Author: Ted Hope

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Truly Free Film

Video: The Future Of Film Festivals

Last week I gave the keynote at the International Film Festival Summit in Austin, Texas. You now have a chance to watch the video of it. Check it out here.

You also get the Q&A — which is always my favorite part of any talk. Here it is: why do we have so many festivals? Why are we neglecting the youth? How can we best address student work? How can niche festivals remain competitive when distributors favor the larger ones?

If text is more your bag, Indiewire ran the first part here, and HopeForFilm (that’s me btw) ran the second part.

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Truly Free Film

Welcome Alicia & Thanks Screen Australia

On Monday, our search for new distribution models begins in earnest.  Screen Australia is sending Alicia Brown to work with us at San Francisco Film Society.

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Truly Free Film

Your Film is Coffee

By Emily Best

I want to start a Fair Trade Filmmaking movement. I have been shouting this from the rooftops, but I understand that talking to filmmakers about getting paid better is like praising virtue and condemning vice: it’s too easy. 

Fair Trade Filmmaking does not start when someone spontaneously decides to pay the filmmaker more than the sales agents, distributors and exhibitors. In the age of direct-to-audience distribution, that’s the really easy part. And while of course the notion of “Fair Trade” is to pay and treat the creators better, more importantly it is a way to engage the consumer in the process of fairer practices. But there is a big catch: the product has to be really good.

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Truly Free Film

What Can Europe Learn From The US VOD Market To Date?

I moderated Europa International Distribution 2.0 in Paris over Thanksgiving. Here Ryan Werner talks about how VOD has evolved in the States, particularly for World Cinema.

It’s nicely shot as these things go, even if my bald spot takes starring honors.

Here’s another clip on whether films need Facebook pages.

And another on Day & Date.

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Truly Free Film

Diary of a Film Startup Part 15: Film Marketing Tools

By Roger Jackson
Previously: Early Results

50 Ways to Sell Your Movie
KinoNation now has a library of almost 100 feature films and documentaries in our Private Beta. As I spend time showing some of these films to various US and international video-on-demand outlets, I am more and more convinced of the need for a step-by-step template that helps filmmakers with the the business of selling & marketing their films. So last week I spent some time creating a “back of an envelope” plan for a section of KinoNation where filmmakers can be guided through a series of fifty steps to give their film a better chance at finding an audience. The idea is to have one page on KinoNation.com for each of these fifty steps, along with an overall Progress Bar — so a filmmaker can review what percentage of this marketing checklist has been completed. This is deliberately rough — I just want to get the discussion started.

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Truly Free Film

12 Questions Toward The Future Of FIlm Festivals

Yesterday I gave the Keynote Address at the International Film Festival Summit in Austin, Texas.  You can read the speech on Indiewire here.  Or watch the video here. I ended the talk with a host of questions — 12 to be exact, and they follow below.

The abundance of questions I’ve raised, point that we have a tremendous opportunity to unlock all ta new power of film festivals — and I certainly can brainstorm with you they myriad of ways that can be done –but if we seek to begin to recognize the boundaries we can push at the festival level, I want to first shower you with even more questions — not answers — as I suspect they will allow far more solutions to flower.

I have twelve questions I am going to be pondering this year when I look at our festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, when I come to your festivals, and when I hear the tales of the intrepid filmmaker / traveller ushering their film from one festival to another:

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Truly Free Film

Please Mr. Zuckerberg, Zap My Facebook Spam!

By Reid Rosefelt

Dear Mark Zuckerberg,

I love Facebook but there is one thing that really irks me fierce, and that’s when a guy with a name like Axylsmpgo Phpnygusx “Big Pimpin” Pxtzchqo and a profile picture of Vera Farmiga likes my page. Who makes mysterious comments like like “axkcfierj;kfdjrpeirka;dfuernxitrh.” I suppose that there are those who get satisfaction out of correspondence of this nature, but alas, I am not one of them.

Please help me get these counterfeit likers off my fan page. All you need to do is give me a button so I can zap away the profiles of people who aren’t real. For example, if I have 1083 and one of those phantoms tries to make it 1084 I click and then I’m back to good old 1083 again. That would give me more satisfaction than you can imagine.

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