Editors note: Congratulations to Tom and the TNYP team on their Independent Spirit Award Nomination!
By Tom Quinn – In the fall of 2003 I began work on The New Year Parade with my co-producer, Steve Beal. Steve was a high school biology teacher with no film background and I was the building AV tech who would stop in at lunch to talk about my screenplay, which followed a South Philadelphia …

Tom Quinn reports – Last week, I had the honor of being the first American filmmaker to take part in the Toronto International Film Festival Talent Lab. I arrived in Toronto two days before the festival to meet 23 other young filmmakers from Canada and the UK, as well as lab producers Sandra Cunningham and Brad Fox of Strada Films.
The lab is intended as a workshop where beginning …

This edition of TCIBR is brought to you by IndieFlix – Hunter Weeks left a cubical job to embark on a filmmaking career and within a three years has completed two documentaries and is in post on a third. One of the core elements of his strategy is to mix a DIY production and distribution approach with a variety of promotional partners. Hunter and Josh Caldwell his producing partner, have …

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Over the next few days we’ll be posting various videos from the DIY DAYS LA event. The day consisted of a number of keynotes (Robert Greenwald, Marshall Herskovitz), panels (Tommy Pallotta, Femke Wolting, Alex Johnson, Micki Krimmel, Mark Stolaroff, Ondi Timoner, Hunter Weeks, Saskia Wilson-Brown), case studies (M dot Strange, Arin Crumley, Lance Weiler), a series of special video presentations (Matt Hanson, Brett Gaylor, Brian Chirls, Christy Dena, Timo Vuorensola) …

by Marc Lougee
:: Mini Cameras: Small, like Diamonds There’s much talk on and offline concerning the advent of mini camera’s used in stop motion animation, specifically when used in tandem with DSLR’s. Some folks love’em, some hate’em, but either way, they keep proving themselves useful, relatively inexpensive and hard to boot when faced with the alternative of shooting all day only to find yourself facing a re-shoot for …

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This edition of TCIBR is brought to you by IndieFlix and Breakthrough Distribution – Karin Chien is an independent film producer based in New York City. She’s produced a number of independent films such as Robot Stories, The Motel, and Undoing. For films such as Robot Stories and Undoing, Karin and her team applied a hybrid DIY approach to the theatrical release of each that created additional value in other …

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In this special video podcast Christy Dena interviews workbook project founder Lance Weiler. Dena, a cross-media entertainment strategist, mentor, designer, writer and PhD researcher conducted the interview for her universe creation podcast. Here’s what Dena had to say about the interview.
Filmmaker Lance Weiler is the special guest on this first video podcast at UC101. Weiler talks about the unique ways he has experimented with extending the storyworld of his …

For anyone who isn’t reading Brian Chirls’ blog you are missing out on a valuable resource. He’s a self professed Indie Nerd Filmmaker (Director, Distributor, Technologist) with a unique perspective on the emerging digital DIY movement. In addition to contributing to the Workbook Project he is also the Head of Theatrical for From Here to Awesome.
by Brian Chirls – Here at SXSW, I’ve met a number of cool, smart, ambitious …

We’re happy to introduce another contributor to the Workbook Project. Steve Balderson is a DIY filmmaking machine. He self funds, produces, and releases his own films. Some of the films have been shot on 35mm and others on miniDV. He’s taken his work on tour and staged his own “freakshows” in cities across the country. We’re excited to have him join the project and if you happen to live in …

by Marc Lougee
:: Digital Image Capture and why we went there
From the outset, I wanted to shoot the film utilizing a high resolution source. My experience with digital capture for animation started while Animation Director on MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch in New York, where we had used three-chip cameras built for medical operating theatres. The image resolution & color was great for standard definition television, but held no promise of …

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Tom Quinn reports – The morning after our grand jury prize was announced at Slamdance was crazy. I woke up sick as a dog and had to clean the condo before catching a shuttle at 11. The place was a mess and I was coming down with a Park City flu. In my rush to pack, I foolishly used dish soap in the dishwasher and suds began …

Tom Quinn reports – I flew home to Philly on Saturday and brought a wicked cold with me so am behind on this post, but we had some great news this weekend: The New Year Parade took the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative at Slamdance 2008!! We couldn’t be more thrilled or humbled. Some terrific reviews went up this week as well:
VARIETY: “Because Quinn …

So, we’ve been in Park City for five days now and my head is spinning. We premiered the film on Saturday and had a great crew in town: Jen Welsh, who plays Kat, Greg Lyons, who plays Jack, my finance Beth, high school pal Tom Bilotta, and Greg’s ECC bandmate, Josh Ostrander. Of course, 10AM on a Saturday is a difficult slot – especially after a ton of great parties …

