For
several years now, I have sat on a variety of pitch panels. From a
privileged seat like this, these are great events where I see new work,
hear from smart colleagues, smile at a turn of wit, and wince at the
inevitable awkward moments. Like most of my brethren on “that” side of
the table, I try to be kind, constructive and fair in my comments to
these filmmakers struggling to make their vision come to light. I try to
imagine what it must be like to be in their shoes. But what I have
learned is that nothing can prepare you for what it must be like to be
in those shoes until you are actually IN them. And that, my friends, is
what I did in Toronto at the Hot Docs Forum 2013.
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Independent filmmakers
looking for ways to get their content both monetized and in the hands of
audiences, Vimeo has just the thing for you! At SXSW 2013, Vimeo announced
their new Vimeo On Demand platform, a service that grew from their “Tip Jar”
concept. With Vimeo On Demand, any Vimeo PRO member ($199/year) can make their
content available for a fee. The filmmaker has ultimate flexibility in setting
price, launch date, rental time or download, countries available, etc. iTunes
and Amazing offer similar deals to filmmakers, however what is unique for Vimeo
On Demand is that Vimeo only takes 10%; the majority of the profit goes to the
content creator.
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The sound stylists at the Boolean Studio house band (aka Twin Goat) tagged yours truly as part of The Next Big Thing. Briefly, TNBT is a way for writers to promote recent projects by answering a set of standardized questions. Twin Goat thought why not musicians? And why not filmmakers too? Below are the questions I’ve been assigned to answer in regards to the film I’m producing, called Street Fighting Man (w.t.), for your edutainment. Enjoy!
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With all the reports filtering back Eastward from the 2013 True/False Film Festival in Columbia, MO as a non-eyewitness I can't really pin down what happened out there, between the game shows, parades, parties and secret screenings and the festival's commitment to questioning the genre line between fact and fiction. Luckily LEF's Executive Director Lyda Kuth was at True/False to take in all the exciting new work that's happening and to applaud LEF grantees Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel in being the recipients of the 2013 True Vision Award
One new element of the festival that caught our attention at LEF was the Neither/Nor screening series, launched this year to provide "a historical overview of films that explore and/or break free of the dubious dichotomy of fact and fiction." The series makes a selection of works that are outside of the fact/fiction divide - films that can be called "Chimeras" after the mythological figure made up of different animal parts.
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I recently went to " Convergence Journalism? Emerging Documentary and Multimedia Forms of News," a discussion with Jason Spingarn-Koff, of the New York Times, and Alexandra Garcia, multimedia journalist at the Washington Post and current Neiman Fellow for journalism at Harvard University. Sponsored by MIT's Open Doc Lab and moderated by Sarah Wolozin, the talk was part of the MIT Communications Forum, an ongoing series of talks held at the MIT Media Lab. Online multimedia journalism is growing and changing by leaps and bounds - there's a lot of room to try out new ways to do the news, and these journalists are experimenting, with successful results.
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In this time of scarce resources and DIY/DIWO attitudes, it’s rare that a week (or a day) will go by without an alert from a friend about their new Kickstarter campaign raising dollars to start/finish/distribute their film project. But in recent weeks, a new Kickstarter wave has crept into my inbox. Two art house theaters near and dear to my heart are Kickstarting their digital conversions.
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For the past two years, the LEF Foundation has supported a forum created by the team at the Cinema Eye Honors. The Forum takes place each year the morning of the event, gathering Cinema Eye nominees and industry leaders for a round table discussion. The intent is to engage filmmakers in a discussion of their experiences and challenges, find areas of mutual benefit and concern, and strive to work collectively toward learning and change.
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Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly are the poster children for the new generation of entrepreneurial independent filmmakers.
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The MIT Open Documentary Lab have partnered with IDFA's DocLab to create an online exploration of the history of the love affair between nonfiction storytelling and technology.
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We are so fortunate, here in Boston, to have the resources of the MIT Open Doc Lab in our backyard. Last night I attended “The People Formerly Known As the Subject,” a presentation by the amazing Katrina Cizek and Gerry Flahive – the minds and motivation behind HIGHRISE.
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