See you at SilverDocs, June 16 - 23

Monday kicks off the 6th annual SilverDocs, an international film festival honoring excellence in filmmaking, supporting the diverse voices and free expression of independent storytellers and celebrating the power of documentary to improve our understanding of the world. 

 Filmmakers from around the world will be showing their films.  Held concurrently with the festival is the SilverDocs International Documentary Conference,  presenting thought-provoking presentations and engaging a diverse group of over 1,000 filmmakers and industry leaders concerned with the future of non-fiction storytelling, production and distribution. 

With a slate of over 100 films, conference sessions and workshops, musical and other live performances, and a special event to honor Director Spike Lee, SilverDocs will, once again, be the premiere film festival event in the Washington, DC area.

If you attend the festival, stop by the press check-in desk in the registration area to say hello. I’ll be there each morning from 8 AM to 10 AM. 

 

Paulo Coelho turns his book into a feature film with MySpace users’ videos

This should be interesting. Author Paulo Coelho is going to collaborate with MySpace to make his latest book into his first feature film. The MySpace collaboration will center around creating a mashup of videos and songs created and submitted by MySpace users.  Coelho will choose the winning videos and songs to use in his film.

But here’s the rub: Coelho is going to own the film.  What do the MySpace filmmakers and musicians get?

Winners will enjoy significant publicity, and their work will be featured across MySpace worldwide including the homepage, MySpaceTV and an extensive banner campaign.

Well, exposure is always a good thing, right?  Not as sweet as a percentage of the gross, or residuals, but you have to start somewhere.

Oh, and the fine print says that if there aren’t enough videos and songs submitted that meet the required standards, the whole project will be scrapped.

It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this. [Via Publishers Weekly]

 

Indie Films Direct Profiles From Here to Awesome Festival Participants

Kent Victor Schuelke informed us he’s taken on the rather daunting task of writing feature articles, profiling each of the 94 films  participating in From Here to Awesome - a discovery and distribution film festival, including interviews with the films’ artists. The first two articles are up, an in-depth profile of Abel Raises Cain, and an interview with Raffi Asdourian, director of Ai.

A Filmmaker Live Twitters Tribeca All Access

Full Disclosure: Double 7 Film is a client of mine.

I’ve convinced a busy Director and Writer to try Twitter .  I don’t usually bring my client work over to my blog, but I’m really excited about Pete Chatmon’s willingness to embrace the idea of reaching out directly to fans through a variety of Web tools, including Twitter.

Pete’s production company is in the midst of retooling their online presence, to include a total redesign of the corporate website and an expansion of their presence on YouTube (in addition to writing and directing feature films, Pete also directs music videos ). 

Pete has a lot of irons in the fire.  He’s in development on his next feature, he’s writing a couple screenplays, and preparing some commercial shoots.  However, he’s dedicated to the idea of finding new ways to connect with movie fans.  He understands the power of interaction and wants to join the conversation. 

He’s an invited participant in Tribeca All Access, and plans to live twitter his experience there today.

This should be an interesting experience and opportunity to get behind-the-scenes with a filmmaker. Check it out.

How NOT to publicize your film on YouTube

Running a successful viral video campaign for a film can be tricky and complicated.  It requires a lot of upfront planning and the implementation of the campaign requires careful management.  Screw up, and lots of things could go wrong: no one will watch it, or maybe, if you’re really unlucky, tons of people will watch it but not understand it, resulting in your film being yanked from the festival in which it was supposed to debut, people you don’t know will send you threatening e-mails, and you’ll have the local police and the FBI on your tail.

The latter is exactly what happened to Outsiders Productions, an Oklahoma-based indie film studio, when they tried to use the “Cloverfield” approach by loading a mysterious and ominous-looking video clip onto YouTube for their latest film A Beautiful Day. The teaser freaked people out in Oklahoma, who thought it might be some kind of cryptic terrorist threat. Things quickly spiraled out of control from there.

The main problem with the video? It made no mention of the movie! The filmmakers have now been spending time explaining themselves and apologizing.  They’re also trying to find some way of turning this fiasco into something positive with their “It’s Just a Trailer” campaign.  It’ll be interesting to see how that works out.

This is a cautionary tale that teaches an important lesson in viral video publicity campaigns. Yes, the results were that the film got some publicity, but I’d bet not quite the kind of publicity the filmmakers were hoping for.