This list was compiled by the good folks at Indiewire.  I stare at it and think it must reveal some greater truth.

What does it say about our culture, about what people want to see?  What does it say about the mainstream industry and what they will buy or promote?

Top Grossing Independent Films of the 2000s

1. The Passion of the Christ, 2004 (Newmarket)  $370,274,604
2. My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 2003 (IFC Films)  $241,438,208
3. Juno, 2007 (Fox Searchlight)  $143,395,265
4. Slumdog Millionaire, 2008 (Fox Searchlight)  $141,319,928
5. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000 (Sony Pictures Classics) $128,078,872
6. Traffic, 2000 (USA) $124,115,725
7. Fahrenheit 9/11, 2004 (Lionsgate) $119,194,771
8. Paranormal Activity, 2009 (Paramount)  $107,753,000
9. Brokeback Mountain, 2005 (Focus Features)  $83,043,761
10. March of the Penguins, 2005 (Warner Independent) $77,437,223
11. Coraline, 2009 (Focus Features)  $75,286,229
12. Sideways, 2004 (Fox Searchlight)  $71,503,593
13. Burn After Reading, 2008 (Focus Features)  $60,355,347
14. Little Miss Sunshine, 2006 (Fox Searchlight)  $59,891,098
15. Hero, 2004 (Miramax) $53,710,019
16. Atonement, 2007 (Focus Features) $50,927,067
17. 28 Days Later, 2003 (Fox Searchlight)  $45,064,915
18. Lost In Translation, 2003 (Focus Features)  $44,585,453
19. Napoleon Dynamite, 2004 (Fox Searchlight)  $44,540,956
20. Precious, 2009 (Lionsgate)  $42,004,270

http://trulyfreefilm.hopeforfilm.com/2010/08/what-do-the-top-grossing-films-of-2000s-reveal.html

David Mamet Interview Night Talk

David Mamet summarizes his view on his craft in a very simple statement.

“The whole idea of drama is three things:

And for the avoidance of doubt:

“There’s no such thing as character development. All there is, is action”

He also talks about the Hero’s Journey and how each story is really the same Hero myth. A fascinating piece.

Enjoy!

http://thestorydepartment.com/video-david-mamet/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+com%2FkMPH+%28The+Story+Department+-+Test%29

LONDON — Sales of new DVDs in Blighty rose by 15.7% in July compared with the same month last year.

Three million units of recently released DVDs — those released in the past three months — were sold in July, with Universal’s “Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang” taking the top spot with almost 400,000 units sold. Year to date volumes of new release DVDs were up 2.5%.

“Avatar” was the top-selling title January through June, followed by “The Twilight Saga — New Moon” and “The Hurtlocker.”

As the school holidays began, demand for kids’ fare rose 14.5% compared with a year ago, led by “Kung Fu Panda — Secrets of the Furious,” which sold 270,000 units in July. “Up” is the biggest-selling children’s title of the year.

Blu-ray disc sales have continued to rocket and are 80% up to the end of July compared to the same period last year at 6.2 million units.
Read more: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118022782.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2564&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+variety%2Fnews%2Ffilm+%28Variety+-+Film+News%29#ixzz0wDOLFZ66
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My first decision as culture secretary was to abolish ministerial cars, saving £250,000 a year. I wanted to send a signal that the money we spend on culture should go to culture, not ministerial pay or privileges.

It is in that context that last week I announced the abolition of the UK Film Council and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. My department is responsible for an extraordinary 55 quangos, the vast majority with highly paid bosses and costly bureaucracy. But if we are going to face budget cuts I have a duty to ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent where it gets the most bang for its buck. It is simply not acceptable in these times to fund an organisation like the UK Film Council, where no fewer than eight of the top executives are paid more than £100,000.

Stopping money being spent on a film quango is not the same as stopping money being spent on film. In fact my second decision actually increased the amount of money going into film when I restored the lottery to its original four pillars, increasing the share going to arts (including film) to 20%. This is expected to increase lottery funding for film by around £3m a year.

Britain is the world’s third-biggest film market, with box office receipts of nearly £1bn last year. We make Hollywood blockbusters – including the two biggest franchises of all, Harry Potter and Bond – as well as creative successes such as Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. Less high profile but equally significant is the incredible skills base we have in our world-class facilities sector which includes visual effects and special effects.

