What do you get when you give a design tool a digital nervous system?

Computers that improve our ability to think and imagine, and robotic systems that come up with (and build) radical new designs for bridges, cars, drones and much more -- all by themselves. Take a tour of the Augmented Age with futurist Maurice Conti and preview a time when robots and humans will work side-by-side to accomplish things neither could do alone.

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Discusses Dennis Palumbo's Therapy Practice with Writers in the Latest Issue of the Authors Guild Bulletin

The Writing Life

 

The Enemy Within

 

Most writers I know, from rank beginners to seasoned professionals, give themselves a hard time one way or another, at one time or another. We’re not good enough writers, we procrastinate too long, we worry over how what we’re working on is going to turn out. When we get notes back from friends we asked to read our drafts, our hackles go up and we experience everything from shame to embarrassment to anger. Sound familiar?

Los Angeles psychotherapist and author Dennis Palumbo has heard it all. Writers make up 80 to 90 percent of his practice. The rest work in other creative fields, so he deals with these issues every day of his working life.

Palumbo is a former writer for screen (My Favorite Year) and TV (Welcome Back, Kotter) and the author of Writing from the Inside Out: Transforming Your Psychological Blocks to Release the Writer Within (Wiley). He has published a collection of short stories, is currently working on his fifth Daniel Rinaldi mystery novel for Poisoned Pen Press and writes a column for PsychologyToday.com.

Palumbo was a successful screenwriter having his best year financially when he decided to leave screenwriting to become a therapist. While in Nepal working on a Robert Redford film on mountain climbing, he had what he calls “a little bit of a Razor’s Edge experience.” He returned home, started seeing a therapist and began taking psychology classes. He had no intention of becoming a therapist, he says, but decided it wasn’t a bad idea for a writer to have a master’s degree in psychology. As part of his training, he ran a group therapy session for schizophrenics. He was meeting with a producer about a movie the producer wanted him to write when his thoughts drifted to his patients and triggered a second insight. “I had a Road to Damascus moment and thought, I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Twenty-eight years later, he’s a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in creative issues and has no regrets. He continues to write, but only what he loves. He spends most days with patients and their issues: writers’ block, procrastination, anxiety, the inner critic, author envy and more. During his lunch hour, he writes fiction.

It will likely come as no surprise to hear that writers’ block is the most consistent of patient concerns. No matter how many successes writers have, he says, they suspect their success is a fluke. “With the next thing they write,” he says, “they’re sure they’re going to be found out.” He tries to impress upon patients the fact that writing is hard — very hard — and he encourages them to resist making themselves the problem. “What writers are trying to do is difficult,” says Palumbo, “and the difficulty is not a referendum on their character or their talent.” It’s easy, he adds, “to imagine that you alone suffer from this fear, that Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, name your favorite writer — never struggled with it.”

And when writers are having a hard time, or thinking too much about the future of their writing, it can lead to procrastination. “If you’ve had good reception to your first book and are afraid of the critical reception you imagine awaits your second book, you’ll procrastinate.” And while you may think you’re procrastinating because you need to know exactly what you’re going to write before you begin, in Palumbo’s view, it’s more often caused by fear of self-exposure. “For many people, the smaller shame of procrastinating is better than the bigger shame of what people are going to say about you when the work is done.”

As with most issues writers bring to him, he reduces that fear to “family of origin” issues. How you take criticism is a direct offshoot of how you experienced criticism as a child and echoes the messages your parents gave you as to your inner worth. It’s up to the writer how that criticism is interpreted and personalized. “A parent can say, ‘You’re an idiot,’ and one kid laughs it off while another crumbles. If you come from a family where you were highly criticized, criticism is horrible. If you were praised to the sky, you will also find criticism extraordinarily hard and painful.”

The more a writer understands that criticism is subjective, that it’s the opinion of someone with different artistic or commercial goals, the less it’s seen as a critique of you as a person. “But,” says Palumbo, “we’re all human and it’s very difficult not to take criticism personally. When an agent of mine once said I shouldn’t take the rejection of a script of mine personally, I said, ‘How should I take it — impersonally?’”

Which is one reason he says screenwriters are the unhappiest writers. Apart from not owning the copyright to their work, screenwriters must deal both with too many people who have script approval over them and with the stream of notes that continually churn the writer’s original story, something that rarely happens with fiction. The number-one horror of being a screenwriter, Palumbo says, is that “the writer is removed from his or her unconscious and begins to accommodate the studio or the star. The screenwriter, who knows the most about the story and character, and has labored hardest, sees his or her work changed in a minute. I was in advertising before I became a screenwriter and screenwriting is a lot like the advertising business. People come to Hollywood looking for an approving parent,” he says, “and that’s the worst place to find one.”

