Scott Kirsner’s CinemaTech blog is always a great place to find out about technical innovations in the film world and now he was written a book, Fans, Friends and Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age, that compiles interviews with artists doing great and interesting things with their work and includes lots of useful content for filmmakers in search of an audience (yes, that means you!).

In the introduction Kirsner introduces us to the New Rules:

We’ve entered into what I call the era of digital creativity. In this era, artists have the tools to make anything they can envision, inexpensively…They can build teams and collaborate across great distances, bridging divides of language and culture. They can cultivate an audience and communicate with it regularly, carrying it (or at least a segment of it) with them from one project to another. And they can take control over the transaction, whether it is selling a work of art on eBay, a book through Amazon, or a ticket to a live performance via Brown Paper Tickets.

If you are a glass-half full type, you’ve already realized that the era of digital creativity presents incredible opportunities. You can do what you love, reach an audience, and earn some money. What starts off as a small fan base can quite suddenly go global, enabling you to quit your day job and earn a solid living.

The flip side is that there has never been a noisier, more competititve time to try to make art, entertain people, and tell stories. Everyone is doing it, and so there is an incredible surplus of content in every art form.

In 2000, 973 full-length films were submitted to the Sundance Film Festival, generally considered the best platform for launching a new indie movie. By 2008, that number had risen to 3,624. (Just 121 were accepted.)

And to that I would add that most of those 121 did not receive any kind of traditional distribution offer!

Kirsner includes a list of useful strategies, things he learned while interviewing people for the book (eg. Create Opportunities for Participation, Understand the Power of the Link, Choose the Platforms You’re Going to Use). Some of these strategies may sound obvious but it’s one thing to say them and quite another to actually do them.

The interviews are divided into five sections: Film & Video, Music, Visual Arts, Writing, and Comedy & Magic. The Film & Video section includes interviews with a diverse range of people including: Sandi DuBowski, Robert Greenwald, Ze Frank, Steve Garfield, and Gregg and Evan Spiridellis (JibJab Media).

There’s also a useful reference section in the back with a bunch of great links and some supplemental reading, including links to smart people like Kevin Kelly, Lance Weiler, and Clay Shirky.

You can download a 35-page sample of Fans, Friends & Followers on Kirsner’s website and order the book there too. Or buy it from Amazon using the link below.

If you make films about social issues and you think about how your films can make a difference in the world then make sure you catch up on all the topics covered at the Making Your Media Matter Conference that took place in DC in February. On the Center for Social Media website you can watch video from the conference and read a summary of everything that was discussed, including:

• Ethics in Social Issue Film: Reenactments vs. Cinema Verite
• Money and Mission
• Outreach and Connection
• Art, Ethics and Mission

Here’s Sean Fine, Director of War Dance, Cara Mertes, Director of the Sundance Documentary Film Program and Thomas Allen Harris, from Chimpanzee Productions talking about Art, Ethics and Mission and responding to Moderator Sky Sitney’s (Programming Director of SILVERDOCS) question about whether documentary makers ought to subscribe to an artistic or journalistic code of ethics.

The Center for Social Media’s latest whitepaper Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics is also worth a read, especially if you are interested in the role public media plays in creating conversations in a democracy (which you should be!). Shooting People is mentioned on page 17 as an example of an organization sharing strategies through a peer-to-peer network. Hooray!

Scottish Screen have provided a very handy downloadable guide to the world of short film distribution. It covers all the bases from festivals to sales agents to digital distribution. If you are even considering making a short film you should read this guide. One of the things I am learning is that thinking about distribution AFTER your film is made is usually way too late. You should be thinking about the goals you have for your film from day 1 of pre-production. It saves a lot of headaches in the long run and it actually makes the whole distribution process more empowering and creative for you, the filmmaker. So get reading!

The call for entries is now open for the Good Pitch at Hot Docs. The Good Pitch gives filmmakers a unique opportunity to pitch social-issue documentary projects and associated campaign strategies to an audience of NGOs, foundations, campaigners, advertising agencies, brands and media.

The Good Pitch at Hot Docs welcomes submissions from filmmakers of any nationality working on documentary projects with a human rights focus. There is no entry fee to apply. Deadline: 20 Feb 2009. Apply at www.britdoc.org/goodpitch.

The Good Pitch will make its first stop at the Toronto Documentary Forum (TDF), May 6-7 2009, part of the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto, April 30-May 10, 2009. See www.hotdocs.ca for more info.

The Good Pitch will then call at SILVERDOCS: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival in Washington D.C. (June 15-22, 2009) and IFP’s Independent Film Week in New York City in September. Sign up for email updates at www.britdoc.org.

The first Good Pitch was held at the BRITDOC Film Festival in 2008 – see the trailer at: www.britdoc.org/goodpitch. The Good Pitch North America tour is a partnership between the Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program (DFP).

APPLY HERE.

Here’s the announcement that was made by Cara Mertes and Jess Search about the partnership between the Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program during the Sundance Film Festival in January this year.

