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…

Any of y’all going to Park City are  spoiled for choice for cool workshops to attend this year! The Filmmaker Summit is brought to you by the very wonderful people at Slamdance, Workbook Project and Open Video Alliance. We’re fans of all three so if you can’t make it to the Summit be sure to participate online and remember that it will be streaming live on Jan 23rd too. Here’s a statement from the producers of the event: The mission…

Nina Paley gave a great and very transparent talk at DIY Days in Philadelphia about her distribution strategy for Sita Sings the Blues and why she believes that giving away things for free can make good business sense. On the film’s website Paley says: “I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and…

Workbook Project’s New Breed brings you this piece by Zak Forsman on how to make the festival circuit work for you EVEN if you don’t have a film screening. The key advice is: manage your expectations and make connections because these connections will help you in the long haul and festivals are probably the best place to meet all the key players in one place. Here is Zak’s video from SXSW:

The incredibly useful Workbook Project recently added another weapon to its creative arsenal. NEW BREED consists of first person accounts of the filmmaking process – you can read through all the posts or go straight to the filmmakers or projects that you’re particularly interested in. The site outlines some NEW BREED goals for 2009: With the dawn of 2009 comes some new additions to the site. NEW BREED: CRITICAL FOCUS will introduce a new series of interviews, special topics addressed…

We blogged earlier about Laure Parson’s excellent new blog on digital distribution. She has recently relaunched the site with even more resources for filmmakers including a list of online markets and a discussion board. The latest interviews on the blog include Doug Block, Sujewa Ekanayake, Caachi, IndiePix and Shooting People’s Ingrid Kopp. This is a great resource for folk trying to get a handle on all the latest distribution options. If you find this helpful be sure to check out…

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…

The latest DIY list from Workbook Project contains some cool new links to check out including Friendfeed, Indiegogo, Plugoo and Sprout Builder. Sound like gobbledygook? This is Web2.0 baby. It’ll become a second language soon. Check it out!

If you haven’t checked out Lance Weiler’s Workbook Project yet then go there now because it is fast becoming an invaluable toolbox for indie filmmakers. The Workbook Project describes itself as “a social open source experiment for content creators” and Wired Magazine have called Weiler “One of twenty-five people helping to re-invent entertainment and change the face of Hollywood.” Here’s more about it from the site: Our goal is to create a free resource for content creators that will become…