clooney honoured at Palm Springs Film Festival

George Clooney will receive the Chairman's Award for his acting work in The Descendants and his directing of The Ides of March at the 2012 Palm Springs International Film Festival.

The award will be presented on January 7 at PSIFF's annual Awards Gala, a black-tie event that always hands out an array of awards to luminaries who figure to be in the Oscar race.

Like the awards given at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in late January, the Palm Springs event has become a valuable stop on the Oscar campaign trail. Previous recipients of the Chairman's Award include Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman and Ben Affleck.

Oscar-nominated actress Michelle Williams will also be rewarded for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in “My Week With Marilyn,” which is already generating Oscar buzz.

Williams, 31, will receive the Desert Palm Achievement Actress Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival awards gala at the Palm Springs Convention Center. Previous recipients include Academy Award winners Natalie Portman, Marion Cotillard, Charlize Theron and Kate Winslet.

“My Week With Marilyn,” which opens Wednesday in limited distribution, premiered Oct. 9 at the New York International Film Festival. Directed by Simon Curtis, the film was presented Nov. 6 as part of the AFI Fest at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, where Monroe put her hand and footprints in cement in 1952.

The Palm Springs International Film Festival runs Jan. 5-16 2012 at various venues in Palm Springs

Sources: mydesert.com & Reuters

Technorati Tags: film festivals,filmmaking

How to sell your film online

Selling your film online has now became easy, although it wasn't always like this till even a couple of years back. You had websites like Revver and Turnhere, which later became redundant.

However, there is something even better now, and its completely free. The best part is that its promoted by Amazon.com, which with its vast resources has helped many self publishers of ebooks to become millionaires.

I am talking about CreateSpace.

CreateSpace provides free tools to help you self-publish and distribute your books, DVDs, CDs, video downloads and MP3s on-demand. So whether you're a filmmaker, a musician or an author, createspace is one service you should definitely try to sell your films, music and books.

Let us talk about filmmaking here. What does Createspace offer for filmmakers? Quite a bit if you ask me. For starters, here's what their DVD publishing section says:

Bring your film to market with retail-ready DVDs. We faithfully reproduce your artwork in full-color and package your discs in Amaray-style cases.
Setting up your title with us ensures your DVD remains in stock, made on-demand when customers order.

Here's some more benefits they claim:

• Your movie becomes eligible for listing on IMDb
• Printed with full-color, full-bleed, customizable disc and cover artwork
• Create custom DVD menu artwork
• Free UPC is assigned if you do not already own one

The best part is that you can sell your DVD on Amazon.com and have your eStore on it. Set the list price and start earning royalties. You can also choose Amazon Video On Demand™ as a sales channel when setting up your title to turn your film into a download. Definitely worth a try for short film makers who find it difficult to find a distribution channel.

Click here to setup a free Createspace account and start selling your film

Final Cut Pro X released

Apple has released Final Cut Pro X, the latest version of its professional video-editing software and one of the most popular programs for digital filmmaking.
Its actually been two days since FCP X was launched, and of course there’s been a strong buzz about it in the market. Video professionals were not only impressed with the new features, but with the new price too. Final Cut Pro X is available in the Mac App Store for $299.99. Compare that to 2009, when the fully loaded Final Cut Studio retailed for $999.99.

Final Cut Pro X is a big update for the powerful editing suite, in no small part because it is now (finally) built with 64-bit support. That means that the app will be able to take advantage of the additional memory space in Mac OS X Snow Leopard and the upcoming Mac OS X Lion.

Installing Final Cut Pro X
Since the only way to get Final Cut Pro X is through the Mac App Store, installation is easy: You just click "Buy" in the store, and the app's icon appears in your Finder, ready to run. You'll be able to install it on five Macs, and you receive updates automatically. The program requires at least a Core 2 Duo-based Mac running Snow Leopard, a decent video processor, 2.4GB of disk space, and 2GB RAM (4GB recommended).

The big new feature is called the Magnetic Timeline, which takes a trackless approach to editing. Like Adobe, Apple has also put a lot of effort into what it calls Content Auto-Analysis, which is another way of saying that the software uses meta-tags to better organize and import content, based on shot type, media format and other information.

