Report from DocAviv

I'm just back from the fabulous DocAviv Film Festival. This was my first trip to Israel, and I wish I could've stayed longer. I met wonderful people, saw some great films as part of the International Jury, went to the beach (a lot), visited many of the famous sites and learned a lot. While DocAviv takes place during Cannes, that doesn't matter much to the locals, who are coming out in droves, filling the theaters and having a great time watching some amazing docs.

We awarded two prizes. The first was a Special Jury Mention to the film Darwin, by Nick Brandestini. He's off to Karlovy Vary next, and you can check out the film here. We also awarded the International Competition Award to El Sicario: Room 164 by Gianfranco Rosi. Turns out El Sicario was recently picked up and will play NYC and elsewhere soon. I highly recommend both films as well as all of the others in competition. There was also an Israeli Doc competition (with many great films, Israeli docs are in their prime right now) and student film awards, as well as a DocChallenge and many special events (including my favorite: Food and Film). The festival is only 13 years old now (happy Bar Mitzvah), but is growing in importance and stature and I highly recommend that doc makers, industry and fans check it out. You can't get much better than May in Tel Aviv, with good docs, good conversations and outdoor screenings at the Tel Aviv Port!

While there, I also ran a workshop with Hypermedia on the Future of the Doc, called "Re:Invent." It was a full day workshop broken into three sessions: new business models for distribution and audience engagement, transmedia practices and pitching. I learned a lot from the audience - about particularities of Israeli cinema and possibilities, about new ideas and I hope I left behind some wisdom as well. The biggest things I learned are: 1. that Israeli Docs are great, the scene is vibrant and winning awards (this I knew, but learned even more while there, watching about 15 recent docs) and 2. that there's a pretty solid funding system in place, but not much for trying new models of outreach and distribution, and last 3. that the political situation makes many things difficult for Israeli filmmakers both at home and abroad (in many ways, and from many different perspectives, too much to cover here). There were two interviews that ran in conjunction. One at NRG, and you can see a Google Translation here, and one with DocMovies. Speaking of DocMovies, they have launched a really cool distribution service that is very filmmaker friendly, and I hope to cover more about that soon.

I've uploaded the slides from my workshop to SlideShare. Feel free to download them, and use them as you wish. I hope to give more updates from the festival soon.

DocAviv - Roadmap to the Future of Docs

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And a late edit: The organizers published this great Flickr Set of the day:




 

Slides from my speech at Sofia Film Fest Meetings

Image via WikipediaI've been having a fantastic time here in Sofia, Bulgaria. I've met many great, talented people – producers, distributors, filmmakers, festival folks, etc. I've learned a lot from them about the state of film in Bulgaria (flourishing, yet having funding difficulties), of film financing and distribution in Europe (too much to share here now) and about Bulgaria generally. I highly recommend the Sofia Meetings to anyone interested in international co-productions, or to anyone who just wants to meet some great European film industry folks.

As usual, I spoke a bit fast at my lecture and many people asked me to share the slides. So here they are. If you've been to some of my recent lectures, there's not much new here, but some things have been updated, including some stats on Facebook usage in Bulgaria (strong). The speech was a general overview of changes to audience expectations, digital disruption and how artists are using these new tools to build their audience and make new business models. I didn't know my audience was going to be distributors until I arrived, but as I explained on the spot - nearly everything I mention here can be used by distributors, film fests and organizations as well.

Sofia: Inventing the Future of Film

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Beyond the Game, VoDo and Cinema Purgatorio

As I've mentioned before, I am a big fan of VoDo - the folks who are using PTP sharing as a way to get money to filmmakers. If you haven't checked them out, you should, but the short version is that you can get their films for free, just like a pirate does, but they've built an easy mechanism for you to donate money to that film. They've also built a reward system, the Do, for those who share these films via social networks, spend money on films, etc.

