Tag: Beth’s Blog

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Truly Free Film

What Are They Saying About You & Your Film?

I like to know, both the love and the hate.  It’s debatable whether this sort of knowledge is a good or bad thing for a filmmaker, but for me — as a producer — I find it invaluable.  Yeah, I have Google Alerts set for the films I have coming out, and the filmmakers generally too.  But I have often wondered what’s being said in the social networks.  What’s being said there?  

Beth’s Blog tipped me to Whostalkin.com and the answer is now easily found.  With a festival premiere coming up, this seems invaluable.
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Truly Free Film

Twitter Review (sort of)

I confess: I am truly new to all of this social networking stuff.  This blog is about two and a half months old.  I think I have only been on Facebook for 5 weeks.  Our film production company has a MySpace page but I am not a MySpace member.  I know I blog about some stuff here that the digi-elite embraced eons ago.  Let’s just say although I am a newbie, I am passionate advocate — and a textbook example of how you can teach an old dog some new tricks.  And I recognize how much my community has to learn.  Admit it: the film biz is filled with Luddites.

I was a very slow at making a commitment to the social network world.  I pondered FB membership for months.  And I mocked the young ‘uns in our office who sang its praises.  I am a convert now, but I am still only using it to maintain a dialogue about the emerging new paradigm for non-Hollywood cinema (I hate describing things in contrast to, but …).  To that end, I am have the same issues Pericles commented on the other day: I am confused whether I should just “confirm” everyone that friends me in an effort to expand the circle, or should I limit my connections to the people I actually know or do, or could do, business with, or at least those that have the courtesy to write and explain why we should be “friends”.  I lean to the former but haven’t jumped in yet.  Some of my hesitancy comes from my expectant embrace of the more social aspects of the technology — and frankly I don’t want to be more social.  I have been trying to figure out how to have more time to myself and my family for a long time.
Which brings me to my fears of using Twitter.  When I was looking for an article on how Twitter might be best applied to the film world, Beth’s Blog led me to the OReillyRadar posting of some of their report “Twitter And The Micro-Messaging Revolution” .  I’d love to see the whole report; if you want to buy it for me for the holidays, you can do so here.  Reilly’s preface documenting his adaptation to the technology echoed what I had suspected — he joined for business reasons and soon found himself using it for social updates too.  It was inspiring though.  
I would like to hear further how filmmakers have effectively used Twitter to communicate with their audience, but this piece alone, got me a lot closer to embrace the present a bit more.  Any filmmakers out there with Twitter experiences to share?
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Truly Free Film

Someone’s Already Explained It All For You

I meet with filmmakers and film executives on a daily basis.  And I am consistently reminded what an absolute bunch of luddites we all are.  Seriously.  We will be unable to move forward towards a Truly Free Film culture until people commit to using the tools available to us to have a better life.

I am heartened by the election which, among other things, demonstrated that the pain of the present was greater than our fear of the future.  Now hopefully our community will follow suit and admit the same.  Towards that end I think we need to organize free seminars that explain the basic tools and how to use them.  I have been preparing an outline for such a seminar which I will soon share with you for input.  The problem is of course how to bring these seminars directly to the people who need them.
Beth Kanter at Beth’s Blog did a lot of the work for you already.  This is a great link (with videos and other links) that lays out the basics: blogs, Technocrati, RSS feeds, tags, Flickr, video sharing, Wiki, widgets, Creative Commons & copyright, mashup, social networking, Twitter, and Second Life.  Whew!  Things change fast and some of this is already dated, but then again this post was already out of date by the time I posted it.
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Truly Free Film

Resources: Beth’s Blog

“Links” have been renamed here at TFF, transforming into “Resources” to distinguish them from the recently added “Tools”.  I think it is pretty self explanatory.

We’ve just added Beth’s Blog to the Resources list.  Although BB is subtitled “How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media” her advice is helpful to all trying to seed, corral, and move audiences.  That means you all you filmmakers out there.
As a “newbie” to both blogging and social networks, I have found it to be a great resource.  Beth’s subtitle on her subtitle is: 

A place to capture and share ideas, experiment with and exchange links and resources about the adoption challenges, strategy, and ROI of nonprofits and social media.