Activism and new UK Film: How The Underground Recreated The Hero : Written By Jane Mcconnell     Jane McConnell @janemcconnell  and @futureartists May 8th 2012, Salford, UK   In Emily James’ Just Do It, we watch news packages from major news outlets interlaced with POV footage from protestors scaling the giant cooler chimneys at the Ratcliffe Power Station. For a UK audience, a film like Just Do It is particularly subversive – even controversial. The protests were decade-defining – it…

#OCCUPYMEDIA.   One Film Versus The World. The Lost Generation. They occupied Wall Street. NY. DC, Chicago. London. …What if they occupied the media? #occupymedia New Manchester film The Lost Generation is the UK’s newest feature film to be released independently – at the end of the world – on the 20th December 2012, which takes a searing look at freedom, cyberwarfare and our idea of celebrity.         FILM SYNOPSIS “Think of a law. She’s broken it. Think of…

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?

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.

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…

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…

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!

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…

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…

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…