Unlike a novel, the screenplay structure is unforgiving. “Structure is everything and every scene has to move the movie forward. Movies are mostly plot driven and the director is king. The best stuff for writers now is on television. It’s character driven, like novels. In TV, the writer is king. Every screenwriter in my practice is developing TV projects.”

Writer envy — and worship — rarely yield happy results. “So many writers come in and say, ‘I’m no John Updike,’ and I say, ‘That job has been filled by John Updike so be the best you can be.’” Because “if you think that Hemingway was a great writer and that you’re a piece of crap, it’s going to be hard starting your next novel.” Smart writers compare themselves to themselves rather than to someone else. And one of the many self-defeating forms of comparison is thinking you don’t have an interesting enough life to be a writer. One of my favorite chapters in Writing from the Inside Out is “Write About Dogs.” It’s a takeoff on an old Booth cartoon and it has to do with using who you are as the raw materials for your work. “The thing about writing,” says Palumbo, “is no matter how particular or idiosyncratic your story is, it can generalize out to everyone. You didn’t have to grow up in Dublin to understand Angela’s Ashes. Ray Bradbury said there’s only one story in the world and it’s your story.”

Many writers believe that self-aggrandizement is a lousy quality and that it’s better to be humble. Humility is great, Palumbo says, but “successful artists of all stripes need a good amount of healthy narcissism. At some level, it has to feel urgent.” And if you don’t believe in you, who will? He goes on to say that writers should feel like that five-year-old coming home with a drawing: If you draw it, it has to go on the wall. The same goes for writing. It has to feel like a calling. You feel good when you write and bad when you don’t. “Annie Dillard said if you write long enough, your body changes on a cellular level, so if you’re not writing, it feels wrong.”

That belief in the writing self is paramount. No matter when you started writing, you need that belief in yourself to be able to withstand rejection and all of the other obstacles the writing life brings. Writers who started at a young age usually see themselves more clearly as writers than those who come to writing later. But those who’ve had success in another profession can bring the same skill set, work habits and self-regard to writing that got them through med school or law school. “There is no one answer,” says Palumbo. “What motivates or hamstrings one writer is not the same for all writers. There’s no ‘one size fits all.’ I say keep giving them you until you is what they want. I see so many patients who say they want to write the next big seller. When The Da Vinci Code came out, a lot of my patients wanted to write that. When you do that, you’re dead. The best thing is to write your own reality. If it’s your karma, the powers that be will want that. We all know stories of authors who’ve written books we love that were rejected by dozens of publishers.”

The goal of therapy, says Palumbo, is self-awareness, to be aware of the behaviors that are tripping you up. “I say insight is the booby prize of therapy. People don’t change with insight. People change with courage. You have to coexist with that which makes you anxious. You can be anxious or fearful that what you’re writing is not any good, but you write it anyway. If you sit around waiting to feel confident, you’ve got a long wait.”

So does perseverance pay off? In his 28 years of practicing psychotherapy, Palumbo says he’s never had a patient not achieve an element of his or her dreams. It may be that the person who wanted to be a TV writer ended up writing a web series. The would-be novelist becomes a successful writer of nonfiction books.

“It may not be everything you want, but the ultimate goal for a writer is to develop a healthy relationship with his or her own writing process. Agents come and go, publishers come and go, trends come and go, but having a profound, intimate relationship with process is the best protection there is. It’s the only thing that sustains.”

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is a writer in Southern California. She is the host of Writers on Writing on KUCI-FM and teaches at Gotham Writer’s Workshop. She has noir fiction in USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series and her book, Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within is in its 11th printing.

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When ‘Based on a True Story’ Becomes a Lawsuit

A judge has greenlit a trial for author Gerald Brittle against Warner Bros. for the rights to paranormal specialists Ed and Lorraine Warren’s story, specifically the events featured in his book “The Demonologist” and The Conjuring movie franchise. Claiming the rights to a true event seems like a bold move, but this case is a convoluted one. However, Warner Bros. could have avoided this huge lawsuit.

Before writing his book in 1978, Brittle made an agreement with the Warrens that for the rights to their story, there cannot be any “competing work,” which included movies. This provision in their book deal is still in effect today but Brittle was never asked for permission to use the events in his book in The Conjuring. Instead, the producers went directly to Lorraine Warren, who gave her okay.

Warner Bros. explanation for their disregard for Brittle’s book deal is that one person cannot have “a monopoly to tell stories about true-life figures and events.” The Conjuring claims what happens in the film is based on real events of the Warren files, but Brittle begs to differ.

