Jeremy Walker is taking the Summer, and possibly the rest of his life, off from film publicity. He has written a piece for indieWIRE reflecting on the nature of publicity (and the importance of good film stills!) Read it to find out more about what publicists should and should not do. For example:

Filmmakers should not think about what goodies a publicist can “get” for them; rather they should think about how a publicist can integrate their film into both the culture of news and the culture at large.

If you need a little help sorting out your RSS feeds from your Wikis then check out the videos on The CommonCraft Show. Lee LeFever explains the basics in a wonderfully clear way and will get you started with some suggested links to try out. Topics include:

Twitter
Social Networking
Social Bookmarking
Blogs
Wikis
RSS

Films uploaded to Shooting People can now be embedded across the web (you can turn this option off when you upload your film if you don’t want it to be shared).

Have a play and please give us feedback. Here’s the trailer for Paul Taylor and Teddy Leifer’s documentary We Are Together to show you what the player looks like.

Is anyone using Twitter actively? Do you find it useful? Do you find out about cool stuff through Twitter? Or is it just more noise, less signal?

Personally I’m a little addicted but I’m not sure if it’s a good, productive addiction or a bad, waste-of-time, distracting addiction. It’s a little like being at a big dinner party and trying to have lots of different conversations at the same time and never quite getting to the point.

Paul Harrill over on Self-Reliant Film has compiled a great list of resources about the Red One digital camera - from forums and wikis to training videos and software.

Great quote from Steven Soderbergh on the Red website: For me, this is Year Zero; I feel I should call up Film on the phone and say, “I’ve met someone.”

So once again Radiohead have pioneered a new and interesting model for distribution

To celebrate this week’s single release (we still have those in England) Radiohead have broken up the song ‘Nude’ into pieces for you to remix.

For those of you who enjoy this sort of thing, you can buy the separate components or ’stems’ (bass, voice, guitar, strings/FX and drums) and remix your own version of the song. You can do this by adding your own beats and instrumentation or just remixing the original parts. More information here: http://www.radioheadremix.com/information/

You can buy the stems here: http://www.radioheadremix.com/buy/

You can upload your finished mixes here http://www.radioheadremix.com and be judged and even voted on by ‘the public’.
You can also create a widget allowing votes from your own website, Facebook or MySpace page to be sent through too.

Hope you enjoy it

For those of you who aren’t that way inclined, Nude is also available in its entirety on CD and 7 inch (UK release) at the usual retail outlets.

I recently interviewed a few folk in the UK about making short films for an article I have been writing. My old friend Ashley Jones of Green Lions was kind enough to give me a really thoughtful interview about the work he has been doing recently so I thought I would post the whole thing here:

When did you start making short films and what kind of films do you make?

When we were kids, my brothers and I used to make short films on Super 8 - mainly fiction stuff – silly stories and stop-motion inspired by Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer video, ‘Morph’ and ‘Noseybonks’. Back then, our films were technically all over the place, but they were great fun to make, honest and visually exciting stories – I still hold on to these elements. I now co-run a production company, Green Lions (greenlions.com), making films full-time with my creative partner, director David Bond. We make films for all sorts of people - for us, for broadcasters, for Current TV, for charities, for ad agencies. We are working on a feature doc at the moment, a series of short docs about sex workers and their punters, two ace films for Current TV, and a series of funny drama-docs for Greenpeace.

When did you start making films for Current? What films have you made for them? What has your experience with them been like?

Our first film, ‘Guerrilla Gardening’ was made for the UK launch of Current TV last year and was our first ‘proper’ commission for a network. More recently we made a film called ‘Mushroom Miracle’. The film follows a group of foragers looking for (edible) mushrooms, but really it’s about our friend Mama Irene who is an amazing character and cooks delicious food. One of the great things about working with Current TV is the opportunity to develop ideas and screen-test fun and interesting people. Current TV’s UK commissioning team is also fantastic. We’ve learnt loads from them about the discipline of making short docs, being economical with story and making your audience really care about your characters and contributors in a short space of time.

