Director Amir Motlagh discusses Shooting on Canon 5D, Hopelessness and his ‘35 Year Old Man’ #indiefilm

35 Year Old Man directed by Amir Motlagh

An exciting weekend is upon us, as the 12th Annual deadCenter Film Festival is screening “35 Year Old Man,” a short film about a guy named Greg who, as the synopsis points out “turned 35 two days ago. Yesterday, he bought a toaster and cleaned the fridge.”

In a recent interview with “35 Year Old Man” director Amir Motlagh, I found out that the tiniest discoveries can lead to overcoming obstacles, his thoughts on whether age matters or not and also learned that just because short films have a small runtime doesn’t meant that they took 48 hours to complete.

Madlab Post: Does the online availability of “35 Year Old Man” hinder your opportunities to screen at film festivals? If not, have you found the festival circuit helpful in attracting online audiences?

Amir Motlagh: Yes it certainly does to some festivals. In fact, a couple have disqualified us, but gladly taken the money. In truth though, this film was never intended for the festival circuit and was going to be a “straight to web” release. We decided in the end to go both routes, and send it out to a couple fest’s and see if they wanted to premiere it concurrently with a web premiere, and sure enough, a couple festivals did.

So now, we will see if these things help one another. I’m not so much interested in how many views the project receives, but more so, how it affects those who do find it. Its far too gloomy to be viral, although Dailymotion did pick it up for a staff pick.

Greg’s delightful observation at the end of “35 Year Old Man,” about sleeping, appears to shine a ray of light on his generally somber existence. Was that part of the story intended to motivate audiences in some way, where their own lives are concerned?

It’s the tiniest of sparks that lead to overcoming great obstacles, so even in Greg’s great depression, there is a point of hope, even though, the form of this hope still lies outside his immediate realm of control. If this film elicits self reflection for an audience member, it might be a good start for action if you identify wholeheartedly with Greg’s circumstances.

Is 35, or any age for that matter, just a number? Or, is it MORE than a number?

35 is relative. This certain angle of hopelessness can occur at any age, probably starting at your teens and on. However, I chose this particular age for the film because I think that this is nearing that neighborhood where societal demands evert those extra arduous forces screaming for stability and responsibility that carries on ad infinitum.

(l-r) Actor Bob Turton & Amir Motlagh

What did you shoot on and how long did the production last?

This was an extremely small production. It was shot on a Canon 5d and a Nikon d7000 with a variety of different lenses. From principal photography to wrapping post, in all, it took around 5 months. The time could have been cut in half with a heftier budget, but I couldn’t have wished for better help.

What advice would you have for 30 year-old aspiring actors who were in Greg’s position six years ago and have plans to move to Los Angeles to further their careers?

Honestly, it’s probably easier to pursue a career as a working actor in your 30’s, then in your 20’s. For one thing, most people have moved on to something else once the dream of stardom has waned. But its certainly not for everyone, and the more kids and or family obligations you have, the harder I assume it is.

I would suppose that acting is not as centralized to Los Angeles as it once was, so, if you are doing great where you are, and happy with the type of work you are doing, do you have to move? But if you do move, the only real advice is to stay focused, do not let cynicism take over, stay hungry, starve doubt, and don’t hate your city.

(l-r) Cinematographer, Lisa Gallo & Actor, Bob Turton

On managing to make a living and still being able to continue to make more films despite the fact that his work is often available online -- in an expensive industry where many other filmmakers are trying to break even and/or pay back their investors....

“I've had great support along the way, but the direction I'm heading is different then the one I've paved. -- I spent a fruitful many days experimenting with new technology and its subsequent altering of the traditional filmmaking process. But whereas I had a deep love of the fringe, I don’t so much identify with that world anymore. I’m looking for that audience, whereas I never minded one before. And this mindset alters everything.

I guess you find a way to make it work for you, if that's what you really want to do. At this point, since my company owns most of my works, I can put them online. I was tied into some distribution deals over the years, but most expired in the last couple years, and I'd rather have the work accessible to those who find interest in them....”

