Make Film Teach Film

5D flurry and amazing feedback...

The posts over the weekend created a flurry of activity as it seems everyone is looking very closely at the Canon series of HD DSLR cameras. I will post more on this over the coming days, but I wanted to share some feedback I just got form the online film makers workshop we have been running for a year now - can you believe we are 1 year old, and we still have 99% five star feedback (you can read all feedback here)!

The course is currently discounted from £99.00 to £69.99 (inc VAT). Remember, as soon as you sign up, you can start as it’s delivered 100% over the internet.

Anyway, check out todays feedback…

Q - How would you rate the seminar overall (out of five stars)?

Q - Can you provide us with a one line comment or summary?

A - Essential for anyone looking to take the next step.

Q - Can you give us a review of your experience on the workshop?

A - I am a professional director. I fund my life through the production of commercials and corporate videos. But of course the goal is to step up and start to take everything I am learning and apply it to that story that I'm dying to tell. This seminar has been a fantastic way to see what my strengths are as a filmmaker and what I should do next in order to reach my goals. It's an exciting feeling.

Q - What was the obstacle that would have prevented you from buying this course? And why did you choose to buy it?

A - The risk that it was just another online course. I chose to buy it because of the endorsements.

Q - What specific feature did you like about the workshop?

A - The Festival related information was essential. I feel many people in the industry know how to make a great film. We know the rules, how to direct etc. It's promotion that we fall down. Chris broke it all down. I loved it.

Q - Would you recommend this workshop?

A - Absolutely. I already have. The workshop presents the chaos of film making in a strange moment of clarity. It makes those of us who have the skills feel. Yeah. I could do that. Now I feel like I know how.

Q - How would you describe yourself?

A - Oliver, Commercial Director, Melbourne Australia.

Blimey! Thanks Oliver and delighted you got so much out of it.

One of our commitments is to continue to evolve and add to this workshop, and so over the coming weeks, we intend shooting more workshops and interviews, powerfully adding to the learning and experience. To be clear, the workshop is not just me, there is an ever expanding group of experts willing to share their professional knowledge with us all.

So if you want to check out the site, go here. Feedback here. And sign up via the discounted link here.

Philip Bloom Weekend continues... shooting the Canon 5D and 7D cameras....

Following the two free podcasts with Philip Bloom, I just wanted to share with those of you who hadn’t seen his work yet, this AMAZING film he made a few weeks back… Here’s what Philip said on the Vimeo page…

Filmed in Dubai over 5 days and nights.
Shot on the Canon 7D, 2x5DmkII and one Panasonic GF1
Dedicated to Sky Vassar who died recently at a tragically young age.
Please read my blog for BTS info.
Thanks to Media Prima and Talkabout Media
Music is from "The Fountain" by Clint Mansell

Awesome.

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

My Trip To Skywalker Ranch... ANOTHER FREE Canon 5D Podcast

As if one podcast with Philip Bloom were not enough, here is the second one we recorded specifically for the blog. In it Philip talks about his summoning to the Skywalker Ranch to meet the Grand Moff George Lucas (above is the film that he shot on his 5D while staying there, and this is the film he screened for George Lucas, Rick McCallum and Quentin Tarrantino and which he refers to in the podcast).

In this podcast I also asked Philip Bloom some questions that we received for him via Twitter – if you want to ask people like Philip film making questions when we interview them, follow me on Twitter – my twitter name is livingspiritpix. Yesterday we interviewed the Paranormal Activity guys and we asked a bunch of questions that we were sent from film makers via twitter.

Listen to the Podcast with the player here...

And remember, this is a bonus podcast to the full one hour on one about shooting with the Canon 7D and 5D that will be released when the new Guerilla Film Makers Pocketbook is released. This will be an exclusive podcast that is only available on www.guerillafilm.com, so please join our newsgroup to get an email to notify you when you can listen to this free podcast.

And tomorrow, another Canon 5D and Philip Bloom post, so swing by again...

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Free Podcast with Philip Bloom... And is the Canon 5D Mk II a revolution for film makers in 2010? We think so...

So I have two days left to complete the new Guerilla Film Makers Pocketbook, and goodness, we are on schedule! How do you like the cover?

Today I have been editing a long interview I did with Philip Bloom, about shooting on HD DSLR cameras - below is a short podcast from the full podcast which will be released soon (when the book is released). Here Philip talks about using ND filters and the value they have.

NOTE - The full podcast goes live when the book is released (if you sign up you will get an email when it goes live). Sign up here

I tweeted about the interview and how these cameras represent an astonishing bang for your buck, and how personally (depending on the project of course), I would choose them over the Red camera or other high end HD format.

