Cinereach Blog

Announcement courtesy of:

DCTV PRESENTS MEET THE FUNDERS
Tue 3/23, 7:30pm, DCTV

Applying for funding can be one of the greatest stresses for filmmakers. But here’s a chance to hear more about what funders are looking for and the best practices for applying to them.

Join us as Natalie Difford (Chicken & Egg Pictures), Ryan Harrington (Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund) and Adella Ladjevardi (Cinereach) calm our nerves and share their invaluable funding criteria with us.

Working with funders is all about building relationships and it starts with a familiarity of all the options out there. Meet The Funders will get you familiar with the current landscape and include some top tips on filling out those tricky applications and submitting killer sample footage. This event is most relevant for filmmakers working on social issue projects.

$15 DCTV & Shooting People Members
$20 IFP, NYWIFT, DocuClub Members
$30 General

Details & Tickets here.

The 18th annual Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital takes place March 16-28, 2010. There are 56 screening venues, 155 films, and an audience of 25,000 is expected to attend. Films selected for the festival “celebrate the wonder of the natural world and illuminate the growing challenges to life on earth.”

Gasland by Josh Fox
This fest will mark the D.C. premiere of Gasland by Josh Fox. The film chronicles Fox’s 24-state journey to investigate the consequences of natural gas drilling. It received support from the Sundance Reach Fund (part of the Cinereach Project at the Sundance Institute), won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and just took home the Artistic Vision Award at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.

Screening information:
FREE SCREENING
Date: 3/16/10 7:00pm
Venue: Carnegie Institution for Science, Elihu Root Auditorium, 1530 P St., NW
A discussion with filmmaker Josh Fox follows screening.

The Road Ahead: The First Green Long March by Cinereach Productions
The first feature documentary from Cinereach’s in-house production arm, The Road Ahead: The First Green Long March is a meditative portrait of the growing student environmental movement amongst Chinese College students. Directed by Ryan Wong and produced by Cinereach’s Michael Raisler, The film is an official selection of the Hamptons, Connecticut and Cleveland Film Festivals.

Screening information:
FREE SCREENING
Date: 3/23/10 12:00pm
Venue: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Ronald Reagan Building, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, Sixth Floor Auditorium, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
The film will be introduced by Jennifer L. Turner of the China Environment Forum, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

RFF ‘09 alum Dena Greenbaum’s film Blues is on the U.S. festival circuit! Here are some details on the festivals where you can catch a screening:

The film will begin its tour in Los Angeles at the 15th Annual International Family Film Festival, which takes place March 10th-14th. Blues screens on March 13th at 10am.

Following this will be the Los Angeles Women’s International Film Festival taking place March 26th – April 1st where Blues will screen Monday, March 29th at 1:30.

Then it’s on to the 11th Annual Memphis International Film and Music Festival, April 22nd – 25th.

And lastly, Blues will screen at the National Film Festival for Talented Youth in Seattle, WA  which takes place between April 29th – May 2nd. Catch the Blues screening Sunday, May 2nd at 2:30 pm.

Congrats Dena!

Adella Ladjevardi, Cinereach Grants Manager, will be on a panel tonight at IFP’s Industry Connect event. The panel is called: Funding Your Film: Strategies, New and Traditional and will feature a range of funders and filmmakers talking about “how to raise money to make and distribute your film.” It will look at “traditional models – grants, fiscal sponsorship through non-profits, equity investment – and new Web 3.0 strategies such as crowdsourcing, building fans, and other trans-media strategies that can help filmmakers of all levels make the best decisions for their projects from start to finish.”

The event is at 7pm (new time) at The New School, 65 West 11th Street, 5th Fl. (Wollman Hall).

If you plan to go, or even if you can’t make it, the below is from a hand-out Cinereach will bring tonight, featuring quick tips on our application process. All the same info is featured on our site, but this handout is a good entry point.

Advice for Grant Applicants

First Things First

Have a film you think Cinereach should support? Great! Check out these tips and tricks to possibly increase your chances of receiving support and make the application process a breeze – both for you and for us!

