Searching is the latest movie in the up-and-coming genre of
computer-screen cinema. It tells the story of David Kim, played by John Cho, whose
daughter, Margot, disappears out of the blue, after sending three consecutive
phone calls in the middle of the night and having left her laptop at home.
Ultimately, he turns to computers to aid in the search.
Everything you see in Searching takes place on a screen. And
though you can see John Cho for most of its runtime, there is never a
disembodied camera – it’s a FaceTime video feed or something on YouTube.
Before I talk about that, though, I want to talk about another movie: Unfriended, the 2014/15 horror movie that brought this thing into the relative mainstream. A pseudo-sequel that I didn’t watch, Dark Web, was released earlier this year, but the original Unfriended is a thing I have spent a lot of time thinking about, evidenced by the 2700-word review – one of the better ones I’ve written.
Unfriended takes place in real time. It is a screen
recording in the literal sense: you can see the entirety of protagonist Blair’s
laptop screen from start to finish. This is fascinating.
I described it as a film “about a girl who doesn’t know how
to use Cmd+C” (or Ctrl+C, if you’re a Windows user). Anytime Blair needs to
copy text (which is often), she goes through the laborious process of right
clicking, copying, going to the destination, right clicking, and pasting. For a
teenage girl, that’s completely ridiculous, and undoubtedly everyone involved
knew that… but it exemplified the complexity of what the filmmakers were trying
to achieve, as invisible keyboard shortcuts don’t communicate actions to the
audience. It was a question of realism vs clarity, and the creative team went
with the latter.
Searching generally avoids this problem by being something
else entirely. Rather than “just” recording a screen, Searching uses the tools
of cinematic language that have been developed over a century and applies them
to this new type of production. There are pans and zooms and cuts. It has an
original, non-diegetic score. There are changes in “location” as David shifts
between computers, and the switch from macOS to Windows in key moments is a
silent but powerful change.
There is nothing inherently wrong with Unfriended’s approach,
which might be thought of as theatrical in an Off-Off… Off-Broadway sense
versus Searching’s cinematic style. Each has a place. But what Unfriended did
is much more difficult to make interesting for the duration of a feature film.
And with that, let’s talk about Searching!… ‘s marketing.
I hate it when movies advertise their big, twisty narratives whether directly
or by quoting some critic who wants his (probably; let’s be honest about the
gender makeup of that industry) audience to know. The last ad I saw before
going to see the movie was on Facebook. It says only “See the twist. Keep the
secret.”
I don’t like this. If you don’t know that a movie has some
big twist at the end and then it comes, then you will have a natural reaction
and be surprised and hopefully thrilled. But when you go in looking for the
twist, it consumes the movie. Everything becomes in service of this twist that
you know is there and are now looking for. People have a natural tendency to
want to outsmart movies. They want to figure out the twist because it means
they’re better than the movie… or something.
So from the time I saw that ad until the moment I saw it, I
was thinking about the twist. I was thinking about my assumptions about the
twist. Because when I see that there’s something big, I always assume one of
two things:
Someone
doesn’t exist
The
protagonist did it
These are bad twists. They can work (I saw an example of the
former earlier this year that was handled beautifully), but that’s a rarity.
Fortunately, the creative team also knew this, and neither
is the case here – in fact, neither is even flirted with.
But the nature of the film’s climax matters less than
whether or not it is justified, and… there is no narrative payoff in Searching that
does not have some kind of setup, as ham-fisted as it may sometimes be. It’s
not trying to trick you or pull the wool over your eyes. In fact, by its very
nature, you forcibly have the exact same amount of information at all times as
David.
Which is the most interesting thing about the movie. Because every interaction David has, between his iPhone and his MacBook, is easily accessible in one place that an audience can use to follow along with the story. It doesn’t matter that the actual desktop was put together over many many many months in post-production – so cool, by the way, because that is what a desktop would look like were such a thing to actually be occurring.
And if someone had remote access to that computer, they would have access everything. The implications of these movies, then, is somewhat terrifying. They only work because it’s completely plausible to get the entirety of a story from text messages, facetime calls, etc. and not feel like you had information hidden from you. You can only feel like you’re as in-the-know as the protagonist if the protagonist puts his every thought onto a screen.