Why? Well you can buy one, lenses, and all the bits you need for around £5k!

That’s a lot of money sure. But the equivalent Red package is nearing ten times that price. Sure there are problems with the 5D, sure there are limitations, but there are problems and limitations with EVERY camera, and that usually starts with the price (both purchase and rental)! From where I am sitting, I can’t see any other camera system that offers similar quality for even a fraction of the price. For an indie film maker and entrepreneur, that has to be something worth serious investigation. If you haven’t seen any 5D footage, check out this film shot by Philip, and marvel at the low light photography and cinematic depth of field. Gorgeous!


After interviewing loads of film makers for the new Guerilla Film Makers Pocketbook, the usual trend that I have seen with many other film makers emerged once again. That’s Pickups and Reshoots, and how essential they are to the success of your film.

We all begin with the idea that we will shoot our movie in eight days, two weeks, three weeks, whatever it is. But we go over schedule and over budget. Then we have reshoots to fix problems. Then we have pickup shoots to fix other problems in the edit. And so on. And when you are out of money and need an expensive camera hire, you have a problem. 

All in, what seemed like a good deal for a one camera system for an eight day shoot, quickly becomes an albatross as you can’t afford to re-rent the camera kit. The upshot? You find yourself stuck in post production, or worse still, you don’t do the extra shooting needed and just complete your film, leaving problems unfixed.

This is where owning your own kit really does offer a real advantage. I have personally shied away from owning kit before as I never saw anything that rivalled the look of 35mm that was affordable.

That’s all changed with the Canon 5D and 7D.

One other hidden problem with the Red camera (and the other high end HD cameras that shoot to drives) is that of data management. Shooting on Red creates HUGE amounts of data. Fine if you are setup to handle it and you really ‘get’ how to manage post production, but for many new film makers, this is a minefield where there will be casualties (loss of data = loss of shots) simply because they can’t handle terabytes of data. It’s bigger than you think, takes longer to copy than you think, and usually gets done at 4am by an untrained assistant. (Doh! Where did that shot go?)

Even managing data files shot on a 5D or 7D is a headache, and they are a fraction of the size of Red files or other ‘pro’ camera systems. But for me, I think it is manageable.

So I am pretty sure that in 2011 at the Cannes, Venice and Sundance Festivals, maybe even the Oscars… we are going to be seeing films shot on the Canon 5D and 7D.

I hope so because I think these Cameras are as big a deal to Indie film makers as DV was ten years ago and HD was two years ago… These cameras are game changers.

To get an email when the full hour long interview with 5D guru Philip Bloom goes live, join our newsgroup here or our Facebook group here.

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

EXAM is up for the Empire Awards… PLEASE VOTE!

Those of you who came to the special screening of EXAM, a movie I produced last year, got the chance to see the film on the big screen, then meet the film makers… And now there is more exciting news!

The Oscars may be the biggest movie awards show of the year and the BAFTAs the most well mannered, but the coolest awards show is always the Empire Awards, run by Empire Magazine, who have been very, very nice to our little film lately. So head over to their site now at…
 
www.empireonline.com/awards2010/vote
 
… and simply add the names of your favourite films of the past year into each category.  Hopefully you'll put us down in a few of them. The big categories we may have a shot at are Best Newcomer (seeing as we got a BAFTA nom for Outstanding Debut we have a decent shot here), Best Thriller and Best British Film (we'll let you vote for Avatar in the Best Film category if you must).  Feel free to vote for us in loads of categories you like, though!  Actor, Actress, Director, Film...  just not Best Comedy, please.
 
Voting closes on FEBRUARY 23RD, so you have three weeks to get your vote in!  Get your friends and family to vote for us too, and you can vote even if you don't live in the UK - the wonders of the internet, eh?

Please share this with ALL your friends – AND REMEMBER, YOUR VOTE COUNTS! It really does…

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

The need for failure in YOUR film making success strategy…

We are just six days away from completing the new Guerilla Film Makers Pocketbook. Once it’s done, plans for the big launch in Cannes, the announcement of our new movie and the rolling out of some exciting and innovative all new film maker workshops will get underway (join the newsgroup here to get emails about live events).

But as we complete the book, I can’t help but reflect on the genesis of the very first book in 1994 – we are fifteen years down the line now, on our seventh edition, and over 100,000 copies sold - which is truly amazing. But back then, both Gen and myself were truly at the bottom of the barrel when we first said… ‘let’s write this book about low budget film making…’

And that’s what resonated with me in this video of JK Rowling, a woman we can all learn something from. Great speech.