But if the industry is to expand further, we also need to be honest about its failings. Two areas in particular need close attention.

The first is the chronic difficulties associated with film financing. Lew Grade said of Raise the Titanic that it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic. The challenges have not gone away. All too often when British film-makers want to make anything of scale, they end up selling all the intellectual property rights in advance simply to finance production. The result is that when we have a hit, the profits do not go back to the film-maker where they could be used to finance the next production. This is what happened with Slumdog Millionaire, a creative success for Film4 but a financial success for Fox Searchlight.

We welcome all foreign investment, which is why the film tax credit is staying. Worth at least £100m a year this is no small commitment. But a healthy film industry will also have a strong homegrown element. Our independent television production sector has understood the importance of IP retention and has become the largest exporter of TV formats in the world.

The second area we need to be honest about is where taxpayers and lottery money is best spent. That is why we want an open debate about, for example, how we fund films of high artistic worth that are unlikely to make it to general release. How do we ensure the public get to see the films they are paying for?

The other decision I have made is to guarantee the future of the British Film Institute. The role it plays in supporting our cultural heritage and promoting the cultural value of film is crucial. But we want to see them do this more effectively, so are looking to remove some of the red tape around what they do and give them greater operational and artistic freedom.

Support for film through the lottery and tax credits will continue. But it must be right to address the structural challenges it faces and focus resources on supporting frontline film-makers rather than expensive bureaucracy. We should not accept the relative size of the British film industry as a fait accompli. Rather, we must step up our ambitions and make the UK the best country for nurturing and promoting its homegrown creative talent.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/08/film-council-quangos-cuts-jeremy-hunt

The Music Industry & Online Piracy by the Numbers

A worldwide business of over 60 billion dollars per year, the music industry claims to be a huge victim of online piracy. What do the numbers actually say? Find out on our new infographic.

VIEW CHART HERE:

Sales agents are finding it increasingly difficult to close pre-sales, as cash-strapped buyers practice a wait-and-see policy.

by Mike Goodridge – SCREEN DAILY

A sales agent friend was telling me this week about a situation in which a film’s producer believed his film – as yet unfinished – to be so good that he wanted the agent to cancel a key pre-sale deal. It was worth taking the risk, he thought, to get a better deal once the film was finished.

The sales agent in question naturally balked. In a market where any pre-sale is a rare occurrence that has the power to trigger other sales or at least interest, the notion of jettisoning an existing deal on the offchance that a better deal could be completed later was lunacy.

Even if the footage looks promising, buyers these days can afford to wait, or rather they can’t afford to take the risk like they used to. It’s a time when any risk is minimized on both sides. Buyers and sellers both have never been more cautious.

It’s a bizarre lull in traditional behaviour because the sales game is essentially one of chance and calculated risk. Entertainment banker Adrian Scrope used to say that before a film was made, you were selling “the sizzle and not the steak.” Who knows what the end product will look like, but these elements – script, stars, director, production values, track records, footage – are all the sizzle that sets buyers’ pulses racing.

But these days, buyers are less manipulable and fully aware that a skillfully cut promo with rousing temp score and action shots does not necessarily mean the film will deliver.

Screen finally reviewed Menno Meyjes’ Manolete this week after it opened in Paris. The 2007 production from Spain’s Lolafilms features a pair of Oscar winners — Adrien Brody and Penelope Cruz, although, when it was shot, Cruz was only just emerging from the glow of Volver which would launch her career into the stratosphere. It was then locked in a post-production battle between producer and director which would keep it off screens until its half-hearted release now.

But when it was being sold – by Handmade – it was one of the most intriguing projects on the market and was widely pre-bought by key distributors on the basis of its two sexy stars.

It was also announced this week that Taylor Hackford’s latest filmLove Ranch starring his wife and Oscar-crowned star Helen Mirren had emerged from the legal quagmire that is David Bergstein and Capitol Films. Worldwide rights have been picked up by E1 Entertainment and Hackford and Mirren will be in Cannes to show footage of the film, which shot in 2008. Hackford’s last film Raywas a worldwide hit and a best picture Oscar nominee.

Still locked up in the Capitol mess are Black Water Transit, Tony Kaye’s long awaited follow up to American History X starring Karl Urban and Laurence Fishburne, and the unfinished David O Russell comedy Nailed which stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Biel.

All of course had their moment in the sun, before they were made, as buyers were wooed with pitches of how marketable they would be when finished.