First off – check out our website to make sure your film is a good fit for Cinereach. While we support a diverse range of films, taking a look at the previously funded films and our current guidelines will give you a sense of our taste.

Funding Priorities (from the web site)

Each year Cinereach grants over $500,000 to well-crafted feature-length nonfiction and fiction films that depict underrepresented perspectives, resonate across international boundaries, and spark dialogue.

Grants range from $5,000 – $50,000 and are awarded to films at any stage, including development, production, post-production, audience building and distribution.

There are two letter of inquiry deadlines per year (Summer and Winter), after which a selection of applicants are invited to submit full proposals.

Cinereach’s ethos favors good storytelling over didacticism and complexity over duality. We support films that demonstrate creativity, visual artistry and take a character-based approach.

Through cinematic artistry and storytelling, Cinereach supported films:

-Provide insight and spark dialogue
-Challenge prejudice and advance human rights
-Discover humanity and hope
-Foster global community

How to Apply

The application process is outlined on the Cinereach web site.

As you will see when you visit the web site, all applicants are required to submit a letter of inquiry (LOI) via an online form as a first step. Deadlines for submitting your LOI are posted and updated on our site a few months before a grant cycle.

We strongly encourage submission of sample work with letters of inquiry. Sample work can include one or more of the following: previously completed film(s), a trailer or clip reel for your current project, or a rough-cut of your current project. If you’re a first time feature filmmaker show us a short – or photographs. Anything that you feel might convey your visual artistry and vision to us.

You may submit an online link in your letter or inquiry (please remember to include your username and password, if applicable) or you may send us a DVD.

Getting Your Questions Answered

If you have questions after reviewing the above referenced pages, check out our FAQ page. It’s made up of questions we’ve received in the past (get it? Frequently Asked Questions) so make sure you give that a good read. (hint: calling us with a question on the FAQ wastes our time and yours.)

Fiscal Sponsorship

You do not need a fiscal sponsor in place in order to submit a letter of inquiry. Should your project move to the next stage in the application process, we would work with you to secure a fiscal sponsor at that time. To learn more about fiscal sponsorship, please visit the Resources page on our website.

Helpful Stats

The Cinereach grant program has become increasingly competitive, and only a small fraction of applicants are invited to submit a full proposal.

On average, less than 10% of all projects that submit letters of inquiry will be invited to submit a full proposal. In our most recent grant cycle, we received 900 letters of inquiry and invited 77 full proposals. Of those 77 films, approximately 10 or 12 will receive a Cinereach grant.

Dos & Don’ts

Do Read all instructions and guidelines on the Cinereach website very carefully.

Don’t Call or email Cinereach staff asking a question that is already answered on the FAQ page.

Do Let us know if you checked the website but couldn’t find the answer you were looking for – that means we need to update!

Don’t Waste time by going into a lot of depth about the history and social context of an issue relevant to your film without talking about your story and your main characters.

Do Try to adhere to the submission deadline for each grant cycle and be aware of notification dates.

Don’t Call or email Cinereach staff on or after the deadline requesting an extension to submit your application late.

Do Spell check. If English isn’t your first language, ask someone else to proofread it. If you’re applying from halfway around the world we’ll very likely cut you some slack.

Don’t Submit a letter of inquiry that demonstrates carelessness and/or an inability to express ideas clearly or succinctly.

Do Demonstrate that your story is character-driven by introducing us to your characters/subjects and describing the arcs their stories follow in the synopsis section of your LOI.

If you don’t have key subjects/characters in mind or know the type of arc their stories might take, don’t worry! Show us you know how to make a film, and tell tell us as much as you can about what you’re hoping for and how you’re planning to capture it.

Finally, Don’t give up if you don’t receive support this cycle! The next one is only a few months away.

** The next deadline to submit a letter of inquiry for the Summer 2010 grant cycle is June 1^st!

A post by Gabriel Long

Choosing a title for my Reach Film Fellowship short was a struggle.