Back in ’94, after the theatrical release of our second feature film ‘White Angel’, Gen and myself got a dawn raid from the police. It’s all detailed in the Guerilla Film Makers Handbooks (though it won’t be in the pocketbook as it’s a much smaller and denser field guide so something had to be cut)… the results were catastrophic as we pretty much lost everything – the accounts, records and film impounded by the  police, so we lost deals, our home and in all honesty, our dignity - I ended up sleeping on a living room floor for a year. It was during this year that we decided to write the very first edition of The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook, and of course, every publisher turned it down.

By luck, we had a friend whose other half worked at a small publishers, and I think out of no more than sympathy, they put the book out. Six weeks later and they had run out of two years worth of stock. They had an unexpected hit on their hands!

So I know from experience that failure is integral to success. I also know that for creative people, the fear of failure can also be crippling and shut down ideas before they even had a chance.

But when you have nothing to lose, heck, people just go for it!

One of the strategies I find useful is to always think and behave like you have nothing to loose.

I find that one of the things we fear risking most is often an ephemeral thing - our perceived (not actual) social status… ‘what will people say if I do it?’, ‘what if I fail and people think I am talentless or stupid…?’ ‘What if I loose their money?’… Paradoxically, we don’t actually fear losing our day job, or losing some money by making a film. We fear what people will SAY if we lose the day job or the money. Crazy huh?

Ironically, everyone else is too busy worrying about their own perceived social status to be bothered with anyone else!

'I DON’T HAVE TIME OR INCLINATION TO WORRY ABOUT YOU AND YOUR FILM IDEAS! DON’T YOU KNOW IT’S ALL ABOUT ME?!'

Sure there may be idle gossip if you fail (or succeed – bonkers huh!), but anyone who has time to gossip is usually projecting their own fears and failures onto others. So ignore gossip. And don’t gossip about others. It’s BAD BAD karma.

I know we had thought about writing The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook BEFORE we had our dawn raid in ‘94, but at that time, we were building a career, and we chose NOT to write it because of how we thought people in the business would perceive us. It took the catastrophic dawn raid to kick us into action and out of our ‘fear of what people would say…’. We needed to loose our percieved DIGNITY...

Nothing but amazing things has come to us from the books and I am truly grateful that we were…

A. Blessed with being experienced enough to write the first edition.
B. In the right place (that would be sleeping a living room floor)
C. At the right time (that would be in ‘94, three months after a dawn raid)

…to write a book with passion and commitment, and reach an as yet undiscovered readership.

So next time you think of doing something ambitious but fear what people will say… get past it and take the leap! It’s your life and it’s ticking by pretty fast… it’s time to DO IT!

Awesome! And thank you for following the blog and reading the books!

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

The Great Film Makers Social Media Experiment is done and the results are in...

OK so thanks to everyone who got involved.

READ SLOWLY, it's confusing. Just like FACEBOOK!

OK so a little back history to this.

Over the last few weeks I had been researching Facebook and discovered there are two kinds of entities you can have – Pages (aka Fan Pages) and Groups.

Which to choose? Facebook being Facebook, it was as clear as mud.

Even after long discussions with people who really should know this stuff, I realised that no-one really had a good handle on it. And let me be clear, I don’t claim to have a great handle on it either, but I will share what I have discovered.

OK, so Pages and Groups are broadly the same.

They are both places where you can post stuff about your ‘thing’, which in our case, is The Guerilla Film Makers Handbooks. And here is where it starts to get confusing. The very fact that the two look and behave almost identically messes with peoples heads.

Cosmetics aside, what are the differences?

Well there are quite a few, but for our purposes, the killer feature I needed was email.

At first glance I thought Pages COULD send email, but they can’t.

You can only 'message' your members - that message will show up in their Live Feed (not the News feed. Thanks Facebook). It will also be sent to the members Inbox (under updates), but to read it, you need to go and seek it out. It took Lucia, my girlfriend and Facebook fan, a good five minutes to find the messages she had been sent from the Page, and she knows what she is doing. So broadly, Pages were not doing it for me.

On the flip side, I could send emails from a Group.

But... Now updates to the Group do not appear in the feeds at all! I MEAN FB GUYS! COME ON!

That means Group members need to go to the Facebook Group to get the update, or I need to resort to an email, which I don’t like to do, unless its really important. Plus, groups are capped at 5,000 members.

So which to choose? Why am I so fixated on email? In my gut, I felt emails had a much better chance of being read than a Facebook update or internal FB message delivered via a feed.

