ReFramed Vision: 2012 Update (Editorial)

Posted by on Mar 25, 2014 | 2 comments

Published in 2012:

It’s been seven years since the launch of MFM and a lot has changed. The entire landscape of low-budget filmmaking has shifted in ways we never could’ve predicted in 2005.

At launch, the focus was still on theatrical distribution, because that was still the goal most filmmakers strove for. The Internet was a place to find information, but it hadn’t become a truly viable way of integrating film and media content in the way it is now. Social media was still in its infancy, with Facebook still in a fledgling state, YouTube a novelty, and people still believing MySpace and Xanga would survive! The goal of filmmakers in those days was to try to make digital look more like film with lens adapters from folks like Redrock Micro and the original MFM was programmed in traditional HTML with JavaScript spliced in where needed and used no CSS, updates coming out just once a month.

As Hollywood tries to continually make requirements to prevent Indiefilmmakers from gaining purchase, they’ve also continued to make missteps that alienate the filmwatching public. This has led to the empowerment of digital distributors like Netflix–which have a powerful rating algorythm that serves as a much more democratized gatekeeper for Indie content than has been available–and RedBox, which allows Day-and-Date national releases of films like our very own Mike Flanagan’s Absentia.

Shortly after the launch, everyone thought RED would take low-budget filmmakers to all new heights but, after pandering to Hollywood and screwing up the Scarlet, their chance to change micro-budget filmmaking was lost when Canon stumbled on a way of creating nearly 50mm film quality on a $5,000 DSLR camera called the 5D Mark II. The DSLR revolution took everyone by surprise (not the least of which was Canon, who had added the video recording feature as a last-minute addition to try to give people a reason to upgrade yet again) and have since permitted the creation of a new class of filmmaker who use the democratizing forum of YouTube to do battle with the forces of Hollywood. So impressive has this work been that talented artists have been pulled into a new stratosphere of content creation and been hired by the best companies in the world! Companies like Redrock, who made a name with lens adapters, quickly morphed their creations to support the DSLRs and made an even more powerful breakthrough in this new world!

As more and more types of media creation have come into being, MFM has continued to re-evaluate how best to assist it’s readers who are no longer just low-budget directors, but now are low-budget content creators of all stripes, including film, multimedia, video games, comics, and role playing games. Just as our readers needs have transformed, so has their need for getting their information in an easily cross-linked environment. As such, MFM is now published in a WordPress environment, allowing our readers to subscribe to feeds as new articles, reviews, and content come out throughout the month.

And, after seeing that there was a great need for quality film reviews for publicity for low-budget films—as opposed to just critiques, which have always been film training tools, rather than publicity tools–MFM has now launched its Straight Shooter Film Reviews which are straight, to the point, and brutally honest reviews of films as a film watcher would see them! In addition, we’re now working to cement a relationship with the folks at MoviePals.com, a social networking site for film/movie creators, which would also do day-and-date reprints of Straight Shooter Reviews, as well as reprints of many of our articles in our archives.

So where do we see ourselves going in the years and months ahead? Well, I look to us covering even more of the events and breakthroughs that are important to our readers, from NAB to GenCon to ComiCon, and more in-between. I look forward to more video content being availble and more ways to easily access our content in mobile environments so that our info is always just a step away. Additionally, we are currently working on a way to allow our readers to post reviews and articles directly in a reader submitted section with special programming that would professionally format and make this content readily searchable, without any technical knowledge required on the parts of our readers.

It’s been an exciting seven years and we look forward to continued new changes in the future!

Jeremy Hanke
Editor-in-Chief
October 2012

    The director of two feature length films and half a dozen short films, Jeremy Hanke founded MicroFilmmaker Magazine to help all no-budget filmmakers make better films. The second edition of his well-received book on low-budget special effects techniques, GreenScreen Made Easy, (which he co-wrote with Michele Yamazaki) is being released by MWP in fall 2016. He's curently working on the sci-fi collaborative community, World of Depleted, and directed the debut action short in this series, Depleted: Day 419 .

      2 Comments

    1. Too many comepimlnts too little space, thanks!

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