Tag: Truly Free Film Heroes

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Truly Free Film

Hope For The Future: Starting The List

What can I say?  I love lists.  I maintain many: My favorite things; Directors I want to work with; 100 Ways To Make A Million.  I am sure you’ve got own.

One of things on my List Of Why I Love Lists is that it is so easy to forget, and with forgetting can come despair, that is until we re-cognize what we already knew.  Lists lift us out of this swamp.  I don’t despair. I HOPE.
If this was the year that everyone believed the sky fell (and it did in terms of the unregulated greed based economic system our world has embraced for far too long), it will hopefully be recognized as the moment when we really entered the Free Culture Era.  But the hard things, the bad things, still attract our attention.  We will remember that 2008 is the year no one could sell their film.  We will remember that 2008 is the year that labor strife and cooperate greed conspired for a work shutdown.  I will certainly remember that it is the year that I did not have a film in production for the first time in 20 years.
But that is not the memory I want to have.  I want to remember 2008 as the year that everything started to change for the better.  We need to look and recognize all the positive signs for change that are out there.  
Let’s build the list of the reasons TFFilmmakers have HOPE FOR THE FUTURE.  Let’s make the list at least 52 entries long so we can get through this next year.  
Share with me some of your ideas.  Here’s my start (by no means in the order of importance):
  1. It is so easy to blog that everyone could have their own page in a matter of minutes.  I thought about having a blog for several months before I made the leap and then I was up and on it a matter of minutes.
  2. The more people are exposed to quality films (and culture in general) the more their tastes gravitate towards quality films.  I would love to see an actual study on this, but I was told it by one of the Netflix honchos in that their members gravitate to the “auteurs” the longer they’ve been a member.
  3. Committed Leaders To A Open Source Film Culture have emerged.  I have been incredibly inspired by all the work that those I have labeled as Truly Free Film Heroes have done.  Even more so I am moved by their incredible generosity in their sharing of all they have learned.
  4. The Tools To Take Personal Control are available, numerous, and fun.  There are more than I can list (but the TFF Tools List is a pretty good start).
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Truly Free Film

It’s An OPEN SOURCE Culture

You may have noticed a new addition to our Truly Free Film Heroes column.  You may have also noticed some guest posting as of late by filmmaker Jon Reiss.  These are not unrelated.  As a veteran of the DIY experience (or as Slava Rubin has dubbed it more accurately: DIWO “Do It With Others”), Jon has taken the next crucial step towards bringing forth a Truly Free Film Culture: sharing his experience and knowledge.  

We need to build a new infrastructure.  It will only come from all of our hard work and general openness.  Please follow Jon’s example, and share.
We are all going to make some mistakes, but we will learn much faster if we don’t keep these mistakes to ourself. We will all make some great discoveries, of places and people and tools and techniques, but we all benefit much faster if we don’t keep these successes to ourselves.
Take a minute.  Think about what you thinks works in DIY marketing; is it novel?  Please let us know.  Do you know of a theater that will book Truly Free Film?  Will your college pay to bring a filmmaker to lecture and show their film?  Do you know of a great TFFilm website?  Any advice on how to network true film lovers together?  You get the idea.  Please let us know what you know.  Join in.
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Truly Free Film

Truly Free Film Heroes

I’ve moved the “Truly Free Film Heroes” sidebar over from my Let’s Make Better Films Blog to here at TFFilms and clarified it a bit in the process (although you don’t get to add a descriptive on Blogger’s “Links” gadget unfortunately).  The Truly Free Film Heroes are the folks that I have found that are actively engaged in working to create a Truly Free Film Culture.  

The potential is before us to expand beyond a film culture designed only to serve the widest possible audience.  We can have something else other than a limited supply of mass market product.  We can move away from a gate keeper culture economy.  We no longer need to address only the audiences that are best served by the dominant apparatus.
The most critical work at the moment in terms of establishing this new culture is not the content itself but the infrastructure needed to support it.  Great work is being done in this regard, but we all need to share what we learn; we have to open with it.  A new model is being unearthed.  The Truly Free Film Heroes are doing the groundwork that we all will benefit from.  You need to support them.