Reclaiming DIY Slides from DIY Days

Here's the slides from my recent DIY Days NYC speech (below). I think it went well, and feedback was pretty good, but please give me more of your feedback below. I don't speak from notes, and there are very few notes embedded in the notes section of the slides, so I'll post the video from the presentation when it becomes available, but I do think you can get the gist of it.

DIY Days - Reclaiming DIY: it’s not JUST a business model

View more presentations from Brian Newman.

I added a slide to specifically point out one important thing – it needs more diversity in the samples I show. I said this from the stage, when I was showing the slide on Sarah Jacobson, but I noticed a couple of tweets where people missed my explanation for this. Here's the text of the note I added:

"Note: In my live presentation, this is where I stopped and explained to everyone that this slide-set really needs more diversity, especially in regards to women. I searched the web for many more images of DIY women pioneers, for this section and the earlier one (where I show Barbara Kopple) and had a very hard time finding them – not that they didn’t exist, but it is hard to find images of many of these pioneering artists online (especially of the right size and image quality). This acknowledgement doesn’t change the slight, but does hopefully make it clear that I am aware of the need for a new version of this in the future that takes into account people like Susan Robeson, filmmakers who worked with Third World and California Newsreel and more. I welcome suggestions in the comments section."

And I welcome more suggestions in the comments of this blog. I've got a pretty strong track record of calling people out for not addressing the strong history (and currency as well) of diverse thinkers and artists in this space, but it needs to be pointed out that I had this same problem. I also suggested that it would make a good project - reclaiming this history online, and a few people volunteered on Twitter, I'd be happy to meet about this. Just for a quick example, I can link you to Susan Robeson on Third World Newsreel, but a cursory image search for her doesn't bring much up at the pixel level needed for slides. I am sure I could've searched better if I'd had more than three days to prepare these slides!

Anyway, hope you enjoy these.

UnLogo - a great new project!

After my last post, I received a couple of comments telling me to check out Jeff Crouse's UnLogo project. I did, and thought it was worth taking out of the comments and adding this as an actual post. I could write more about it, but Jeff's video about the project is short and sweet and makes everything pretty easy to understand. Jeff (whom I've never met) has some other great projects on his site as well - my favorite being the Godblock app, certifying that a website is free of messages of religious indoctrination. Check out his other projects after you watch this video.

Unlogo Intro from Jeff Crouse on Vimeo.

Ten Great Things about Indie Film

I do a fair bit of complaining about the state of things on this blog, so I thought I’d take a moment to post about some good things for once. Riffing off Ted Hope’s list(s) of bad things in the industry, in a friendly manner, here’s my top ten list for good things going on. Sure, there’s more than ten, but I didn’t want to come up with 38 (much less 75), so I thought ten was a nice round number.

1. Ch-ch-changes: There’s been a lot of change at the top in the industry lately. We’ve seen big change at the New York Film Festival, MoMA, AFI, Full-Frame, LA Film Festival, Sundance and Indiewire to name just a few. That’s a great thing - new perspectives are needed and all of these organizations will probably be stronger for it in the long run. This is nothing against the people who left - in most cases, I know them and like them, but I like a little shake-out in the sector. It would be great to see a little more shake-out amongst the other “gate-keepers” in the industry, but hey, this is a start.
2. Sharing: It’s much easier for filmmakers to communicate and collaborate on projects now. While not all of the data I’d like to see is available, it is much easier for me, and everyone else, to communicate with one another and see what’s working and what isn’t working. It’s much easier to share and promote info on one’s film, to crowd-source production, funding and even audience building. As more tools are built to facilitate collaboration and sharing, we’ll see even greater things built - and anything that makes us less truly alone as an indie is a good thing.
3. Tools: Following on the sharing, we have some pretty cool new tools at our disposal - Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, Crowd-Controls, Open Indie, Top-Spin, Good Screenings, WireWax and Wreck-a-movie being just a few worthy of mention. There’s plenty more (even the big ones like Facebook and Twitter are helpful to indies), and new things being developed everyday. Not to mention the DSLR revolution and other production tech changes - all helping indies to make a better film, often more cheaply.
4. The return of small: There’s always been a vibrant regional film festival scene, and while there has been a little shake-out, there’s also been a few smaller festivals rising up that promise good things - Indie Memphis, Flyway Film Fest and Camden to name just a few. Even the new Vimeo Festival (owned by a decidedly not small company) showed how well a “small” fest could work this year. Then we have the rise of indie film clubs and screening series, such as Cinema Speakeasy, Cinefist, the Pretentious Film Society, UnionDocs and similar efforts. I can’t even begin to name them all, and they make for a much more vibrant film culture. They’re also a great way for emerging filmmakers to build a support network, get exposure early on and develop a fan base - all good things.
5. Doc-everything: The doc world is growing up, in so many ways. From an evolution in pitching markets (the GoodPitch) to new funding mechanisms (Gucci, Impact, Fledgling, etc) and old (Sundance, Participant, Ford) and outreach support (Film Sprout, Working Films) and even new festivals (DocNYC) taking stage while older ones (Sheffield, IDFA, HotDocs) continue to thrive, while new blogs (What not to Doc) enter to give great advice - the field is alright. Sure, it’s still tough to make a doc, and yes, there’s a bit too much focus on social issue docs, but this is arguably the healthiest part of the sector. Note: I am leaving off at least a hundred names that are part of this vibrant scene, and I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings. This is a testament to the health of the sector.
6. We’re figuring out distribution: For real. You can’t go to a festival anymore without some panel on distribution. There’s a plethora of experts to help you (Broderick and Reiss, amongst others); lots of alternative options to explore (Argot, Tuckman, Variance, Cinema Purgatorio); new avenues for VOD and digital (Gravitas, Brainstorm Media); a few web platforms trying new models (IndieFlix) and yes, even some of those supposed dinosaurs, traditional distributors, are figuring out how to make some things work (trust me, ask a few people like Magnolia, for example). We haven’t solved this puzzle yet, but we have more minds focused on it than ever before, and many more options to explore.
7. We’re thinking beyond the film: Sure, you might not be hip to transmedia, or may even hate it, but more and more artists are realizing that they are often creating a project, of which a film is just one component. This helps with expanding the story, giving more avenues for audience engagement and opening up potential revenue streams. While not everyone will be a Lance Weiler or Jeff Gomez, all of us can benefit from trying some new storytelling methods.
8. VoDo: I’ve explained it here before, but essentially VoDo is a simple way to support filmmakers on pirate networks. But piracy is a bad thing, you say. “Waah” says I. Keep bashing your head against the wall hoping it will go away. In the meantime, smarter people have thought up a way to turn a possible negative into a definite positive - we could use more of such creative thinking.
9. Filmmaker Magazine: Scott Macaulay somehow keeps improving this magazine, in spite of the competition and in spite of his busy producing schedule. Without picking on anyone, ahem, Filmmaker Magazine is quite literally the only trade publication worth reading anymore as an indie (I am not counting little guys like HTN (etc) in this mix, they rock). While the website could use some modernization (the content is good though), the magazine overall continues to serve up a great mix of reviews, news, analysis, new faces and new ideas. Thank goodness for that, because very few others are looking good in this race (to the bottom for most).
10. Variety is behind a paywall. Boy, I’ve never heard people gripe more than when Variety cut off their free access. But here’s the deal folks - the same 5,000 people or so (maybe more, just guessing) that paid for this in the past will pay for access now. Does it make their Tweets pointless? Yes. Did it open up even more room for their new rivals? Yes. Did it get thousands of indies to stop obsessing over sh-t that they don’t need to know about? Yes, and that’s a darn good thing.

