Judy Berman’s article from Flavorwire, “Why is Indie Film Dying While Indie Music Thrives?” has, to say the least, stirred some argument, such as Filmmaker Magazine‘s Scott Macaulay in his response “How Cool is Indie Film?” and all over the Twitterverse.

I don’t think “indie” film is dying at all.  I think it’s being reshaped – the very definition of “indie” is undergoing transformation in that there really is no single definition.  Everyone has their own.   “Indie” film has a bright future, but I think one thing needs to happen before that future can be bright – the abandonment of the term in all creative fields.

For many, “indie” is used as a badge of honor, “I’m an independent artist…” or a crutch, “I can’t get the money because I’m an indie.”  The term “indie” is  utilized and defined in so many ways that it’s lost all meaning.  There’s a stigma to it, there’s a badge of honor.  “Indie” is controversial. “Indie” is better.  “Indie” is worse.  “Indie” is quirky.  “Indie” is hard core.  “Indie” is real.  “Indie” is a stepping stone.  And worst of all – “Indie” is an excuse.

That’s just a small smattering of how “indie” is used across all forms of art, criticism, study, and pop culture (another term that should be abandoned).  There’s no single definition, and that deadens the creative title we creatives work so hard at mastering.

Filmmaker.  Photographer. Comic Book Creator.  Writer.  Musician.  Add “indie” to that and see what connotations arise – both good and bad.

In Michael Chabon’s wonderful book of non-fiction essays, Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands, he writes “I read for entertainment, and I write to entertain.  Period.”  Entertainment is entertainment, and in spite of what we may think, we’re here to entertain, to illuminate, and to please ourselves and hopefully an audience, because unless we do that – there’s no “next project.”

Why do we have to be “indie?”  Can’t we just be filmmakers? Authors? Musicians?  I don’t care about being cool.  I care about being good, always improving, and entertaining.

Last week, I wrote on this site, the wall between audience and creator is gone, and as that wall goes down, “indie” and “studio” or “mass produced” blur together.  People want to be entertained, and we need to be there to do it for them.  Once we stop, then not just “indie” film or “indie” music will die – but entertainment as a whole.

Stop labeling.  Stop excusing.  Make content.  Deliver.  Entertain.  The how and means to which you get there are immaterial (studio, independent funding – oops, there’s another one).  What matters is HOW you entertain.  That’s your voice.

Entertainment is entertainment.  Who cares where it comes from?  Just be sure you’re the one entertaining and that you do so with a voice.  That’s true independence, and the only kind that matters.

And as long as people have a brain and a creative streak, it’s not going anywhere.

And yes.  I’m going to practice what I preach and make a conscious effort to remove the prefices “indie” and “independent” from my Filmmaker credit.  I am what I am.

Tyler Weaver is an independent filmmaker and unrelenting multi-hyphenate, a regular contributor to the pulptone.com website, and is the founder and EIC of Multi-Hyphenate… which you’re reading right now. He’s currently making new things…

Wouldn’t it be easier if the two of us just wrote our movies and filmed them without input from our friends, actors, composers, props people, etc.? Possibly. Maybe it’d be even smoother if one of us wrote the movie and then the other directed it. Less talking, more filming. But then our final product wouldn’t be as rich, and the process, not as fun. We’re more interested in storytelling that is shared.

Since we’re a screenwriting duo, it’s natural that we start with each other. All of our screenplays begin when one of us has a small, creative flash – an image, a concept, a personality with intriguing implications. Once the idea is shared, it enters the world and becomes a dialogue between two. We explore the ideas in depth, create characters, construct scenarios. It is a shared process, dialogic from the outset.

Discussion doesn’t stop once the script is finished. Because we produce our own short films, we get to share and explore the ideas once again – with actors, cinematographers, composers, our friends. It is at this point that the work changes and deepens once more. And the deepening is manifold.

• While making Libidoland, we had many insightful conversations with our lead actress about her experiences as a dominatrix. We learned about both the motivations for doing that kind of work as well as what the clients were into and expected. Most importantly, we talked about the prevalence of different tastes and desires beyond what’s considered “normal,” an issue that lies at the heart of the film.

• While making Sound Sleeper, my sister and I found ourselves laughing until we cried about comical memories from our childhood and comparing them to what our parents remembered. My dad, of course, had no recollection of being the cause of so much nighttime drama.

• While making Snow Bunny, the people who wanted to contribute the most were my nieces who played Mandy and Delilah. Being from a broken home themselves, they immediately understood the tension, the anxiety, and the isolation their characters felt. Both girls brought a lot to their roles – sometimes too much, as my eldest niece sometimes wanted to use the film as a vehicle to vent her anger at her own neglectful parents.

Though these discussions and conversations in the midst of filmmaking are not always whimsical or fun, this is where the true joy of filmmaking lies – in connecting with others and exploring what it means to be human.

The final step, of course, is to find an audience, share our work, and get their thoughts. Although we’ve enjoyed a relatively small audience for our films, an extraordinary amount of discussion has been generated, especially for Snow Bunny and Libidoland. We love that people have a lot of opinions, and we aim in the future to open our world, find a larger audience, and engage with even more people.

So what happens after we get our audience’s feedback? Well, we want to make another movie, of course. Back to the drawing board…

Thanks to Jessica and Julie for joining us today. To find out more about the filmmaking team of King is A Fink visit their website. I also strongly recommend you follow them on Twitter – they’re smart, funny, and understand the art of communication and the tweet.

View their work:

Libidoland

Sound Sleeper

Snow Bunny

Mission X is the story of Grant, a documentary film student who wants to travel to Iraq and document real war.  Grant’s only experience with war is his expertise with his military Xbox game. He meets Ryan a mercenary who agrees to have him document him while he recruits a group of mercenaries for a private mission. Thinking he’ll be able to get up close and personal to a ‘foreign’ battle, Grant discovers the war is right at home.

I asked David if he wouldn’t mind answering a few questions about his film and his distribution process.