- Amir Motlagh

Want to know more? Check out my companion interview with Amir Motlagh, on the deadCenter Film Festival and other goodies!

“35 Year Old Man” written and directed by Amir Motlagh is screening this weekend in the deadCenter Film Festival’s “Rated ‘R’ for Ridiculously Awesome Shorts” program.

Saturday, June 9, 2012 at 7:30pm and Sunday, June 10, 2012 at 8:15pm

Both screenings are being held at the IAO Gallery in Oklahoma City, OK.

Don’t live in or near Oklahoma City? That’s ok too. You can still watch “35 Year Old Man” HERE.

Why Short Films Get Rejected and Unhealthy Obsessions with Working in Film: An Interview with Couchfest - Part 2 #indiefilm #filmfestivals

In September, the 2011 Couchfest film festival screened short films in over 30 locations around the world. Here is the second part of an interview that I did with Couchfest founder, Craig Downing, where he explains why film submissions are rejected, how he manages to find a balance between his love for cinema and everyday life without going insane and why cash prizes continue to be a staple aspect of this festival.

Madlab Post: Are you still providing cash prizes for winning films? If so, who or what entity makes this possible?

Craig Downing: I really don’t like the idea of pay-to-play; I know that a lot of these filmmakers have worked so hard to make these films, you know – they’ve basically been late to jobs, lost significant others and separated themselves from their families to get down into the basement and edit these gems, so I always feel a little bit weird about not offering prize money. I feel like that’s always going to be a key element to our film festival, so every year we’ve always offered cash prizes – some years, we offer these eight-foot karate trophies that we love sending; we make these silly marathon medallions and sashes that we send to people, in addition to the cash prizes.

We would like to continue to offer filmmakers the opportunity for cash prizes – especially when the first year we did it, we called the Golden Couch winner and was like “hey, congratulations! You’ve won $1,000 in U.S. cash for your film” and they were like “great!” and then said “hey Craig, by the way, do you think there is a chance that we can come by and get the money now, because our rent is due tomorrow?” and I was like “Fuck yeah, that’s why we do this!” It’s exactly why we fucking do this. Secondly, who the hell is paying for it? To be honest, it’s The Foundation of – my back pocket.

We’ve been looking at a model to where sponsors can recognize the great opportunity to put their product in front of creative types around the world and be part of this film festival all at the same time but that’s a weakness of ours. It’s hard for us to put all of our hats on at the same time, so this coming year, we’re going to start 11 months before the film festival – we have a sponsorship coordinator that we’ve hired and we’re going to start with enough lead time that if a company does recognize the true value of what we’re doing and wants their product in front of the right customers, the right clients and the right audience, then we’re setup to give them enough time to jump on board and basically I don’t have to keep standing on the edge of my credit card to make this happen.

Has Couchfest become a full-time responsibility?

When it’s happening, it’s about a 200% full-time responsibility; About six months before, it starts to ramp up, like any film festival and during those last two months, you’re lucky to get in naps or even eat. The last two months, it ends up being everything and then throughout the year, it ends up being a part-time job while you’re going to film festivals and you’re working on other things. There’s not much you can do six months out – you can’t promote the films, because you don’t know what the films are yet; you can’t make the DVDs because you don’t have the films, so it’s something that loads up, the closer you get to the event.

How are you able to run a film festival and manage a balance between it and another job or social life?

That’s assuming that I am handling that very well (laughs) – I don’t know if I am. I’m very obsessed with what we do, so I probably spend 90% of my time on the last 1% of the details that no one else will notice because our staff is sickly, unhealthily obsessed with promoting awesome films to awesome hosts and bringing people together. Unfortunately, I just cry every time I see a good film, so for me, it doesn’t feel unhealthy because I love what I do.

As far as a healthy balance goes, I can’t say that it’s a healthy balance – You show me someone in the film industry that’s healthy! It’s not designed for a healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately, I love it; I have a crippling weakness for community projects, so I come back every year with the same, if not more, energy to do it again.

How can the Couchfest method of watching movies in stranger's homes work for independent filmmakers who want to take their movies on the road and gain a larger audience?

