There’s so much going on at the moment I feel rather gleefully overwhelmed. The Spirit Awards will be broadcast live on IFC tomorrow at 5pmET but I’m also going to be watching a webcast of the red carpet on IFC.com at 2.30pmET with commentary from SXSW’s Matt Dentler and IFC’s Alison Willmore.

And then of course on Sunday there’s some Oscar something or other happening. I’m going to find a friend with a bigger TV than mine and make some careless financial bets. It makes it more fun when “stakes is high.”

On a smaller scale but no less enjoyable, earlier in the week I went to the Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series night that Michael Tully guest-curated with aplomb. He chose some films that I already know and love (The Zellner’s Foxy and the Weight of the World and the Duplass’s The Intervention) but it’s always a pleasure to watch old favorites with an audience. I finally got a chance to see Matthew Lessner’s clever and rather heartbreaking By Modern Measure and Josh Safdie’s beautiful We’re Going to the Zoo – and I reveled in the wonderful Weekend by Henrik Andersson, a film that makes me want to move to Scandinavia and wear a lot of beige. Check out upcoming screenings from the series – Barbes is always a fun place to drink beer and watch films on a Monday night.

On Tuesday I moderated an IFP Industry Connect panel on alternative distribution options which was very useful for me as I’m currently writing an article on that very subject. There was healthy debate amongst the panelists who brought a wealth of experience working on everything from: new models for theatrical (IFC Films with their day and date strategy), aggregating for iTunes (New Video), digital cinema ventures (Emerging Cinema), new web fundraising strategies (IndieGoGo), and online film sites (IndiePix). I’ll post more feedback in here shortly as the article comes together. It’s a subject I have been thinking about somewhat obsessively of late – for now there’s more discussion on this on the TOOLS blog.

Enjoy the film-tastic weekend!

As a card carrying feminist (except they don’t give us cards which is very unfortunate!) I am embarrassed to admit that I’m not half the geek I would like to be. I can’t code much more than an html link and I don’t really understand what the Semantic Web is although I like the sound of it very much. I got a bit obsessed with solid-state drives over the weekend but am still not really sure what is so good about them to justify the $1,300 price difference between the MacBook Air with a regular hard drive and the one with a smaller but no doubt fabulous solid-state drive.

Despite these shortcomings I have been getting very excited about the line-up for the Interactive Festival at SXSW this year although I will be too busy attending the Film Festival to actually go to any interactive panels. I hope that they podcast lots of them because I finally got around to listening to the podcasts from 2007 recently and found them fascinating – and very amusing to see how of-the-moment so much of this stuff is, there’s lots of excited talk about what the super-secret iPhone oooooooh will be like for example. I think it’s a shame that there isn’t more film/interactive crossover in the panels because there are so many business and marketing panels in the interactive fest that are increasingly relevant to filmmakers as they pursue new distribution strategies. I found out about so many amazing websites, projects and ideas from the 2007 Interactive podcasts and that was a mere smidgeon of what was covered at the event itself.

Speaking of distribution, I’ll be moderating a panel for IFP Industry Connect tomorrow to talk about alternative distribution options with Ryan Werner from IFC Films, Slava Rubin from IndieGoGo and Jordan Mattos and Bob Alexander from IndiePix. Will be interesting to hear what they’re all up to and where they see things heading in 2008.

This has been doing the rounds recently. I know if I had made a film I would probably be very upset to think of people watching it on their phones and iPods but I also think that you have to let people watch stuff in the way they want to watch it. Otherwise you just end up sounding crabby and elitist. I still prefer to see films in the popcorn-aroma cinema surrounded by other people in a dark and magical room, of course I do, but if I want to watch something on my “fucking telephone” then I will. So there.

Interesting post I just stumbled upon (and I mean this literally, I wasn’t using StumpleUpon!) on Chris Anderson’s Long Tail blog. He has posted an email he received from a filmmaker who is finding it very difficult to make a living in long tail land and who argues that it benefits big companies and consumers but that small producers are still struggling to survive:

Your Long Tail theory is a basic and profound truth that I happily embrace AS A CONSUMER. But as a producer and creator of Long Tail content it is basically spelling out my doom. Other than your book examples which are still basically about VERY LARGE entities and aggregators, I am finding very few self supporting examples of independent Long Tail producers.

It feels like niche markets and the tools of Web 2.0 are ideal for small producers but how does everything add up? I would love more stats on this stuff. Anybody know where to find them?

