Archive for the ‘filmmaker resources’ Category
Media Convergence and how to spend a rainy afternoon…
There is a fascinating organization at MIT that is working on media convergence that along with the Comparative Media Studies department organizes the futures of entertainment conferences and publishes dozens of podcasts of their colloquia here.
The topics are fantastic. Here is an example that takes on how the internet has challenged how storytellers (in this case writers) present their public and private selves to the world.
A rainy afternoon in front of the computer wouldn’t be complete without trolling the wonderful and provocative ideas that emerge at the TED talks. Clicking at random will always bring you something unexpected. Here’s an 18 minute one that blew me away tonight:
Art + Art = something more
This post really gets one thinking about how you might add value to that victim of piracy and VOD.. that endangered species – the DVD. Thanks, Brian for thinking out of the box!
SpringBoardMedia: Ken Price, Bukowski, Curation and Film
My favorite part of the show was over at the Franklin Parrasch Gallery in Midtown (only until April 20) – they have a collection of ephemera, books, postcards, album covers and even tequila bottles designed by or featuring art works by Ken Price. If you like his sculptures (I’m not as big of a fan of these as his other work, though they are what he’s most known for), then you must stop by to watch the ten minute video showing his process (layering up paint and then sanding it down to expose layers in patterns). Note to curators – put this video on YouTube once the show is over and his sales will likely triple. Anyway, the piece I most liked, and that I think is in a weird way most relevant to film, was a limited edition hard-bound coffee table book of Charles Bukowski’s Heat Wave, with drawings and original art work by Ken Price. The cover is the photo I’ve used here. As Black Sparrow’s website explains, the book was a large format (15×12) portfolio, with text by Bukowski (poems), illustrated with 17 black and white works by Price, handbound and including a disc of Bukowski reading his poetry and containing a compartment in the back with 15 original serigraphs which could be removed and framed. A limited, signed edition was made as well as a limited, unsigned edition and the entire thing came in a slipcase with a cool design.
I’m a fan of both Price and Bukowski (yes, I’ve not left my college reading days too far behind), but you don’t have to like either to think about how this could be used for film. Not every film, but some. I’ve often talked about ways to monetize content in a world where everything is increasingly becoming free – well, here’s a great example. I can see Price’s works for free, in galleries and online. Bukowski’s poems are all over the place, and even with his popularity, I can find them in numerous used bookstores for cheap. But this is a piece of art – when it first came out in 1996 it sold for about $3,500 and I imagine it’s worth much more now. I can’t afford it, but I bet the 100+ editions they made sold out. How can filmmakers duplicate this? Again, not everyone can, but I imagine there are fans who would buy something similar from many indie films. Perhaps stills from the film, coupled with the script, a DVD, etc. Or maybe the film, the soundtrack and text from an author that is in a similar vein as the subject of the film. I’ve got lots of ideas for this, and I’m helping a few filmmakers whose films could definitely be re-purposed this way, but thought I’d share the idea with all of you, perhaps you can come up with an even better way to copy the idea in your work.
Ted Hope at DIY days
The Workbook Project’s DIY day in NYC last weekend was an inspirational moment of truly collaborative and community based thinking about storytelling and where it is going. Check out one of the lead “inspirers” – Ted Hope
A scary week for those trying to keep the ‘net out of corporate control
DIY Days really stretched my brain
The Workbook Project, Lance Weiler’s “open source” media collaboration platform pulled off its third outstanding DIY days event in NYC yesterday. I’ll be posting some great links, thoughts and feedback this week on what I’ve learned, but here’s one for tonight: a spinoff of the WB project has developed this award-winning 3 minute documentary series: RADAR. Check it out.
This is just one of their outstanding pieces:
Live from SXSW: Viral video how-tos from the pros
The most fun — and still useful — panel I’ve attended at SXSW Interactive so far was Saturday’s How to Create a Viral Video. It doesn’t get much better than the three viral experts that Flux creative director Jonathan Wells brought together:
- Damian Kulash, frontman of rock band OK Go
- Margaret Gould Stewart, head of user experience at YouTube
- Jason Wishnow, director of film and video, TED
The tone for the session was set when Damian Kulash teed up “the definition of viral video”: Boobies and Kitties, which presents the view with 30 seconds of plunging necklines, 30 seconds of saccharine-sweet kittens and 30 seconds of kittens stuffed into bodacious cleavage. With such quality artistic contributions to our cultural good, who needs Quentin Tarantino? Continued…
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Hmm, how long will Apple let producers sidestep the iTunes store?
clipped from blogs.wsj.com
Indie Film iPhone Apps — The New Distribution Frontier?
By Michelle Kung
Kimmo Kuusniemi, left.
When Apple first announced the launch of its iPad digital tablet on January 27, many media and technology experts immediately focused on the device’s applications for video games, e-books and other digital media. Finnish filmmaker Kimmo Kuusniemi, however, saw the iPad as the perfect distributor of his independent documentary, “Promised Land of Heavy Metal.”
A film about the history and philosophy of the heavy metal movement in Finland, “Promised Land” was the culmination of several years work for Kuusniemi, who played guitar for the band Sarcofagus in the late 1970s and ’80s before switching careers to filmmaking. But after struggling to find full theatrical distribution for his film (it has been shown on Finnish TV and a Scandinavian TV deal is being negotiated), he decided to try a different tactic. Continued…
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PBS getting pretty post-modern!
“Earth Days” PBS Documentary to Premiere on Facebook
Feature-length documentary film Earth Days will premiere on Facebook with a live video stream and a chat at 8 p.m. EST on April 11, more than a week before the over-the-air PBS television premiere at 9 p.m. EST on April 19.
The film chronicles the history of Earth Day in the United States and investigates issues related to the today’s American environmentalism movement. It has been playing the festival circuit and in select theaters for months, leading up to its PBS American Experience premiere. Earth Days has pulled a 70 rating on Metacritic — “generally favorable reviews.” Continues…
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Friends, Fans & Followers available for free for a few days!
Scott Kirstner’s book on creating a fanbase in the web 2.0 world is available here till the end of SxSW festival.
Some great resources for documentary lovers and makers
A couple great sites that have come into their own in the last two years:
The Workbook Project is an online collaboration that studies, discusses and creates the next generation of multi-platform independent media.
Massify is a filmmaker, actor, producer online community with some pretty big partners (Lionsgate, Killer Films, etc.)
D-word is a documentary specific forum for fans and creators.
Here’s an unsophisticated, but thorough list of documentary resources.
Finally, this is afilm and video finder that links to eight of the most significant educational doc distributors.
The “Prenups” – filmmakers and funders trying to get along
The single most common question that independent producers ask me in my role at Mountain Lake PBS (after learning that we don’t have the resources to fund outside projects – even the most promising) is where they can raise their production funding. The answers is that they have to do it the same difficult way we do at PBS: apply for grants, approach sponsors (underwriters in PBS-speak), consider “crowd funding”, get a bank loan, look for tax credits, etc.
But in each of these cases, the filmmakers will have to consider what it is the funders are looking for. Many a relationship between funder and filmmaker has foundered on mis-understanding. A new project hopes to layout a lot of misconceptions for media makers before things go off the rails. Check out The Prenups. Excellent work that every filmmaker should read. You can download the 2 page summary Matchmaker Guide for the Cliff Notes version
free filmmaker stuff
Here is a great site I found when looking for graphics of those little leaves that you put around film fest announcements:
http://www.sonnyboo.com/downloads/downloads.htm
There are countdowns, contracts, templates, etc. Thanks Peter!
Here is the poster that I created with the leaves:
Poster for Skatopia documentary at Amsterdam Film Festival
