Film festival audience award employs digital technology

US indie film festival the Cinema Eye Honors presented by Indiepix has announced that it is to add a new audience award that will utalise both online distribution and voting process. The festival have chosen the BroadRamp platform to distribute the films and is requesting that viewers cast their vote online after watching. Indiepix are said to have chosen BroadRamp’s Content Distribution System because it does not require the user to download a third party browser plugin. However, this is a claim that confuses me slightly because taking a look at BroadRamp’s site they seem to be very much utalising flash video in their player which of course uses the “third party plugin” Shockwave. Soooo… unless I’m missing a trick and I they’ve some swanky technology they’re not showing off on their website… you still need a plugin folks.

BroadRamp seem to be best known for their work in the field of interactive e-commerce video. What’s interactive e-commerce video I hear you cry. Well, the basic concept is that you’re sitting watching a video online, or wherever, and you see a t-shirt you really like. You hover your mouse over that t-shirt and a pop-up appears giving you information, price and an option to buy the shirt. An idea then that seems to be genius and utterly horrific all at the same time.S o the cynic in me is thinking, will the content from this film festival be used as a film testbed for this evil genius video creation? Or am I turning into a internet conspiracy theorist? Either way, I am delighted to see that festivals are recognising the problems in the industry and making steps to rectify it. It does however seem bizarre to me that they would not use a more well known platform, such as blip.tv, vimeo or even the big daddy YouTube. My jaded mind is still mulling over the marketing potential of the BroadRamp system in festivals to come – you’ve been warned!

Anyway, the festival selections have been made and announced, more information can be found at the Indiepix and Cinema Eye Honors websites and voting commences on March 1st.

Right, that’s enough from me. Good night Finger Lickers, I will see you in the morning.

K

Zombie 2.0

Afternoon finger lickin’ fans. So I mentioned a while ago that horror legend George A. Romero was at Sundance discussing the democratization of filmmaking in a spout.com interview. However, I didn’t really get into the reason why he was at the festival. His latest installment in the “Dead” saga premiered at Sundance and, as any good film director should be, he was whoring the hell outta it. The flick is basically a Blair Witch shakey handy cam take on his other apocalyptic tales. I am a big horror fan but not especially into the living dead stuff I’m more of a slasher man, however this really took my fancy.

The trailer is ridiculous and there’s obviously some jolly good hammy acting going on, but of all the horror remake dirge out there it actually caught my attention. From what I’ve read Romero has always worked in a very independent fashion and his latest film is no different, he’s using web 2.0 marketing techniques with exclusive MySpace goodies as well as tapping into the wannabe-filmmaker You Tube revolution to inspire his craft. I for one wanna give it a chance!

Give it away, give it away, give it away now!

There is something sick in the film industry. We all know this. From an average DVD-buying consumer to the indie filmmaking community to the academics in their ivory towers to the disgruntled industry insiders, we all know that the rot set in a long time ago. Whether you’re a film school grad trying to get a break or a filmmaker trying to get funding or a consumer standing in the cinema with only four choices on the menu – film is hard, way too hard. Now, I’m not here to get into a discussion about the film industry creating an impenetrable bubble for those of us who are trying to get in, what I am here to talk about is giving your film away for free.

Much of this blog is fueled by the likes of Lance Weiler and Arin Crumley who are actually doing this kinda stuff in practice. My inspiration for writing this blog was the incredibly brief treatment of the “give your art away” discussion in this months Filmmaker Magazine. Arin and Susan gave another interview about their experiences in the world of self-distribution a while ago and during the course of that interview he said something way more interesting than anything Filmmaker published. He said, and I’m paraphrasing here folks, brace yourselves, that it would have been more beneficial for them to have had their movie already up on YouTube while they were doing the festival tour. It is this issue that I believe is so much more important than anything else surrounding the self distribution debate.

