Michael Conti Productions

Category: Documentary

  • Monetizing Your Film Through Theatrical Distribution

    Monetizing Your Film Through Theatrical Distribution

    My talk on “Monetizing Your Film Through Theatrical Distribution” at AVX 2019, October 16 at the largest annual gathering of film, video, broadcast, digital media and audio visual professionals in the Rocky Mountain Region was well-attended.

    Michael Conti will share details from his filmmaking experience of getting 50 theatrical screenings nationwide in one year without using a traditional distributor. Learn how to find your audience, determine the best venues, do social media marketing that is more organic than paid, and monetize your efforts through third party ticketing and split box office revenues. Find the ideal partners to help with promotion, and see your dream on the silver screen, too!

    Rocky Mountain Audio Video Expo 2019

    The Rocky Mountain Audio Video Expo @AVXpo is the premier annual trade show where manufacturers meet directly with the decision makers in IT, film, AV, video, broadcast, sound, animation, computer imaging and editing through workshops, speakers and exhibitor booths. AVX attendees get one-on-one access to some of the industry’s leading experts. The 2019 AVX is October 16-17 at the Crowne Plaza DIA in Denver, Colorado. Learn more: http://www.avxpo.biz/

    Hanging out with Alan O’Hashi (Boulder Community Media), Heather Boyle (Producer of The Unruly Mystic: John Muir) and Michael Conti, Owner of Michael Conti Productions LLC.

    You can learn more about the presentation at: https://crazywisdomfilms.com/self-distribution-gamechanger/

  • Empowers movement of Social Emotional Learning

    Empowers movement of Social Emotional Learning


    “I really enjoyed working with you on this video. You did a remarkable job of capturing, selecting and most of all understanding the heart of this story. I was very impressed. And now people know a little more about all the good that is going on in Atlanta–it gives us all hope.”


    – Gary Dixon, President of Random Acts of Kindness Foundation and Foundation for a Better Life.

    Video empowers audience with social emotional learning stories

    This video captures a movement occurring across America’s educational landscape. It almost didn’t happen in a timely manner.   Michael Conti Video Productions became contacted by Random Acts of Kindness Foundation.  The end-result of the 5 minute video came from 10 hours of video captured of both students, administrators, teachers and parents from the Atlanta Public Schools.  We visited over two shoots into inner city schools there.  Those videos were then transcribed professionally to help with narrowing the video editing process by the Boulder Video Editor, Michael Conti.

    The stories in the video were authentically captured in classrooms or wherever there was room for the 2-person crew to set up.  We had natural lighting and practical florescent lighting along with a well-placed mic for the majority of the interviews caught with Canon XF100.  B-roll was captured with a Canon 6D.

    Besides color correction and audio sweetening by our support contractors, the magic happened again when we went into Coupe Studios, a local Boulder award-winning recording studio, to do the final mix after receiving an original score by Los Angeles based composer Chris Piorkowski.

    Conclusion

    The end result is a video that moves people.  Let’s us know otherwise.

    Since the Atlanta Public Schools hadn’t yet complied all the data on the metrics of the one year test implementation of SEL into some of their schools.  What we captured on the video became the anecdotal research results.  They were impressed with what they heard and saw!

  • Filmmakers who aren’t afraid to break new ground

    Filmmakers who aren’t afraid to break new ground

    While our inspirational documentary film, The Unruly Mystic: John Muir, indie budget pales in comparison to a Hollywood film, Boulder Colorado based Michael Conti Productions decision to use an integrated Adobe workflow with Adobe Premiere Pro at the hub, was a given for this tech-savvy and budget conscious producer, director and editor, Michael M. Conti.

    Adobe Premiere Pro was used to edit 21 films that will appear at the Sundance Film Festival this year, up from only 9 in 2014. After pairing up with Adobe After Effects CC, Premiere’s capabilities and ease of use noticeably improved, attracting more and more devoted users.

    Case in point:

    Gone Girl is the first Hollywood feature-length film cut entirely in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

    This final tidbit of news was a welcome surprise to the independent film community.

    Much of the visual effects work was done in-house, which allowed the team to work iteratively, in parallel with the editing. For example, Michael Conti could edit in Adobe Premiere Pro while others worked on shots in After Effects. The saved compositions would automatically update in Conti’s timeline thanks to Adobe Dynamic Link. This integrated and interactive workflow kept shots looking cleaner and eliminated distracting back-and-forth discussions so the entire team could focus on the story as it took shape in the edit bay. This streamlined workflow was one of the main advantages for “The Unruly Mystic.”

    The process of editing this 105 minute movie with Premiere Pro from the ingest of assets (originally shot on two CANON XF100s), to individual scene editing (taking advantage of sub-clip and bin folders), to combining the multiple scenes in a single timeline (flatten) will be a subject of another post.

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