DIY DAYS Boston coverage

// October 9th, 2008 // news

We’re working hard to get the videos from Boston online. In the meantime here is some coverage of last weekend’s DIY DAYS event.

David Tames over at www.kino-eye.com covered the event and provides some valuable insight into the day’s presentations.

The DIY Days Boston conference was held at MassArt on October 4, 2008. The conference drew a full-house of both seasoned and emerging filmmakers and media artists who came to learn about online tools, techniques, and strategies for building and sustating their audience. DIY Days follows an open source model, the conferences are produced with the efforts of the organizers, volunteers, and generous supporters like MassArt Professional and Continuing Education for the Boston event.

Lance Weiler said, “if there is anything that you find valuable [we ask that] you share with someone else, that’s the cost of admission […] embed it and share it.” Some of the gems from the conference include Lance’s suggestion (I’m paraphrasing) that “your movie is only a seed from which to build a community” and he is urging filmmakers to stop thinking of themselves as being in competition with each other and helping each other, creating a new community of sharing ideas and films and strategies from the ground up, this is what the Workbook Project is all about. Slava Rubin of IndieGoGo put it in terms of DIWO (Doing It With Others). Here are some of my notes from the sessions.

Part one
Part two


Marie Lamb from ARGNet attended and found striking similarities to issues faced by game designers.

When I heard DIY Days was coming to Boston, mostly I was looking forward to reconnecting with filmmaker, Alternate Reality Game enthusiast and ARGFest Boston speaker, Lance Weiler, (Hope is Missing and Beyond the Rave) and maybe getting a scoop on his next project. While I did get to do all that, I also got to meet some incredibly talented independent filmmakers, culture researchers, and writers, and participate in a great discussion not only about independent filmmaking, but also about the future of media and technology.

DIY Days is an offshoot of Weiler’s The Workbook Project, and is paired with the From Here to Awesome Film Festival. All are grounded in his commitment to open-source filmmaking, mentoring and encouraging creativity and helping independent filmmakers to finance, distribute and promote their projects inside and outside of traditional media channels (but mostly outside). Weiler’s partner in DIY Days is Arin Crumley, co-creator of indie film/YouTube phenomenon, Four Eyed Monsters.

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