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Truly Free Film

Pop Culture Called For Revolution In 2014

"If you can't break eggs to make an omelette, break the plate."
“If you can’t break eggs to make an omelette, break the plate.”

We love to bring down oppressive regimes — at least in our films. What does this say about our ability to recognize our own situation regarding our desire for greater freedoms? Are we tapping our desire for change with the stories we tell? Are our artists as free to explore this desire for change as we think? Do they have to take the quiet road when walking that talk? If they are somehow oppressed, how and where is the oppression manifest? What can we learn by examining the work we made, distributed, and consumed this year?

In other words, if art is partially about showing us all that we can aspire to as individuals, communities, and a planet, what are our films telling us about where we should be headed this coming year?

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Truly Free Film

Understanding Hollywood’s Current Film Business

As a producer, not only do you need to understand the business of film, you inevitably have to explain it to your investors.

Your investment in

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Truly Free Film

Nobody Knows Anything #6: Principles of Strategy

By Charles Peirce 

Nobody6-300Strategy is a great personal passion, but something I find few people have an adequate grasp of. While the basic assumption seems to be that advice of all kinds is inherently strategic and of value, it is often anything but. Any given suggestion or piece of advice is only worthwhile inasmuch as it allows the attaining of a goal — without knowing that goal and measuring the success of attempts to attain it, you are not operating strategically: you are merely using tactics of unknown value.

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Truly Free Film

Nobody Knows Anything #3: What Makes A Film Successful?

By Charles Peirce  

Nobody3-300There’s a certain watercooler betting-pool mentality that accompanies the box office results of movies, as though their success were completely encapsulated in a single opening weekend’s results. This despite the fact that everybody knows Hollywood accounting is particularly slippery, that budgets never reveal the accompanying marketing costs of films, that foreign market revenue is increasingly important to the success of many films, and that ancillarly sales can be a primary rather than secondary revenue stream. Nonetheless, we seem to equate box office numbers with whether a film worked, whether it’s worth anyone’s time, and whether it’s going to ruin somebody’s career or save it.

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Truly Free Film

They Found A Way To Kill Indie… But….

Was it for Independence Day specifically that Hollywood wanted to find a way to kill indie? Or is it just a symptom of a greater dis-ease?

Hollywood once was a city of dreams, but they have been making a different bed for some time now — and everyone knows it is draped in spreadsheets.  Yet, as evidenced by some recent statements, they too can still dream, and sometimes even of slaying the beast and recognizing what they really want.

Conspiracies are such a pleasure, because

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Let's Make Better Films

Brainstorming A Good Idea With A Couple Of Chums

” in 1978, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and the screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan worked through an idea…”

If you weren’t in the room, here’s your chance to read how it was done.

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Truly Free Film

Mandatory Viewing: David Poland’s State Of The Union

David Poland’s has long been on a mission to demystify the film business for the rest of us, and he does a great job at it. His columns frequently are filled with crucial nuggets of knowledge. Now he’s done a 30 part series on the State Of The Union (of the film biz). If the rest is as as good as episode one with Bill Mechanic, all of you will soon have a much better handle on the business. Thanks David!

http://moviecitynews.com/views/dp30/2009/billmechanic.html