There is no historical evidence of the witch, Satanic child sacrifices, and even possession that is featured in the movie. Those events take place in Brittle’s book, which he says the Warrens fabricated (unbeknownst to Brittle at the time of writing the book). So Brittle argues that the movie is based on his book instead of facts. He even goes into arguing that the production company told screenwriters not to read his book because they didn’t have the rights to it. How Brittle would know that is unclear.

This will be a tough case to decide on, especially since the subject matter is paranormal activities that can’t be truly proven. With that in mind, it might have been smarter on Warner Bros.’ part to cut the “based on historical events” claim, fictionalizing the story altogether. What makes the film interesting was apparently fiction anyway.

Without connecting itself to the Warrens’ case, The Conjuring is a movie filled with horror tropes and stories that have been told before. Horror films have been dealing with demonic possession, haunted families, and exorcisms long before The Conjuring franchise. Those things aren’t unique to the Warrens. Therefore without the Warrens’ name and the claim that the events are based on truth, The Conjuring could have been just as scary and successful as a regular fictional horror film without all this legal trouble.

Real events inspire horror movies all the time, but filmmakers can get away with making movies about them by not claiming any connection to them. Stating that a movie based on possession and ghosts is a true story should be taken with a grain of salt anyway, considering it’s very hard to prove those things are even real.

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Story Merchant Books Launch's Andrea Aguillard's "The Meander Tile of Lisa Greco" Romance of Mythic Identity Book 2

Second generation Italian-American Lisa Greco is about to receive the reward she's worked her head off for--but she's not sure it's what she wants anymore.

She's always postponed exploring her creativity, and discovering her Neapolitan origins. So she throws the dice, and goes to Naples where she meets a mysterious Japanese-Italian professor of mathematics and itinerant tenor who's in search of his own roots. This leads her to do something she's never done before. She takes his hand as he leads her into the darkest recesses of the ancient excavations that reveal the key to both their identities.

Gary Wenkel Smith's Novel Examines SBC Milieu, Bares Truth Through Fiction

The Last Midnight is Gary Wenkle Smith’s first novel. It might make interesting reading to the Sentinel’s readers on several grounds. Of note is that Smith is a San Bernardino personage through and through. He is the son of Nancy E. Smith, who was San Bernardino County’s Fifth District Supervisor from 1956 until 1976, the second woman to serve as county supervisor in the county. Smith, who grew up in San Bernardino and attended Pacific High School, San Bernardino Valley College, and Cal State University San Bernardino, in his own right has gone on to have a storied law career, during which he has practiced criminal law almost exclusively. He has had notable success in defending individuals charged with murder, scoring acquittals for a host of his clients who were looking at a lifetime in prison or potentially the death penalty. He remains in practice with an office in San Bernardino, a stone’s throw from the new San Bernardino Courthouse.
The Last Midnight takes as its subject matter a murder case, perhaps not too unlike some of the cases Smith has himself been involved in defending. The central character is an attorney, Patrick Moynihan, practicing law in fictional Danbrier, located in fictional Danbrier County, both of which bear too many obvious similarities to San Bernardino and San Bernardino County to make believable the author’s halfhearted assertion, made directly to this reviewer, that no actual correlation between the fictional and the real was intended. Moynihan, as well, bears a somewhat sneaking resemblance, at least in certain aspects, to the author.

The novel opens in the immediate aftermath of a murder that has occurred in a fourth floor room in a Danbrier hotel, as investigators from the Danbrier Police Department and the sheriff’s department have arrived on the scene. Horrifically bludgeoned is the lover of the wife of the ne’er do well son of one of Danbrier County’s wealthiest citizens. Hotel security video footage has captured images that indicate, without actually proving, it is the wealthy young man who wielded the baseball bat used to beat the victim do death. Subsequently, further evidence, consisting of DNA findings implicating the young man, come into the possession of the sheriff’s department’s crime lab.

