Janet Grillo thinks that the relationship between visual storytelling art and technology is integral. The technology informs the art. The art informs the technology.
“Think for a minute about the evolution of movies,” says Janet. Back in the day, they used very big, clunky, huge cameras. You couldn’t move them very quickly. You couldn’t move them in the space. You had to position them in one spot and construct an environment to capture the imagery and the sound around it, explains Janet.
You would have created a soundstage. The environment, the lighting, and the sound could all be controlled. And you had this monstrous piece of equipment flat in the middle.
Janet says soundstages dictated the way that stories were told. You had very formal settings. You were basically moving from theater into film, so film was highly theatrical. The film tradition came from a spoken, executed tradition of the theater and the theater’s proscenium arch stage, in Janet’s view.
You can see that in the very stylized work of Alfred Hitchcock. He grew up in that system of studio filmmaking where it’s highly formal and very structured, Janet notes. And you can see it in how the actors are moving in and out of the frame and their movements are blocked. It’s almost like a stage play.
This is an excerpt from the Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo (1958) which demonstrates Hitchcock’s theatrical style of filmmaking:
GALVIN ELSTER: I asked you to come up here Scottie, knowing that you’d quit detective work. But I wondered whether you would go back on the job as a special favor to me. I want you to follow my wife. No, it’s not that. We’re very happily married.
SCOTTIE FERGUSON: Well, then-
GALVIN ELSTER: I’m afraid some harm may come to her.
SCOTTIE FERGUSON: From whom?
GALVIN ELSTER: Someone dead.
[Please embed: https://unsplash.com/photos/tBlYM_VcIkE]

[Please embed: https://pixabay.com/photos/lens-equipment-movie-digital-camera-3143893/]

The lexicon of filmmaking started with editing, according to Alrick Brown. “In the early 1900s, this film thing became real,” Alrick says. “And after people started telling some amazing stories, the next big innovation was editing.”

Over time, editing evolved and became more complex. The camera did more than just capture a movement. “So now we’re like ‘What if you did this? What happens if the camera starts to move?’” explains Alrick.

From the first filmmakers to DW Griffith, cameras did what Alrick calls “magical things.” Audiences experienced film in ways they had never experienced it before.

These early editing techniques began building off of each other, and the techniques came from all over the world. “My film education was focused on what was going on in America,” explains Alrick, “but film really was going on around the world.”

Filmmakers borrowed from each other. DW Griffith, for example, watched films from Germany. Einstein’s early audiences used some of his editing techniques.

“There was this communication across cultures from Latin America to Europe, where people were telling their stories. These things evolved into the techniques you would later see in the earliest Hollywood films,” says Alrick.

DW Griffith built his techniques from things he had learned from around the world. “It’s the same way a student would make a film today,” Alrick points out. “A lot of their approaches will come from things they’ve already watched and experienced.”

Film students aren’t the only ones who use this approach. Directors like Tarantino and Scorsese have spent their careers studying other filmmakers.

“We call them geniuses,” says Alrick. “And some of them deserve that title, but it’s because they’ve spent so much time looking at the history of film. They understand what techniques to keep and what techniques to throw away.”

Compared to other art forms, film is a new medium. “Filmmakers had to lean on other art forms for inspiration,” says Alrick. “So they looked at other forms of communication to build this lexicon that would become filmmaking.”

The film movements were happening, and they were informing one another. A young American filmmaker who saw Godard’s work for the first time would get excited because Godard is playing with time in a way no one else had played with it.

Melvin van Peebles made independent, experimental films in the US. Then he studied and made films in France. Van Peebles was influenced by the French New Wave. He was influenced by all of those films that he saw, but he was equally influenced by what he didn’t see. Later, he became one of the first Black filmmakers to get a deal with Hollywood, along with Gordon Parks and Ossie Davis. They were the first three black filmmakers to be given an opportunity to make films in Hollywood. Hollywood needed some token people. And so they brought these three black filmmakers in, during the late ’60s and early ’70s.

These filmmakers were going to the cinema and seeing racist images that mirrored and impacted how they grew up. They wanted to change those images. They wanted to show people that there was more to the Black community than what Hollywood was representing.

In 1972, Melvin van Peebles stepped away from his Hollywood deal and made Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. In doing so, he shook up the system. It was one of the first times a person used their own money to make an independent film. His film showed police brutality and a black man taking his handcuffs and beating a police officer to death.

