In preparation for a screening at the Glasgow Film Festival which kicked off last weekend and a DVD release from Third Window Films in March, Confessions of a Dog’s director Gen Takahashi joined me to discuss his epic drama of police corruption in Japan, an eye-opening disclosure of the hidden infrastructures within Japanese society. We discusse his career as an independent producer-writer-director and the process of finding international distribution for 3 hour+ scathing observation of Japan.

I’m not too bothered about whether my film is Japanese or non-Japanese, I don’t particularly aim for a non-Japanese style […] I myself don’t really fit into Japanese society so maybe that’s just the natural outcome.

Director Neil LaBute’s career has spanned numerous theatre and feature film productions, but for his latest project, LaBute collaborated with the team behind new PS3 game Heavy Rain, to create a documentary where famous ‘witnesses’ answered the question How Far would You Go…? to save someone you loved.

You can watch How Far Would You Go…? on the Heavy Rain site.

This week I’m taking a break from the regular Directors Notes episodes to talk to journalist, blogger and author Scott Kirsner about his book Fans, Friends & Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age. The book discusses the tools and techniques used by media producers across a variety of fields, to build dedicated audiences around their work and convert that engagement into revenue streams which can overtime support a creative career.

In addition to the 35-page preview edition of Fans, Friends & Followers available on the site, Scott has generously provided an extra filmmaker interview for the DN audience to check out below.

Showlinks
Fans, Friends & Followers
CinemaTech
Powertools
Free – Chris Anderson
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
Steal this Film

Timo Vuorensola
Science Fiction Director & Collaboration Pioneer

Throughout the 1990s, a group of friends in Finland turned out a series of animated and live action Star Trek parodies under the banner Star Wreck. The sixth installment, Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, was the first to be a full-length feature, and the first to come up with a new approach to collaboration that invited people across the Internet to contribute 3-D models, digital environments, acting performances, and even the film’s score. Much of the production took place in a converted two-room apartment, the kitchen of which had been converted into a render farm. The total budget, not including sponsored and in-kind goods and services, was about $20,000.

Timo Vuorensola was the director, shepherding the project along over seven years. He’s now directing another collaboratively-produced project, Iron Sky, about a group of Nazis who escaped to the moon during World War II and are about to return to earth. Vuorensola also helped launch the site Wreck A Movie, which offers a platform for other filmmakers to invite their audiences to get involved.

The Internet is a collection of communities. You need to create a community around your film. That will not happen if you keep things to yourself. You need to open yourself up, show your face, show your production, let people get inside. People do a lot of things when they get enthusiastic about something. They help the production, give money, or run into the streets and scream about your production. You need to allow people to do that. It’s an enormous viral force.

I don’t know if it was luck or if we did something right, but we were able to create a pretty big community around Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, and another one is building up around our current project, Iron Sky.

People want to see who is behind the product. They want to identify with you.

We started to work on Star Wreck in 1998. We went around to different forums and posted about it, so people knew what we were doing. Some of that was on a Star Trek board. We’d say, “We’re gonna go out and make this film. Does anybody want to help me?” At first, no one does. But they do want to see where it goes.

Over time, if you do some things on your own that really show quality, and show who you are, people want to feel helpful. They sense that there is one guy behind this, and he needs our help.

When a big film enters a community, no one believes they’re actually going to need help.

We had made five Star Wreck movies by ourselves. With the sixth, we had a script, and we said, “OK, we’re going to need ten or twenty people on the Internet to read it and comment on it, and send ideas.”

After we had the script right, we realized we’d need a big fleet of spacecraft. None of us were able to do modeling; we could do animation, but not modeling. We started to go around the Internet looking for Web sites that had to do with 3-D modeling, and we said, “We’re working on this cool film. Would you like to help us?”

A lot of people already had models of spacecraft that they wanted to make better.

We found actors on the Internet, too. But we said, “We need you to come to Finland for the shoot.” People came from Japan, from Canada, from the States, from Norway. We found the musician who did the whole score on the Internet. He was from Finland, but we never met in person while we were working. He just dropped us his new music, and we went back and forth on instant messenger with changes.

In 2005, when the film came out, people started to do their own fan-subtitled versions. It was a Finnish language film with English subtitles when we released it. But it got translated into about thirty different languages.

Star Wreck was made by a core group of five people, but over 300 people are credited in the end credits, and there was a larger community of 3000 who were involved in some way. They evangelized Star Wreck in whatever channels they could. They contacted local press. They took the film under their wings

We decided not to create a media kit. We should have done one. We would’ve gotten better media coverage.

The total amount of money we spent was around 15,000 Euros. And we made that money back, ten or twenty times over.

We had a DVD version we were selling, and we sold distribution rights to television. It was shown on TV in Finland, Japan, Italy, and Belgium, along with some other places. It had a big merchandising element, with t-shirts and caps. We printed them ourselves. It cost about two Euros per shirt, and we sold them for twenty Euros.

The bulk of the money came from us selling the DVD ourselves. We also did a distribution deal with Universal Pictures for retail sales of the DVD in Scandinavia, which came out a year-and-a-half after the original release. But we made more money selling it ourselves.

I should mention that it was initially released for free on the Internet, in October 2005, as a Torrent file and as a direct download. Later, we released it on YouTube and Google Video. Selling DVDs despite the free version is a funny thing, but people do it anyway. I think you can double your income if you give something away for free. I don’t believe in piracy. It’s just people using the available technology.

