MicroCinema Scene

Alex Ferrari is making quite a name for himself. In 2005 he directed the $8,000 short that could: Broken. Ferrari has continued to exploit digital technology to give his projects a very impressive scope
and professional sheen. Nothing has changed with his latest offering, Red Princess Blues: The Book of Violence, an animated short, written and co-produced by Ferrari. The short serves as a prequel to his feature length debut, Red Princess Blues. Currently in pre-production, the film follows a young woman on a quest for revenge. Alex has interrupted his busy pre-production schedule to answer a few questions.
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MicroCinema Scene was launched in 2003. Since that time, we have amassed a large collection of articles related to filmmaking. We decided to organize this information and re-launch it as a new feature: The No-Budget Film School!

Currently, the No-Budget Film School encompasses everything from holding an audition to organizing a screening for your completed film. The unique thing about these articles is that they are all written by filmmakers who have worked on low-to-no budget movies. A lot of the information you find here is not covered in mainstream filmmaking books - because it is unconventional. It addresses the real issues that arise when you are scraping together all the resources you can get your hands on and making a movie despite almost impossible odds.

Use this collection of articles, and when you have a question or need additional information use our commenting system or head to the forums.

So, check out the No-Budget Film School, grab a camera and get started on your next film. We want to see it!

No-Budget Film School

Sony Pictures Classics acquire Baghead. Baghead, the new film from the Duplass Brothers, was shot guerilla-style in and around Austin, TX last year. I’ve heard nothing but positive things and look forward to checking it out.

Brevis 35mm Flip Adapter reviewed. FreshDV really knocked it out of the park with their exhaustive coverage of Sony’s new EX1 camera. Now Matt Jeppsen follow it up with Part 1 of an extremely detailed review of the Brevis 35mm Flip Adapter.

D2DVD rakes it in. The New York Times reports that direct-to-DVD titles are raking in the cash. The new American Pie D2DVD earned $30 million on a less than $10 million production budget.

“The direct-to-video business was making titillating, low-quality movies to feed the rental channel,” said Craig Kornblau, the president of Universal Studios Home Entertainment. “We discovered we could keep franchises alive with made-for-DVD movies if we made them feature quality.”

Blu-Ray will win the format war. With Warner Brothers moving to Blu-Ray, Gartner market research company predicts HD-DVD will be gone by the end of the year.

Alex Ferrari exploded onto the Micro scene with his short film Broken which pushed the boundaries of digital cinematography and low-budget special effects. Now he is back with an even more ambitious project: Red Princess Blues. The new project is a feature-length project and is currently in pre-production. To pave the way Ferrari has made a short-film prequel, and this time it’s fully animated.

For a limited time, thanks to Latino Review, you can now view Red Princess Blues: The Book of Violence in it’s entirety. On-line. For free! As you might expect, it’s pretty amazing. You’ve got until February 7th to check it out. HELPFUL HINT: It’s a big file, so let the entire film load before you push play. It makes for a much better viewing experience.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH IT.

Synopsis: In this tale we meet her as a 12 year old little girl who finds herself in a strange country looking for her father. She is then taken in by a “unique” looking man who goes by Nino. The short film is completely from the perspective of Princess and what she is going through. She soon discovers the “Book of Violence” and slowly begins her journey that one day will lead to vengeance.

If that whets your appetite, head over to the Red Princess Blues site for more information about the animated short and the upcoming feature film.

It’s a new year and time for a new direction here at MicroCinema Scene. Regular readers will have noticed that we have been down for some time now and you’ve probably wondering what the hell was going on. Here’s an explanation:

EXPANDING OUR FOCUS

Since 2003, MicroCinema Scene has covered the world of no-budget moviemaking. What’s remarkable is how much has changed in that brief span of time. MiniDV was the hot new technology and getting your movie on DVD was the ultimate goal. The term “microcinema” specifically referred to small exhibition spaces that screened independent or underground movies. Things have changed dramatically.

High Definition cameras are now an affordable option. The internet has opened up countless new ways to distribute, network and even find financing for independent projects. In 2008, a microcinema could be you, an iPod and a digital download.

While we will continue to review as many DVD releases as you can send us, we will be seriously expanding our focus to cover work that that is being released digitally. We will also be exploring these technologies as they advance, always looking for ways they can be exploited by independent filmmakers. Just to clarify, we want to add to our coverage, not replace the old with the new.

With that in mind, we saw a need to do a lot of work to the site itself, so that we can publish more content and move faster when it comes to incorporating new technology.

THE NEW SITE

You’ll notice immediately that quite a bit has changed about how the site looks. What might not be as readily apparent is that the site has changed structurally as well. MCS now uses Wordpress as it’s Content Management System.

Wordpress is primarily known for being a popular, free, open source blogging platform. I’ve used it for quite a few sites over the last few years (including my personal blog) and as the software advances I’m starting to become more and more impressed with it’s capabilities as a CMS. Also, it has a very simple user interface that makes it easy for our growing group of contributors to directly submit content.

I also believe that Wordpress is a very important tool for the indie filmmakers publicity arsenal and will be writing a series of articles about this in the near future.

There are still a lot of kinks to work out. A lot of the articles look really ugly right now because of code that carried over from previous versions of the site. Some of the old content is difficult to access. We are working to fix this and soon our entire archive will be clean, nice-looking, fast loading and easy to find.