The story follows two brothers as they navigate a newly complex relationship over the course of one afternoon, so naturally my first working title was Brothers. It worked fine and stated something simple and factual about the story, so it stuck. I had purchased a URL, set up a website, and begun initial promotion for the project – increasing my commitment to Brothers.

As I got into production and post and my film materialized, however, I realized I needed a new title. Brothers doesn’t evoke enough visually or emotionally in a potential viewer’s mind. Furthermore, anyone who searched for “Brothers the film” online would have to dig through dozens of results related to the recently released Jake Gyllenhaal/Toby McGuire movie of the same title to find anything about my project. A quick IMDb search immediately revealed that my film would be one of many, many films called Brothers.

So I set out to find a more evocative and unique title. My first strategy was just to think about it and wait for inspiration to strike. A week later I didn’t have any good ideas, so I decided to take a more structured approach. I made lists of possible titles, asked my cast and crew for ideas, and I re-read the script looking for moments or lines of dialogue that could yield a new name. This gave me many options, but nothing that really fit.

Finally, I sat down to discuss title options with Reva Goldberg and Margaret Shafer, who run the Reach Film Fellowship at Cinereach. As we debated various ideas, for the first time I was forced to articulate what I wanted from the title. It had to be unique, evocative, and it was also important to me that it reflect the essence of my film in a meaningful way. A baseball bat is an important object in the film, but The Bat was too literal and too plain. There’s an important scene that takes place in the dining room, but My Chair at the Table felt too forced. The Hideaway appealed to me as an option that eluded to both the boys’ emerging identity and to childhood games, but Reva pointed out that it has connotations that don’t fit the film, (“It makes me think of pirates,” is how she put it).

Ultimately, Reva suggested The Drawing and when she said it, I knew that was the title. A young boy’s drawing figures very significantly into my coming-of-age story. It felt simple and solid. It evoked a key scene and symbol without giving anything away, but also hinted at the process of self-creation, of growing up.

You might conclude that the lesson here is to get other people to title your film, but that’s not quite it. In order to recognize The Drawing as the right choice, I had to develop a clear idea of what I wanted it to do. Without that knowledge, I was stabbing in the dark to come up with ideas and judge suggestions from others. Only when I knew how I wanted the title to look, sound, and feel could I select it.

RFF 2010 Fellow Gabriel Long (mentored by Laurie Collyer) has done extensive work in both narrative and documentary film. Two of his documentary projects were nationally broadcast by Current TV. Swimming New York City documents a swimming race around Governor’s Island, and The Art of Sticks offers a portrait of outdoor sculptor Patrick Doherty. He has also completed seven narrative short films, most recently Adán, which follows a schoolteacher as he travels from his home in Ecuador to New York City, trying to find a friend in the wake of a school shooting. Long recently moved to New York City where he works as an assistant director, editor, and writer. Check out The Drawing blog and Facebook page to stay updated on Gabriel’s latest news.

Cinereach grantee October Country, a film by Michael Palmieri & Donal Mosher, received an incredible 5-star Time Out NY review! Critic Kevin B. Lee calls the film, “Intimate yet larger-than-life, this masterpiece of the everyday shows you don’t need James Cameron’s toy box to make images pop from the screen, much less to see and embrace the world anew.” Click here for the full review.

October Country will be screening in NYC at IFC beginning this Friday, February 12th. Click here for showtimes and to purchase tickets.

One of the main things I have learned working on Love Lockdown is that you should not trust the United States Postal Service to deliver anything on time! I’ll give you the back-story: After much debate, I decided to ask London-based Editor and Director Yusuf Pirhasan (LG 15, Kate Modern) to edit my film. Yusuf and I have worked on projects together in the past, we’re good friends, and as an editor I trust him implicitly.

My only reservation on having him cut the film was that he lives in London, and I live in New York. After much debate, interviewing other editors, and asking around for advice, I felt Yusuf was still my editor of choice. Not only is he a talented editor and storyteller that has special experience with short form content, but he’s a great friend that will work tirelessly on my project, forgive me for not getting enough cutaways, (maybe not), and will understand that I have a very limited budget.

