Archives for October 2019

Getting Real about Brands and Impact Films

This week, I wrote an Op-Ed article for the BrandStorytelling website and newsletter on the topic – Getting Real about Brands and Impact Films. This is the first of a series of articles I’ll be writing for them, and I wanted to start with a topic I think is super important for brands, but that also applies to filmmakers – that you can’t just make a social impact film, you have to do the impact work (or hire someone to help). Here’s the intro paragraph, and a link to the full article:

As more brands move into making content, especially long and short form film, many are starting to make films intended to have social impact. While films and media made for impact aren’t right for every brand, they increasingly make sense for brands wanting to share their values with consumers who consistently say they want brands to take a stand. But while many brands are making impact entertainment, too few are actually doing what it takes to have an impact, and need to start thinking harder about what impact means – before audiences (consumers) begin to see this as more cynical “purpose-washing” and brands meaning to truly have an impact have difficulty rising above all of this noise.

Read the Full Article over at BrandStorytelling

What I’m Reading: Film

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The Upcoming Crisis in Arthouse/Indie Film

From Vulture – a classic that Disney isn’t removing

More from the best of times, worst of times files. Three articles hit this week that obliquely touch on what I think is a big crisis facing the indie film sector – in the middle of a golden age for content – and the need for us to build more mechanisms to support indie and arthouse narrative films.

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Why were you rejected?

Why were you rejected? will you be accepted ?- fest service needed

Free idea to anyone who wants to launch it. We need a festival advisory service that helps filmmakers (and brands) figure out whether their film is good enough for film festivals (and which ones), and what would make it stronger – and it needs to be made up of festival programmers.

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Get While the Gettin’s: Or the Vicissitudes of this Market

Frothy Waters

A short one this week, as I’ve been on deadline for another article running soon elsewhere. It is a plumb crazy time in the film business – not unlike the financial markets, or our daily news.

On the one hand, this moment in the film business reminds me of a quote I read from Ray McKinnon in Garden & Gun: “ I always said that if you couldn’t get a role in In the Heat of the Night in those days, if you were an Atlanta actor, you should strongly reconsider your career choice. I actually played a crack dealer one year and got killed, and came back as the town newspaper editor.” Point is, the gettin’ was good for actors back then (and now).

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Netflix vs. Theaters…again

via Variety

Owen Gleiberman penned an “upper decker” of a review/slam of Scorsese’s The Irishman and Netflix’s release strategy this week in Variety when he wrote “Netflix, You Have a Problem: ‘The Irishman’ Is Too Good,” arguing that the film demanded a longer theatrical release before it hits streaming.

His entire argument can be summed up by his last paragraph:

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