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I’m often asked about social media and how it can effectively be used to create awareness around a particular project. For those that aren’t familiar with Social Media, it represents a change in the way people create, discover, and share content online and off.
The following power point is an overview of how one can use to social media to extend a story and generate a conversation around their work. In …
Read the full story »focuses on how tech impacts storytelling. A collision of gaming, music, film, and technology
Last year, DIY DAYS traveled to LA, San Francisco, Boston, NYC and London. This year things kick off with the biggest DIY DAYS event to date. On Saturday August 1st, DIY DAYS will come to Philadelphia. Filmmakers, musicians, game designers, software developers and entrepreneurs will join for a day of talks, roundtables, think tanks, speed presentations, and case studies. The overall theme of the day will be how to fund, create, distribute, and sustain from one’s creative efforts.
The WorkBook Project and PIFVA present
WHAT: A FREE day of talks, panels, case studies, roundtables, think tanks and speed presentations
WHERE: UArts - 211 S. Board St, Philadelphia, PA
WHEN: Saturday AUGUST 1st
from 8:30am to 6:30pm - followed by a social mixer from 6:30 to 8:30pm
Registration is now open
SPEAKERS
The following speakers are confirmed for DIY DAYS Philadelphia. Check back often as we’ll be updating the list on a regular basis. Full schedule details coming soon.
Scott Macaulay (film producer and editor of Filmmaker Magazine)
Dan Goldman (Shooting War and founder of Dandelion)
Esther B. Robinson (filmmaker, producer and founder of Art Home)
Brian Newman (CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute)
Lance Weiler (Founder of WorkBook Project and culture hacker)
Scott Kirsner (journalist - Variety, Wired, Boston Globe and author of Fans, Friends, and Followers)
Lina Srivastava (creator of the Transmedia Activism framework)
Michael Monello (co-founder of Campfire Media and producer of the Blair Witch Project)
Alex Johnson (co-founder of WBP Labs, co-creator of RADAR)
Brian Clark (founder of GMD Studios)
Brian McTear (music producer and founder of Weathervane Music)
Arin Crumley (filmmaker Four Eyed Monsters and As the Dust Settles)
Anita Ondine (writer / producer / CEO Seize the Media)
Chuck Wendig (writer / developer of games, film and TV)
Hunter Weeks (Director/Producer 10 MPH, 10 Yards, Ride the Divide)
Noah Harlan (film producer and mobile app developer)
Leah Kauffman (editor of Phrequency)
Jesse von Doom (founder of CASH Music)
Geoff DiMasi (founder of P’unk Avenue)
Vicki Callahan (author and co-creator of Transmedia Activism framework)
Check back as we’ll be updating this on a regular basis over the next few weeks.
Know of someone you think would be a good speaker OR if you know someone who would be interested in volunteering behind the scenes to help make DIY DAYS Philly happen let us know. work@workbook.com
This past weekend at the Open Video Conference Ted Hope producer of (21 Grams, The Ice Storm, Adventureland) and writer/director Lance Weiler (The Last Broadcast, Head Trauma) discussed how technology is impacting the art and craft of storytelling. As the industry shifts and audiences move from passive to active collaborators how does the art of storytelling change. What will emerge as new formats and how will they be funded and …
Dee Cook reports - How are you telling your stories these days? Here’s a small rundown of three entirely different kinds of narrative frameworks using online media - and the audience - in new and sometimes unexpected ways.
Alabaster
The Queen has told you to return with her heart in a box. Snow White has made you promise to make other arrangements. Now that you’re alone in the forest, it’s hard to …
Steve Peters has experienced designed some of the most well know ARGs of the last few years. From “Why So Serious” for the Dark Knight to “Year Zero” for NiN - Steve has carefully crafted elaborate experiences for audiences / players that involve extending story and characters across devices and into the real world. Now Steve and a number of others from 42 Entertainment have broken off to form …
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We’re excited to be a partner of the upcoming Open Video Conference. The conference takes place June 19th and 20th at the NYU Law School. What makes OVC a must attend event is the combination of tech, creativity and policy issues that will be addressed during the two day conference. Full details after the jump.
Open Video Conference, June 19-20, NYC
40 Washington Square South (NYU Law School)
http://openvideoconference.org
Register now @ http://openvideoconference.org/registration/
on Twitter/Identi.ca: …
Scott Kirsner sent over a couple of links and resources for those wishing to build audiences.
