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Winter’s Bone Casting Call January 10th

05-Jan-09

Registration for people who want to be extras in the feature film “Winter’s Bone” will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jan. 10 at the Forsyth High School gymnasium, 178 Panther Drive in Forsyth.

Producers are seeking adults and school-aged children for the project.

“We are also interested in babies around 8 months old,” said location casting director Heather Laird. “Children appearing in films and television are usually played by two individuals.

“Identical twins are great, but they are hard to come by. We will likely end us selecting two similar-looking infants.”

The babies will work about a week on the film. Most of the rest of the extras will work one day.

Extras are generally paid $50 to $100 per day, Laird said.

“Winter’s Bone” is based on the novel of the same name by West Plains native Daniel Woodrell. Principal photography will begin in February in the Forsyth area for about four weeks.

For details, go online to www.wrightlairdcasting. com

Sugar Grip Faries

22-Dec-08

Hat tip to the “Totally Unauthorized” blog, check out this 1 minute video

Sugar Grip Fairies

Happy Holiday’s folks!

Frank Chimero offers “Jailbirds”

18-Dec-08

Frank’s an MSU graphics arts grad who lent his animation skills to this short film on the US Penal system.

There are currently more than 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States. What does that look like, exactly? That’s equivalent to putting the combined populations of Miami, Las Vegas, and Minneapolis behind bars. Why is our penal system broken? How do we stack up against other countries?

Retrospective - Hollywood Studio Logos

16-Dec-08

mgm-leo-lion-logo-historyYou see these opening logos every time you go to the movies, but have you ever wondered who is the boy on the moon in the DreamWorks logo? Or which mountain inspired the Paramount logo? Or who was the Columbia Torch Lady? Find out the complete history for six of the largest studios in this excellent article from Neatorama.

What’s Your Festival Or Distribution Plan?

04-Dec-08

From IndiWire, an insightful column addressed to filmmakers who submitted to Sundance on the current market and distribution options:

iW INSIDER | Eugene Hernandez: A Letter to Filmmakers, Whether or Not You Got Into Sundance
by Eugene Hernandez (December 3, 2008)

So, let’s be upfront… To those who are hoping to make a sale after your Sundance premiere, it’s important to know that most folks I’ve spoken with agree that this year’s market in Park City will be like no other in that it probably won’t be as robust for big on-site acquisitions. Larger companies seem to be shying away from theatrical acquisitions and right now there are simply fewer large, established distribution entities to turn to. Even so, a range of reps will work with films and filmmakers to field and generate sales interest at the festival. And sure, deals will be made, but the industry and established filmmakers alike are focusing more and more on digital rights and other means of distribution.

Some filmmakers will have decided to sign with a rep to help them navigate the digital space (DVD, VOD, online), while others will opt to hold on to their rights and 100% of all revenues that may come from them in the future. Either way, these are big decisions. Talk with filmmakers and producers who’ve already been down this short path and spend time determing what you need to give up and what you’ll get in return.

There is plenty more so be certain to check out the entire column.

Oh, and here’s the Competition Lineup at Sundance this year.

Springfield Schools Bring Home Student Journalism Awards

20-Nov-08

The National Scholastic Press Association held their Annual Convention in St Louis earlier this month and several area schools came home with awards. There were also several winners from the state that bode well for the development and support of motion media and multimedia efforts in the region.

2008 NSPA Broadcast Story of the Year
First Place - Rachel Miles, Kendra Weatherford, HTV Magazine
Hillcrest High School, Springfield, Mo.
The winning story - Easy Access, a story on easy access to liquor online


2008 NSPA Broadcast Pacemaker Winners

HTV Magazine
Hillcrest HS, Springfield, Mo.
Dave Davis, adviser
Judges’ comments: A very nice newscast open, [though] it’s too long. Excellent work on the easy access story (ordering liquor online). This was a very impressive enterprise story that showed care and proper steps to make sure that the student journalists were not breaking the law. A fine example of student journalism at its best. The video phone story was also well done; it was well shot and edited, and it, too, showed good reporting skills. The story about the football team had really good writing and use of natural sound. Bravo for doing the “chatroom” piece on the 17-year-old brain tumor survivor. Also for including commentary in the newscast. Congratulations to a high school journalism program that puts an emphasis on the fundamentals of ground-breaking reporting, solid writing, and enhanced story telling through video and sound.

NSPA Best of Show Winners
2008 JEA/NSPA Fall National, High School Journalism Convention
Broadcast Program
1st - Central Intelligence, Central HS, Springfield, Mo.
Nichole Lemmon, adviser

The News-Leader did a nice story on the Central program on Thursday.