So, tell me what you think of these ten things - are they good? What did I miss? 

Creative Rights & Artists

I'm spending this week over at the ArtsJournal Blog Network, taking part in a conversation with 20 other bloggers on artists, culture and policy.  The idea is for us to discuss the following topic for an entire week:

"Arts and culture are a cornerstone of American society. But arts and culture workers are often left out of important policy conversations concerning technology and creative rights even though the outcomes will have a profound impact on our world. Is it benign neglect? Or did we miss an essential call to action and engagement? With a new administration moving full speed ahead on technology and copyright issues, do artists even know what the priorities are? Can they recognize opportunities to make a case for what their work needs to thrive, and how it impacts society? Join us as we examine what exactly does it take to bring arts and culture to the table, and how our field can become more proactive to carve out a more powerful place for the arts in 21st century America"

There's already a fair amount of conversation on today, day one of the topic. I've posted my first thoughts here, and I hope you can join us on the blog and contribute your thoughts. Too lazy to link over? My basic argument, thus far, is that we're not interesting artists in the policy debate because it isn't positioned artfully. Perhaps if we gave artists the tools to create (and some dough), they might create a more powerful message about the importance of arts to policy and vice versa.

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.

FFF - What we can learn from social issue docs

All this doom and gloom in the film business is getting to me...

Nah, just kidding. I actually think that all of my posts lately have been pretty upbeat, even though some people have said otherwise - the underlying message is to figure out ways to make the film business work better. I also don’t hear as much negativity out there in the media business as I used to, in fact, most of that talk is getting pretty old and stale. When I meet with serious filmmakers, and by this I mean whether emerging or established, they have their heads on their shoulders and know the various games you have to play to make films and get them seen, they are pretty upbeat. They are generally excited about all of the changes, they can’t wait to experiment more and they can now at least try around with some new ideas since the old ones didn’t work well for many of them. Okay, quick aside, I do still meet serious filmmakers who are depressed, but I’ve posted enough about them for now and this is a happy post. So I’m now initiating a new category of post here, one devoted to nothing but the good news, the things that are working amazingly f-in well, things I love about film or the film world today or people I want to champion. I hope to keep up the good spirits at least once a week, but given my general grouchiness, and how many projects that pay me are on my plate that week, it may slip (unless I find some happy guest-bloggers, hint hint). I need a name for this feature, but I’m going to try and crowd-source that work - suggest away in the comments or via DM or email. For now, in the spirit of Twitter’s Follow Friday or #FF, I’ll call it FFF for Fun F***in Friday, which also let’s me celebrate cursing, my favorite hobby after film.

This week’s FFF - social issue documentary film. Yes, this sector is not usually associated with fun, but if you’re raising money, looking for help, looking for partners and strategies, looking for a community, building an audience, searching for new strategies, thinking about how curation helps content at festivals or pretty much any other activity in film, this is the Fun sector for you! I’m not kidding. The doc sector in general, but especially the social issue doc sector is thriving, has built some semblance of an infrastructure and is connecting with audiences, which isn’t easy for tough subject matter. It’s doing so well, in fact, that lots of filmmakers get upset that unless they are making a social issue doc there’s no chance for grant support, etc. But this is FFF, no complaining allowed - instead, we should look at what they are doing right and try to replicate some of it in the rest of the film world. So what water are they drinking? Well, someone who actually works in it daily can probably chime in with more than this list, but here’s a start (not in order of importance, just the order in which I think of them):