I’m going to start with a ‘typical’ question, because I am genuinely curious – how did you get the idea for Mission X?

I have had many ideas for films over the years but up until the last couple of years, I was writing screenplays that were too expensive, out my reach. I decided to come up with a concept, that could be told on a micro budget. Just to get me kick started after a long gap. So the germ came from a practical basis first.

I wanted to keep it in more or less the one location, kind of “Clerks”, “Res Dogs” style. A character story, but at the same time having a non linear set up that would cut away to action, cinematic stuff. I didn’t just want guys talking in a room 90 minutes.

I had no interest in the military at all, but I have always been interested in people’s personal battles, which can be harder to win than any war. So I wanted a story with characters that were fine in war, they survived dangerous missions, but their personal wars were harder to win when they came back to dull suburbia. And that’s why they partly do this mission that is almost suicidal. They trained to live on the edge, not to exist, settle. That can kill ya!

I also wanted to show myself as a filmmaker that could do some thrilling stuff, action, but that’s very hard to do well with no money. I had watched a lot of action Iraq videos, and military body cams, so I thought it would work to bring that type of reality action into the film. It suits the story, and it would be cheap to pull off. I also liked the idea where one minute this young gamer filmmaker is playing military games, next minute he’s in the thick of it on a real mission in his city.

You describe your film as a micro budget, self financed feature film.  Self-financing a film requires extra attention to every line in the budget.  What steps did you take as the producer to ensure the ‘director’ in you didn’t get carried away and spend more than you allocated?

It’s impossible to get carried away when you literally have no money anyway. I started the first day with £30. It was a simple scene with me (I play the Merc leader) and the film student. Once I shot that, I got the website up, pictures, people began to see the vision, and then I got offered lots of stuff that nobody would give me before. People got inspired enough to get on board

I shot another cheap scene, and shortly after that, others saw the concept, and then I got a top armourer on board. So it kind of rolled like that. I saw how Chris Nolan had shot “Following” this way over a year (Dark Knight) filmmaker, so I approached it in this piecemeal way.

I knew it would be gritty, cheap looking, but I felt that would add to the fact that this does look as if a REAL student has followed these guys. So then the budget does not become an issue, hinder the movie. The whole film cost about £4000, including post.

I got a little investment from a worker at the burger bar I worked at, after he saw footage from the gun battle, but most of that was used to buy a new computer, hard drives etc for the post. I would rather have had a producer on board, or even co-producer, as it did hugely affect my creative side, but I will continue to produce my own work until I can find the right person. It’s my future goal to partner with someone who believes in what I am trying to do.

You spoke with producers Joke and Biagio about why you made the decision to distribute your film and not rely on traditional distribution methods.  Since that interview what success have you had with self distribution and what would you change if you had to start again today?

To be 100% honest, I did know from day one I wanted to self distribute, but my real goal was simply to make a calling card for private investors, industry to see, because I had such a gap from my first funded feature.  I knew I was making a very cheap film, and because of that, I knew I would have the freedom to hold on to it, experiment with it, retain rights. If I had a large investment, I might have had pressure from others to take a more conventional approach. That’s why I think new filmmakers should keep the budget very low.

I attracted investment to do a little tour across the UK, but the guy wanted a bigger cut at the last minute. That would have allowed me to do screenings, and really get the film out there. It would have also paid for the very basics of the cinema release in Scotland, as a top multiplex chain saw it, and wanted to test it on an audience.

I have no regrets, because I never assumed a cinema would want a £4000 movie, so it did give me a boost that I might have a glimmer of talent. I believe I can make films for indie and big audiences, so it has made me focus on getting the bigger budget version into development. So I treat Mission X as my short film, and I am using it to develop the US remake.

MissionX is selling a steady flow of DVD’s. Enough to keep running, but I know I could make 1000 times more if I gave up my ambition, and just focused on sales for another year or two, but then I am a sales person and not a filmmaker. There has to be a balance. I would rather make more films, climb higher, and it will make more sales on a slower burn. I have the Roger Corman attitude, make films! However, in my next film, the global tour, marketing plan is at the forefront of my strategy. I believe in a solid six months marketing, but make the marketing and selling fun, that ways it’s not a drag.

Once I partner with more military sites, get downloads up, cool merchandise, it will roll faster. It’s doing the job I intended. It’s also attracting the investment for this horror movie, and it will give my investor a great return over the next few years.  I know in the worst case scenario, the £4000 Mission X will easily make a very healthy profit over the next 18 months. Especially when I can afford cool merchandise.

What would I have done different? I can’t regret anything, because I was 1000% from even calling myself a filmmaker just 18 months ago. I was working in a burger bar, with zero contacts, and pretty down. This little flick is already opening many doors, so even if it did not make a penny, it’s already done its job.

Mission X has a large potential for merchandising opportunities, particularly to males ages 18-35.  What types of merchandising have you done or plan to do with the film?

The age range for this version is around 18 to 35. It’s a more introspective, character driven film than it looks. A remake would be for a younger global gamer market.  I am not a big believer in just throwing out t-shirts, mugs, and then wondering why people don’t buy them. It needs more effort than that.

Somebody pointed out to me that the hit military game “Modern Warfare 2” has a character that wears a similar mask to what we have in the film. A lot of young males are looking for these masks, so I am on to a few companies to try and get the best deal to manufacture them. I also wanted to put an Xbox live file of the film on to a flash USB drive, that looks like an ak-47 bullet.

If the film gets pirated, it’s easy to find the Mission X name on top of the search engines. Some traffic could go there, see the masks, cool looking flash drives, (That are cool to own even outside the film) so I could then start making sales on these. I also have my eye on dog tags, and several other merch items.

If the film really spreads, and if I get a remake deal, then people also go back to the original film. So this little flick, and all the stuff connected with it, could be a bigger earner for the rest of my life. It could turn into a brand, so that’s why I am patient in this biz. Nothing is overnight. And that’s why I turned down small offers from sales agents and distributors.