The news of deals being struck is beginning to filter out of Park City. But behind the deal making that has become legendary is the reality of having to deliver the film. Long after the buzz has dwindled producers will start the long haul of delivery. For some outlets it can be minor but for others it can be a labyrinth that will take money from you at every turn.
It …

Tom Quinn reports – I fell behind on the blog this week because we are working to get our assets together for Park City. Everything is lining up really well and the mounting interest has been exciting. It’s shaping up to be a great premiere on the 19th!
Most recent news first: My good friend and designer Matt Hanemann just sent me the poster artwork at 2AM. …

At the beginning of 10 MPH you’ll see Josh and I trying to get sponsors to help out with the whole Segway thing. It was really tough as many of the companies we talked to felt there was no opportunity for ROI. Independent art was not worth their investment. But over time with some work on our strategies, we’ve learned how to intrigue sponsors more and were actually able to …

Tom Quinn reports – When the call came in for Slamdance, we were initially caught off guard. I had submitted a very rough cut in September and assumed we’d be passed over. I planned to lock picture in December, affording a few months to mix the film and wrap any loose ends before the spring festival slate. Fortunately, the programmers saw through our rough cut and we found ourselves with …

Tom Quinn reports – With Slamdance only a month away, I thought it may be worth detailing the process of prepping THE NEW YEAR PARADE for its Park City premiere. Fortunately for us, the IFP Narrative Rough Cut Lab had prepped us on dealing with distributors, sales agents, and planning our festival strategy. But even with their guidance, I found myself initially overwhelmed by the tidal wave that hit last …

We hear this all the time. It’s about who you know. Most professions in life seem to benefit from networking, but in filmmaking it is about as important as it gets. And getting out to network can become very difficult when you are spending weeks and months in the edit room and have devoted your entire income – plus whatever you can muster up on your credit cards – on …

M dot Strange reports – So I was lucky enough to be summoned to make an animated music video for one of my favorite bands “Mindless Self Indulgence” I used Cinema 4d 9.1 w/Cactus Dans tools, and After Effects 6.5.
I thought I would out together a little thang documenting my work on the Mindless Self Indulgence music video “Animal” There’s a ton of music video making-of’s out there but since …

In my 2nd job out of college, I worked for a dotcom in the San Francisco area. It was high times and everyone was rolling. I had the privilege of sitting next to the PR person they hired and she had quite the silver tongue. I tend to absorb as much as possible, so I listened to her pitching People Magazine, ZD Net, USA Today, and various other news agencies. …

If you’ve never dealt with trying to get into film festivals and that’s in the plans, go buy Chris Gore’s

With the advent of the Internet, we make instant judgments on something after viewing its website. Especially movies. Before making films, Josh and I both worked for a software company managing websites. Between this and numerous things we tried to do on the side, we learned how to design websites and master web marketing. This, in my opinion, is one of the keys to our success. The following is a …

Make movies yourself. Distribute them on your own. 10 MPH’s director Hunter Weeks writes a thorough overview of how he and Josh successfully made 10 MPH one of the most talked about indie films of 2007.
AN INTRODUCTION:
If you watch 10 MPH, you’ll see that Josh and my approach to getting into the film industry was one of blind faith. We had no formal training in making films and very …

This past week, we concluded our latest cinema ARG experiment entitled HOPE IS MISSING. The design of HIM is covered in an article that I wrote for the current issue of filmmaker magazine. This post will focus on the results of the experiment. A more detailed case study surrounding the cinema ARG will be released later in Nov.
Layers of interactivity
HOPE IS MISSING consisted of four web films that were loaded …

Tom Quinn reports – After an amazing week at the IFP Market and Conference, I am prepping my film for Friday’s Sundance submission deadline. The six days spent in New York were all remarkable thanks to months of hard work by the IFP staff, especially Amy Dotson who programmed the Lab and Emerging Narrative sections. Here’s a quick overview of our week:

Lab fellows with John Sayles …

In a special multi-part series along with live updates from the IFP Film Market, filmmaker Tom Quinn (The New Year Parade) will document his journey as part of the IFP’s narrative rough cut lab. Selected out of hundreds of submissions Tom’s film joins 10 other projects as the IFP helps to pull back the curtain on post, festivals and distribution.
This past June, I was fortunate enough to attend the IFP …

Since I’m knee deep in pulling together the next HEAD TRAUMA cinema ARG, I thought I’d share some of my promotional materials. The following is an invite followed by a press release for the event. We started by hitting horror blogs and then moved into some indie film and general movie outlets. When I come up for air next week I want to layout a detailed description of how we …