How do you feel as a filmmaker about current opportunities for making shorts and distributing? Is it easier to get stuff to an audience than it used to be? Can you make a living from it?

It’s now definitely much easier to get films out there. Over the last couple of years the infrastructure and viewing quality has massively improved. There is now a growing culture of ‘do-ers’ – filmmakers not waiting for other people to fund their next project, but going out and making it themselves. If you have access to a video camera – you don’t even need to own one – you can get out there and tell a story. The opportunities for distribution are of course greater but making a living from shorts is still a challenge. At the moment our secret is to deliver exciting short films that stand out and make a difference, whilst at the same time taking on enough corporate work to pay the rent!

Do you watch shorts? If so where: TV, DVD, online?

I love watching shorts online and it has become my preferred method of watching telly (that and DVD episodes of The Wire!). Current TV is definitely my favourite place for short docs. I also love FourDocs, as well as the brilliant 3 Minute Wonders on Channel 4’s website. Of course I watch tons of YouTube, but generally search or follow links rather than just trawl. I’m also a huge fan of the Moving Images section of www.archive.org, and I’m really into Vice’s www.vbs.tv - some really exciting work there. As for fiction, the recent series of New York Times sponsored short films were cool (http://tinyurl.com/2my54d), and I was over the moon when a new Yacht Rock episode (www.yachtrock.com) appeared on channel101.com earlier this year.

Have you submitted to festivals? Have you screened at festivals? How important are festivals to you?

We try to submit all our films to relevant festivals and often use withoutabox.com. Festivals are a great way to get your films out to new audiences, and the increasing number of film festivals means it’s much easier to reach specific, targeted audiences. For example, one of our Current TV films is playing next month at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, as part of a discussion about the significance of place and identity in London’s East End. The film and talk will inspire new urban strategies to help local inhabitants identify with their environment. It’s great that our film can add to a bigger discussion and this movement for change.

Have you considered using a sales agent to sell your films to TV stations etc?

We have been to see one or two sales agents. At the moment we work directly with our friends and contacts at the various channels, and use our commissioned films as calling cards to help us get charity and corporate work. As we develop our body of work and our slate of ideas we will definitely be looking to get more serious with a sales agency. I really think the sales agency business will also change and adapt to recognize small but innovative companies like ours, and develop new revenue opportunities for shorts and online film.

How savvy do you think most filmmakers are about all the opportunities currently open to them?

Independent filmmakers and small indies like us have a real opportunity beyond traditional TV and are beginning to bite at the heels of the bigger, corporate indies. The filmmakers we meet all eagerly embrace the new world of online delivery and multi-channels. We try not to get too obsessed with the latest delivery craze – if a channel is going to work, it will last beyond the initial hype. The important thing is story, with heart. Films that have that will always find an audience.

How web savvy are you? Do you think it’s important to know how to utilize the web to market and distribute your work?

I’m fairly savvy but I always think I should be doing more! It’s really important to be using it well and there are definitely more and more opportunities in online drama and factual content through places like social networking sites. We are talking with MySpace and FaceBook about a couple of factual series at the moment. The success of internet drama shows such as Sofia’s Diary and KateModern shows that commissioners are interested in developing more and more online content which can only be a good thing for filmmakers. It will be exciting to see how we can do this for documentary.

Own-it provide intellectual property advice for creative businesses and while their free events are located in and around London, they have lots of free resources for anyone to download. Just see below…

Tamsin

SP London

Own-it provides:

• free legal contract templates, articles, podcasts and factsheets available for download
• free legal advice and a detailed FAQ section
• events to enable creative people to make the most of their ideas
• a directory of useful resources and contacts across creative sectors.

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!

Photoshop Express is a new free online photo editing application from Adobe. Of course it doesn’t give you all the tools of the desk-based application but it’s free and it looks pretty nifty. Webware has a review here. I was a bit alarmed to hear about their terms so be careful if you make any of your photos public:

Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

Premiere Express is also available for free so check it out if you need to do some basic editing. Just read those terms first!