Producer DeVon Franklin's "Miracles from Heaven" is a new style of faith-based film; Aofie O'Donovan's latest album was inspired by childhood trips to visit her family in Ireland; there's a high failure rate for for film festivals as they struggle to find a place in the crowded marketplace.
Aoife O'Donovan digs into her family's past on 'In the Magic Hour'
Singer-songwriter Aoife O'Donovan was born and raised in Massachusetts, but spent a lot of her childhood visiting her extended family in Ireland. On her second album, "In The Magic Hour," O'Donovan was inspired by those trips and the recent passing of her grandfather.
O'Donovan wrote the album during a break from a tour. "I think when you get older, it's harder to access those moments," she says. "But I think that's what helped me finish the rest of the songs that became the record and helped me sequence the record and helped me come up with the title of the record."
The Frame's James Kim asked Aoife O'Donovan to break down the album and what it was like revisiting her childhood memories.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
When I was a child, there were 27 grandchildren, and I barely had any one-on-one time with anybody. The concept of one-on-one was not really a thing when there are nine sets of uncles and grandparents and kids. It does sound strange to some people that we would all be together every summer, but we really would. We would get several houses on the beach — these sort of beach cabins — all the kids would sleep in one room, in bunk beds. It was wild and so magical.
"MAGPIE"
In the song, "Magpie," to have that line — "To feel you in the passenger seat" — is a much more recent thing. In the last several years, as I've become an adult and spent a lot of time in Ireland playing music and visiting family, it's only been then, in those last years in my grandfather's life, that I had any one-on-one time with him at all. Especially where I would be driving him around, but that did happen.
A couple years before he died, my friend and I were in Ireland with the hopes of making some sort of audio documentary about him. We interviewed him and went on all these drives with him, and he would be sitting in the passenger seat. Of course my granny didn't want him to come with us. She's like, "No, no! Jim, stay home, stay home!"
But we would take him and just ask him these questions, and one moment that really stuck out in my mind was [when] we were driving back from his old home place — the house that he grew up in — and my friend, Stephanie, asked my granddad, "What are your greatest accomplishments in life? What are you most proud of?" And he just said, "My family." I just thought that was so beautiful.
"DONAL ÓG"
"Donal Óg" is a very old song. I first heard my dad singing it, and the words really jumped out at me. I just think they're heartbreaking. It's sort of a love song sung from the perspective of a woman. There aren't too many of those in the folk tradition, so when they pop up, they always sort of grab me.
Initially, I thought that I would start the album with just an A capella version of this song to set the tone, but it ended up taking on a life of its own. We recorded it live in a church in Portland with an organ, and me singing into a microphone into the very back of the room. It created this huge soundscape for what ended up being the centerpiece of the record in a lot of ways.
As the track fades out, you hear my grandfather come in and start singing an old ballad that he sang every chance he got, called "The West's Awake." That was an iPhone recording that my dad took at a cousin's wedding and [in] the last moments of mixing, I had this idea: "What if we could [put] that in?" I emailed it to Tucker Martin, my producer, and he snuck it in there.
I think it's a chilling moment, especially when other moments in the record, I'd make these very explicit references to my granddad. In [the song] "Magic Hour," I even say, "If you listen hard, you might hear my grandaddy singing far away." I wasn't trying to be clever or anything. I'm just really happy it worked out and that we were able to [include] it because I think it's nice that he got his moment.
"In the Magic Hour" is out now. Aoife O'Donovan performs as part of “A Prairie Home Companion” at the Hollywood Bowl on July 1.
So, you want to buy a film festival?
If you're a film fan, especially a fan of festivals, you're in luck: over the next month, eight different festivals will screen movies in Southern California. In North America, there will be more than 7,000 film festivals this year alone. That works out to 20 or so, each and every day.
Clearly, a lot of people and cities want to be in the film festival business. But these new events have an astonishingly high failure rate as they struggle to find a place in the crowded and ever-growing marketplace.
