Hey Folks

Current TV, From Here to Awesome and the Workbook Project are doing a FREE event on July 26th in Los Angeles that you should attend if you’re in town.

DIY DAYS
How do we sustain ourselves as filmmakers and storytellers in this day of shifting film distribution systems? How do we monetize our film and get the word out? Presented by From Here to Awesome the Workbook Project and Current TV – DIY DAYS aims to answer these questions with a day of panels, roundtable discussions and workshops: A look at how to fund, create, distribute and sustain.

Proposed Discussion Topics
- New Forms of Storytelling
- New models of Finance, Production and Distribution
- Audience Building & The Audience Becoming Collaborators
- War Stories: “What’s The Real Deal?”
- Self-Sustaining: what to know when trying to make a living from your art
- Case Studies (Arin Crumley, Lance Weiler, M dot Strange and others discuss the making and
distribution of their work)

Open Discussion Topics
- What are you working on? What are you looking for?
- How do you consume your media?
- What needs to change in order for you to sustain?

We’ve lined up a diverse group of speakers from all sides of the industry.

Speaker List
Robert Greenwald – Outfoxed, Wallmart the High Cost of Low Price, Iraq for Sale
Tommy Pallotta – producer of A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life
Mark Pellington – director of Henry Poole is Here, Arlington Road and Mothman Prophecies
Marshall Herskovitz – Blood Diamond, Quarterlife
Lance Weiler – The Last Broadcast, Head Trauma
Arin Crumley – Four Eyed Monsters
M dot Strange - We Are the Strange
Ondi Timoner – DiG, Join US, We Live in Public
Saskia Wilson-Brown – Current TV
Micki Krimmel – expert in social media and online community
Jon Reiss – Bomb It
Alex Johnson – digital media strategist / filmmaker
Christy Dena – cross-media strategist and designer
Matt Hanson – filmmaker and founder of A Swarm of Angels
Timo Vuorensola – director of Space Wreck and co-founder of wreckamovie.com

More info at diydays.com

So here it is! The newest member of our blog family. This is where we will blog about all the cool new stuff happening on the web and beyond that will be useful to you as filmmakers.

We want to tell you about tech wunderkind filmmakers like Lance Weiler who is spreading the knowledge so brilliantly with his Workbook Project.

And talk about innovators like Matt Hanson with Swarm of Angels, M dot Strange with We Are the Strange, and Matt Gaylor with Open Source Cinema.

And show you the filmmakers who have ventured into the scary territory of self-distribution and survived to tell the tale. Filmmakers like Arin Crumley and Susan Buice with Four Eyed Monsters, Hunter Weeks with 10MPH, and Todd Rohal with The Guatamalan Handshake.

And investigate the filmmakers who are partnering with non-profit organizations to promote their films and change the world in the process, filmmakers like Marc and Nick Francis with Black Gold, and Paul Taylor and Teddy Leifer with We Are Together.

And we want to talk about cool blogs and podcasts, interesting plugins and widgets, new online social networks and video hosting sites, and anything else Web 2.whateveritisnow that takes our fancy.

But we also want to hear from you about your experiences and about the resources you have found useful so please leave comments and get involved. We’ll have guest bloggers posting too so that you get to hear a variety of perspectives from all over the world.

Bring it on!