Calling All Creatives: DIY Days Philadelphia Happens August 1st

If you're in Pennsylvania, DC, NYC, or the environs... consider being part of DIY Days Philadelphia, on Saturday August 1st. The one previous DIY Days event I've participated in was phenomenal -- and it's free (but you do need to RSVP to hold a slot.)

Here's the scoop:

DIY DAYS is a FREE day of talks and networking centered on how to fund, create, distribute and sustain from your creative work. After a successful first year that included stops in LA, San Francisco, Boston, NYC and London, DIY DAYS returns with a series of day long conferences for creatives that enable the sharing of work and ideas while providing an important networking outlet with industry innovators.

Many of those working in film, music, design, gaming and tech are wondering how to sustain themselves in challenging economic times. How does one monetize their creative work and get the word out? DIY DAYS aims to answer these questions with a day of - speakers, panels, case studies, roundtable discussions and workshops presented by an impressive list of innovative thinkers and doers.

Acclaimed author and filmmaker, Douglas Rushkoff (Life Inc., Get back in the box: innovation from the inside out) will open the conference with a keynote on storytelling. Other speakers include Scott Kirsner (Friends, Fans and Followers), Dan Goldman (Shooting War), Lance Weiler (Head Trauma, The Last Broadcast). Michael Monello (co-founder of Campfire Media & Blair Witch Project producer), Brian Clark (GMD Studios) Esther B. Robinson (ArtHome), Ana Domb (MIT) Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters), Scott Macaulay (Producer Gummo, Raising Victor Vargas, editor Filmmaker Mag), Don Argott (Rock School), Eugene Martin (Diary of a City Priest) Alex Johnson (WBP Labs), Anita Ondine (STM) Brian McTear (record producer Miner Street Studios), Mark Schoneveld (the Poverty Jetset) and Geoff DiMasi (founder of P’unk Avenue). Plus many more.

Lance Weiler, a resident of the greater Philadelphia area, and founder of the WorkBook Project and DIY DAYS explains the genesis for the project. “DIY DAYS is an attempt to pull back the curtain on a once closed industry - to share the process of what it takes to make work and sustain from one’s creative efforts. Philadelphia has so many talented people working in different areas, and our hope is that DIY DAYS can help to bring some of them together and, maybe in the process, spark some new collaborations.”

The conference runs from 8:30am to 6:30pm on Saturday August 1st and will be followed directly by an after party/ mixer to be held at the Brandywine Workshop located at 730 S. Broad Street.

Registration is now open but space is limited.

Two from the LA Times

Two pieces on the digital media future that ran in the LA Times this week:

'Hollywood hits the stop button on high-profile Web video efforts' and 'Digital technology and dollar signs' (an op-ed piece I wrote.)

From the first piece, by Ben Fritz and Dawn Chmielewski:

Conceived with great fanfare, big media's attempt over the last two years to capitalize on the Internet video phenomenon embodied by YouTube and "Saturday Night Live" digital shorts has fallen victim to recession-triggered cuts and inflated expectations about the advertising revenue they would command.

"It's very similar to what happened in '99 and 2000, where everyone saw gold in the hills," said Mika Salmi, the former head of digital media for MTV Networks and now a technology venture capitalist, in reference to the first dot-com boom. "The reality is that it's much harder to make money than everyone thought."

It mentions the recent shut-down of 60Frames Entertainment, Disney's Stage 9 Digital studio, and earlier failures like NBC's DotComedy Web site and SuperDeluxe.

Meanwhile, in my piece, I argue that perhaps Hollywood hasn't been experimental enough with the Web, or taken users' behavioral changes seriously enough. (The top talent in Hollywood still wants to make feature-length, big budget content for cinemas, I'd argue...not short clips for mobile phones.)

From that piece:

Many in Hollywood still deride the wacky, user-generated videos that occasionally turn into viral hits on YouTube, the top website for video viewing. And it's true that one of the most-watched videos ever uploaded to the site is titled "Charlie bit my finger -- again!"