THE FORUM

The MicroCinema Scene forum has always been a huge part of this site. We are working on a new system that will solve some of the problems we had with previous versions of the forum. Forum 1.0 was getting completely besieged by spammers. Since the site is a completely volunteer run project, spending hours deleting messages and banning IPs was becoming a real drag. Forum 2.0 was relatively SPAM free, but slow to load and increasingly buggy. Forum 3.0 should alleviate these problems and develop into a place that keeps the spirit of the old forums, but that makes communication even easier. If everything comes together as we think it will, you should even be able to access it via your mobile devices.

Meanwhile, you’ll notice that all of the reviews and articles have a comments section. We would love if you took advantage of this, because nothing on this site should be seen as one-way communication. Everything we publish should be seen as an invitation to conversation and community.

Thanks for bearing with us during our recent downtime. Stay tuned and get involved because some cool stuff is on its way.

And most importantly… keep making movies!

Just in time for Halloween, CNGM Pictures debuted Irving Renquist, Ghost Hunter will be debuting on the web Wednesday. This supernatural series, sporting a first season run of nine episodes, will be available on the web, on regional cable access channels, and ultimately on DVD. Irving is CNGM’s first foray into television production after several years of producing features and shorts, including Fate Twisted Simply, Cuba Road, Sleep to Dream, and others.

The Carolina Film and Video Festival is looking for submissions for their Fest in February in Greensboro. The Fest focuses on independent and student work and has cash prices. There are workshops and presentations, as well as screenings, throughout the Fest. The deadline for submissions is November 15.

Michael W. Dean, who has encouraged free bootlegs of his underground music documentary DIY Or Die, has opted to put the entire feature up at YouTube. The documentary features interviews with Lydia Lunch, Gwar, Fugazi, the Stooges and others. Dean is also the author of the how-to book $30 Film School.

Stray Cinema is back with another open source film experiment. This year’s footage, available for recutting and remixing, was shot by New Zealand filmmaker and visual artist Naomi Lamb. A screening of remixed projects will be held in New Zealand.

Start a guerrilla drive-in. This is awesome! And I may seriously do it. This “instructable” gives step by step instructions.

Wages of Sin hits the iPhone. Director Nathyn Masters has been aggressive about making his movie available via new formats (it was the first indie released for Apple TV) and now he is going after the iPhone audience. iPhone downloads are now available at the bargain price of 99 cents.

Eric Stanze’s DEADWOOD PARK, will be released on October 9th, 2007. The movie is being distributed by Cinema Epoch in partnership with Koch Entertainment.

Steven Soderbergh goes apeshit over the RED ONE. ”This is the camera I’ve been waiting for my whole career: jaw-dropping imagery recorded onboard a camera light enough to hold with one hand. I don’t know how Jim and the RED team did it–and they won’t tell me–but I know this: RED is going to change everything.”

Four Eyed Monsters breaks $25,000. The micro-movie that has become an internet sensation has earned $26,480 through their partnership with Spout and YouTube. The filmmakers have decided to extend the film’s run on YouTube. And while we’re on the subject of YouTube…

YouTube has begun encoding videos for iPhone. As of June 29, 10,000 videos will be available in the H.264 codec. Their entire catalog should be availabe in the Fall.

Blockbuster chooses Blu-Ray. Things are not looking good for HD-DVD. The video rental giant has been test marketing the competing HD formats in 250 stores and Blu-Ray discs have been responsible for 70% of the rentals.

Film Flap is excited about the Canon HV20 and gives links to back up his enthusiasm. At just over $1K, there is a lot of buzz around this little camera.

Blue November MicroFilmFest in Seattle. Blue November began in Tulsa, OK in 2003 but followed its director to Seattle in 2006. This is a very artist friendly fest, so check it out.

Off to deadCENTER. I seriously think that deadCENTER is one of the most fun and most underrated film festivals in the country. It’s especially fun for filmmakers. The atmosphere is friendly, casual and unpretentious. They are also very open to MicroCinema projects.

DVXUser has launched a new service called RocketIndie which is designed to help indie filmmakers distribute their DVD. From producing the discs, to handling the transactions and shipping the orders - RocketIndie aims to do it all.

Also at DVXUser - voting for the SpyFest community film festival has begun. If you’re a member, just cruise over to the site, watch the movies and vote for your favorites. It’s kind of like On The Lot… but it’s not stupid.

Looking for more video competitions? Check out VidOpp - which collects all the video competitions that offer cash awards into one place for easy reference.

Sundance 2008 entry deadlines announced. Yes it’s already coming up. September 1st for shorts and September 11th for features.

Mumblecore goes international and gets a writeup in The Guardian (via Matt Dentler). It’s great to see these films getting such wide exposure, but unfortunately it also means we are probably stuck with the mumblecore label.

Vampires face-off against a sword wielding priest played by Tim (Trancers) Thomerson in Live Evil, the new flick from Jay Woelfel. Fangoria has the first look at the trailer.

Apple will officially add YouTube videos to the AppleTV. The company has also announced a 160GB version of AppleTV that will retail for $399.

Fantastic Fest 3 partial schedule announced. This is hands-down my favorite film festival. If you love strange movies and can afford the trip to Austin - you won’t be disappointed. The new site has also launched.

HD-DVDs get cracked again! It’s turning into a comical situation. Hackers are cracking the new keys before discs even hit the shelves.