John August

Indie

One Too Many Mornings screening

Follow Up, Indie

[One Too Many Mornings](http://onetoomanymornings.com), the Sundance movie I’ve written about a [few](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2010/one-too-many-mornings) [times](http://www.google.com/url?q=http://johnaugust.com/archives/2010/watching-otmm&ei=C12eS438FojUsQOyvq2_Aw&sa=X&oi=nshc&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1&ved=0CAsQzgQoAA&usg=AFQjCNE49afLrclHRRDZbgE13LDH0pfWrA), is having a screening tomorrow night (Tuesday, March 16th) in Los Angeles.

I’ll be leading a Q&A with the filmmakers right after the screening, talking not just about the film but the challenges and opportunities in making and releasing a microbudget movie.

If you’re considering making a little movie, you should keep a close eye on OTMM. It’s good — a tiny, Swingers-esque two-hander. And the filmmakers are smart guys, not just how they made the movie, but how they’re putting it out in the world. They’re doing everything I would try, but will it work? It’s a great case study for indie films in 2010.

Here’s the info:

Tuesday March 16th – 8:00pm

Downtown Independent
251 S. Main Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Tickets are $7, available in advance at [Brown Paper Tickets](http://www.brownpapertickets.com/producerevent/102295).

Prepping for the Directors Close-Up panels

Directors, Indie, Los Angeles

Tonight and next Wednesday, I’ll be hosting the [Directors Close-Up](http://filmindependent.org/content/directors-closeup) panels for Film Independent.

Tonight’s director is Jason Reitman, joined by cinematographer Eric Steelberg, editor Dana E. Glauberman and composer Rolfe Kent. We’ll be talking about Up In The Air, Juno and Thank You For Smoking.

Next Wednesday’s director guest will be announced tonight. We’ll be talking about casting and working with actors.

Word from the organizers is that it’s almost sold out, but “a limited number of passes” will still be available at the door if you want to try. It’s at the Landmark Theater in West LA, beginning at 7:30pm.

Film Independent is recording these panels, so if you’re living outside Los Angeles, don’t despair: I’ll pass along the info when I have it. In preparation for the series, they shot a bunch of short interview pieces with me, which you can see [up on YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a0zVJxaiPY).

The Twitter hashtag for the series is #DCU2010. If you have questions for anyone on the panel tonight, tweet it ([@johnaugust](http://twitter.com/johnaugust)) and I’ll try to ask.

Watching OTMM

Follow Up, Indie

One Too Many Mornings, the Sundance movie I [wrote about last week](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2010/one-too-many-mornings), just debuted at Park City and online. I watched it — the $9.99 HD download — and would recommend it to many readers of this blog. It’s lo-fi funny, a mumblecore Swingers, with a refreshingly clear sense of what it is.

The movie’s achievably ambitious. The team figured out exactly what assets they had, and how to maximize those strengths. More crucially, they sliced away a lot of the cruft that usually comes along with shaggy indie films. There are no guns, no teary poems, no bad fathers. Its protagonists are a wuss and an asshole, but the script lets them be more than that.

And it looks great, largely thanks to its black and white photography.

Could anyone pick up a camera and make a movie like this? No. There’s talent required. But the film is great example of how little actual money you need to make an honest-to-God movie.

The film’s distribution strategy — allowing viewers to [buy it online](http://www.onetoomanymornings.com/), or [rent it on YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK91Gsx1ePE) — makes it simple for aspiring filmmakers to check it out.

One Too Many Mornings

Indie, Sundance

My friend Leo pointed me towards [One Too Many Mornings](http://www.onetoomanymornings.com/), a really truly indie that’s playing at Sundance this year. As it turns out, I know the director (Michael Mohan) through his work at the filmmakers’ lab.

The movie looks great in its lo-fi simplicity, but what interests me even more is how the filmmakers are approaching distribution.

In the wake of The Nines, I’ve written [several](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/nines-post-mortem) [times](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/hard-indie) about how getting a movie made is substantially easier than getting a movie seen. The mythical Sundance experience — fierce bidding wars to land the next indie smash — are over. Most films don’t sell, and the few that do struggle to reach even a tiny audience.

Some filmmakers like Todd Sklar have [opted to self-distribute](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/self-distributing-an-indie-feature), essentially taking the indie band approach and touring theaters around the country. That’s great if you enjoy being in a van.

The Mornings team is doing what I would try: skipping theatrical altogether. The day after the premiere, you can [download their film](http://www.onetoomanymornings.com/store/) or get the DVD. You can even buy a piece of the set, or buy the filmmakers lunch.

They’re not going to make a lot of money, but my hunch is they will be able to get a lot more people to see their movie this way. That should be the main goal of any indie.