Mark Duplass’ SXSW 2015 Keynote

mark duplass sxsw keynote

I really like mumblecore film (i.e. microbudget, no-budget film). If you go the archives from years past, you can see I’ve done some film reviews, usually of independent films. Of the independent films I watch, Mark Duplass is a stand out I like. He’s gotten sorta huge in the past few years. Currently he has a TV show he writes and produces on FX called The League, HBO show Togetherness that he writes and produces, and has a guest-starring role on Fox’s The Mindy Project, all while still managing to have a movie career outside of all of those other projects. Busy guy!

He wasn’t always this way.

He used to be just like the rest of us: working a day job, living in a crappy apartment in South Austin, TX, and wanting to have a career as a filmmaker but having no connections to the industry. This wasn’t the typical tale of some twenty-something guy who passionately wrote a screenplay, happened to know someone who worked in the Warner Brothers mail room, and the script ended up at the studio heads who loved it and immediately produced it. That usually only happens in lofty dreams/hollywood movies.

Duplass didn’t know anyone who worked in the mail room at a studio. He didn’t know anyone in connection with Hollywood film, for that matter. He just knew he wanted to be a filmmaker. So set out to do that by making a no-budget short film with his brother, Jay Duplass, that cost them only $3 bucks. According to him the film was poorly shot and not that good. Despite the production quality, the taste and vision was there.

He worked at his day job, diligently saving money, and continued to make short films almost every weekend. He and his brother started to build a community of people they collaborated with, acted with, wrote with, and edited with.

Big piece of advice? Don’t go to film school. He says to minor in film and major in something that can get you a good paying job (since you’ll need to save money). When a guy in the audience asked a question about if he should go even go to college and film school, Duplass told him to think hard about it and maybe even skip college due to how expensive it is.

Duplass had some incredibly great, fresh, advice on up and coming filmmakers trying to break into the industry further. He talked about his experiences going from a guy having no connections to honing in on his craft, building a community, and moving up in the industry. There were eight tips he touched on.

1. The $3 Short Film

When you’re just starting out, find out the resources and locations you can work with and build the short film around that. Duplass said he and his brother spent $65,000 on a film called “Vince Del Rio”, it was their first film and it turned out horribly bad and him and his brother got depressed and almost gave up. They didn’t. They persevered and made another low/no-budget film and submitted it to a bunch of festivals.

“It doesn’t matter what your film looks like as long as it has a distinct quality and unique aspect to it”

2. Make a Feature for Under $1,000

Again, figure out all the resources, locations, and people that can help you and make a super low-budget film. Go make the movie on your own, with your own team.

3. Show Your Movie to Notable Stars

Even better, notable stars who are frustrated by the lack of choice in roles they get. Let them see your $1,000 movie at a festival and tell them you will build a movie character based on what they want. A lot of them won’t respond, but some will.

4. Make Another Cheap Movie–But With Notable Star

The cheap movie with the notable star will have the power to get distribution to video on demand services (iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, etc).

5. VOD is the indie film’s savior

“This is where I think VOD is an amazing thing to have for independent film” Duplass says

The cheap movie made with notable star will get some attention on VOD, unlike it would if it played in just a few theaters, and agents and other people will start to notice you.

6. Next Stop: TV

At the beginning of the keynote, Duplass mentioned how much of middle class film is dead. There aren’t that many $5 million to $10 million dollar budget films that are produced unless they have a notable star in them. TV is the replacement. TV is the new age medium indie filmmakers can go to.

You pitch a show to a network, it will probably get denied, and so you independently produce a few episodes of the show and sell it to a network looking for fresh, inexpensive programming.

7. Raise Your Friends and Help Them Out

Now that you are in a better place, help out your lower level friends produce their projects. All about building a community of people.

8. Crossroads

People will be offering you directing, writing, and producing jobs. They will be tempting to take. A lot of the offers will fall through. It’s okay though. You have built yourself up. You won’t be rich but you’ll have a solid reputation, people will see you as a filmmaker. You will be able to show your kids your movies and say that was 100% no compromise, your movie. Some studio doesn’t own it, you do.

