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Ted Hope is an independent film producer. He's produced over 60 films. This is his blog.

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6 Tips on How to Finish Your Micro-Budget Film

  • By Ted Hope
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  • October 28, 2011 8:30 AM
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  • 3 Comments
We don't want to repeat each other's mistakes. We have to learn to admit what we've done wrong. And we have to share the lessons we've learned. We learn what to do better the next time, by fucking up famously the first time. Second films are rich terrain precisely for this reason. I would love to be in a room of filmmakers who just finished their second film just to harvest the sweet tidbits from the conversation. Fortunately, recent sophomore feature grad, Preston Miller, shares today some of the morsels of knowledge he gathered his second time out.
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More: Directing, Pre-Production, First Features, Guest Posts, Micro-budget Filmmaking

Collaboration 101: Working With Your Partner (In Life And On Set) -- Part 3 of 3

  • By Ted Hope
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  • October 8, 2011 12:52 PM
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  • 0 Comments
The last two days, Sophia Takal and Lawrence Michael Levine have been sharing how they have navigated both a personal and professional collaborative relationship. For me, my curiosity about their process was sparked when I watched Sophia's GREEN, a feature that moved, impressed, and scared me. I look forward to collaborating more fully with my wife on our movies (albeit only behind the camera), but watching Sophia's film, I knew I had a lot to still learn about the how to of the dual pursuit.I will be presenting GREEN in a little more than a week from now at my HopeForFilm screening series, and it is not a film you should miss. GREEN premiered at SxSW this year and deserves to travel far and wide. It has lodged itself into my memory. If you haven't been following Sophia & Lawrence's very revealing conversation this last three days, I suggest you travel back in time and start from Thursday's post and read it one sitting.
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More: Collaboration, Directing, Sustainability, Inspiration, First Features, Guest Posts

Collaboration 101: Working With Your Partner (In Life And On Set) -- Part 2 of 3

  • By Ted Hope
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  • October 7, 2011 12:30 PM
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  • 0 Comments
Yesterday, in an effort to determine whether "Can A Couple Truly Collaborate Creatively (And Survive?)" we started to look at the origins of the collaborative filmmaking team of Sophia Takal and Lawrence Michael Levine -- who just so happen to be entangled romantically too. Today, they share a bit about what they went through when they embarked on their first feature, Lawrence's GABI ON THE ROOF IN JULY. They are as honest and forthcoming about their process, as they are in their filmmaking itself. As I said yesterday, "Whether you aspire to work with your significant other, or just collaborate well with your team, the back and forth and growth that Sophia and Lawrence have committed themselves to, can all teach us a few things."
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More: Collaboration, Directing, Sustainability, Inspiration, First Features, Guest Posts, Recommended Viewing

Koo On "Your Audience is Worth More Than $"

  • By Ted Hope
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  • September 19, 2011 12:30 PM
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  • 2 Comments
Film may be 110 years old, the Film Industry a century, Amer-Indie, as a semi-organized infrastructure and process, 30 years, but as a creative community we are only a few years, at best, in. Sure the guilds have been here longer, but as an open & transparent, group, activity sharing information and aspirations, it's taken the rise of blogging culture to bring us together.As much as we are coming together on a general basis, indie film communities come together now around specific voices. Nonetheless, other than Kevin Smith there are very few folks who have truly built and served their audiences to such an extent that that audience is in fact a community that can be depended on to support a film to the extent necessary to move it through production and release. Or rather, until recently. Crowdfunding, more than just a money raising tool, allows us to measure how communities can truly make movies happen. Koo, who has built the much loved and very useful blog No Film School, now is making a film, and as he shares below, he couldn't have gotten so far with the support from the community he has so loyally served.
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More: Crowdsourcing , Financing, First Features, Guest Posts, Audience Aggregation

Video: Christine Vachon Does A Good Ted Hope Impression

  • By Ted Hope
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  • August 2, 2011 2:59 AM
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  • 0 Comments
Christine Vachon recently had a talk with Anthony Kaufman at the NewFest Visionary Award presentation and had many interesting things to say about her career, producing, and indie film -- all that plus a lovely impression of yours truly.
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More: Mentoring, Producing, First Features, Career Management

Guest Post: Craig Johnson "True Adolescents and the 'Tweener' Indie Film"

  • By Ted Hope
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  • July 29, 2011 3:00 AM
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  • 3 Comments
Is there a place in the Indie Film Eco-system for a good story well told? Artist strive for this goal, but can audiences unite around something not built around a big concept, big cast, or controversial element? Perhaps the bigger question is can a filmmaker even take the risk of trying to answer this question?TRUE ADOLESCENTS (starring Mark Duplass & Melissa Leo -- two of the most watchable folks out there) opens today in NYC and got a good NY Times Review to boost it. Writer/Director Craig Johnson guests today about why and how he took that dare.
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More: First Features, Guest Posts

Guest Post: David Geertz "Are Indie Filmmakers Slave Drivers?"

  • By Ted Hope
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  • July 28, 2011 2:59 AM
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  • 6 Comments
How do we truly think about film? Do we ignore the truth even when it is right before our eyes? Are we sometimes willing to compromise our ethics in order to achieve our creative goal? Would we be willing to defer that goal in order to maintain the ethical standards that we otherwise embrace?I named David Geertz as one of Hope For Film's Brave Thinkers (2009 Edition) for a new start up he had then. That venture may now be gone, but David is still very much a Brave Thinker, as his guest post below, and his commitment to more, attests.
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More: Crew, Financing, Pre-Production, Producing, Sustainability, Tools, First Features, Guest Posts, Business Models

Video: Spike Jonze, Lisa Cholodenko, and me on Financing and The Rule Of The Samurai

  • By Ted Hope
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  • July 27, 2011 4:25 AM
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  • 2 Comments
Spike, Lisa, and I got to have a great conversation at The Cleveland Public Library early this year, and a great crowd came. An official video was shot of the proceedings and hopefully will be available shortly, but this one came from the crowd, and is a nice little nugget to wet your appetite.
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More: Financing, Mentoring, Speaking Engagements, Inspiration, First Features, Career Management

Guest Post: Brendan Fletcher "An Indie Process in a Conventional System?" Part 3

  • By Ted Hope
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  • July 5, 2011 3:00 AM
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  • 2 Comments
Today, Brendan Fletcher continues his tales of being a MAD BASTARD as much as the civilized world permits.
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More: First Features, Guest Posts

Guest Post: Brendan Fletcher "An Indie Process in a Conventional System?" Part 2

  • By Ted Hope
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  • July 4, 2011 12:00 PM
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  • 0 Comments
Why do anything conventionally these days? How do we make our work fresh? Sometimes it makes sense to rethink it all. Can it ever be done by working within the state-ordained system. Today MAD BASTARD's Brendan Fletcher continues his exploration of these and other questions.
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More: First Features, Guest Posts

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