Film Futurist

If you were at the New York DIY Days a few weeks ago, and stayed till the very end, you might be featured in this “Mad as Hell” Arin Crumley video below. First off, I have to say hats off to Crumley for putting all that heart into his work. I felt like I was at a Southern Baptist revival and Arin was the fire and brimstone pastor ready to raise us all up. PREACH IT! is what I yelled when I saw the fire coming on. And it brought a smile to my face to see all those filmmakers wound up by the spirit of Crumley and his Holy Ghost of OpenIndie. When I was done being saved, I took some time to think about what we are mad as hell about. I encourage you to watch the video and ask yourself the same question. Mine is below the video.

Personally, I think anyone who hasn’t seen the handwriting on the wall that says CHANGE is patently in need of some ocular examination. Crumley presents it as a crisis of distribution, which it is to an extent. But one can argue that the recent proliferation of useful distribution and marketing technologies and online communities to support our film work has presented massive benefits to the DIY filmmaker and as such, the crisis has been halfway resolved. So why are so many still mad as hell? Crumley’s is a call to action for a somewhat demoralized community to rally around alternative (non-studio) solutions like OpenIndie.

But on the other side of the spectrum it seems some people are angry at precisely this trend towards the social media driven creation and marketing of indie films. Mike S. Ryan for instance, is an established indie producer associated with well-known films Junebug, Palindromes and Choke, to name a few. In his Filmmaker Magazine article, he expresses a fair amount of panic about the swell of “Audience-driven content posing as truly independent film” which he believes “has numbed the audience that is hungry for innovative work.” From my vantage point, Ryan’s fear that the internet will chase away originality or the margins is entirely misguided and unduly panic-inducing. And I look forward to a face-to-face debate with the guy (stay tuned).

But hey, he’s got a right to be mad as hell just like Arin Crumley and all of us who yelled and shook our fists in solidarity at DIY DAYS. So many things to be mad about, and not enough time.

So, in the spirit of the “mad” conversation, please feel free share your indie film gripes: what are you mad as hell about?