Dive into the archives.
- ITVS Digital Initiative- New Tech for Reaching Audiences
I’m a little slow on the uptake here, but man-on-the-beat Scott Kirsner of Cinematech has a great resource on the ITVS site where he interviewed a number of documentary filmmakers about their experiences using new technology to reach an audience. Scott told me:
Among the folks I spoke to were Tiffany Shlain (”The Tribe”), Katy Chevigny (”Election Day”), Hunter Weeks (”10 MPH” and “10 Yards”), Byron Hurt (”Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes”), and Curt Ellis (”King Corn”). Not everyone is a filmmaker who is funded or supported by ITVS… our sole criterion was to find folks who were… [more]
- INTERVIEW- D-Word Founder and Doc Director Doug Block
The D-Word is an essential resource for documentary film folks- an online community of filmmakers, writers, and broadcast/distribution types. Doug Block, the founder and co-host of the site, is an experienced filmmaker whose breakout film 51 BIRCH STREET, a personal documentary about family relationships, benefited from a grassroots marketing campaign that included utilizing the internet. Infinicine asked him about the transitioning state of distribution for documentarians.
[I]nfinicine: In your experience, are independent filmmakers making a transition to online forms of distribution? Are streaming and/or downloading viable revenue sources for a filmmaker who has essentially self-financed… [more]
- INTERVIEW- Educational Market- Rachel Gordon, Energized Films
The educational market is an often overlooked source of revenue for independent filmmakers, and has a lot of models that may be used by more “commercial” vendors in the future. Rachel Gordon has a background as a director, producer, ad writer. Her consulting business, Energized Films, helps filmmakers access the educational market.
[I]nfinicine: How are streaming/digital downloads changing educational distribution?
[R]achel Gordon: The process of change in education is pretty slow, but what is happening is that some colleges and universities have been able to experiment. They’ve
started licenses to stream on servers they’ve created and maintained… [more]
- Remix, Reuse: New Rights Models at Silverdocs
The internet has made copyright issues complicated enough for filmmakers wanting to make money distributing their films. For documentary filmmakers, the issues around fair use and copyright have always been a counterbalance to their own impulse to protect their creative work. At SILVERDOCS this past weekend, panelists tried to sort out some of the emerging issues in the complicated arena of copyright law. One issue that emerged is the challenge to actually get proper licences for works that because of digital duplication are now often difficult to trace to a legal source. USC School of
