With so many people handing out advice, you would think indie filmmakers feel especially blessed. However, I strongly suspect that they don’t. Since what I do with this blog is hand out lots of half-baked advice and pushy opinions, you can only imagine the conflict I must feel. OK, I’ll be honest and admit that there is no conflict and the great thing about handing out advice is that there are no strings attached. Not much profit, but certainly no strings.

Some of the currently available advice is actually good, with one of the more interesting being a recent post by Jason Brubaker at Film Slate Magazine. Titled “How to Make Your Movie Without the Middle-Man,” the post sets up a couple of interesting points just before he pitches his book Filmmaking Stuff: How to Make, Market and Sell Your Movie Without the Middleman. First thing you will notice is that Brubaker does not like the middleman (with or without the hyphen).

Brubaker is big on the concept of direct marketing of movies via the Internet. Notice that I just used a term that is not often invoked in discussions of VoD and internet distribution: Direct Marketing. If you are familiar with the commercial use of this term, you will know that it often carries a bit of a dubious rep. The reason is because a lot of direct marketing involves all of those annoying solicitation calls, spam emails and junk letters you get every day. That is the dark side of the concept. Unfortunately, the light side involves a lot of work that gets into a slightly similar vein (though now you get to use the “social networks,” which is certainly more respectable — sometimes).

But it is also one of the major alternative approaches being pursued by a wide variety of indie filmmakers. It has the advantage that you don’t have to deal with any middleman distribution companies. Except for taxes and expenses, you get to keep the money made through your film. You control the whole operation at every level. Gosh, does this sound like a swell exercise in rugged individualism or what?

To be honest, I am of two very conflicting minds on this issue. First-time filmmakers often go into distribution deals with a tremendous disadvantage. A good example is the original Night of the Living Dead. Back in 1968, the only way George A. Romero was able to get distribution for the movie was by cutting a deal with the Walter Reade Organization for less than $400. Since the company then proceeded to make a really stupid foul-up with the copyright and the movie went into public domain, that pathetic upfront payment has been the only dough Romero has ever seen from the most widely viewed horror movie of the modern age. Ironically, that is slightly more cash than many filmmakers have seen from their first movie.

So getting rid of the middleman sounds like a truly fantastic idea. Likewise, Internet distribution has come of age — technically speaking. However, a successful commercial model of this type of self-distribution is still a work in progress. An increasing number of indie filmmakers are working in this direction (and Brubaker’s book is a good starting point if you wish to pursue this), and eventually something is going to hit big, maybe. But it is a concept that is still in the developmental stage. It is also an approach that requires a lot of work. You know, like 18-hour days, 8 days a week. The staggering nature of this process is enough to make you pine for those greedy middlemen. You might even realize that some of these folks (the honest ones) actually do work for a living.

Of course that brings up the next question: Where do you go to find these middlemen? The first thought that occurs to many indie filmmakers is the film festival circuit. But before you go there, please take about seven minutes to check out the YouTube video You Cannot Rely on Film Festivals to Distribute Your Film by Jon Reiss, author of Think Outside of the Box Office and co-author of Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul.

As you watch Reiss’s presentation, pay close attention to the numbers he is unreeling. Thousands and thousands of movies ply their way through the film festival circuit every year. Only a very small percentage of these movies will ever get a distributor. Even then, only a small percentage will ever actually get distributed in any major sense. It plays like a culling process created by Thomas Hobbes, and it all feels harsh, brutal and short. Unfortunately, these are the successful titles. The unsuccessful movies simply vanish somewhere in the back of a UPS truck.

Which is why everybody keeps going back to the direct distribution idea. But trying to do it all is nearly impossible for many filmmakers. Fortunately, an ever-growing lineup of websites are emerging to provide indie filmmakers with a pre-established online distribution system. One interesting example of this type of service is EggUP, a growing company designed to guide filmmakers through various platforms and achieve an actual approach to monetization with their movies. Beyond the Box Office recently did an interview with Chris Lucero, Marketing Director of EggUP, that does a nice job of outlining the DIY model of distribution. Currently EggUP is averaging 10 to 50 downloads per day, which is low by web standards but not at all bad in the indie trade.

