FEATURE: THE LOST CHILDREN - A FEATURE FILM by Mark Harris

Zak Forsman said:
this is one of the few ways to give yourself a leg up on festivals too. you're going to get the same foot in the door with fests that tom quinn and others have had. I look forward to getting sick of reading about you on indiewire. :) congratulations!
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Thanks. It's a year long thing, with the IFP providing support throughout 2011. In Sept, we go to their IFP market where they tell me we meet distributors, agents, etc. It really is a huge honor and extremely helpful to get such big guns banging on my movie for a week. Jon Reiss is there, Scott MacCauly, Joanna Vincent.

And the whole IFP staff is amazing. Rose and Amy, everyone there really loves film, and wants to see you make you film the best it can be. And if today is any indication, they also will not let me get away with any bulls**t. All of them are right up in your business challenging the assumptions you came in with about your movie. It's a Godsend, really.

On the downside, I just found out I did not get a finishing funds grant I applied for. So the people offering that suck.
 
Awesome, Mark. Congrats on this; I look forward to hearing about it. What was the application process you went through to get in?
 
dougspice said:
I meant more like what your experience of it was, personally.
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I sent in my ****. They picked me. They pick films they think have promise, I guess, and films at a certain stage where the stuff you learn in the lab will start to be helpful.

The lab is now over and holy crap what a week. Bonded with a number of other filmmakers hitting the same point in the process, and dreading the next steps as much as I am.

I am going to write up a detailed thing about the lab experience at Filmmaker Mag...shooting for this week.
 
So a cool part of the IFP lab is that I'm assigned a one on one producing mentor. And the guy I got is pretty intimidating.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1317614/

But in our first meeting tonight, already his advice on the cut of the film has been resonating. He's got tons of knowledge and experience and I'm very appreciative of his time.

The lab is a year long fellowship where the leaders and mentors will advise and help out along the way. We go back in Sept to focus on our marketing, dist and festival plans.
 
Thanks for sharing, Mark! Sounds like a really good deal.

Have you answered a lot of those questions now? And, have you shifted gears with the feature into entirely different directions?
 
Kholi said:
Thanks for sharing, Mark! Sounds like a really good deal.

Have you answered a lot of those questions now? And, have you shifted gears with the feature into entirely different directions?
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I'm in the process now of settling the questions. There are a couple of different ways my film can go, and right now, it kind of straddles between them. I am close to deciding which way to take it and doing some more cutting accordingly.
 
Did any of the other filmmakers touch on transmedia at all? I'm curious what the consensus was (or wasn't) on how that fits into the modern distribution model. (I feel weird even writing that phrase).
 
dougspice said:
Did any of the other filmmakers touch on transmedia at all? I'm curious what the consensus was (or wasn't) on how that fits into the modern distribution model. (I feel weird even writing that phrase).
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No not at all. It was all focused on the films. Some filmmakers even got a little tense when I mentioned saving some exposition for the website. Even in my case, we kind of put that all to the side, except when talking about distribution specifically, and just focused on the film. In fact, some of the ass-kicking I got had to do with making sure I focused enough on the film as a film. Which I needed to hear right now.

I was a little surprised in that most of the filmmakers seemed to not know much about what was happening in distribution. I learned a TON, to be sure, but some of the stuff about self-dist I've been following for two years now, and to some filmmakers it was completely new. I guess I thought a lot of that stuff - whether you go for it or not - was common knowledge now.
 
Hey all, I don't come round these parts much anymore, but wanted to send a follow-up for all of the folks on here who had supported me and my movies over the years. THE LOST CHILDREN is about to have its NYC premier at Lincoln Center in NYC on Jan 22. The premier sold out very quickly, so they added a second showing on Jan 28th. That one is also on track to sell out. Lot of folks are at Sundance then, but we timed the second screening to catch them when they're back. And some of the elements of the premier tap other communities in NYC who wouldn't be gone anyway.

I'm trying a lot of crazy stuff with the premier, putting into practice some of the stuff I've been studying for the past couple of years. Film Society of Lincoln Center has been very supportive.

I started talking about what I'm doing at the premier event over in Filmmaker Magazine:

http://filmmakermagazine.com/61196-immersive-storytelling-for-the-lost-children/

I'll pop back into this thread to say hey to anyone who joins in. But a big thanks to the mods & members who've both supported me and bested me in competition over the years. Jack, Timur(see you there, brother!), Aram, Luis, Barry, Joe, Jason, Kholi(I WANT MY SUPERSEEDS, YO!!!), Zak and the rest of you crazy cats. Not sure how many of ya'll still hang here but word!

Peace!
 
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