Just passing on some cracking advice that my brother found on Ted Hope’s superb blog. If you do not have distribution, you are not ready to play film festivals if: * you do not have your trailer made and up on the web; * you do not have clips selected and up on the web; * you have not been writing a blog regarding the film for a significant length of time; * you do not have a plan on…
People often question the power of writers in film and life generally. However I think this is a mistake, after all, look at what the Writer’s Guild have secretly managed to achieve. For the past fifteen years it’s been a common assumption that the invention and popularisation of the mobile telephone has kicked a hole in many film staples. My mobile phone service provider even has a long running series of cinema adverts which often have fun with how this…
My dear friend Sara Pascoe has pointed me in the direction of this, quite frankly terrifying, website – Dr.Wicked’s Writing Lab. The site is based on the principle that “A tangible consequence is more effective than an intangible reward” or less obliquely “If I don’t write stories for [a creative writing] class, I will receive scorn from my teacher and a bad grade in the class. If I don’t write my own stories I am only disappointing myself. I experience…
OK, I think that actually means “Good Morning Panda” but the Welsh for “Hallo” seems to be “Hylo” which didn’t really seem to go far enough in making the point that my lovely bear shaped film is going to be shown on S4C, Channel 4′s Welsh sister station. So if you happen to be in Wales on the 17th May and you happen to be unable or unwilling to sleep and find yourself near a television at about 3.50am then…
According to indieWIRE the audience at Hot Docs jumped 42% from 2008 to 2009 and had record breaking numbers this year (122,000). This is fantastic news for a festival with such a superb line-up of documentaries. The top 10 audience votes reflect just a tiny percent (and range) of the films screened: 1. The Cove (D: Louie Psihoyos; USA) 2. 65_RedRoses (D: Philip Lyall, Nimisha Mukerji; Canada) 3. Inside Hana’s Suitcase (D: Larry Weinstein; Canada, Czech Republic) 4. Best Worst…
The Open Video Conference looks like an interesting couple of days for anyone interested in online video and the future of open and participatory culture on the web. From their description: Open Video is more than just open codecs. It’s the growing movement for transparency, interoperability, and further decentralization in online video. These qualities provide more fertile ground for independent producers, bottom-up innovation, and greater protection for free speech online. The conference will showcase awesome cultural works, inspiring talks, and…
Another great resource! Scott Kirsner, author of the incredibly useful Fans, Friends and Followers which I mentioned earlier on this blog, has set up a wiki called Power Tools for sharing much of the information he has collated on audience building, collaboration and commerce. There are already a bunch of useful links on there on things like social networks, analytics, blogging and online video – but like all wikis this will be much more valuable if filmmakers like you get…
The catch is you have to contribute some of this info! But check out the DocAgora Webplex website. There’s already a lot of great resources on there for documentary filmmakers and this is the sort of site that will only get stronger as more people use it and contribute to it (it’s early days yet so don’t expect a complete database at this stage). I was talking to a filmmaker at Hot Docs who said that he wished that there…
