Is Indie Exploitative?

🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To

1. Nike’s World Cup Short Film - We’re just a few days away from the opening kickoff, so Nike’s short film arrives just in time. The sports giant invented this tradition over 30 years ago, with many entries proving to be enduring classics. Dan Streit of Somesuch directs; we last saw him directing Connor O’Malley in the viral comedy short Coreys, and Dan shared a few notes on the experience making this ad with the Clios.

2. Scorsese Embraces AI - The cinema titan was announced as joining AI firm Black Forest Labs as a “partner and an adviser,” in a rollout that included a piece in the NyTimes and a two-minute video of the director using the company’s AI as a storyboarding tool. The company’s CEO is quoted in the Times stating, "The fact that someone like Martin Scorsese — one of the greatest, most impressive filmmakers to exist — is using our technology and curious about exploring it...it's such a great proof point that this works.”

3. Palm Springs Shortfest - America’s biggest short film event is just over 2 weeks away, and the 300+ film lineup has dropped. S/W team member Céline Roustan is the Co-Director of Programming for the fest and supplied Variety with this statement: “Building the lineup from a record number of submissions was no easy feat, but ultimately we were drawn to what excites us both about short films: daring, uncompromising, free and compelling narratives and visions.”

4. Monetizing the Humble Short Story - A couple of weeks ago, we shared an article about our friend Scott Glassgold and the success he’s been having with selling short stories to Hollywood. Trend alert: WSJ now has a piece on Run-A-Muck, a media startup co-founded by Condé Nast’s former Head of Sales, which will publish short stories online with the intent of farming material for Film & TV adaptations.

5. New Show From Joe Bennett and Green Street Pictures - These S/W alums are on quite the roll. Fresh off a Peabody for Common Side Effects, word arrives that Netflix has ordered Dealies, a new show set in a big box retail store.

6. The 27-Year-Old Assistant Who Found Backrooms - I enjoyed this story Matt Belloni reported in Puck, responding to the Backrooms phenomenon by going way back and highlighting Lucas Ford, the assistant at 21 Laps that first brought the filmmaker’s YouTube shorts to his bosses. First off, we’re suckers for flattery, so an oblique reference to us in paragraph two caught our attention. But the piece is also a good look at the sometimes random and serendipitous way work gets discovered by industry (and why the friction-free nature of online is superior at unlocking opportunities). Of course, the piece also notes that Ford subsequently moved on to found his own production company and “…got zero credit or compensation for his role in discovering a potentially billion-dollar franchise.” Haha, we feel you, Lucas…we feel you.

7. Who’s the Next Curry Barker? - THR had the same idea as we did in looking to tip who might be the next YouTube horror breakout. We even had an overlap pick in S/W alum Caleb Phillips. Congrats Caleb!

8. Her Father’s Death Changed Her Movie About Him - Lindsey Calleran is Short of the Week’s most recent Trailblazer Award recipient for her short, I’m Really Scared I’m Dying TBH. She writes movingly for Indiewire about her new debut feature, Caity, which is premiering at Tribeca. The film depicts the father/daughter bond she shared with her Dad and how his death, in the middle of development, changed the film she planned. “I won’t attempt to explain what it’s like to have a deep creative relationship with a parent, except to say that I know it shaped everything about me.”

9. Queer Shorts in The Navy - Feels ripe for a Village People or seamen joke, but this small news story about Chaplain Simon Edds organizing a queer short film festival for Australian soldiers is neat!

10. What To Watch This Weekend - I’ve been talking about Glitch Productions in this newsletter a lot the past couple of years, and, just like with Backrooms and Obsession, they’re having their mainstream breakout moment. A massively big YouTube hit that was subsequently licensed to Netflix and Amazon, The Amazing Digital Circus premiered its final episodes as a theatrical experience this weekend via Fathom Events two weeks before the episodes are set to hit YouTube. How have they done? Well, they won Thursday’s box office and set a ticket presale record for Fathom. Pretty good! It takes about 4 hours to catch up to the finale if you want to jump on the bandwagon. Here’s the trailer to entice you.

🔥 Obsession Art Director Posts Candidly, Inspires Firestorm

Sally Choi is at an early stage of her film career and took a key role on a $750,000 indie film. That film is now a $250M grossing blockbuster, and she has feelings about that. She took to Instagram on Friday to share those feelings—about the difficulty of the project, the poor pay, and how she felt foolish for not “flipping” the production (turning it from non-union to union). The post went viral, and the fallout has pretty much dominated social media, and X in particular, all weekend, breaking out beyond even Film Twitter. It’s hard to summarize a twisting discourse like this, but it’s a fascinating flashpoint for a whole host of issues in filmmaking at this moment, so I’ll try and sketch out some of the angles.

• After Choi’s post migrated to X, S/W alum Luke Barnett went viral in response with what ended up a common and representative chastisement of Choi—worrying that she’s threatened her career, and stressing that having a giant film like Obsession on her resume is the true reward because of how it will boost her future prospects.

• Luke got called a bootlicker by many, who argued that it’s only right that the people who make a movie should enjoy some of its upside.

• Jeremiah Lewis, however, controversially opined that “Art directors risk nothing for their work,” making the point that department heads for whom a film is a gig are not holding the bag for the 99% of failed indie films in the same way that the writers/directors/producers who sacrifice for a project over years do, or as investors do financially, so upside participation isn’t warranted.

• The conversation largely spun around this loop—folks stating that this is how the industry works, and that pro-labor demands are basically asking fewer films to get made, versus rebuttals that this is pro-capitalist bullshit.

• Still, that doesn’t mean there aren’t ideas. Indie producer extraordinaire, Mynette Louie, shared a guess at what the Obsession waterfall looks like to help spur conversation.

• Daniel Goldhaber, director of low-budget hits like Cam and How to Blow Up a Pipeline, suggests that profit share in massive upside cases isn’t unreasonable and points out that this is what David Lynch did with Eraserhead.

• RonenV had an interesting post too, comparing upside incentives in film to tech, suggesting that trust in the compensation culture of Silicon Valley is a big reason Hollywood is losing to them.

• Also, a reminder that folks like S/W alums Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley are actually putting these sorts of cooperative ideas into action on successful, awards-season films, so there is action and precedent in finding equitable alternatives to the status quo.

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