Think Outisde the Box Office or #totbo

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to win a free pass to a conference hosted by filmmaker and author Jon Reiss about tips from his must read book for filmmakers Think Outside the Box Office. Earlier this year, I got my hands on a copy of the book as one of the prizes my film 'Ai' won from Egofest. I won the conference passes through a contest Jon was holding on Twitter where you had to ask a relevant question for the festival, read more about that here. The purpose of the two day information fest was to inform budding filmmakers, producers and investors about the ever evolving and oftentimes complex world of digital distribution and understanding your digital rights. I found the conference to be very informative with wonderful speaker guests such as Sheri Candler and Lance Weiler.

Along with my buddies, I did my best to live tweet the event to preserve some of the best morsels of information into the ether of the internet where they can be cherished forever. If you check out the hash tag we were using #totbo you can find valuable tidbits from the conference. Also, check out this awesome blog compilation of Day 1 info put together by Belal Khan. Finally, best part of the conference was meeting people you interact with digitally but haven't met in real life. So shout outs to my fellow #totbo peoples, in particular Sheri, Emily, Jake, Miles and of course Jon.

DIY Days NYC

I've been working hands on with the workbook project and DIY Days since my short film Ai premiered as part of the distribution and discovery film festival From Here to Awesome. As some of you may know who follow the indie scene, DIY Days is an amazing event for filmmakers looking to learn, share and connect with other filmmakers and is FREE, making it the best value when compared to other pricey conferences offering similar experiences.

DIY Days is coming to the New School in NYC April 3rd and registration is open now (hurry limited space). The event features an amazing list of talented speakers including Ted Hope, Lance Weiler and Eclectic Method among others. I've been asked to be the techincal director of the event and am putting the call out to any budding NYC filmmakers who want to volunteer and help capture this amazing experience. Specifically I'm looking for people with video cameras and still cameras to document, film, photograph, live stream and publish the DIY Days event online. If you are interested in helping out and volunterring your time, please contact me directly HERE as the event is fast approaching and we need your participation to both sustain this amazing resource for filmmakers and share it with those who cannot attend.

Transcending Twitter Potential

"Transcending Situational Potential"
by theongoingrms

Ryan Seslow is an amazing multi-disciplined artists and professor who I've had the pleasure of meeting via the magical social networking tool, Twitter. Ryan was one of the earliest people I began to follow and he instantly blew my mind with a plethora of amazing artistic content. I also became fascinated with his personal artistic works which include a wide variety of Warhol-esque techniques and cultural references on iconic touchstones. I could go on and on about Ryan's art but am more inclined to direct you to his insane Flickr page which gives you more than a glimpse into this prolific artist's body of work.

"Transcending Situational Potential" is a new short art film Ryan made that is extremely evocative and insightful about the birth of creative impulses. It's a surreal journey of complicated ideas but if you focus and pay attention, I guarantee you will be able to relate to your own creative urges. As Professor Universe and the fragmented personality soliloquize, I was mesmerized by the images that the words evoked. My favorite section of the film is entitled "Expression is in Motion" in which Ryan dissects footage of a crowd of people walking down a street as an omniscient voice muses on in poetic verse. As the images slowly unfurl and the movement grinds to a near halt, we begin to see subtle distortions in the footage. As if they were waves radiating from invisible shadows, Ryan's beautifully shows us the potential in all of us even in the simplest subtle of movements.

Raising the Not Quite Dead...on Twitter!

So yesterday I posted about Jason Pollock's premiere tweetup and today I'm writing about Anthony Lane, an ambitious filmmaker who I also met on Twitter. He caught my attention via his unique method for raising funds for his next feature film "Invasion of the Not Quite Dead". Using the social network, he is taking pre-orders for DVDs and blu-rays of the yet to be filmed film and using that as the primary budget for his project. Yet another ingenious concept for combining social interaction with progressive film cutlture. Not only is Anthony attracting an audience before the film is even made, but he is directly incorporating them into the film.

Anthony is offering a few different packages on his website, a standard pre-order and then multi-tiered producer package or even a speaking role in the film. Either one will result in the zombification of a photo you send to Anthony, part of the pre-order. I think Anthony's creative concept for finacning his film will succeed and I look forward to adding "Invasion of the Not Quite Dead" to my blu-ray collection.

A New Kind of Film Twestival

I've been on Twitter for quite some time and it never ceases to amaze me how amazingly innovative people can be with the social network, particularly when it comes to integrating it with evolving film culture. In my opinion, one of the most important aspects of social media for filmmakers is building an audience for your film, essentially curating your work directly for your fans. But building an audience is only step 1, interacting with them and keeping them engaged with both the filmmaking process and the distribution process is vital to creating something more lasting than an mere independent film.

I can't think of a more perfect example then what Jason Pollock is doing with the premiere of his new documentary film "The Youngest Candidate" at the LA film festival later tonight. It truly is a first of its kind, to use Twitter not to just to promote the film, but actually directly inviting your audience to attend the premiere and bringing those digital supporters who can't attend the event into the theater via Twitter. Jason is truly interacting with his audience in a new and inspiring way and because of that, I predict his film will be a huge success, more so than the average independent film, that is unaware of the power that can be infused via social media.

Learn more about the film premiere and tweetup and if you are tweeting today, hash tag all your tweets with #TYC so Jason can be a trending topic when the film premieres.

UPDATE: Just for clarification, the term Twestival in the title refers to a play on words for film festival and is not meant as the actual definition for an official fund raising operation for charity water. Thanks Amanda Rose for clarifying!