We’re always trying to figure out how to get a bigger audience, ourselves, so we’re both in the same boat on that one. My recommendation would be to give your host plenty of time to promote what you’re going to bring them. Secondly, finding a house to do it is a great idea, but don’t overlook community events or community organizations.

For example, the one that we’re working with here in Warsaw, Poland – they’re an art collective and they promote art and culture in a part of a neighborhood that’s been kind of neglected; when they do events, the whole community comes out, which is what our mission is – bringing people together with mind blowing films. So, what I would do is look into hosts but also off-venue opportunities like youth centers, art collectives or even independent film organizations.

You could even look into DIY – bike garages or bike collectives; think about your audience, what do they like? – (hypothetically) Oh, look, there’s like a dumpster diving meeting that happens once a month – why can’t I have my films at the introduction of their meeting or after their meeting, why not just have a little 30-minute social film gathering?!

So, I would piggyback it with events or groups that probably would enjoy what we’re doing and also have similar interests. You could just basically have your film fest inside of a thrift store – I mean, right there would be your target market! Get like, 50 white t-shirts from the t-shirt rack and make a film screen out of them. That’s a nutty little idea that you could go with.

Can you name some reasons that would cause short film submissions to be rejected from Couchfest?

Hell yeah -- You’re film is three minutes long, for the love of god, DO NOT have a one-minute credit screen!

33% of the audiences’ experience is watching the credits! I know the credits are important, but find a way to have it not be a significant act or chapter of your film. That’s key because people are sitting in someone’s living room; if the film is two to four minutes and then there’s a minute of credits, that’s a lot of downtime. It makes it more difficult for us to accept a film if the credits end up being a major section of the film.

Think of it this way – a feature is two hours, right?! – and the credits are maybe 10 minutes. Percentage wise, what is that? 120 minutes and 10 minutes of credits – that’s like ten percent. So, if a movie is three minutes, which is like 270 seconds, the credits should be like 10 seconds, tops! Make the credits quick, don’t hurt me. Also, it’s never about the production with us. It’s mostly about “Is that story good?” – that’s all we really want.

I can’t tell you how many films we reject from state film schools or production houses and how many films we are gleefully accepting of that comes from people we’ve never heard of and halfway through the film, it’s obvious that they ran out of friends and they actually cartooned the rest of the film because they ran out of people to help them. If the story is good and we get goose bumps or we laugh so hard that our co-workers tell us to shut up or we drag a co-worker to come over to see it, [a film is less likely to be rejected].

Watch the level of trying to hard. There’s a big difference between acting for theater and acting for film – you don’t have to be so LARGE when you’re filming, and I think that sometimes, that drama comes across in a film and it’s too much for the frame – our programmers will reject that very quickly.

What has been the key to Couchfest's growth and success since it started back in 2008?

Most of my staff have all been filmmakers, so we try to remember the heartaches and the frustrations of what it’s like submitting and making films. We try to make it so that every step of our film festival feels genuine, real and organic; On our application, we have ridiculous questions like “How awesome are you?” and “We demand gossip!” -- We also know that submission fees are expensive.

We remember submitting our films to film festivals and being shocked that the submission fees were more than our film budget. So, when we ask for a submission fee, we make it very clear that if your film is selected, we reimburse your film’s submission fee and we’re proud of that. We know that if we liked your film, you should be able to get something out of it and on the other hand, if we don’t accept your film and we do retain your submission fee, we offer – if you want; maybe you don’t, but we offer the notes that our programmers took on your film.

It’s basically free objective, we-don’t-know-who-you-were kind of feedback about your film; so if you’re going to pay for your submissions and you don’t get accepted, we feel like we’re at least giving you something or the opportunity to get something out of it. You’re not getting your girlfriend or your boyfriend telling you how much they love the films, we’re giving you our honest feedback.

Can you describe your strangest or most surprising memory from this year’s Couchfest that reminds you how truly unique this event has become?