Bojack Horseman is by far my favorite show on Netflix and by extension probably my favorite show on television. The animated story of a washed-up celebrity voiced by Will Arnett in horseface started off dark and has only gotten moreso as the seasons have gone on. I loved the show all the way back in Season One, more than most. Season two really changed things, though, particularly with its episode “Hank After Dark,” centered on a Cosby-like character in an alternate reality where a woman tries to bring him down instead of a man. And, well, she fails where Hannibal Burress in the real world succeeded. That marked a turning point for the show’s cultural relevance – the moment where the show went from a darn great show to a vital one.
I watched the entirety of Bojack Horseman Season 5 in less
than seven hours. Skipping the opening and closing credits – which Netflix
makes very easy to do – puts the runtime at about five. In those extra hours, I
was, well, this, mostly; recording Monday’s episode about Islands of Adventure.
Also, eating dinner. I did watch while I was cooking, though.
An oft-documented problem with the
dropping-every-episode-at-once paradigm is that in the full year or so that
comes between seasons (or more, as in the case of Stranger Things), it’s easy
to forget what’s going on. When shows air over months, the first episode of a
new season is comparatively pretty soon after the finale of its previous one.
Unless it’s, like, Game of Thrones. Because it’s been a year since I last watched
Bojack Horseman, something that will now probably become an actual reference
point for the passage of time in my life, I had honestly forgotten the
narrative threads left off at the end of Season 4. Instead, I remember its most
effective and powerful moments, or even entire episodes that are dedicated more
to character than to plot. Episodes like Stupid Piece of Sh*t and Time’s Arrow are
genuinely incredible and have left indelible marks. But I couldn’t tell you
what happened in the last few minutes of the season, so it took me half an episode
to actually get my bearings.
The show continues to focus on four-plus-one characters. There’s
Bojack, washed up sad horse trying to make a comeback; Princess Carolyn, Bojack’s
ex-girlfriend and still agent and now producer of this season’s show within a
show; Todd, asexual comic relief formerly crashing long term on Bojack’s couch
and now doing so on Princess Carolyn’s; and Diane, Bojack’s closest friend and biographer
turned blogger.
Diane’s now ex-husband and all-around good dog Mr.
Peanutbutter weaves his way in and out of everyone else’s storylines and gets
some of his own screentime this season, but even that is ultimately in service
of developments relating to those other characters, mostly his ex-wife.
In that way, Bojack Horseman season 5 isn’t necessarily
welcoming to newcomers. As before, the timelines are fluid, with flashbacks
fleshing out backstories that only returning viewers will see and be like,
“Ohhh! So that’s how that happened.”
But most of those moments are over as soon as they begin. No
one would accuse Bojack Horseman of meandering along the way so many Netflix
shows do. It’s thing after thing after thing. The exception may be the
incredible sixth episode, which I think is formally one of the most daring the
show has done yet for its commitment to minimalism as little more (and yet so
much more) than a 20 minute monologue, but even that covers a whole lot of
character ground and features probably the best performance Will Arnett has
ever done. If ever a man deserved a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding
Character Voice-Over Performance, it would be for this.
But even in that, the show retains its constant stream of jokes
and/or other emotions. There is so much going on in Bojack Horseman at any
given moment, with half a dozen visual gags in the background of every
establishing shot, and dialogue that you barely register before it’s onto the
next thing. It lends itself well to the things that Netflix is good for:
binging and rewatching.
By binging the show, you commit yourself to its descent into
madness. Each episode goes deeper into the psyches of its broken characters
while simultaneously serving as a scathing indictment of society in general and
the entertainment industry in particular. It’s often uncomfortable, frequently
hard to watch, and always impossible to look away from.
This time around, Bojack Horseman takes on, among so many
other terrible things, sexual harassment and the widespread forgiveness of
abusers. And… it’s rough. The main harassment plot line is fairly light at face
value but has depressing implications.
Henry Fondle, a sex robot built by Todd as a would-be gift that
says, well, wildly inappropriate sex… things, says those things to people until
it makes him literally the head of the company producing Philbert, the
aforementioned show-within-a-show that everyone else is tangled up in. In a
way, it’s reminiscent of the bizarre Vincent Adultman arc from the first
season, where what was very children on top of each other’s shoulders
nonetheless had a relationship(?) with Princess Carolyn, because no one could
see the obvious except for Bojack.
