You can be a Director at a Film Festival

For all you media mavens of the teen and under set: So you figured out IMovie, and you have created your first YouTube projects and you are feeling good about yourself. Well then, its time for you, young film maker, to get on the Festival Circuit and you are in luck. There are a huge number of no cost and low cost ways to submit your film to festivals all over the GLOBE. My nearest and dearest fest is the Chicago International Children's Film Festival, which is the only youth fest that is Academy Award eligible. The deadline for submissions is coming up FAST--May 1 if you want to be on time, May 31 if you enter late. Here is how you enter: http://cicff.org/content/applications-deadlines/3

What are the benefits of participating in a festival? Your work is seen by an audience! And by an audience of people who loves films. Even if you are not accepted, get thee to film festivals, where you have an opportunity to see work you do not often get a chance to see. Many festivals feature films from other countries and you will find that people don't always look at the same world you do. You will also find that people are people no matter where they come from. Film festivals will inspire you and educate you.

Contest for Young Media Makers

As promised, news about a contest for kid film makers: The “Kids Take Charge” video campaign asks families across the country to post a video of their child explaining the mischief they can get into when the toys that keep them occupied run out of battery power. The top ten creative entries will receive a portion of the $10,000 donation – based on an online poll – for their charity. The first 250 people to enter a video will receive a free Energizer® Recharge Smart™ Charger. Energizer will select ten finalists based on originality, humor and alignment with the, “Kids Take Charge or Else” theme. Consumers can help determine the amount of money each charity receives by voting for their favorite at www.Energizer.com/SmartCharge. The funds will be allocated based on the percentage of views that each video receives. To enter, visit www.Energizer.com/Smartcharge to review rules and submit a link to an online video posting with the hashtag #SmartCharge before May 17, 2010.

So make a great video and earn some money for your favorite charity.

So you wanna be in PICTURES

I get asked all the time, because my kids get film and theater roles, about how to get into "show business". You have been told your kids are gorgeous/talented/outta be in pictures and you are ready to sign up. If you are truly serious about it, the first thing I will ask you is: How do you feel about living in LA??? Because if you are successful at all, you will at least have to spend part of a year there. The vast majority of kids you see in film and tv live there and your odds of getting enough work to make it financially viable are that much greater if you are there. But lets say you live in one of the US' other major markets and you just want to get your feet wet. Well, your children can get work and make a bit of money as long as one parent is willing to make it their job. And thats the crux of it---if your kids are into it (and don't EVEN think about it if its not THEIR passion) carve out a space in your life to do this. Auditions come up suddenly, as do jobs, and you have to drop everything and get there

HEADSHOTS. You do not need professional headshots at first. A good natural portrait will do to get first theater jobs and student films. Once you have an agent, they will have photographers they like to work with and they can coach you on what looks book in.

AGENTS. Reputable agents DO NOT CHARGE YOU until you get work. While an agent may recommend coaches and photographers, be VERY wary of anyone who tries to sell you anything. Agents are supposed to be selling YOU, not making you BUY from them. Get a list of registered agents who handle kids and follow their submission requirements EXACTLY---it's usually a photo with a resume, but each agency will specify.

RESUME. Go ahead and start out in community theater and school productions. List that. Acting resumes list contact information, height, weight, clothing and shoe size and age. You can create a website with youTube video embedded--but make sure its excellent quality. Better to have no information than to have information that makes you look bad. If there are any film schools or community media centers near you, look for auditions there, and do as much as you can to learn.

REJECTION Being an actor is about constantly NOT being wanted. Even the most successful talen only books less than half the work they are considered for. If you or your child gets upset easily over NOT getting cast, then this is not a healthy activity for you. If you can enjoy the process of auditioning and not sweat being passed over, know that the more you audition, the more you will be cast. Of course, the more you audition the more you will NOT be cast too! But auditioning itself has to be the fun part. If you get the gig, that's gravy. You have to see your success in terms of how many auditions you go to and not how many gigs you get. That may sound insane, but every successful stage parent I know believes it.

The reasons you do not get cast are legion: you are the wrong size, wrong "look" (whatever THAT is), you have a conflict (never EVER lie about this when auditioning---kids get to have lives and you should be forthcoming about them) Sometimes they like your pigtails and sometimes they CANT STAND pigtails. It is never a reflection on your talent if you are not cast---it means someone else fit the director's vision more closely than you. Move on. It often seems as if there are "styles" of children that fall in and out of popularity. If you are a style that is popular you will see more bookings. But who wants to be a style.

SUCCESS What will you get out of this? Given the recent economy, not a whole lot of money. Many featured jobs are now going to non union or "real people" casting which pays LOW. But as I always say, its better that someone pay my kid to do something they love instead of me paying for activities, right? You will also find friends--people interested in acting and film and movies and theater so you develop a nice peer group. And for our family, being in shows and films is a way for us to spend a lot of time together. And what else could you ask for?

NEXT POST: Contests and deadlines for kids who create their OWN projects.

CITIZEN KANE

After being distracted for several weeks by other media (a run with Mad Men's first season for example) we finally curled up on the couch for a look a Citizen Kane. I am not sure my children are in concurrence with AFI's assessment of its status
as the best American film made, but, after a heavy dose of 3D overkill, the black and white simplicity of Welles vision was refreshing and compelling.