I've not written as much (at all?) about another company I like, called Cinema Purgatorio (CP for short). CP was founded by Ray Privett, a very smart, capable distributor who is a true filmmaker's friend. He has done everything from running the Pioneer Theater (and making sure filmmakers got paid there before it went downhill (without him)), to working with distributors, theaters, etc. CP is a filmmaker friendly distributor - a very rare thing - and he prefers to work with the quirky, little films (usually) that need special care and attention in finding their way in the marketplace. And he does an amazing job with these films. Check out his website, he's currently working on Zenith, a great transmedia project by Vlad Nikolic, and he's done films like Christmas on Mars featuring the Flaming Lips and Bjork's Voltaic concert film. His website sums up his company like this:

"Cinema Purgatorio brings movies to select audiences via custom-crafted theatrical and semi-theatrical releases (including press campaigns), and mass audiences via output VOD and disc deals. Every season, Cinema Purgatorio films screen publicly in more than 40 cities; be on the VOD menus of over 10 million homes; and are released far and wide on DVD and Blu-Ray."

Well, now these two great companies are working together and CP also brings films to bajillions of homes through VoDo! You can now get the CP film Beyond the Game by Jos de Putter on Vodo. The film, which I haven't yet seen, follows two of the best players of World of Warcraft....and that's no easy feat to accomplish. Here's the film's description:

"Warcraft III is the most popular real-time strategy computer game, thrilling over 2.5 million North Americans and 10 million people worldwide everyday. The game creates an alternate universe, where players challenge each other with a mythically-charged online world of humans, orcs, the undead, knights, and elves.

In Beyond the Game, we meet - in real life and within the game - two of the game's leading figures, known as Grubby and Sky. Acclaimed filmmaker Jos de Putter tracks these Kasparovs of a new generation and a new game across the world all the way to the world championships in Seattle."

I really like that Ray is willing to take a chance and experiment with this new distribution model. Most people are afraid of piracy and PTP, but let's face it, your film is going to get pirated no matter what - fighting it won't help, so you might as well turn it into a business model. It also gets a film seen: Beyond the Game already has had over 300,000 downloads! That's some serious viewer numbers for a doc, and by using VoDO, they have a chance to help invent new business models as well. As Ray/CP describes on the VoDo page:

"Support of this release helps Cinema Purgatorio with its next generation strategies to bring movies to theatres, discs, and downloads, seeing downloads (and torrents) as a "legitimate" release method."

Amen. I hope it works!

You can get the film at VoDo or pay for it directly, and support a filmmaker and a film curator/distributor/innovator at Cinema Purgatorio.

What I want for the New Year - AddArt for internet video

Here's a simple idea for an entrepreneur to make a few bucks and disrupt the heck out of the business - design an Add-Art that works on internet video watched through a browser (or any internet connected device) that takes over whenever there's a pre-roll that I can't skip on a video online. Except instead of static art, which would get boring during all those pre-roll ads and trailers, pull in pre-curated artistic videos from Vimeo or YouTube (or Mubi, or....). I'm sure a widget could be made that could do this without the content distributors and/or device makers knowing about it, and it would save me from watching a bunch of crap I don't want to see. Or hearing it, if you made it work with Pandora. It would be a great bonus if the program also added witty one-liners, perhaps from Mark Twain, in place of those annoying text ads that can still be found running at the bottom of certain videos.

Please someone, make this, please.

11 Things on My Mind for Twenty11

photo © 2009 Karola Riegler | more info (via: Wylio)
It’s that time of year when everyone makes their top ten lists, and I’ve done it before and am adding my 11 cents here now. I could just paste in last year’s list below, as all of them are still relevant, but that’s too easy...except for number 1, policy. Unfortunately, this one is much the same as last year, so to make up for this repeat, I’m giving eleven thoughts here. Most of these aren’t predictions, but are instead just a few things I’m thinking about as we head into the New Year.