For a distributor who has chosen to allot large chunks of acquisition budget to expensive propositions like these, the worst case scenario is empty slots and films which only emerge years later without heat and not much to market. Add to that the growing problem of films bought with the guarantee of a certain scale of US release that end up shunted to DVD or TV when the distributor goes out of business and it’s no surprise that many buyers are practicing a wait-and-see policy.

Which brings me back to pre-sales today. With Cannes just a month away, the market is waiting to see what prices independent distributors will willing to pay for that all-important “sizzle”.

Pre-sales still mark a film out as special. Another sales agent told me this week that if a film is pre-sellable to a distributor, it means it’s eventually pre-sellable to an audience.

http://www.screendaily.com/5012570.article

While it may at first appear hugely complex, 3D need not be less straightforward, or vastly more expensive than conventional production. Adrian Pennington of Broadcast Magazine highlights speaks with Andy Shelley and gives some top tips

1) 3D or 2D?

Does the project really benefit from being 3D? Just because the technology is available, it doesn’t mean it is applicable to all ideas.

2) Understand the basics

“A production manager needs to understand the basics of 3D and therefore the parameters that will work,” says Andy Shelley, head of development at On Sight. “Before deciding on kit, they need to consider what technology will allow them to do that they couldn’t do before, and what key shots they have used in the past that won’t work so well.” Thorough pre-planning is essential. Involve 3D specialists up front and keep them central to the production throughout its lifecycle.

3) Check the costs

Some broadcasters would have you believe that you can bring in 3D for 5-30% more than HD. Figures up to 50% are currently more common, while natural history 3D can run to many times the rate of 2D HD. Cutting corners by hiring lower quality kit could end up costing much more to fix in post-production. Rig rental costs begin at £500 a day, rising to £2000 at the higher end. Remember to factor in dual cameras, 3D monitors and recording kit.

4) Find 3D specialists

From camera operator to post house, find people who can substantiate their claims to 3D experience. “Inexperience of particular technology can slow you down on set,” says Shelley. Because there are so few around, trained stereographers can command £600-£1000 a day. Directors of photography are ideally placed to learn stereography and in future a separate DP and stereographer may not be necessary. Ensure you have a clear understanding of what you are asking the 3D specialist to deliver. If the brief is confused, a lot of time will be wasted in planning, while the prices quoted will vary wildly.

5) Depth budget

Core to the brief is the depth script, which represents a detailed storyboard of what effects the director, in tandem with the stereographer, wants to achieve with the extra dimension.

6) Active vs passive

Acquisition equipment can be configured in a variety of ways. Do you want side-by-side or beam-splitter? Active or passive rigs? For live action, or any dynamic shots moving from wide angle to close-up, active rigs are a must. They allow corrective adjustments to the lenses to be made accurately and on the fly. Passive rigs enable a different type of shooting but the convergence will have to be manipulated in post.

7) Don’t fix it in post

Corrections made in post on a 2D shoot are multiplied in 3D and some may even be impossible, requiring a reshoot. Nailing 3D accurately at the point of acquisition will make the single biggest impact on whether your production remains on budget.

8) 2D to 3D conversion

There are several ways to achieve 2D to 3D conversion. Rotoscoping frame by frame delivers the best quality but can cost up to £100,000 a minute. Software processing tools just emerging on the market can automate the job – but the results can be disappointing. The key question is: what do you expect and what is your budget?

9) Shooting 3D and 2D

Most commissions will be for a 3D version of a 2D HD shoot. Posting 3D can often mean that the 2D version is free – unless a separate editorial cut is needed. An international market for 3D content is opening up and Blu-ray 3D means DVDs are another possible sales route.

10) Less is more

Slower, wider, longer shots will give more desirable results. One plus for live events is that fewer camera positions are required. In-your-face shots need careful consideration to avoid eye strain.

This article taken from the Broadcast Supplement ’3DTV – What you need to know about Television’s Technology Revolution’ March 2010

The UK private film funds | In Focus | Screen.

Aegis Film Fund to invest $50m in film productions | News | Screen.

Aegis Film Fund (Aegis), a newly launched debt fund in the UK, intends to invest up to $50 million in films, with a focus on high budget productions.

The fund will invest in film and media content through short to medium term loans and debt, including discounting of government tax credits and pre-sales contracts, basic gap funding and secured bridge financing.