This was one of my favorite conversations we had at SXSW 2007 and I think every filmmaker should watch this video.

There’s a beautiful little community of filmmakers growing out of SXSW. We talked with three of them about their process and how non-traditional it is. Left to right: Aaron Katz (Quiet City), Gretta Gerwig (star,co-writer Hannah Takes the Stairs), Joe Swanberg (director Hannah Takes the Stairs), Paul Moore (moderator).

The SXSW Film Festival is over. Kevin reviews the documentary, Helvetica. Paul interviews SXSW award winners Michael Jacobs (Audience of One), Bill Haney (The Price of Sugar), and Ronald Bronstein (Frownland).

Download FilmCouch #12 or subscribe to it in the iTunes store (search for “filmcouch” or click here to launch iTunes) and a new free episode will download every Friday.

There are a few filmmakers documenting their attempt to change a person’s life for the better. John Chester is one of them and in Lost in Woonsocket the change in his subject’s life is real.

This ad was not the first citizen ad, and it will not be the last. The game has changed.

This is the last line of today’s “I did it” post by Phil deVellis. As he told the world today, he created the “Vote Different” campaign mashup ad that’s been all over the internet the past couple of weeks. Here’s another excerpt from deVellis’ post, explaining his motivation:

I made the “Vote Different” ad because I wanted to express my feelings about the Democratic primary, and because I wanted to show that an individual citizen can affect the process. There are thousands of other people who could have made this ad, and I guarantee that more ads like it–by people of all political persuasions–will follow.

This shows that the future of American politics rests in the hands of ordinary citizens.

The power of a citizen’s voice through an ad like this might come as a bit of a shock to old school politicians and campaigners. But it can’t be a surprise to anyone who has ever knocked around for a while on YouTube or who knows the term Web 2.0. Anyone with a bit of tech savvy can communicate a political opinion and create a forum, just like any “ordinary citizen” can become a famous “actor,” thanks to YouTube (or a movie reviewer with a following, thanks to Spout).

And Phil deVellis is right: His “citizen ad” will not be the last. The issue with these political ads, just as with everything else in the Long Tail, will become how to sort through all of them to find the few quality ones worth your time.

Jump-rope will blow your mind. We got to shoot Tim Martin, world champion jump roper, for a couple minutes. Stephanie Johnes shot the best jump ropers in the world for two years and her documentary, Doubletime, is stunning.

Last week I walked five blocks to my favorite neighborhood cafe, managed to snag one of the “good” tables (near an outlet and a window, not too small), switched a couple of chairs around so I could sit on one that wasn’t wobbly, bought my Americano, and settled in to get lots of work done. But I couldn’t get on the Internet. No one around me could get on the Internet. And several people had asked cafe employees to restart the router several times. No one could figure out what the problem was. I ended up quickly drinking my coffee then packing up and walking home. A good hour, gone.

A few days later I went back to that cafe, and a barista told me what the problem had been: Some numskull was downloading a movie! Clueless or just selfish? Who knows. The point is that this whole movie downloading thing isn’t what you’d call a breeze. At least not yet.

But it’s still on everyone’s radars. The Sunday New York Times had three articles on the topic: “The Shape of Cinema, Transformed at the Click of a Mouse,” “The Revolution Will Be Downloaded (If You’re Patient,” and “Little Films on Little Screens.”

I wish the dude at the cafe had read the piece by Manohla Dargis (”The Revolution Will Be Downloaded”) before he screwed with the wireless network a couple dozen people were trying to access. Here’s a paragraph:

When all the planets are aligned and your computer has enough memory and hasn’t been deluged with spam for lots of little multicolored pills, it will function just dandy. But try to download without enough disk space and through a wireless connection, as I initially did, and you may soon wonder why you’re spending so much time and energy to watch films you’ve never heard of on your computer rather than watching a “Children of Men” DVD on your dreamy big television.

True enough.

And here are some bits from A. O. Scott’s article (”The Shape of Cinema”):

It is now possible to imagine–to expect–that before too long the entire surviving history of movies will be open for browsing and sampling at the click of a mouse for a few PayPal dollars….

…you have the potential of tens of thousands of movies competing for the burdened attention of the viewers…. How will they be sorted out? How will you know which ones you might want to see?

A.O. Scott, who says the question is asked out of plain-old curiosity, not out of fear that the professional critic is a waning vocation, ends up basically answering it later in the article:

It has become something of a truism that Web culture is driven not by traditional, top-down forms of tastemaking like the judgments of professional critics or the strategies of corporate marketers, but rather by the lateral operations of social networks.

…What will guide those choices? Will the social networks that drive taste on the Web discover new and neglected works? Will they manage to circumvent both relentless marketing and criticial myopia? If the short history of the Internet teaches anything, it’s that any decisive, early answer is sure to be wrong.

