Tip of the Week: How to Cope With Symposium Brain Fry

1. Focus on the Inspiration and Creative Potential One of the best uber-takeaways is how a symposium or workshop can inspire filmmakers to new creative opportunities. Allow these ideas to run through you and don’t get caught up with any of the specifics just yet – you can delve into those when the time comes for you to act.

25 Points to Consider in Approaching Your Festival Premiere: Part 2

The first part of this article concerned how to approach festivals if you want to still pursue a more conventional sales oriented strategy within the new landscape of distribution for independent film.

This second part will address what you should consider if you are going to use your premiere festival (or one of your festivals) to launch the actual distribution and marketing of your film.

Think Outside the Box Office one of Brian Newman’s Recommended Reads

Recommended Reads from Brian Newman’s Blog Springboard Media There’s been a lot of great writing both in print and online (and at times, both) for filmmakers this year. It’s late in the year, but I thought I’d give my quick summary of some great titles that I think are required reading for any filmmaker – […]

Ted Hope Speaks at BFI London Film Festival

Seasoned Indie producer Ted Hope (21 Grams, The Hawk is Dying, TrulyFreeFilm) speaks in London on the future of Independent filmmaking.  How will digital technology make films more accessible? From Screendaily.com: Film industry should be more accessible, says Hope 14 October, 2009 | By Sarah Cooper Veteran independent film producer Ted Hope called for new […]

Reel World Class Discusses Web Finance

I’m sitting in my Reel World Class at Cal Arts showing the class how to blog and how easy it is. We got here by being sidetracked by a Web 2.0 vs Web 1.0 discussion. More later. Check out fundable.org

DVD Distribution How To in Filmmaker Magazine

My second in my series of Hybrid Distribution How To’s has been come out in Filmmaker Magazine. Here it is: MY ADVENTURE IN HOME VIDEO, PART 2 Setting up DVD distribution: Yes, you can still make money doing this. BY JON REISS Following — or perhaps instead of — your independent film‘s theatrical release is […]

Theatrical Mapping Project

Ted Hope has added a new “tools” section to the Truly Free Film site. I have suggested that he add the theatrical mapping project from the Workbook Project. This map was my first step in the theaters that I contacted for our theatrical release of Bomb It and as such was hugely instrumental in our […]

Reel World Survival Skills for Filmmakers

This post is a response to Ted Hopes post on the Truly Free Film Blog today: “I am committed to destroying the myth of the starving artist” I developed and teach a class at Cal Arts that addresses Ted’s concerns about making a living as a filmmaker. It’s called “Reel World Survival Skills: Everything I […]