The blog for aspiring & established filmmakers of independent films. by ted hope.

Come To Woodstock!

I am on the jury and will be be doing another panel up at the Woodstock Film Festival this weekend.  I am completely impressed with the films in competition.  They’ve done a great job curating.  And they’ve done a great job programming too.

Saturday at the Woodstock Film Festival has an embarrassment of riches, particularly in terms of yours truly.  1P brings Ang Lee’s RIDE WITH THE DEVIL, which I had the pleasure of producing along with this year’s Woodstock Maverick honoree, James Schamus, and the late, great Bob Colesberry.  RIDE’s been cited as a fave of folks as diverse as Bruce Springsteen and Gore Vidal, but it’s been rarely seen.  I think there will be some surprise guests at the screening, and I can only thing of one good reason to miss the show.
That reason is a panel I am on on the current state of what is still mistakingly referred to as the “Indie” film world.  Woodstock’s assembled a stellar and diverse group for it: John Sloss, Mark Duplass, & Ryan Werner — all of us moderated by Variety’s Dade Hayes.  It is on at 2P Saturday.  Here’s the description:

IS IT SAFE? With the closure of many of the studio specialty divisions and the reported financial troubles of many of the independents, has “indie film distribution” come to an end, or is this just the end of the world, as we know it? What does the “falling sky” really signify for the independent film sector? Were these companies right to turn their backs or were they just spending too much? Should you make films these days without some form of distribution? And most importantly, who, what or where is the great future hope for indies (and is it all online?)?
Join this esteemed panel of experts straight from the front lines of indie distribution and learn where the light is at the end of the tunnel.

I wonder what I am going to say?  Hmmmm….   We need to move the dialogue beyond my “1000 Phoenix Rising” and certainly beyond “The Sky Is Falling”.

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Meet Ted

Hope offers his unique perspective on how to make movies while keeping your integrity intact and how to create a sustainable business enterprise out of that art while staying true to yourself.

Meet Ted

Ted Hope is a “holistic film producer”: he aims to be there from the beginning and then forever after, involved in every aspect of a film’s life cycle and ecosystem, as committed to engineering serendipity as preventing problems, as obsessed with lifting the good into the great, as he is…

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