This edition of TCIBR is brought to you by IndieFlix and Breakthrough Distribution – Inventing the Movies is a new book by Scott Kirsner that details Hollywood’s epic battle between innovation and the status quo. Scott joins us for a discussion about cinema’s past, present and future. Of particular note for filmmakers is a discussion around the pull economy / attention economy and how building and maintaining audiences is going …

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This edition of TCIBR is brought to you by IndieFlix and Breakthrough Distribution – Skot Leach and his brother Ryan are on a mission to warn the world about a secret zombie outbreak. Their Lost Zombies project is a crowdsourced zombie flick that has user-gen sightings coming in from all over the world. Community members submit video, audio, photos, and articles as they document zombie outbreaks. In our discussion Skot …

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This edition of TCIBR is brought to you by IndieFlix and Breakthrough Distribution – Casey Walker has turned to the internet to raise the funds for his debut feature film, FREE FOR ALL…BUT YOU!. By putting a different spin on a model that helped a college student raise a million dollars for school, Casey has found a legal way to gather funds for the film. To date he’s raised over …

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I’ve just return from Hot Docs where I participated in a panel of judges for the newly formed Convergence Lab. Created by DocAgora, the lab focuses on a number of projects. The lab brings together producers, filmmakers and interactive designers in an effort to develop cross-media strategies for their projects.
Cross-media (the telling of stories across multiple mediums, devices and platforms) is a topic that we discuss often – an exciting …

First off, if you haven’t checked out Brett Gaylor’s open source cinema project you should. It is an exciting doc project that pulls from collaborators around the world. Brett is currently looking for some materials to finish the film. Here’s a request that he sent out to his Open Source Cinema members. If you’d like to join this ground breaking project visit http://opensourcecinema.org
Hello dear members of Open Source Cinema! This …

The following was originally published in Filmmaker Magazine. I thought it was appropriate to re-post since the FHTA submission period is coming to a close not to mention numerous filmmakers have been asking for info on ways to spread the word about their work. This article was one of a four part series entitled “Lessons in DIY.” Make sure to read the article it covers three other interesting projects that …

This edition of TCIBR is brought to you by IndieFlix and Breakthrough Distribution – Dan Goldman is a critical acclaimed comic book artist and illustrator. His most recent project “Shooting War” went from being a free online comic to sparking a bidding war. Various major publishing and production interests battled it out for the publishing and film rights. Goldman is a strong believer in the concept of crowdsourcing and …

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In this special video podcast Christy Dena interviews workbook project founder Lance Weiler. Dena, a cross-media entertainment strategist, mentor, designer, writer and PhD researcher conducted the interview for her universe creation podcast. Here’s what Dena had to say about the interview.
Filmmaker Lance Weiler is the special guest on this first video podcast at UC101. Weiler talks about the unique ways he has experimented with extending the storyworld of his …

Power to the Pixel is a conference that focuses on funding, producing and distributing films in the digital age. The next edition of PTTP will be held in Paris this coming June. Liz Rosenthal the founder of PTTP was kind of enough to share the following video. Please feel free to embed and spread.

The final Power to the Pixel session brings together five pioneering filmmakers who are reinventing the …

For those of you who don’t know FROM HERE TO AWESOME is an extension of the workbook project. In the spirit of bringing an open source philosophy to various parts of the filmmaking process, FHTA is focused on education, discovery and distribution. Over the next few months leading up to the festival’s kick off in Paris on June 3rd, FHTA is constructing a series of vids that detail the current …

Recently, I’ve found myself a bit obsessed with the concept of lifestreams. Granted the concept has been around for awhile but what I’ve found most interesting is how a lifestream could be applied to the discovery and promotion of films.
The term Lifestream is associated with creating a digital timeline of your life. They usually include blog entries that you’ve written, photos you’ve taken, text messages you’ve sent or received, bookmarks …

The promise of unlimited choice and shelf space due to an emerging on-demand universe of content has many in the industry struggling to figure out how new media revenue should be divided. This highly contentious issue is at the center of the current WGA strike. But while the WGA and the Hollywood studios duke it out over Internet residuals, many independent filmmakers are simply trying to figure out how to …

We’ve been working on a new social experiment for the last six months and this coming Thursday it will take its first steps. From Here to Awesome is a discovery and distribution festival. The hope is that by bringing together audiences, films, promotional partners and distribution outlets, FHTA can create opportunities for filmmakers that enable them to control their own rights and receive a direct financial return from their work. …

This edition of TCIBR is brought to you by IndieFlix and Breakthrough Distribution – Over the holiday break we recorded two editions of TCIBR that looked back on 2007 and forward to 2008. In part one we take a look at the year in digital entertainment. Our guests include Scott Kirsner of CinemaTech and Woody Benson, general partner of Prism Venture Works.

