October 2011
105 posts
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WatchIs the Website Dead?
By Katharine Relth
We return to the experts from our Amplify the Message panel for more sage advice on social media.
This panel was moderated by Marc Schiller of Electric Artists and included Lina Srivastava of Lina Srivastava Consulting, Tribeca Flashpoint’s Howard A Tullman, and writer/director Rider Strong.
In this 8 1/2 minute video selection, they discuss why...
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WatchIs Context the New King?
By Katharine Relth
During the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, several unique conversations in the Tribeca Talks: Industry series were organized as a way to inspire industry professionals, thought leaders, and Festival attendees to think about the present and future of filmmaking in new, innovative ways. Offering something different than the traditional screenings and ...
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To Science and Art
By Fred Wilson
Editors’ note: We like this post from Fred Wilson at AVC for 2 reasons: 1. He mentions us, and 2. More importantly, he highlights the trend that all filmmakers, film lovers and readers of our blog should note: technological innovation—think the internet—creates new opportunities for artists that they should explore. We think his thoughts can also apply to all aspects of...
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Where Is The Innovation Model in Film?
By Aina Abiodun
I just got back from LA (which is where I both attended film school and spent the majority of my professional life until about a year ago) and something struck me this time that had never occurred to me before: there is no model for innovation in Hollywood.
Most of the younger folks in the biz express frustration that the “system” is resistant to change,...
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WatchKeeping Your Sanity While Engaging Your Audience
By Jen Begeal
Transmedia projects have multiple points of entry that follow multiple storylines across several platforms. This kind of attention to detail can be overwhelming to a small team, and let’s face it, most transmedia projects function on micro budgets. Asking your audience to jump down the rabbit-hole with you requires finesse,...
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Filmmaking With a Participatory Audience
By Q’orianka Kilcher and Leone Marucci
Actress Q’orianka Kilcher and writer/director Leone Marucci sat down to discuss the efforts they’ve made to develop an early and active fan base for their upcoming film, The Power of Few, and why engaging a participatory audience is an increasingly important element of the filmmaking process for the industry to consider. Here’s what they had...
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The Film Industry Must Risk Its Present to Find...
By Billy Goldberg
Big news was made halfway through the 2011 edition of CinemaCon, the annual trade-show sponsored by the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO). After months of speculation, Warner Bros, Sony, Universal, and Fox announced they would be the first studios to offer selected films on video on demand (VOD) 60 days after their release in theaters. This model effectively...
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DSLRs, Websites and 3D, Oh My! New Technology for...
By Peter Hawley and John Otterbacher
To us, it’s all about the storytelling. If the story grabs, it doesn’t matter what form it takes – books, radio, TV, cinema, games or yet-to-be-categorized interactive media –it’s all about the story being told.
As times and technologies change, content creators have many more readily-available options for how they tell their story. But as ...
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What Filmmakers Can Learn From Mark Pincus’s Dog
By Mike Knowlton
The power of a great story can’t be understated. Look no further than Jeff Gomez’s recent post on this very blog, Reawakening the Grand Narrative. In it he explores the potential of narrative and how it can change the world. But as filmmakers, how do we continue to tell original, compelling stories in the disruptive entertainment landscape in which we find ourselves?
...
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Monetize Transparency, Not Secrecy
By Orly Ravid
I was initiated into the film distribution business starting in foreign sales, and then launched a domestic home video label for the same company. In this work, I noticed something disconcerting: the business of film distribution was predicated on being in the know of some basic information, and then trading on it.
The value of the knowledgeable middlemen was in knowing...
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Fair Use in a Transmedia World
By Pat Aufderheide
So far so good. But now what?
Documentary filmmakers have pioneered a more flexible, usable understanding of their right under copyright to fair use, which is the right to quote and re-use copyrighted material under some circumstances. Before 2005, documentarians were prisoners of a “clearance culture,” which often kept them even from starting projects that might...
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We’re Not So Different, You and I
By Nancy Schafer
I serve as the director of the Tribeca Film Festival, and in this position, I have an incredible opportunity to find and showcase films that I believe are important. I’ve made it a priority to show films that seek to dispel myths and prejudices. These are the kinds of films that I enjoy, and that can have a lasting impact on audiences.
We started the Festival in the wake...
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Can Data Save the Studios in the Age of Social...
By Nick DeMartino
Warner’s acquisition of Flixster is Hollywood’s savviest move yet to survive a wrenching transition into the age of social media.
It’s not just that Flixster is the leading social movie site on the iOS, Android and Blackberry mobile platforms with 35 million downloads to date. Or that its sister site, review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, attracts 12 million monthly...
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Technology, Storytelling and Innovation
By Jim Stern
When I began my career in film as a director 13 years ago, it was a hugely different world. Mounting a feature film production required significant time, money, equipment, and manpower, none of which were easy to come by as a first-time director from Chicago.
Today, budding filmmakers are blessed by the extraordinary technological advances our business has experienced since...
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Beauty and the Geeks: The Blind Side of Hollywood
By Chris Dorr
Every year, just before the Academy Awards are held, the Motion Picture Academy finds a beautiful young actress (such as Jessica Biel, Scarlett Johansson or Charlize Theron) to host the luncheon for the Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards. These awards cover technologies like new advances in 3D camera design, software for improving postproduction workflows or...
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WatchTransmedia for Social Documentary (part 3)
By Angelica Das
Another route for participation in the social documentary experience is through citizen journalism. Also still in the production phase is Leah Mahan’s film Turkey Creek, about the endangerment of an idiosyncratic and historic community of coastal Mississippi. The community of descendents of emancipated slaves is struggling to...
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WatchTransmedia for Social Documentary (part 2)
By Angelica Das
Still others approach social documentary by first tackling other spaces. Newcomer Jacqueline Olive is taking on the sensitive issue of lynching. The Always in Season Island project had roots in museum exhibitions to raise awareness of the prevalence of lynching in American history all the way through the 1960s. It’s a history that...