Moynihan has been retained by the defendant’s father to represent his son. A hard-charging, albeit alcoholic, prosecutor is gunning to convict the defendant and send him to prison for life. As Moynihan and his top-notch investigator carry out their own investigation into the facts for the purpose of being able to mount a convincing defense, they unearth further indicators that Moynihan’s client is a sadistic sociopath and other convincing evidence that he is guilty of the crime he has been charged with. Smith offers a graphic display of the defendant’s depravity, which includes an insatiable affinity for methamphetamine and a host of other sordid proclivities. The defendant’s character flaws do not keep Moynihan from living up to his professional commitment to offer his client an aggressive and effective defense. While he is working toward that end, playing within the rules and the ethical code of conduct he has adopted to justify to himself that he has buttered his bread and established a vaunted professional reputation by getting acquittals of some individuals who have been charged with the most heinous of acts, Moynihan and his investigator learn that someone within the law enforcement hierarchy is militating on his client’s behalf, obfuscating, losing, contaminating or altering, if not outright destroying, the evidence which Moynihan recognizes would under normal circumstances once presented in a court of law, his own spirited legal defense notwithstanding, convict his client of the crime he almost assuredly committed. Soon it becomes clear that his client’s wealthy father is using his financial means and his connection to the corrupt county sheriff to compromise the professional and ethical integrity of the backbone of Danbrier County law enforcement – the sheriff’s department’s investigators, evidence technicians and its crime lab personnel – in a push to have Moynihan’s client exonerated. That corruption of the law enforcement establishment bleeds over into the district attorney’s office, where the alcoholic-but-ever-determined deputy district attorney is himself being pressured to throw the case.

It is this element of Smith’s narrative that is the most compelling and poignant and which makes The Last Midnight for me worthwhile reading. Long before he decided to reinvent himself as a novelist, Gary Wenkle Smith was an attorney, indeed a pretty good one. It is a comment upon our society and our era – I will leave it to the reader to decide whether it is a favorable or unfavorable one – that Smith and his professional colleagues, when called upon to answer, even outside the courthouse, whether their clients are guilty or innocent will with a show of the utmost sincerity and conviction assert that those they represent are absolutely innocent. Reflexively, lawyers will insist that is the case even when a showing of the facts in a court of law has already established or will in time demonstrate, and a verdict has settled or will decree, their clients are guilty. It is as if engaging in the creation of fiction has freed Smith to tell the truth about his profession, or at least tell the truth in a way he cannot when he is in a court of law.

Smith succeeds in his fictional setting in posing questions that go right to the heart of the validity and morality of the venerated American Justice System, one that relies on the adversarial principle, a crucible in which a verdict, or what is supposed to be the truth, is crushed between the mortar and pestle of the prosecution and the defense, either side of which is free to engage in the application, or misapplication as it were, of truth, its own version of truth, misrepresentation, sleight-of-hand, half truth, deception, quarter-truth and even outright lies. The theory is, and all of those participating in this system just seem to accept, this presentation of facts, factoids and falsehoods, what is real and what is not, and what is truth and what is not will enable a jury of the accused’s 12 peers to ascertain some semblance of “real truth.” In this sense, Gary Wenkle Smith manages to inculpate his other self – the lawyer – and all of his fellow attorneys, prosecutors and judges in a philosophical indictment at least as scathing as any actual criminal filing down at the courthouse.

A key element of the plot of The Last Midnight is the deviation from the legal system’s adversarial principle, when sheriff’s department personnel and then the district attorney’s office, at the behest of corrupt higher-ups, undertake to assist the accused, which is the opposite of their traditional role. This creates an imbalance, one that registers with Moynihan, committed as he is to his defined role within the adversarial system. It raises the quintessential question of whether the system, which accepts falsity as one its key components, can ever lead to truth, and whether a system that openly involves the display of falsity, indeed embraces it, can render justice. One ponders whether and how often Gary Wenkle Smith the lawyer, in the quietude of his own reflection while engaged in his life’s work, struggled with these questions.

As the reviewer of the book, it is my role to interest you, a potential reader, in reading the book yourself, so I will not spoil for you whether Gary Wenkle Smith satisfactorily answers the questions he so skillfully poses. You can do that on your own by obtaining a copy in paperback or Kindle from Amazon.com. The Last Midnight is published by Story Merchant Books in Los Angeles. For further enticement, let me add that the novel covers a lot of ground, all of it in Southern California, save for a short interlude in Oregon. It brings in, beside the expected lawyer and police types, a healthy cast of characters, including gangsters, enforcers, hit men, former special forces operatives doing civilian contract work, and nude dancers. It does not lack for action or fast and shiny modern muscle cars. In addition to the murder that is the central element of the plot, there are by my count five other coldblooded, or hotblooded depending on how you look at it, killings that take place within the narrative. To those to whom genre is of significance, The Last Midnight perhaps might be described as a courtroom drama, though less than 20 percent of the action takes place in a courtroom. It is part action novel, suspense novel, crime novel, and novel of psychological realism. Add to that it is part fantasy and part Harlequin Romance, but I will not reveal whether the lawyer gets the girl. –Mark Gutglueck

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What Types of $10M – $20M Films Break Out?

