Edinburgh and new models for filmmakers

Just back from the wonderful Edinburgh Film Festival, where I was participating on some panels for Power to the Pixel. Video will be up soon and I'll try to add it in. I had a great time, and the panels were a mix of old and new world folks discussing how to deal with the transformations of digital. I spoke about how filmmakers can continue to make money for their creativity in a world where things are trending towards free - not just free through piracy, but also where returns from ad supported sites are too little to live on, and where even the traditional models seem broken. Here's the slides, but a quick note - I tend to free-form deliver these, so the notes aren't everything that I talked about. Once the video is up, all will be revealed.

Filmmakers making a living with Free

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I also spoke about our Reframe project as a new business model that is actually working well for our partners. I focused more on how it is helping consumers by being a trusted source to find quality content. The slides are below. While there I also spoke on a Shooting People panel, but there's no slides from that presentation, which was kinda a mix of how Reframe works, and what new models exist for indie filmmakers in the digital landscape. Here's the Reframe slides:

Reframe Overview For EFF

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Open Video Conference Speech

I'm speaking at the Open Video Conference tomorrow, and then immediately boarding a plane for Edinburgh to speak (3 times) at the Power to the Pixel event at the film festival and at a Shooting People event. Then I take some much needed vacation in the Highlands. So, I am posting for all (4) of you lucky web readers, my open video presentation the day before. Wow, look out! it's short, they call it a "lighting talk" ... and it is at 5 minutes.

It's very simplistic, almost like a beginner's powerpoint. It's a style I borrowed from Jenny Toomey of the Ford Foundation, because I was about to present without any slides, but decided a few simple ones could help the flow. Nothing fancy needed here. I'm going to be pretty much ad-libbing about what I see as failures of the open video movement - mainly a lack of attention to the bigger picture, of which open video is just a tiny part. As well as a complete lack of real business models, and an unhealthy disrespect of the "dinoasurs" of old media, who are quite ready to beat the open folks into submission. Don't get me wrong, I'm on the open side, with a dose of realism against the utopianism, but when I looked at the schedule, it seemed like a bit of a love fest in need of a reality check. Here it is, and the Edinburgh ones soon:

Open Video Conference Present.

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