But a number of young creators -- many of them working outside of Hollywood's orbit -- have been feverishly experimenting with new ways to tell stories and generate revenue. An office worker in Connecticut created the catty entertainment commentary show "What the Buck" on YouTube, and suddenly found he was making more from the site's "partner program," which offers creators a cut of ad revenue, than he was at his desk job, which he promptly quit. Lance Weiler accents his suspense films with cellphone and Web-based "alternate reality games" that enable players to explore the story and interact with characters after they've left the theater. Robert Greenwald, a Culver City-based documentarian, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars online to support his left-leaning films and Internet videos on such topics as the mortgage crisis and the war in Afghanistan. And Gregg and Evan Spiridellis are building a new kind of animation studio in Venice, where they produce a series of viral videos about current events and politics, and sell subscriptions to a vast collection of customizable digital greeting cards. This month, they'll debut their latest video for President Obama at the Radio and TV Correspondents Assn. Dinner in Washington.

Business models for content on the Internet are still evolving. But it's already becoming clear that $100-million movies like "Land of the Lost," or even $10-million independent films, may not represent the future of the industry. And new technologies like YouTube, the iPhone and next-generation gaming consoles are opening up all sorts of new, creative possibilities. The artists and business people who will succeed in this new environment are those who are paying attention to the changing behaviors and tastes of this new digital audience -- rather than trying to ignore them or, worse, explaining why they are wrong.

Your thoughts?

Gary Hustwit, Lance Weiler, Christopher Roberts, and Me ... Next Sunday at the Apple Store SoHo

I'm psyched to be moderating a panel next weekend as part of Internet Week NY that will focus on changes in film funding, distribution and marketing.

Here's the event info on Facebook. It runs from 2:30 to 4 PM on June 7th at the Apple Store in SoHo, and it's free (though space is limited, and I'm told it was standing room only last year.)

Gary Hustwit (director of docs 'Helvetica' and the new 'Objectified') was a huge hit on my panel at SXSW this past March... Lance "Mr. Transmedia Experience" Weiler is always great... and I'm eager to meet Christopher Roberts, director of 'Up With Me'. (The panel is organized by the nice folks at IndieGoGo.)

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: Talking About the Future of Indie Film, at SXSW

Eight folks who were in Austin this week for the SXSW Film Festival sat down yesterday morning to have breakfast and talk about the one big idea or big challenge or big shift that we've been thinking about most these days. We recorded the conversation so you could listen in, but be forewarned that there's a lot of background noise; the restaurant was noisier than is ideal for audio recording. (It gets better as the recording goes on, as the restaurant empties out.) The order in which people speak in the recording is: producer Ted Hope, filmmaker Lance Weiler, conference organizer and producer Liz Rosenthal, technologist Brian Chirls, outreach guru Caitlin Boyle, filmmaker Brett Gaylor, producer and Filmmaker Mag editor Scott Macaulay, and me (Scott Kirsner.)

Some of the things we talked about:

- film financing
- transmedia experiences
- Creative Commons Plus licensing (ways to profit from people sharing and redistributing work licensed under Creative Commons)
- the need for more experimentation and information-sharing among filmmakers
- business models around piracy and file sharing (in particular what Jamie King has been doing with VODO)
- the desire for participation (IE, the audience is no longer just interested in passive consumption)
- the possibility of some kind of "Oprah's Book Club" movement that would involve groups of people watching and discussing films, rather than books
- the rise of YouTube, and whether filmmakers should be paying more attention to what audiences are doing (IE, watching short YouTube videos with groups of friends or colleagues), rather than insisting that the 90-minute film is the only "respectable" product to be making today

And much, much more.

I started the conversation by asking everyone to talk about one big idea or challenge that they'd been thinking about lately.

Here's the MP3, or you can listen by clicking 'Play' below.

From DIY Days Boston: Todd Dagres on Indie Film and Internet Video

To kick off DIY Days in Boston on Saturday, Lance Weiler and I interviewed Todd Dagres on stage.

Todd has produced several independent films (including the Sundance entry 'TransSiberian' this year), but he is best known as a venture capitalist who funds start-up companies like Veoh, EQAL, Twitter, and Next New Networks. Our conversation focused on how TV is changing... the as-yet-unproven business models of Internet video... financing and making independent films... how distribution is evolving... and why the word "community" ought to replace the word "audience" in your vocabulary.