But while the idea of a robot sex-talking its way to the top
of the food chain is ridiculous, remove the robot from the equation, then take
the overtly sexual language and mask it just a little bit, and suddenly you’re
faced with something that feels very real. That people accept it as part of the
company culture because they think that that’s just how business is done. It’s
by sheer force of talent that, even once you realize that deep down none of
this is funny, you can’t stop laughing.
The prevalence of forgiveness is much more straight faced, resulting
in a much more complicated series of emotions. The existence of an award
ceremony called the Forgivies that a Mel Gibson-a-like wins is something that people
can laugh at and feel superior about because it’s so obviously terrible, at
least as long as they didn’t see Hacksaw Ridge. Which I did not.
(You’re so brave!)
But the whole show is built around a character who does not
deserve forgiveness – oh and does he not deserve forgiveness – but it’s so easy
to put that out of your mind when he isn’t actively being a monster. You feel
for him. You maybe even want to forgive him.
I mean, he’s trying to change! Slowly. Inconsistently. Maybe
circumstances won’t let him, but how much does that matter? Maybe it’s
circumstances that won’t let him, though… does that even matter? “I would like
to be judged solely by my intentions this time,” he says early in the season.
But the road to hell, right?
Bojack Horseman never lets its title character off the hook,
per se, but the show is now grappling with its potential to normalize the
behavior that it has made so much effort to not glamorize. And in dialogue,
largely given to Diane and co-star of Philbert, Gina, Bojack Horseman talks to itself
just as much as its protagonist about that very fact. The conflict there is
obvious. The audience, too, is implicated in all of this. But what can you even
do?
Whether you see that implication as an accusation or a good
faith attempt to open a dialogue says little about the show and a whole lot
about you.
I spent last weekend and the start of the week visiting my friend Christine in Oviedo Florida, a town that is named after Oviedo but lost the Spanish inflection somewhere along the way to become “Oveedo.” Oviedo is not all that interesting, but it provides proximity to Orlando, home of Walt Disney. Orlando as a city is also not super interesting for anything but its glut of theme parks, but that one aspect of it is very interesting indeed.
The five big ones: Disney World, Animal Kingdom, Epcot, Islands of Adventure, and Universal Studios, all cater to slightly different groups, but my favorite has always been Islands of Adventure. I’m a fan of rides over non-specific “attractions,” and I’ve considered that one the best of the bunch as far as that goes.
It has been about thirteen years since I was last in Orlando, and the park has changed in some parts and remained identical in others. There are fewer roller coasters now, largely a result of the removal of the Dueling Dragons, which I missed this time around. In their place was a whole lot of construction, and the giant crane visible over Olivander’s Wand Shop definitely diminished some of the Magic of Diagon Alley.
Other than those, the rides I remembered were there, plus a
few more, thanks to the addition of Harry Potter World and a ride themed after
Kong: Skull Island.
The deemphasis of roller coasters (Harry Potter has only an
entry-level coaster) has been met by a bigger push towards more high tech rides
with greater property integration. I find myself somewhat conflicted about
this.
On the one hand, the experiences offered by trusty old
Spider-Man (asterisk for reasons we will talk about in a bit) and the newer
ones like Harry Potter’s Forbidden Journey and Skull Island: Reign of Kong create
some genuinely thrilling and unique experiences unlike any you can experience
at other parks.
On the other hand, I really like roller coasters.
And sure, I could go anywhere to get on roller coasters;
there are a bunch of cheaper coaster-heavy options in Orlando even, though why
anyone would travel to the home of Disney and go to a non-Disney themed park is
beyond me. But also, The Incredible Hulk is my favorite ride at the park and
easily one of my favorite coasters period. I greatly enjoyed Dueling Dragons as
well back in the day. I want some loops, you know? And there’s only one place
in the whole park to get them. That’s a bit of a shame.
Christine had never been to an amusement park before. That
made the visit particularly special. And our first ride, her first ever
amusement park ride, was Spider-Man.
In Spider-Man, you put on a pair of 3D glasses and get sent
out into Manhattan (not where I was looking to be on my vacation away from… Manhattan)
in a car with a bunch of other folks. You see Spider-Man. You see villains. You
see actual flames and water and you get lifted into the air and dropped and
it’s all very exciting. But… it broke. In the climax, the projection gave out.
First, the audio lost sync, then the video looped, and then it went black. And
in that moment, the illusion was lost. A moment I remembered, one of the most
intense of the entire ride, as you feel like you’re falling, is nothing.
