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DIY DAYS LA & SF 3 DVD set

Help support open source filmmaking today!

3 DVD set with over 10 hours of keynotes, panels and case studies. To see a list of speakers and topics visit www.diydays.com

Make a donation to the project and receive your copy of DIY DAYS LA & SF. Pick the donation you'd like to make and receive the 3 DVD set today.

$40 donation

$20 donation

$10 donation

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Culture Hacker

• The Art of Branded Content
  Here’s my interview on branded content with Creative Director Tim Roper from award winning advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky. We met Jan 23rd at UCLA Media & Entertainment Week. What do you feel are the biggest misconceptions about branded content? The biggest misconception is how easy it is to conceive it in a fresh way and then [...] […]
• An Interview with Polly Frost: Evolving Your Art for Emerging Channels (Part One)
  About 5 years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Polly Frost and her husband Ray Sawhill through our mutual friend, Steve Vineberg. Immediately, we hit it off upon realizing we shared a passion for  horror, sci-fi and pulp. I have to admit I was a little intimidated; both Ray and Polly have pretty intense [...] […]
• Internet Attention Whoredom, Endangered
  I spend a fair amount of my internetting time on DeviantART – enough to see random “recent deviations” fairly often. There is no social network filter on this landing page, so, like the recent tweets page on Twitter, everyone sees when you’ve just posted something. You can get a fairly good idea of what people [...] […]
• Transmedia as a Tool for Audience Building
  The purpose of this blog posting is to show how I’ve been using transmedia for audience building and to welcome comments from others who can suggest points for improvement. You might also like to check-out what’s been implemented and give it a whirl! […]
• Moving Filmmakers to a Transmedia Business Model
  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 [...] […]
• The Fight for Exlusive Content
  When there are too many platforms competing with each other content will become king. Right now entertainment has been devalued when you can rent a new film or TV show for 99 cents at a Red Box kiosk at 19,000 different locations, can download unlimited films through Netflix, and a rent/buy a film through iTtunes. I [...] […]
• Doing the Wave
  Now that Google Wave has been out for a while, have you joined up? Is it living up to all your expectations, plus some? Or is it just something that you slobbered over because invitations were rare, but now you just keep forgetting to check in because you can’t figure out what to [...] […]
• The First Ever Culture Hacker Gift Guide
  Deck the hall with boughs of holly! Tis the season to redefine storytelling as it evolves through collisions with new forms of media! Fa la la la la la la la la! Oh dang…that isn’t catchy at all. Here are some particularly culture hackerly gifts, old and new, hand picked by the culture hacker [...] […]
• May the mystery be with you – no matter if you are a storyjedi or storysith
  Quickly thinking out-loud tonight … The element of mystery has grown to become just as powerful to cross-media storytelling as the force to the Jedi and Sith. And just as the force, there exists a dark-side to the element. While the techniques and tools of cross-media storytelling vary from those used to tell a story for the [...] […]
• Ten Interactive Story Ideas for Layar
  Layar, the augmented reality browser that has been creeping up on Android phone users since May, hit the iPhone App Store last month. And yet, the Layar web site lists a big fat goose egg under the heading “Games.” I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Surely, someone out there has to [...] […]
• IGC Independent Game Conference
  November 5-6 I covered the Independent Game Conference where game designers peddled their wares to buyers inside the halls of the Marriott Hotel in Marina del Rey. In between all this networking my friend Don Le filmed (later edited) my interviews with notable professionals and panels that explored subjects as diverse as building personal relationships [...] […]
• The Legos from Another Universe
  In retrospect, of course it was obvious that Legos had to be from space. Right? The Bradford Rant Institute seems to think so – they’ve been tracking mysterious Lego Pods that have been falling to earth in various locations around the globe. The next pod is due to hit the southeastern United States [...] […]

NEW BREED

• Event Screenings & Alternate Releasing
  Ordinarily, I don't like speculative posts. At times I find them even counter-productive, because they can often wind people up with pie-in-the-sky "what-ifs," but provide no real actionable items. So that's not my intent here. Here I just wanted to throw out some ideas for viewing/releasing a film, and see ... […]
• Providing Your Actors with External Stimuli
  Note: This post was inspired by my own complaints that the DIY movement seemed to spend very little time on craft, as opposed to distribution. So I decided to put my money where my mouth was and try to start some conversations on craft. Working with actors is probably my favorite ... […]
• Skip Perfection & Launch Early
  Earlier this week I read a tip on The 99 Percent site, titled, The Beta Principle: Skip Perfection & Launch Early - the post made a strong argument for start-ups to avoid the drag of over-refining and take to advantage of early user-feedback. But, when reading, I couldn't help but ... […]
• PARK CITY: Exploring the Solutions, Part 3
  SABI filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah pick up with Ted Hope where he left off in the last episode to further explore the solutions that are emerging for independent filmmakers. He is joined by Mynette Louie (Children of Invention) and new interviews with Sultan Sharrief (Bilal's Stand), Lance ... […]
• do something different
  I was going through my unread Instapaper list tonight - cleaning things up, watching videos I had saved for later, etc - and I came across a post by Ted Hope, from his blog, Truly Free Film, titled: 50* Ways You Can Do Something Different On This Production. There were a ... […]
• LOST CHILDREN TRANSMEDIA PLAN
  In this video, I talk about the transmedia effort for the film Coraline. Here's the panel I attended where the creators talk about what they did: SUNDANCE TRANSMEDIA PANEL. In this video, I also talk about the main points of THE LOST CHILDREN plan. They are: Add new story-related content to our ... […]
• PARK CITY: Exploring the Solutions, Part 2
  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 ... […]
• PARK CITY: Exploring the Solutions, Part 1
  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. […]
• THE LOST CHILDREN TRANSMEDIA EFFORT
  I pretty much say everything in the video, so I won't repeat it here. But I wanted to provide a couple of the links I talk about in the video: THE LOST CHILDREN website and THE LOST CHILDREN Transmedia Kickstarter Campaign If this stuff is useful to you as a filmmaker, you might ... […]
• PARK CITY: Seeking the Answers, Part 2
  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. […]
• PARK CITY: Seeking the Answers, Part 1
  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 ... […]
• PARK CITY: Discovering the Questions
  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. Part of an on-going series ... […]