NOFF Panels

Today at the New Orleans Film Festival (which is continuing through Thursday), we attended two of the free panels on the schedule.

First- I'd like to say that the fact that this festival has free panels is awesome. I've never been to a film festival that has such great free opportunities for local filmmakers to learn more about what is going on in the industry. I wish we could have attended them all- but it just wasn't in the realm of possibility for us. We attended panels yesterday, too, and I'll try to give an overview/review of those later in the week. But for today, I'll talk about the ones we saw this afternoon.

First up- we saw the panel titled "New Frontiers in Post- Production: Louisiana + Beyond"
The panelists were Bradley Greer of Cineworks, Greg Milneck of Digital FX, Tom Vice of Fotokem, Peter Cioni of Light Iron, Sergio Lopez of Storyville Post, and the moderator was Chris Stelly of Louisiana Entertainment.

Now- as a caveat- I'm not a post-production person- I'm a scriptwriter and a producer (and thus far only of shorts.) My partner's background includes a ton of editing and animation experience, though, so he convinced me to go to the panel. I'm really glad I did, despite my lack of post-prod experience and knowledge.

The panel went over a lot of things- but the gist I got out of it was that Louisiana is in the beginning stages of developing a viable post-production industry here in the state. They really emphasized that Louisiana needs to develop that viable post-production industry for the long term because we need that to survive as a film industry. A few years ago, movies might come to Louisiana to film things, but they'd go home to California to do the post production because that's where the director and DP live and they want to keep things near them and work with people they know and trust. Now, more people are moving to Louisiana or starting their own projects, both in the producer, director and DP groups AND in the editors, motion graphics, and animators groups. So the talent pool is growing at the same time as the pool of those who will choose and use that talent pool is growing.

In terms of big films in Louisiana, this is a really good thing. As far as indie films, it's good too, but for different reasons. Obviously, it's awesome that lots of talent is coming here in terms of post. This gives us- as filmmakers- more of a pool to pull from and a better chance at making our movies the best they can possibly be. It also provides more of an opportunity for freelance, part-time, or full-time work in the field that can both increase local skills and provide income so locals can complete their own projects without worrying about being broke.

The second panel we went to today was From Script to Screen: Funding Your Indie Project The panelists were Will French of Film Production Capital, Andrew Larimer creator of “The Drink Show” web series, Glen Pitre an Independent Filmmaker, Jay Thames a Producer, and Lisa Valencia-Svensson a Producer. The moderator was Carroll Morton who is involved in the Entertainment Industry Development, City of New Orleans.

This panel focused on funding- and the two big take-home messages seemed to be:
1- Be prepared- get all your info together before you start making funding pitches and be organized.
2 – Look into multiple sources of funding- get multiple private investors, grants, crowdsourced funding, etc…just don't put all your eggs in one basket.

The panel talked a little bit about the new crowdsourced funding model, but didn't focus much on that. They talked about figuring out every step of the way who could potentially help with funding and how to get those people on board with your project.

Also mentioned as a source was the model of doing paid projects (commercials, local stuff, etc) and then using some of that money to fund your own personal projects. So- that was my take on the panels we went to today. There were some specifics brought up (in both panels) that deserve further discussion- but I'm going to save those for another post (otherwise this would become one of those horrible long posts that nobody reads til the end).