An investigative report from Film Industry Analyst Stephen Follows and Founder of The Numbers Bruce Nash

In recent articles, we’ve looked at what it takes for films to break out at two ends of the indie budget spectrum. We started out with low-budget films, made for between $500k and $3 million. Last time we looked at higher-budgeted indies, made for $20 million to $50 million. This time around, we fill in half of the gap by looking at films made for between $10 million and $20 million.

As before, we’ve reviewed all the films in Nash Information Services’ database in that budget range released between 2000 and 2016. We then identified the sixty most profitable movies, after accounting for all sources of revenue and estimating marketing and distribution costs. That gives roughly three films a year from the period under consideration. For more details of our methods and criteria, see the Notes section at the end of this piece.

This analysis produced a result that’s slightly different from our previous investigations. Rather than having a fairly even split between several different categories, there’s a significant cluster of films that share the same audience.

Model One: Senior Cinephiles



By far the biggest category in the list is a group of films that found an older audience – what we’re calling Senior Cinephiles.

At the risk of upsetting every 36-year-old reading this article, we’re considering anyone over 35 to be “senior.” (Essentially, if you lost count of how many Spider-Men there have been, you fall into this category). In our defense, this is how the demographers segment the market, so it’s the data we have to work from in the first place.

Films in this category have an audience that is roughly 55% over the age of 35, compared to around 22% for the market as a whole. To give you a sense of how much these films differ from the norm, see below for the demographic data for these films as they relate to UK cinema audiences.




Unsurprisingly, high-quality drama, often with a grey-haired lead, dominates the upper reaches of this list. Notably, around half of the films in the list are foreign, including The King’s Speech, The Queen, Philomena, The Artist, The Imitation Game, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Downfall, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Les Intouchables. The other half tend to be US-produced films that vied for (and sometimes won) Oscar glory: Brokeback Mountain, 12 Years a Slave, Sideways, Into the Wild, The Hurt Locker, Black Swan, Spotlight, The Fighter, and Letters from Iwo Jima, for example.

So it’s fair to say that going after an older audience with a high-quality drama is a good bet for success at this budget range. But there are a couple of films that stood out to us for being a little more targeted at the older set, and a little less awards-focused: About Time and Under the Tuscan Sun. Also lurking on this list is sci-fi drama Ex Machina, which had broader appeal, but skewed towards a much older audience than is usual for the genre.

So, as always, good films rise to the top, but we think that this budget range also skews older, regardless of the quality of the film.

Model two: In Your Face Comedy



In our analysis of $20m-$50m films, we found that lowbrow was the order of business for comedies. At this lower budget range, there are vestiges of the lowbrow genre (Jackass and Harold & Kumar feature, for example), but this group has a more concept-driven feel to it. Movies like Legally Blonde, Neighbors, Bad Teacher, Borat, Hot Fuzz, and Think Like a Man all have a central theme or characters that poke fun at society, rather than the more situational comedy we saw at a higher budget.

When looking at the group as a whole, they all share a trait that we feel is best described as “in your face.” The filmmakers take a concept and run with it as far as they can. The concept itself can come from anywhere—Borat and Beverly Hills Chihuahua don’t share much of the same demographic—but it’s all in the execution.

These are all films for which a significant portion of the audience came out thinking, “my friend would love this.”








 Model three: Mature Horror



In keeping with the theme of this budget range being fertile ground for older audiences (where, as we have noted “older” means, depressingly, over 35), the horror movies we found this time tended more towards the psychological, and less towards the gore. All of the films build suspense through drama, usually with older protagonists.

Note, however, that there are only six films in the horror genre in this list: about one every three years between 2000 and 2016. There were no horror films in the $20m-$50m budget range, so this is an improvement. But few horror films made for over $10 million really break out, at least in comparison to other genres, and certainly compared to low-budget horror.

Model Four: Music-based films


Sometimes this analysis throws up a surprise. At higher budgets, we found a group of age-reversal family films. At this budget range, there’s a sizable group of films that are based on music and dance, most of them lighter fare such as School of Rock and Step Up, but also last year’s Oscar darling La La Land.

The films’ musical styles tend to cluster around the mainstream. There’s no punk, blues, or classical music to be found, which is frankly a little disappointing. But going for what works with general audiences seems to be what works financially.

We excluded sequels from this research as we felt that their existing audience was a large factor in their success. However, had we not done so then this category would also have included Magic Mike XXL, High School Musical 3: Senior Year and Step Up 2: The Streets.