David Carr has an article in The New York Times this week on the “glut of cinema” in theaters at the moment.

Just the other day I was trying to figure out if Great World of Sound had already been released in NYC and was horrified to find out that it had come and gone without me noticing! There are so many movies out at the moment that I hadn’t even noticed the release of a film I really loved and wanted to tell all my friends to see. In the article Bingham Ray, now with Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, says “I very much doubt this environment would have given people a chance to see ‘My Dinner With Andre.’” Is this true? How are small indie films going to have a fighting chance? Is it just that everybody is misguidedly trying to get everything released at this time of year or are there just too many damn movies being made? Does the cream rise to the top? I think a lot of the cream gets pushed out of the cinema before it gets a chance to do much of anything.

King Corn opens today at Cinema Village in NYC. This is a really important documentary about the American food system, raising provocative questions about the way our food is produced, from the subsidized genetically-modified corn that plays such a large, and unhealthy role, in the American diet, to the cows that are fattened up on corn, a food they do not normally eat, in vast feed lots. This film made me really start thinking about what I put into my mouth, ahem, and also about the fact that food in this country may be too cheap, not reflecting the financial realities of food production. But if this all sounds too dry, it’s not. The story is told through college buddies Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis attempting to grow an acre of corn in Iowa and then follow it through the food system – it’s an entertaining journey that will also put you off drinking soda (high-fructose corn syrup is NEVER a good idea) for life!

Check out the website for more information about where you can see the film and how you can get involved:
www.kingcorn.net

Radiohead are letting their fans decide how much to pay to download their new album In Rainbows. When you order the download it gives you the option to fill in the amount saying “It’s up to you” and then “No really, it’s up to you.” Is this the future of the music industry – trusting loyal fans to pony up the bucks for the work that they value and love, circumventing the bureaucracy and dishonesty of the music industry? Would this work with films? Are people willing to pay for stuff they believe in? I would really like to believe that the answer is yes.

There is more on the threat this could be posing to the music industry in The Guardian.

I know I have been rabbiting on a bit about last week’s Filmmaker Conference but there are so many great resources available online which I think will be extremely useful for all those filmmakers who couldn’t make the event itself. As usual Lance Weiler has tons of great links and video on the Workbook Project for your viewing pleasure. This panel on consumer viewing habits, moderated by Weiler, will give you lots of good techy tips on how to create an audience for your work and keep ‘em loyal:

Those of you who read my previous post on copyright will be interested to see that Brett Gaylor is on this panel talking about Open Source Cinema, “a collaborative documentary project to create a feature film about copyright in the digital age.” You, yes you, can get involved in this project too so visit the website to find out more.

If all this geek-talk is getting you hot under the collar and you find yourself muttering words like long tail, crowdsourcing and, oh yes, string theory smackdown, then you should have a browse through the Wired Geekipedia. Do you know your DRM from your SEO? You will after reading this.

I’m moderating a panel on “Creating Content for New Platforms” this afternoon so if you’re attending the IFP Filmmaker Conference come on by and find out more about what’s happening on the web and on a teeny tiny screen near you!

There are lots of great people in town for IFP and the panels I attended yesterday on festival/marketplace strategy and finding your audience provided plenty of food for thought. We’ll be excerpting transcripts from Brian Geldin, the trusty Film Panel Notetaker, on the Shooting People bulletins all this week.

International copyright is such a tricky issue. On the one hand I understand that artists and businesses need to make money in order to survive personally and commercially, but it is also clear that the winds of change are blowing and, as one man says in Steal This Film, “When the winds of change are blowing, some people build shelters while others build windmills.” People thought that the VCR was going to destroy the film industry but it didn’t. What will happen now with the Internet, downloads, file-sharing and peer to peer networks? Some of the windmill builders are the people behind The Pirate Bay, a huge bittorent tracker and the subject of the first part of Steal This Film. I’d love to know what others think about this issue because I have to admit I feel really out of my depth.

Watch the first part of Steal This Film and post your comments.

Some useful resources for those willing to wade into these shark infested waters are the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, the brainchild of Lawrence Lessig, the Center for Social Media, the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the US and The Open Rights Group in the UK, and Cory Doctorow (co-editor of Boing Boing) who is particularly eloquent on the problems with DRM. And of course Creative Commons - allowing content creators to decide which rights are reserved.

UPDATE: Check out the Steal This Film podcast from BRITDOC 07 here.