I understand you’re working on a larger U.S. remake of Mission X – can you tell me about that?

I am working on a horror at this minute, with a tour, and if I am successful with this, I think that will really give me the clout to get the remake done. I am packaging the MX remake  this year to take to the states. Get an agent on board, and finding a producing partner. We know the industry is bumpy at the moment but Hollywood will always want big event style films. My remake version is in that mold.

The £4000 version was never written as a big movie, made with a no budget. It was written to suit the budget. So we see the film student hang out with this Merc leader as he prepares the attack, and then he gets to hang out with the gang before the attack. Mixed with some action in different time frames. So it does not look like a $15m movie that was made on the cheap.

After I saw the film in the edit, I realized this remake has HUGE potential to appeal to a global gamer market. Not a CGI film, but a real gritty “Cloverfield” meets “Black Hawk Down” style film. Some “Saving Private Ryan” style wild action.  It came to me in minutes.

The remake would start like a Spielberg film, where an ordinary character lives in dull suburbia. His friends are all gamers, “armchair Adventurers”. They live on the edge, but a dull edge of inactivity, entertainment, booze, drugs. He wants to go to Iraq, but wants to speak to a Merc he met online for his college documentary.

That night he is picked up by a chopper, taken to an airfield hangar, 50 mercs have just landed, and they are all preparing for a revenge attack in a US city. (All shot through his HD camcorder very real. District 9 style)

He gets his interview with the Merc leader, but then gets to go on the attack. The movie then kicks into a rollercoaster, as they attack the city building, then spend the rest of the film trying to escape the 1000 armed contractors who try to kill them all. They chase them all over the city. So it’s much more of a thriller for an international audience.

The movie would also have a transmedia aspect to it, where you don’t see a boot camp scene in the movie, but you do on video diaries, and you see other POVs of the mercs bodycams before the film comes out.

Ninety minute big films have to really move these days, but character stuff can spin off to transmedia, to support promo trailers. Even mini movies from other POVs. This way you get to explore interesting characters on the web, away from the pure thriller movie ride. So it’s the best of both.

It’s also all part of a viral marketing plan, and spin off story telling. I also have a solid sequel, possible game, theme park. The game and theme park is a bit ambitious, but I always think you should aim beyond your reach. If your life ambition is just to make a £4000 movie on your doorstep, than that’s all you will get. I have bigger plans.

David”s very clever when it comes to marketing.  He’s created a great website for “Mission X” where you can also purchase the DVD. And he’s got a new site up for his next film “Death Movie”.  I know we’ll be hearing a lot more from him in the future.  Thanks you David, it was wonderful having you here today.

You can follow David on Twitter @indiemoviemaker or on Facebook

What’s EgoFest?

EgoFest is a one day film festival for shorts.  It takes place in Brainerd, MN on February 20th, 2010.  EgoFest was originally a one time festival four years ago.  Since EgoFest was never planned as an ongoing event, everyone had a great time and then went their separate ways.  But in the last year, questions started coming in from our small community about when the next EgoFest was going to happen.  Now you can only say “I don’t know” so many times before you need to honestly look for a better answer.  That answer…  was to bring back EgoFest.  I’m sure there are a lot of people thinking “that’s nice, but there are tons of film festivals all over the place, and some of those are only for shorts, too.”

How is EgoFest different?

Our motto is “EgoFest is Filmmaker Friendly”.  For starters, we have no entry fee.  Submission to EgoFest is free for all the people who have toiled and cried and bled and screamed and gone without sleep for days, you know… filmmakers.  These filmmakers are trusting us with their babies, what more can we ask?  We gladly get the money to put on the festival from other places.  Also, I’ve heard filmmakers say that for them it’s all about the audience, but for the staff at EgoFest, the festival is all about the filmmaker, they are the stars of the show.  We know how hard filmmaking is and how stressful a screening can be.  So we try to do what ever we can to help put your mind at ease and enjoy the festival.

We are available.

We feel one of the most important parts of “filmmaker friendly” is just plain being available.  We have made sure, with the technology today that we can always be reached.  Check out our contact us page .  If you have questions, concerns, or just want to say hi, you can give a call.  I’ll be happy to hear from you.  You can also email, Facebook, or Myspace (if you’re into that).  Or perhaps, my personal favorite, Twitter.

Let’s tweet.

Twitter has become a tool EgoFest can no longer do without.  We can keep in touch with filmmakers all over the globe, and we do, on an everyday basis.  There are many we have met on twitter that support our festival.  Some have then reached out to us outside of twitter. Film Courage (@filmcouage), Film Snobbery (@filmsnobbery) and Video20Q (@video20q)  were kind enough to invite us onto their shows and let us talk about EgoFest.  We have also recieved many entries as a direct result of meeting filmmakers on twitter.  There are entries from Jessica King and Julie Keck (@kingisafink) , John Trigonis (@Trigonis) , 4D4 Films (@4D4Films) just to name a few.  Twitter also happens to be where I met Maria (@Maria_56).

Alright, I’ll wrap it up.

You don’t have to take my word for it, go look around our website (and don’t forget to take a peek at this years prizes) or go on Facebook or Twitter.  Really, I think that if you take nothing else away from this post (which may be easy to do) I simply want you to know that EgoFest is rooting for you.  We want to see you succeed and we will be here to answer filmmakers’ questions, give some advice, get the word out about your film, or what ever we can do to help you in this crazy business.  And that offer stands, whether you send us a film or not.  Us indie film people need to support each other and stand together.

Thanks again Maria!
Phil Holbrook (@Philontilt)

I met Phil on Twitter, he’s a creative filmmaker I admire and respect, and he’s got a damn good sense of humor.  You’ll see what I mean when you view his latest short film  “Honest Work”. – Maria

How did you get involved in production and development?
Matt: I started doing television production in college and then moved to New York City for an internship at HBO my senior year.  At the end of the internship I stayed in the city to start working in production.  I have done a little bit of everything in the television world since then – working and collaborating in reality, hidden camera, game show, comedy, scripted hybrid and talk/variety shows.  I have spent time in front of the camera and on stage as well, and those experiences helped to inform my producing style.  It is a very competitive industry and my diverse background has employed me through lots of ups and downs.