Analysis

As we’ve looked at different budget ranges, it’s been consistently surprising to us how much films will cluster into groups in each range. Now we’ve completed three of these articles, it’s remarkable how each analysis throws up a very specific category of film that “works” at this budget range, and not at others. There was only one hit (Chicago) in the $20m-$50m budget groups that was first-and-foremost music- or dance-based, but we found six of them budgeted between $10m and $20m. Similarly, age-reversal comedies stood out at the higher budget range, and there are none in the list this time.

Whether that has implications for filmmakers is something worth thinking about. Certainly, if you’re looking to make a musical, keeping the budget under control looks like a key consideration. And, particularly at this budget range, appealing to a more mature audience looks to be important.


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Copyright © 2017 Stephen Follows and Bruce Nash. All rights reserved.

How Artificial Intelligence Will Make Digital Humans Hollywood's New Stars

Illustration by: Wren McDonald

Script supervisors, editors, CG artists and actors all had better look out: "It's all over by 2045 — we are no longer running the show."

Following Paul Walker's death in 2013, the Furious 7 filmmakers faced the delicate task of finishing the film using a digitally created version of the actor. To do so, they resorted to performance capture with the help of the actor's brothers, Caleb and Cody, as well as painstaking computer animation from a team at VFX house Weta. That was state-of-the-art in 2014. But imagine if, instead, a computer could have stepped in, watched all of Walker's performances in the previous Furious films, learning the minute details of how he walked, talked and even raised an eyebrow. And then imagine that artificial intelligence took over and itself helped to create a digital performance for Walker's character.

This isn't so far off. Now that the use of computer graphics is commonplace in movies and TV, artificial intelligence may be the most important technology to emerge in Hollywood. Potential AI-driven applications — in which the machine takes over and can learn and think for itself — could function as script supervisors, take a first pass at film editing, even create performances either for digital characters that resemble actual humans or more fantastic CG creatures. While that may sound like something out of Blade Runner or Westworld, the truth is, such technology could have a huge impact in the areas Hollywood cares about a lot: schedules and budgets, by shortening production times and bringing down costs.

Creating believable digital humans — still considered the most difficult VFX feat — could be the ultimate test of the emerging tech due to the "uncanny valley," the phenomenon in which human replicas that are not quite human-seeming essentially creep people out (certainly, not the best way to drive people into theater seats). "Digital humans are increasingly important in films. But if your data is too sparse, it doesn't look right," says Chris Nichols, a director at Chaos Group Labs and key member of the Digital Human League, a research and development group. "We are using AI to fill in the gaps. The whole concept of AI is dependent on data training itself. The more data you have, the better the system works." Such techniques have not yet been used in a mainstream movie. But, theoretically, AI could do the job of creating a digital "Paul Walker" faster and more economically than current methods.

Right now, AI is best at filling in the blanks after a character already has been sketched out, either from an actual performance or by CGI artists. Another application could come into play in a movie like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, in which footage of current-day Kurt Russell and reference shots of his younger self were combined to "de-age" the character. AI "does sound magical," says Nichols, but "it's not exact data. It's interpreted data — interpreting the missing parts."

Stephen Regelous, a SciTech Academy Award recipient for the development of Massive, an AI-driven software that was first used to create the huge armies in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings series, sees potential for AI in the animation world as well. His Massive system was used for that purpose on a recent animated film, though he declined to reveal his client. "You can shave off tens of millions of dollars from the budget of an animated feature," he says. In a matter of seconds, AI could animate a character, a labor-intensive process for a CG animator. "With Netflix and other streaming services [adding to the volume of production]," adds Regelous, "AI can help produce animation more quickly, and they need ways to improve their efficiency."

AI also could be used to create individual characters in live-action movies. "In Planet of the Apes, it could be an alternative to performance capture, [which was used so that Andy Serkis could play the hero Caesar]," says Regelous. "At some point, you'll be able to create an actor that doesn't know he's not real."

That could pose some thorny issues in the not-too-distant future. "The question of the ethics — whether you should do this or not — is still there," warns Nichols. Motion pictures such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and AI: Artificial Intelligence are cautionary tales about AI-trained computers and robots rebelling, and futurist-entrepreneur Elon Musk already has voiced fears of "a fleet of artificial intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind." That possibility was suggested recently when Facebook, which already uses AI for editing news feeds and targeted ads, reportedly shut down an experiment in which a pair of AI-driven robots ended up creating their own language that defied human comprehension.

"It's all over by 2045 — we are no longer running the show," predicts Regelous. "They will become so smart, and this won't be about motion pictures. They will be curing cancer and fixing global warming." But Regelous doesn't envision a bleak future. "Anything significantly smarter than us is going to value us. It will think, feel love and value life," he says, adding, "I hope I'm right. Otherwise, we are screwed."