NEW WIKI
Scott has just put up a wiki with some content from the book FANS, FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS which we covered a few weeks back on TCIBR. The wiki contains useful tools for marketing, outreach, promotion, and commerce. http://powertools.wikispaces.com So make sure to stop by and add to this new growing resource wiki. …
Over at the NEW BREED there is a discussion brewing about Managing Expectations on the Festival Circuit. Various NB filmmakers weigh-in on the topic by sharing some of their experiences and opinions around the value of festivals. Last month Zak Forsman (see recent Q&A for more details on Zak) headed to SXSW. He brought along his camera.
Related:
Is There A “Too Many” (When It Comes To Film Festivals)?
How I Learned to …
Zach Forsman is a writer/director/producer/editor. Zak and his creative team Sabi are prolific. They are currently working on a number of shorts and a few feature films (White Knuckles, Eloquent Graffiti, Heart of Now). Strong proponents of DIY filmmaking; Sabi’s work is organic, stylized and improvised.
Zak is also the editor of the New Breed. If you haven’t checked out the new extension of the WBP make sure to pay a …
Today our guest is author and journalist Scott Kirsner. Scott has written a followup to his book Inventing the Movies entitled Fans, Friends and Followers - Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age.
The tools to produce films, music, books, and art have been democratized: they’re accessible and inexpensive. And the channels to distribute all sorts of creative products have also been blown wide open: today, …
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As WBP continues to grow we are working to find interesting ways to benefit the creative community that surrounds WBP. Here are some of the things that we’ve been working on.
RADAR NOW LIVE ON BABELGUM
RADAR is a weekly, 3-minute series produced by WBP LABS - a division of the Workbook Project. The series is a timely, insiders view into the cutting edge of storytelling and creativity, and the …
Christopher Rice reports - Here at Culture Hacker, we’ve touched on the ARG (Alternate Reality Gaming) world, the creative side of cross-media storytelling, and a lot of what’s new to the collective tech & story scene, but I think now’s a good time to let it all collide – KABOOM!
As a story analyst and writer working primarily in the film platform, I’m more interested in the creative process behind the …
In 2008 From Here to Awesome experimented with a “day and date” festival model that helped filmmakers reach audiences on various devices and platforms while enabling them to retain their rights. Instead of repeating what we did last year we’ve decided to spend some time doing R&D around the topics that are impacting the futures of entertainment. Over the course of 2009 we’ll be holding a number of discussions with …
Dee Cook reports - Ken Eklund is an author and award-winning game designer whose 2007 serious game, “World Without Oil,” took the internet by storm. The game presented the world with a premise: there has been a glitch, and oil supplies are running short all around the globe. How does it affect you personally? Participants were invited to submit their experiences in any variety of electronic …
Dee Cook reports - Remember liner notes? They were the best on double albums because you could flip open the album cover like a book and read it. This is vinyl, back in the days when everyone knew how to squeeze a little more life out of a phonograph needle by putting a dime on top of the cartridge. Anyway, lots of times the liner notes would …
Mike Ambs reports - The six months it took me to import and tag the more than a 100 hours of footage - the main bulk of the film - was fairly easy for me to keep a pace with. It was “easy” because there was a solid goal: x number of tapes. It was “easy” because my progress was obvious: I would log the number of tapes imported by …
Zeke Zelker’s latest film InSearchOf won the first edition of From Here to Awesome last fall. Recently, Zeke released his film in a number of college markets and took in more than 12,000 from a single screen. Over the next six months Zeke and his team will take the film to over 80 college and universities.
What’s your background?
I grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania where my summers were spent playing in …
Mike Ambs reports - When Amanda first posted about us (mainly me) being concerned with our lack-luster number of RSS subscribers - ie: less than 5,000 - It came across as a “why do our numbers suck” post, and that’s a fine question for us to be asking, our numbers do need improving just in a general sense.
But I’m less concerned with specifically the RSS stats, and more with our …
Todd Sklar reports - I’m just now getting caught up on life post-tour, so I’m gonna start this post off with a sincere apology for the lack of participation on my behalf re; this group blog. Not sure how many readers there are out there, nor how many of them give a fuck whether or not I’m posting material, but on the off-chance that a handful do, I wanted to …
You enter the CULTURE HACKER SHRINE. The floor is littered with the SKULLS of old media. An ARTICLE with a CLEVER LEAD is here. What will you do?