These are good questions for everyone at spout.com–employees and community members alike. The website was certainly created with those intentions–to help people sort through the “Long Tail,” to point to good movies that might be overlooked, and to listen to the opinions of real people, not marketing experts. But as with any community, the people who are in it ultimately determine the direction. We’re as eager as A.O. Scott to see what happens.

Paul and Kevin discuss highlights from the SXSW film festival. They review Joe Swanberg’s new film Hannah Takes the Stairs, then talk to Jennifer Venditti both before and after the controversial screening of her excellent new documentary, Billy The Kid.

Download FilmCouch #11 or subscribe to it in the iTunes store (search for “filmcouch” or click here to launch iTunes) and a new free episode will download every Friday.

After ten films, Bill Haney has discovered filmmaking, in concrete ways, can change human suffering for the better. His recounting of making the documentary, The Price of Sugar, is truly inspiring.

Who Loves the Sun has been showing at festivals around the globe the past year, including two screenings at SXSW earlier this week. Corey Marr, the film’s producer, joins director Matthew Bissonnette to talk about budgets, being Canadian, and filming on an island. For more on Matt and the ideas behind the film, read this recent SpoutBlog post. You can also visit the official movie site and the film’s MySpace page.

K: What have been the primary ups and downs in making and distributing Who Loves the Sun (WLTS), from a producer’s point of view?

C: It certainly has been an adventure. I think the two highest highs were getting the phone call from telefilm that they were investing in the film, and arriving on the first day of principal photography and seeing all those people and trucks. Plus, no one drowned that I know of. The biggest down was having to make a huge insurance claim because one of our cans of film got fogged. And using the porta-potties was never pleasant. On the distribution side, the film comes out in Canada on April 6th, and we are currently working on US and foreign sales, so ask me again in a few months.

K: How much did the movie cost to make?

M: about a million and change canadian, which is like about five hundred american dollars.

K: How did you keep costs low?

M: we tried to keep costs low by being mean and cheap. however, in my limited experience, once you start working with people who aren’t in your immediate family, stuff just gets expensive: folks gotta eat! in some ways, it seemed we had more time on Looking For Leonard[Bissonnette's first film], and that was a really, really inexpensive movie. i mean, we made that one out of spit and scotch-tape.

K: What ended up adding expense to WLTS?

M: greedy price gouging by oil companies, who were cynically using the cover of their iraq war, nearly sunk us. canada is a big place, so we did a lot of driving. oh yeah, setting the film on an island and shooting on water didn’t help. so cost overruns were half dick cheney’s fault, and half mine.

C: Matt is being a bit hard on himself. the way our financing worked out, we actually had mandated days that we had to shoot across two different provinces. So a story that is ideally suited to one main location turned into about six or seven different unit moves. I\’d lay 10% blame on funding bureaucracy, half on cheney, and the rest on matt. It’s funny, though, because now that it’s done, it’s strange to think of it being done in any other way.

K: Tell me more about the funding, and in particular how it helped to be Canadian.

M: telefilm canada, manitoba film and sound, and christal films (our cdn distributor) kindly paid for the film (helped along by cdn tv sales at tmn and movie central) …i love all those people. i mean, i really really love them.

C: and we can’t forget the Canadian Television Fund, a television pre-sale to showcase, and our awesome Canadian tax credits.

K: What has the marketing/distribution process been like?

M: well, since the film comes out in canada april 6th, and the us theatrical is still up in the air, we haven’t really gotten too far into that mess yet. In general, i always want people to spend more money, and to market the thing for what it is, if that’s possible.

on the festival level, the getting it out there level, reaching out to the people via the internet level, corey has been doing a real good job. these days, with a bit of hard work, it seems you can put your thing into the world, even if you don’t have much cash, or insider status, or what have you.

K: What has been your experience at film festivals?

M: i really like most fests. i enjoy the audiences, and seeing where people are at regarding film in particular and the whole ball of wax in general. i don’t have super faves, don’t care if it’s big or small, but sxsw, los angeles and london will always have a very special place in my heart, as they gave us our first breaks [with Looking for Leonard and WLTS].

K: Corey, what is your background? How did you get into film production?

C: My background is in advertising, having worked at a number of ad agencies, both on the creative end and on the strategy side, but never really being satisfied with either one exclusively. Probably something to do with my megalomaniac complex, and probably one of the reasons I got into producing. Plus, I have always been fascinated by the permanence of film, and art in general. WLTS is my first feature length film.

K: What are you focusing on these days?

C: Getting ready for the Canadian theatrical release (April 6th), working with our sales team in the US, and building an online community for the film. you too can be our virtual friend. just visit us on myspace, iklipz and imeem, as well as the facebook group who loves the sun-the movie. and, of course, on spout.com. I’ve also been developing some new projects, including two features with Matt. And none of them takes place on an island.