5 Spots Remain for In-Depth Workshop on Building a Fan Base & Generating Revenue, 12/1 in San Francisco

I'm doing an in-depth version of my workshop on "Building Big Audiences and Generating Revenue in the Digital Age" next Tuesday evening, 12.1.09, at BAVC in San Francisco. There are just five spots left (and the registration rate goes up on Saturday at midnight... if any seats remain.)

We'll explore several important case studies of media pioneers who've built big fan bases online, including Joss Whedon, OK Go, M dot Strange, ze frank, Michael Buckley, and Jonathan Coulton. We'll talk about online fundraising, selling merchandise, digital downloads, and other new revenue streams. We'll detail some of the really simple techniques for turning a small audience into a big audience -- stuff I've picked up, and stuff you've picked up.

And as a group we'll brainstorm strategies for several projects being developed by the workshop participants.

Even though this is San Francisco, I'm assuming that participants are artists, not techno-whizzes, so this will be a workshop delivered in plain English, with lots of time for Q&A. I want you to leave with a few practical, powerful things on your to-do list, not questions and confusion.

The full description of this evening workshop is here. Everyone will get a free paperback copy of Fans, Friends & Followers.

I wrote the book for independent artists (filmmakers, musicians, stand-up comics, writers, artists) trying to make a giant dent in the world, without a major media conglomerate's resources. And that's exactly who this workshop is for.

Hope to see you there!

Some Notes from the 2009 Producers Institute Opening Panel

Really fun conversation this morning at the opening session of the Producers Institute for New Media Technologies, covering all things related to the evolution of documentary storytelling.

Lots of people have been Tweeting from the event using the tag "#pint09." While there wasn't a live video feed of the panel as promised, I'm told that recorded video will show up soon (and I'll link to it once it does.)

I blogged earlier about some of the topics we planned to cover. We got to about half of them.

A few random notes, mostly sparked by things the audience said:

1. If you focus too much on new technologies and communications platforms, like Twitter and iPhone apps and Facebook, you can risk missing a big chunk of your audience (unless your film is intended explicitly at people under 35.) What about people over 35? Filmmakers ought to think about making their film available and generating buzz in traditional places (like theaters, film fests, Netflix, and Amazon) as well as on the Interwebs, iTunes, mobile devices, house parties, etc.

2. A lot of filmmakers can get intimidated by how much there is to do in this new world of audience cultivation and digital distribution: so many new platforms, formats, and modes of interactivity. But I also think there are so many new ways that you can seek out help from people you've never met. Your creative crew can grow from five to fifty if you know how to ask for assistance and get people involved (with tools like wikis, Ning, and even simple blogs like this one). Of course, you also have to be open to the kind of ideas and contributions you get -- and be willing to give up a bit of control in exchange for getting pro bono assistance from folks around the world. (In Fans, Friends & Followers, Jonathan Coulton, Robert Greenwald, and Timo Vuorensola talk about their approaches to crowdsourcing.)

3. We need a good way to connect filmmakers with social media experts, for advice/guidance/collaboration. Even tech-savvy filmmakers can benefit from smart ideas about engaging the audience and getting them talking about your work... and many social media folks would love to sink their teeth into some substantial film projects. Perhaps this is a job for the 2009 edition of The Conversation, now sort of in the planning stages for NYC later this year.
(We're still trying to nail down the right venue.) But if there are other initiatives doing this sort of thing, let me know...

Calling All Documentarians: Your Ideas About the Future of Doc Storytelling

The great Wendy Levy of BAVC has asked me to moderate a panel this Saturday in San Francisco, for the Producers Institute for New Media Technologies. Here's the description and the list of panelists. I'd love to get your questions, comments, and predictions here -- and we'll weave them into the conversation Saturday morning as much as possible (with credit). I'm told the panel will be live streamed here.

Descrip and panelists:

The Future of Visual Storytelling:
Content-Driven Technologies and the New Documentary Movement

There is no question that the way people consume content has fundamentally changed over the last several years. Whether online, on mobile devices, DVD/BluRay, or in physical spaces, the way we tell stories is also changing. What is the future of documentary filmmaking, with the reality of shorter attention spans, laptop culture and evolving technology that enables new ways to interact with narrative content? This panel will explore the emerging developments, new opportunities and technical challenges in the field – is interactivity the end of traditional narrativity?