You need to offer different monetization options for different customers. Some people watch it on the Web for twenty minutes and then want to buy the DVD. Some people watch the whole film on BitTorrent, but then want to support us by buying merchandise. We want to let you give us money in any possible way.

With Iron Sky, we’re selling 2000 of what we call “war bonds,” which cost 50 Euros. You get a DVD of the teaser trailer, and a little booklet about the film, and a certificate that says you participated in the fight against space Nazis. They’re selling OK, but it’s not a way to finance the whole film. Just a way for people to support us.

This new film is even more collaborative than Star Wreck. We have a couple thousand active people, and the film will be out in 2010. We’re trying to get the story and the facts behind it straight, and get the graphical look working. We’re relying on the community for a lot of that.

This is my day job now, every day since early in 2006. I used to work in telemarketing before that.

Those who will survive all of these big changes in the filmmaking industry are those who know how to activate the community, in production, in distribution, in PR, in everything. It’s a force that not everyone knows how to gather.

Sometimes when I get really lucky, a director whose work we’ve featured will stick around once the interview dust has settled and become a firm friend who I can have extended film discussions with and tap up for viewing suggestions. Thankfully since his first appearance on DN 028 Kurtis Hough has fallen into that category, so it’s pleasure to welcome him back for an extra special episode kicking off our 100th consecutive week of podcasting to discuss his latest project Storm.

Showlinks
KH Studios
Stumble Then Rise on Some Awkward Morning
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Baraka
Microcosmos
Galapagos
The Blue Planet
Winged Migration
Godfrey Reggio
Koyaanisqatsi
Philip Glass
Grave of the Fireflies

godspeed you black emperor – storm from Kurtis Hough on Vimeo.

There’s so much great work out there that even if I spent the full 24 hours a day on Directors Notes I’d still only be scratching the surface, which is why I’m so pleased that the mighty Wholphin DVD magazine exists to bring the best of it straight into our homes every quarter. I managed to hide the envy in my voice long enough to have a chat with creator and man at the helm Brent Hoff.

Showlinks
Wholphin
David O. Russell
Todd Solondz
True/False Film Fest
SXSW
Sundance Film Festival
Specialten
The Power of Nightmares
Pangea Day
Please Vote For Me

When I’m not working on Directors Notes you can normally find me trying to convince anyone and everyone that they really need a film podcast. CINECITY ’07 actually listened and set me loose with a mic and contact details for some of their directors, which is how I got to spend the morning in Grant Gee’s kitchen to discuss his feature documentary Joy Division, which finally got its UK release yesterday and is as good an excuse as any for posting the interview here.

Grant Gee is well know for his work on music promos as a director, cinematographer and producer and perhaps most recognised for his 1998 Radiohead tour documentary, Meeting People Is Easy. His new project is an exploration of the iconic band Joy Division and the city of Manchester which itself had a role in shaping their unique sound.

Showlinks
Grant Gee
Joy Division
Meeting People Is Easy
CINECITY
Bolex
Warren Sonbert
Idioteque – Radiohead
Fried My Little Brains – The Kills
Nature Boy – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Control
Touching from a Distance
Jon Savage
Apple Final Cut Pro
Northwest Film Archive
Factory Records
Sheffield Doc/Fest
The Weinstein Company
The Works
Jim Perrin
Banff Mountain Festival

Alkin Emirali chairs a Q&A with two of the most respected script executives in the UK Dan MacRae and Sarah Golding, who shed some light on the mysterious alchemy of script development and their roles in the process.

Showlinks
Lighthouse
Working Title Films
UK Film Council
Pan’s Labyrinth
Billy Elliot
Mr Bean’s Holiday
Jacques Tati
Shane Meadows
Mike Leigh
Zenith Entertainment Ltd
Inspector Morse

Screen South’s Miranda Robinson chaired a Q&A with Rachel Robey and Alastair Clark, both producers for Nottingham based Wellington Films. Their debut feature London to Brighton, directed by Paul Andrew Williams, won a host of awards during 2006 including Best Achievement in Production at the British Independent Film Awards and was nominated for both British Film Producer of the Year at the London Critics Circle Awards and the Carl Foreman Award at BAFTA.

Showlinks
Lighthouse
London to Brighton
Wellington Films
British Independent Film Awards
London Critics Circle Awards
Carl Foreman Award
Steel Mill Pictures
Royalty
London Film Festival
UK Film Council
BECTU Rates
Equity Rates
Film Council Completion Fund
Cannes Film Festival
21 Grammes
Mike Leigh
Central Junior Television Workshop
Ravenscourt Theatre School
Panavision
Red Road
Edinburgh International Film Festival
Pete Bradshaw’s Guardian Unlimited Review
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Mona Lisa
Long Good Friday
Vertigo Films

A couple of weeks ago, I got to attend the cast and crew screening for Screen South’s 2007 slate of Digital Shorts and crashed the post screening party to find out more about the Digital Shorts experience from the Screen South team and this year’s supported directors.

Showlinks
Screen South
Screen South Winning Films
UK Film Council Digital Shorts
BritDoc
Shooting People
Edinburgh International Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
London Film Festival
BBC New Filmmakers Award
Rushes Soho Shorts Festival
Ten Thousand Pictures of You
Resfest
Future Shorts
Gone
The Road to Guantanamo
National Film and Television School
Exploding Cinema
OMSK
Cannes Short Film Corner
The Script Factory
Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival
Encounters Short Film Festival
Cinema Extreme