Here it is in MP3 form (41 minutes long.)

Lance, Arin Crumley, David Tamés, and all the volunteers did a great job putting on the event -- and the audience was amazing.

In Boston this Friday & Saturday: DIY Days

DIY Days, organized by Lance Weiler and Arin Crumley, are coming to Boston this weekend. Friday is a screening of films from the 'From Here to Awesome' festival, and Saturday is a day-long conference on the new world of filmmaking, distribution, and marketing.

Both events are free, but you need to register. MassArt is hosting. I'll be giving a talk called "The Era of Digital Creativity" in the afternoon...

Calling All Bay Area DIY Filmmakers...

What are you doing next Sunday?

Lance Weiler, Arin Crumley, M dot Strange, Caveh Zahedi, and a bevy of other crazy DIY filmmakers are getting together at the 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco next Sunday (August 17th). This is the second in the "DIY Days" series, which aims to share experience and case studies among avidly independent filmmakers. (The speaker list is here.)

It's free... just sign up here.

And you can see lots of video from the late July DIY Days event in LA here.

Talking 'bout THE CONVERSATION

In Boston last Friday, Lance Weiler and I met briefly to do some planning for 'The Conversation' this coming October.

We also sat down in front of the built-in Webcam in my MacBook to talk a bit about our hopes and dreams for the event -- and the reason we're putting it together.

The cinematography and sound are crude, to put it nicely. But I think you'll get the gist that we're trying to do something experimental and unconference-like...something that will bring together a really interesting bunch of innovators this fall. (That's me on the left, Lance on the right.)

DIY Day LA: Are You Going?

Had a chance to connect with indie filmmaker Lance Weiler this afternoon in Boston.... he mentioned that registration is about to close for next Saturday's DIY Day in Los Angeles. The agenda looks great: Tommy Pallotta, Marshall Herskovitz, Robert Greenwald, and more. The best part? It's free.

A Conversation with Cinetic: Today's Market for Digital Rights

I spent some time on the phone today with three of the folks involved in building Cinetic Media’s new digital rights group, called Cinetic Rights Management. They wanted to supply a bit more background on the group, which seeks to help indie filmmakers wring the most possible value from their work by selling it to satellite companies, Internet portals, mobile phone operators, etc. (I’d posted last week about Cinetic’s hiring of Matt Dentler and some of the deal terms they’d been dangling before filmmakers.)

First thing: they didn’t dispute the deal terms I’d seen them offering to filmmakers last year (a 50-50 split of revenues after some expenses are taken off the top, like digitally encoding the film, and a 10-year exclusive contract to be represented by Cinetic.) But Cinetic’s Christopher Horton did say that terms are negotiated “on a case-by-case basis.” Horton said they’ve signed up “about 100 films” so far.

Janet Brown, the chief operating officer of CRM, said that the long-term arrangement is important to Cinetic because of the “unproven revenue model in this space”; the resources CRM will commit to marketing a film; and the logistics of encoding films and collecting info about how well they’ve performed in each distribution channel.

But what happens, I asked, if a filmmaker signs up with Cinetic and something goes awry? Cinetic might not find any buyers for the film, or might get out of the digital business in five years. Horton quipped, “This could be our only business in five years.”

Still, when Cinetic reps a film at Sundance or another festival, a filmmaker might sign a year-long exclusive with the firm, or even shorter. There’s a big difference between that and a decade. But the CRM team contend that they’ll be able to do a lot with a film’s rights over that period of exclusivity, as digital markets develop. “Having a sales agent for your digital rights is going to be even more important than a conventional sales agent” handling theatrical and home video distribution, Horton predicted.

Brown explains that CRM will market films to Internet portals like iTunes, Joost, and Jaman; satellite companies; cable companies; telcos; and wireless operators. They’re interested in repping not just new films, but high-quality older films where the rights have reverted to the filmmaker.

