We're on the Road to Somewhere
This has been a great, productive year for King is a Fink Productions.
We wrote and produced 4 short films (Snow Bunny, Sound Sleeper, Anxiety Acres & Libidoland). Snow Bunny was accepted into 2 film fests (Lakedance International Film Festival & Queens International Film Festival) and nominated for an award. We’re on our way to finishing our 3rd feature-length screenplay. We’re toying with the idea of finding funding to produce our first one (Baker’s Dozen), which showed well in this year’s Blue Cat, Outfest, and Great Lakes screenplay competitions.
We’re on the right track, but, despite our recent successes, it’s still easy to stumble into a puddle of self-doubt. Is this really a good idea? Shouldn’t we get our heads out of the clouds? We should just put our noses to the 9 – 5 grindstone and focus on our 401k’s?
The doubts are normal. We expected to have low points. What we didn’t expect was to find such a supportive indie movie community to help us through them.
HERE ARE SOME PEOPLE WHO INSPIRE US AND KEEP OUR INDIE SPIRITS UP:
NIC BAISLEY
- ON TWITTER: @filmsnobbery
- WHAT HE DOES: runs movie site FilmSnobbery.com, hosts live show, provides honest reviews of indie movies (including shorts)
- WHY WE LOVE HIM: Nic’s friendly & accessible, the consummate host, promoting the work of new/unheard of indie filmmakers, sharing advice freely, and connecting new indie film folks with established people in the industry to create a community that benefits everyone.
- ON TWITTER: @grking
- WHAT HE DOES: Gary directs feature-length movies via his production company Kitchen Table Films. Films include Dismal, Hubris, New York Lately, What’s Up Lovely? He also writes a kickass blog.
- WHY WE LOVE HIM: Gary shares his process freely, he’s friendly, promotes our work, is always on the go, and he’s even found a way to parlay his personal directing success into paying gigs from other people: he’s currently directing a movie in Ohio. He’s also hinted at a (maybe) musical film in his future (or was this just us dreaming?) We can’t wait to see what he does next.
PHIL HOLBROOK
- ON TWITTER: @philontilt
- WHAT HE DOES: Directs short films (Honest Work) with Creative Jinx in Minnesota; runs the EgoFest, a free fest for short films
- WHY WE LOVE HIM: He does what we do (makes shorts w/ his friends). He’s extremely supportive of other people’s work in the Twitterverse, obviously talented, shares film/production tips, promotes other people’s work, gets our sense of humor…+ HELLO! Free film fest!
- ON TWITTER: @doubleedgefilms
- WHAT THEY DO: They produce feature films via their production company, Double Edge Films; this week their wildly popular movie INK was in the top 20 movies on IMDb despite not having a distributer.
- WHY WE LOVE THEM: They found a path to their audience and to distribution on their own terms. Rather than just relying on film fests, the Winans picked a unique route for INK – they premiered at the first sizable fest that accepted them, showed their film in independent theatres across the US, then distributed the movie themselves on Blu-Ray and DVD. Soon it’ll be on Netflix & in Blockbuster stores around the country. They used social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) to the fullest extent and have been extremely generous in sharing their process; just listen to this 11/1 radio interview they did with Film Courage.
Of course, not everyone is encouraging and supportive. But that’s for another day…