It was actually kind of fascinating in the sense that it
makes you realize just how much work your brain is doing to make the whole
thing work. The vehicle barely needs to move for you to feel intense movement. But…
you want to feel it from start to finish. It made me wonder if we were a
one-off or if something was generally wrong with the ride and no one bothered
to inform the operators. I considered it but didn’t; maybe no one else did
either.
This wasn’t an isolated incident either. Two rides,
Spider-Man and Jurassic Park, and one queue, the one for The Incredible Hulk, had
moments when the theme park broke through the façade.
Despite the glitch, I enjoyed the ride. Christine did too.
One down. It’s a start!
The last time I went to a Disney theme park, my family
picked up the tab. This time, the $115 ticket – more, I imagine, than it was in
2005 – ripped a hole right in my wallet. But, ya know what, vacation, am I
right? If I can’t make not-always-financially-sound decisions while I’m
traveling, why even bother having money in the first place?
Before going on another ride, we experienced the Eighth
Voyage of Sinbad, a live show with some not-necessarily-great fighting but
pretty great other stunts. That was fun. As with Spider-Man, there was actual
fire, and it was something that I could feel. But unlike Spider-Man, where it
was probably fifteen to twenty feet away, here it was probably sixty or more;
and I still felt it. I can’t even imagine how hot it is for the people onstage
within spitting distance of the flames.
Christine bought butterbeer in the Wizarding World, which
seemed like something that just had to happen. It tastes like cream soda with
butterscotch topping. I had about five sips of it. I liked it well enough but
could tell it would send me into a sugar coma if I had any more.
The Hippogryph coaster was fine. Christine screamed a lot.
It seemed like a good introduction.
Harry Potter’s Forbidden Journey was perhaps the most
interesting ride of the whole visit, owing largely to Christine’s intensely
adverse reaction.
Forbidden Journey felt like the modern version of what
Spider Man was trying to do. It didn’t use 3D glasses, and it didn’t need 3D glasses. The ride is long and
the projections immersive as heck. It relies even more on those than
Spider-Man. It has actual props and sets that you flip and turn your way
through, but there’s no, for example, real fire. The effects themselves are are
digital.
About those flips, though: Because it is a hanging ride with
the track above rather than below, and there is only one row of seats to manipulate,
a lot more can be done to these seats, including two instances of near upside-downness.
I did fine with all this. Christine did not.
I left the ride thinking that it felt like the logical
evolution of Spider-Man. The lack of glasses, the more intricate projections –
it all felt very modern where Spider-Man felt retro. This even extends to the
set. One of the most fun things about these attractions is the work that goes
into the pre-ride. Long corridors with lovingly crafted sets to get you in the
mood. Videos and props crafted just for the ride. If your ride wait is less
than 40 minutes, you’re going to spend that whole time in this environment, and
it adds greatly to the experience.
We went on a Monday after school was already in session.
Much like my trip to Nuevo Vallarta, this off-season visit resulted in waits
that were manageable *at worst*. These lines are built to accommodate such
large groups that, so when the expected wait is 20 minutes, you can spend
literally five just getting to an actual person to stand behind. This was
truest with Harry Potter, but there were long walks to at least three separate
rides. Still, we never waited more than half an hour. And while we watched the people
with their express passes skip ahead, I never felt the urge to drop the extra
$65.
So, not completely financially unsound.
Going on Kong’s ride made me realize that I was wrong in my
original assumption about Harry Potter, however. The newest ride is even more
projection-heavy yet requires 3D glasses. It has to do with your experience of
it. As with Spider-Man, Kong puts you in a car with a number of others. You all
experience it together vs the feeling of isolation you have with Harry Potter.
And you’re able to look around at projections that come at you from both sides.
In this environment, the glasses are a necessity.
Kong’s line has the most impressive animatronic I’ve ever
seen, of an elder woman making what are probably religious proclamations about
Kong. After the fun but silly ones on the Jurassic Park ride, where you can
literally hear the movements, the jump in tech was again on display.
Jurassic Park didn’t glitch, but the in-ride intense voice-overs were mitigated somewhat by the actual voice coming over the intercom on four separate occasions “Row Three Take Off Your Hat,” chastising someone who wasn’t even on my ride. He was in the one behind, and clearly he didn’t care at all, because we kept hearing the messages.
