Some useful ideas explored here from New Breed - these are part of an on-going series from Filmmaker Magazine and The WorkBook Project to document the Filmmaker Summit held last Saturday at Slamdance (more about this to follow soon).

Filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah of Sabi Pictures arrive at Park City with an intent to define the questions most relevant to independent distribution options. Insights from Brian Newman, Dan Mirvish, Jon Reiss and Ira Deutchman open a path toward discovering some real solutions.

SABI filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah move away from identifying the questions toward some possible answers that may, in fact, lead to the solutions we seek. Insights from Linas Phillips (Bass Ackwards), Habib Azar (Armless), Dan Mirvish, and Brian Newman are fleshed out with more thoughts from the pre-Filmmaker Summit roundtable.

SABI filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah move away from identifying the questions toward some possible answers that may, in fact, lead to the solutions we seek. Insights from Linas Phillips (Bass Ackwards), Jon Reiss and Brian Newman are fleshed out with more thoughts from the pre-Filmmaker Summit roundtable.

Any of y’all going to Park City are  spoiled for choice for cool workshops to attend this year! The Filmmaker Summit is brought to you by the very wonderful people at Slamdance, Workbook Project and Open Video Alliance. We’re fans of all three so if you can’t make it to the Summit be sure to participate online and remember that it will be streaming live on Jan 23rd too.

Here’s a statement from the producers of the event:

The mission of the Slamdance, WorkBook Project and Open Video Alliance Filmmaker Summit is to jointly craft a new charter for filmmaking, storytelling and content distribution, with and by the global filmmaking community.Our collaboration is born out of reaction to an independent film industry currently in a state of change and how, as a global filmmaking community, we can better understand and find greater success afforded by new technology and the democratization of new tools and processes.

We believe sustainable independent filmmaking is no longer about the production itself. Instead, it’s about how filmmakers must now expand their role and take charge of reaching and engaging worldwide audiences across all viewing platforms. In this direct approach, the viewer is now collaborative, less passive and more connected then every before. New business models will emerge as a direct result of experimentation and transparency around process, the Filmmaker Summit is an attempt to chart a course towards sustainability one that is by filmmakers for filmmakers while at the same time being inclusive of the audiences that support them.

Nina Paley gave a great and very transparent talk at DIY Days in Philadelphia about her distribution strategy for Sita Sings the Blues and why she believes that giving away things for free can make good business sense. On the film’s website Paley says: “I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and show Sita Sings the Blues. From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes.”

Watch her talk here:

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:

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!

We blogged earlier about Laure Parson’s excellent new blog on digital distribution. She has recently relaunched the site with even more resources for filmmakers including a list of online markets and a discussion board. The latest interviews on the blog include Doug Block, Sujewa Ekanayake, Caachi, IndiePix and Shooting People’s Ingrid Kopp. This is a great resource for folk trying to get a handle on all the latest distribution options. If you find this helpful be sure to check out Lance Weiler’s Workbook Project too.

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

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!