I noted that the big kahuna in terms of Internet sales (and now, rentals) seems to be Apple's iTunes marketplace. The CRM trio seemed to agree. They noted that, working with New Video, they helped cut the deal with iTunes to premiere Ed Burns’ “Purple Violets” there last year. (No data is yet available, they said, on how well it has performed.) And Brown said they’re “in discussions now to finalize our deal with [iTunes],” adding that CRM has “a very good relationship” with Apple.

Most of the deals CRM is seeing offered are so-called “consignment” deals: give us the movie, and we’ll give you a share of the revenues it produces. But CRM hopes that some films, in some digital outlets, will receive advances – especially when they’re offered to one outlet on an exclusive basis.

It can take a while for these Internet outlets to produce revenues, Horton explained. “We never tell filmmakers, we’re going to make you a heck of a lot of money through Jaman, Joost, and Netflix over the next twelve months. We’re focusing on the long-term,” he said.

A main emphasis in CRM’s dealings with filmmakers, it seems, will be helping them make sense of the growing number of digital distribution options – and freeing filmmakers up to get started on their next project, without spending years marketing their last one.

“Not every filmmaker has the time or inclination to do what Lance Weiler or the Four Eyed Monsters guys have done,” Brown said.

“Most independent filmmakers out there are still unaware of the opportunities,” said Dentler. "They’re so busy being filmmakers, engrossed in their project, that they don’t see the bigger picture, the bigger landscape.”

‘Four Eyed Monsters,’ he observed, came out in 2005, and directors Susan Buice and Arin Crumley “still haven't made another film. Hopefully, with our resources we can help filmmakers focus on continuing their careers.”

'Digital Cinema for Indies' panel at SXSW

The big challenge of today's 'Digital Cinema for Indies' panel at SXSW was explaining both the technical intricacies and the business parameters of digital cinema. But we tried.

The big challenge right now is that most of the 4000 or so digital screens in the US show studio content, delivered by AccessIT. Those screens aren't very accessible to independent filmmakers and small distributors. And the cost of mastering completed movies to the DCI standard, a file format designed by the major studios, is still quite high. Right now, panelist Russ Wintner said, "there are four labs in LA -- a virtual monopoly -- that can turn out a DCP." (The DCP, or digital cinema package, is the term for the final DCI file that's sent out to theaters, whether via satellite or hard drive.)

So what's the answer for an indie filmmaker looking to get her movie out to theaters in digital form? You could master the movie yourself, commandeer a hard drive, and tote it around to theaters, as panelist Lance Weiler did in 2006 with 'Head Trauma.' (Lance is something of a technical genius, so you may not want to try that yourself.) Or you could work with networks like Emerging Pictures -- which is fairly selective of what it picks up for distribution but has a nice network of digital venues around the country. (Emerging doesn't do four-walling, or screenings paid for by filmmakers that allow them to keep the entire box office take.) A somewhat more open option is Truly Indie, part of the Landmark Theatres empire.

Both Emerging and Truly Indie say that the costs of digital cinema distribution through their networks is usually cheaper than striking a film print.

(Update: This Hollywood Reporter piece, focused on the ShoWest trade show in Vegas, talks a bit about how the three biggest chains are approaching digital cinema.)

Launch time for 'From Here to Awesome,' a New Twist on the Film Festival

Three of the most thoughtful and high-energy DIY filmmakers around -- Lance Weiler, M dot Strange, and Arin Crumley -- have launched a new kind of online festival.

Called 'From Here to Awesome,' they're accepting submissions of full-length features and shorts right now. As with all festivals, the goal is to bring more attention to deserving work -- and the FHTA crew plan to use the Internet to achieve that, rather than, say, inviting a couple thousand friends to a snowy ski town in Utah.

There are no submission fees, and the festival will connect the "top ten" filmmakers with scads of distribution opportunities. (Most of these are distribution opps that any filmmaker can take advantage of without being part of FHTA, but the festival has prizes -- like free DVD replication of your movie, or free E&O insurance.) There will also be a "virtual conference" later this spring.... which seems like something to stay tuned for...

IndieGoGo: A Social Network for Filmmakers Raising Money (and Their Backers)

Almost a year ago, I wrote about IndieGoGo in Variety, as part of a new wave of efforts to use the Internet for film financing. (Back then, the site was still mostly a concept, and it was called Project Keiyaku.)