At opening night of the Southern California Film Festival in Huntington Beach last month, Guy Davis — who took over this event just six months ago — isn’t popping any champagne. He’s planning a trip to Costco.
“We’re gonna print out post cards,” Davis says. “Gonna get ‘em out, just gonna pound the pavement. Obviously not the turnout we wanted so we’re gonna change the game plan.”
This is a small festival — one venue, four days — so every screening is important. Sadly, opening night saw a crowd of about 20 paying customers spread out in the 300-seat theater.
These are interesting times in the festival business. The Big Bear Film Festival shut its doors a little over a year ago after 14 years of screenings. And the Arrowhead Film Festival closed two years before that.
A recent survey by the Film Data and Education blog out of London found that 39 percent of all new film festivals only last for one year before they are out of business.
But we’ve still got lots of regional players and fests that focus on themes or niche films in the L.A. area alone. There’s the Latino International, Universe Multicultural, Indian, the Los Angeles Asian Pacific, Los Angeles Women’s International, the L.A. Jewish film festival, the Kona Surf fest, the L.A. Greek, Outfest, New Media, L.A. International Children’s, Scream Fest, Shriek Fest, Irish Screen America, Pan African, the other Venice film festival and ... well, you get the idea.
So what what would make someone jump into this crowded pool? And how do you “buy” a film festival?
Davis, a film school graduate and movie fanatic, had been running a business in Arizona but was looking to get into something new when he saw the “for sale” ad on-line. He did some research, wrote the check and, voila! — it was all his.
“Let’s say it’s the cost of a modest luxury vehicle," Davis says. "We can rationalize it that way: I could have either bought a new car or a film festival.”
Eric Kohn, deputy editor at Indiewire, hits dozens of film festivals every year. He says they get in trouble when they they don’t have a distinct identity.
“There are just too many bad or forgettable film festivals curated to not meet the needs of any particular audience,” Kohn says. “It’s almost too easy to cherry-pick films that seem like they should be in a film festival — because of the stars they attract or the subject matter — without taking into account things like quality.”
One of the best examples of a little festival that grew into something big is Slamdance – founded by a bunch of people who, when they didn’t get into Sundance, just moved down the road and set up their own shop in Park City Utah. Peter Baxter is the co-founder. He says people who get into the festival game thinking it’s all parties and glamor are bound to fail.
According to Baxter: “I think it’s an attractive proposition, even romantic if you like, to start or take over one, because it’s so much fun to see film and share film with people. I think one of the reasons they fail is the hard work it takes to make them successful and get them off the ground — and because there are so many, there is competition. And you have to find a way to separate your festival from another which makes it attractive to your audience.”
Festivals get their money not only from ticket sales, but sponsorships and the fees they charge filmmakers to submit their work. Davis says most of the other festivals he’s checked out are break-even propositions at best, so he had no illusions about how lucrative this can be.
The post cards may have helped: crowds for the SoCal Film Festival were better on the weekend and the fest made a small profit.
But Davis is already looking forward, thinking about a name change, from the SoCal Film Festival to the Huntington Beach Film Festival. Less sexy for submitters perhaps, but better for locals.
“There’s a branding issue," Davis says. "I’ve had so many people come up to me — Huntington Beach residents — and say, I didn’t know there was a Huntington Beach film festival. And that’s a problem.”
And as for anyone who thinks that maybe there’s not enough audience to keep feeding all these events, Davis is more than happy to set them straight:
“If you think movies are an art form — which I do — then in one way if you’re saying we have too many festivals, it’s like saying we have too many art museums. It’s just one more way that movies as an art form are marginalized. So instead of asking if we have too many, maybe we should be asking if we have enough?”
How 'Miracles From Heaven' producer DeVon Franklin merged faith and film to find success in Hollywood
“Miracles from Heaven” is the latest attempt by Hollywood to reach an audience that historically has been either ignored or, in some instances, insulted: moviegoers who are devoutly Christian.
These so-called “faith-based” movies are now coming out a little more regularly. Some of the titles — most notably, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” — have been hugely successful at the box office.
