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

The Rise No-Budget NYC. Good Machine ’97

I don’t even know what this was for, This was for something on WNYC called “Egg” produced by Jeff Folmsbee.  but I do know that my friend Dan McGuire was also heavily involved in the shooting and editing of it.

I co-founded Good Machine back in 1990. We made a lot of good films and had some good times too. Iget a big kick out of seeing glimpses of folks from so long ago: Mary Jane Skalski, Heta Paarte, Glen Basner, and James Schamus and Ang Lee.  Nothing like seeing those gigantic computers and roladexes too. Too think we could make a film without an iPhone…

It also feels so fresh to me.  The same drive and ideas that made Good Machine a good idea back then, holds true to this day.  Everything is new again. We founded that company on the idea of a no-budget film fund (okay micro-budget in today’s vernacular) could make money and build a better mousetrap in the process. That, and the fact that I had a good long list of directors who needed some help. Both those things still hold true.

Although I must admit I no longer have a Che poster behind my desk, although the Obama “Hope” won works as the same sort of litmus test.

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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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