1. Will the film industry start to take policy seriously? I doubt it. Policy turns people off, but if we don’t pay more attention and get active in these debates, the possible future for indie film might get turned off. It’s hard to imagine a world where the internet no longer works like it does now, but take one look at this graphic of what the industry wants and you quickly get a sense of what could become of the internet. This will be the year that this story gets framed to the public in a big way. The Right is already trying to paint the FCC’s recent ruling as “regulating” the internet. Filmmakers are story tellers. We need better stories about why this issue is important. There’s quite a role here for creatives, and I hope a few of them take this issue head-on in 2011.
2. Will Apple become a rights-broker? When talk turns to Apple these days, it’s usually about the Ipad, and when it might come to Verizon. What interests me more is this excellent interview with Michael Whalen about their purchase of a huge cloud computing facility down in NC, and what it might mean for the future. It’s becoming increasingly clear that ownership of content isn’t as important as controlling the experience around content. Apple is already doing well with consumers accessing content. They could also handle rights licensing pretty well - imagine if any artist could post their content (film, music, writing) and set terms and publishers and others licensed that content through a system built by Apple - in the cloud. As Whalen says in the article about their possible plans "What if iTunes or whatever AAPL calls their new streaming service is broken into TWO parts - the actual delivery and streaming of the programs, etc. and on the other side - - the administration of the copyrights in the digital realm including collecting fees and licenses from OTHER PLATFORMS." While this isn’t talked about much, it’s an interesting theory and worthy of some speculation.
3. Which indies will embrace the prequel? I’ve been speaking for a long time about how filmmakers can use short video as a way to build interest in their films before the film is released. Karol Martesko-Fenster has put a name on it with the idea of the prequel, and you can see a great example of how it can work for a documentary film with Bengali Detective which is premiering at Sundance. Lots of room here for other formats - building up certain characters or plot points in a narrative film, for example, and a great way to build audience.
4. Which indie transmedia experiments will succeed? A lot of indies are starting to experiment with developing their story across multiple entry points. Lance Weiler has a transmedia project premiering at Sundance and another in the works (or maybe several). Liz Rosenthal and Tishna Molla are pushing the field forward by holding excellent conferences and labs with Power to the Pixel, and rumor has it some other big entities are getting into this soon. Wendy Levy at BAVC is helping filmmakers learn more about it as well through the BAVC Labs. I don’t think 2011 will be a big year for transmedia - it will probably start gaining more momentum in both indie and Hollywood circles (and elsewhere), but it will probably be 2012 at earliest before the “big embrace,” but maybe I’m wrong.
5. Who will figure out mobile, social, check-in, rewards and indie film? There’s a few companies operating in this space, but no one has put it together well yet. This will be a gold mine (or three) someday and I can’t wait to see what launches and develops in 2011.
6. Will YouTube figure out what it’s doing? If any company could use a strategy, this is the one. I could give them a million ways to do what they’re doing better. I’m sure you could too. They obviously have the whole mass adoption thing down, but when it comes to working with long form film and changing the distribution paradigm, they need some work. They ran some half-assed experiments in releasing films last year, and have been making some interesting moves lately, but this is probably the year when they need to put up or ....
7. Will film festivals figure out social? Yes, they are all on Twitter. Marketing themselves constantly. Oh, wait, sorry, just constantly as the festival approaches or to hit me up to support some fundraising campaign they’re doing. Film festivals, through their curation, are better positioned than almost anyone to build a better relationship with audiences and help change the indie film paradigm. But only if they take social media seriously and start using it to help me (as an audience member) discover films year-round, and not just the ones they programmed. There’s value in the opinions and curations of your programmers. Lots of value, but only if you get smart about social (hint: see 5).
8. Which trades will die? The last couple of year’s have brought us a whole host of new trades - almost completely online - and some new business model experiments. The problem is, we’re not getting any better information. In fact, if you put a bunch of random people who use the Net in a room and asked them to list the top 100 worst ideas for a film trade journal, you’d find all of them represented somewhere in the mix of Variety, HR, The Wrap, Deadline Hollywood, MCN, etc. (I am missing many here, I know). I imagine Variety will survive, if only because enough of Hollywood will pay for it behind their pay-wall, but it’s long been irrelevant. I actually think the HR strategy to become more consumer focused could have worked, but as it is being executed it’s like they are aiming for Delta Sky Magazine level work. That said, they have some new advertisers that might keep them afloat. IndieWire is in good hands now with Dana Harris (Eugene, who did an amazing job, recently left), and she, and the good crew there, might turn this into something even more interesting. At least one of the others will die - that’s one prediction for this year. I was speaking with a media investor the other day, and we both agreed - this space is ripe for some disruption, and I hope someone launches something new (or redirects course), because man, we need something better.
9. Could someone start a fund for creative storytelling? Yes, I know there’s things like Creative Capital, but what I want is an IMPACT Partners for narrative films with no redeeming social value. Okay, just kidding, I know that all films have social value, and I actually believe that narrative storytelling is a better way to have impact on social issues than through docs, but you get my point. We need funding for narrative filmmakers with good ideas.
10. Who will be the new filmmakers who break through and reach an audience? Who will tell the best stories? While most of this post is about business stuff, what I really like is discovering a new voice, or seeing an established artist go in a new direction, or just stay in a tried and true direction with a great new story. Many of these films won’t make it to a large audience, so I’m also interested to see which ones can break through enough to enter the cultural conversation. From what I’ve heard about many films in development or even premiering this January, we might have a great year ahead of us.
11. Who will launch the next big thing? There’s a lot of people at work behind the scenes trying to build new film companies, transmedia companies, tech companies in this sector and similar new endeavors. I feel like I meet with someone about to launch the next big thing almost every day. Here’s to hoping that 2011 is a successful year for all of them!