So there is my two-cents worth of advice this week. It’s all good advice. It’s all free advice. Hey wait a minute, I’ve got to find a way to charge for this stuff.

Maybe they do. But that forces the question: What is mainstream? Quite seriously, is there such a thing? I really don’t think so. In fact, I don’t think there has really been a strong definable cultural “mainstream” since the early 1960s. That was about the time when the gray twilight of the Eisenhower years faded into a psychedelic midnight.

Any modern attempt to define the mainstream seems doomed to either falling into an ideologically predetermined pit or wandering off into a lalaland of half-baked assumptions. Over the past several years, studies have been done trying to determine TV and movie viewing habits of registered Republicans and Democrats (though based on political bias, this reasonably covers the parameters of modern mainstream American cultural debate). Supposedly the top shows for Republicans are Modern Family and Big Bang Theory. Democrats allegedly stay glued to Dexter and Mad Men.

What does this tell us? Mostly it suggests that Democrats all have cable TV and Republicans don’t. Neither Modern Family nor Big Bang Theory is exactly a conservative show. Actually, a case could be made about latent right wing tendencies in a show like Dexter. Either way, it might just be possible that people watch these shows more for entertainment than social/cultural values. Sometimes, I fear that there are no remaining relationships between entertainment and values.

Similar studies have been done regarding movies. Probably the most interesting thing gleaned from these reports is that Republicans are more likely to skip going to the theater and will wait for the film to come out on DVD. Maybe they’re saving up their money to get cable, I don’t know. Oh, and 60 percent of the Republicans can’t stand Michael Moore. Based on what I’ve heard, this figure is probably low. Ironically, a lot of Democrats are not too crazy about Moore either. Strangely enough, viewers from both political parties all love Amadeus. It seems that Mozart (and not Beethoven) shall unite the world.

To be honest, these studies don’t really clarify anything. Sure, the more conservative a person may be the less thrilled they are with hearing F-bombs throughout a movie. On the other hand, I have the strong impression that a lot of young right-wing types find the movie Scarface oddly inspirational (sort of an Ayn Rand story on steroids). The current cultural scene is such a mixed bag that it often defies description let alone analysis.

The near ludicrous success of The Avengers is potentially a tribute to its own half-cockamamie presentation of “diversity.” Think about it. You’ve got one super-rich, arrogant rep from the 1 percent camp. Add in a 99 percenter from the Depression who has been turned into a superhero role model for the Boy Scouts. Tag them both with a badass black dude with a commanding voice and a really great looking leather coat. Mix in a female Russian super assassin with a swift kick and deep feelings and round it all off with a good-looking immigrant with family problems. Combine it all with the Hulk’s anger management issues and the whole thing starts to sound like Modern Family in costumes (minus the gay characters).

In many respects, the impending success or failure of the movie Dark Shadows will be a stunning mix of these contradictions. After all, it is a major mainstream movie by that major mainstream director, Tim Burton. Yes, Burton is a mainstream director almost in spite of himself. He really hasn’t changed much since his early days (back when he was booted out of Disney), but everything else has changed and he is basically mainstream. It stars Johnny Depp, just about the only truly bankable movie star out there even though his success is partly due to playing the swishiest gay-blade of a pirate in movie history.

The problem the movie will face is its inability to comprehend the emotional force of its own source material. Sure, the old TV series was a half-campy over-the-top production infamous for its whacked-out plot lines and numerous live-and-on-the-air boo-boos. But it also had an emotional intensity that was once best explained to me by a recovering heroin addict (and addicts made up a large chunk of the show’s viewership). As he put it, it was the only show on TV about people fighting against destructive urges that they could barely control. Most likely the movie’s display of warped humor and surreal visuals will not be able to compete against the TV series’ strange power to hook (no pun intended) the attention span of the average addict.

Which suggests several things to me. The term “mainstream” is basically meaningless (except in terms of ownership — for example, mainstream media is something owned by a major corporation). Likewise, there is no mainstream culture in any coherent, traditional sense. Instead, we are now dealing with a system of sub-cultural groupings with points of overlap that can allow for successful combinations. A major production has to find a way of combining many of these groupings in order to achieve a broad audience. In turn, an indie movie is more capable of playing to a smaller niche market and primarily has to find that niche market.

