Project Nantlle Coed

 

Some films are made just for the maker, who is the only audience.  A private diary.  But film is a powerful medium, and impacts on society: governments across the world have a history of funding national film making. 

Question the whole cinematic apparatus: writing, making, marketing, showing, the audience.  Create ‘Nantllewood’?  Create a market by selecting your audience personally.

Fashion a structure for a cultural action group.

A kickstarter – 100 Audience members – An exclusive film for only those who sign up.  Each member is a director = ‘distributed direction’.

Options are offered to the closed group for the presentation of the film.

So – recruit a group of people who are to be the audience for the film that they will decide the structure/context for, based on the options provided / shared with them by the director (me).

Each member/fan pays a fee and has votes on what happens in the film and when.

Clips are provided for each one minute section to make 17 minute film.

17 sections of music are shared and voted on where they are played.  The ‘premier’ is by private internet share.

To question what the relationship of the audience is to a film – a reverse marketting of the medium?

To apply structural principles ( a set of rules that are predetermined) to a whole film production. (as opposed to narrative principles).

To document the whole process/project in a documentary film.

A cinematic cult who are chosen to be members, and who vote on various options for the film as provided by me.

To subvert the current industry model for filmmaking (or to usurp the current model and apply it to a radical context).

Mainstream film starts with the selection of a script that is judged to be a financial success.  (Or does it?)  This judgement is based on what has been a money-earner before, and on focus groups and market research.  Standard practice dictates that a film maker/director decides on, or has a clear concept of, the audience for the film.  For mainstream film, this is the biggest audience possible.  Thus, a children’s film that has reference to adult issues is a winner as both children and adults will enjoy it.

So maybe a mainstream film starts by analysing the market (audience) for a potential film, and then looking for a story/script that could meet the needs of the audience/production? Thus genre - ‘What kind of films do you like?

Statistics concerning who, demographically speaking, attends the cinema is also important.  So the idea of selecting an audience and letting them have a hand in making the film which is aimed at them is in one respect a radical framing of what happens in all funded, mainstream cinema, but also could be seen as a radical recuperation of the methods of capitalist cultural making.

The spectator vs the audience.

The private film whose only publicity/proof of existence is the PhD.

A three year project to make a film comparison about the film industry versus artist made films.  To apply radical ideas of structural film: that narrative forces identification and thus perpetuates the lie that everything is fine.

Filmmaking as a process.

Makers have developed various technical processes to produce interesting effects in the actual body of the film.  Options for experimentation in the other elements of process involved in filmmaking are available.  

The process of marketing and promoting: 

the process of writing/scripting: