Tag Archives: Paul Devlin

Making Tax Season Less Taxing for Filmmakers

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Next Monday, March 23rd at 7PM, Paul Devlin will be on a panel hosted by the DCTV (87 Lafayette Street, NYC)!

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Freelancers, rejoice! Just in time for the dreaded tax season, DCTV will be presenting an informative and calm-inducing panel discussion on tax preparation for independent filmmakers and freelance artists.

From learning about great tax saving deductions, to taxes in the sharing economy, new challenges with Obamacare, and what you need to know about the IRS and how to protect yourself in case of an audit, this well-rounded panel will keep you informed and hopefully put you at ease.

Panelists

Paul Devlin, Filmmaker is a 5-time Emmy winner and Independent Spirit Award nominee who made the critically-acclaimed feature documentaries SlamNation, Power Trip, BLAST!, and The Front Man. He wrote about the IRS’s battle with documentary filmmakers and his own (mis)adventures in being audited in this Filmmaker article.

Steven Zelin, CPA was born and raised in NYC and has been a licensed CPA for over fifteen years. He has an MBA in Finance and Marketing and a B.S. in Accountancy, is an Adjunct Professor of Accounting at Long Island University, and conducts a seminar every year on The Business of Being an Artist. Steven is active on the Not-for-Profit and Taxation of Individuals committees of the New York State Society of CPAs. He’s also known as The Singing CPA, “that really smart tax guy who writes and sings funny stuff.”

 

Tickets

$10 / DCTV Members

$15 / General

$35 / General + Discounted DCTV Membership!

Buy tickets here!

Filmmaker Magazine: “Look Your Customers in the Eye”

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“Look Your Customers in the Eye” is an article by Paul Devlin, published in Filmmaker Magazine.

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Independent filmmaker Brian Paul is a man who lives his films. In that spirit, he has taken DIY film distribution to a whole new level. Street level, that is.

For the past two years, Paul has made a comfortable living by selling his hybrid fi lm Cure for the Crash…The Art of Train Hoppin’ directly from art market street stalls in New Orleans. His unique distribution strategy has proved remarkably successful. Paul claims to have sold thousands of DVDs of Cure for the Crash by personally engaging more than 100,000 people face-to-face.

“When I was a teenager in West Philly,” Paul explains, “I used to work in a pawn shop, where I learned how to help people make a decision.” Later, his aggressiveness evolved into charm as Paul took a job selling art at high-end galleries on Royal Street in New Orleans. Paul went on to use these sales skills to move DVDs of Cure for the Crash from his Vespa at historic Jackson Square in the Big Easy while simultaneously pushing hard with mailings and email blasts to attract a distribution deal.

Read the rest here!

Dox Magazine: 4:3 to 16:9 Transition

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4:3 to 16:9 Transition

Paul wrote this article for DOX Magazine during the Power Trip era.  Check it out for some interesting information on the 4:3 to 16:9 conversion.  After all, you still come across 4:3 content stretched to fit a 16:9 screen, even now.  How do we make it all look good?

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“Versioning” has become an inevitable burden for non-fiction filmmakers as they adapt their work to fit various television time-slots in an effort to squeeze every drop of revenue from a project.

My film Power Trip now has four different length versions with another in progress, and I am approaching twenty distinct Masters, with iterations for NTSC, PAL, Texted and Textless. Tape stock expenses alone are burdensome.

Now comes a new dimension to versioning as TV transitions from the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 – finally catching up to cinema, which went wide-screen decades ago, reacting to the perceived threat when television was new. There seems to be little consensus across borders about the best way to make this transition, so the process has become bewildering.

In Europe I’ve seen 16:9 TV’s stretching out 4:3 sports broadcasts, making the athletes look ridiculously fat. Channel surfing on a sophisticated wide-screen TV produces a startling variety of shape contortions to fit the screen size. Broadcasts in 4:3 from the US, such as MTV, suffer most, blown up and cropped on top and bottom to fit 16:9…CONTINUE READING HERE!

Rejecting the College Rejection Letter

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Posted by Paul Devlin:

When I was a senior in high school, I noticed that the rejection letter I received from Harvard had a grammatical error. So, I wrote a letter back, rejecting their rejection letter. Then I sent a version to all the colleges that had rejected me.

My mother, Nancy Devlin, sent a copy of this letter to the New York Times and it was published in the New Jersey section on May 31, 1981. Then in 1996 there was a cover story in the New York Times Magazine about the trauma students were experiencing getting rejected from colleges. As an education writer, my mom knows all too well that educational issues are cyclical. So she re-submitted the letter.

This time it was published on May 5th, 1996 in the Op-Ed section of the Sunday New York Times, a very prestigious, high-profile space. It turns out the letter had already become popular and was reprinted in newspapers, books etc. (without my knowledge, pre-internet). The New York Times accused me of plagiarism. When they discovered that I was the original author and they had unwittingly re-printed themselves, they were none too happy. But my mom insists that it was important to reprint the article because the issue was clearly still relevant. The letter remains popular on the internet even today.

Anyway, here it is:

Office of Admissions
Any College
Wherever U.S.A
Dear Any College:

Having reviewed the many rejection letters I have received in the last few weeks, it is with great regret that I must inform you I am unable to accept your rejection at this time.

This year, after applying to a great many colleges and universities, I received an especially fine crop of rejection letters. Unfortunately, the number of rejections that I can accept is limited.

Each of my rejections was reviewed carefully and on an individual basis. Many factors were taken into account – the size of the institution, student-faculty ratio, location, reputation, costs and social atmosphere.

I am certain that most colleges I applied to are more than qualified to reject me. I am also sure that some mistakes were made in turning away some of these rejections. I can only hope they were few in number.

I am aware of the keen disappointment my decision may bring. Throughout my deliberations, I have kept in mind the time and effort it may have taken for you to reach your decision to reject me.

Keep in mind that at times it was necessary for me to reject even those letters of rejection that would normally have met my traditionally high standards.

I appreciate your having enough interest in me to reject my application. Let me take the opportunity to wish you well in what I am sure will be a successful academic year.

SEE YOU IN THE FALL!

Sincerely,
Paul Devlin
Applicant at Large

 

DOX – “A Pioneering Experience”

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Paul Devlin talks about the BLAST! ArtistShare project – what worked, what didn’t work, and the future of independent film financing.

Published in DOX Magazine.

Read the full article here!

“Although ArtistShare is a fan-based funding platform developed for the music industry, a documentary filmmaker decided to break new ground by trying it out to fund his latest documentary. He shares his experiences in the following.”

The business of making films is changing fast, and independent artists must adapt quickly to a landscape in constant flux. New technology is erasing traditional funding models as quickly as it is creating new ones. One need only look to the recent collapse of the music industry to wonder how quickly and how drastically the film industry will be similarly transformed.

But does watching the music industry fall off the cliff first give the film industry an opportunity to soften our own inevitable fall? Can we learn from their mistakes and adapt their responses to our own unique challenges? I took a chance that a new innovative funding model for music artists called ArtistShare could also be adapted to fund a factual film. The risk, of course, is that pioneers are often identified by the arrows in their back.

My goal to completely finance my film BLAST! by adapting Artist- Share’s fan-based funding platform was not achieved, but the model does show promise. I offer up the following analysis of the successes and failures we experienced so that other filmmakers can develop this model further.

Replacing Record-company Funding

New technology has gradually transformed the music business from a retail industry into a service industry. Internet downloading has permanently undercut CD sales, record companies are collapsing and live shows now eclipse traditional retail revenue for major artists.

Clearly the record-company funding model for emerging and mid- level artists is disappearing. So how will new music be created and distributed, and how will these artists get paid in this new landscape? In response to the changing landscape of the music industry, Artist- Share’s CEO Brian Camelio developed a new funding model to allow fans to fund their favourite artists. Similar models have emerged in the meantime, but ArtistShare claims to be the first.

ArtistShare provides a web-based template through which musicians can offer their fans an opportunity to purchase tiered participation in the creation of their new work. For example a “Gold Participant” may pay a large amount of money to get an Executive Producer credit on the CD, access to recording sessions, a personal performance from the artist, and more. High-end offers emphasise access and exclusivity…..

Read the full article here!

WHY FILMMAKING CANNOT BE A HOBBY

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Blast! Director Paul Devlin on the IRS’s battle with documentary filmmakers.

Read the full article here!

Last year at a summit meeting of the independent film community called “The Conversation,” Ira Deutchman was compelled to propose, “Filmmaking has never been a business…it’s a hobby.” Sentiments like this are not uncommon after the hardships filmmakers have faced in recent years, the multiple threats to our business models that accompanied both technological change and the global economic crisis. In fact, many filmmakers have been forced to re-evaluate the economic viability of their entire enterprises.

Soul-searching in tough times is important, but our community must be extremely careful with our language and avoid using words like “hobby.” Why? Because the IRS is listening! If you are deducting filmmaking expenses from other sources of income on your tax returns, then you must identify your filmmaking as a for profit business and not a hobby.

Documentary filmmakers have become especially vulnerable to the perception that they are engaged in a hobby rather than an activity for profit. Because development takes so long and revenue sources are so difficult to sustain, filmmakers often endure losses over many years. They persevere because they become so passionate about their subject matter and the need to spread their message to the world that generating a profit may not seem primary.

Unfortunately the unfair and incorrect perception that documentary filmmakers are not interested in profit has resulted in unsettling scrutiny of our industry by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. In a case now in U.S Tax Court in Arizona, the IRS has been asked to demonstrate whether or not the primary purpose of documentary filmmaking in general is “to educate and to expose” and is thus “an activity not engaged in for profit.”

This may sound absurd, but it is very serious. If the IRS wins their case against Arizona filmmaker Lee Storey (Smile ’Til It Hurts: The Up With People Story), documentary filmmakers may no longer be permitted to deduct expenses associated with making their films from other sources of income. Furthermore, filmmakers who have already deducted these expenses may be faced with potentially ruinous audits.

Read the rest of the article at FilmmakerMagazine.com!