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The NEW BREED Park City series continues. SABI filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah speak with Dan Mirvish, Brian Newman, Ira Deutchman and Ted Hope to further explore the solutions that are emerging for independent filmmakers – featuring a proposal for a new relationship between filmmakers and festivals as outlined by Peter Baxter at the 2010 Filmmaker Summit. VIDEO after the jump.
Read the full story »focuses on how tech impacts storytelling. A collision of gaming, music, film, and technology
The WorkBook Project has joined forces with Filmmaker Magazine to produce a number of daily videos from Park City. The following discussion focuses on the need for a alternative network connecting filmmakers and audiences. Featuring: Peter Baxter, Saskia Wilson-Brown, Brian Newman, Paul Rachman and Lance Weiler.
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.
The NEW BREED series continues as SABI filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah speak with Ted Hope, Jon Reiss, Mynette Louie (Children of Invention) and Linas Phillips (Bass Ackwards) to explore the solutions that are emerging for independent filmmakers – featuring some of the insights and actions that came from the 2010 Filmmaker Summit.
Part of an on-going series from Filmmaker Magazine and The WorkBook Project.
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We’re excited to announce the Filmmaker Summit, a gathering taking place online and in Park City at the Slamdance Film Festival. The WorkBook Project, Slamdance and the Open Video Alliance have come together to stage a global event that will bring delegates from various parts of the world together to discuss and debate pressing issues that filmmakers currently face. But it isn’t just the delegates who will be shaping the …
By Lance Weiler – OpenIndie burst onto the scene this past fall when Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters) and Kieran Masterton ( a software developer) successfully raised over 12k via a kickstarter campaign to bootstrap a new theatrical on-demand model. Frustrated at the current state of distribution the two teamed up to create a service that will help filmmakers find audiences and audiences find films. I had a chance to …
For the third year running, Scott Kirsner (Fans, Friends, & Followers, CinemaTech), Woody Benson ( Prism VentureWorks) and Lance Weiler (founder of the WorkBook Project, story architect) sat down to discuss the year in tech and entertainment.
Subjects covered – the real-time web, geo locational services, emergent gameplay, transmedia storytelling, crowdfunding, augmented reality, DIY, 3D cinema investment, the impact of the Comcast / NBC Universal merger, Avatar and Paramount’s new …
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By Zak Forsman – The last two years have been an extraordinary education. I often look back at the development process for HEART OF NOW and WHITE KNUCKLES and imagine what choices we at SABI would have made if we were the filmmakers we are today. With a new decade upon us and the promise of a community-defining year ahead of us, it is time to declare some …
By Robert Pratten – I’ve been working with two entertainment properties and a media start-up the past couple of months and I wanted to share the business models I developed to explain where we’re heading.
Here’s what we already know: pulling in an audience is tough but pulling in finance is tougher.
The Old Days
In the “old days” – as shown in Figure 1 – raising finance was what you did …
By Lance Weiler – In the upcoming issue of Filmmaker Magazine I write about the value of data to filmmakers. In my column I look at a number of projects and then tie them back into how they could be used by filmmakers to aid the curation, disovery and creation of films. One of the projects that I focus on in the piece is a data harvest project entitled “We …
The WBP network will be growing in the coming months as we bring on additional contributors and finalize a new site design. The following are some recent posts by contributors.
Over at the New Breed
The SABI Festival Strategy
by Zak Forsman
STEP ZERO: ASK YOURSELF WHY
Be honest with yourself and ask why you want to do this. It will be a financial, emotional and physical drain to be sure. So you must define …
WBP is growing by leaps and bounds. We just celebrated 3 years this past November. What started as a blog has grown to into a network both online and offline. 2010 promises even more growth as we expand our list of contributors, redesign our sites, and host a number of events here in the US and in Europe. WBP is an open creative network that is centered on assisting those …
By Gary King For background history on the film project – visit my previous New Breed Article: “A LOVELY Filmmaking Process”
Having achieved picture lock with WHAT’S UP LOVELY, I feel that I am now able to fully cover the details of the decision-making process during the editing stage — and how engaging with test audiences affected its final outcome. Mind you, we are still in post-production as of this …
By Haley Moore – Smoking Gun Interactive is taking its new ARG Exoriare very seriously.
Just because the game is intimately tied to the release of a new graphic novel and a planned console game, they aren’t about to treat it like an advertising campaign. In fact, they’ve been sending out press releases, writing stories for BoingBoing, and talking to The Guardian in anticipation of the ARG, rather than waiting …
Editors note: Congratulations to Tom and the TNYP team on their Independent Spirit Award Nomination!