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A redhead, a brunette, a missing undiscovered Poe diary, and a murdered third baseman in an exhibition ball game with the New York Giants are the weird ingredients for the mad behavior of Mr. Arongio, the antique dealer who will stop at nothing to acquire a rare find.
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What Types of Low-Budget Films Break Out?

An investigative report from Film Industry Analyst Stephen Follows and Founder of The Numbers Bruce Nash


 Breakout indie hits may be some of the most romantic stories in the movie business. The plucky lone film-maker battles the odds to make their dream film, putting naysayers in their place when it becomes a box office sensation, bringing them fame and fortune beyond their wildest dreams…

But are breakout hits random events that no-one can plan for or do they share some kind of DNA that can teach us how to make successful independent films, and also what genres or techniques to avoid?

To answer these questions, we began with a list of over 3,000 films from The Numbers’ financial database, investigating full financial details, including North American (i.e. “domestic”) and international box office, video sales and rentals, TV and ancillary revenue. We narrowed our focus to study feature films released between 2000 and 2015, budgeted between $500k and $3 million, which generated at least $10 million in Producer’s Net Profit, using a standard distribution model where the distributor charges a 30% fee.

This produced a list of 63 films in total: roughly four films a year over the 15 years under consideration. Almost all of the movies will be familiar to followers of independent film, from small films that became Oscar hopefuls, like Beasts of the Southern Wild and Winter’s Bone to horror movies like Insidious and The Purge that got picked up by the major studios and became box office sensations. With the list in hand, we looked for common themes and found (with a small number of exceptions) that the breakout hits broke down naturally into four types.


Model One: Extreme, Clear-Concept Horror Films

It will come as no surprise to most producers that horror films feature prominently on the list of top low-budget breakout successes.

 

•     Most Profitable Films: Insidious, Monsters, The Devil Inside, Paranormal Activity 2, Dead Snow.
•     MPAA Rating: 82% are rated ‘R’, 12% PG-13 and 6% not rated.
•     Running Time: Relatively short, with an average of 94 minutes and no film ran over two hours.
•     Critical Reviews: Average to poor. Highest rated film in this category is Buried, which has a Metascore of just 65 out of 100. The average Metascore across the dataset was just 49 out of 100.
•     Audience Reviews: More supportive than the critics, but still not above average for most films, at an average of 6.2 out of 10 on IMDb.
•     Release Patterns: Two very distinct release patterns – half played in fewer than around 100 theatres while the other half played in over 1,500 theatres.
•     Income Streams: 28% from theatrical, 60% from home video and 11% from TV and other ancillary income.
•     Income Location: 46% of income was from the US & Canada and 54% international.

Model Two: Documentaries with Built-In Audiences and/or Powerful Stories

The second group of films that stood out were documentaries.

•     Most Profitable Films: Exit Through the Gift Shop, An Inconvenient Truth, Marley, Tyson, Bowling for Columbine.
•     MPAA Rating: A healthy spread across all ratings, with the most common being PG-13.
•     Running Time: Average of 102, although a wide range from 80 minutes up to 144 minutes.
•     Critical Reviews: Very high, with a Metascore average of 79 out of 100.
•     Audience Reviews: Very high, an average IMDb rating of 7.8 out of 10.
•     Release Pattern: Small number of theatres, with most playing in under 250 theatres and the widest release being An Inconvenient Truth in 587 theatres.
•     Income Streams: 17% from theatrical, 71% from home video and 12% from TV and other ancillary income.
•     Income Location: 58% international and 42% domestic.

Critical reviews seem vital for this type of film to break out and it’s interesting to note that the documentaries with the lowest scoring critical ratings (The September Issue at 69 and Religulous at 56) each had strong inbuilt audiences (‘Vogue / fashion’ and ‘Bill Maher / religious scepticism’).

In fact, only a handful of the documentaries on the list don’t have an obvious audience: Man on Wire, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, and Searching for Sugar Man are the only ones that needed to find a crowd. The others were either about someone already very famous (Marley, Tyson, Senna, Amy… note the one-name titles!) or played very directly to a receptive audience (Inside Job, Blackfish, An Inconvenient Truth etc).


Model Three: Validating, Feel-Good Religious Films

Speaking of receptive audiences, the third group of films we found were faith-based films.

