Category: Opinion

What’s Happening in Indie Financing?

Alex Epstein knows:

crowdfunding book Capture
Get a better look at this book at Amazon.Com

CROWDFUNDING FOR FILMMAKERS
by Alex Epstein

I keep hearing that traditional funding for indie films is getting harder and harder.

I’m not sure it was ever that easy, unless you count the moment right after video stores came in and you could put together almost any cheesy erotic thriller or teenagers-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods horror movie and make a direct-to-video movie. If you read Joe Camp’s book about how he funded BENJI, the sleeper dog movie hit of 1974, he had a lot of trouble getting his movie made, and then more trouble getting it into theaters. read article

Peggy Bechko: Connecting Your Writing With Publishing

Otter

by Peggy Bechko

=&0=& Amazon Kindle   Don’t have a Kindle? Get a free reader for your computer: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311 Self Publishing Manual 2013 Writer’s Market – Kindle Edition

Angry Book Review: The Unoriginal Writer’s Daughter Revisited

Yes, the writer of this review is, well, let’s say “uncharitable” and let it go at that. But we gotta tell you: Where she’s coming from is a golden place. Read and absorb, Young Jedi Writers, for your own sakes:

madmans-daughterby Shana Mlawski

This week, the YA world is abuzz about The Madman’s Daughter, a new piece of historical fiction about the teenage daughter of Dr. Moreau. (Yes, that one.) (Yes, there is a love triangle in it.)

When I first got wind of the title, my mind immediately went back to one of the very first articles I ever wrote for OverthinkingIt.com. (Don’t read it. It’s meh.) In that piece, “The Unoriginal Writer’s Daughter,” I took writers – mainly women writers – to task for continually naming their booksThe Such-and-Such’s Wife and The Such-and-Such’s Daughter. A quick jaunt over to Amazon will show you that this trend is still very much in play today. read article

Invisible Mikey: My Trigger

lifetrigger

by Invisible Mikey

I was reading Zeenat’s post about daily methods for reinforcing your inner upside (http://positiveprovocations.com/2011/02/21/top-9-ways-to-be-positive-and-happy-everyday/).  The first one listed was to Carry a positive Trigger.  She was writing about having a token of something that makes you happy with you at all times.  When you get sidetracked, you can use it to get back in the game of life.  She did not realize that by saying this she reopened a beautiful memory from my early childhood.  I’ve had a positive trigger inside me since I was three!  It’s Trigger himself, the smartest horse in the movies.

Roy Rogers was a former shoe factory worker from Ohio named Leonard Slye.  He reinvented himself and became a beloved singing cowboy in movies and on TV.  In preparation for his first lead role in Under Western Skies (1938),Roy tried out several handsome horses the studio provided.  He was carried along smoothly and rapidly by a six year old palomino named Golden Cloud , but Roy was also impressed at how intelligent and responsive the horse was.  During the shoot, co-star Smiley Burnette remarked that the horse was so quick Roy ought to call him “Trigger”.  And quick he was, a fast learner and a fast runner.  The name stuck. read article

The Nuclear Option: Batman, Iron Man, and Attitudes Toward Power

There’s nothing like overthinking THE AVENGERS and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES to bring sunshine to our day:

Nuclear_Option_by_bloodbather

by Richard Rosenbaum

The summer of 2012 saw the premiere of two major superhero movies: The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises. Of course, both being superhero movies it’s only logical that they would have a certain number of things in common – tropes of the genre that make it what it is instead of, you know, something else. There were plenty of extra-diegetic similarities as well: both were directed and co-written by well-respected auteurs (Joss Whedon and Christopher Nolan respectively), both were the culmination of film series that had led up to these as their climax (in DKR’s case it was the final volume in Nolan’s trilogy that started with 2005’s Batman Begins; with Avengers it was the ultimate assembly of characters and plotlines that had been being pieced together since Iron Man in 2008). read article