What are some of the deciding factors that can make an idea into something you’d want to develop into a pilot?
Matt: It depends on the show, but for me 99% of the time it’s character – a big, dynamic character in a unique world. So much of the type of docu-soap programming I make starts with a person at the center of a world that is the best at what they do, or is an expert above all the rest.  The type of personality that you can hang a show on. At the center of LA Ink (TLC) is Kat Von D, a compelling personality with an amazing talent.  The King of Dirt (DIY Network) is a simple landscaping show, but at the core of each episode are Gino Panaro and his brother, Ralph. The make amazing landscapes and drive each other a little nuts – in a fun, dramatic way.

Why don’t some pilots make it?
Matt: The unfortunate fact is that most pilots don’t make it.  If one out of ten goes to series, that’s considered successful.  During the pilot phase, you are trying to figure out what the show is, how it works and what the structure is, but there are lots of factors and influences that can throw your project off-track.  Sometimes you have an idea in mind, and sometimes that idea does not translate to screen as well as you hoped.  Or sometimes the network that bought the pilot sees the show differently than you do, and their changes can effectively kill the project.  Sometimes pilots come out great, but the network changes its mandate (e.g., they go from being a lifestyle channel to a cooking channel) and the pilot you made no longer fits on their network.  There are lots and lots of ways a great television show can die.

Was there ever a pilot you made that you were sure would be picked up as a series and wasn’t?  Why?
Matt: Yes.  I did a game show that everyone loved for a music channel.  The network did focus group testing (where they present new shows to large groups of people and find out what these audiences think of them), and the show did really well.  Everything looked great, and the day before the network was going to make a decision about ordering the show, the leadership of the network changed.  When that happens, a new General Manager (GM) is brought in, and when a new GM comes into a network, they often wipe the development slate clean by killing projects that the previous GM was working on.  It’s unfortunate, but a new GM is there to make their own mark with programming they develop.

When a pilot is picked up by the network what are some of the first things you need to do to create a show that will have ‘legs’ for  13 or more episodes?
Matt: To be honest, you really don’t want to do a pilot.  The goal is to walk into a network with a short tape that demonstrates what the show is so that the network development folks want to go straight to series.  This tape has to be awesome – like “make the hairs on your arm stand up” awesome.  If you make a pilot from that tape, it gives the network another chance to find something “wrong” with your show.  Networks can always find something “wrong” with a show, and once you get into a situation where they’re testing and thinking and time is passing, your chances of going to series start to go down.  With that said, sometimes you can’t avoid going to pilot, and it’s in that pilot that you want to demonstrate that the world you are making a show about has lots of stories to tell.  You can help to illustrate that by writing up paper that talks about future storylines or events that are coming up.  Anything that lets the network know that this could be a show that could last a long time with lots of possibilities, lots of exciting things to see.

How does your role change once the show goes from pilot to series?
Matt: It gets easier (hopefully).  The pilot is all about figuring out the formula, doing all the creative heavy lifting.  Once a show goes to series, I hire someone called a showrunner who handles all the day-to-day operations of running a show.  If I hire a really good showrunner than I can sit back and monitor the show from afar.  If the showrunner has trouble, or the talent on the show has problems, then I get involved.  I always say, “my phone only rings when things go to hell.”

Describe a typical day.
Matt: No day is all that typical.  I will check my fantasy football scores first thing in the morning.  Then it’s off and running.  I will screen cuts of shows, give notes, talk to my showrunners and help them problem solve….  I will listen to pitches, meet with network executives and give pitches for shows, or travel into the field to direct pitch tapes.  I spend a lot of time on the phone with network executives who are overseeing my shows.  My day usually starts off calm, and by 4pm, I find that I usually have not eaten lunch and I’m asking myself “what the hell happened to my day!”

Any advice for creatives out there that have an idea of a television show?
Matt: You can pitch to networks.  They have development departments, and they’re always looking for good ideas.  Just pick up the phone and make an appointment. Depending on your level of experience in television, it may make sense for you to partner with a production company.  I would recommend matching your idea with a production company that has a track record for doing that type of programming.  For example if you have an idea for a game show, go to a production company that has a proven track record of making hit game shows.  A company with a track record can get your idea into a high level person at a network, and maybe right to series!  Good luck!

Matt, I appreciate your time, thanks for joining us to day.

Matt’s recent series and Executive Producer credits at Original Media include:
King of Dirt – A how-to-landscaping show for DIY that mixes reality with instruction.
Masters of Reception – A docu-series for TLC set in the behind-the-scenes world of New Jersey’s most successful wedding catering company.
Swamp People – A docu-series for The History Channel set in the swamps of Louisiana.
Destination Design – A home makeover show for HGTV that uses inspirational travel to transform homes.
LA Ink – A docu-series for TLC starring Kat Von D set in and around the tattoo scene of Los Angeles.
Storm Chasers – A series for Discovery that follows a team of scientists and filmmakers as they attempt to intercept tornadoes.
BBQ Pitmasters – A competition docu-series for TLC about the world of competitive BBQ.
Tough As Nails – A docu-series for HGTV centered around one of Boston’s best female homebuilders.
Flowers Uncut – A docu-series for TLC about world-renowned florist, Jeff Leatham.
Duel Survivor – An adventure survival series for Discovery.
Be Good Johnny – An eight part series for The Sundance Channel that follows Johnny Weir on his quest to Olympic glory.

Interview With Film Maker Ted Fisher Part One.

Your documentary Bend & Bow was created in five days for the International Documentary Challenge – how did you choose your subject and what steps did you take to finish within the time constraints?

