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
  How is the home viewing experience evolving?
• Phil Tippett / Founder, Tippett Studio
  Jonathan Rothbart / Co-founder, The Orphanage
  The future of visual effects
• Sara Pollack, Film Manager, YouTube
  Alex Afterman, Founder, Heretic Films
  Tiffany Shlain, Director, “The Tribe” & “Connected: A Declaration of Interdependence”
  Jonathan Marlow, Director of Content Development, Vudu
  The new landscape of distribution
• Mike Curtis, HD for Indies
  Jeremiah Birnbaum, Founder, San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking
  Insights from the edge of digital cinematography and post-production
• M dot Strange, Animator and Filmmaker, “We Are the Strange”
  Building a fan base online
• Gregg Spiridellis, Co-founder, JibJab Media
  Michael Ferris Gibson, Director, “24 Hours on Craigslist” & Producer, “Truth in Numbers: The Wikipedia Story”
  New avenues for creativity and storytelling
• Michaelene Risley, Independent filmmaker
  New approaches to fundraising
• Alex Lindsay, Founder, Pixel Corps
  Producing high-end series for the Web
• Lance Weiler, Director, “Head Trauma” and Game Developer, “Hope is Missing”
  Peggy Weil, Artist & Game Developer, “Gone Gitmo” and “The Redistricting Game”
  Opportunities at the Convergence of Games and Cinema

This weekend is the Hide and Seek Festival in London (27-29 June) and tomorrow they start with Hide and Speak - a day of discussions on games and the future of play.

Lots of Toolsy issues being covered and, interestingly, a session considering what might be gained from not using the technology available.

Friday 27 June 2008

- The ARGs Don’t Work, 9.30am-1.00pm
There’s a major problem with the structure of alternate reality games (ARG). How do you keep your core players happy while making something that lets the casual audience in throughout the life of the project? An international panel of ARG designers meet to discuss their experiences and their visions for the future.

- And Some History for Good Measure, 2.30-3.10pm
Pervasive games explore the space where games overlap with other cultural forms. This talk looks at some of the highlights of games-plus-something-else from the last thousand years or so, from an educational arithmetic game of the Middle Ages to alternate rule sets for duelling.

- Taking the Pervasive Game Turing Test, 3.30-5.00pm
The Pervasive Game Turing Test poses this question: could I be having an equal or greater amount of fun playing this game without using technology? This issue has challenged us at Hide and Seek to consider the role of technology in every game that we make. From text messaging to Wii hacks to GPS (Global Positioning System), a panel of games and technology designers discuss the possibilities and pitfalls of going past paper and pen.

Hide and Seek is a festival of social games and playful experiences, running in London from the 27-29 June 2008.

For more information, bookings and the full programme of events visit their website.

Finding useful tools for downloading video from the web can be very confusing.

Check out Liz Gannes’ article on newteevee.com about the different options, their perks and their pitfalls.

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.

Liz Rosenthal created Power To The Pixel to create a forum for the independent film community with the latest in depth information and knowledge about new opportunities available in the transforming digital media landscape.

She held a one-day conference in London in October last year and all the videos from the sessions are now online so you can hear from industry pioneers like Lance Weiler, David Straus, Kelly DeVine, Robert Greenwald, Matt Hanson and others without leaving your computer.

Chris Anderson has done it again! Read his article on the trend towards FREE in Wired. Interesting to see how online film distribution will be affected by these changing business models.

Scott Kirsner has a report in Variety about the Consumer Electronics Show happening at the moment in Las Vegas, focusing on how we may be entering a new age of open architecture.

If you wish you were at CES to gawk at all the new tech goodies you can watch some live footage on Mogulus and you can ask questions and comment via live chat.

Fernanda Rossi, The Documentary Doctor, analyzes a documentary problem every month on Documentary Educational Resources. This month’s issue discusses what to do if you have used different format cameras to make your film. She calls this “irregular camera syndrome.”

The Producer’s Institute for New Media Technologies is 10-day residency run by BAVC in San Francisco that teaches documentary filmmakers how to adapt their socially relevant work for delivery across different digital platforms from web to video. The institute will take place from May 29th to June 8th 2008 and the application deadline is February 1st 2008 so check it out now as it sounds like a great way to learn more about harnessing emerging technologies to tell your stories and reach people in new ways.

There are some online resources from this year’s institute that you may find useful if you are developing your own website and want to learn more about design and authoring.