I know some people are married to Facebook, but I am not. And again, just a gut feeling, I believed a lot of others were not married to it either.

And this is where my experiment came in!

I wanted to know just how effective messages delivered via Pages and Groups would be.

By now I had set up a Group for the book, but had been advised by a number of other people that it should be Page and NOT a group. So I started the Page with the expectation that I would shut down the Group. But I ran into problems when I tried to send emails. So I thought, let’s test how successful messaging people from both the Group and Page actually is.

First off, I have to say, this is not scientific at all. It’s just a rough guide. There are tons of variables too, and I won’t even go into how this could make the data wildly inaccurate. So here’s what I did.

I asked members of the Group to send me an email IF they read the message I just emailed or if they read it on the Wall. I also asked members of the Page to email me if they read the same message I sent to them through the Page, which they would pick up in their feeds or internal FB messaging (that appears in your ‘in box’ under Updates on the left).

At the time I had 100 members of the Page, and 37 members of the Group. The Page membership was rising too, around five people an hour. And they would almost certainly have read the message, so that could change the numbers.

I let this test run for 24 hours and did not include any emails I received after that time (in fact I received just two emails late)

13 people emailed me from the Group. So roughly a third of the members of the Group got the message and felt the need to respond.

10 people emailed me from the Page. So roughly a tenth of the members of the Page got the message and felt the need to respond (though as the Page grew to 200 by the end of the test period, that could drop the number down to a twentieth).

Also, two people emailed me but did not clarify if they came from the Page or the Group. One person Twittered me.

So it’s pretty clear to me. The Group is the way to go as I need emailable contact with the members, and a Page just does not help me out there.

But… I also want that cool embeddable Facebook widget where people can click to become a fan too. And that only works with Pages. I am nervous too, of passing the 5,000 limit set on Groups. It’s not a problem now, but over the years, it could become one.

And so in the absence of any clearer way forward, I have chosen to use both the Group and the Page. I am hoping that the Page will used by interested people who want to know a little more, and anyone who is really into what we offer and stand for, well they will join the Group too. It’s a far from perfect solution and entirely hobbled by Facebook and their bizarre approach to usability.

If anyone has any comments on this, I really would love to hear it. And also, please, if I am wrong on anything, let me know and I will correct it.

So you can join the Facebook Group here (and we will send you info on film making stuff, podcasts, book updates etc.) Personally, I would recommend the Group.

And you can join the Fanpage here, but you will need to search out our messages and updates.

I guess it’s up to you.

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

A picture says a thousand words… How good is your headshot?

You know, given that we are all in a communications business, I am astonished at how badly many film makers chose to represent their own image. As part of writing The Guerilla Film Makers Pocketbook, we have been conducting countless interviews, and alongside the words we feature a photo. Hey, no big deal you would think? Wrong!

I would say that roughly half of the people we talked to for the book got pretty awkward when we said, ‘do you have a photo’? It got even weirder when we saw some of the pictures! I mean really, we are in a media business! Image is vital. I thought it worth mentioning as it’s one of the things you will need in your arsenal too – a great headshot, or photo of you on set in action. Pictured here is Sherry Candler, who is starting to feel like our resident PR guru. You really get who she is from this picture. She is smiling and engaging with me the viewer right now. That’s a great shot. Doubtless taken by a pro.

So what are you going to supply that journalist when you get that killer break? A photo of you on the beach (yes I had those sent to me for the book), passport photo (had that too), or cropped photo of you in a group (plenty of those), or my favourite, a photo of you stood by a celebrity? It may be great for your Facebook or Twitter profile, but it’s inappropriate for a PR headshot. Films are BIG investments and when it comes to the crunch, people with money want to know you are professional.

The thing is, you need to get this organised now, because it’s too late when things start to happen. There just won’t be time when you are on that rollercoaster. Another film maker who I see is getting this right is Danny Lacey – check out his blog, you get who he is right away. Great picture.

Remember, you are your greatest asset and ambassador. There is no point hiding behind the curtain. Get yourself front and centre baby!

So ditch those painful pix of you drunk at a film party and get a pro to take some great shots of you in action.

Final tip – if you want an ‘I am a director’ photo. Stand next to a camera and point. Apparently that is what directors do. Here is a great one of my good friend Johnny Newman on set with his new feature film ‘Swinging With The Finkels’ (and I also interviewed him in the new Guerilla Film Makers Pocketbook.

If you find yourself helping out on a large scale production as a runner or otyer job, in the lunch break, go stand next to the camera and click a cheeky one off. We won’t tell if you don’t.