Ted: When people imagine making a documentary, they picture going on a shoot somewhere beautiful, exotic, perhaps dangerous, or think about crafting material from a stack of tapes into something an audience will enjoy. It’s easy to forget the essential process of documentary work is developing an idea and then gaining access. Nothing happens without good planning and the ability to find and ally with the right subject. Even if you think of yourself as a director, an editor, or a cinematographer, you’ve got to immerse yourself in the role of producer and take care of those tasks — or there is no film.

For Bend & Bow I worked with five other filmmakers. We’d participated in the Doc Challenge the year before, making Blind Faith: A Film About Seeing. For that film we followed a group of blind photographers on the last day of their exhibition at a Manhattan gallery, and tied that with the Empire State Building going dark to draw attention to the issue of preventable blindness. The film made it to the Doc Challenge finals, but we left the process exhausted and felt we could have made the film better if we had worked smarter.

So for Bend & Bow, we took every element seriously: we made a list of possible topics and subjects, preparing for any genre and theme we might draw in the Challenge. We then did the hard work: we secured a “yes” from every one of our possible subjects. We acted like we were producing several short films, and prepared to shoot any of them. When we received an email at the start of the challenge, telling us that the year’s theme was “Change” and our genre was “experimental” we took a phone vote — and were most excited about following Natalia Paruz, a musician who plays the saw in the New York subway. We knew from our pre-production discussions with her that her life story involved major change, and of course busking musicians are generally paid in “change” also. More importantly, we found our conversations with Natalia captivating. My best advice is to not start a documentary unless you find the main subject exciting. If you’re not fascinated, no one else will be.

For the shoot, we tried to gather everything in one day: we followed Natalia from her home to the subway station at Union Square, stayed as she played, and later that night shot interviews at her home. That was according to plan. Then our process moved to my tiny apartment, where the six of us huddled for several days, ordering take out food, drinking wine and trying to shape the film. My wife and I are normally quiet, but for about 72 hours straight the apartment rang with saw playing and people shouting out ideas. That’s where the we hit a bit of a wall: at a certain point we realized we didn’t know how to end the film. The clock kept ticking, and we kept re-editing, looking for an ending and struggling to agree.  We found we could beat the basics of production, but we fought the clock to figure out our film. That’s the main thing I now do differently: at every shoot I wait to have the moment where I say “aha, that thing that just happened? That’s our ending.”

The Frugal Traveler: The Grand Tour features 13 European Cities in 12 weeks.  The series gives viewers a look at the Old World through conversations with the people you encountered in your travels.  How much footage did you shoot compared with what was seen in the series?  Were there stories you wished you had more time to tell?

The summer before, I worked as producer on the Frugal Traveler: American Road Trip series, which was the New York Times first venture into serial programming. The idea was that travel writer Matt Gross would take a summer road trip in an old Volvo, and report in each week with a video in addition to his written piece. At the time there was a lot of excitement about video blogging, and if you looked around the Web you could have seen a lot of video shows that were really just someone talking to the camera, maybe standing in an interesting place but maybe just against a plain background. But Matt is a good writer, and definitely wanted to go further, and my background is documentary, so I wanted to angle the show towards those concerns, and the Senior producers were very supportive but wanted an emphasis on the characters Matt would meet. So the three themes blended: Matt’s personal thoughts on travel mixed with some documentary material emphasizing the experience, mixed with the type of quirky characters you find in every city in the U.S. It worked well (the series won the Webby for Online Film & Video in the travel category) and we made it seem enough like a crewed television production that I’m not sure people understood what a high-wire act it was: Matt really did travel the country alone with a small touristy camcorder, pulling it out when people seemed willing, then uploaded the footage online with a proposed script. I usually had less than 12 hours to edit the piece — a great learning experience and editing exercise, but nerve-wracking and challenging.

So when the series expanded to Europe the next year, the idea of how stories would be developed was exactly the key production point: Matt traveled alone, shooting what he thought could be the week’s story but aware that once the footage and script arrived at the New York Times’ there would be a very pragmatic process. Based on input from Senior producers, the task of constructing something that works out of limited material, as well as the context of the series, there were always hard choices and stories that were in the assembly draft, then cut from the final edit. Usually Matt shot a good amount of material, following several possibilities. The most common outcome was that one of the mini-stories he’d tried for would get cut: I’d do an assembly based off the script, we’d see how long we were running, and then usually the first step toward finishing would be to trim out at least one of the encounters he’s had during the week. So some charming characters went into the trims bin, and a few surprising adventures as well. The goal always had to be for a watchable, coherent video, though — and it had to fit in the overall arc of the summer journey, too.

For me, two things happened that I found most exciting: in one episode, after he had finished filming everything else, Matt got a chance to meet immigrants struggling to survive. It shifted the episode from the traditional material of travel video — see art here, eat food there, don’t miss this — to one where the idea of traveling as luxury was contrasted with those who travel because they have to. It meant we pushed the edit right up to a late-night deadline, but made for a story that was worth telling and an experience that no one had expected to see. In another episode, Matt set out to hitchhike around Cyprus. That’s not the kind of experience you can communicate with a “star” followed by a big crew. A single person with a tiny camcorder, however, could get across the feeling of waiting, as the sun goes down, to find one last ride out of the middle-of-nowhere to somewhere to stay for the night.

Part Two – My interview with Ted Fisher continues tomorrow.  Ted talks about his documentary Hoop Springs Eternal, teaching and film school.

Find out more about Ted by visiting his blogs New York Portraits, and Actualities and his website.

You’ve executive produced many television shows that have become popular based on their ‘un told nature’.  It began when you wrote and produced for the hugely popular series MTV Uncensored.  How did the idea come about?

David: MTV Uncensored started as a special for MTV’s Ultrasound series.  The first in the series was the Video Music Awards Uncensored.  I was one of several segment producers working on the project, but the concept really spoke to me.  With MTV’s 20th anniversary coming up, I loved the idea of exploring the history of the VMA’s through untold stories.

That first two-hour show was simply envisioned as a new way to promote the Video Music Awards.  What nobody expected was that the show would actually generate ratings – and buzz.   Even more unexpected:  the more it aired, the better the ratings.  That actually became a regular occurrence on later episodes of Uncensored – it rated better in the reruns.