Check out this video Apple released to show off the new features in Final Cut Pro X:

Shortie Awards Youth Film Festival

Hollyn Randolph just mailed me in about the forthcoming Shortie Awards film festival.

The Shortie Awards film festival will be held June 5, 2011 in Arlington, VA a suburb of Washington D.C. The Shortie Awards recognizes original short film productions created by student filmmakers, ages 7-18, and their teachers.

This year we have entries from 26 states and 14 countries and India has 36 entries which is the largest number from outside of the US.

Apparently the last date for submitting the entries was April 1, 2011. But we can look forward to the screenings and the winners. Those who live around Arlingtom and Washington DC should attend the event!

Short Film: Damn Your Eyes

David Guglielmo, an alumni of School of Visual Arts, New York emailed me his short film titled Damn Your Eyes.


Damn Your Eyes a Spaghetti Western-influenced revenge film shot on the Sony EX1 digital camera in the NY Metropolitan area for $5,000. It has been successful at film festivals and recently won two awards.


WINNER: "Best Student Film" at Royal Flush Festival '09
WINNER: "Best More Than Horror Short" at Buffalo Screams Horror Festival '10

I liked the visual quality of the film: the lighting, the locations, set, framing, composition etc. The DoP used the Sony EXI camcorder given to him pretty well. Most of the actors did a really professional job and that took the movie experience a notch higher. The screenplay could have been written better. Some of the moments in the movie were clichéd and boring but on the whole it is a decent production. What do you think of the movie? Please watch and comment (feed subscribers will need to visit the blog to watch it).

David Guglielmo must be congratulated for doing his excellent direction. Considering he is relatively new to this profession, he has done a laudable job that commands appreciation.
 Digital filmmaking is indeed growing from strength to strength.

Summary of the filmmaking business

 

Technorati Tags: filmmaking,film business,film production

There are three main stages of the filmmaking business process: production, distribution and exhibition.

1. Production involves the following:

• finance: a producer seeks to find investors and financial backing for a film package;
• preproduction: includes research, planning, budgeting, hiring director and crew, casting, finding locations, scripting and storyboarding;
• production: shooting the film;
• postproduction: editing, sound design, sound editing and dubbing, special effects and graphics

2. Distribution: the distribution, marketing, advertising, promoting an classification of the film.

3. Exhibition: exposing the film to the audience, whether it is in a one-screen, multiplex, multi-screen or art-house cinema; also includes reviewing and criticism.

Tribeca Film Festival Launches Online Version

I had recently blogged about Tribeca Film Festival's announcement of filmmaking grants for funding documentaries of social significance. Well now it has gone a step further further launched an online version of the increasingly popular movie fest.

According to Hollywood Reporter, the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, which kicks off from April 20 and ends on May 1 in New York city, will have a new online component where audiences will be able to watch live streams of events and interact with other audience members.

Online audiences will also be allowed to submit questions to a host of festival executives and other notable guests and access detailed information on all of the online fest filmmakers. There will also be a Future of Film blog that will include posts from film and technology experts.

If you want to know about the screenings at Tribeca 2011, check out the Tribeca Film Festival 2011 film guide .

Salon Films launches filmmaker training program

Salon Films will launch a cross-border training program for young Singapore and Hong Kong filmmakers, and a funding initiative in connection with the Hong Kong government subsidy for filmmakers.

The training program is organized with the Media Development Authority of Singapore to bring budding Singaporean filmmakers to work in Hong Kong and China.

The program began in Hong Kong, in partnership with the Academy of Film of the Hong Kong Baptist University, and continues in Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, in cooperation with the China Film Foundation and CCTV, and will conclude in the Hengdian studio, lasting three weeks in each city.

The film crew is shooting a documentary to commemorate the 20th anniversary the establishment of economic relations between China and Singapore.

"Asian culture shares common origins," Wang said, "The training program is aimed at providing an opportunity for young filmmakers across Asia to meet, exchange ideas, and make films that speak to our mutual cultural roots."

To capitalize on the current prevalence of Hong Kong-Chinese co-productions and the growing film industry in China, the program also intends for young filmmakers and film students to obtain hands-on practical experience in China.

Film students at the Academy of Film of the Baptist University will also join the Salon team in Beijing and Hengdian.