Acting is the Thing

Christians want to support good Christian films. They yearn for something to latch onto... a group of filmmakers like those at Sherwood Baptist church making films like Fireproof that extols the virtues of saving a marriage. Or movies like Bella, which extols the virtues of saving a child from abortion. Or even The Passion of the Christ, which tells a historically accurate representation of a Roman flogging on Jesus Christ and his subsequent sacrifice on the cross.

Christians want to support films that tell a story they want to see and one that flies in the face of the hedonism that rules the day in Hollywood. They're searching for entertainment that is not filled with sexual innuendo and showcases vices as virtues or lust as love.

If, as a filmmaker, you happen upon such a movement, its important that you have everything in place to ride that large, growing wave all the way to the shore.

Two recent Christian films could be considered case studies of potential Christian game changers, that, instead of the growing into a tidal wave, slowly dissipated into another wave among many due to the same fundamental reason.

Come What May and Pendragon are both independent Christian films that were ambitious and very successful in almost every way. Their approaches were timely and inventive and touched the core of Christian film audiences.

In a growing anti-Christian social and political climate, Come What May had the ingenious approach of attacking the legal case surrounding the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling by having a student in a Christian college tasked with arguing against the ruling in a moot court, which has real judges and/or retired judges in an arena that simulates Supreme Court proceedings. The lead character struggled with taking on the task of trying to overturn Roe v. Wade and was searching for a compromise solution. When forced to face the issue head on, he had to rely on his faith as well as overcome opposing viewpoints on the issue from his own parents.

The script was very well written and, for a Christian film, the production value was quite good. Having access to a relatively new, small Christian college that looked like a historic Ivy League school elevated the look of the film to higher than normal levels. The lead actors were good looking, wholesome young people which was appropriate for the characters.

Pendragon: Sword of His Father is an incredibly ambitious film from home school families that started small, but ended up being massively grand and epic in scale. The film takes place in 411 A.D. when the Romans left Britain and left a void of power that various groups tried to fill by attacking villages and acquiring slaves and wealth. Pendragon follows the son of a village leader that is killed by marauders who destroy his town. At first he is enslaved, then escapes, then leads a group of other fighters to defeat the marauders that killed his father. The film talks about the need to follow Christ's example and that God's plans last more than just one generation.

The film has tremendous production value, with special effects, swords, battles, explosions, etc. It has over 600 extras, full sized sets that look like real villages, chases on horse back and fisticuffs.

Both films were on the verge of being powerhouses. They both garnered tremendous press and support within the Christian film community. Come What May was a selected film of the American Family Association and was offered for sale via the AFA in a number of the AFA's email updates. Pendragon won numerous awards and was written up in a number of Christian film blogs and websites.

The problem that both films struggled with that kept them from being blockbusters was the basic and fundamental issue of acting. Both films had everything going for them, except one of the three fundamentals of film making. When people watch films they need to see it, hear it and believe it. Believing it comes from the writing and the acting. Both films have good scripts, but the acting completely undermines everything else.

It's just an example of how difficult it is to put together a completely successful film. And it also shows that some of the core items, acting, lighting, writing and directing, are at the root of a successful film experience.

In both films, Come What May and Pendragon, once the initial impressiveness of scope and approach wore off, you are still stuck with the core items. Once we grasp the amount of effort and time it took to make the world of Pendragon come alive, once we've accepted it as the reality of the film, the only thing that is left is the character journeys. And the believability and effectiveness of those journeys are fueled by the quality of the acting.

I hope we can, someday, put together a project that has reached some social and spiritual critical mass like these two films, where we can leverage the press and attention, growing one small ripple into a tidal wave of both critical and financial Christian film success.

Merry Christmas

To my family and friends that have been visiting this website for five years, I want to thank you for your support and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

I hope you all are blessed with an abundance of God's graces this holy holiday and throughout all of 2010.

Microcinema Flashback - Breath Mints, Microcinema and the American Film Market (2004)

The last of my microcinema articles which was printed online as the microcinema revolution neared its end. This one talks about the American Film Market and the lessons we can learn from it for the microcinema filmmaker. Funny how things had, well, not changed much as far as quality film creation during these years in microcinema. As many amateur filmmakers cried foul at the lack of respect for their work, in reality, most of the product created during this immensely prolific time were just bad cinema.

From May 2004.