The Incredible Hulk went down while I was in line, which resulted in some weird dissonance while an in-park voice-over while one voice over the intercom said “We are experiencing a brief delay and will update you when anything changes” and “Status Update: Gamma Radiation at full,” which sound like they could be related but aren’t. But I kept thinking that maybe they would be and waited for far too long… which was frustrating, particularly since they made me put away my cell phone, camera, etc. in a locker, resulting in me being alone and bored.
Eventually, though, I got on, and gosh darn was it good. Such a fun coaster. Gave me a bit of a headache as it knocked me around, but totally worth it.
We went on one other ride and walked through one other
attraction: the Ripsaw Falls log flume and Fury of Poseidon, uh, walking tour.
Ripsaw Falls is a classic, and it’s a ride that people will literally stop to watch others experience. Jurassic Park has that too, though seen from a different angle.
More importantly, Ripsaw Falls makes you the rider, much wetter.
It costs $4 to rent a locker by the ride. It was the only
money I spent once we got into the park itself. It was also a great purchase.
Some rides – Harry Potter, Incredible Hulk – will give you free locker access
because it would be dangerous to have loose stuff hanging around during them. The
water rides don’t have that, but, like, if you’re walking around with a camera
because you’re vlogging in a theme park, rent a locker. Your stuff is going to
get soaked and probably not work anymore and then not be under warranty because
of severe water damage, and then people will laugh at you.
And deservedly so.
Lastly, Poseiden’s Fury. This was the one older attraction
that I hadn’t done before, and I’m both sad and glad about that. Sad because it
was super cool and I wish I hadn’t missed it the last times around and glad
because it was super cool and I got to experience it for the first time. In its
climax, the whole space opens up in a way that is genuinely awe-inspiring, and
though the projectors appear to be in dire need of bulb replacement, resulting
in some muddled visuals, it was nonetheless a pretty incredible show.
And that was the experience in a nutshell. Sure, it would
have been nice for things to have worked properly and that guy in the Jurassic
boat behind me to not have been wearing a hat while a disembodied voice berated
him, but though they impacted the immersion in those moments, they did little
to diminish the overall experience.
In fact, there was something kind of amusing about seeing
behind Disney’s curtain. They work so hard to keep you from seeing the seams, and
to see them fail feels like a special thing.
You may be wondering why I want to compare Moon Pies and Choco Pies. It’s a fair question, but it’s got a simple answer: Moon Pie’s official twitter account. Twitter is generally a nonsense cesspool, but one beacon of light is the full commitment to post-irony that you’ll find in such gems as:
Describe how a brand uses questions as bait to get quote tweets and attention in 5 words
And those are all since the beginning of August. If you dig back further, it’s all amazing.
A lot of brands do this kind of thing (Old Spice comes to mind as one that has been in the game longer than anyone), but I don’t think even they compare to Moon Pie for sheer commitment. I mean, look at this one:
“A lot of people ask me “Hey, are Moon Pies any good” and I would say I’d probably eat them even if I didn’t work here that’s a pretty big endorsement”
Can you imagine another official brand account saying “probably” like that? Of course not. That’s ridiculous.
And it worked. Ever since I learned about the account late last year thanks to an AV Club article, I’ve been craving a Moon Pie. And only in the past few days have I finally gotten to have one.
That’s not for lack of trying – though I’ll admit I didn’t try very hard – but there just aren’t Moon Pies in New York City. I checked out at least a half dozen stores that the Moon Pie website says would typically stock them in a different place where I don’t live, including one that says it should stock them in the place where I do live but to no avail.
But the desire went at least somewhat deeper than just wanting a Moon Pie because their socials were tops; I actually just wanted the snack. I like smores. I wanted to try what are effectively bagged smores. Is that an enticing way to phrase it? Doesn’t matter.
One day, though, I was in an M2M, which is a Korean-plus grocery store that has sadly lost most of its locations over the past couple of years. I was buying pocky or something and noticed they had an individually wrapped thing called a Choco Pie. It looked kind of like what I thought a Moon Pie was supposed to look like. It was 50 cents.
I went to the internet and looked up the difference been a Moon Pie and a Choco Pie. Unfortunately, no one had made a clear, straight-to-the-point YouTube video that I could quickly watch and get the necessary facts from while I awkwardly stood in the aisle – an issue that I have just fixed by releasing this video (you’re welcome, internet).