Political content, social statements and hip attitudes in a movie will almost always take a back seat to emotional engagement with the audience. Finding this point of engagement is the tricky point. The upside with the old-school mainstream model was that filmmakers didn’t have to work much at it. They just followed the cultural formula. The sentimental tricks were clichéd, but the nice thing about clichés is that the responses are predictable. Some of these tricks still work, but lots of them don’t, and modern media are having to stumble their way toward the new clichés. By the way, clichés are not always a bad thing except when you do them badly.

Finally, recovering heroin addicts make for a very interesting form of test audience. Once they are past the denial stage, they can be pretty upfront with what they think.

This is why you are not working as a big-shot Hollywood executive. You do not understand the Big Picture. Only senior Hollywood suits truly understand how this all works. The rest of us are simply the victims of too much rational thinking.

Take for example the surprise success of Think Like a Man. Though it is most likely about to get buried by the US opening of The Avengers, this little romantic-comedy turned a $12 million budget into a $64 million box office within a mere two weeks. It has manged to do this despite the fact that the romantic-comedy genre has been running pretty flat over the past year. Then add in the other issue, because the movie has what insiders euphemistically refer to as an “urban” cast (in other words, a predominately African-American cast in a movie based on a best-selling book by an African-American comedian turned writer).

In the real world, the success of Think Like a Man seemingly gives proof to the shifting demographics of the American movie audience. These days, both film and television are very dependent upon an extremely diverse mix of viewers. This is sort of acknowledged on TV by the increasing need to “diversify” a show (usually based on some kind of harebrained statistical breakdown that demands one black character for every six to seven white players). As backhanded as the TV approach may be, mainstream movies haven’t exactly caught up yet to that level of sophistication.

So in the Hollywood mindset, there has to be some confusion about how a black comedy such as Think Like a Man (which is not exactly a black comedy anyway) could be successful. To the suits, this can only mean one thing: the romantic comedy is making a comeback. Obviously if this film (with a predominately black cast) can make this much money, just imagine how it would do with a white cast. Hey, this could be an ideal project for Jennifer Aniston….

The enormous failure of John Carter has resulted in the unusual (for Hollywood) moment when the senior executive in charge had to fall on his sword. Rich Ross’ recent resignation as head of Disney’s film production almost sounds like that rare moment when a senior executive takes responsibly for failure. If this were to happen on a regular basis, every executive suite in Hollywood would be equipped with revolving doors.

But Ross doesn’t count. He moved into that position from Disney’s cable TV operations. By Hollywood standards, he was not a “movie person.” If Ross had been considered an insider, he would never have had to take the blame for a dumb idea that had been green-lighted in 2008, long before he was promoted to the head position (in 2009). Likewise, if Ross had pulled the plug on the film there would have been hell to pay. Ross made the mistake of going along in order to get along. More importantly, he was a TV guy, and the movie folks will tell you that TV is not the same as the movies. After all, if John Carter had been a TV show it would have been quietly canceled well before massive damage was done.

With $200 million blown out the wazoo, you would think that John Carter would put a major dent in the notion of bloated tent pole movies. But then The Hunger Games happened. This sucker will probably end up making around a billion dollars, and every studio honcho alive wants a cut of the action. What is perhaps most interesting about the phenomenal success of The Hunger Games is that: 1) it has the box office of a tent pole movie but was made on a modest budget of $80 million; 2) both the novel and the film tap into a large teenage female audience, not a male audience (though it has a strong overlap into that part of the market); 3) it has certain narrative and thematic qualities that are more closely related to various TV shows that also appeal to the same demographic market (for example, The Vampire Diaries).

In a sense, The Hunger Games is a cable TV series done on a bigger budget. It is an action movie with a female lead. It has a surprising number of black actors playing roles that could have been played by whites rather than the other way around. More ironically, the film was produced by Nina Jacobson, who was fired by Disney back in 2007 (she was fired by phone while in the delivery room).

Once again, back in the real world, this might suggest that conventional Hollywood thinking doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. But you would be wrong. What it really means is that The Hunger Games would have done even better if it had been made for $200 million and starred Johnny Depp (who, I am sure, would have done the part in drag). Better still, how about Jennifer Aniston? It could have been the crucial game-changer role she needs….After all, her romantic comedies have mostly been flops and her high-profile career has been slightly marred by the lackluster audience response to virtually every movie she has actually starred in (the ones in which she had the lead role and wasn’t part of an ensemble cast).