When supervising producer Carlo Ocando left MTV, I was asked to produce MTV Spring Break Uncensored – and that show received even higher ratings.

Dave Sirulnick and Lauren Lazin then asked me to do MTV Uncensored– covering the entire history of MTV.   That show really set the tone for all the others.  We began booking actual stars; everyone from Jon Stewart to Cindy Crawford.  That two-hour show received an Emmy nomination, but we lost to the Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC.

A whole series of specials followed – not just about MTV.  We produced Sports Illustrated swimsuit Issue Uncensored, Jim Carrey Uncensored, Grammy’s Uncensored, and Def Jam Uncensored.  We had amazing producers for all of them – a terrific team.   And I also helped put together the 20th anniversary coffee table book which was based partly on the interviews  from MTV Uncensored.

You also produced two special Uncensored television shows for CBS Sports – the story behind The Final Four college basketball championships and the SuperBowl.  How did your story go from cable to network television?

David: That came about when MTV became involved with the CBS Superbowl coverage in 2001.  It had to do with the synergy that was created when CBS and MTV came under the Viacom banner.  MTV was producing an evening of prime-time Super Bowl specials the night before the big game, as well as the half-time show that year.  One of the specials was SuperBowl Uncensored, which I supervised, and Craig Shepherd directed and produced.  It was done in the same irreverent tone that we had done all the other Uncensored specials and was hosted by Craig Kilborn and Chris Connelly.

It did well in the ratings and received good critical notices, so later CBS asked us to do March Madness Uncensored.

Ironically, I know nothing about sports.  That worked to my advantage, oddly enough, because I didn’t have any preconceived notions about what a sports program should look like.  At the time, Les Moonves got a good laugh at the fact that I had never filled out a bracket before.  I picked the teams based on the length of their names – whoever had the shortest name moved up.  It didn’t turn out too badly, actually – Duke did very well that year.

When you created TV Land Confidential you featured the untold stories of favorite television shows, movies and music. Was it difficult producing a show without knowing what the actual stories would be until you were in post production?

David: Well, that’s the thing about untold stories:  they’re untold.  I mean, the people telling them have probably told their friends and family, and insiders might know.  But the stories we were generally looking for were stories we had never heard before.

I’m a total trivia geek.  My head is filled with the most useless knowledge about pop culture.  With TV Land Confidential, I finally got to put that knowledge to use.  So we would start with obscure stories and work our way from there.

Each person we interviewed became a link in the most convoluted TV family tree you’ve ever seen.  Interviewing Barbara Eden meant we wanted to interview Larry Hagman which led to the cast of Dallas.  We interviewed Gavin MacLeod and that meant both the Mary Tyler Moore Show and Love Boat stories.     Cloris Leachman led to stories about Malcolm in the Middle and Mel Brooks movies which led to Peter Boyle which led back to Everybody Loves Raymond.

I was constantly juggling information in my head.

As Executive Producer of MTV’s VMA 2009 What You Didn’t Know you were given the task of writing, producing and getting the show on the air in two weeks.  What challenges did you face and overcome when dealing with such a short turnaround time?

David: What You Didn’t Know was something that MTV decided on in the eleventh hour.  The 2009 VMA’s this year generated a lot of buzz and they wanted to capitalize on it while interest it was still high.

The key was MTV giving their full support to getting this on the air.  Meetings happened quickly, approvals were turned around within a few hours, everyone involved knew that there was no time to get it wrong.  They hired a terrific team of PA’s, AP’s writer and editors who all hit the ground running.

Even though these were untold stories to the general public, we knew from day one what the stories were going to be.   Unlike the uncensored or confidential shows, the show was fully scripted BEFORE we did any interviews.  That made it a lot easier.   And so did the fact that we could do all the interviews on DV, something that would have been impossible six years ago.

What’s the secret to finding the untold story and getting a celebrity to tell all?

David: First, you have to know your subject inside and out.  Once I’ve done all my cramming, then I “forget” what I know.  My job isn’t to show them how smart I am or to tell the stories for them.  It’s to get THEM to share.  I encourage them and show my knowledge in small ways.  I keep my questions short and the whole thing completely conversational.  Allison Steele once told me that she didn’t really need research for an interview.  She told me her own feigned ignorance, combined with natural curiosity always led to the best results.

Occasionally, someone will show up for an interview unexpectedly.  Lou Gossett showed up with Garret Morris for his interview and I got a terrific conversation about the early years of Saturday Night Live.

I never go in with a list of questions.  I go in with a list of topics and try to NEVER look at my notes.  But then I let the conversation go where it will.  I ask general questions, show the person I’m talking with that I REALLY am interested in what they have to say – and show my knowledge in small ways over the course of the interview.

I never dig for dirt.  It’s salacious and what they’re expecting.  For the most part with celebrity interviews, I’m not looking to play “gotcha.”  It’s about making them look good.

Once you get someone comfortable, they’re willing to talk about almost anything.  I’m very proud of the interviews where someone started out reticent to talk and then ended up going much longer than planned.

Most important is to remember that celebrities do interviews all the time.  In the first fifteen minutes, they will give you their “stock answers.”  You have to go longer.  The best stuff usually comes in the second half hour when they let their hair down.  Your interest and enthusiasm to hear their real stories is the best way to get the BEST stories.

Once you show that you are not looking for dirt on them or on their co-stars, you will get some surprising material that’s better than anything you were expecting.

What was the biggest untold story you’ve ever uncovered?

David: I can’t tell you that.  It’s still untold.

What was your favorite untold story?

David: That I CAN tell you.  And it’s not about a celebrity at all.  It’s the very first story from March Madness Uncensored, about a player named Wiley Brown.  Today, he’s the head coach for Indiana University Southeast.  But back in 1981, Wiley was a student playing for Louisville headed to the NCAA finals.  When he was four years old, Wiley lost his thumb in an accident and now played basketball with a prosthetic thumb.
On the morning of the big game, Wiley accidentally left his thumb back at the restaurant where the team had breakfast.  He couldn’t play without his thumb.  So the assistant manager and team assistants had to race back to the restaurant with a police escort to go find the thumb, which had inadvertently been thrown out by the restaurant staff.