Yearbook (1-224 pages)
9th - Falcon, Glendale HS, Springfield, Mo.
Lindeay Steinberg, editor
Lisa Wingo, adviser

An Update From the Missouri Film Commission

12-Nov-08

Missouri Film Industry Members:

As many of you know, our operations at the Missouri Film Office have been scaled back significantly over the past few years. With greatly reduced manpower and funding, our focus has been, at minimum, to continue providing the basic services that will attract and support motion picture and video production in Missouri.

As a consequence, however, other areas – marketing and project tracking, as two examples – have been forced to the sidelines. One of the areas that has suffered dramatically is communications. We’ve struggled to re-institute our e-newsletter, the Weekly-Wrap-Up, the weekly newsletter that gives the latest skinny on Missouri and film-related things. Its appearance has been sporadic, though our goal now is to make it a monthly piece, and it’s now in a snappy new format. The first edition appeared last month (October), and we hope to make it a monthly newsletter and have the second issue ready next week.

But there are more things happening than can be relayed in a newsletter, and I’ve been made aware of frustrations you or others have experienced with our lack of communication about those things. I apologize. Again, our focus has been trying to handle an increasing volume of business with decreasing resources, and that left little or no time for communicating. My mistake, when our resources were cut and I had to decide what stays and what goes, was to relegate this type of communication to the non-essential pile. Well, I’ve seen the light, and this will become the first of (I hope) frequent reports on the nuts and bolts of what we’re doing, projects, tax credits, web site changes, problem resolution, etc. These won’t be fancy, and may be brief, but at least, I hope, it will give you a better sense of what’s happening with your film office. So, to get started:

Most of you by now know that the Film Office moved from Columbia back to Jefferson City in July, although Andrea Sporcic (Film Office assistant director) and I remain University of Missouri employees. There were some obvious disruptions, such as office phone numbers changing. We retained our old email address and gained another one. One very important positive as a result of the move is that we now have an administrative assistant, Jenna Vaughan, who divides her time between the film office and another division. She began in September. It’s been a real boost, one I’m still getting accustomed to; it’s been 3 ½ years since the film office had an administrative assistant. We have a general phone line that goes directly to Jenna: 573-522-1288. Jenna has not had previous experience working with the film/video industry but she’s picking it up quickly. Feel free to give her a call, introduce yourself, and tell her a little about your role in the industry.

Our new contact info:
Missouri Film Office
301 W. High Street, #720
Jefferson City, MO 65101

Jenna direct: 573-522-1288
Jenna.vaughan@ded.mo.gov
Fax: 573-522-1567

Andrea direct: 573-751-6573
Andrea cell: 573-424-4431
sprocica@missouri.edu OR
andrea.sporcic@ded.mo.gov

Jerry direct: 573-522-4938
Jerry cell: 573-690-0791
jonesjerr@missouri.edu OR
jerry.jones@ded.mo.gov OR
mofilm@missouri.edu

“Last Will” started principal photography Monday (10/27) in KC. They have about three weeks to go in the KC metro area. Andrea Sporcic (Film Office assistant director), Jenna Vaughan (Film Office manager) and I visited the set in North KC on Wednesday. I chatted with several crew and everything seemed to be going well. The research division of the Missouri Department of Economic Development also visited the set with a video crew to get testimonials for a video production they’re doing to show the positive economic benefits of film production. They interviewed several local crew and actor Tom Berenger, who said very nice things about Missouri and the importance of our incentive program.

Tax Credit Applications: We have a couple right now that we’re processing. By that I mean we and the Department of Economic Development (DED) incentives division are reviewing submitted applications, looking at key points like budget and percentage of budget that is Missouri spend, proof of financing, start dates, and likelihood of actually starting production. We have two projects – both features in the $2-4 million range – that tell us they plan to submit apps and to start production by the end of the year. Another larger project indicates that they will submit an app in the next weeks for a project next year. Right now, we have authorized or awarded approximately $800,000 in tax credits this year, leaving about $3.7 still available. We have no commitments for next year’s $4.5 million.

By the way, I don’t want to be vague about projects in the works, but a lot of these are not ready for publication, so I don’t feel comfortable putting them in an email. However, if you have some questions, give me a call and I’ll probably be able to give you more info over the phone.

