I had a blast last weekend at the Colony Film Festival in Marietta. Saw some great movies, met some inspiring filmmakers, and just chilled out a lot. Without planning it deliberately, it seems every year I make a long drive in Ohio in October and see the amazing leaves changing colors. Now that I'm back to work, the list of things to get done seems somewhat more achievable.
Framelines trucks along. We're shooting 3 roundtables and 2 featured filmmakers in an attempt to wrap up the first season of 13 episodes. I still need to find another featured filmmaker to complete the set. These are for people with a body of work and a distinctive style. The roundtables will be interesting because I'm trying to populate them with people I don't know or at least don't know well at all.
Because of the psychology of the Internet Age, I'm finding uses for outtakes and extra bits we have shot to create more content either exclusive for online or to add to the cable show CLIP FRAMES. I have found that people like a consistent and steady stream of material to be a key to retaining online audiences. Both leftover from the television era of having a show once a week, as well as the plethora of content inundating people on the Internets.
The Framelines Roundtables tend to be anywhere from 45 minutes to over an hour each. The run time of the segments tends to be anywhere from 3 minutes to 7 minutes which equates to a lot of good material that never makes it to air. The Roundtables, although generally considered to be the least polished segment of the show, do have incredibly useful information from a variety of people discussing topics. My pattern thus far has been to take 2 segments from the Roundtable for broadcast on Framelines, then come up with another 10-15 minutes of material from the outtakes to form something for the websites and Clip Frames.
For the two 48 Hour Film Project episodes of Framelines, we shot interviews at the drop off. Since we got not only 3 of the team members we followed, but also 3-4 other people too, I decided to make these vignettes on each of them. Giving face time online and on cable TV to these other filmmakers who struggled equally means a lot to me.
Over time, all this material from Framelines and Clip Frames will add up. With 22 episodes of Clip Frames and 13 episodes of Framelines covering material from close to 100 filmmakers from Ohio - combine all that with repeats and airings in 7-8 markets, and the independent film movement will, at the very least, be seen.
