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Truly Free Film

How to Build a Storyworld of Content. And How Not To.

By Karim Ahmad

This is part 2 in a series of posts I’ve been obsessively writing on storyworlds lately. Part 1 was published on Indiewire last week, where I discussed the community-building advantages to creating a storyworld of content around any single piece of IP. Part 3 is now available here.

What I want to discuss here is the how. Assuming you already want to, how do you reboot your process to allow for multiple interconnected stories to exist within a singular storyworld? Well, that’s the first challenge, is that you have to really want to. Innovation is hard, it’s time-consuming, and you have to be willing to question all aspects and habits of your storytelling process. Easier said than done. It takes discipline. And often times, it required working way outside your comfort zone. But if you’re like me, that prospect will excite you as much as it terrifies you. So what does that process look like? What are some of the challenges and pitfalls to avoid? Here are some of the takeaways from our process reinventing FUTURESTATES series from an anthology series of scifi shorts into a collaborative and immersive storyworld of content. Our goal was to make the series stickier by creating interconnections between stories and by creating multi-platform access points for users to engage with the content.

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Uncategorized

TV Is Dead, Long Live “TV”

It was about twenty years ago that I wrote an article called “Indie film is dead. Long live Indie Film”.  It took me a looonnngg time to make that pivot from full time film production. Now I wish it did not take me so damn long.  I am very happy planning an end to end reboot of the entire film infrastructure.

 So when WIRED asked if I wanted to discuss “TV is dead. Long live TV.” with Amazon Studios’ Roy Price, I couldn’t resist.  Roy is the first in new type of film and television executive.  Roy is the only head of television production I can think of that has dealt with both transactional and subscription video on demand, has film and television in his portfolio, as well as apps and community. He just got 5th patent to go along with it all.  When we think of creating & distributing pop culture in this connected age I can’t help but think soon this sort of Roy Price executive will be what everyone in the biz will want at the helm.

Check out our conversation on the future of television in the age of the internet:

Categories
These Are Those Things

Good Advice For Filmmakers, Part 1276

Some good advice for filmmakers (as well as recent college grads) comes from Arthur C. Brooks in the NY Times last weekend:
1. Earn everything: people who do not feel responsible for their own successes spend 25 percent more time feeling sad than those who feel they are responsible.
2. Fail & rebound: the average entrepreneur fails almost four times before succeeding.

Categories
Truly Free Film

IndieStreet Post #13: What Are Films Without An Audience

By Jay Webb

Screen shot 2013-08-19 at 4.51.06 PM

Previously: Making A Film? Why?

Audience building interview 1

There is no such thing as art without audience.  A motion picture does not even exist without its impact on human viewers.  As an independent creator without established lines of distribution, how do you build an audience that yearns for your specific stories? How do you keep them excited about your stories of the future?  In today’s market, your response to this question may be the difference between a “one & done” and having a long, sustainable career as a filmmaker.

Categories
Truly Free Film

Are We Accepting Censorship As A Given?

The Surveillance State’s seemingly shy cousin is starting to strut more on the dance floor. The siren song of censorship grows louder as governments and multinational corporations rock out to it as a means to fortify their power and wealth, knowing the rest of us will remain silent if we too believe we can accumulate even more green before the music ends and we have to take our seat.  Isn’t it time we got our priorities in order?

You’ve seen what is happening, right?  Russian forbids profanity in the media.  China draws hard lines on what can and will be said.  The European Court allows history to be erased from search.  And here in the US not only do we continue to train ourselves to police ourselves, armed with the knowledge that Big Brother, I mean the NSA,  is always watching, but we limit our own access — as well as our ability to innovate — by continuing to progress to a “he-who-pays-the-most-can-and-will-control-all” state and the consequent end of Net Neutrality.

Categories
Truly Free Film

BondIt: Product Launch: Influx of Project Submissions, Needs, Variation of sizes and Interpretation on Usage

By Matthew Helderman, & Luke Taylor

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Determining specifics on the success of a product’s launch is always speculative. We’ve seen the same story countless times — a studio primes their latest release to be a massive box office success, only to watch the film crash and burn into box office bomb oblivion. Cloud Atlas, Mars Needs Moms, John Carter, Battleship, The Lone Ranger— we’re all familiar with these recent examples of big-budget bombs that were projected for success and proved to be poor investments.

The reasoning and research behind the cause of these failures and successes is endless — timing, marketing, money, foreign sales, lead actor status, direction, writing, length, acting — any of the above can be blamed for poor results. The reality is, it is simply impossible to determine the exact needs of an audience or consumer before any product is launched. Market research, development, and beta testing can certainly provide some statistics to lean on — but there is unfortunately no exact science until you are out there in the marketplace.

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Issues and Actions

EFA Board Calls for Release of Ukrainian Director Oleg Sentsov

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY
press release
EFA Board Calls for Release of Ukrainian Director Oleg Sentsov

The Board of the European Film Academy calls for the immediate release of Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov.

Sentsov, who has been involved in supporting the Euro Maidan protests in Kiev and has opposed the annexation of Crimea by Russia, was arrested at his home in Simferopol, Crimea, and accused of organizing a terrorist attack. It is believed that the director has been flown to Moscow where he is facing trial.