Comics and games have always had a symbiotic relationship. There are games about comics, and more than a few comics about games. Chasing the Wish even brought comics into the ARG scene a few years ago. These two media tend to collide often, …
By Jenny Abel - This post will begin with a brief disclaimer: I have made only one film. I had no idea what I was doing when I started working on this film. I’m not even sure if I’ll ever make another film because I’ve been working on the same film for ten years. If there is a New Breed geriatric ward, perhaps I should be wheeled over there …
By Christopher Rice - Storytellers of all trades, including novelists, filmmakers, musicians, game designers, and even bloggers, currently face a greater challenge than telling a compelling story in their medium; it’s called change, and like evolution in general, it’s simply inevitable. While storytelling will continue to forever thrive as one of the best sources of entertainment reflecting the human condition and emotion, the way audiences are consuming these stories and …
Lisa Salem reports - All systems are a balance between order and chaos - natural systems especially. Communities are systems. Audiences built on the web are communities. Understanding the natural laws of community will greatly enhance the potential of how big your audience-community can be and what it can do. It will also help you in thinking of ways to crack the dilemma of how to monetize that system and …
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Zak Forsman reports -
I’ve just released a trailer for HEART OF NOW and wanted to share the things I’ve learned about this little marketing niche. What I’m doing is taking the lessons of the commercial world and applying them to my indie film work. So these are the conventions, the general “rules”. And yes, they are just waiting for someone like you to come along and break them!
Trailers can be …
Lisa Salem reports -
ENDING THIS YEAR WITH A REMINDER OR A PRIMER - WHICHEVER THIS MAY BE FOR YOU…
“The number one threat to a filmmaker nowadays is not piracy, it’s obscurity.” (Matt Hanson at Power To The Pixel 2007, re-quoting from Tim O’Reilly).
I want to end the year by going a little retro, so in a kind of year-end look-back-as-a-means-to-moving-forward, I’m posting these three videos from Power To The Pixel …
The NEW BREED is expanding with a new blog. But wait there’s much more. We’re pleased to announce that Zak Forsman (IFHY, Heart of Now) will be leading a group of merry DIY filmmakers as they share their experiences from script to screen and beyond. The focus of NEW BREED is to pull back the curtain and share the struggle of what it takes to get work out into the …
This edition of TCIBR is brought to you by IndieFlix - In recent years fans have brought TV shows back from the dead, helped films get made and protested when they felt that the stories and characters they loved where being mistreated. Sharon Ross author of “Beyond the Box: Television and the Internet,” joins us for a discussion on Fandom and what can be learned from those who are passionate …
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Lisa Salem reports -
Interesting post over at Chris Anderson’s Long Tail blog about how your project can still be a raging success when only 1 - 0.1% of your audience participate in your content in the way you’ve set out for them to - because the number of people the internet makes potentially accessible is so vast. He cites Wikipedia and You Tube as good examples of this - the …
Over 60 interviews and upwards of 40 hours worth of material are now available in our new TCIBR archive. You can either click the track to listen or use the mp3 link to download. The archive was built using opentape a free open source package that enables you to easily create and host mixtapes.
All the TCIBR podcasts are open media so feel free to embed and spread them. If you …
For DIY DAYS NYC we ended up doing a different format then the other events in LA, SF and Boston. The NYC event was a casual dinner gathering and an open discussion. The evening was made possible thanks to Storybids and indieGoGo. It was an evening of good food and conversation. Dinner guests included Ted Hope, Faye Dunaway, Lance Hammer, Susan Buice, Paul Rachman, Lance Weiler, Arin Crumley, Joseph Morin, …
Nick Braccia reports - I’m new to the WBP crew and wanted to kick-off my involvement with a brief and practical outline of introductory steps to help you make the transition from mono-media storyteller (in this case, film) to transmedia storyteller. In time, this evolution will help you to grow (and strengthen) your audience.
Like many contemporary transmedia story architects, I was first exposed to this expansive medium back in 2001, …
DIY DAYS Boston presentation - Xiaochang Li and Ana Domb from MIT’s Convergence Culture Consortium look at how media content spreads in the current landscape and how the audience engages with it. Moving away from the “viral” metaphor that strips the user of its agency, they examine the shift away from a “sticky” model to a “spreadable” one. This notion of spreadability is intended as a contrast to older models …
Alex Johnson reports - A couple of weeks ago I took part in Power to the Pixel, a three day Digital Distribution & Film Innovation Forum in London. I gave a 15 minute presentation on the following issues: As technology shifts, audiences are evolving at a startling rate. Who are they, where are they, and what are they doing? How does the media producer keep up with and define …
Power the Pixel videos are now live. Timo Vuorensola explains how he and his team fully embraced the concept of crowd-sourcing. Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning was a huge collaborative effort made by a core group of 5 people in Finland, and a community of about 3,000 volunteers from around the world. The film was a major online hit and has been downloaded over 8 million times.
Lisa Salem reports - At Power to the Pixel, I asked Arin Crumley and M Dot Strange the same three questions:
How do you see your relationship with your audience?
How do you integrate your audience into your lifestyle?
How do you compartmentalize your audience community into the big picture of what you’re doing?
I was curious to see how they were going to interpret them.
Arin’s answers turned into a 90 minute thought-trail (I’d …
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Lisa Salem reports - This is the first in a series of posts out of Power to the Pixel 2008 - which was a pretty mind-blowing experience for me. M dot Strange was the first person I interviewed and he quickly got me questioning some of my assumptions about whether or not you get to choose your core audience, or whether it’s actually them who choose you:
[Audio clip: view full …
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As the landscape changes new outlets and services are emerging. With so many choices what is a filmmaker to do? But most importantly what are they going to do for you? The system is in flux and there are no rules. This is your chance to let your voice be heard: have a say in how outlets and services think about working with you and for you. Panelists: Scilla Andreen …
We’re introduced to the dudes as the fall tour kicks off in Columbia, MO, where we weather sellout screenings, impromptu parades, and travel delays before heading west.
Current Tour Schedule:
First Leg
Sep 19 - Sep 21
Columbia, MO
Oct 1 - Oct 6
Santa Fe, NM
Oct 7
Alburqueque, NM …
STEAL THIS FILM, a documentary about file sharing was released in 2006 via torrents and to date over 6 million people have downloaded the film for free. The following podcast is from director Jamie King’s case study which was presented earlier today at the Power to the Pixel conference in London.
Jamie is currently working on VODO, a voluntary donation system for distributing films via torrents.
[Audio clip: view full post …
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We’re excited to announce that FHTA will becoming to NYC this week for a special three day engagement. All 22 films will be screening. In addition to the theatrical screenings there will be a series of virtual screenings . When we set out to experiment with a “day and date” festival model, we hoped that the filmmakers would embrace the collaborative aspects of the concept. At the heart of FHTA …
By Alex Johnson - ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.’ wrote the Bard in perhaps one of the earliest statements about branding. But would it? The answer is yes. And no.
‘Here Juliet tells Romeo that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention, and that she loves the person who is called “Montague”, not the Montague …
Chris Holland author of the “Film Festival Secrets: A Handbook for Independent Filmmakers.” Holland’s new book takes readers behind the scenes of the festival process and offers some insight into the process. The book is available as a free PDF download, via a free online vieweronline and can also be purchased in print form.
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
The following reading recommendations come from the newest addition to …
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There is power in the crowd. When they rise up they can fund, create, distribute and promote. But how do you turn an audience into an active community where members become collaborators?
Panelists: Slava Rubin (indieGoGo), Skot Leach (Lost Zombie), Jason Harris (Mekanism), Bryan Kennedy (Mobmov.org), Blair Erickson (Millions of Us) Discussion Leader: Lance Weiler
:: SITES
WHAT: Where music goes film follows. The music industry has been ahead of the film industry for years - in terms of technology, failed business models, and musicians going direct to audiences. In recent years, discovery has become a major focus (LastFM, Pandora). The Sixty One takes discovery a step further by combining gaming and community to create an addictive social discovery mechanism for music.
WHY: With so much content …
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WHAT: A two day conference that brings together speakers from various industries for a discussion and debate around the future of cinema, games, and storytelling.
WHERE: Takes place 10.17 and 10.18 at the Pacific Film Archive Theater in Berkley.
For more info visit www.theconversationspot.com
From the site:
Our hunch is that we’re at an important moment in the history of technology and visual storytelling — a broad term that encompasses filmmaking, TV, online video, …
Basically, a week after returning from a 3-month jaunt to Southeast Asia, David Austin asked me to write a screenplay that we could shoot in his house. He was preparing to sell an old mansion that he had been living in that was once the home of Samuel Goldwyn. All week I had been attempting to see a revival screening of Luis Bunuel’s Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie …
HELP SUPPORT OPEN SOURCE FILMMAKING - 3 DVD Set of DIY DAYS LA & SF available NOW
We’re happy to announce that we now have a 3 DVD set, over 10 hours of keynotes, panels and case studies that were shot this summer in LA and SF. Since DIY DAYS is part of a larger open source project focused on creating quality resources for the filmmaking community, the DVDs are available …
Today (Alex Johnson, Micki Krimmel, myself) did a panel at the FIND Filmmaker Forum.
FIND program description
NEW TOOLS FOR AUDIENCE BUILDING
New rules need new tools, right? Join filmmakers and new media pioneers as they show you where to start and what you need in order to build an audience—from tools to tips & tricks. Once you have an audience how do you keep them engaged? How can you turn an audience …
By David Beard - There are interesting parallels between the aspirations which drive innovation in the Transmedia space and those of developers of the Semantic Web.
The Semantic Web is a set of theories and implementations dealing w/ the representation and relations of web resources. It addresses ways that these resources can be structured and described to facilitate their organization, analysis and composition by software algorithms.
For instance, a character in a …
By Lisa SalemThis is the second of four posts covering the film BLACK GOLD - a social-issue driven documentary co-produced/directed by brothers Marc and Nick Francis. The film joins the dots between coffee consumption in the west and coffee production in developing countries.
As I said last week, BLACK GOLD is remarkable because of the tangible social impact it has had on the issues it covers and because audiences rallied around …
“What is a blog? Why do we blog? We blog to…exist.” stated protagonist Dylan in the opening of Quarterlife. While many would –if uncomfortably- embrace this statement (Technorati indexes 112 million blogs, with 120 thousand new ones appearing each day) just as many would, and do, feel confused by it. Issues of online identity are far and wide, and becoming more pressing.
From SNL skits on MySpace …
Comrades,
My name is Todd and I made a film last year called Box Elder. I actually made it twice technically (we re-shot the entire thing after getting 80% of it in the can), but that’s a story for another blog. We’re here today to talk about this distribution tour we’re about to embark on, and first, a little bit more on the film that started it last spring.
Box Elder …
Tom Quinn reports - Last week, I had the honor of being the first American filmmaker to take part in the Toronto International Film Festival Talent Lab. I arrived in Toronto two days before the festival to meet 23 other young filmmakers from Canada and the UK, as well as lab producers Sandra Cunningham and Brad Fox of Strada Films.
The lab is intended as a workshop where beginning …
Pollinate is a new addition to the Workbook Project network. Its focus is on all things related to audience. In an extensive four part series Lisa Salem looks at how Mark Francis’ feature doc BLACK GOLD reached global audiences.
By Lisa Salem - The irony is that these multiple posts have come about as a result of what was originally intended to be a short phone conversation with filmmaker Marc Francis …
We covered Tiffany Shlain earlier this year when her short THE TRIBE became the number one download on iTunes. In this case study from DIY DAYS SF, Tiffany details the unique approach that helped her to turn THE TRIBE into a successful and profitable project. For more on Tiffany and the Tribe visit www.moxieinstitute.org or www.tribethefilm.com.
For more info on DIY DAYS visit www.diydays.com
In a matter of days we’ll be welcoming a new blog to the WBP network. The NEW BREED centers on projects in various parts of the creation process. From the script phase to screen and everything in between NEW BREED will focus on all things DIY. Told from the trenches by filmmakers who in the throws of it.
Stay tuned…
:: SITES
WHAT: Where music goes film follows. The music industry has been ahead of the film industry for years - in terms of technology, failed business models, and musicians going direct to audiences. In recent years, discovery has become a major focus (LastFM, Pandora). The Sixty One takes discovery a step further by combining gaming and community to create an addictive social discovery mechanism for music.
WHY: With so much content …
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
This past weekend at the Open Video Conference Ted Hope producer of (21 Grams, The Ice Storm, Adventureland) and writer/director Lance Weiler (The Last Broadcast, Head Trauma) discussed how technology is impacting the art and craft of storytelling. As the industry shifts and audiences move from passive to active collaborators how does the art of storytelling change. What will emerge as new formats and how will they be funded and …
Alex Johnson reports - A couple of weeks ago I took part in Power to the Pixel, a three day Digital Distribution & Film Innovation Forum in London. I gave a 15 minute presentation on the following issues: As technology shifts, audiences are evolving at a startling rate. Who are they, where are they, and what are they doing? How does the media producer keep up with and define …
Over at the NEW BREED there is a discussion brewing about Managing Expectations on the Festival Circuit. Various NB filmmakers weigh-in on the topic by sharing some of their experiences and opinions around the value of festivals. Last month Zak Forsman (see recent Q&A for more details on Zak) headed to SXSW. He brought along his camera.
Related:
Is There A “Too Many” (When It Comes To Film Festivals)?
How I Learned to …
Scott Kirsner sent over a couple of links and resources for those wishing to build audiences.
NEW WIKI
Scott has just put up a wiki with some content from the book FANS, FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS which we covered a few weeks back on TCIBR. The wiki contains useful tools for marketing, outreach, promotion, and commerce. http://powertools.wikispaces.com So make sure to stop by and add to this new growing resource wiki. …
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