This edition of TCIBR is brought to you by IndieFlix – Brian Clark joins us for a discussion about filmmaking, audiences, breaking the rules and the value of going DIY. Founder of GMD studios and co-founder of indieWire, Brian has been at the forefront of the independent film scene for well over a decade. GMD studios has created digital experiments, campaigns and games that flow seamlessly between the …

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This edition of TCIBR is brought to you by IndieFlix and Breakthrough Distribution – Jeff Gomez turned his childhood passion for role playing into a successful transmedia venture. His company Starlight Runner Entertainment has expanded the intellectual property of brands (Hot Wheels, Magic: The Gathering , Pirates of the Caribbean) by developing cross-platform storyworlds that engage audiences in new and interesting ways. The design and builds of these worlds have …

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Timo Vuorensola is a filmmaker who has fully embraced the concept of crowdsourcing. After the success of his last feature film Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning which has been downloaded over 8 million times, Timo and his team created a platform to help others crowdsource their movies.

WB: Can you explain Space Wreck and how the audience played a role in the film?
TV: Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning was a huge …

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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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 …

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 …

M dot Strange reports – This was part of a presentation called “Adventures in self distribution” I describe the journey I took with my animated feature film “We are the Strange” From my bedroom to Sundance and beyond and back to my little studio again after turning down Hollywood deals and deciding to self distribute and make my films my way.
M dot Strange: Berlin Talent Campus 08 from M dot …

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 …

Kfir Pravda reports – With the entrance of Yahoo! to live broadcasting field, and rumors about Ustream / Microsoft flirt , live Internet broadcasting is back in the headlines. There are many players in this market, some doing better than others. Technology is not a major differentiator, however competitors vary in feature set. Let’s see who is doing what.
I focused on main and interesting players today – Ustream, …

Scott Kirsner of CinemaTech talks with Brian Chirls (filmmaker, technologist, self-distribution pioneer and workbook project contributor) about building audiences and harnessing the power of the internet.
Scott writes “Last Wednesday, I had a chance to sit down for a few minutes with Brian Chirls, the tech guru who helped Arin Crumley and Susan Buice build an audience for ‘Four Eyed Monsters.’ More recently, he has been working with John Sayles on …

Content is going to become even more open in 2008… With the change in the media climate and distribution experiments such as Radiohead’s In Rainbows (in music), and Four Eyed Monsters (in film) which have open qualities (temporarily available to watch or listen/download for free, for example) but are not necessarily truly open content, it is getting harder to tell what you can and cannot officially do with your media.
These …

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 …

M dot Strange reports – So I was lucky enough to be summoned to make an animated music video for one of my favorite bands “Mindless Self Indulgence” I used Cinema 4d 9.1 w/Cactus Dans tools, and After Effects 6.5.
I thought I would out together a little thang documenting my work on the Mindless Self Indulgence music video “Animal” There’s a ton of music video making-of’s out there but since …

SITE: www.mogulus.com
SERVICE: TV studio in a browser —
Broadband penetration + drop in bandwidth costs + low cost gear + Mogulus = your very own TV channel. There has been a rise in streaming video solutions hoping to do for video what push button publishing did for blogs. Their focus is ease of use and the target audience is anyone who wants to pick up a camera. The term “Public …

* PROJECTS
What can the most successful doll on the planet show us about being Jewish today? Narrated by Peter Coyote, the film mixes old school narration with a new school visual style. THE TRIBE weaves together archival footage, graphics, animation, Barbie dioramas, and slam poetry to take audiences on an electric ride through the complex history of both the Barbie doll and the Jewish people- from Biblical times to present …

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 …

by Alex Afterman – Current conventional wisdom is that independent distribution is a broken system. Well guess what? Coming from someone inside the business that’s absolutely right.
There are so many more challenges and problems these days in indie distribution than when I started Heretic Films, my company, 4 years ago. First of all, the digital cinema revolution – which is, don’t get me wrong, a great thing, …

Our guest today is Paul Pod, founder of Tape It Off The Internet (TIOTI). TIOTI targets lovers of TV shows and creates a social layer that allows viewers to discover and share media. The concept of social discovery around media is an important trend to follow, especially when it comes to bringing one’s work to an audience.

For more information about Paul and TIOTI click here.

To listen NOW …

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Today our guest is Nicholas Reville, Executive Director of the Participatory Culture Foundation. PCF is a non-profit organization who’s mission is to create tools for broader, deeper engagement with culture and politics. They are working to ensure that the new mass medium of internet TV is open and independent, just like blogging and podcasting. They have a number of FREE tools and services that content creators can use to reach …

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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 …

I’m a fan of remixes and mashups. A couple years back mashups exploded onto the scene. One of the most downloaded albums of all time is Danger Mouse’s Grey Album – a creative mashup of JayZ’s black album and the Beatles’ White Album. The Grey Album was plagued by copyright issues and couldn’t be officially released but that only fueled demand and massive downloads via p2p networks.
They often say where …

Cutting through the static
by Lance Weiler
Last November the internet hit a major milestone, over a 100 million sites with registered domain names and active content. The web is considered to be the great equalizer for filmmakers, one which promises cost effective promotion and distribution. But where do you start and what’s the best way to design a cost effective online promotional campaign that can help you build an audience for …

Our guests today are Susan Buice and Arin Crumley. Four Eyed Monsters is Susan and Arin’s first feature film. When a festival run didn’t result in distribution, Arin and Susan took matters into their own hands. By harnessing a variety of free sites and services, they’ve built an impressive audience for their own work. In our conversation we discuss ways for filmmakers to build their own audiences, and the …

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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 …

Our guest today is Matt Hanson. Matt is the creator of the cinema 2.0 project, A SWARM OF ANGELS. SOA is a collaborative filmmaking experiment that uses “crowdsourcing” to create and distribute a full length feature film. The project is open to anyone who would like to join the process. For a small fee you become an Angel and have a vote in everything that happens from script to screen.

To …

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