We actually tracked down Wiley and the assistant coach who told us that the thumb was only found after doing a dumpster dive.  But Wiley’s story didn’t end there.  In the middle of the big game, on national television, a time out was called – Wiley lost his CONTACT LENS.  We found the footage of all the players searching for his lens.  Wiley laughed as he told us about the embarrassing moment.  And of course, Louisville went on to win the national championship.

But for me the capper to the whole thing was the great visual we got at the end of the story:  Wiley’s thumb from that game now resides in the Louisville Hall of Fame in a glass case.  That was a story that kept on giving.

Thanks David for sharing your stories.  See David’s latest untold stories in the special he recently executive produced for MTV –  VMA 2009: What You Didn’t Know.

They’re executive producers with ideas and they know how to get a show made.  What’s different about these pros is their willingness to share their experience and help others.  They agreed to an interview and I jumped at the chance to get a look behind the curtain of Reality TV making.  Here’s Joke and Biagio.

As executive producers/show runners what are the specific hats you wear and how do you divide them amongst each other?
Joke: We both handle big-picture creative in terms of content, overall vision for each show, etc.  On a more day-to-day level, I oversee most of the logistics, scheduling, budgeting, staffing and managing crew, on top of dealing with both casting and story departments.  Biagio has a knack for dealing with talent, so he is their producer, doing pick-ups etc.  As the resident master editor, he’s also much more involved with making sure we get all the shots we need, so he’s point for the director and DP in those situations.

Biagio: Yeah, I’m really lucky I married Joke! She is a genius. She’s creative and great with planning/logistics.  I’m creative and, well, I’m creative. However, we’ve both run entire productions by ourselves, so we’ve each had to handle creative and logistics on our own. I use David Allen’s Getting Things Done method to help me be ALMOST as good as Joke logistically, but when we can both work together on a project, I dive for the writer’s chair, director’s chair, or the edit bay. I’ve also self-taught myself motion graphics, and often end up editing and creating 2D and 3D elements for  our shows.  I tend to do all the graphics work on pilots. On series, I usually do quick supplements to what the graphics company provides.  In low-budget situations, Joke and I will do the filming ourselves, and I will edit, mix, and create the graphics.

When it comes to reality TV, one of the first steps is casting real people.  Why is casting so important to the success of a Reality TV show, and what do you look for?
Joke: Most, if not all, reality shows live and die by their cast.  Our job as reality producers is to create a world our cast can live in, set up boundaries, but then let cast members run free within those boundaries.  That’s when the magic happens…when you let the cast be themselves within the world you created.

For that to be a success you need people who don’t self-censor. Reality TV cast members must be comfortable with who they are and be willing to share their true opinions and feelings.

We look for those who are excited about the journey they are about to embark on. They must be truthful about their strengths AND their weaknesses.  And yes, they have to be open about both because that’s what makes them relatable, rootable or despiseable to our audience.  Anyone who comes in faking or hiding who they really are is out. We’ve learned to spot the fakers.

Remember, not everyone is right for a reality show.  Not everyone is exciting enough, or open enough, and that’s ok!  Not everyone is meant to be a pro-athlete either.

Biagio:  Choosing cast members is a puzzle that takes weeks to solve.  Every show has it’s own demands.  For instance, when we cast Beauty and the Geek, we had to find a group of Geeks who were socially inept, extremely smart, but still willing to open up on camera–a tall order for brainiacs who don’t like to talk to people as it is!

Plus, they had to have great make-over potential, and the ability to learn something from our Beauties.  Likewise, the Beauties had to be beautiful, not exactly book-smart, and be willing to live in a house with a bunch of geeky guys. AND we had to believe they’d grow and change over the course of the season and learn something from our Geeks.  Finally, all Beauties and all Geeks have to be unique from each other, so you’d remember them.  This means some potentially great cast members don’t make the show because they look too much like another person we’re casting that season.

For Scream Queens, on the other hand, we need girls from a wide range of acting backgrounds and geographic locations who could potentially appear in a major motion picture.  We have to ask ourselves:

Are they a good enough actress?

If not, do they have enough raw ability to become a far better actress over the course of the show?

Do they look like a Scream Queen?

Does everyone in the cast look different enough from each other?

Being an ex-actor myself (I played the dorky next-door neighbor on Kenan and Kel) I know how hard it is to go out for audition after audition.  Seeing what a grueling casting process Scream Queens has been makes me happy I became a producer instead!

When producing a reality show how much of the story gets determined in post production?
JOKE:  Someone said that a scripted show gets written 3 times, once on the page, once during shooting, then again in the edit bay.  You can say the same about reality.  We go out there with a sense of what we’re going to get, we develop the challenges and can predict certain reactions from the cast to those challenges.  But, when shooting, everything can change at any moment. That’s the exhilarating part about reality, and many times they story we would have never thought of is much better than anything we could have predicted.

Also, when we get to post, and we comb through our hours and hours of footage, we find these gems we didn’t even know we had.  With cameras running at all hours of the day, you can’t possibly see and hear everything, so it’s fun to discover new nuances or insights in the bay.

Biagio: We’re both writers, and part of the reason we wanted to get into documentary and reality TV was that real people are always more interesting than anything we could ever make up.  We wanted to expose ourselves to people from all walks of life to help us become better writers and story-tellers.  So casting real people and then telling them what to do would go against the whole reason we started producing unscripted TV in the first place.

Are there reality shows on TV that are heavily scripted ahead of time? I’m sure there are. But again, that’s not why we wanted Reality TV to be part of our repertoire.  The whole allure of making an unscripted show is the excitement of not knowing what’s happening next.