Am I shamelessly pounding away on a point here? You betcha! So far the biggest successes of the year have been movies that were not produced according to the rules of standard Hollywood thinking. It is not a coincidence. But Hollywood hasn’t a clue. They’re still following a master plan that resulted in such films as John Carter. The closest effect that some of these surprise successes have had on Hollywood is that female thing from The Hunger Games.

Which is why they are placing more emphasis in the ads for The Avengers on Scarlett Johansson. Especially her cleavage. That’s sort of the same idea, ain’t it?

And by the way, John Carter was originally suppose to be the first of a trilogy. I suspect that a reboot will be announced very soon.

What can one say about asteroid mining except that the technology is still running a little behind on that idea? Besides, Bruce Willis may not be available. However, the issue about film’s running speed is both curious and controversial. A lot of theater owners are protesting the idea because of the cost involved in making the change. But to be honest, I thought that the change to digital sort of makes the whole debate pointless.

The traditional running speed of 24 fps was basically coincidental in the first place. It just happened to have been the speed that most closely matched the audio tape speed of 7-1/2 inches per second. Obviously this became a useful match-up for sound movies. Before that, the running speed was determined by how fast the cameraman could crank the camera.

Over thirty years ago, Douglas Trumbull helped to invent Showscan, which moved the running speed up to 72 fps (and used a 65mm film gauge). This went over like a lead balloon with theater owners. Though the image produced by this faster system was sharper and more “realistic,” most theaters were not interested in the cost of technical adaptation.

Today, with the advent of digital 3D, the running speed issue is an open book. The IMAX 3D system runs nearly twice as fast as anything Cameron is talking about. In fact, the IMAX system is running right around the threshold that Trumbull was hoping to promote years earlier with Showscan. When a film runs at the standard speed (24 fps), the mind is still faintly aware of the flicker effect, and the average viewer retains a basic ability to register a difference between reality and the projected image. But once the projection speed reaches 72 fps, this difference dissolves and the mind can no longer make the distinction between the projected image and reality.

Back in the 1980s, Showscan demonstrated this effect by a presentation stunt. A display of the system would start with a person standing in front of the screen, explaining the concept. At some point during this presentation, the speaker would slip through a slit in the screen while his filmed image replaced him in front of the audience. Virtually no one could tell the difference between the real figure and the image.

If you saw Avatar in IMAX 3D, then you got a hefty taste of what I am talking about. In a conventional 2D screening, the alien characters of the movie were extremely impressive examples of high quality computer graphics. But you also noticed that they looked like computer graphics. In the IMAX 3D presentation, the residents of Pandora appear as life-like as the human cast (heck, they were more life-like than some of the cast). It really was a different experience. Of course at the running speed used by IMAX 3D, even Bugs Bunny is going to look real.

In 2009, a research group with the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers settled on a new range of six different running speeds for movies. The SMPTE recommendations are all very well researched (and 48 fps is one of the slower speeds). However, I’m not sure if it really matters, since the rapid technological change will take this issue in whatever direction is necessary (well, that and the cost of the technology).

This is due, in part, to the fact that the frames per second approach to speed measurement is becoming irrelevant. Likewise, some of the parameters are not actually being mapped out by members of the SMPTE. Part of this “speed” issue is being worked out by gamers (most of whom would find this discussion to be a hoot from an old fuss-budget). By their standards, all of the SMPTE recommended speeds are too dang slow. Gamers represent a different part of the digital universe, but they are part of the greater technological scene and they have a distinct influence on digital development. In fact, they have a bigger influence than the SMPTE.

Which suggests to me that the current projections of future development in the motion picture industry are largely based upon concepts that were primarily valid as of three days ago and became invalid just yesterday. 48 fps is already out of date. Theater owners are going to remain extremely unhappy about everything yet to come (starting last week). Within a few more years, none of this industry is going to much resemble anything we are currently debating. The only prediction concerning future development that I feel confident in making is that movie popcorn will remain grossly over-priced. The rest involves a wild range of variables, half of which practically sound like something from outer space.