note: I corrected the title of Bengali Detective (I had it wrong, as Bombay Detective....oops) and fixed the links.

Shared Film - Panel with Gregory Bayne at Open Video Conf.

This Saturday, I'll be attending the Open Video Conference to moderate an after screening talk with Gregory Bayne about his film Person of Interest. Bayne has been taking an alternative approach to releasing his film - he's toured it garage style, given it away for free, you can buy it in multiple formats on his website now and he's doing a bigger tour of the film beginning next year. You can read more about what he's done in this excellent Filmmaker Magazine post, but I'm most interested in getting his thoughts on how filmmakers (and other artists) can use Peer-to-Peer and other free mechanisms to build an audience and still make a living. I'm sure he'll have a lot to tell us, and I can't wait to finally sit down and talk with Gregory Bayne.  Check out the conference website to learn more about the events - two days of great speakers and some great films. Here's the trailer for Person of Interest:

New business models for film & transmedia

I'm here at the Power to the Pixel - Pixel Transmedia Lab in Cardiff, Wales. Thank goodness, because it's only 70 degrees here and NYC is apparently in a heat wave. I'm also sitting on a hotel balcony looking over a beautiful bay (of which I would provide a photo if I only had a camera (!!!) on my Blackberry). I've been learning a lot from the excellent experts they've assembled, as well as from the project participants and other attendees. I'll post more on that soon, but for now, here's the slides I'll be presenting tomorrow at my speech on developing new business and financial models for transmedia production. While this group is made up of largely transmedia producers, many are starting with a relatively traditional film, and I think the slides are relevant to anyone thinking about new business models for the production of any media. As with most of my talks, there's not a ton of detail in the slides - most of it is what I say, so I hope to have video to post or link to soon. I think these are easy enough to understand, however, and you can always contact me directly (in comments here or on Facebook) if you have questions. I should be clear  - I'm not presenting anything here as clear, hard facts - the business models are being invented (here at the Lab, for one), but these are some thoughts and observations:

Transmedia Biz Models, Pixel Lab

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Let me know what you think.

Future Think Edinburgh

I'm off to Edinburgh for the Edinburgh Film Fest, which remains one of the better fests out there and which is jam-packed with good panels and activities. I'll be speaking at a few events with the film festival. First, this Sat at 1pm is a panel called "Free for all" and you can guess what that's about - free, piracy, etc. I'm really looking forward to this one, as there's a rep from the MPAA there, and while I am sure he is nice and great, I'm also sure we'll disagree on this issue! I can't find a link online for this one, guess it's too hot a ticket.

Then on Sunday, I'll be speaking for Shooting People as part of their Digital Bootcamp. From the website: "For filmmakers, the internet is changing everything. Shooting People presents this half day session designed to help you and your film navigate the rapidly evolving digital and web landscape. The session is aimed at those for whom these tools are somewhat of a mystery, and know they need to understand them. Alongside a presentation from new models in funding and distribution expert Brian Newman, and a thorough case study of The Last rites of Ransom Pride by festival filmmaker Duncan Montgomery, the event is a comprehensive survey of resources, websites, social media, systems, tracking, crowdsourcing, funding, distribution, exhibition, outreach … and more."