Shooters,

Excuse the cross-posting with the Festivals blog, but we didn’t wany any of you to miss out on this -

Mullighan recently presented a panel at the London Short Film Festival, entitled ‘Luck = Preparedness + Opportunity’. With him were the delightful filmmakers (and Shooters), Ben Slotover and Eva Weber.

If you weren’t lucky enough to make it down to the Curzon for the event, no fear! Ben has kindly made his notes from the panel available to you all here.

Ben, as it turns out, has actually made short instructional videos, very good tools for the newer indie filmmaker. You can watch his Zero Budget Filmmaking Compilation below, but he has uploaded more videos to his profile on Shooters which I thoroughly recommend you watch.

Ted Hope Art House Convergence Closing Remarks from joe zina on Vimeo.

You can also read the full text of Hope’s keynote address, delivered at the Arthouse Convergence in Salt Lake City just before Sundance, on indieWIRE.

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 by site regulars and more articles from guest contributers. Look for upcoming conversations with filmmakers Hunter Weeks, Ondi Timoner, Barry Jenkins, Lynn Shelton and Joe Swanberg, as well as a new series of articles by site regulars sharing insight into lessons learned… the hard way. And in a few days we will introduce a prolific filmmaker of short films, Jack Daniel Stanley, who takes his southern gothic horror film, A Little Mouth To Feed, to Slamdance 09 and offers insight into his preparations, planning and experience at the festival.

If you’d prefer not to learn ALL your lessons the hard way, read NEW BREED and hear from filmmakers who learned them for you!

Sundance is going to be interesting this year. With the economy in the dumps there is almost certainly not going to be the usual sales activity, and hopefully filmmakers will be going there with expectations firmly in check. This could actually be a good thing for Sundance. As Steven Zeitchik writes in the Hollywood Reporter:

But what these breakouts show is that the fest’s main value might now lie in the classic indie model, in which little money is spent and little is earned. The payoff comes in the form of critical cachet and awards, not in a “Little Miss Sunshine”-style plug-and-play blockbuster. It’s a switch that takes the fest back to its emergence two decades ago, when movies like “sex, lies & videotape” were championed not as possible crossover hits but as giving rise to directorial talent and even a new style of filmmaking.

Such a shift would dovetail, in a sense, with the festival’s own ambitions. While organizers haven’t voiced outright opposition to the sales market as they have with swag and ambush marketing, they have had an ambivalent relationship with it: Organizers like the heat and industry attendance it brings but privately worry that it puts the emphasis on the big sale instead of the great film.

So, like the Scouts, be prepared and be ready with a strategy that does not stand or fall on a sale.  Filmmakers looking for festival strategy tips may already be aware of Chris Gore’s Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide. I haven’t read them but you might also want to look at Christopher Holland’s Film Festival Secrets: A Handbook for Independent Filmmakers and Heidi Van Lier’s The Indie Film Rule Book. You can read more from Heidi on the Film Independent website here and here. Bomb It director Jon Reiss also has some good advice on his blog, including info about printing postcards and posters.

Shooting People will be reporting from Park City over on our Festival Focus blog so stay tuned!

Gosh, what a long time it has been since I last posted on here. Sorry for the extra-long silence over the holidays. Anyway I am back and, like many others, I have been thinking a great deal about the challenges facing independent filmmaking in 2009.

I mentioned on my Shooting From The Hip blog that independent filmmakers are well trained in dealing with financial uncertainty and I hope that we can continue to work together to forge a creative path in 2009. Make sure that you add Shooters you have worked with to your profile on shootingpeople.org – this will make it much easier for you to find cast and crew for your films who have worked with people you already know and trust.

And here’s a new blog to add to your list if you want some solid information on how films actually get made. All About Indie Filmmaking is written by Jane Kosek, an indie film producer in LA, and is full of useful tips to help you find your feet in the industry.

Happy New Year!

Action for Brazil’s Children Trust patron Fernando Meirelles together with writer/actor Don McKellar feature in a newly released Q&A session focused on the making of ‘Blindness’ – watch the web cast here. Meirelles also discusses his involvement with social film projects, notably Cinema Nosso, which is supported by ABC Trust, a UK-based charity. Cinema Nosso was set up by Meirelles in 2002. The project was directly born out of Meirelles’ renowned ‘City of God’. The film, famously shot on location using residents of the Cidade de Deus and nearby favelas, inspired the philosophy behind this dynamic charitable project.

Meirelles comments: “When I was first approached by ABC Trust, I found a fundamental synergy between our thinking and theirs – one of empowerment. ‘City of God’ had a profound effect on those involved in it’s making, especially the young people. It developed their self belief, opened their minds and changed their lives. Beyond this we saw an opportunity to harness the power of film to inspire more young people from deprived communities to tell their stories, encouraging them to work on both sides of the camera.”

ABC Trust CEO Andrew Webb adds: “Cinema Nosso has been incredibly successful in its approach to tackling the problems of social exclusion, violence and poverty faced by many young Brazilians. We believe that working through the arts provides a uniquely powerful way of changing lives and many of the projects we support use film, dance, theatre and music. This kind of work opens new horizons and often provokes deep rooted and meaningful change within individuals’ lives as well as whole communities.”