Archive for the ‘funding’ Category

Dance Film Association is offering its members post-production funding.

Guidelines
1. Deadline: July 1st, 2012
2. Notification: August 1st, 2012
3. Funding Available: Up to $2,500

Requirements
1. Applicant must be a member of Dance Films Association.
2. Only films that have completed shooting and are in production will be considered.
3. You may not apply if you’ve received a Post-Production Grant previously.
4. Applicants will be required to submit a link to a cut of the proposed project that is five minutes or under in length that expresses the project’s intent, scope, and aesthetic to the best of your ability at this stage. This sample may not necessarily be the first five minutes of the film.

Application
Please contact Brighid Greene brighid@dancefilms.org for access to the application.

Funding Panel

Greg Vander Veer was a cameraman for the recent film Sally Gross: The Pleasure of Stillness, about the revolutionary dancer and choreographer. He was also a cameraman on the upcoming film Lucky Dog.   For the Broadway musical,The Color Purple, Greg filmed behind-the-scenes activities for the two-year duration of the show. He is also a video contributor and co-editor of IndexMagazine.com. Greg attended Hendrix College where he received a BA for Interdisciplinary Studies: Historical Film.  He also spent one year at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia where he studied Documentary Film Production. Greg currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.  Check out Greg’s newest project, Keep Dancing.

A filmmaker, choreographer, and performer, Gabri Christa brings her roots from Curaçao, Dutch Caribbean to her directing and film work. Now based in New York, (via Havana, Amsterdam and Puerto Rico) she has received many distinguished awards for her Choreographies and Short Films including a Guggenheim Fellowship for her choreography.  In 2008, Gabri Christa was invited to the Pangea Day Film Festival as “One of the World’s 100 most promising Filmmakers” and her film “High School” received an ABC TV award for Creative excellence. For more info on Gabri Christa click here.

OurGoods.org - a bartering network for creative communities, and recipient of a 2011 NYC CIF award.

This year’s Rockefeller NYC Cultural Innovation Fund recipients have just been announced, and I was very excited by the number of awards going to projects that support New York City dance, media and performance artists. The grants of up to $250,000 are some of the largest that non-profit arts organizations can hope to get, and they go a long ways towards getting more progressive and experimental projects off the ground.

One of the most fantastical projects being funded is for the “Dance Films Association to produce, market and distribute high definition and 3D films of NYC dance companies’ performances in partnership with TenduTV.” For companies barely able to afford multiple camera documentations of their work, let alone in HD, this proposal is akin to Kennedy proclaiming we will walk on the moon. Now with this grant audiences in Peoria could experience a performance of DanceBrazil as if they are actually sitting in the Joyce Theater, or better yet, up on stage with the dancers. Maybe, just maybe, this will be the medium that will help artsy dance enter into the mainstream cultural consciousness.

Misnomer Dance Theater has received their second CIF award this year for an intriguing project that will “utilize behavioral science for a stakeholder-engagement program for NYC’s performing arts organizations in partnership with strategy and marketing firm Orcasci.” Seeming to flow from their previously awarded project, the online “Audience Engagement Platform,” Misnomer continues to explore how artists can market their work more effectively and tap into new audiences. Their approach raises the question, can the performing arts be marketed like big media, with their focus groups and huge research budgets? Can small independent artists mine niche markets and come up with huge followings in unexpected places? Misnomer claims they can, and hopefully with this funding they will prove it is possible.

Other projects funded this year are aimed at increasing cultural and political awareness through the arts such as Casita Maria’s partnership with Dancing in the Streets to illuminate the cultural legacy of the South Bronx, and New York University and The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics’ programs to support and train performance-based political artists. The Field in partnership with OurGoods.org has a particularly subversive project so that artists can get around the capitalist system entirely through an online barter network.

With each of these projects the ramifications for culture and the arts could be huge, or like any grand experiment, it may flop. By the time they get off the ground will they already seem passé? Will the media and technology involved be embraced by consumers or tossed aside as novelties? Time will tell, but at least artists will be able to try these pie in the sky ideas out. Whether or not the masses come flocking to see 3D productions of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in their local iMax theatre, or NYC dance companies find a significant following among NASCAR dads, at least they are in the arena and able to contend, instead of busking for change on the sidewalk outside.

For a complete list of this year’s Rockefeller Cultural Innovation Fund recipients and their projects, go here.

Dance Films Association members may apply for DFA’s annual post-production grants ranging from $250 to $2,500. This program is open to filmmakers, choreographers or dancers.  Awards will be announced in July 2010.

Proposals should include DVD or VHS of work-in-progress, budget, distribution plans, biographies of key members of the creative team, and a one page description of the project including how funds will be used. There is no form to fill, simply supply the above information.

DFA membership information can be found at http://www.dancefilms.org

Thursday, November 5th, 1:00-2:00pm (EST) Webinar fee: $18

Register here: http://pentacle.org/movement_media_artists_services.asp#workshops

Online fundraising doesn’t have to be hard.  Whether you’re raising money from hundreds of supporters or just friends and family, learning how to design and promote your dance or film project online lets you fundraise quickly and effectively.

Dancer and choreographer, Benjamin Ford Asriel (http://www.basriel.com) presents a Webinar designed to help dancers learn how to creatively utilize the Internet to raise money for their dance and dance film projects.

Benjamin’s ‘Project Paper Trail’ is a choreography project and fundraising blog that has currently raised over $9,000 through online donations.  The one hour Webinar will take place in real time, so that you will have ample time to ask questions and get feedback from Benjamin.

click here to register!

Benjamin will discuss his success with his fundraising project, ‘Project Paper Trail’ .  Hear about the different types of donors his project attracted, and how his funding project became so successful.

Learn how artists can build wider, more engaged audiences and new models to generate support.  Open discussion will be part of the Webinar, so you will have time to ask questions or discuss ideas about online fundraising campaigns for your artistic work!

We look forward to seeing you at the Webinar on November 5th.

Benjamin Ford Asriel posts 'Project Paper Trail' online for viewers

So before we get into the pre-production goodness, there is, in the true fashion of all things dance, an update that affects, well, everything. To start, my soloist dancer Julia has a major neck injury/illness, and won’t be able to move for a while (probably somewhere around three weeks).  So that’s something. Additionally (perhaps for the best) a sudden rain/snow leek at the production co’s office directly on top of my work station and computer put us behind a few days (although, wouldn’t you know it, that little G4 took the water like a pro, and is back up and running!).

So there’s that.  However, while i can’t fascinate you with all the exciting post-production details that we’ve yet to discuss at our yet-to-be meeting, i can take this post to tell you about the general structure for this piece, and the side project that’s developed off of it.

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