Monday the 21st has me with Shooting People, BAFTA and the Fest again for Short-Sighted, where I'll lay out more of my thoughts on how to make a living by incorporating free into your business model. There's a lot of other great speakers as well, and I look forward to learning some new things. Immediately after that is FutureThink (Mon 21st) - a discussion on the future of cinema. From the catalogue online: " a look at the future: Where will our industry be in 10-20 years time? The world will always want visual stories but how will we view them and where? Will the rise of digital technology mean that cinemas become obsolete?" I'm pretty sure they won't, but I think there's lots of other changes in store, so it should be a good discussion. 

Anyway, there's a lot of other great speakers, so if you'll be in Edinburgh check out those links and look me up in town. 

ATL-PushPush Distrib/Fundraise 101

Just back from my old stomping grounds of the ATL, where I did a few private consults and one big, long workshop for filmmakers at PushPush Theater. The experience, for me at least, was great. My slides are embedded after the fold, but first a few words of thought on Atlanta. Having been there, I'm not telling anyone who lives there anything new when I say there's some serious talent in that town. Sure, we all know about Tyler Perry, Rainforest Films, Turner and all that, but the ideas I heard from several producers/directors were pretty incredible. I also like the fact that they have great resources in town like GSU's DAEL center, the Atlanta Film Festival, a top-notch new media/gaming sector and with an amazing tax incentive, there's arguably few places better to shoot right now.

They also have innovative thinkers like PushPush Theater. Yes, I am biased as they paid me to consult and to speak, disclaimer enough? That said, I don't know of many other theater companies that are thinking about community and creativity like they are doing. They aren't just a theater company. Sure, lots of people open their doors to improv, to people showing film screenings, to training, to actors who might want to go from stage to screen. PushPush, however, is going further and thinking about how their projects can become multi-platform transmedia productions. This kinda started with a program they did called Dailies, which helped a group of filmmakers workshop a series of short film experimentations into what became Pop Film's The Signal.

50,000 films is a great thing, post on The Wrap

My first post for The Wrap just went online. In it, I discuss how the ever increasing flood of films is a good thing. Say what? Aren't they just crowding up the house? I don't think so, and explain why. Let me know your thoughts, either here or at The Wrap (and expect some more zany thoughts there soon).

For those too lazy - here's the article, pasted below:

For a few years now, the topic du jour at panels and conferences has been whether or not the sky is falling on the film business. Most panelists seem to settle on a common culprit contributing to the malaise: Too many films being made.

Case in point: During a recent conversation between Ted Hope and Chris Hyams, hosted by TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman, the panelists bemoaned this fact, and when Waxman commented that more than 3,000 films were submitted to Sundance last year, Chris Hyams quickly interjected that the Sundance submission number grossly underestimates the real numbers. Based on his analysis of unique, individual entries from the thousands of film festivals that used B-Side’s Festival Genius software to run their websites, Hyams estimated that as many as 50,000 films were made in 2009.

Audible gasps were heard in the room, and judging by the questions and comments from the audience, on Twitter and from those watching the streaming feed, it was clear that everyone agreed that 50,000 films might be 49,850 too many.

Some things I'd like to know

To my mind, the biggest problem facing the indie film field is the lack of transparency around the numbers. Which numbers? All of them. Until we know a few basic things, it's really hard to say what's wrong, what might work, what has worked and whether anything really is wrong at all. Everyone talks about box office, but we all (should) know that those are really the least important numbers. If we had better data available, publicly, on VOD, deal points, DVD sales, etc., then we could build a more robust indie film sector. We don't know these numbers for a lot of reasons - many people make their living off keeping these things confidential, but some of them we just don't know because no one who should be asking them has bothered - ahem, that would be you, lackadaisical film industry trades (all of you). So here's twenty things I'd like to know, in no particular order.

The Chicago Producers Series Slides

As promised, here's the slides from my presentation at the IFP Chicago Producer's series.

Chicago inventing Future Speech

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Storming the gates, or can't we all just get along

Let’s all storm the fences. I’m mad as hell and I just can’t take it anymore. The tyranny of the gatekeepers has stifled all creativity and I can’t find any innovative or creative films. A secret cabal of festival programmers, distributors, IndieWire editors, producers reps, broadcasters, Apple employees, NYTimes reporters and theater owners is holding back the flood of original, amazing content.

