Raising Sparrows

Money Pit or How I Learned to Love Withoutabox

When I was in college I remember the day that I learned about film festivals, specifically Sundance. I learned how a film festival isn’t just the celebration of the diversity of films, but it was also a market place where distribution deals were made. It was an opportunity to see the rare films that you don’t get to see at the neighborhood cineplex. At the same time it really was where indie filmmakers got noticed and were able to make their big break. This was roughly 10 years ago. When I learned all of this the internet was still fairly young and I thought the coolest thing was having a T1 connection in my dorm room that allowed me to play Counter Strike with anonymous competitors from the neighboring building. There was no YouTube and Napster was the topic of debate. Film studios assumed they were safe because there is no way you would be able to compress video down to a small enough size to make it transferable on the internet.

Now, we live in the Netflix and YouTube age. Artists aren’t being discovered as much as they are being put to work at different small-budget freelance gigs that eventually lead to bigger and more grandiose clients. And now I am learning about film festivals all over again. I am trying my hardest to get onto the festival circuit. I haven’t posted anything in a long time because to be honest it is a little boring. Most of it is tedious research, reading about upcoming festivals, marking dates on the calendar, scrambling to get paperwork finished. It is really the unsexy part of filmmaking that you never see in the behind-the-scenes on your favorite DVD.  A new website has popped up a few years ago called withoutabox. The site is like the facebook of festivals. Filmmakers love it because they can keep track of the festivals they are targeting and festivals love it because it gets rid of the paper and DVDs. This is both a great and terrible thing for me because now all of the festivals that I have been searching for are at my fingertips, but they are also draining my bank account really quickly.

One of the rules of film school that I have ignored (as I am sure every eager filmmaker has on their first feature) was to make sure to write publicity into your budget. I made the terrible assumption that publicity meant trailers, posters, and newspaper ads. One of the biggest costs is festival entry fees. Whether it is a prominent festival or an obscure one it seems like $50 is the magic number that all of these entry fees hover around. It’s like buying a really expensive lottery ticket for the chance to win a lottery ticket. Then, it’s tricky figuring out if you bought the right lottery ticket. Every day I get emails about upcoming festivals, niche festivals, upcoming deadlines, missed deadlines and other opportunities.

I have the confidence that my documentary is a good film and that it will find an audience, but it’s hard to tell which festival is going to be the one that gets the ball rolling. I guess what I am saying is if you have a connection to a film festival and you can get me in for free we should really sit down and have a few drinks. The first one is on me.

What’s In A Name?

Happy 2011! It has been a long time since I have posted on this editing blog. Time has gone by at light speed since we got the ball rolling in California. Adam Lesar, our producer was able to bring David Lee Swann to the Raising Sparrows team.  David has allowed us to finally get together in one place to focus on only the documentary. The experience has been amazing.

In October we were able to finally show our family and friends what we had been working on and talking about for over three years. Thankfully, the historic Paramount Theater in St. Cloud, Minnesota was gracious enough to host this sneak peek event.

That afternoon the one question that haunted me was when someone from the audience asked, “Where did the title of the film come from?” My initial answer was that it was named after the boat, and then the boat’s name was changed. It is true that the schooner is now called the Rover and not the Sea Sparrow and many people got the impression that because the name of the boat changed the movie has nothing to do with the title. It even had me thinking that maybe I should change the name as well.

The next morning after the sneak peek the producers and myself looked over all of our comment cards and had a long discussion about whether we should keep the name or not. The trouble is that in my opinion the title speaks very clearly what the documentary is about. Please let me explain.

I have talked to hundreds of ambitious people in my lifetime who have also shared what they want to do with their lives. There are those who talk about becoming famous musicians, and then they join the army. Others who want to be talented painters, but end up going to college to be doctors.  I am not criticizing any of these decisions, but my point is that very rarely do I meet an individual who has a grandiose dream and still pursues it no matter what the rate of failure may be.

The part of the story that really kept my enthusiasm going for this documentary has been Randy’s lifetime determination to fulfill his desire to own his own ship and sail. At times it seems like this has been a plan he concocted since high school. This isn’t a birch bark canoe that he wanted to take on Little Rock Lake, this is grandiose. So why sparrows?

Sparrows are the Midwestern pigeons. They settle in large numbers and if they are startled they pick up and move a few feet away from the danger. They don’t move far, just far enough to carry on their business while keeping out of harms way. It takes a great upset around them to actually cause a host of sparrows to fly away. Keep that in mind as I start discussing my point.

During our production there were birds and sparrows everywhere, obviously. Most of them were there because the barn made a natural nesting place. Randy tearing this place apart to fit his ship was causing a lot of chaos amongst the avian community. This image is one that I had in my head during the entire filming process. I was thinking about how a lot of people have got smaller hobbies that don’t really disturb a lot around them. They are reasonable and normal ambitions. Here was a man who’s dream is so large that it causes a lot of change around him. Enough change to symbolically raise sparrows from their roost and cause them to find another home.

I have always loved the Stanley Kubrick and Christopher Nolan stance when it comes to understanding the meaning of a film. They have always left it up to the audience to interpret that meaning. I think this is important in order for someone to embrace the story, because they have then attached themselves to it. I won’t be explaining anything else with my documentary, but I felt that I needed to make a correction to what felt like a gross mistake on my part to a select audience of our largest support.