I had a couple of volunteers who, when done with their shift, they were allowed to go to the other houses in Iceland and see other films; During the film festival, I was walking back and forth between the houses to see how things were going and I saw my volunteers and I was like “How are things going? Did you like the new films?” and they totally blew me off, did not talk to me and I felt so honored that they were like “Yeah, yeah, I know that’s the director of the film festival, but Fuck You, we’re late for these films – we gotta go! I don’t want to miss any of these films; we can’t talk; gotta go, gotta go!” and they were just so excited about going to the next house and dashing off on their bikes that they just had no interest in talking to anyone. I just thought that was kind of amazing.

Since you cannot be in 50 places at once, how were you able to maintain a smooth flow between all of the domestic and overseas houses involved with Couchfest 2011?

We made it really clear in the beginning, and with our application process, that there’s only so much we can do; we can’t provide insurance for your place – that’s just something that we can’t afford to do. So, you’re kind of an independent, off-the-radar venue; an independently operating entity. We can provide the content and we’ll help you with promotion, but we, in no way, can handle the insurance or equipment; we can’t sign off on anything in your house.

We gave the DVDs to them as early as possible so that they could test them before we added their event to our website; we were constantly online so that if anything was happening, we could make updates and changes immediately, to reflect what was happening – we got lucky; We have a great staff so we micro-nano-analyze everything that could possibly go wrong and have plans of what we could do and things we could participate in proactively to make it smooth for the host.

That’s not saying that there weren’t things we could improve on, but we front loaded as much as possible so that the hosts wouldn’t have to sweat so much and they could really just enjoy the experience of being a host and being with the audience, there at the house. So, we try to just organize as much as possible in advance and then monitor it online, what we can do to offer support.

Couchfest is a cutting-edge short film festival where the program lineup is so good that volunteers totally blow off their boss between shifts, in an effort to make sure they don’t miss any of the screenings.

The event delivers films in Haiti and makes it possible for movie lovers in Slovakia to have access to the same films that are showing at industry-recognized events including the Melbourne International Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival and Toronto Film Festival.

Watching independent films has never been more fun. Here's hoping that this interview will encourage more movie lovers to seek out, appreciate and enjoy the kind of laughs, discussions and modern-day attention span accommodations that short films offer!

*Photo by Christopher Velasco, courtesy of Couchfest films.

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Taking Movies on the Road: An Interview with Couchfest Founder, Craig Downing #filmfestivals #indiefilm #shortfilms

The 2011 Couchfest film festival’s international expansion united movie lovers around the globe, from Iceland to Peru and then all the way over in Haiti. It not only allowed for a wider celebration of short films, but any filmmaker whose work was selected to screen at the festival this year can take pride in knowing they their film was seen in places that they probably never imagined being showcased at, much less visiting.

I had the pleasure of discussing the exciting movie madness that was this year’s festival, with Craig Downing, the founder of Couchfest. During this conversation, he revealed some of the surprises, challenges and thrills of taking short films beyond U.S. borders; along with the top reasons why some film submissions are not accepted to screen at this festival.

Madlab Post: Could you give a rough estimate of how many people attended Couchfest this year?

Craig Downing: We had probably about somewhere around 500 people, worldwide.

What methods of promotion helped to attract audience members at Couchfest screenings?

We had a lot of success with word-of-mouth, Couch Surfing had an article about us that drove a lot of traffic to the site and then we had an article with Wired online that drove a lot of traffic and one of my favorite blogs, Laughing Squid did a piece on us – and that kind of trumped things up because we have a budget of debt, so we get really excited about any kind of word or marketing or twitter announcement about us; I think the biggest thing for driving people to the festival is just hearing about the quirkiness of it and then wanting to go experience it.

Most of it was online; we did a couple of Facebook ads and put up some flyers in Iceland – the flyers last about a day, until someone rips them down and puts up their own band poster over them. Online, there are a lot of filmmaking groups and industry blogs that I was reaching out to, mentioning what we were doing – I would say to filmmakers that I really like “Hey, we have a film festival in your city – you could be elbow to elbow with other filmmakers, whether you have a film or don’t have a film playing at this festival.”