Ok, anyone who’s worked in this business for more than say, a year, will laugh hysterically at the cat-herding thought of corralling that many movie geeks towards doing anything other than watching cinema. They can’t agree on what’s good and what sucks, much less what to suppress and what is genius. They seem to all agree on avoiding sunlight, but beyond that, no such cabal of gatekeepers exists folks.

Alright, there’s some truth to the whole gate-keeper argument. There is someone (many someone’s, actually) who has to weed through those 3000+ submissions to Sundance, and someone else who has to weed through the accepted films to figure out which ones might find an audience in New York City, much less in Topeka. You can choose to call them gate-keepers, but I like to think of them as shit-strainers - a big industry protecting me from all the crap out there. These poor souls watch more than 500 films a year on average, only ten or twenty of which might be worth me ever seeing, and for all that thank-less work, all they get is a bunch of name-calling in the blog-o-spheres (I could link to ten articles in the last week that are somehow related to this, but you’ve probably read them already).

We should be giving them a medal.

DIY Days - Reinventing Innovation Speech

I just wrapped my DIY Days speech (ok, hrs ago) and people have asked for the text and slides. So here they are. I am kinda commenting on the slides, and some slides are counter-points to what I am saying so the video will  be much easier to follow, once it is up.
Slides:

Diy Days Speech on Innovation

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Here's the text, after the fold:

Selling your film - when is the best time?

The Conversation took place this week in NYC, and while the entire event was great (kudos to the organizers) and I learned a bit, had some great conversations and even found some inspiration, I was also left scratching my head. How can we, as a field, get something so collectively wrong as the notion of film festival premieres and audience awareness? Thomas Woodrow, a producer who I admire, stated on one panel that you needed to sell your film at the point of its maximal awareness, and that for Bass Ackwards, that was clearly at Sundance (paraphrasing). Joe Swanberg said something to this effect regarding his decision to do a simultaneous premiere at SXSW and on IFC. We’ve seen these experiments at multiple festivals now, and will continue to see more. As currently conceived, all of them will fail.

Let me be clear - I am not critiquing IFC, the filmmakers or the festivals for experimenting - we need more of that. I also like all of them. I’m also sure that some of them would argue with me over what constitutes a failure, and I’m sure some of them will make some money, possibly even good money. That said, we’ll never know how much they might have made with a different strategy. My argument here is really with the notion that a premiere at a major festival is your point of maximal awareness. It’s not, never has been and never will be, unless such festivals do a lot of re-visioning of what they are and how they operate.

My presentation for BAFTA Scotland

Here's the Slides from my recent presentation in Glasgow, Scotland for Scottish Students on Screen, a program of BAFTA Scotland. For those of you who've seen my other presentations, this one won't be really new - it combines a few things from multiple different presentations, but it does add a few new things near the end. I always post these, however, so that people don't have to take notes on links, etc which are all embedded in the presentation. The entire day was great, with many other good speeches, including one from Anita Ondine and from Peter Mullan.

Glasgow - Inventing the Future

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Re-thinking impact in film

I recently attended a think-tank, strategy session for an independent documentary filmmaker trying to have meaningful impact with his film. He did a smart thing - gathering about 30 really smart people (plus me, somehow) to talk about having an impact with film. This got me thinking about this question generally, and while this filmmaker was coming from the right place on this, I generally have a problem with this whole question. I have been thinking about this sense, and it led me back to a post I made on this blog in 2006. There might be one or two of you who read me now, but I figured most of my readers are new (the rest having left from all these long posts), and I think this post is still pretty relevant.  Plus, I've been busy this month and posting less, so this gives me something new/old. So, with some minor revisions, here’s some thoughts on the whole question of having an impact with film.

Increasingly, the foundation community and other funders of film are asking the question, how can we have more impact with film? Quite often they are focused only on social media, and the implications are twofold: first, that past efforts to have impact through film have not succeeded, and second, that impact means more than eyeballs – in other words, that audience size isn’t enough and that some larger change also must take place. Let us realize from the outset that the first assumption is completely false. The second assumption puts forth a proposition destined for failure, and one that is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the relation of media to culture, the civic sphere and social change. That said, as many filmmakers and media organizations rely on support from those obsessed with impact, we must address this concern now, for although grounded in many false assumptions, the premise is ultimately true.