 

The speech ends at around the 25:00 minute mark. The floor is open for questions. One that stood out was about moving to Los Angeles. A person wondered about if, when they should move. Duplass answered by saying a filmmaker should keep making films where they are, where they know lots of people that can help them (with locations, props, crew,etc) and can get to know themselves. A filmmaker just starting out can’t do that kind of thing in LA.

Two pieces of great advice (don’t move to LA until you find your style/voice and don’t major in film) and eight tips on success in the film industry.

Watch the keynote for yourself. It’s a great viewing with lots of original and fresh bits of advice and anecdotes.

Stop acting polished

UJO0jYLtRte4qpyA37Xu_9X6A7388 (1) Your workspace isn’t that clean,

You don’t dress like that all the time.

You can’t possibly drink Starbucks everyday.

Sound familiar? Well anyone who takes the daily scroll through social media might know what I’m talking about. People who act like their lives are put together and stunning. Instagram is a prime example. Nearly all of a person’s photos are clean and polished with good contrast, lighting, posture, and overall picture quality.

Really? Is that how your life is?

I thought I was crazy for being the only one thinking this until one of my friends brought it up as well. She was scrolling through Instagram and made a scrunchy face as she saw some particular users post the same type of photos over and over. It may involve the same background, object, selfie, and so forth.

Is it wrong or bad they’re doing this? No. The problem is that it doesn’t let them be as authentic to their users as they could be. The point of this post is not to bully and point a finger at people, the point is to be authentic, be yourself.

Just because other bloggers, entrepreneurs, working professionals, etc. post coffee pictures doesn’t mean you have to. Just because they post about pictures of their boots and how ready for the fall season doesn’t mean you have to.

Be yourself, share what’s going on in your life, not what you think you should be posting.

If you have a hobby, share it. If there is some quirky anecdote you want to share, share it.

Post and share on social media that showcases you, not content and/or an image you think you should have because of others.

 Polished image away

 your authentic self shines now

show you, show true, always

#thehaikuproject

Me (2nd from left) coding this past year on my first site!
Me (2nd from left) coding this past year on my first site!

Photo by: Joshua Earle

Evolution of the Romantic Comedy

“Boring”, “Overdone” and “haven’t I already seen this?” are some of the common comments that sit below a YouTube Trailer for an upcoming romantic comedy. People are getting tired of the predictable genre and are moving on from it to cinematic romance movies.

Romantic comedies used to be viewed in a positive way for most. They were easy to follow, had a predictable but nice ending and made you feel a mushy gushy warm feeling inside. For the most part, women would go in attendance to these types of films. Now it seems as though no one wants to see the dying genre anymore.

The 2012 film What to Expect When Your Expecting, even with a star studded cast, made only $41 million domestically against a budget of $40 million. The Jason Segel and Emily Blunt romantic couple comedy The Five Year Engagement grossed $27 million domestically against a budget of $30 million.

Studios seemed to try to take on a different approach this year with the guy-centric romantic comedies That Awkward Moment and Cavemen. That Awkward Moment seemed more like That Awkward Movie to most viewers due to its lack of a clear theme. The movie’s success seems to be attributed mainly due to the star power of its leading stars Zac Efron, Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan rather than any compliments to the actual movie.

The cinematic romance and romantic dramedy have faired well recently. 2013 featured the films Enough Said, The Spectacular Now, Before Midnight, Drinking Buddies, and many others. Enough Said and Before Midnight  went on to gross more than $25 million each.

zzzzzzzz

Movie goers seem to divert from the clique plots and happy endings of rom-coms in favor of the realistic portrayals of romance in the films like Enough Said, Before Midnight and others. The films feature characteristics like natural lighting, complex conflicts, *real looking* people and natural dialogue (particularly in the case of Drinking Buddies which had largely improvised dialogue).

So in the times of decreasing box office returns, studios should look into romance films that people want: ones that show there isn’t always a happy ending to relationships…and that’s okay.

