Hey Folks Current TV, From Here to Awesome and the Workbook Project are doing a FREE event on July 26th in Los Angeles that you should attend if you’re in town. DIY DAYS How do we sustain ourselves as filmmakers and storytellers in this day of shifting film distribution systems? How do we monetize our film and get the word out? Presented by From Here to Awesome the Workbook Project and Current TV – DIY DAYS aims to answer these…

John August, director of The Nines and also a screenwriter with a great blog, has written a really candid, useful post, partly in response to Mark Gill’s comments, about what he learned about distribution after his experiences with The Nines. Read his take on indiefreude and why acceptance to Sundance does not mean that you’ve made it and there’s money in the bank. He also makes the important point that there is much success to be found in Gill’s 99.9%…

Another new post is up on TOOLS, this time about The Conversation “a two-day conversation — definitely not a conference — about the future of cinema, video, games, and telling stories with new media” coming up in Berkeley, CA later this year and bought to you by Ken Goldberg, Scott Kirsner, Tiffany Shlain and Lance Weiler. I definitely plan to attend this because I know many of the people involved and I’m sure it will be a really useful and…

Those who have been following the recent is-the-sky-falling-on-independent-film debate might be interested in The Conversation “a two-day conversation — definitely not a conference — about the future of cinema, video, games, and telling stories with new media” coming up in Berkeley, CA later this year and bought to you by Ken Goldberg, Scott Kirsner, Tiffany Shlain and Lance Weiler. Here’s more info about some of the speakers and subject areas to be covered: Reed Hastings / Founder & CEO, Netflix…

I have just published a post on our TOOLS blog about the current discussions over Mark Gill’s talk at the Los Angeles Film Festival’s Financing Conference. I am consumed with how to get from here (between past and future models, looming recession, endless noise, very little signal, embattled communities) to there (is there a there there?) I know this is all terribly obtuse but I’m figuring this stuff out too! Bottom line: I know that organizations like Shooting People are…

Mark Gill’s talk at the Los Angeles Film Festival’s Financing Conference has been causing a right old kefuffle in the independent film community. It was read nearly 100,000 times on indieWIRE in 4 days. Here’s an upbeat nugget to wet your whistle: Here’s how bad the odds are: of the 5000 films submitted to Sundance each year– generally with budgets under $10 million–maybe 100 of them got a US theatrical release three years ago. And it used to be that…

I know this has been around for a while but I often play this clip from the South Park “Canada on Strike” episode when I’m talking to people about digital distribution so I thought it was about time I put it up on my blog! And I just gotta throw in this clip too. All the internet stars waiting to collect their money. Priceless!

John Tozzi’s Business Week article Indie Filmmakers Hit Their Target shows the abundance of new methods of distribution available to independent filmmakers. He details success stories of films and their creators who, rather than following traditional routes, are opting to take distribution on with the same entrepreneurial spirit they channel into their films. By maintaining their distribution rights, these filmmakers are carving new roads into advertising and distribution, while managing to draw a greater interest in their films (as opposed…

I went to the Where Internet and Film Collide event at the IFC Center last night, presented as part of Internet Week New York and hosted by IndieGoGo and Filmmaker Magazine. You can read more about the event on The Film Panel Notetaker but I wanted to link to some of the cool films I saw last night here too. First Green Porno. I love Isabella Rossellini – she’s beautiful, funny and the sort of person I would love to…

The excellent and knowledgeable Laure Parsons has recently started a new blog on distribution in the digital age called Infinicine. It’s pretty new and shiny right now but subscribe to it to get future updates on things happening in the big wide world of digital distribution. This stuff changes so quickly – blogs like this help you stay on top of things so you can make smart distribution decisions and not glaze over when people start talking about VOD and…