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Join the spankingly new and shiny Guerilla Film Makers Handbook Facebook Page

FaceBook. Talk about idiosyncratic. It’s an amazingly powerful tool but blimey, it sure aint intuitive.

OK, so today I set up the Guerilla Film Makers Handbook Facebook Fan Page – you can join here. I had previously setup a Facebook Group for the book, but was immediately contacted by marketing guru Sheri Candler (remember we recorded a podcast with her, you can listen here) who thankfully set me right before too many people had joined the now defunct group. You see it’s really rather important to get this setup correctly, right from the get go. If you get too far down the line in a Group but need a Page, or vice versa, there is no way to migrate your members from one to the other.

So what are the differences? Well it’s pretty cryptic, until you have actually been there and have the T shirt. And even then, because of the idiosyncratic way that FaceBook operates, it remains a little nebulous at times.

Sheri Candler, who is currently twittering like crazy from Sundance (about a low budget horror film I keep hearing great things about called ‘The Yellow Brick Road’) wrote an excellent and detailed post on her blog about FaceBook Pages and FaceBook Groups, so there is no point me repeating it here. You can read it here.

Our FaceBook page is the start of something that we intend to be both exciting and inclusive for all film maker, much in the same way that Gone Fishing was. And we are making the big announcement in Cannes about it, as well as hosting a launch party for The Guerilla Film Makers Pocketbook. And this year, we also are planning a Cannes Field Trip for film makers who have never been. So if you are interested in coming along to Cannes, join the FaceBook Page and also join our newsgroup here.

Right, that deadline is not going anywhere… 12 days to locking the book!

PS - Gen has a new blog post on www.GuerillaGal.com too

Onwards and upwards!
Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Focus for success and Tweeting to the converted...

I am in the final furlong now…

The deadline for The Guerilla Film Makers Pocketbook is February 8th, and it’s all hands on deck in the Living Spirit office. I printed the book out last Friday and was horrified at how many blank pages I saw, and how little time remained. And so, I engaged my ‘laser sights’.

One of the keys to success that I have isolated (while interviewing hundreds of other film makers for The Guerilla Film Makers Handbooks) is what I call ‘laser vision’. It’s a kind of ultra focus on a single thing. When people get this ‘laser vision’, the impossible quickly becomes a daily event. I have experienced this myself many times, and seen it in others. For me, right now, laser vision is going to get me through the next fourteen days. It’s a great tool for completing a project. It’s also a great tool for starting a project and getting momentum very quickly.

A film maker I have been following on Twitter who has this laser vision is Danny Lacey, who has a site here. He is going for it in a small, consider, but BIG way!

To echo this approach, I am reading a short book right now which was recommended to me by an American film maker, Susan Cohen, who I interviewed over Skype last week. It’s called ‘Ignore Everyone’, by Hugh MacLeod – the first few chapters are on the authors website at www.gapingvoid.com (I am sure many of you will have already either read it or heard of it). Chapter One in this book, which also takes the books title, ‘Ignore Everyone’, is another expression of ‘laser vision’. MacLoed gives his unique and insightful spin, but it’s ‘Ignore Everyone’ and ‘Laser Vision’ are fundamentally the same ideas. You can read his chapter here, and I recommend it.

One thing that I am increasingly finding that I am concerned about it that of the interference from my connectivity and networks - phone calls (now that I have a cellphone, home land line, office land line and Skype), as well as email on my computer and iPhone, as well as MSN messenger and Skype messenger, mean that I am more connected than ever (and as a side thought, it seems that 15 years ago, when I had just one land line, it cost a lot less and I got a lot more done!) Whenever film maker Simon Cox comes to work in my office, he always comments on the number of emails I get – EVERY HOUR!

Social media is an especially worrisome area for me, especially Twitter. Don’t get me wrong, I love it.  I tweet, I read tweets and I respond to tweets. But am I the only one out there that gets the feeling that there is a great party going on somewhere in the Twitterverse, and somehow, I am just too busy to attend? You see the great killer of ‘laser vision’ is distraction, and Twitter is the mother of distraction! Sure I have managed to get great answers from Twitter in the past, make amazing discoveries and build relationships… all good stuff. But it is also so darned addictive and distracting. Deep in my gut, I fear that many film makers, myself included, may be tweeting to the converted in the hope that it will lead to that ‘killer opportunity’ or ‘nugget of info’ that changes everything…

Twitter is here to stay. For sure. It’s a great tool and lot’s of fun. I just hope that I find a way for it to help me better tell great stories…

OK time to re-engage my laser vision… ‘I am going in captain…’

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author

www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com