Oh yeah, back to the USPS. I cloned my hard drive and sent one to Yusuf who four weeks later had still not received it. The Post Office had no clue where it was. Realizing I already wasted a bunch of time and should have done this three weeks earlier, I bought another drive, cloned the film again and sent it via FedEx. It arrived three days later. The original hard drive surfaced six weeks after I originally sent it. It had been stuck in customs, and they made us pay 50 pounds to get it back! Back to filmmaking: I spoke to my mentor Annie Sundberg about my editing situation since she is also cutting a film with an editor that lives in another country. She gave me some great tips on how we can communicate, and exchange footage in the easiest way possible.

Technology has made it possible to do this long-distance edit in a painless way. My editor uses yousendit.com to upload new cuts of the film. They download fairly quickly, allowing for a quick turnaround to view them and get back to my editor with notes and feedback. We use Skype to videoconference and discuss scenes, and key issues of the film. So far, so good. The edit is now going as well as a documentary edit can go.

I have also learned from this experience that I would have liked to begin editing the film earlier, during principal photography, instead of waiting until after. If I had been assembling scenes as I went, it would have made it easier to figure out what pick-ups I needed and grab them as I went along, and while I was still frequently visiting my subjects. I learned this the hard way because the family I follow in the film has moved since I was last shooting with them. This makes re-shoots in their previous apartment impossible.

This round, I’ll be in London working with Yusuf in-person, which will make communication a breeze, and I’ll have no reason to get the United States Postal Service involved.

February 16th Tribeca Film Institute will partner with the New School to present a Case Study of Entre Nos, a Cinereach grantee. Tribeca Film Institute’s blog post reads, “What makes this film so wonderful is that it is based on a true story, and so it is told from the heart. What makes it astounding is that Paola and Gloria made it for next to nothing.” Both Paola Mendoza and Gloria LaMorte will be present to discuss the process of getting their award-winning film made. No tickets or reservations are required. Please click here for more information.

When Tuesday Means Friday and Tomorrow Means Maybe Next Week or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying (So Much) and Love Post-Production

I once believed – and still do to some extent – that there is nothing in this world worse than post-production.

In pre-production, there is planning, designing, discussing, arguing, revising…. Lots of tough choices must be made, but all choices that seem full of promise, since the script is still young and revisable. With nothing set in stone, the opportunities are limitless.

And while production has its downsides, there is enough adrenaline from actually shooting your film to get you through the rough patches. Sometimes those little problems even find a way of becoming part of the creative process.

But then comes post-production, like a giant splash of cold water to the face. This is reality, your reality, your film’s reality. This is what you’re stuck with for what seems like an eternity, until the deadlines come rushing at you and it feels all too short.

Am I being dramatic? Perhaps. But let me explain.

When there is a script, in that first precious stack of pages there is a story. It’s something unreal, something waiting for you to breathe life into it.

Then there are crew members – the producer, DP, production designer – who help bring the story into focus. They make it seem real. They talk about the film like it’s actually going to happen.

Then there are actors and rehearsals and long talks over tea about character development. And they make your film feel real. They show you that essence you had an inkling of when you first wrote the outline or jotted down the first scene on a napkin somewhere.

And then there’s the shoot with the crew, equipment, wardrobe, props, makeup… Watching the monitor, staring intently at the screen where your actors and crew bring the story together, the film finally looks real. You can see the pieces falling into place.

But after the shoot is wrapped, it is real. The creative “control” becomes a bit limited. Instead of creating the puzzle, you’re handed a box of puzzle pieces to assemble. But some of those puzzle pieces don’t seem to fit, and some of them seem a little out of focus, or are too rough to connect with the piece that must go next to it. There’s something wrong in so many little places that you could just scream with frustration.

And that stupid puzzle, lying in pieces on the table – or more accurately, on the computer screen in front of you, is post-production. It’s taking all the footage and sound and performances and focus marks and everything else that you did or didn’t notice on set, taking this raw and unforgiving beast and making it into something watchable.