Production Guide: No way around it, this has been a fiasco. We knew last year that the production guide needed to be dramatically updated, particularly the database program, which was not printer friendly and time consuming for crew members and businesses submitting multiple listings. We went to a department at the University of Missouri to create a spiffy new production guide database. The only major drawback was that we would not be able to transfer data from the existing online guide to the new guide. Assuming the change would not take long, we thought the most expedient course would be to hold changes in listings and new listing submissions until the new guide was up and running. Long story short, that process dragged on for much longer – months, in fact – than we anticipated. In the meantime, listing requests were building and building. We’re to the point where the new guide should be operational very soon, but we’ve already decided we can wait. We’ve begun vetting the backlog of listings requests and they are being added to the current guide. The vetting process should be done in about another week. When the new guide is ready to go on line, we’ll have to do basic data entry to transfer all the info from the old format to the new. That will take a lot of time, but we had reached the point where we didn’t see any alternative. So, if you’ve been wondering about your new or revised listing, it should be showing up, if it hasn’t already, in the next week or so.

We also have started a complete overhaul/upgrade of our web site and all components. Here’s a brief overview I wrote for the latest quarterly report we provide to the Department of Economic Development:

Web Site
The computer science department at the University of Missouri school of engineering is providing major upgrades to our web site. First, a graduate student who is also an instructor is developing a photo database as his masters’ project. We have never had a photo database on our web site (it’s been cost-prohibitive), while many of our competitors do. This will be a major addition.

Second, the production guide database is being completely revamped to become more user-friendly. There has been a long transition period to accomplish this, but again the database will be vastly improved.

Third, the entire web site is being redesigned. More accurately, it’s being completely replaced by a new web program developed by Dale Musser, chair of the computer science department. It’s a proprietary system that has been purchased by other businesses but is being provided to us gratis. It will be administered by the servers in the computer science department. It will also allow us to combine the two separate systems of email we currently have – DED and University – into a single system: mofilm.org.

Our upcoming schedule: Andrea is meeting with a producer who will be traveling through Columbia this week, then she heads to St. Louis this weekend for the opening of the St. Louis International Film Festival. She’ll be meeting with many of the filmmakers. I’ll be in St. Louis for a MOMMA meeting, in Kansas City to visit the set of ‘Last Will,” then in Los Angeles this weekend to meet with studio producers about a project for 09 and to appear at a seminar conducted by the Producers Guild of America on Saturday. They’ve invited two state film offices – Missouri and I don’t know the other one yet – to work with separate line producers on a project and make presentations to about 150 producers in Burbank. We’ll discuss crew, incentives, locations, lodging – the whole nine yards and, I hope, drum up some business. Later this month – Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving – Andrea and I will be in Joplin where the BBC will be filming re-enactments for a documentary on Bonnie and Clyde.

That’s it for the moment. Hope this helps bring you up-to-date. Please feel free to forward this email and give us the email addresses of anyone who wants to receive these updates.

Jerry Jones
573-522-4938
573-690-0791 cell

IndieVest Offering Independent Movie Investment Model

14-Oct-08

From the Wall Street Journal:

High-Risk Glamour: A Piece of an Indie Flick
IndieVest Members Pay Fee, Get Right to Buy Into a Film

IndieVest Inc. is bringing the concept of fractional ownership to people who want to invest in movies, hoping that its financial model will prove profitable in a trying era for independent movies in Hollywood.

Co-founded in 2006 by Wade Bradley, a former tech venture capitalist, and producer Mark Burton, Los Angeles-based IndieVest is intended to be a one-stop-shop not only for individual film investors, but also a full-blown movie studio that develops, acquires, produces and distributes small budget films theatrically.

See the entire article here

Qualified Production Activities Income - Film Makers and Taxes

13-Oct-08

I picked this one up from the Dallas Producers Association mailing list, some good advice it would appear on managing your taxes.
=================

Whether you are shooting commercials, industrial videos, television series or feature films, now would be a good time to sit down with your tax professional and review how changes in federal tax law will affect your business in the coming year. The American Job Creation Act signed into law on October 22, 2004 makes several changes that you should be keeping in mind.

The change with the biggest impact on producers of commercials and industrial videos will be the new 3-9% credit or deduction for “Qualified Production Activities Income.” “Qualified Production Activities Income” is defined as the domestic production gross receipts after deduction of the cost of goods sold and other expenses allocable to those receipts. Domestic production gross receipts include income derived from any lease, rental, license, sale, exchange, or other disposition of any film or video produced in which at least 50 percent of the total compensation related to the production is paid for services performed in the United States for actors, directors, producers and crew. The deduction cannot exceed 50 percent of the W-2 wages of the employer for the taxable year. The deduction for Qualified Production Activities applies to production activities after December 31, 2004. The deduction starts at 3% in 2005 and 2006, increases to 6% for 2007-2009 and then settles down to 9% in 2010.

