Shooting people Blog

Is the Market always Right?

Posted Monday, November 22nd, 2010

Is it time to lobby for a quota system for cinema films, as in France, Germany and Spain, to support our beleaguered UK Film Industry?

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Why I said ‘no’ to the Broadcasters.

Posted Monday, October 11th, 2010

Guest blogger, Emily James, is currently in production on a feature documentary about environmental direct action groups, including Plane Stupid, Climate Camp, and Climate Rush. The film is crowd funding, and will be released under a Creative Commons license in early 2011.

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Can a niche film make money?

Posted Friday, September 17th, 2010

Shooter Mark X Jones is about to launch his first DVD.  Here he considers the journey the film has taken; a film he initially thought was too specialist to make any money.  http://shootingpeople.org/cards/MarkJones3 If making a film is akin to having a baby, then making the DVD is like packing the growing teenager off to college and making him face the world on his own two feet.  My (business) partner Maya Hammarsal and I are wondering how our off-spring will

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Jon Reiss Shows You How to Think Outside the Box Office

Posted Friday, December 18th, 2009

If you haven’t picked up a copy of Jon Reiss’ Think Outside the Box Office do yourself a favor and grab one now. Whatever kind of distribution and marketing strategy you are pursuing for your film (and if you haven’t got a strategy yet this book will help you develop one!), there are loads of good tips and ideas in here for you. This is a time when we all need to be sharing as many resources as possible to

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Digital Bootcamp Wiki – Help It Grow!

Posted Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

We’re really proud of the growing Digital Bootcamp Wiki. It started off as a companion to the workshops we have been conducting but it has now become a standalone resource on funding, distribution, marketing and so much more in the digital age. Wiki comes from the Hawaiian word for “fast” – and if you all collaborate to this wiki by adding to it we can help it grow even faster!

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Shooting People supports VODO

Posted Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

We’re pretty excited to let you know that we’ve up to a strategic partnership with VODO (short for voluntary donations), an experiment in new distribution from Shooter Jamie King. What’s the idea? Well, Jamie is also one of the directors of Steal This Film, a film that he achieved over 5 million downloads for by working with Pirate Bay to promote and distribute the film for him. He also received more voluntary donations for the film than he would have

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Digital Bootcamp Wiki

Posted Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

I created a wiki – digitalbootcamp.wikispaces.com – for the Shooting People Digital Bootcamp workshop conducted on July 4th 2009 at the Frontline Club – taught by James Mullighan, Harriet Fleuriot and myself. Like the workshop itself, most of these resources are aimed at documentary filmmakers but narrative filmmakers can find lots of good ideas here too. Please add to the wiki if you have additional links, tips and tricks to share – we want plenty of collaboration in the spirit

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Digital Bootcamp at the Frontline Club

Posted Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

I’m part of a Shooting People team teaching a workshop on how filmmakers can best use the web at the Frontline Club in London on Saturday, July 4th. The workshop will include case studies on films that have harnessed the power of the web, tips on using social media, and online strategy and resources for filmmakers. If you’re looking for help distributing and marketing your film online then Digital Bootcamp is for you! I’m working on some lovely slides for

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DocAgora Webplex – funding, festival and distribution info all in one place!

Posted Monday, May 11th, 2009

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

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You’ve Got It Made – Scottish Screen Short Film Distribution Guide

Posted Monday, February 16th, 2009

Scottish Screen have provided a very handy downloadable guide to the world of short film distribution. It covers all the bases from festivals to sales agents to digital distribution. If you are even considering making a short film you should read this guide. One of the things I am learning is that thinking about distribution AFTER your film is made is usually way too late. You should be thinking about the goals you have for your film from day 1

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