I bought it. It was delicious. This was at least six months ago. It satiated the specific snack sensation I was so inspired to find, but Choco Pie doesn’t have hilarious marketing, so I still wanted the actual thing.
Well, having spent the weekend in a small city upstate. I finally got myself an actual Moon Pie.
Moon Pies are pretty big, though. I was actually a little surprised at their size, since I have been used to the smaller Choco variant. Let’s unwrap these bad boys and see this a little bit better.
I should have suspected, since Moon Pies have a full hundred calories on Choco Pies (220 vs 120), but this is a lot smore snack. Almost too much, I think. And the Choco Pie? Bite-sized by comparison. I don’t feel compelled to eat another Moon Pie, but I’d be digging the concept of another Choco Pie if I hadn’t just eaten both.
When I was researching the difference all that time ago, I learned that the real measure of this sorta snack is to briefly microwave it and have it warm. Only then will I really know what’s what.
For science.
…
Law of diminishing returns, am I right?
The Moon Pie is an institution, having been around for literally more than 100 years. The Choco Pie and every other thing like it – there are many – inevitably is naught but an imitation of the thing that the Moon Pie website says was conceived of in a coal mine back in the terrible teens. This Choco Pie comes from Lotte, a Korean mega corporation that has also an film production/distribution subsidiary that released great films like Eungyo, Very Ordinary Couple, and The Terror, Live. They have their hands in a lot of, uh, insert pun here, but for real though.
A box of 12 Choco Pies costs $4. A dozen Moon Pies costs $6. But, that comparison isn’t really fair. A Moon Pie, as we have established, is a little bit too big, but you’re getting more unhealthy snack food for the money. A more direct comparison would be the Moon Pie Mini, which I do not have but is closer in size to the Choco Pie (which lacks a “Maxi” equivalent), and that cost $4 a dozen as well. At that point, it’s not a matter of cost but of taste and convenience.
The latter we addressed – it’s difficult to get my hands on a Moon Pie by any means other than an online shipment, and these types of snacks are exclusively impulse buys for me. Placing an order with the knowledge that I’ll be having a dozen of these things hanging around in my kitchen is a surefire path to intense regret similar to the one I’m feeling right now. So I can’t get the things in the first place, but even if I could, would I? Is the original actually better than its imitation?
Yes, it is. I don’t know if all those extra toxic-sounding chemicals that make up the Choco Pie are resulting in a taste that isn’t quite-but-almost-the-same but still just isn’t quite as good. I mean, it’s less good for you probably, but neither of these things could by any measure be considered healthy, so do the degrees even matter? You shouldn’t eat either, really, so if you’re going to go against what I assume is a doctor’s advice, go with the tastier option.
Four years ago now, my friend Gerard and I ran a small but ultimately successful Kickstarter for a martial arts short film called Reel. Though we filmed the bulk of it in late 2014, it wasn’t finished until… a month ago. There are a lot of reasons for this that don’t matter here, but the point is that it weighed on my mind for literally the entirety of the intervening time and if I hadn’t finally finished it, I probably never could have gotten this whole YouTube thing off the ground.
But I digress. The movie is actually pretty good, something that I think shocked just about everyone involved. If it gets into a festival, I’m going to review it here. It would be a largely positive review.
Because of that, we decided that it may actually be worth sending out to film festivals. In my years as a film critic, I went to a lot of festivals and saw some of my favorite movies ever and also my most hated. There are certain projects that just, like, why? So bad. Sometimes the New York Times loves a film that you absolutely hate and you just can’t even.
And when you see those movies, you can be fairly sure that your movie is good enough to show somewhere, but obviously it’s more complicated than that.
It’s complicated because the job of a festival programmer is complicated. The selection of a film isn’t based just on its merits – it must function as part of a cohesive whole that is the festival’s ideal. And this is even more true when it comes to shorts, since they have to work as part of programs or a lead-in to a feature.
Which leads to a lot of tough decisions.
Your film might be the perfect length for its story but too long for the shorts block. You might execute your thematic intent perfectly but no one else submitted anything to complement it.
I know that Reel is at least as good as some of the films that will play at the New York Film Festival, but I also know that the festival doesn’t show movies like it and therefore couldn’t accept it if they wanted to. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s important to know what you’re submitting to and why you’re submitting there specifically. If you don’t, well, that submission fee ain’t coming back.