I tried to encourage my wee film critics to see this vision in the context of its time--Welles' use of angles and cutting must have seemed revolutionary at the time.Nahh, they just wanted to understand the story.

The acting was superb and my theatrical children definitely saw the advantage of using your theater ensemble in your film work! I got a chance to talk about all the directors who have essentially built acting ensembles in order to do their work. And I could see little light bulbs going off on that one as we look forward to a summer of short film making.

In the end though, the story worked. It worked well enough that questions continued to be asked about the film even the next day. I think that Citizen Kane is the kind of movie you keep going back to--every time you see something new, and you come to it with fresh eyes, because your experience has altered the filter that you see it through. I don't feel the need to do that with a lot of movies, and maybe that is why this film is so great.

Speaking of movies to look at again, my entire clan says its time to see UP and Wild Things again. They are looking at movies repetitively now in a new way. When they were small, they would want things over and over again for the comfort of sameness. Now they go back to find new things. And great movies do not disappoint. I am hoping that this year does not dissapoint in terms of new releases, but so far, nothing is sticking out for me.

Beauty and Creepy in the eyes of beholder

I recently attended a dance concert with my family. Ordinarily, dance has little to do with media, being the nice old fashioned art form that it is, but this was a dance concert that took film as its inspiration. Artistically, it struggled with the bridge, some times triumphing, some times falling short. There were two main challenges: one) many of the choreographers took films that the dancers (and most of the audience) had never seen as jumping off points leaving a bit of a generation gap and two) combining screen imagery with a live human is an endeavor fraught with peril, and in this instance, they did not often win the battle, except as a novelty and maybe a way of getting folks out of their texting in the dark (people, really!) Many have tried to integrate dance and media, from Merce Cunningham to Twyla Tharp. And many have failed. We should never stop trying.

But the most fascinating takeaway I had from the concert had to do with the piece
where a man was videotaping a group of young women and it was live streamed onto a video wall. I know the man--lovely dancer and brilliant teacher whom I have been priviledged to study with. Watching, I felt torn between watching the live stream giant video and the dancers. But I was truly shocked at my children's reaction to the piece. They found the vision of a man following a group of, to be totally honest, somewhat scantily clad young women around with a video camera to be down right creepy. Whether its been the recent news stories or one too many school presentations on Stranger Danger, something about the visual language of the piece put them off. What was fascinating for me wasthat I am frankly so inured to the innate visual vocabulary of young girls sexuality, what with the revealing clothing these days on elementary school girls,and the wiggly walks and suggestive movements that even toddlers pick up from YouTube, that I did not read the clear message that my kids got.

We do not notice how innundated our children are with sexualized imagery through media. And never before had my kids talked back to me about how uncomfortable they are with that language. They told me the piece was "inappropriate". Knowing the performers I absolutely know that the intent was not what my kids interpreted it to be. But I will converse with them a lot more on what is and is not "appropriate". This dance piece opened up an entirely new critical dialogue for us, and is making me really look at the visual shorthand we use each day.

Oscar Nite

We lined up on the couch, shoved the dogs over, hunkered under blankies, and we watched. In some strange convolution of holiday traditions we made green mint milk shakes???? We followed on the internet, looking up filmic histories, and IMDB profiles and followed tweets, and tried to figure out where we had seen them before. We are soooo new media. (Except when it was over we watched a 40's Bette Davis classic)
We opined. We groaned. We ogled. We cheered. We laughed. And we did this weird thing where someone in the family had to call it, right before they gave the winner. It was like some strange parlor game--only in America, we can turn a supposed art form into sport. Collectively, I think we only missed two calls. We feel likeace prognositicators. And now we are itching to see the shorts, and I spent a hopeless waste of time trying to find where we could see the Book of Kells. I think Oscar night is just a wonderful night of family fun. Hope yours was!

Stepping Outside the Comfort Zone

I was supposed to be snuggled up on the couch with the kiddies watching Citizen Kane, an almost old fashioned entertainment, but I ended up instead at a workshop with Grisha Coleman, a dancer,(former Urban Bush Woman) vocalist who works at a thing called the Arts Media and Engineering Department at Arizona State University. And this is where someone like me, for whom there are usually categories for artwork,(I am going to the opera, I buy tickets for the ballet) finds her little mind sort of blown. Ms. Coleman is using technology and varieties of media, to create installation works that combine all sorts of disciplines into events. As I am sitting there, listening to her attempt to describe with simple English, her complex, multi-layered works of art, my mind is telescoping possibilities, and at the same time seeing pitfalls.

It concerns me in this wild west phase of new technology that we have yet to find vibrant functional support structures for the idea people. It has become difficult for artists to get sustained paid gigs. I know that truly creative folks always find a way, but we need as much creativity as we can get to solve some of our intractable human issues, and we aren't putting our money where our mouth is on that one. Every day I get emails from creative organizations who are laying off more staff. New technology is not cheap. And it takes time to develop, and sometimes it takes a very long time, a big investment, before there are returns. As we spiral out to the new frontiers of media, we need to support the visionaries who are creating it.

And hey, the Oscars are almost here!