Which may be why Cameron is now looking to jump-start the industrial revolution in the Alpha Centauri star system.

Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t this how the bad guys in Avatar started out?

But the real push toward a postmortem career took place last week when Tupac Shakur appeared at the close of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The digital resurrection of Tupac has created an enormous stir, partly because the entire audience (and many critics) were starting to sound like the kid in the movie The Sixth Sense.

The technical achievements of the Tupac stunt are open for debate, especially since the production company Digital Domain does not like to reveal details about the man behind the curtain. One of the better online discussions about the technical aspects can be found at Yahoo! News as they talk with Michael Bove of the MIT Media Lab. As Bove points out, the image wasn’t a true hologram but more of a mix of holography, computer generated imagery and the magician’s old friend Pepper’s Ghost.

It may be all smoke and mirrors, but it has worked well enough that there is now a serious debate about putting “Tupac” on some form of a tour. Heck, for all I know this is how The Rolling Stones have done the last couple of their tours. But what is really interesting about the “Tupac” performance is the way in which they have been able to generate a so-called “new” performance. In the past, the digital insertion of dead stars has been limited either to the content of previously filmed material (for example, the Mustang ad with Steve McQueen) or digital painting with a body double (Peter Cushing’s cameo at the end of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith).

Which brings up some questions as to the plus and minus of doing a movie with just dead people. Sort of the ultimate version of Plan 9 From Outer Space as dead movie stars are presented in “new” performances. The Tupac presentation demonstrates that the technology is basically ready. The only thing stopping it is….

Lawyers. Lots and lots of lawyers. Also the heirs to various estates who have hired the lawyers. The issue as to who owns the right to a dead person’s image is murky. Last year, a federal judge struck down parts of a Washington state law that restricted commercial use of a deceased celebrity image. In California, there is the Celebrities Rights Act, which protects a person’s image for 70 years after their death, as well as a Civil Code known as the Astaire Celebrity Image Protection Act (passed in response to the infamous Dirt Devil commercial). A dozen US states have various laws regarding this issue. The list will continue to grow in sync with the technology.

Most of these laws pertain to the rights of the celebrity’s heirs to retain and control images of the deceased (especially in regards to commercial exploitation). Since part of the reason for using a dead celebrity is to get an iconographic image for a modest price, the ownership issue takes a bite out of the process. Likewise, these laws are primarily focused on the commercial use and manipulation of old images and footage.

Now we have entered a new world where completely new performances can be conjured out of the software system. For example, let’s say you have the money, the technology and the presumed lack of brains, and all you want is to do a porn flick starring Cary Grant. No problem. At least no problem until his heirs sue you off the face of the earth (which I have no doubt they will do and I strongly support their right to do so). Not only will they have the right to go after the producer about the use of Grant’s image, but I also suspect they will have various grounds to go after the filmmaker regarding the “new” performance created for the deceased. Grave robbing is bad enough, but libel can get nasty.

So we may be entering a brave new world of litigation. But it gets even better. We already have a new breed of agents, the kind who handle dead clients just for this purpose. Along with the agents, we will (I assume) have a new form of publicist (who will probably be technically able to get an audio arrangement that would allow for the press to do phone “interviews” — and I have done a few phone interviews where I might as well have been talking to the dead). Heck, business managers for the dead ought to be next.

There are definitely some positive aspects to using the dead. They don’t whine as much as living performers and are a lot less likely to do a Charlie Sheen or Lindsay Lohan stunt (and they will certainly be more even-tempered than Mel Gibson). Many directors will finally feel that they are getting exactly the kind of performances they want out of the cast. The personal demands during the shoot will be a lot easier to manage. Likewise, no one will ever again be bugged by that time-honored question: “What’s my motivation?”

The more I think about it, the more it almost sounds desirable. This may be the truly scary part about the process. In a way, it completely denies the possibility of any fresh, new approaches. Quite literally, it’s a dead-end. But since Hollywood is shamelessly mining the past for everything else, it kind of makes sense.

So I guess the lesson we have learned this week is that there is an afterlife. Kind of. OK, it’s more of a reboot. Now excuse me, I want to get back to work on Bogart’s next film.