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Entertainment
created by and for the no-budget filmmaking
community. We all work way too hard making movies not enough people watch.
FASTFORWARD is a chance for us to talk to other people just as messed-up as we are, relax and laugh about it. Send
submissions/comments/complaints to 
FFRevolution (or Fastforward) is a community for filmmakers, and a light-hearted digital magazine celebrating the best from the underground filmmaking movement.
We don't take ourselves too seriously here. Most of the movies featured here are comedy films, and that's no accident ... amateur comedy films just tend to be a little faster, a little more entertaining. We want to convey through comedy the real love we have for amateur filmmaking, and the joy it can bring. We shoot with no money in our pockets. And we're learning and working to make our films better and better. And it's exhausting, and at the end of the day, we need to relax and know that there are other people out there doing the same crazy thing we are.
This community is here to encourage creativity, and you can post or send me literally whatever the hell you want, anything in any format. We're a modern art museum. If it's a creative piece, and it makes me laugh or I just plain like it, it goes up on the site enshrined for all to see. We want to surprise you, and I like to be surprised myself.
We also love to hear when a filmmaker has a new project out, and you can shamelessly advertise your newest and best work in the forum.
Founding members in 2003: Jonason Ho, Mike Stoklasa, J. Brugmann,
Warren Blyth, Garrett Gilchrist, Jason Gutierrez
This site was founded in 2001, then again in 2002, by Garrett Gilchrist, with Mike Stoklasa, Warren Blyth, Jonason Ho, Jay Bauman, Alan Winston, J. Brugmann and others. It was a reaction against other filmmaker forums on the web, which didn't have enough of a sense of humor, and less quality control over what sort of films they showed.
The site's peak was in 2003 or 4, and the forum has been quieter since then, with Garrett Gilchrist making most of the posts. But our proudest moments have come since then actually, with huge activity as we restored a lost animated classic, The Thief and the Cobbler, attended film festivals and events, and continued the struggle to "make it" in this strange world of film. The site is as alive as ever, and we welcome new members. And we're all still in contact - the crew from the old days.
This site was always up to the minute with news on low budget films, and because of that I've retired a lot of the old content (for being out of date). What's remained is the good stuff, the stuff that still seems relevant, and funny, and telling in some ways about the art and madness of low budget film. There's a lot of great stuff here, and more being added all the time.
I spent a long time at other filmmaking sites on the web, and the main thing that bothered me was that they had no sense of humor. They were about as much fun as a marble sculpture. And that restricts creativity. For me the viewing of a good film is a joyous act. I laugh out loud when something amazes me. And talking to other filmmakers for me is spending time with some really clever, funny, rowdy friends. Films were made to be seen by an audience of real people who haven't seen the film before. And aren't being forced to like them. Filmmakers work harder when they have someone besides themselves to entertain. If an artist can't laugh at himself and his own work, then he can't grow as an artist ... and a filmmaker website would be a lot more fun if it could let its hair down and, well, party.
About a dozen of us were complaining about how deathly dull all the filmmaker sites we visited were. And one day I was complaining a little more than usual. Mike Stoklasa had already given me the idea to do a parody site, but we needed more than a parody. Warren Blyth started bugging me, why don't you just start your own site at Fastforward and we can run it the way we think it should be run?
So voila - FASTFORWARD. The cure for the common film site.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Welcome to the Revolution.
 
Bonus Article:
WHY "REVOLUTIONARY?"
By Garrett Gilchrist
When you first start to make movies in, say, high school, you can feel very much alone ... I grew up in a small town and no one else was making movies but me. I know how glad I was when I first discovered, through the magic of the internet, just how many people were doing the same thing. In time I became connected with hundreds of no-budget filmmaking groups across the country, and made many friends. I've moved to Los Angeles now, and feel far from alone ... rather, I feel surrounded. The vastness of this movement is clear to all of us.