Do we cast people we think will have interesting chemistry, stories, and conflicts with each other? Of course.  Are we guessing that a challenge where girls are covered in cockroaches will get a rise out of the cast?  Yes.  But do we say, “Okay, now you say X, you say Y, then get in a fight and break something” to our cast? No.

What do you look for in a director for your shows, and what’s your collaboration process?
JOKE:  The need for a director in reality varies from show to show.

When you’re dealing with a docu-series, having a producer who can also tell your camera operators what to shoot is much more cost effective.  You do need to rely more on your cam ops at that point to frame pretty pictures, but a strong DP in the A cam position usually gets it done.

When you’re dealing with a multi-camera situation (more than 3 cameras) a director/supervising producer is needed to manage all those bodies and decide who will be shooting what.  Whether that’s a senior story producer directing cameras on where to go in a during in-house reality, or a supervising producer/director setting up camera positions for format elements like challenges and eliminations, it’s a role that involves lots of communication with other departments.  They must talk to the AD, the DP, Story, Art, etc.

We look for people who can work as part of a team, are cool under pressure, know their stuff and are fun to be around.  Going into production is like going into battle. You want someone you like next to you in the trenches.

Biagio:   I like directors who are also great photographers, and who’ve carried a camera on their shoulder at some point in their career.  If the have editing experience, BIG PLUS.  Too many directors have never sat in a bay.  I want a director who knows first hand how to make a scene work in post.

Story sense is also hugely important.  Often times in reality, a director gives you what they think is good coverage, but all they’ve handed over is a bunch of angles un-connected to the story. It’s a nightmare!  Aspiring reality directors: shooting pretty pictures is not enough! Please, listen to the story that’s unfolding.  This isn’t scripted, you actually have to adjust your angles to the reality of what’s happening.

You’re about to produce the 2nd season of VH1’s Scream Queens, where the challenges are often terrifying and always unique.  Who creates the challenges?
JOKE:  This is again a collaborative process.  We have a challenge department, a story department, we bring in experts to tell us what’s doable in terms of SFX, etc.  Ultimately there are lots of brainstorm sessions where we try to “crack” the challenges. We then present to the network and have a collaborative back and forth with them.

On Scream Queens in particular, we also consult with the judges who add their own ideas or bring to light interesting perspectives or feedback on some of our internally created ideas.

Biagio: Challenges for reality TV have to be big and visual.  A straight up acting challenge is a very boring thing.  Throw in a leap from a forty-foot window and now you’ve got something.  When brainstorming challenges, we have to ask ourselves:

Will it look compelling on TV?

With it cause an emotional reaction in our cast?

Will the challenge itself create great reality moments later?

That last one is important.  If the cast isn’t affected enough emotionally by a challenge to be learning from it, talking about it, debating it, and arguing about it later, it’s probably not a good challenge.

Production work can sometimes be 24/7 – so I have to ask, does being married make it easier or more difficult to work together?
JOKE: For me personally, easier.  My parents worked together in their own business all my life, so did my grandparents and 2 sets of aunts & uncles.  It’s all I know.  To me home is wherever Biagio is, so whether that’s on set, or on the ride home after a long day, it makes it easier.  I couldn’t imagine my life not working with my spouse, not sharing everything, not working towards the same goal.  But it’s not for everyone. There obviously are times we disagree and that’s why we work extra hard at communicating effectively.  When we’re tired or hungry, we’re not always that effective

Biagio: My parents divorced when I was 14, and it was the hardest thing I ever went through.  I decided I’d never get married unless I met my soul mate.  I met her. A woman named Joke.

I wanted to build a life with someone who I was not only madly in love with, but who I also liked enough to be around all the time.  A best friend.

Joke is my best friend, my business parter, and my wife.  And the truth is, I feel like I married way out of my league!  Every day I’m thankful to have a constant companion who’s just so freaking awesome.  The hardest times are when we’re apart more than a few hours.  I think since we married in 2001 we’ve spent less than 10 days apart, and every one of them sucked.

Admittedly, it’s not easy when the person who means everything to you says, “No, I don’t like that graphic you made.” Or I say to her, “I really think that schedule is wrong.”  But we’ve learned not to take it personally, because we know we’re stronger as a team.  We make each other better, and that makes our projects better. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thank you Joke and Biagio!  For more information about Joke and Biagio visit Joke Productions.  If you want information on how to be a producer, breaking into Hollywood, storytelling and much more visit their blog.

So you have to shoot in High Definition and you don’t know where to start.  Don’t worry. Though it may seem confusing at the beginning, knowing what to ask is half the battle.  Here are a few questions to help you get started.

1. What type of editing intake system will you be using?  There are many types of HD record options (HDCam, HDV-HD, XDcam, etc.) and decks to go with each.  It is important to know how your edit system will acquire the footage so you can start out with the correct recording format.   If you don’t know where you will edit or what type of system you are using, you can consider using a camera that records onto a disk.  Later, you can then transfer the footage onto a hard drive or straight into the appropriate editing program.

2. What type of footage does your network, client or distributor accept?  Some networks won’t accept some formats or minimal footage must come from it.  For example, they may allow a given HD project to have up to 15% standard definition footage.

3. Will you be required to deliver all of the raw footage and if so, in what format?  If the client wants raw footage in a certain format like HDCam, it makes sense to go ahead and shoot with that format.  If you don’t have to turn over your raw footage, consider how you will archive the footage once your project is complete.

4. What are resolution and frame rate requirements?  Most of the projects that I work on are shot at  1080i or 720i.  Will your final project been show full screen?  Do you have to downconvert to standard definition and if so, will it be centercut, anamorphic or letter boxed?  You’ll want to make sure that the camera being used has the proper settings available and that the tapes and edit system can accommodate your needs.

It is important to talk to as many people as possible about your project until you feel comfortable making choice.  Talk to shooters, editors and distributers/networks/clients.  Sometimes there may be more than one solution to your HD needs.  But armed with the right information, you can make the best decision for your project.  Good luck.

Visit  Sydnye White’s website  at www.docsandtv.com