Now, the site has officially launched.

I do want to see someone succeed, and create a networking hub where filmmakers can raise money. But I think filmmakers and financiers are right to be skeptical... you can see some of the debate about the model on this earlier post about IndieMaverick, a UK-based financing site. (One thing that would make me more comfortable with IndieGoGo would be an actual address, and names listed on the site of who is behind it. I know the principals, and that they're based in Berkeley, Calif., but I'm not a filmmaker or financier coming to the site for the first time...) What will it take for someone to succeed? A well-known filmmaker successfully using one of the sites to raise money for a project.

From IndieGoGo's official press release:

“DIY has been long the mantra of independent filmmaking and financing. At IndieGoGo, we push that to the next level with DIWO, “Do It With Others” which more accurately reflects the active communal process required to launch film projects”, said Slava Rubin, IndieGoGo Founder and Chief of Strategy and Marketing. “Using the tools IndieGoGo offers, we aim to empower artists to realize their goals and bring more relevant films to the people. Online fundraising is accelerating, the cost of production is falling, social networking is approaching mainstream, and user-controlled media is the future. As these trends accelerate, IndieGoGo offers a new marketplace to turn ideas into film, and fans into insiders.”

...In its pre-launch phase, IndieGoGo sought developmental feedback from a wide range of filmmakers and industry leaders. FLOW: FOR LOVE OF WATER, directed by Irena Salina and produced by Steven Starr, was selected by IndieGoGo to be its first Showcase project and was subsequently selected to World Premiere in competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Other noted filmmakers planning to include projects on the site include Christopher Roberts (THE BELIEVER), Lance Weiler (THE LAST BROADCAST, HEAD TRAUMA), Michael Roiff (WAITRESS, AMERICAN SON), M dot Strange (WE ARE THE STRANGE), Michealene Cristini Risley (TAPESTRIES OF HOPE), Brett Gaylor (BASEMENT TAPES), Beth Murphy (BEYOND BELIEF), and Yung Chang (UP THE YANGTZE) which is also featured in the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

...Slava Rubin will represent IndieGoGo on the GOING IT ALONE: DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION FOR INDIE FILMMAKERS panel at the Sundance Film Festival on Wednesday, January 23, 12:30 pm at the New Frontier on Main Microcinema.

Workbook Project: Year in Review Podcast

Lance Weiler of The Workbook Project invited me and Woody Benson of Prism Venture Works to yammer a bit about what was important in the world of digital media in 2007, and what we see ahead in 2008.

Next Friday: Power to the Pixel!

Just a quick note about the "Power to the Pixel" conference, being held next Friday (10.26) in association with the London Film Festival. The subtitle is, "The Digital Distribution Forum for Independents."

Liz Rosenthal, one of the great minds behind the late, lamented Digimart gathering in Montreal, has put it together.

The speakers are great (Matt Hanson from A Swarm of Angels, director Lance Weiler, Ira Deutchmann of Emerging Pictures) and so is the price: L35. (That's 35 pounds sterling.)

The Reinvention of the Drive-In?

I have a piece in Variety on MobMov, a new organization I've been hearing a lot about. Here's the opening:

The inventor of the drive-in, Richard Hollingshead Jr., has been dead for three decades and is mostly forgotten. Bryan Kennedy, a 27-year-old Web designer, has never been to a drive-in. But with an online initiative called MobMov, the San Franciscan is reinventing the ozoner for the YouTube generation.

MobMov.com -- MobMov is short for "mobile movie" -- serves as a kind of digital clubhouse for about 160 "chapters" around the world, from L.A. to Hyderabad, India, that organize impromptu outdoor screenings. Projection booths usually consists of an LCD projector perched atop a car, a DVD player and an FM radio transmitter for the soundtrack.

But in a fresh twist on this old-fashioned exhibition form, two independent filmmakers have given MobMov chapters the right to screen their latest movies for free, in hopes of building buzz and spurring DVD sales.

(One fix to the story: Lance Weiler's "Head Trauma" is actually screening next Saturday, October 20th.)