To listen NOW click the play …

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One of our favorite crowdsourced projects, A Swarm of Angels is expanding. We’re members and supports of the project which is challenging the way films are funded, produced and distributed. We sat down with founder Matt Hanson to discuss the Swarm last year. Listen here.
“Phase 3 is where A Swarm of Angels really takes flight. With over 1000 members from around the world, and after a longer than anticipated pause …

Brett Gaylor’s “Basement Tapes,” is a collaborative documentary project about copyright in the digital age. We interviewed Brett a bit ago for TCIBR.
The above video was a group project done by 64 students from Concordia University.
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* PROJECTS
Esther Robinson’s debut feature, A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory is a touching and deeply personal cinematic journey. The doc centers on her Uncle Danny who was a talented filmmaker and Andy Warhol’s lover. In 1966, Danny mysteriously disappeared. The film’s subjects include Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, Paul Morrissey, Brigid Berlin, Billy Name and what may be the earliest known footage of the …

One of the goals of the Workbook, is to create a “social open source” project that encourages content creators to share information with one another. Yesterday we held the first in a series of discussions around the current state of the industry. A group of filmmakers came together at the IFP’s NYC offices for some food and conversation.
Participants included: Josh Zeman, Zachary Mortensen, Esther Robinson, Doug Block, Ry Russo …

The new Case Study section of the Workbook, will focus on projects in development, production and distribution. The first case study details the Head Trauma cinema ARG (alternate reality game) which not only promoted the movie’s DVD and VOD release but also became its own revenue stream.
Like everything else associated with the Workbook the Case Study section is an experiment, so if you have questions, suggestions or know of …

This past week, we concluded our latest cinema ARG experiment entitled HOPE IS MISSING. The design of HIM is covered in an article that I wrote for the current issue of filmmaker magazine. This post will focus on the results of the experiment. A more detailed case study surrounding the cinema ARG will be released later in Nov.
Layers of interactivity
HOPE IS MISSING consisted of four web films that were loaded …

This edition of “TCIBR” is brought to you by IndieFlix – Tiffany Shlain is a writer, director, and producer of innovative short form work. Her most recent project THE TRIBE, is an unorthodox, unauthorized short film about Jewish people and the Barbie doll. Tiffany and her team have been able to reach their audience in an interesting and unique way that is returning a profit and engaging audiences around the …

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Producing a feature-length motion picture is a daunting task. All the more so if you do it without the support of a major studio using money you have raised yourself. But according to independent filmmaker Lance Weiler, “the real struggle” comes after the film is completed. Distributing a theatrical feature — and doing so profitably — poses an even greater challenge. As Weiler put it during a recent interview with …

By Christy Dena –
In 1917 poet Guillaume Apollinaire gave a lecture, L’Esprit Nouveau et les Poetès, on what he described as the ‘visible and unfolded book of the future’. He wrote that creators in the future will, ‘like conductors of an orchestra of unbelievable scope,’ have at ‘their disposal the entire world, its noises and its appearances, the thought and language of man, song, dance, all the arts and all …

Today we are joined by writer and game designer Ken Eklund. Over the past 20 years Ken has been writing and designing games. His most recent game World Without Oil, was an ITVS funded ARG (alternate reality games) about a future oil shock. WWO is the first ARG designed to create a dialog about our dependency on oil and stimulate social change.

For more info on Ken Eklund click …

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Arin sent this vid in. He is currently building up a collection of interviews with the press which he’ll later mashup.
From Arin:
“This is an interview that chronicles how Four Eyed Monsters was promoted using the internet. The result of this interview was an article on Wired.com’s“
For more on Arin and FEM click here.

Since I’m knee deep in pulling together the next HEAD TRAUMA cinema ARG, I thought I’d share some of my promotional materials. The following is an invite followed by a press release for the event. We started by hitting horror blogs and then moved into some indie film and general movie outlets. When I come up for air next week I want to layout a detailed description of how we …

When it comes time to creating digital assets for your work, I’ve found that it’s important to devise a plan that will work for your target audience. Finishing the film and expecting people to find your site, and keep returning over time – just isn’t going to happen. But a couple things can help you in your quest to get your work found, and along the way your fans might …

In an interesting experiment FOUR EYED MONSTERS has joined forces with film community site Spout.com Together they are running a 1 week promotion which started yesterday. The promotion has the full movie running on youTube and for each person who signs up for a FREE Spout.com account FEM will receive a dollar.

In traditional models of distribution this type of internet releasing has been known to cause issues with selling …

Today we are joined by Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky. Miller is a writer, artist and musician. His work often combines art, technology, and politics. One of his recent media projects entitled “Rebirth of a Nation” is a remix of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 “Birth of a Nation.” Miller’s work is at the forefront of the emerging remix culture and during our discussion he shares his feelings about art, technology …

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I’ve heard a lot of people challenging the theatrical experience – box office numbers are down from previous years, and home theater systems are only getting better. Not to mention all the competition for viewers attention thanks to a 500+ channel universe, broadband and a shrinking amount of free time. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that people still want that communal experience that a theatrical film can provide. …

One of the missions of the Workbook Project is to create a bridge between filmmaking and technology. In an effort to identify new ways to harness the power of the internet, we like to demonstrate things in practical ways. For instance, when I found out that I couldn’t attend the festivities in Park City this year, I started thinking about ways that I could in a virtual sense.
Since I’ve been …