By Tom Quinn – In the fall of 2003 I began work on The New Year Parade with my co-producer, Steve Beal. Steve was a high school biology teacher with no film background and I was the building AV tech who would stop in at lunch to talk about my screenplay, which followed a South Philadelphia …
With DIY DAYS LA kicking off in a matter of days we asked Zachary Levy to share some insight around the making of his latest doc STRONGMAN. The project centers on Stanless Steel, The Strongest Man in the World at Bending Steel and Metal. From start to finish the process has taken 10 years to reach the screen and along the way Zachary has made some interesting pit stops. One …
thanks futureofmusic.org – Today’s post is by Brian McTear, co-founder of Philadelphia’s Weathervane Music Organization– a nonprofit community that works with independent musicians to support and advance their careers. Weathervane’s efforts revolve around a program called the Weathervane Music Project Series: a curated series of audio and video recordings featuring the artists, their music and artfully produced video of the actual recording sessions.
When some people think about the lives of musicians, they may …
Since bursting onto the scene with the low budget flick the the Roost in 2005, Ti West has made 3 feature films in 4 years – Triggerman, Cabin Fever 2 and House of the Devil. During our discussion West explains balancing writing, directing and editing along with the realities of being a hired gun.
House of the Devil arrives just in time for Halloween in a VOD on-demand / theatrical …
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We’re less than four weeks away from DIY DAYS LA. On Thursday November 19th, DIY DAYS returns to LA for an evening of talks and networking. Plus the night will end with a rooftop party. More details will be available in the coming weeks.
DIY DAYS LA is FREE but requires you to REGISTER in advance of the event. Space is limited and is on a first come first serve …
We are pleased to announce a new award. The WorkBook Project – Discovery and Distribution Award is part of an initiative to provide tangible options for those working in film, music, games, design and software to fund, create, distribute and sustain.
The first edition of the WBP Award will be given to a feature filmmaker. The winning feature filmmaker will be given a one-week theatrical run at the state of the …
by Zak Forsman – As the team here at Sabi Pictures develops our evolving strategy for distributing Heart of Now and White Knuckles in 2010, VOD and DVD have been strongly recommended by consultants like Stacey Parks of Film Specific as having the best potential for direct revenue. So I have been following VOD in particular, hoping it might fulfill its promise to supplant a deflating DVD market but also …
Cory Macbee’s feature The American Astronaut is considered a cult classic. Thanks to an effective DIY release strategy and strong word of mouth the film has enjoyed a long life since its release in 2001. When it came time to craft his newest film Stingray Sam, Cory took a different approach. Stingray Sam launches today coming to “many screens near you.” There’s a theatrical premiere, a live streaming event …
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Nina Paley shares the results of the hybrid distribution strategy she is using to release her most recent feature SITA SINGS THE BLUES.
TALK – SITA SINGS THE BLUES Distribution Project Report
“If it’s free, how do you make money?” 5 months after the Creative Commons Share Alike release of her animated musical feature Sita Sings the Blues, Nina Paley presents the first round of hard data from the project. Contrary …
Brian McTear reports: Today, it’s plainly obvious that the music industry is in a terrible predicament; but the only solutions we hear have to do with saving “business”. Those of us who care about artists can only hope that once business is saved, this will trickle down to them somehow… eventually.
It’s now clear that Spotify itself, the great hope of the industry, has exactly this approach: They’ve promised large …
This past weekend at DIY DAYS Philadelphia there was a panel about Changes in Creative Collaboration. In an effort to extend the conversation NEW BREED editor Zak Forsman reached out to a number of the NEW BREED contributors and asked them to share their thoughts on the subject of creative collaboration.
Here’s the first in a string of videos from the NEW BREED filmmakers. Make sure to check out vids …
Thanks to all the volunteers, speakers and attendees who helped to make DIY DAYS Philadelphia such a success. Close to 300 people attended the day which included 40 speakers and 22 sessions in two different spaces.
The event yesterday showed the power that a community can have as people traveled in from all over the US not only to attend but also to volunteer their time and talents.
Over the …
Power to the Pixel, an influential conference for the art and craft of digital storytelling has just announced a call for entry. The Pixel Pitch is looking for cross-media projects that have a film focus. I was fortunate to take part in the first Pixel Pitch with my newest project HiM. This innovative program offers an opportunity for those who are experimenting with cross-media storytelling to connect directly with funders, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
:: 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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By Robert Pratten – I’ve been working with two entertainment properties and a media start-up the past couple of months and I wanted to share the business models I developed to explain where we’re heading.
Here’s what we already know: pulling in an audience is tough but pulling in finance is tougher.
The Old Days
In the “old days” – as shown in Figure 1 – raising finance was what you did …
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 …
The WorkBook Project has joined forces with Filmmaker Magazine to produce a number of daily videos from Park City. The following discussion focuses on the need for a alternative network connecting filmmakers and audiences. Featuring: Peter Baxter, Saskia Wilson-Brown, Brian Newman, Paul Rachman and Lance Weiler.
Filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah of Sabi Pictures arrive at Park City with an intent to define the questions most relevant …
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. …
Culture Hacker NEW BREED Diy News