So now, how does one deal with this nightmarish puzzle? The trick is to put the puzzle together completely and seamlessly, to make the footage into a masterful film – something your mom and dad can be proud of (even if it’s a reminder of how you didn’t go after that law degree).

Now, turning this footage into a film will require some cheating, some “tweaking,” some sacrifices and some epiphanies. The finished puzzle won’t look like the picture on the box necessarily, but with any luck, it will be even better than the original plan. You’ll have taken some pieces of something and made it whole and new. How do you cheat on a puzzle? Well, unlike the puzzle pieces that arrive in a box ready to fit together, the footage can be cut, copied, pasted, and reorganized. You can create an entirely new picture from the one that came printed on the box by changing the order of what happens in the script or by moving a line of dialogue.

Post-production is a time to re-think the story with many creative limitations, instead of endless possibilities. You’re using what tools you have, rather than starting from scratch like you did with the script, by making new creative decisions you hadn’t considered before. It’s trusting the editor to snap the pieces into place, taking whatever means he needs to make them fit in a way that captures the story and characters. It’s trusting the sound designer to build an ambience and to enhance or create those little things you might be missing from set – like that pause of silence for dramatic emphasis.

For one example, the footage we shot for my Reach Film Fellowship film, Wild Birds, had some unintentional focus issues that at first seemed hugely problematic. My editor and I were able to make some of the out-of-focus shots work nicely in unexpected ways, however. Apparently sometimes a consistent problem can become part of the film’s aesthetic, depending on how it is used. I’m also considering adding a line of ADR to help bring out some backstory that the audience at my rough cut screening said seemed to be missing.

There’s another trick: find people to watch your cuts! And don’t just ask your biggest fan. Find people who know nothing about the film so you can get a clear sense of what the audience actually gets from it. It’s important to know what doesn’t work in the earlier cuts so you can find creative ways to fix them before you fall in love with a certain shot or scene or pacing. And don’t despair! You’d be amazed by how even the smallest change can make a world of difference.

And maybe this is the real problem I have with post-production. It’s the adjustment period. It’s letting go of the film I once thought I was going to have and being open to something else, just as, if not more, wonderful than the original plan.

“To be a filmmaker, you must first be crazy,” Esther Robinson told me (and the other three 2010 Reach Film Fellows) at a workshop she led for us in October. She was providing guidance on how to have a healthy financial life, despite the unpredictability of our lives as artists, but her comment can also be applied to the filmmakers’ creative process. Filmmakers often have to act in ways that are unexpected (not only when envisioning and creating their career paths but also when working on an individual film). We step away from the “original plan” to form a new path with every endeavor. And if you’re unpredictable as an artist, then why wouldn’t your artwork be allowed a mind of its own too? Filmmaking is a growing process, a learning experience after all.

So, I take back what I said earlier about post-production. I suppose that it is almost just as magical and exciting as pre-production, in that it is a whole new opportunity to explore the wonderful world of your film. It just takes a lot of time and thought and waiting and playing with footage and looking at things, and showing people things and admitting what does and doesn’t work in a constructive way… But if you keep at it (and what option do you have at this point?), you’ll have something really amazing at the end of it – a film. And not only a film but a learning experience, more patience, and new creative tools for your next one.

While patience is not one of my strengths, it’s something I’ll have to practice. As my grandmother has told me many a time, “Good things come to those who wait.” So I’ll keep my fingers crossed and hope that she knows what she’s talking about.

Courtney Hope (mentored by Jeremy Kipp Walker) is a 2010 Reach Film Fellow. She recently graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a degree in Film & Television. While a student at NYU, she wrote and directed several short films. Hope’s thesis film Sex & German Grammar, which was awarded the prize for Best Cinematography at NYU’s Fusion Film Festival, also screened at the Southside Film Festival and the Palm Springs Shortfest. Hope has also shown films at the London Super Short Film Festival and the Reed Media Festival, and took home a prize at the 2007 Southside Image Over Words competition. Hope recently completed her first independent short, Another First.