Panelists:

Lance Weiler, The Workbook Project

Mark Gibson, Media Consultant

Tina Singleton, Witness

Joaquin Alvarado, CPB

Here are some of the topics I plan to bring up... feel free to respond or to add others in the comments below.

Round 1: In five years, what will people mean when they say “documentary”? What will have changed, what will remain the same about the form? What new possibilities will documentary storytellers be seizing?

Round 2: What today feels to you like the platform or new technology that offers the most potential for documentary storytellers to connect with audiences and change the world? (IE, the iPhone, games, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.)

Round 3: What’s the most significant change you see taking place among viewers, and the way they consume/create/interact with content?

Round 4: What’s one project that to you feels like it represents a new, experimental (perhaps interactive) direction in documentary storytelling?

Round 5: What is the role of the director, producer, and the creative team? Are they ringmasters, conversation catalysts, community organizers? How does the work of creating new elements around the film balance with all the work of creating the film itself? What about giving up control – how does that square with the traditional control-oriented nature of filmmaking?

Round 6: What question would you like to ask the audience, or your fellow panelists?

Audio: Outreach & Connection panel, from Making Your Media Matter 2009

Just wanted to post some rough audio from today's panel on "Outreach & Connection" -- how filmmakers can effectively build an audience for their work (captured with my little Olympus digital voice recorder). This was part of the 2009 Making Your Media Matter conference organized by American University's Center for Social Media.

The panelists were:

- Andrew Mer of SnagFilms
- Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar, filmmakers of 'Made in LA'
- Scott Kirsner, editor of CinemaTech (that would be me)
- Maia L. Ermita, Director of Festival and Outreach at Arts Engine

And moderating was Wendy Levy, Director of Creative Programming at the Bay Area Video Coalition.

Here's the MP3 file... or just click play below. It's about 90 minutes long.

Where Documentaries Collide with Games, Social Networks, and Virtual Worlds

Every summer, the Bay Area Video Coalition runs the Producers Institute for New Media Technologies, which has quickly become one the world's foremost petri dishes for experimentation at the intersection of film, games, social networks, and virtual worlds.

If that's an intersection that interests you, the list of projects just accepted into this summer's workshop is well worth a look.

Here's a sample:

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVE
Project Director: Paco de Onis
The ICC is the first permanent international tribunal set up to try individuals for crimes against humanity. "The Reckoning" is a documentary about the critical early years of the ICC as it issues arrest warrants in Uganda and puts two Congolese warlords on trial and shakes up the Colombian justice system. Through the Institute, the team will develop a social network, a casual game application for educational distribution, and a cell phone/text messaging tool to bring stakeholders into the network in order to increase understanding and awareness of the ICC, and generate a global discussion about international justice and the role it can play in deterring mass atrocities.

Video from BAVC Event on New Media & Documentary Storytelling

I moderated a really interesting conversation last month at the Bay Area Video Coalition on using new media to tell non-fiction stories. (Some of my notes from the panel are here.)

They've recently put the video up on Blip, so I'm embedding it here. Here's the description of the panel, and who was on it:

New Media/New Meaning: Multi-Platform Technology, New Media Innovation and Documentary Storytelling

10am - 11:30am, Saturday, June 2 at KQED, 2601 Mariposa Street at Bryant, San Francisco


Panelists include: Scott Kirsner, CinemaTech (moderator); Chris O'Dea, MobiTV; Tim Olson, KQED Interactive; Rahdi Taylor, Sundance Documentary Institute; Anthony Marshall, Current TV; Tony Walsh, Clickable Culture; Meghan Cunningham, Magnet Media, zoom-in online; Ben Batstone Cunningham, alt-zoom studios.

Click To Play

(Some editorializing: Blip seems like a pretty bad place to host video.)