Which method of promotion had the better ROI for Couchfest, in terms of attracting an audience for the screenings--Facebook ads or flyers?

It’s hard to measure that but I would say, because Facebook has the analytics that I can look at and I can’t really follow up on the posters – there is probably a better, targeted impact with the Facebook ads. They were very specific for the keywords that we were using and they were visible a lot longer, whereas the posters lasted a day – until they got graffiti over them. The online, Facebook ads were probably more effective.

What were some of the differences between how audiences responded to the 2011 Couchfest program lineup, from country to country?

There were films that I absolutely loved and I got to see all of the votes coming in and was tempted to change the votes for the films I liked – I thought that I picked a film program that was so solid that everyone would love it – I was living in that kind of dream and to see some of the results come back, I was like “wow! How could they not like this film? -- it was so great – these people are cyborgs! – What is wrong with them? Do they not have, like, a mother?! This film is GREAT!” Then again, I ended up talking to some of them and they were like “Yeah, the film is great but the acting of the mom – I just couldn’t handle it – it was just too dramatic,” and I was like “Oh, yeah!” – which is the whole point.

As you probably know, in the middle of the film program – there is a 35 minute program for the houses – we squeeze in a five minute intermission in all of the programs and the point of that is to let people have an opportunity to chitchat and talk, which is realistically what our film festival is about. We say we’re a film festival, but the secret is – we’re not a film festival; We’re a community event where we try to bring people together. So, we trick them into coming together with awesome films, awesome hosts and a fun idea in an awesome location.

So, the idea that there is a difference of opinion between the cities or even at a certain location about films – I was like “wow, I didn’t even imagine that,” but at the same time it’s like “wow, this is a great opportunity,” because I KNOW that stirred up some conversations – because some people loved these films and some people hated them; and I loved the idea that there were probably great discussions about the films BECAUSE of the differences of opinion.

How did culture have an impact on the ways that audiences responded to the films?

One of the locations that we had was Oman, which, they don’t even allow Western media in Oman and when I was talking to the host, I kept asking him “are you sure you want me to put your address on the website? – I’m ok with not listing your location, for your own safety” and he was like “no, it’s totally fine – couchfest films, for better or worse, is not on their radar – they’ll have no idea what’s going on or that we delivered, basically, satanic, Western film to Oman.”

At this point, I would also really like that guy to email me back and let me know he’s alive, or at least talk to me so, you know - I don’t know if his hand has been chopped off –- but anyway, I imagine that their response to films is completely different than say, Brooklyn, New York where we had 20 people get together and watch films.

Another example I can give you, there is a film called “The Dark Side,” which is a parody of “The Blind Side” and they take select sections of the movie and do it in such a way that they recreate it as a horror movie and it’s really, really good – I realized that it’s very American-centric and people in Poland actually told me that they didn’t submit the votes for that movie because they had no idea what it was about, which is fair. I should have recognized that, and it was silly of me to assume that everyone had seen Sandra Bullock’s Blind Side.

Statistically, what genres or types of films have gained the most favor among audiences at Couchfest since the festival's inception in 2008?

Each year, we always try different things; One year we tried to do a festival out of Iceland while also doing it around the world (*wink*) -- crazy! In the past, we did a horror house once and I was absolutely surprised that it was not well attended, so we haven’t done it since.

We did a documentary house one year and that was wildly successful, but the difficulty with the documentary house is – we don’t get a lot of submissions for documentaries because it’s really hard; As a documentarian, you’re really trying to hit deep for the story and get all the facts from both sides and blah, blah, blah; and because the time limit for our films is eight minutes, to do a documentary in eight minutes is pretty much impossible and really difficult.

So, we were just happy one year that we got enough short documentaries that we could actually do a documentary house, and I would LOVE to do it again but we just don’t get enough of them to do it as a specific house. We normally get a couple and then I just kinda soup them together for a mixed genre house.

But wait! There's more....

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this Couchfest Interview, to be posted this weekend, on The Madlab Post!

*Photo by Christopher Velasco, courtesy of Couchfest Films

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