We’re are being constantly bombarded by people telling us not to blow our creative and commercial load too soon, excuse the analogy, but we are. For example, in a meeting earlier this month about a web tv project I have ties with, a University lecturer made a point that completely threw me. She said that you need to hold off as long as possible, launch all your content at once and hit the students with a high impact marketing campaign to ensure that they watch. What? Now, while everything else she said was brilliant and useful and insightful this just made no sense to me. Where’s the longtail? Where’s the viral tasty morsels that all those media snacking YouTube junkies wanna stuff down their faces?!?! This is old world thinking people surely it would be better to launch the site with basic content and release regular episodes to encourage stickiness? What I’m trying to say is that giving it all away in one big dollop of flash video is surely not the way forward. Arin and Susan have the right idea, give it away for free, get a sticky following, so to speak, and release the goods themselves when you’re most high-profile to your given audience. So in the case of indie film you need the viral video episodes and the film online. You’re not losing anything by giving it away, you’re not diminishing your selling power with distributors you’re gaining more ammunition to prove that this film has an audience and if you snap it up now there’s a theatrical life for this film just as much as there’s an online life.

The industry and us as filmmakers need to stop thinking of our films as precious and start whoring. How can we get people to view this flick? How can we create a revenue stream from that viewing method? How can we get our video blogs onto every video sharing site on the Internet? And how can we get the film itself onto as may of those sites too!?! Now, I’m not saying there aren’t obstacles to this – upload limits in terms of size and film length as well as average viewer attention span etc. but seriously if you play this right folks you can get that regular viewing audience that are interested enough to watch the whole film online and you can prove to the web 2.0 industries that it is viable for them to sponsor your flick and in turn the film industry must surely pay notice.

I’ve said enough… but check out the following links for further information and some inspiration.

From Here to Awesome – A alternative discovery distribution film festival.
Arincrumley.com – Arin’s personal site, loads of blogage and self-distribution info.
Tube Mogul – Distribute your video to a plethora of online sites.

K

No Community For Old Media

I visited the cinema the other day, to watch No Country For Old Men. After the film, everyone I was with had an opinion on what was seen, good and bad, we spoke our words and they beamed across to each others ears, then evaporated into thin air. We then walked off to the car and each went home. How dull.

Was that it? I was thinking. I wanted to leave a comment, for the next person to find. There was no-where for me to do that.

• No number to text,
• No Kiosk to give my thumbs up or down,
• No video booth to leave a rant,
• No community cafe led by a local fanboy of the director to join in a discussion.

Sure the indie art house cinemas, have actor and director post feature discussions. But I wasn’t at one of those. I was in a multi screen complex. Where 10s of thousands of pounds exchange hands and thousands of people filter through every week… and I know these cinemas have a production line mentality, but they’re also fighting the backlash of DVD sales, illegal downloads, and online screenings. Shouldn’t they be embracing the current (forget the new) technology? Rather than putting their hands over their eyes and thinking no-one will notice.

I can’t help but think that cinemas are slow to catch on. Their visitors are used to communicating instantly and hearing, reading, seeing opinions from everyone else before them.

I don’t think it’s enough for any form of media to just deliver anymore… whether that’s books, music, films or stage shows.

How hard would it be to impliment just half of the things I’ve mentioned above? Not much I’m guessing. Maybe one day hey? Until then, there’s definitely no community for old media.

Mark

(Orginally posted by me on Mediasnackers.com, but cross posted here, due to its topic and relavance)

Filmmaking at 10mph in the fast lane.

Director/Producer Hunter Weeks co-creator of 10mph the conceptually brilliant comic-documentary that follows a pair of aspiring filmmakers as they travel across the United States on Segways. You’re no doubt wondering, what the hell is a Segway? Or perhaps if you’re a Californian police officer you know them well. Basically, these scooter devices, which you may have seen on YouTube, or TV, or around your local park go a max of 10mph. With these devices these two filmmakers travel across America and document the hilarious consequences.

Anyway, I haven’t seen this film but they seem to be generating a great buzz and I’m very keen to check the flick out. However, my reason for writing about this is to request that you all support these DIY filmmakers by signing up for ourstage.com. Just like Four Eyed Monsters, ourstage.com have been brilliant and offered to pay 10mph $1 for every sign up they get. This is an amazing model for independent film revenue generation and it deserves all the support we can give.

So, please, please, please, sign up for ourstage.com via http://www.10mph.com/ourstage to make a real difference to some great filmmakers. Likewise, please check out the video below where Hunter talks about the project and how you can help them make their next film.