I just completed the trailer for my Beijing Olympics film, Boomtown Beijing,just in time for the upcoming Singapore International Film Festival and the charity screening in Beijing on April 20th.
A big thank you to my friend, Zhou Hou Heng (周侯衡） , for helping me edit and package the trailer.
Watch the trailer here:
The online demand for short films has been growing and growing.
While indie features continue to struggle to find distribution, short film makers have a better chance of making some cash by putting their films on sale via iTunes, Xbox, and Netflix.
A recent entry at the Circuit Blog at Variety.com notes the irony of the situation — short filmmakers at Sundance 2008 may do better financially than their feature film counterparts.
The Circuit – Blog on Variety.com – 1390000339
The key reason for this: bandwidth. Greater bandwidth and faster internet access has turned the Web into a viable distribution system for short films.
Films in the “under 10 minute” category also play well to the internet audience, notorious for having the attention span of a flea.
In response, a slew of online film festivals have sprung up, trying to capitalize on the opportunity of Internet distribution:
Selected works will also be aired on a internet TV channel called the Babelgum Channel
Do you have a short film that stands for social change? Pangea Day Festival is the place for you.
It is backed by Participant Productions, the same people behind the films, An Inconvenient Truth and
Syriana
Closer to home, specialized short film distributors such as, Objectifs Films, have carved a niche by bringing Asian short films to a global audience.
In the age of viral video and online short film festivals, film makers have to be ever more succinct.
If you have a film that will change the world, make sure it is under 5 minutes.
Technorati Tags: movie marketing, online distribution, video distribution, Sundance Film Festival, online film festival, Babelgum Online Film Festival, Pangea day Festival, Participant Productions
The best films often don’t win the biggest awards.
This is the conclusion that I have come to after observing film competitions and award ceremonies on the sidelines.
I have seen very average films make it to the top film festivals in the world. On the other hand, highly nuanced and well produced pieces have been left out on the cold, hard pavement of rejection.
The key to this puzzle lies in that intangible and elusive variable we sometimes call “resonance”
Oscar-nominated documentaries send message of hope – Yahoo! News
News about this year’s Oscar nominations seem to confirm this educated guess. 4 out of 15 films that made it to the shortlist for documentary features deal with the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of these, 3 out of the 4 war films, No End in Sight, Taxi to the Dark Side,Operation Homecoming, scored Oscar nominations.
We all know that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are millstones tied to the neck of the American conscience. So documentary film making,too,becomes a means of exorcising the ghosts of blood, violence and the tears of innocent victims. The war theme resonates with the American zeitgeist.
In other words, if you are making a personal film about a little known cause in an obscure place with a polysyllabic name that defies pronunciation, your chances of clinching an Oscar nomination and winning a big award are close to zero. No matter how well-made your film may be.
This is because your film will not find resonance with your intended audience. The jury panel and the film festival goers may be frustrated because they search, could not find, those reflections of their greatest sorrows and deepest anxieties in your work of art.
In that sense, the ability to read the times and have your finger on the pulse of your audience is just as important as the technical skills involved in crafting a good film.
Having said that, it is perhaps wise to go ahead and make that obscure little film anyway.
The making of the film that is after your heart is reward in itself, even without the coveted laurels of nominations and awards.
Technorati Tags: Oscar nominations, Oscar-nominated documentaries, documentary film making, movie marketing, film festivals
Being at the Berlin Film Festival helps me appreciate the difference that a film-literate audience can make to the film making experience
Here is a city where people have attended the festival year after year and over time they have developed the ability to articulate their analyses and insights about film.
Even films from little known places have sold out screenings. The premiere of Invisible City, a Singapore documentary about history and memories, for instance, was packed to the overflowing, with some people sitting along the aisle. From what I hear, other Asian films at the festival are doing equally well.
I have had the pleasure of chatting with quite a few people who have travelled to the festival every year. I have also met individuals who have volunteered tirelessly at the festival for decades.
One of these chance encounters led to an interview about my Beijing Olympics documentary, Boomtown Beijing, on German radio. “35 mm” is regular film magazine show on Radio Dreyeckland in Freiburg, in the southwestern part of Germany.
Alexander Sancho-Rauschel, the radio journalist who interviewed me, also volunteers at the student cinema at the University of Freiburg. The Aka Film Club, or Academic Film Club, has been around for 50 years. It was started in an effort to enable students in post war Germany to watch more international films. Although the name of the club sounds very stern and seems almost archaic in this day and age, it has been retained out of reverence for tradition.
I wonder what the listeners of Radio Dreyeckland will think of the interview of my little documentary about the Beijing Olympics?
One thing, for sure, the passion for film seems to transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries here. So I cherish the hope being a little known film director making a small film in the Far East might actually be an advantage, fuelling curiosity about the project.
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