More from the IFP Filmmaker Conference

Lance Weiler moderated a great panel yesterday afternoon that was supposed to be about "Consumer Viewing Habits" but wound up being more about the economics of supporting one's creative work, whether it involves full-length features (Arin and Susan from 'Four Eyed Monsters' were there), short-form funny videos (Andrew Baron from Rocketboom), or documentary (Brett Gaylor of Open Source Cinema).

Some very random notes:

Arin mentioned to Brett how important it is to collect ZIP codes from people interested in your project. That way, when you're doing theatrical screenings or events (or trying to figure out where you should do these events), you have a sense of the geography of your fan base: do people love you in Madison, Wisconsin, while they couldn't care less in Portland, Oregon?

Brett showed the trailer for his doc, which garnered applause -- a good sign. It should be finished next year, he says.

Andrew said that Rocketboom is one of YouTube's advertising partners, and that YouTube will share revenue from the ads it places on Rocketboom. But none of the ads have started showing up yet. Lance suggested that one reason why is that someone created a hack for Firefox that allows you to strip the ads off YouTube's videos. I suspect there may be other reasons, too. Afterward, Baron told me that the ad payments are based on impressions (not click-throughs), and that YouTube would be splitting the revenue roughly down the middle with its creators.

Arin and Susan shared a lot of financial info about 'Four Eyed Monsters.' They've grossed about $135,000 from the movie so far (but are still trying to erase some credit card debt.) About 69 percent of that has come from selling DVDs, movie tickets, and downloads, and 31 percent has come from selling t-shirts, posters, and other merch.

Afterward, Hunter Weeks (director of the doc '10 MPH') came up and we talked about distribution a bit. He said he hasn't really been selling many downloads on Amazon Unbox, even though an Amazon PR rep told me recently that his films was among the best-selling indie downloads on that site. (They had 12 downloads in the month of August through Unbox...and yet a representative for Amazon's CreateSpace division, which handles the indie content on Unbox, told me that month that they were "in the top 20 Unbox titles." What does that say about how well Unbox is doing?) Hunter said he also sells digital versions of the movie on his own site using a service called E-Junkie, which charges $80 a month to host the movie -- and nothing per transaction.

Then there was some hanging around in the lobby...I spoke with a couple knowledgeable folks about when, if ever, indie movies will appear on iTunes. The smart money is on 2008 -- not this year. iTunes is supposedly still more focused on trying to get more studio content. (It is now almost two years since I wrote this opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle arguing that Apple is being hypocritical by not allowing independent creators to sell their film and video on iTunes.)

Then there was a dinner that Slava Rubin of IndieGoGo organized....which brought together the 'Four Eyed Monsters' team, Lance, Brett, and M dot Strange...basically, an incredible about of DIY filmmaking smarts gathered around one long table.

Two Great Podcasts for the Price of None

Remember podcasts? Those great audio files you can listen to on your computer while you're doing other stuff -- or transfer to your iPod? They're free?

- Back in March, I moderated a really informative panel at South by Southwest on "Building an Online Fan Base." The MP3 audio is here, and for context, there's some textual coverage of the panel here. Panelists were:

> Scilla Andreen, IndieFlix
> Jim Miller, Brave New Foundation
> Ian Schafer, Deep Focus
> David Straus, Without A Box
> Joe Swanberg, Filmmaker
> Lance Weiler, Filmmaker and Editor, The Workbook Project

- Speaking of The Workbook Project, Lance has just posted an interview with Nicholas Reville of the Participatory Culture Foundation, which is trying to ensure that the medium of Internet TV stays open and independent.

In New York? Two Great Shows That Taste Great Together

If you're in the Greater New York area, filmmaker Lance Weiler is organizing a very special showing of his latest movie, 'Head Trauma,' complete with a DJ providing a live soundtrack -- and live performers in the audience. Plus, you're encouraged to use your cell phone -- which Lance incorporates in the story as a cinematic gaming device. It happens on Saturday, July 14th.

Is Lance gunning to be the new William Castle?

And the Museum of the Moving Image is also doing a preview screening of 'In the Shadow of the Moon,' in Manhattan on July 19th. Great documentary by British director David Sington, who'll be there in person.