The latest entry in the genre is “Miracles from Heaven.” The movie, based on a real story, stars Jennifer Garner as the mother of a young girl who may be dying from a stomach ailment. But when the girl falls and is knocked unconscious, she has some sort of religious experience.
The movie grossed an estimated $15 million in its opening weekend, a very solid debut for a movie that cost about $13 million to make.
“Miracles from Heaven” was produced by Devon Franklin, a former studio executive at Sony, which financed and distributed the film. Franklin spoke with The Frame's John Horn.
Interview Highlights:
How do your job as a preacher and your job as a Hollywood producer complement one other?
So much of the foundation of our faith is based upon storytelling. You look at how Jesus ministered, so much of his ministry was through parables, which are stories. So that foundation is sometimes overlooked and, for me, it's really about if I'm preaching a sermon or I'm writing a book or I'm making a film, at the end of the day it's like, What's the story you're involving in? How can they see themselves in the story and how is the resolution going to impact them when they leave? They're a lot more intertwined than they may seem on the surface. For me, if was really about not feeling like I had to choose ... The more I began to embrace who I was, I began to find the power in blending it all together.
How did you find your way in this business that's known to be hostile to religion?
It began, first and foremost, about being passionate about being in film. When I was 18 years old I got an internship for Will Smith at his management company. I wanted to make films, I wanted to be a producer, and what I realized in that internship was that in order for me to be successful, I have to serve. It was an unpaid internship at the time, no one was paying me any attention, I'm just the little intern from USC. But what I realized was, if I can create value for the people who I'm working for, then I will have an opportunity to get more in exchange from them. I would make sure I remembered coffee orders, I would go around and ask people what did they have to file. So the more that I practice service, the more opportunity I got. The more opportunity I got, I was able to get further in the business. Once I got to the studio, that same service mentality is what helped me ascend ... The more I did the job, the commitment to service and the quality of the work is what made people open to embracing where that came from, which is my commitment to my faith.
Why is it considered unpopular to be open about faith in Hollywood?
So much of faith in Hollywood is viewed through a political lens. But at the end of the day, faith in and of itself is not political. Because it's viewed politically, it's not popular if you say you have faith because the perception is that means you're evangelical, you're a right-wing person, you're a Republican, and that's not true at all. Part of the challenge and the opportunity for me was doing the work, making sure that I was being a student of entertainment and trying to be of service, and owning who I was. The first movie I worked on for Sony was "Pursuit of Happyness." I created a marketing campaign on how to take that message of inspiration and translate it to a core faith audience that would receive that message. The movie came out and it ended up doing $160 million domestic, almost as much as "Casino Royale" that year, it was almost like the business plan of authenticity and owning who I was was proof. So it was a combination of all those things that laid a foundation for me to feel good about being who I was and not being afraid of that.
You observe the Sabbath, meaning you don't work from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. So what if there's an issue on [a movie] set Friday night? Do you just not show up?
I will not come. Every job that I've taken, Sabbath observance is very important to my faith, so Friday night at sundown to Saturday night sundown I don't work. And every job, before I take it, I let them know about the commitment. If ever there's been a conflict, it's not really a conflict, because I just say I can't do it. Every movie that I've worked on as an executive, the grosses come out Friday night. I turn off my phone. I don't know what happens until I turn my phone back on Saturday after the sun goes down. I don't compromise. If you don't set boundaries about what's important, especially in this industry, you won't have any boundaries ... I tell people, If that means losing the job, then [so be it]. I don't need it that badly.
What are your thoughts on the term "faith-based movies?"?
I'm so glad you're bringing this up. The faith-based idea, or title or whatever you want to call it, it's something I always struggle with. The stories that I'm drawn to are good stories, they do involve faith, but "Star Wars" involved faith. What has happened now is that "faith-based" has been kind of molded into a genre, it's like code for lower-budgeted Christian material that seems to preach to the choir. So I look at faith very broadly, and my desire and passion is to make stories that are universal and accessible that can still be authentic to their roots.