Dreaming In Austin. JAG35 Are Heading To SXSW.
DREAMING IN AUSTIN
“A short documentary about just doing it.”
By: Robin Schmidt
Every year hundreds of film festivals take place all over the world bringing together filmmakers, fans, distributors and dealmakers. Festival acceptance is a crucial step in a filmmaker’s progress, a mark of quality that says ‘you’re good enough’. The better the festival the better the perception of you as a filmmaker. That’s how it’s always been. For as long as the film industry has been around there have been those who’ve been able to surmount vast odds to get their film made but they still had to pound the festival circuit for recognition. At least till now. In 2010 filmmakers such as Ricardo de Montreuil (The Raven) found themselves plucked from Vimeo straight to production deals. The rapid and unexpected uptake of DSLR video has accelerated this process with vast numbers of new filmmakers taking cheap equipment, shooting, editing and exhibiting their work to their own audiences.
We are witnessing the rapid birth of a renegade spirit, one that flips the bird at traditional models and seems utterly irrepressible. Anyone, it seems, can make anything, and get people to watch it. But what of the festivals? Are they still relevant, or are they losing there impact as audiences simply by-pass traditional filters of content and build relationships directly with the filmmakers? Not yet, it would seem. The festivals still offer an opportunity to be found nowhere else, that of human interaction. And around the fringes of every festival sit the opportunists, the renegades with a film and the chutzpah to take it and attempt to get it seen. Festivals are as much about deal making as they are about exhibition and you just never know whom you might bump into.
The Garcia brothers, Jehu and Misa are these filmmakers. Well-known figures in the DSLR community as creators of cost effective support rigs for HDSLR cameras. Misa also runs The Whistle Bait a monthly event ‘where the 50’s meets the 60’s’ and patrons show up at the clubs in downtown LA for a night of rockabilly, dancing and live burlesque. After two years of working with filmmakers to develop his support equipment Misa decided to turn filmmaker himself and document the events he had created. With the short film in the can, his next goal is a festival experience and Austin’s SXSW is the target.
Dreaming in Austin will follow Misa and Jehu as they attempt navigate the structures, mores and etiquette of film festivals and get their film seen by the right people. We will also be picking up interviews with the stars of the festival for an insight into the sharp end of the process as well as engaging with other fringe filmmakers at the festival. This process can resemble a game and we’ll be borrowing the language of classic strategy games like ‘Risk’ to tell the story of the gambles, the manoeuvres and the progress of their journey, both visually and narratively.
The short documentary should provide a fascinating insight into the post post-production world of filmmaking. Getting it made is just the beginning and Dreaming in Austin will shed light on what happens next.
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