11/04/08 and participatory filmmaking

On 11/04/08 I voted, went to work and celebrated a bit too much at the end of the night when Obama took the stage to announce he'd won. Jeff Deutchman and more than 20 other filmmakers documented the entire day, from 8am til 4am the next morning, and the resulting film, called 11/4/08, is about to premiere at SXSW very soon. I was lucky enough to be among a small group invited to see the film in advance yesterday, and I can highly recommend you see it there or at another festival or screening soon. But this isn't a review post, but rather is a note that what Jeff is doing goes well beyond just telling a story of which we know the ending.

Jeff's idea came to him just a few weeks before the election. It was likely to be an historic moment, which it became as Obama became the first black president. It also turned out to be historic for other reasons - the turn out from young people, the places that turned blue, etc. But as many of us can remember, this wasn't a given, so Jeff's team could have ended up documenting the defeated hopes of so many supporters for all they knew. Jeff wanted to catch the day regardless of the outcome, and he asked friends from around the world to document their experience of the day, send it to him and he would "curate" a film from their footage.

More than 20 people, from accomplished indie filmmakers to amateurs, agreed to take part. Some filmed their own experience throughout the day, others captured organizers pulling out the vote, some went with the major crowds others just their own families and friends. Jeff calls the film a piece of "consensual cinema," and while you see the vision of multiple filmmakers shining through, it has been edited to his own rhythm. BTW, it interestingly let's you experience your own version as well, in a way, but that's for a review piece.

Jeff isn't done, however, with his participatory cinematic experience. He's still collecting stories online at the project website, and he's encouraging people to upload their footage, or their complete films, and to take the film's footage, remix it and upload their own versions for everyone to see. It's a great way to collectively re-participate in the experience. This is something that might make McCain supporters gag, but hey, they can theoretically spin their version as well, and I am willing to bet one of the more interesting results will be when that happens.

Anyone who reads this blog knows what a big fan I am of those who embrace the new, participatory culture and this film is an interesting way to use it for the recording and re-telling of history. Check it out when you can and spread the word. Oh yeah, as you can see from the image, there's a Kickstarter campaign you can help with too.

Engage 101 at Shooting People/DCTV

Tonight I gave a speech for Shooting People and DCTV called Engage 101 - Audience Building Masterclass. That was an impossible enough task, so I tried to make it harder and give a brief overview on film distribution, all the new models out there and some basics on using the web and some old fashioned tools to build your audience...all the way up to transmedia 101. Whew, not sure that was smart, but I got good feedback and it was fun. I also learned a lot from the questions, and at the end we opened it up for a group session on a few films, and as expected, the audience feedback was great. I always upload my presentations for free, so here below it is. No audio or video was taken, and these slides don't capture everything I said, but the essence is there. If you're super advanced in this stuff, it might not be worth your time, but could be worth a view for some new (and old) ideas. Feedback appreciated as always. This was also just one of many panels and masterclasses these folks do, with many great speakers, so check out their info online.

here's the presentation, and my apologies that Slideshare always repeats the title, the title, the title....I don't understand this glitch.

Shooting People Engage101

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ACTA...wasthat? and why it matters

Well, the New York Times finally covered what is arguably the most important tech/film/net/future/etc story going on in the world (a close second to the Google/Authors Guild proposed rip-off) yet I'm not seeing much about it in the blogs and tweets I follow from the film world. That's bad news, because this is something every filmmaker should be aware of, as well as anyone who is interested in the future of content online. Or the future of the net, really, and that should be everyone. So what the heck is ACTA and what can you do about it?

I know, I know, these policy things make your head hurt. Mine does too, and this one is a doozy. ACTA, or the Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Haven't heard of it? That's because you aren't supposed to know about it. It's a top secret negotiation between major countries to combat counterfeiting. You're probably thinking well, piracy and counterfeiting are bad, so what? Well, there's lots of arguments against that view, but even with it, it's a pretty big concern when major countries meet in secret, with no democratic input, about possible rules which could forever change how we access content online. Guess what....your needs as a little indie producer/consumer probably aren't on the list. But you can bet those of the MPAA are, and knowing how like the RIAA they've become, you can bet their proposals amount to breaking the net to preserving their business model.

These talks are secret, you know, like the ones you kept when you were twelve, so details are scant, but there's been leaks and they've have included some doozies.