Given the history of film that had been created before 1972 and how the Black community was portrayed in those films, van Peebles crew was left divided. Some were not happy seeing that type of imagery. Yet these were filmmakers who were subverting Hollywood because they knew that there wasn’t a place for them. Eventually, Sweetback was a success.

That movie made money. People wanted to see the movie where this black man kills a cop, and runs away, and gets away with it, and the community protects and saves him. Audiences were eating that up.

What did Hollywood do? They saw an opportunity. Shortly after Sweetback was released, the blaxploitation movement began. Hollywood saw a way to make money off of stories where there was a protagonist who was black. For example, the initial Shaft character was written for a white man. It wasn’t until the success with Sweetback that they adjusted it, and the film was made with Richard Roundtree in the lead role.

“The 1930s and 1940s were kind of the heyday of the American studio system. It was the heyday of Japanese filmmaking—many amazing filmmakers were doing so much work; however, the studio systems were still being established. And when Alrick Brown says the system, he means these things are built to just create and crank out stories. So, filmmakers became adept in storytelling because they had to constantly kick out stories,” Brown explains.
These were the filmmakers Brown first watched—Hitchcock, Orson Welles, they all came from that system. Brown continues, “Filmmakers like Ozu and Kurosawa also started their careers. It’s when I started seeing films that came before them; it was Buster Keaton, and it was Charlie Chaplin.”
Now, this new generation of filmmakers who grew up watching Keaton and Chaplin were making films. But these filmmakers functioned more independently and had a system that supported them.
Brown explains, “Films were often made while being written in these studio systems because they were just cranking out material. They put stars under contract—you are under contract; you made a certain number of films. They put directors and producers under contract.”
“And so, it was a film studio—with filmmaking machines. And in that machine system, some people were excluded. A lot of stories were excluded, as well as a lot of people who weren’t included in that part of the journey. European filmmakers who grew up on some of these American films, and were like, that’s not about them,” says Brown.
There were formulas to filmmaking. You had to believe that the French New Wave had some filmmakers trying more innovative things, that they were looking at the formulaic approach to some of the romance films that were coming out of Hollywood.
“Film noir was another popular genre in the 1930s and 1940s. This genre focuses intensely on a particular style or look. Film noir was a genre that had certain conventions it practiced. The audience always knew who the hero and villain were. They knew who the femme fatale was. This formulaic type of filmmaking, although entertaining for the masses, bred populations of filmmakers who thought of doing something different. They forgot about the narrative in the same way,” Brown states.
Brown further explains, “The filmmakers thought to loosen up the storytelling just a bit, where they were not going have this person be the hero, but instead, make them kind of a haunted hero, particularly after the war when many men came back with ailments from the war.”

 “World War II comes along, and they have to develop a camera. They develop a camera in World War II to be on the battlefield and capture the action. This was a revolution,” Says Janet Grillo.

It was a revolution in the way that newsreels were being made and showing people what was really happening on the front lines. If you went into a movie theater in those years, in the ’30s there’d be a newsreel because people didn’t have TV’s back then. You’d go into a movie theater, and there’d be a newsreel with footage of what was happening on the Western front, and then you’d watch your movie.

Things evolved even further. Those cameras were more lightweight. They could be carried and brought into the field. After World War II, a lot of filmmakers started to think ‘what if I took that camera and that technology. What could I do with it? Where could I go?’ They took these lighter cameras, and they went into the streets.

Important Italian filmmakers started the birth of Italian cinema in the 40s and 50s right after the war. They were telling very authentic, true stories about their experiences. Vittorio De Sica, the Bicycle Thieves. Open City, Rossellini. Really important, beautiful movies. Umberto D., Vittorio De Sica. They’re taking these lightweight cameras, and they’re moving into the world and the post-World War wreck that was Italy. They’re poignant, human stories, and oftentimes they’re not using actors. They’re using real people.

This knocks the film-going audience off its feet. This is a revolution in terms of what cinema is. What it can be. The French picked up on this right away, and they created the whole Cinéma Vérité. The truth. The truth of cinema. It has related to documentation and documentary film. The kinds of ways that cameras can move fleetingly, fluidly, naturalistically to capture moments and do weird things in weird places.

Then you have Auteur theory coming up, with this whole birth in the ’50s and ’60s that the French filmmakers were enthralled and respectful of the films that are made in the studio by Alfred Hitchcock. They respected what he was doing, but they were also very excited with how they could change things. The Auteur film is the author. Auteur means author. The camera is the pen, and they can use that fleetingly and quickly.

