Some useful ideas explored here from New Breed – these are part of an on-going series from Filmmaker Magazine and The WorkBook Project to document the Filmmaker Summit held last Saturday at Slamdance (more about this to follow soon). Filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah of Sabi Pictures arrive at Park City with an intent to define the questions most relevant to independent distribution options. Insights from Brian Newman, Dan Mirvish, Jon Reiss and Ira Deutchman open a path…

Select stories from the Spring issue of Filmmaker Magazine are now online and there are a couple of articles I particularly recommend as far as tools you can use goes: Esther Robinson tells you how to keep your credit sweet. And Jon Reiss gives some great pointers on marketing DVDs on the web. Filmmakers talk about shooting films with still camera. And Lance Weiler talks about building community on torrent sites.

Super producer and super nice guy Ted Hope gave a keynote address at Film Independent’s Filmmaker Forum in Los Angeles over the weekend. If you need to gird your loins for the challenges and opportunities ahead you should read it because you, dear readers, are the TRULY FREE FILMMAKERS he is talking about, or at least you can be. A THOUSAND PHOENIX RISING How The New Truly Free Filmmaking Community Will Rise From Indie’s Ashes I can’t talk about the…

Scott Macaulay had some interesting things to say about how the way that we watch stuff affects our impression of it in the latest Filmmaker newsletter. He writes about a comment left in response to Noah Harlan’s post about new business models: Rather than debate business models, this poster said, why don’t filmmakers just focus on making a good picture? He (or, perhaps another anonymous poster) wrote, “I don’t see distribution as the thorn in indie’s side. I see quality…

We’re doing a bit of a catch-up on things that have been happening in the blogosphere over the past few weeks and wanted to draw your attention to this piece by Noah Harlan on the Filmmaker Magazine blog – written after he returned from the Sundance Producer’s Lab. In it he addresses online, ad-supported business models and comes to the conclusion that “In an ad-based model you would need a minimum of at least 800,000 viewers and possibly as many…

Belated congrats to my friend and Shooting People colleague, Jesse Epstein, for being one of the “25 new faces of independent film” in Filmmaker Magazine. In addition to getting to pose in a big red truck for Filmmaker, her film 34x25x36 is also playing in the YouTube screening room. Ms Epstein is awesome. Still from 34x25x36

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…