 

•      Most Profitable Films: Fireproof, God’s Not Dead, To Save a Life, War Room, Courageous.
•     MPAA Rating: Two-thirds were rated PG and the remaining third were PG-13.
•     Running Time: Fairly long, all were over 110 minutes and the average was two hours.
•     Critical Reviews: Incredibly poor, with an average Metascore of just 26 out of 100.
•     Audience Reviews: Similar to the horror pool, with an average IMDb rating of 6.3 out of 10.
•     Type of Release: An average of 1,273 theatres with the widest being War Room at 1,945 theatres.
•     Income Streams: 29% from theatrical, 55% from home video and 16% from TV and other ancillary income.
•     Income Location: 90% of income came from North American sources with just 10% coming from outside the US and Canada.

Two things stand out with these films. First, they make virtually all of their money in the United States. Second, they get very bad reviews from mainstream movie reviewers. The strength of these movies isn’t necessarily their quality so much as the message; they deliver to an audience that is interested in what they have to say.


Model Four: Very High Quality Dramas

At the other end of the spectrum, at least in the eyes of professional film reviewers, come very high quality dramas. Almost half of these films were American productions, with the rest coming from a wide variety of countries including Germany, Argentina, Mexico, the UK, France and Poland.

 

•      Most Profitable US Dramas: Half Nelson, Waitress, Blue Valentine, Fruitvale Station.
•     Most Profitable Foreign Dramas: The Lives of Others, The Motorcycle Diaries, Amores Perros, Sin Nombre.
•     MPAA Rating: The vast majority are R-rated, with just a third being rated PG-13.
•     Running Time: A wide range, from 81 minutes up to 154 minutes long.
•     Critical Reviews: Extremely high, with an average Metascore of 81 out of 100.
•     Audience Reviews: Similarly high, with an average IMDb rating of 7.5 out of 10.
•     Type of Release: Small release, with all but four playing to fewer than 300 theatres.
•     Income Streams: 25% from theatrical, 63% from home video and 12% from TV and other ancillary income.
•     Income Location: 66% of income for US dramas came from the US and Canada, whereas the reverse was true with non-US dramas, with 64% of income coming from international sources.

The lowest rated film in this category received a Metascore of 68 out of 100, which was higher than all of the films within the Horror breakout success category.

A common thread among these films is awards attention. While they might not be big enough to win a lot of main-category Oscars, these are the films that have picked up a bunch of Independent Spirit Awards, Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, and got some screenwriting and/or acting Oscar nominations.

Do the Films Have to be Any Good?

An interesting finding from this research is that the quality of the film is only relevant for certain types of films.

•     Religious films received extremely low ratings from critics but had mixed ratings from audiences.
•     Horror films showed a range: some were disliked by both audiences and critics (such as The Devil Inside), while others had middling support from both camps (such as Monsters) and then there were films which audiences enjoyed but critics were lukewarm towards (such as Dead Man’s Shoes).
•     Documentaries and Dramas were all popular with audiences and the vast majority also received extremely high ratings from critics.

If we plot this on a graph, we can see just how distinct these three sub-categories are.

 


What’s Missing?

Many of the films in the list come as no surprise, but what’s interesting is what’s missing from the list. We found…

•     Virtually no comedies (Waiting… is the only out-and-out comedy on the list, and it was made at the peak of the DVD sales boom)
•     No action movies
•     No thrillers
•     No musicals
•     Virtually nothing directed at kids — Dr. Dolittle 3 was the only family movie that made our list — although we believe some animated franchises such as Barbie are very profitable but their budgets aren’t quite in our range.

Aside from the missing genres, the other notable absence is any major star involvement. Of course, this is largely a function of the budget—it’s hard to get Tom Cruise for a $3 million film—but it’s remarkable that none of these films attracted anybody who would even be called a B-list star at the time the film was made.


Lessons for Filmmakers and Producers from this Research

So we think there are a few lessons for independent film-makers who are hoping to make breakout hits:

Some “niche” audiences are large enough to make for a very profitable market, if you can reach them. 


The “faith-based” film audience stands out, but there are also receptive audiences for certain types of documentaries. Having a very clear idea of your audience is the first step to making a financially successful film.

 
If you’re aiming for a more general audience, quality matters. 

A lot. Honing your screenplay to what you think is perfection and then having it ripped apart at a workshop may be hard work, but it’s almost certainly what it takes to get a dramatic film to ultimately work with audiences, and to make back its investment.

Look for good actors, not big stars, and do the same with all of the technical crew on a film.  


Fun fact: Affonso Goncalves, who edited list member Beasts of the Southern Wild also edited fellow list member Winter’s Bone and 2016 Oscar nominee Carol. Finding a good editor, cinematographer, production designer and other key members of the crew is more important for a low-budget film than blowing a big chunk of your budget on a famous (or, just as likely, previously-famous) actor or actress.

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 Copyright © 2016 Stephen Follows and Bruce Nash. All rights reserved.