The new Section 181 election to deduct as an expense the cost of creating qualified film or television productions rather than taking depreciation deductions over ten years as is required under the income forecast method” will have a much greater impact on producers of motion pictures and television series. The ‘income forecast method’ of depreciation which the IRS started requiring to be used by all film and television projects in 1996 never had quite as large an impact on producers of commercials and
industrial videos as it did on producers of movies and television series.

The majority, if not 100% of the potential income from production of commercials will be received within one year of production and thus up to 100% of the expenses were deductible in the first year. Movie producers often had to wait up to ten years to deduct the full cost of the expenses of production. That delay can devalue the deductions from 20-50% resulting in a greater tax burden. The new Section 181 deduction eliminates that delay.

In order for a production to qualify under Section 181, the budget has to be under $15 million (not usually a problem in Colorado) and 75% of the total compensation is for services performed in the U.S. by actors, directors producers and other relevant production personnel. Participation and residuals are not included as “compensation” for the purposes of the Section 181 deduction. This deduction is applicable to productions commenced after October 22, 2004, but before December 31, 2008.

Film and video producers maybe able to lure new investors by passing on the new federal deductions and tax credits, and commercial producers may be able to use their tax savings to invest in HD equipment of other new technologies. But some planning may be necessary to make full use of the
deductions.

Darlene A. Cypser is a movie producer and sales agent currently working with Inferno Film Productions, LLC in Littleton, CO. She manages production, post-production, sales and distribution of the feature film Dragon and the Hawk and other projects still under development. She also represents other
movies seeking distribution at film markets.

Cypser is a licensed attorney in both Colorado and New York with a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Oklahoma. She is also Chief Executive Office/Venture Capital Management with the Midgard Corporation of Littleton where she oversees the financing and management of start-up companies and other investments. She is a public speaker and writer, author and a member
of the Colorado Film & Video Association and American Geophysical Union. She may be reached at 303-587-9792.

Springfield’s Motion Media Expo This Friday October 10th

06-Oct-08

SPRINGFIELD’S FIRST ‘MOTION MEDIA EXPO’ TO BE HELD OCTOBER 10TH AT KEYES ART GALLERY, DOWNTOWN SPRINGFIELD

SPRINGFIELD, MO (October 1, 2008) – Springfield’s first MOTION MEDIA EXPO will be held at the Keyes Art Gallery, 229 South Market Avenue, Friday, October 10th, 8:00 to 11:00 PM.

This Motion Media Expo has been organized for producers, directors, filmmakers, composers, writers, designers, talent and a host of supporting services to the film industry. Green Glass Productions’ producer Jonna Volz-Howes has purposed to create a networking and sales environment for independent and production businesses in the region by putting them all in the same room. “Here they can sell themselves as employees or employers of productions companies by showcasing their portfolios and skills,” says Howes. “We want to bring together a diverse group of people in an artistic and comfortable environment and entertain them with music and a fashion show, offering food and beverages as well.”

Registration is required for Businesses and Individuals who desire to be in the MFAS’ film Directory and to be showcased by displaying their marketing tools via print and digital formats at the Expo. Details and costs for registration can be seen at www.greenglassproductions.net. Deadline for business entries is October 6, 2008. For non-registrants, there will be a cover charge of $10 at the door.

Steve Olson, president of the Missouri Film Alliance Springfield, says, “We are excited to be working with Jonna Howes and Green Glass Productions in their efforts to bring this Motion Media Expo to Springfield. We have witnessed significant growth over the last four years in the community of filmmakers and supporting organizations in the Southwest Missouri region. The Expo will play an important role in developing a comprehensive film directory of the talent and services in our community. And, the directory is a critical marketing tool for MFAS as we continue to promote the benefits of filming in Southwest Missouri.” The MFAS office will manage the ongoing maintenance of the Directory. October marks the fourth anniversary of the founding of MFAS.

Music talent scheduled to perform during the evening include Cornbelt Chorus, Rhett Roberson, Lyal Strickland, and Jeremy Larson.

A Fashion Show will also be presented by local designers and wardrobiers Cross Rags, Jacqueline’s, Vintage Vice, and more.

Green Glass Productions, founded in 2008 by Jonna Volz-Howes, is registered with the State of Missouri, business address is PO Box 905, Springfield MO 65801. Fax number is 417-865-3191.

The Motion Media Expo is a cooperative event with sponsorship from MFAS and Stonegate Creative Group.