Make no mistake, the digital revolution is here. I used to use the word "revolution" as a joke. But hundreds of thousands of young people all across the nation are picking up camcorders and creating their own films, in a quality level that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. And it works both ways - many Hollywood filmmakers are shooting with the same cheap cameras a broke college kid would be. Clearly the face of film is changing, and will change more in the future. It is these young people who will be the great filmmakers of tomorrow. You can see that the more films they make, the better their films get. These young people will not go into Hollywood not knowing how to direct. What we will see from the best of them is original style, purely original cinema ... revolutionary entertainment.
What I love to see most in a no-budget movie is originality. I like to think that the point of all good art is to provide an alternative viewpoint. If we were all doing this for a living and shooting ten million dollar indie films, I would still point out that it is our job to look at what Hollywood does and do the opposite. To shoot a movie for no money, at any level, is a revolutionary act. It is personal self-expression on the smallest media level, which is and always has been the level of the counterculture. There was a time when everyone wanted to start a garage band, to start a xeroxed magazine. Today everyone wants to start a film company, to start a magazine on the web. And as there were lots of bad garage bands, there are lots of bad films.
A lot of independent films I see I might call "grey films" ... films that play flat, simple, unambitious films with mediocre acting and a lack of passion, that were shot cheap and look cheap, and look like a lot of other indie films. There is a dearth of originality in independent film today, and of ambition, and I am sad to say that you will see a better film on the mainstream shelves of Blockbuster than you will at many film festivals. Because independent filmmakers rarely tackle films on an epic scale. They shoot what they know they can afford. More independent films are being made than ever, and there is a glut of similar content. You know that feeling ... after a while it all starts to look the same. And you're searching for something rougher, more raw ... more true.
There is a certain belief in many circles that if you don't have the money to make your film look "professional," you shouldn't shoot a film at all. And a lot of money is spent in these circles making the set look "professional," and the director and his crew themselves look "professional." These people are putting their money in the wrong place, because it doesn't matter how cool and "professional" the director may look onset if the film itself isn't up to snuff. It is professional-looking, perhaps. Slick, and empty. Those who put the most effort into making themselves look good tend to make movies that don't look or play well at all. Because all their energy is put into what's behind the camera, not what's in front of it. And many of the best filmmakers I know (and this is true in Hollywood too sometimes) themselves look quite terrible when they're making a film, they look beaten-up and barely alive, yet the actors and the visuals and everything that's in front of the camera are wonderful. The actual film comes out brilliant. And that's what really matters. That's what the underground filmmaking movement is all about. You don't go "underground" without getting a little dirty. I would far rather see an original, quirky, interesting film shot by someone who's young and learning, than a professional film that's like a dozen other movies I've seen before.
Many of the films I like most, and many of the films you will see on this site, are not slick at all and look like they were shot on toilet paper. But they have a spark that makes them more heartfelt and interesting to watch. And here is my rather odd suggestion to you as filmmakers ... DON'T do the same thing the professionals do. Find your own way of working. Be raw. Be real. Be true to yourself and your own limitations. Find your own story to tell and your own way of telling it. Shoot for cheap. Smell bad. Be unprofessional. In the next generation of independent film, if we want to survive in the sea of passionless product, we need to do everything we can to ignore what the mainstream does and be as unprofessional as possible.
Because in the counterculture, it is the slick but empty work that is irrelevant. That is ignored, and rightfully so, for there is enough of that in the mainstream. You can seek to make better movies, but the minute you aspire to carbon copy someone else's work in the effort to look cleaner and make your work more palatable, that is the minute your work becomes irrelevant. You are shooting on video, and your work will never look like a 35mm film, so the need is for content, acting and real original stories, above all. At this level you need to be far more original, far more exciting than the movies you grew up with, because your versions are going to look like crap and unless they have that spark, they are crap.
This website is dedicated to the films and filmmakers that have that spark. That pursue their own fascinating, bizarre, quirky vision. That make movies that shock us, that make us leap out of our seats. That make us laugh. Oh god yes, the films that make us laugh. The films that make us feel something.
Welcome to Fastforward, filmmakers of tomorrow! Remember: You are the counterculture. You are revolutionaries. Start acting like it, or be trampled by those who do.
Viva la revolution,
Garrett
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