The first our series of interviews with digital storytellers, realized in collaboration with Filmmaker, here are the team behind the interactive storytelling platform Zeega. From the group’s mission statement: Zeega is revolutionizing web publishing and interactive storytelling for a future beyond blogs. With Zeega, you can use any media in the cloud, transform the entire screen into your playground, and share your interactive creations with the world. We’re living in a unique moment. More media than ever is recorded and shared. But the web today is dominated by a few platforms – all stories start to feel the same, trapped […]
“Do filmmakers need to learn to code?” The inspiration for this blog series came from this question. Software is part of our everyday life; in some circles coding is seen as the new literacy and a means of empowerment. At MIT’s Comparative Media Studies, where the MIT Open Documentary Lab is housed, we are confronted with this question on a regular basis as humanists sitting in a land of hackers who marvel at the power and elegance of code. Fluent in many programming languages, some of them believe that we all should be. In an effort to make coding more […]
Over at the IFP website, Filmmaker‘s Associate Editor Dan Schoenbrun has a comprehensive case study of Kelly Anderson’s My Brooklyn. The doc has had unprecedented success at the reRun Theater, selling out countless shows and bringing highly engaged audiences to the theater to both watch the film and discuss the issues it tackles surrounding local gentrification. Here’s a few choice extracts. Firstly, Anderson discussing “event-izing” screenings: I think that it gets at this deep question of – why do you make films? Maybe that’s what people need to do – sit back and think about why they made the film that they made. Do you just […]
Has a peculiar notice popped up on either your TV set or computer reading: “Copyright Alert! #1”? This notice is the first of six that digital communications users will receive as part of the Copyright Alert System (CAS). Having failed to get Congress to adopt the SOPA/PIPA legislation last year, the movie and record industry trade associations, the MPAA and RIAA, respectively, have taken a second bite at the apple in their effort to address the problem of illegal downloading of copyrighted entertainment content. CAS, which went into effect on February 25, ties the major content trade associations to the […]
IFP Lab film Blue Caprice, a chilling drama about the Beltway sniper starring Isaiah Washington, was today acquired by IFC’s Sundance Selects imprint. The movie is the debut feature by NYC-based French director Alexandre Moors — one of Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces” of 2012 — and had its world premiere in the NEXT section at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Later this month, it is the opening night selection at New Directors/New Films. Commenting on the pickup, Sundance Selects/IFC Films president Jonathan Sehring said, “Alexandre Moors has made one of the most distinct and haunting American independent films of the year […]
Today the Sarasota Film Festival announced that it is joining forces with Factory 25 to offer a distribution deal as the prize for one of its competition sections. The winning movie in the Independent Visions strand will get a deal with Matt Grady’s Brooklyn-based boutique label, which has released many Sarasota alumni films from recent years. Here’s the info from the press release: The Sarasota Film Festival today announced that its Independent Visions Award will be presented by Factory 25, heralding a new partnership with Brooklyn-based film distributor. The winner of this prestigious award will also be presented with an unprecedented […]
Transmedia by definition requires producers to work in more than one medium; the fun, most of the time, is in devising ways to carry a narrative (or narrative world) across different platforms, making them engage with each other while best utilizing each platform’s unique capabilities. Sometimes, however, it’s sufficient to work exclusively in a single non-film medium — and it can get the creative juices flowing if you’re stuck in a rut. After all, Bergman had his fiction (besides his theater work), Woody Allen has his clarinet, and Pasolini had pretty much everything. I’ve recently been working more on my […]
Hacks, four-hour workweek condensations, and digital outsourcing — I’m often dubious about the efficacy of many strategies promising “the answer” when it comes to both creative and business endeavors. That said, “Hacking Kickstarter: How to Raise $100,000 in 10 Days (Includes Successful Templates, E-mails, etc.),” found on the blog of Four-Hour Work Week guru Tim Ferris, is an excellent walk-through of one very successful Kickstarter campaign, and it’s full of practical advice. The Kickstarter was for Soma, a designer water filter, but much of author Mike Del Ponte’s advice can be applied to filmmakers too. I don’t agree with 100% […]
Two weeks ago RED announced that they were suing Sony for patent infringement for technology used in Sony’s PMW-F5, PMW-F55, and F65 cameras. Last week Sony posted a response on their Pro video website. First noting that the F65 has been commercially available for over a year, and that the F5/F55 were announced in October, they go on to say: Sony has now had an opportunity to study Red’s complaint and the asserted patents, and categorically denies Red’s allegations. Sony intends to defend itself vigorously in the Red lawsuit. Sony looks forward to prevailing in court, thus vindicating the Sony […]
I stopped collecting comic books years ago, and I was never much of a vinyl person. Do you know anyone who truly fetishizes out-of-print books, because I don’t. Who needs rare DVDs anyway? Not suckers with Netflix streaming or HuluPlus accounts. The DVD has only been around 17, 18 years — what could possibly count as rare, even? Is there such a thing? Perhaps that DVD of an oddly artful B horror film from the ’70s that went out of print in 1996 and has never returned, but piracy has gotten so advanced now, surely you can find a stream […]