*****

Breath Mints, Microcinema and the American Film Market
By Pete Bauer

After the Round table that produced a theoretical "ten commandments" of microcinema, there was some heated discussion on the Microcinema Scene message boards about the topic. One of the outcomes of that discussion was that, as Mike Amato stated so succinctly, some microcinema filmmakers are "Breath Mints" and some are "Candy Mints." Breath Mints are those microcinema filmmakers who want their projects to "smell nice" and would love to make movies for a career. Candy Mints are those who simply have fun making movies and don't have any real movie making career ambitions.

Well, this article is for all of the Breath Mints out there.

For those of you who are hoping that your creative jaunts in microcinema will somehow propel you into the fray that is the Hollywood movie machine, there is a simple way to see if your projects are up to snuff, to see just how far microcinema has to go to reach any sort of globally accepted quality level... attend an American Film Market (AFM).

If you've never been to the AFM, I strongly suggest you attend one. It is the place where films are screened and sold, primarily by U.S.-based distributors to international markets, however there are some U.S. distribution rights that are acquired from domestic and international films too. Everything from the next big Universal release to latest batch of Troma films are there. I attended the AFM in 1999 to see how the process worked as friends of mine assisted their distributor to get our low-budget action flick out into the market.

When you go to the AFM, what you will find is a very large group of below average films vying for the limited international distribution deals. If you can't actually attend the AFM, it wouldn't hurt to at least pick up the AFM edition of the Hollywood Reporter (usually comes out the month of the market... February this year, moving to November next year). In it you will find a lot of information about the films, a lot of advertising for films looking for distribution and a detailed list of every company and the films they have to offer. When scanning this years Hollywood Reporter, some interesting things come to mind in regards to microcinema.

First, some real distribution companies make the absolute worst posters. Its amazing how cheesy these things are. Maybe its on purpose, maybe in some twisted way they sell because they look stupid. I don't know, but there is enough of them that it makes me wonder.

Along with bad posters, there's a lot of movies with actors that scream "this movies going to suck, but at least you'll recognize the name of the star." Names like Eric Roberts, Gary Busey and Lorenzo Lamas come to mind. I've often been of the mind that I'd rather have the right no-name actor in a movie than the wrong name actor. But, that may not help me sell anything. The President of MTI Home Video says in the mag "I'll take all the Eric Roberts films I can find" because they fill a niche market. Scanning through you'll also find out that movies such as Ginger Snaps 2 & 3 are in post-production and that Corman's The Keeper of Time looks A LOT like Lord of the Rings.


You'll also find the estimated prices for worldwide markets. For films budgeted between $750,000-$1 million (the lowest budget covered), for example, you could make:

- between $30,000-$90,000 from the German/Austria market.
- $10,000-$15,000 in Malaysia.
- $2,000-$5,000 in Pakistan.

Compare that for films between $6 million-$12 million:

- you could make $500,000-$1.1 million in German/Austria market.
- $90,000-$150,000 in Malaysia.
- $20,000-$30,000 in Pakistan.

But even in Hollywood, making your money back is hard work. Consider that if you were in the lowest category ($750,000 - $1 million budget) the MOST you could make back (if their estimates are correct in the magazine) if you sold to ALL of the international markets at their HIGHEST value is $1.24 million. For the $6 million - $12 million budget range, the most you could make is just under $11 million. Of course, there are other ways to make money on a film (domestic, etc.) but this clearly shows that international sales has its limitations. I guess the key is to make a movie that LOOKS like $750,000 film, but costs much less. I don't think the technology used in microcinema is there yet, but perhaps someday it will.

What does all of this have to do with the Breath Mints of microcinema? I think you could safely say that many of the films at the AFM are what we most of us would consider crap. But, if you look at the difference in production value, story and acting, most are vastly superior to what is available on the microcinema scene. Granted, the nature of the microcinema scene promotes experimentation and imitation from learning filmmakers. But, I also get a sense from a lot of microcinema filmmakers that because we made a movie over 74 minutes long, people should consider it just as valid or valuable as the features Hollywood churns out. Yet, most microcinema efforts don't equate in quality to any of the features available at the AFM. As sad as a movie like SCI-FIGHTERS starring Lorenzo Lamas and Don "The Dragon" Wilson looks, it would still kick most of our microcinema asses.

In the end, as microcinema filmmakers, we may not give a crap about Hollywood's financial paradigm. Like Candy Mints, we may just make movies for ourselves. But, if one thinks that their next microcinema effort is going to be able to compete with even the lowest quality product selling at the AFM, unfortunately for the Breath Mints, we still have a long way to go.