On the other hand, there’s something kind of nice about the shorts-specific complexities, because you can tell yourself that a rejection was not an indictment of your work but of everyone else’s – and there’s a non-zero chance you’ll be right.
In 2018, it’s easy (if not exactly cheap) to submit your movie to dozens or hundreds of festivals with a few button presses. Sure, some festivals, like Cannes or Telluride, have dedicated platforms, but the bulk of festivals of all shapes and sizes are accessible via one or both of two platforms: Withoutabox and/or FilmFreeway.
Each service does the exact same thing – connects your film with festivals, but the experience of using each is different in key ways. FilmFreeway offers much more robust tools for filtering through the enormous list of participating festivals – all right from the home page. Aside from sliders and radio buttons on the left sidebar allowing you to select for customizable entry fee ranges or event types or film categories and there’s a wider variety of sorting tools, including popularity and user ratings.
For those numbed by the sheer volume of options, there are a handful of curated lists, including 33 of the “50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee” from Moviemaker’s list – one that I’ve used in the past as a way to narrow down my submission decisions.
Withoutabox, too, has filtering tools – if you dig into the “Festival Search” page – though they’re not as wide-ranging as FilmFreeway’s. It also has some easily accessible lists, including “Hot List” – for highly popular options – and “Deal Time” – for those with lower-priced entry, but it lacks the ability to sort by that popularity and has no user reviews; both have quick links to their Oscar-qualifying festivals.
But what Withoutabox has that FilmFreeway does not is a parent company with a household name: Amazon. Withoutabox, then, shares an owner with IMDb, meaning there are some integrations between those services that doesn’t exist elsewhere. The project page you create for your film can automatically become an IMDb page. Considering how user-unfriendly the IMDb interface is, it’s a major step up. Additionally, there is a button right up there in the corner of Withoutabox telling you that you can have your film put on Amazon’s Prime Video Direct if you want to self-distribute your work.
These are nice.
Since the last time I used it, FilmFreeway has introduced a profile system that they bill as “Like IMDbPro, except it’s free,” but let’s be real: No. FilmFreeway’s profile system is an IMDb competitor in the same way that YikYak was a Twitter Competitor.
RIP YikYak.
Withoutabox is the OG here, and with that status has come complacency. And fair enough: you don’t need the most efficient browsing system when you offer exclusive access to Sundance, Slamdance, Tribeca, Fantasia, etc.
To take on Withoutabox, then, FilmFreeway would need the sleeker interface and more modern feel. And it has that. Every aspect of the service feels more thoughtfully designed. Certainly, they’ve got a complex going on, considering their dedicated page of tweets from people favorably FilmFreeway against its competition.
Maybe if I tweet out this review, I will get added to their page. Probably not. It’s a bit much.
You can decide which subject is the “it” in that scenario, and you’ll probably be right.
But the flip side of Withoutabox’s hold on the big names is that its selection of smaller festivals is less impressive.
For example, my last short played at the Women Texas Film Festival in 2016 – shot after Reel, but finished much earlier. Maybe I’m a little biased, but it’s a great festival, and it’s only on FilmFreeway.
I asked Justina Walford, the festival’s creative director and most impressive person I have ever met, why that is, and she told me it was a combination of complexity, cost, and ultimately just need: enough people use FilmFreeway to fill their slate with quality productions, so why even bother with its competitor?
But this means that a filmmaker will inevitably have to use both: Withoutabox for the big names… and FilmFreeway for everything else. Because for the festivals that use both – Austin, Fantastic Fest (also in Austin), Female Eye, etc. – there is no reason whatsoever to go with the dinosaur.
But regardless of the platform, it’s unequivocally the case that getting your work in front of programmers is more-or-less infinitely easier than it once was. With a single video file (maybe even a Vimeo link), you can get your work seen by programmers all over the world. And though both FilmFreeway and Withoutabox seem to take issue with the fact that Reel has two directors, they take a lot of the frustration out of information gathering. You know you have the stuff that you need, because there are boxes that you’ve gotta fill or else you can’t submit. It’s easy. It’s nice.
And then, of course, you can obsessively check the status of all of your various submissions from the comfort of a single dashboard (or… two).
These platforms take the stress out of submission itself, FilmFreeway more than its competitor, which frees up time that you can use to… stress out about where those submissions are at.