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Ed Burns Is Forever Indie
Edward Burns and Caitlin Fitzgerald talk Newlyweds (2011).
Edward Burns is no stranger to the world of indie film. He launched his career with the $25,000 The Brothers McMullen at the Sundance Film Festival back in 1995, during the dark, pre-digital days of 16mm cameras and now-foreign concepts like optical houses and film prints.
In 2010, after seven larger-budget features as a writer-director, Burns returned to the low-budget arena with Nice Guy Johnny, which he made for roughly the same budget as The Brothers McMullen. Burns, who also produced and co-starred in the film, bypassed traditional distribution methods by releasing the film himself, first with a short festival tour and then with a simultaneous day-and-date rollout on VOD, DVD and Pay-Per-View.
Now Burns is taking this new model even further with Newlyweds, which he produced for a staggering $9,000 sum. His self-described “pseudo-documentary” relationship comedy premiered at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival and has just been released in various digital formats.
So why would an established moviemaker like Burns embrace methods and equipment more common among self-financed first-timers? MM had the opportunity to ask him about this and other aspects of the changing indie landscape via cell phone as he strolled through Central Park, the ambient noise of New York City serving as an appropriate backdrop for such a candid conversation with one of the city’s most identifiable auteurs.
Paul Osborne (MM): Nice Guy Johnny was already an incredibly inexpensive film to make. How’d you get the cost down by almost two-thirds for Newlyweds?
Edward Burns (EB): This time around, we used a Canon 5D instead of the RED camera; and the lenses we used were Canon lenses, no additional glass. We shot the entire film handheld. The other thing was, on Nice Guy Johnny, we had to pay for some of our locations. On Newlyweds, there were a lot of handshake deals. We would go in and say, ‘Look, here’s the camera. On most days we’re either a two- or three-man crew, and each scene only has two actors in it. We’ll be using primarily available light, there’ll be no generators and we’ll plug into an outlet. So we could get our locations for free.
We saved a couple thousand dollars on transportation, too. There’s the difference between having to put actors up versus shooting right in New York City, with folks just staying in their own apartments. With Nice Guy Johnny, I paid some people a handful of money to lock down their schedule for the week we shot in the Hamptons.
MM: You’ve returned to the micro-budget approach for two movies now, so clearly it’s working for you. What are the advantages to making films this way?
EB: Obviously you have the freedom you don’t have in big-budget filmmaking, because you don’t have the guy who cuts the big check looking over your shoulder. Whether it’s somebody from the studio or just a private financier, no one is asking to know why, in the middle of the day, you’re deciding to scrap a scene or change a location. It allows you to be more nimble, more spontaneous. You free yourself from the traditional production shackles, which you need when you’re spending millions of dollars. When each production day costs you several hundred thousand dollars, you’re very accountable to what you get done. But in our case, we didn’t have to play by those rules.
As an actor, the great freedom comes when you’re shooting with such a small camera. Most days our cameraman was the only crew; there was no sound man, we were just wearing lavalier mics in a live environment, with no lights. You’re not slating anything. I’m not calling action or cut. So performance-wise, after the second or third take, you forgot you were making a film. At no point were there any of the triggers that might indicate to an actor, “Oh, I’m here on a set playing this part.” If you can make the filmmaking apparatus and environment disappear, you get much more realistic performances. And we were able to do that each and every day on Newlyweds.
MM: In terms of cast and crew, how do you convince others who are used to the big-budget way of working to get on board with this sort of approach?
EB: So many people are tired of the bulk of the work they have to do, and that goes for both below-the-line and above-the-line talent. So if you can offer an actor or a crew member a project that they care about, that’s how you get talent to show up and work for peanuts. More and more people are going to see this as a viable alternative to how we’ve been told we’re supposed to make movies.
MM: You took a very different approach to distributing Nice Guy Johnny. Were you happy with the results?
EB: Very happy with the results, yeah. We used a company called FilmBuff as our aggregator. They helped us get the film onto iTunes and to Comcast, Cablevision and Time Warner and do our DVD deal.
MM: For Newlyweds, you’ve signed with Tribeca Films, the distribution arm of the Tribeca Film Festival. How will this release differ from Nice Guy Johnny?
EB: There really is no difference. Our deal with iTunes, VOD and the cable companies is all the same. It’s a better DVD deal. Otherwise, it’s the same terms. The sticking point is that we don’t get any advance; they have the film for three years, but we retain the copyright. That’s the big thing, because at this point I recognize the need to be able to build a library of my own films. Especially as these digital distribution pipelines change, I’m going to be able to monetize my films as the landscape evolves. Facebook and YouTube are only a few years old; who knows how we’re going to be consuming this type of media in three years.
The reason we went with Tribeca is that we wanted to use their brand to help us reach a wider audience. But we didn’t want someone to spend a lot of money marketing the film, because those costs are counted against it, and this is not a million-dollar business. You’re dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars. By being able to partner with Tribeca, we get to use their branding—their big machine—to reach a much wider audience.
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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT 
- Comment by Conrad on 2/22/12 at 10:02 pm
“So if you can offer an actor or a crew member a project that they care about, that’s how you get talent to show up and work for peanuts.”
Are you kidding me? It is that kind of bad advice that makes it harder and harder to make a living. I did not invest thousands into gear to be told to work for “the love of project”. Working for peanuts doesn’t pay my fucking rent.
This story was published in the Winter 2012 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Forever Indie / Ed Burns returns to his low-budget roots with Newlyweds
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