Let’s take a look at the role critics play in the film industry and how every year they get together to discuss the best films and reward them for their effort.

“Film gets released. Critics write about it. Critics love to champion work that they’re passionate about,” explains Eugene Hernandez. “A group of critics, at the end of the year, meets to say, Ok, what were the films that mattered to us this year?”

Critics watch the most films out of any kind of writer or journalist. They’re like programmers of festivals, the folks that choose the films. Eugene explains that they watch lots and lots of movies. At the end of the year, they sit back and make a list, and they say, well, what was my favorite? What was my favorite film of the year? What was the best performance? What was the best-what had the best costumes or the best editing or the best direction, writing, various categories?

There are several critics groups at the end of the year in December you see a lot of. If you’re aware of it and thinking about it and you do a search on Google at the end of the year and you look for sort of critic’s prizes or best films according to critics or even top 10 lists, you’ll see a lot of that. You’ll see that critics are championing, celebrating, and highlighting the films that they were the most passionate about.

Eugene says that could be a great way to bring more attention to a film as well. A film comes out maybe early in the year or it’s at festivals earlier in the year, and then suddenly at the end of the year, critics are looking at it against all the films they’ve seen, the hundreds of films they’ve watched that whole year. And they’re saying, oh, these are the ones that stick with us, that matter, that is worth giving more attention to.

The awards season -as it’s called for the industry at the end of the year and into the beginning of the new year- is the moment when a lot of these films are celebrated.

“Whether that’s at the Golden Globes in January or at the Oscars later in the winter or early spring, these are the highest-profile awards,” Eugene says. “There are different levels and layers of awards, starting at local film festivals and national, international film festivals, but also continuing to the critic’s groups in the fall and then the higher profile, well-known awards.”

There’s a movement right now in the world with streaming and online audiences, and filmmakers who self-distribute their films. These filmmakers figure out how to get their films booked and get them into theaters and do everything themselves. Taking the self-distribution route is completely possible for you, too. It takes a lot of work, but it’s definitely possible.

According to film industry expert David Ninh, “When I think about the role of distributors that we work for, and specifically our distributor and my role, it’s very curatorial.” Distributors look for unique storytelling. They look for whether or not the filmmaker has an interesting voice or an interesting story that they want to tell the world. They look at the film and if it’s going to be relevant and special down the road in their library. Or if it’s going to become a classic, because distributors sometimes compete for films. David adds, “I think that when there is a good film, there’s a lot of interest. A lot of distributors want it for themselves so that they can put their stamp on it and put it out to the world with the filmmaker.”

Those are very striking instances for the filmmaker to figure out the right home for their film, to get the film out to the world, and to figure out who can be the best partner for them to get it out in the widest way possible. Filmmakers need to outline the goals for their films. Some filmmakers just want a lot of money and to sell the film. Some filmmakers are more concerned with getting it out organically and having the theatrical experience by getting it rolled out in as many theaters as possible. The money is secondary to them because it’s more important to build the profile of their film in their career.

An international film festival: early beginnings
“I was living in New York in the 1950s where there was this guy named Amos Vogel. He showed independent films in downtown New York in alternative spaces to various audiences,” Eugene Hernandez recounts. “Later Richard Roud, a Londoner, came to New York and to the Lincoln Center, where the New York Film Festival (NYFF) is now held.
The Lincoln Center for Performing Arts was founded in the late ’50s, early ’60s as this kind of arts campus for different art forms: ballet, opera, the philharmonic, and various other art forms.
“This is what started the connection between Amos Vogel, a guy presenting films in downtown New York, and Richard Roud, who showed films at London film festivals before moving to New York,” explains Hernandez. (Vogel and Roud co-founded the New York Film Festival.)
The NY film fest-where being different is the norm
The New York Film Festival has shown diverse cinema styles over the years. And it continues its tradition toward distinct filmmaking—high-profile films with well-known actors and directors.
Celebrated films from all parts of the world. Films that haven’t yet played to an audience in New York.
“This is the big thing about the New York Film Festival—each fall it introduces new films to new audiences, particularly to New York audiences,” Hernandez continues.
“Hundreds and hundreds of films are submitted for consideration each year, but few are selected,” Hernandez points out. “It takes place over a few weeks at Lincoln Center, at other parts of the city, and online.”
Short films, experimental films, movies from all over the world come here to New York to be discovered by audiences.
New York Film Festival is for film lovers
There’s a lot more festivals now, but NYFF has become an annual fall gathering place. Audiences get an overview, a cross-section of which films and filmmakers stand out for the fall season.
NYFF is highly regarded because it has a relatively small program, with only 25 to 30 films.
“It’s a place where we get a measure of what’s new, what’s celebrated, and what’s so special about the art form of filmmaking,” ends Hernadez.

