Introduce Yourself : Producer for indies by Benjamin Wiessner

Benjamin Wiessner

Producer for indies

I run a little film company called ornana (as in the mythical fruit hybrid of orange and banana). We premiered our first feature, euphonia https://vimeo.com/64493407 at SxSw this year then put it up on vimeo for free. We just finished our second hand drawn animation, Confusion Through Sand, which will hit festivals starting this winter. Just getting into producing for other people, which has been a whole new adventure. One of my passions is building new infrastructure to make independent film more viable. I'd love to get some conversations started about what we can all be doing for each other to help build a better film culture together. Reach out with ideas!

Merri Christi Pemberton

HI Ben, welcome to Stage 32. I am looking at Euphonia now..I can't wait to see what happens with the sounds the main character is recording. I love his percussion playing using everyday objects. I would love to talk to you about your experience at SXSW. I am making my first feature length film (Tangerine Skies), which will be submitted to film festivals including SXSW from 2014-2015. I will be recruiting the bulk of the film crew and casting very soon, but already in the early production process (filming and music arrangement work I can do solo at this point). I would love to reach out to you to pick your brain about your experience as a filmmaker and also a producer. My site has info about the film www.gcrestproductions.com.

Jenna Goodwin

Sounds great, hopefully talk soon :)

Jenna Goodwin

Are you a money making Producer, or a promoting one?

Benjamin Wiessner

Jenna, the word producer might be one of the most ambiguous and flexible in our language. I takeprojects from the idea stage and help with development from there through release. I've gotten into some self-distribution and dealiung with foreign broadcast rights, et cetera. Every project seems to demand a new role or two to be played--that's one of my favorite things in indie film, is the unexpected demands and challenges.

Jenna Goodwin

Oh i see, ok then. Thank you for clarifying that for me.

Josh Barkey

Hey, Ben. I LOVED "euphonia" when I first saw it online - shared it all over the place. Great work and keep it up. Oh, and check out my new short LOCKER 212, if you're interested: https://vimeo.com/90641585

Josh Barkey

Ha-ha. I just realized that your flick, CONFUSION THROUGH SAND, played the same block as LOCKER 212 at Indie Grits. Loved that one too, by the way :-)

Benjamin Wiessner

Josh, I was just having the same experience with Locker 212--the name sounded so familiar, they I clicked on it and realized. I didn't get down to indie grits this year, unfortunately, but Matt sent us a password right after the festival. Glad to see that Locker 212 is up for everyone now, really powerful film. Shoot me an e-mail at BCWiessner@gmail.com if you want to talk about some on-line promotion ideas to help get it the audience it deserves. We've become pretty efficient human spam bots over at ornana.

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