BAVC Innovation Salon: Podcast and Video Clip

Didn't get a chance to go to 'Strange Collision' last month, a conversation about the intersection of creativity and technology here in the Bay Area. It included panelists like Stu Maschwitz from The Orphanage, Tim Partridge from Dolby Labs, Kevin Arnold from IODA, Lincoln Dean Hershberger from Electronic Arts, and animator M dot Strange. It was organized by the Bay Area Video Coaltion.

But the podcast is here (mp3 format), and M dot Strange was kind enough to point me to the very entertaining video intro he made for his part of the panel discussion.

This Moment in History

Wendy Levy of the Bay Area Video Coalition asked me to moderate a panel discussion yesterday at the Producers Institute for New Media Technologies, a 10-day workshop where documentary film- and video-makers explore ways to tell stories in other media -- videogames, cell phones, interactive kiosks, or virtual worlds like SecondLife.

The more I thought about this group of creators, I wanted to put this particular moment in history into context.

So I started by showing this film, made in 1895 by Thomas Edison and William Heise. This was about a year after Edison's Kinetosocope movies were first shown to the public in 1894.



Then I showed this video, made by Judson Laipply in 2006. (Astonishingly, even though this is the most-viewed video on YouTube, about 90 percent of the audience said they hadn't seen it before.)



Watch them both, and then think about what they have in common...which we'll come back to in a second.

They both feel to me like new media being born. No one quite knew what to put in front of the camera, what would hold the audience's attention. The cinema didn't really develop into a medium for modern dance... and Internet video may not develop into a medium for short-form, physical comedy like "Evolution of Dance." But I think this moment in history is going to be shaped by creative people who figure out what works both artistically and commercially on YouTube...on cell phones...in videogames and virtual worlds.

I'm amazed at how much these two clips have in common: No dialogue. No cuts. A camera frozen in place. Both dance-oriented. Both involve shooting a performer who hails from another medium (Annabelle Whitford was a vaudeville performer...Judson Laipply is a motivational speaker who tours college campuses.) How much was the budget to produce each of these? Judson told me that the cost of his was exactly equal to the cost of a DV tape; Whitford probably got paid to perform at Edison's studio in New Jersey, but I'm guessing that making "Serpentine Dance" was not a very pricey proposition.

Our conversation yesterday at the Producer's Institute touched on lots of topics that creative people are concerned about, among them:

- How do you maintain control over your work once you put it on the Internet, if other people want to put it in contexts you don't like, or re-edit it? Or can you maintain control?
- How do you draw an audience to your work?
- How can you measure the size of the audience you reach on the Net?
- Where are the good examples of substantive, socially-relevant content being seen on the Net?
- Where will financing come from (this, actually, was something I discussed afterward with a filmmaker from Buenos Aires)?

The subtext of the morning's conversation, to me, was that in 2007, new technologies are offering a fresh sheet of paper to people who want to use images to tell stories. You can take advantage of that, or you can ignore it and keep doing what you're doing.

But anyone willing to experiment and learn and take risks -- young or old, part of the establishment or an outsider -- is going to shape what these new media become.

Alternative programming in d cinemas ... Unbox for indies ... BAVC Innovation Salons

- The Washington Times has a smart piece about alternative programming being shown in digital cinemas, focusing mainly on concerts and director Q&As.

- Variety's Anne Thompson writes about how indie filmmakers are using sites like Unbox and inDplay to wring money from their features. Still, seems like a tough slog to try to earn a profit on a $100,000 film through digital distribution only.

- The Bay Area Video Coalition is starting a cool series called the Innovation Salon; the first one is coming up soon, on April 26th. Speakers include animator M dot Strange, Orphanage co-founder Stu Maschwitz, the CEO of the Independent Online Distribution Alliance, and Electronic Arts executive Lincoln Dean Hershberger. It's free to attend -- just RSVP. Here's the description:

From visual effects to game design, to animators to programmers, the Bay Area has proven that artists and geeks can rule the world. Is it talent, tolerance and technology?* From the ecosystem now dubbed “Digital Hollywood” come award-winning movies and games like Sin City, The Incredibles, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Matrix, Battlefield, and The Sims--new ways to tell stories, get music, watch video, play games and build community. Science + creativity = Revenge of the Nerds. Welcome to the future.