You  can read a free version of Anderson’s Free: The Future of a Radical Price on this very blog! You can also download an audio version on his Long Tail blog. For a critical view read Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker review of the book. Gladwell concludes: “The only iron law here is the one too obvious to write a book about, which is that the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws.” What do people think?

Here’s the book. Magic!

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

The very smart and savvy Sakia Wilson-Brown has written a series of posts for IndieGoGo on viral marketing. You can read the 3rd post here and then follow the links at the bottom for parts 1 and 2 (the IndieGoGo blog is doing funny things to my browser which is why I’m linking to Saskia’s blog).

I love Twitter because although it can definitely become a time suck, it has also led me to discover so many interesting people, events, articles, websites and ideas. I have total geek love for film but I am also interested in lots of other things and Twitter allows me to indulge in all my random passions from social change, to entrepreneurship and technology in Africa, to open source solutions, to mobile health, to progressive and environmental business practices, to feminism… and on and on (you can see how useful this can be when you are researching a documentary or a script and delving into worlds unfamiliar to you). It has opened up a whole world of access and possibility for me and I love it for that.

It can also be a great way for you to promote your films and career (along with Shooting People of course!). Follow us on Twitter and please post comments or reply to us on Twitter if you have any really great Twitter tips for independent filmmakers.

You can follow @shootingpeople and my more personal feed: @fromthehip

Below is the video from a talk that producer Ted Hope gave at the New York Foundation for the Arts about how the film infrastructure is changing as creators and audiences take on new roles. “We must accept that being a filmmaker means taking responsibility for our films all the way through the process. Building the new infrastructure is the first step towards real media independence”

Producer Ted Hope Discusses the Future of Finding Film Audiences from Reel 13 on Vimeo.

Filmmakers working on social issue films are often concerned with creating change as well as reaching an audience. This is more often the case for documentaries but it is certainly true of many narrative films too. The trouble is that many filmmakers find it hard enough to get a film funded and then distributed, let alone embark on a costly and time-consuming outreach campaign. However, it is often part and parcel of the reasons for making the film in the first place and it can be incredibly rewarding to reach new audiences and see your film having a real impact.
But how do you measure this impact? The Fledgling Fund has written a paper that addresses this: Assessing Creative Media’s Social Impact. It is worth reading if you are working on your film’s outreach plan but it is also something to bear in mind when you are applying for funding from organizations like Fledgling. If you know how they will be assessing your film, it will enable you to think through the issues and write a much stronger grant application.

Consider for example the “Dimensions of Impact” diagram on page 16. How does your film work within each dimension? It will not necessarily work in every dimension of course but thinking through all the options will give you a better sense of what your film can do. It is important to have a rigorous and well-thought out strategy rather than simply hoping that the right people will see your film. This paper will help you see the possibilities.

The Open Video Conference looks like an interesting couple of days for anyone interested in online video and the future of open and participatory culture on the web. From their description:

Open Video is more than just open codecs. It’s the growing movement for transparency, interoperability, and further decentralization in online video. These qualities provide more fertile ground for independent producers, bottom-up innovation, and greater protection for free speech online. The conference will showcase awesome cultural works, inspiring talks, and cool tech demos.

They have some great speakers like Clay Shirkey and Yochai Benkler and topics span a huge and fascinating spectrum: fair use, human rights and video, mobile journalism, art and technology and giving away films for free (Jamie King will be speaking about Steal This Film II, Brett Gaylor about Rip: A Remix Manifesto). I plan to be there and will report back. There will also be a live webcast.

Find out more about the Open Video Alliance and the ideas behind the Conference in the video below.

Another great resource! Scott Kirsner, author of the incredibly useful Fans, Friends and Followers which I mentioned earlier on this blog, has set up a wiki called Power Tools for sharing much of the information he has collated on audience building, collaboration and commerce. There are already a bunch of useful links on there on things like social networks, analytics, blogging and online video – but like all wikis this will be much more valuable if filmmakers like you get on there and add the resources you’ve found useful. C’mon share the digital love!

The catch is you have to contribute some of this info! But check out the DocAgora Webplex website. There’s already a lot of great resources on there for documentary filmmakers and this is the sort of site that will only get stronger as more people use it and contribute to it (it’s early days yet so don’t expect a complete database at this stage). I was talking to a filmmaker at Hot Docs who said that he wished that there was one place to go for all these resources. Well now there is! Or at least there will be.

So create an account and get stuck in. I’m very excited to see this build and I’ll be reporting back further as I try it out and encourage filmmakers to do the same.

Brian Newman (CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute) gave this talk to the Tribeca All Access filmmakers yesterday. It’s a little odd looking at slide shows without being guided through them but this gives a good survey of the current online options available to you as filmmakers.

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: