| | | | Ep 6 of No Budget Confidential... Charlie Buhler & Before The Fire! September 24th • 5pm PDT (8pm EDT)
You won't want to miss my newest No Budget Confidential, scheduled for next Thursday at 5pm PDT. I'll be speaking with director/producer Charlie Buhler about her amazing $60k thriller Before The Fire, which was just released last month by Dark Sky Films.
What can I say about Charlier Buhler that captures all her energy and enthusiasm? Well, she's a fireball. She speaks in the language of filmmaking lessons--and she has a bunch of them from this project. We'll discuss her five year journey making the film, where she and lead actress/screenwriter Jenna Lyng Adams reversed engineered Jenna's pandemic script to match the resources they had available to them for free back in Charlie's home state of South Dakota. And those resources were pretty incredible: a farm, planes, National Guard troops, and even a burning house. We'll also explore what she did before making the film to prepare her for the experience--you'll be surprised to hear how she developed her craft and gained the confidence needed to embark on her feature.
Was the 5 years worth it? I'll say! The film garnered a bidding war earlier this year, with an advance that has already put them in the black. Plus she got commercial and Film/TV representation out of it. We'll talk about all of that, showing clips and behind-the-scenes stills that will enrich our conversation. And of course bring your questions, because we'll be answering all of them. |
| | If you've watched my past episodes, you can probably tell I put a lot of work into these sessions. I spend days preparing for them, so please help me spread the word. As you know, they're FREE, so anyone can join, at least until they fill up. See you this Thursday (with Will Dennis - information below) and next Thursday with Charlie Buhler!
No Budget Film School presents NO BUDGET CONFIDENTIAL - EPISODE 6 Charlie Buhler Discusses Before The Fire Thursday, September 24, 2020 • 5pm PT (8pm ET) Free - Live Via Zoom
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| | | | | | $50k One Hour Outcall Opens Today!
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| I first met filmmaker T. Arthur Cottam after seeing his brilliantly bizarre and hilarious no-budget feature Carbuncle many years ago, and we've been friends ever since. T. has put together an impressive body of work that include eccentric features and shorts, with titles like Filthy Food; Pornographic Apathetic: and 52 Takes of the Same Thing, Then Boobs. His films have played prestigious film festivals, won awards and received extensive praise. Always working on the edge of convention, he is also a very resourceful filmmaker who knows how to make something impressive out of nothing.
For his newest feature, One Hour Outcall, he's teamed up with writer/producer/actor Bill Norrett, who like many a first-time feature filmmaker, had been living with an unrealized dream to make a feature film for decades, and finally decided to do something about it. A successful financial analyst, he quit his job to travel the world, and worked on his script while traveling. He knew he needed to write something he could make on a micro-budget, if he was going to get it done, so he set his story in mostly one location with mostly just two actors, and wrote one of the parts for himself to play.
Upon his return to the States, he showed the script to T. and the two went to work putting it all together. For Bill, who now didn't have a job (or a car or a home), that meant sleeping in guest houses or on couches, riding the bus to casting sessions and meetings, and raising money from friends and family members, for more than 3 years. |
| | The result is an incisive drama depicting the ongoing relationship between a successful businessman and a young, intelligent escort, and the secrets they've been keeping from one another. Told with an innovative non-linear structure, the film required two versions of the script--one in the order of events, and one in the order the film depicts those events. The film was shot in 23 days over a month, with most of those days utilizing just two crew members and two actors, shooting in a rented house in Downtown Los Angeles. The crew was T. directing and shooting, and Jim Eshom, acting as an AC and booming. They shot with a Canon C500, which a Canon rep lent to them for free, and they ran the boom mic cable directly into the camera, with T. monitoring the audio himself. They shot four days at the Italian food restaurant Miceli's in Studio City, where they added an actual sound mixer and a few PA's, and several more actors and extras. The rest of the movie was set in a car, which they shot using a poor-man's-process technique.
To Bill's credit, he paid everyone who worked on the film (except himself), even paying the non-SAG actors SAG scale (a few actors were SAG and they shot using the SAG ULB Contract). It took T. and editor Sam Hook about a year to lock picture, and after finishing the post sound and final picture work, they played several film festivals, before COVID shut them down. Fortunately for them, they were approached by the producers reps BloodSweatHoney after one of their early festivals, and BSH garnered offers from several distributors, before they finally chose to go with Gravitas Ventures.
The film is opening on VOD today, and Bill and T.'s Do-It-Yourself dream will finally become a complete reality. Visit their website for links to the film on iTunes and Amazon, or catch it on one of your other favorite platforms. One Hour Outcall is a great example of getting a lot out of a little. It proves you don't need a big crew (or even a small crew) and a truck-full of gear to get professional results. And it demonstrates how writing and acting (and editing) can win the day, when there isn't money for visual or practical effects, stunts or movie stars.
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| | | | | REMINDER: No Budget Confidential This Thursday With Will Dennis
Don't forget this Thursday we'll be talking to Will Dennis about his hilarious $40k romantic comedy Vanilla. You can watch Vanilla for free on Amazon Prime right now and then join us with all your questions. Will put his tech job on the shelf and literally learned filmmaking on his own, before setting off to write, direct, produce and star in Vanilla. We'll talk about what he did to prepare for the journey, how he designed a movie to make for practically no money, the tiny team he put together to shoot it, and the success he's had since finishing it.
No Budget Film School presents
NO BUDGET CONFIDENTIAL - EPISODE 5
Will Dennis Discuss Vanilla
Thursday, September 17, 2020 • 5pm PT (8pm ET)
Free - Live Via Zoom
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| | | | Film Fatales Offering Regular Industry Webinars
Film Fatales, the non-profit organization that advocates for parity in the film industry and supports an inclusive community of over a thousand women and non-binary feature film and television directors nationwide, is offering regular programs throughout the year--most of them for free or by donation--that you may find valuable.
Coming up this Friday at 2pm PDT, for instance, is a panel discussion with episodic television creators and showrunners Alexandra Cunningham (Dirty John), Kitao Sakurai (The Eric Andre Show), and Shoshannah Stern (This Close). Moderated by Film Fatales member Marie Jamora (Family Style). This panel will be an open conversation with episodic television creators to discuss how they are pushing boundaries and conventions in the stories that they choose to tell. Visit their Eventbrite page to register for this event, and visit their website to see all the other events and programs they've got going on.
Film Fatales raises the visibility of marginalized directors and increases the talent pool for industry organizations, programmers and production companies looking to work with more underrepresented voices. By expanding the landscape of storytelling, Film Fatales continues to bring exciting new films to the screen. |
| | | Don't Miss NYWIFT's Free Interview with Julie Taymor
New York Women In Film & TV is also offering regular industry events and programs, including their NYWIFT Talks, a free weekly webinar series designed to bring updated news and vital information about the impact of COVID-19 on the media and entertainment industry. Industry professionals discuss what you need to know about theatrical releases, digital advances, virtual tools, festival opportunities, production updates and more.
This Friday at 12:30pm EDT they're speaking with legendary director Julie Taymor about her upcoming virtual release of The Glorias, which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. A nontraditional biopic, The Glorias is based on Steinem’s own memoir My Life on the Road and traces her influential journey to prominence—from her time in India as a young woman, to the founding of Ms. magazine in New York, to her role in the rise of the women’s rights movement in the 1960s, to the historic 1977 National Women’s Conference and beyond. It stars Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Lulu Wilson, Ryan Keira Armstrong, and others.
Visit the NYWIFT website to register for this webinar and to view other upcoming events. |
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