In this age of movie mega-hits, it’s difficult for any independent film — let alone one without big-name stars — to get made and find an audience. Writer/director Adam Rifkin hopes the front-page issues explored in his new film, Look, an feature shot entirely from the point of view of security cameras lurking everywhere, hits home with movie-goers when it opens December 14 in New York and L.A. The small-budget film was financed and distributed via a new company called Liberated Artists, the brainchild of former AOL CEO Barry Schuler and producer Brad Wyman, who made the Oscar-winning film Monster. Rifkin earned cult film status with The Dark Backward before writing Mousehunt starring Nathan Lane and Small Soldiers with Tommy Lee Jones. Below, he tells us how Look, which is about the things people do when they think no one is watching, scored on the all-important film festival circuit.
Where did the initial idea for Look come from?
The spark came about four years ago when I was driving through Los Angeles and got a ticket from a red light camera and got a photo in the mail from the police department of myself singing to the radio, making an idiotic expression, looking embarrassing. The idea that a photo was taken without my knowledge and sent to my home address was a little unnerving and it got me thinking: How many times a day do cameras I’m not aware of take my picture? Today, the average person is captured 200 times a day, more in big cities, and the numbers are growing exponentially. I thought this could be a really cool way to shoot a movie that I’d never seen it done before. I really wanted to throw a bucket of cold water on the public’s obliviousness to just how many surveillance cameras are out there and to use the film as a means of starting a conversation. Everybody wants to live in a safer society but at same time everybody is concerned with their right to privacy.
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You shopped Look to film festivals like CineVegas, where it won the Grand Jury Award, Chicago International, where it was an official selection, and Fort Worth, where it won a special jury prize. How important are festivals to success in today’s overcrowded movie market?
Film festivals are a great way for independent films to get seen by audiences and buyers. You can make the greatest film in the world but if you have no place to show it and nobody sees it, it just sits on a shelf in your basement. Festivals are how lots of films get discovered. When we screened the film at CineVegas and it won, which was fantastic, we suddenly got inundated with offers from other distribution companies, big ones, but we turned them all down. All the plans submitted to us were completely in the box, nothing particularly creative — they were just going to feed the pipeline a product. We believed starting a new company, working together, and really being passionate about nurturing a success out of the film was essential, especially because the film is different, because the film has no names. It’s a lot easier to distribute a film if Will Smith’s face is on the poster.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of films compete each year on the film festival circuit, hoping for a shot at the big time. How did Look break out of the pack?
Hopefully, the cream always rises to the top. But that isn’t always the case. I’ve seen wonderful films get turned down at film festivals and never get seen. That said, you’ve got to keep trying. If you make a film that’s great and it doesn’t connect, you gotta make another film — and another. You can’t ever quit.
Walk us through the film festival process. How many did you submit to and who were you competing against?
We submitted to four and got accepted to all of them and now the movie opens December 14. The neat thing about festivals is you’re competing with all kinds of films. You’re competing with the kid who made a film in his backyard with his home camcorder for $50 and you’re competing with big budget independent films like I’m Not There, starring Cate Blanchett and Richard Gere. Film festivals are a great way for creative films to find their audience. You wouldn’t necessarily see a movie like Underdog [which Rifkin wrote] at a film festival because it’s such a populace film. Film festivals are a great way to introduce a film that’s artistic to a crowd of people who appreciate something different.
| Big Brother is an easy target, but in this day and age it’s Little Brother who’s more of a threat. |
That said, how do you market your film so that it resonates with festival judges as well as a wider audience in middle America?
We believe Look is a film that will not only appeal to cinefiles but anyone who’s a citizen of any civilized country because this proliferation of surveillance cameras affects us all. If you’re walking down the aisle at any Wal-Mart you’re on 40 different cameras. So it’s not just a film for urban movie geeks. It was also very important to me that the characters be real people that any of us could relate to: a mini-mart clerk with big dreams, a department store manager trying to score with all his saleswomen, a high school teacher trying to be a decent husband, and a lawyer struggling with a sexual dilemma. I didn’t want the characters to be so quirky or so outrageous that people wouldn’t be able to connect with any of them. There’s a number of different story lines that interweave and I hope everybody will relate to at least one of them.
How do compare your experiences making this film with the big budget Disney film, Underdog?
I love working on big studio movies. There’s lots and lots of money to play with, lots of very nice hotels to stay in, lots of delicious catered food, and lots and lots of time, which is fabulous. Also, big budget movies often open the first day on 3,500 screens. It’s a really exciting way to make a movie. Look is a very independent film that cost about the budget for lunch on Underdog. The crew was really small and everybody was there because they believed in the project, believed in the script, and believed in the opportunity to do something different. Nobody was in it for the payday.
What did you learn about the use of surveillance cameras while making this film?
True story. During research, I visited a bunch of malls and department stores to see how their offices worked and how the cameras looked. I’d always assumed the people behind surveillance cameras were trained professionals, responsible individuals who take their job as security experts seriously. I found out that’s not always the case. One mall security office, which had dozens of cameras, was run by a bunch of high school kids and dropouts who weren’t always zooming in on shoplifters — they were also zooming in on girls’ boobs. They showed me their highlight reel of the funniest things they captured people doing and if they found something particularly egregious they’d post it on YouTube. As a private citizen, I was unnerved. As a filmmaker, it got me very excited. Big Brother is an easy target — the issue of the government invading our privacy. But in this day and age it’s Little Brother who’s more of a threat. Because everyone has a cell phone camera, everybody has access to YouTube and in a second a world audience can have access to any piece of video.
What do you want people to take away from Look?
I hope they think about it and talk about for long time. Whenever they’re in an elevator or a department store I want them to remember the movie, turn around, and see the camera peeking at them. Every time I show the movie I get emails, calls, and text messages weeks later from people saying “Damn you, I can’t go to the bathroom any more without being paranoid someone’s watching.”
Tips on scoring an audience for an independent film:
1) Make the best film possible.
2) To generate buzz and help find a distributor, shop it to as many film festivals as you can.
3) Explore innovative, out-of-the-box marketing ideas and traditional and online media markets.
4) Consider the issues your film explores and pitch reporters who cover those issues instead of concentrating solely on entertainment writers.
5) If all else fails, try, try again.
Dawn Shurmaitis is a freelance writer whose stories have appeared in Salon, New Jersey Monthly, and numerous newspapers. After seeing Look, she regretted every indecent act she ever committed where cameras may have been watching.
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