Inventing the Future in Chicago

I'm headed to one of my favorite US cities this weekend - Chicago - to give a speech for the IFP Chicago Producer's Series. It looks like a great line-up. Lance Weiler will be joining me, as well as some great speakers like Pat Aufderheide, Gordon Quinn and many others, including quite a few I've never met, which is great because I'll likely learn a lot of new things. My personal favorite is the panel with the one speaker I'll be positively gushing about - Mike Stoklasa on his near-perfect reviews of Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, which I've been raving about.  While there, I'll be speaking about innovation in media - something I just spoke about at DIY Days (the video is now up and embedded below), but I don't plan to recycle the entire speech. Instead, I will speak a bit about the current state of the film business - showing some examples of what is working well for filmmakers and other DIY artists, and then speculate a bit about the possible future of the field (cribbing a bit from my last talk).  I'll be speaking a fair bit about participatory culture, crowd-sourced production, funding and distribution and transmedia practice. You know, all those fun, trendy things to speak about these days.

So, if you live in Chicago, or anywhere nearby in the Midwest, stop by and say hello - or at least watch Mike's talk, if not mine. Hope to see you there.

Here's the video from DIY Days:


Brain Newman - DIY Days from ZAFFI Pictures on Vimeo.