 

 

SXSW: Day 3 Recap

Things were planned for the day of Sunday March 9th: Mindy Kaling’s panel, Brooklyn-Nine-Nine and the Fifty Shades of Creativity panel. Getting to the convention center around 8:10am, I thought I would get to the Mindy Kaling event early (and get a front row seat!). One problem: forgotten badge.

A 1.5 hour round trip bus excursion later and I had my badge. First up was the panel Running the Show: TV’s Newest Queen of Comedy. Mindy Kaling, Ike Barinholtz and Adam Pally from Fox’s The Mindy Project were in attendance. The discussions included the changing nature of the television landscape. Streaming services like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu changing the way people watch TV. It was discussed how cable and network shows differ, process of writing an episode and the increasing diversity of people in TV.

I toted a good ol’ point and shoot camera to all of my events for the day. I’ve gotten a few looks from people, suprised that I have an actual camera and not just an iPhone with a camera app. One of my professors even called me out on it the other day. This is how to conversation went:

“So I noticed you have an actual point and shoot camera. “-Professor

“Yeah…”-Me

“…”-Professor

My Apple-fan professor who likes content
My Apple-fan professor who likes content

As you can tell the conversation went very well! Anyways, the Mindy Kaling panel went great. Despite the funny looks I got with my camera, it took some great pictures with it’s 20x optical zoom.

I prefer my Canon SX260 zoom over some iPhone 5s
I prefer my Canon SX260 zoom over some iPhone 5s

Kaling was sitting at a lounge after the panel to do an interview. People hovered around closely. Many tweets from Twitter had similar message: “Breathing the same air as Kaling/In same room as Kaling” with a boatload of exclamation points afterwards.

Since I sat at the back of the crowd, when it was time for autographs, I got to be one of the first in line! I got to take a picture with one of my TV writing role models.

I asked if Matt Damon or Ben Affleck ever contacted about her play "Matt and Ben." She said no.
I asked if Matt Damon or Ben Affleck ever contacted about her play “Matt and Ben.” She said no.

I was content after this picture. I could die right at that second and be happy. You know what I mean? After the picture was taken I thought about going to a data journalism presentation by a Texas State alumna. For some reason I felt this urge to stay. I had no idea why but decided to go with it. I sat down outside of the lounge and started doing some work on my laptop.Actors Melissa Fumero and Stephanie Beatriz from Fox’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine would be there at 3pm so I stayed. I’m so glad I did.

“Can I plug in next to you?”

A woman stood next to me as I was sitting against the wall with my laptop plugged in.

“Sure” I agreed.

She plugged her phone in and turned and asked what was going on in the streaming lounge. I told her about the people from Fox’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine doing an interview there. She talked about how her husband liked the show. When asking where she was from, she said Chicago. I told her I maybe wanted to move to Chicago after my graduation in December 2014. She asked about what my college major was and what kind of work I wanted to do. This is where things got weird and cool at the same time.

I pulled up my about/portfolio website that I had been making for my Web Design and Publishing class. I showed her my Twitter bootstrap site covering mumblecore film.

“Oh, one of my friends does that” she said.

“Cool. Who is he?” I asked.

“Joe Swanberg.”

My body simultaneously went numb and filled with excitement at the same time. I had Joe Swanberg featured on my mumblecore website (located here). Only seeing two of his movies, Joe Swanberg was already one of my favorite directors. The woman was suprised that I knew who he was and even more suprised that I liked him as a director so much.

The next 10 minutes I got to talk with her about her high school days with Joe. The early films he did. The projects he has going on now. It was great. It was more than great. It was perfect. She was really happy that I coached her into taking a photo and getting an autograph from the Brooklyn Nine-Nine actresses.

“My husband’s going to love this!” she said.

By the end of the day I was pretty happy. Getting to meet Mindy Kaling, Stephanie Beatriz, Melissa Fumero, and a longtime friend of one of my favorite directors? Sunday, March 9, 2014 will go down in my personal history. South by Southwest is freaking awesome!

Brooklyn Nine Nine
Talking with Melissa Fumero and Stephanie Beatriz about Seth Meyers wanting to guest star on Brooklyn Nine-Nine