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So you’ve made your film. Now, what do you do? Do you have this burning fire to share it with others and an audience? Then your first step is to start thinking about which film festivals you want to send it to.

Hopefully, your film isn’t too long. That’s the first piece of advice Caran Hartsfield would give: “I think there is this misconception that I am more of a filmmaker, the longer my film is. From what I’ve seen, that is the wrong way to think about it. A film festival and being a filmmaker is quite the opposite.” The tighter your film is and the more in control your story, scenes, and directing are, the better it is. If you can do a tight 10 (minutes) as opposed to an okay 20, it’s better to have the tight 10. And depending on your skill level, the shorter, the better. Just show you’re a promising filmmaker, and that’s all you have to do. Caran adds, “I’ve seen careers launched off of five-minute films, so don’t think, the longer, the better.”

It can’t be stressed enough that a lot of film festivals also cut off minimums and maximums. Often, the maximum for many festivals is 20 minutes. It’s really hard to program longer films because then they have fewer films to put in the festival. So even if you’ve made a film under 20 minutes and you think it could be longer — know that you already have your film to share with the festival.

Also keep in mind that film festivals usually have an entrance fee. Be strategic about how and where you spend your money. However, some festivals do waive fees. Send an email, explain your situation, and see if it is possible to waive the fee. If you already have a track record and you’ve established some sort of momentum with your film, this can especially be a door opener for you.

Film festivals are really great practice for you as a filmmaker to talk about your work too. Usually, there’s a Q&A after screenings for filmmakers to talk about what inspired them or their filmmaking process. This is helpful in getting you comfortable to have a dialogue with your audience and thinking about your work. And as you move forward to your next project, you will be much more aware of what you’re interested in thematically and why you’re telling this story. Because you already know that Q&A is coming. You definitely want to be clear on how your story is connected to what you’re thematically interested in.

Caran highly recommends submitting your work to film festivals. She explains, “It’s a great opportunity for an audience to see your work and share in the thing that you were most interested in and passionate about for so long.” So send out those films. Have a strategy. And put on your calendar when the film festival deadline is, and submit on time because those deadlines can come and go quickly.

“Filmmakers can benefit from the experience of submitting a film to a festival, even if they don’t make the cut. I’m talking specifically now about the New York Film Festival. There’s only so many slots. Only 25 to 30 films are chosen for the main section of NYFF,” explains Eugene Hernandez.
“Imagine watching hundreds of films and having to choose only 25 or 30. Well, I can guarantee you, as someone who watches a lot of movies, there’s another 10, 20, 30 films that you really like, but there just isn’t room for them in that festival that year.”
So, you may get a note from a film fest programmer saying, ‘We liked your movie a lot. Unfortunately, there isn’t room for it in our limited program this year. We really hope you’ll stay in touch with us. Maybe there’s room for it in another festival we organize or another way we can show it.’
Feel free to stay in touch with these people, these fests.
Festival programmers and organizers talk to each other, share information. Maybe someone will have three or four film entries, all on the same subject matter. They’ll say, ‘It’s a documentary about a topic we have another film on already, but I’m going to recommend it to my friend at a different festival. I think they might like it.’
Film fest organizers are people, too
People are busy.
A curator won’t give extensive notes to every single filmmaker -for every film they view. But if they care deeply about a film, if they feel a connection to a specific film or subject, they might. It doesn’t hurt to ask, to say, ‘Hey, can you share with me any feedback? What did you like? What didn’t you like? Your notes would be really important to me to help me understand how people are responding to my film.’
“Then as an artist, as a filmmaker, be open to what they have to say. Be open to the fact that just as we individually have our own tastes, what we like, what we don’t like, the programmer you’re sending it to may also.”
“It’s not personal if they don’t like your movie, but their response can be informative. It can help you think about how you can adjust a film or just how you talk about it. Maybe your film is being read differently by audiences than how you intended. You can go back and kind of tweak some of your messaging to account for that response,” ends Hernandez.
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