SPEAKERS
SAN FRANCISCO SPEAKERS
Tiffany Shlain - Honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century,” Tiffany Shlain is an award-winning filmmaker, founder of The Webby Awards and co-founder of International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Her films include “The Tribe” and “Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness,” and have been selected at over 100 festivals including Sundance and Tribeca and received over 20 awards. Her last film was the # 1 most downloaded film on iTunes. Her team at The Moxie Institute has been singled out by The New York Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Sundance for their cutting-edge work using documentaries and internet distribution in unique ways to engage audiences. Tiffany lectures worldwide on the Internet and her filmmaking. She is the director of The Moxie Institute, an organization that creates film, books and theater experiences around social issues using emerging technologies. She is working on a new feature documentary, Connected and a performance documentary for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts that premieres in October as part of the art triennial Bay Area Now. Tiffany is an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow. www.tiffanyshlain.com
Jason Harris is the president / executive producer of Mekanism an award-winning provider of multi-platform content production and digital marketing services across the advertising, entertainment and media communities. In other words, we make a lot of funny, strange stuff that is hard to explain in a concise opening sentence. The studio houses some of the industry’s top film, animation and interactive content creators, and we sprinkle our love of good storytelling on commercials, websites and viral campaigns to inspire measurable brand loyalty. As President and Executive Producer, Jason Harris’s core focus is on creating and producing branded entertainment campaigns, as well as fostering Mekanism’s position as the premiere storyteller for emerging media. A complete body of Mekanism’s work can be seen at www.mekanism.com.
Chris Metzler - After graduating from USC with a degree in business and cinema, Chris’ film career has taken him from the depths of agency work, to coordinating post-production for awful American movies seen late at night in Belgium. His film directing and producing work has resulted in frequent partnerships with Jeff Springer, where together they’ve criss-crossed the country with the aid of caffeinated beverages and made their way in the Nashville country and Christian music video industries, before finally forsaking their souls to commercial LA rock n’ roll. These misadventures eventually culminated in their winning a Billboard Magazine Music Video Award. Chris recently finished traveling the film festival and theatrical circuit promoting his John Waters’ narrated documentary, PLAGUES & PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA, which premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival and later won both the HBO Producer’s Award and the Robert Altman Award, before being broadcast on the PBS documentary series “Truly, CA” and debuting nationally on the Sundance Channel. He is a recipient of the Bay Area Video Coalition’s AEA Award and has previously received funding support from the Pacific Pioneer Fund and the Fleishhacker Fund. Chris now finds himself pursuing docs featuring gay truck drivers, Australian opal miners, and the Black punk band Fishbone.
Jeff Springer was born in an abandoned town in the California desert, raised in Hawaii, and educated at USC Film School. After living for a winter in Russia, he returned to Los Angeles and began directing music videos and shorts, as well as editing for Fox, the WB, UPN, Lucasfilm, Capitol, and Geffen Records. Burned out and hungover on WWF and bad R&B, he fled to San Francisco to start work on the feature documentary PLAGUES & PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA with co-director Chris Metzler. After weeks in the desert and a couple of burnt cameras, the film went on to win 35 awards for Best Documentary and premiered on the Sundance Channel. Meanwhile, Springer was going “undercover” investigating the East German Wild West in Berlin and following the Ska-Funk-Rock band Fishbone around Europe. Now finally, after all that unexpected funkadelic excitement, he suddenly finds himself very content, in a little editing studio overlooking San Francisco.
Sara Pollack is the Global Product Marketing Manager of Film & Animation at YouTube. She is responsible for building and executing YouTube’s business strategy for film across the Marketing, Product, Business Development, PR, Sales and Editorial teams, in order to ensure that YouTube remains at the cutting-edge of digital entertainment. Prior to joining YouTube, Sara was a Production Executive at Big Beach, an independent film production and finance company, where she worked on both feature and documentary films, including Little Miss Sunshine, Everything is Illuminated and Sherrybaby. Before Big Beach, Sara worked at Miramax Films, directly reporting to the President of Production during the studio’s release of such award-winning films as Finding Neverland, The Aviator and Cold Mountain. Sara received her B.A. in English Literature from Brown University.
Mark Rotblat leads the Business Development efforts at TubeMogul, with a focus on communications and marketing activities surrounding customer acquisition, product launches, and industry analysis. He previously worked in Marketing and Business Development at Healthline.com where he developed partnerships for the company’s content and tools. Prior to Healthline, Mark was a management consultant for Stockamp & Associates where he advised multi-billion dollar healthcare organizations on IT implementations for operational improvement and financial reporting. Mark holds an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and a BS from Duke University.
Scilla Andreen is an award winning producer, Emmy nominated costume designer and CEO and co-founder of IndieFlix.com. She is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a popular film festival panelist and tireless champion of independent film. Scilla and producing partner, Carlo Scandiuzzi created IndieFlix, an independent film distribution and discovery site founded on the principles of community, promotion, syndication and transparency to help independent filmmakers monetize their work. www.indieflix.com
Slava Rubin co-founded IndieGoGo to help independent filmmakers overcome their fundraising challenges. Focused on bringing Filmocracy to the people, Slava frequently speaks at conferences and writes on the disruptive technologies impacting the media industry; from finance to distribution. Recent speaking engagements include Sundance, SXSW, Slamdance, and IFP Filmmaker, Making Media Now & >Play Conferences. Slava also serves as an Advisor to the IFP Film Market and Film Labs. Prior to IndieGoGo, Slava was a strategy consultant working on projects from start-up go-to-market strategies to corporate execution plans. He offers expertise in audience building, marketing, and DIWO (Do-It-With-Others). Beyond his passion for film, Slava started Music Against Myeloma, an annual charity event raising funds and awareness to fight this rare form of cancer.
Tom Hicks is a co-founder of Caachi, an Internet company that sells and markets independent films as DVD-resolution downloads and high-resolution streaming video. Tom began his career in Silicon Valley and eventually worked overseas doing mainly legal and business transactions. He escaped the business world to follow his passion for film and technology and started Caachi with Charles Choi to address the bane of independent filmmakers: marketing and distributing films. Tom believes the Internet, with its access to a global audience and the ease of marketing online, will revolutionize the independent film world. Tom can be reached at tom.hicks@caachi.com.
Caveh Zahedi is an independent autobiographical writer/director whose feature, I Am A Sex Addict, won the 2005 Gotham Award for “Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You.” The film was subsequently picked up for distribution by IFC Films,. His previous feature, In The Bathtub of the World, aired on the IFC Channel. His second feature, I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore, won the Critics’ Prize at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 1994. His first feature, A Little Stiff, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991. He is currently in pre-production on a metaphysical thriller set in Rome.
Skot Leach is a graduate of the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where he studied video and motion picture. While attending the Academy Skot began exploring alternate means of distributing and telling stories online. Skot’s interest in internet technology and social media led him to the mobile industry where he has spent the last several years building community driven mobile products. Simultaneous to this role Skot is a screenwriter. Skot’s primary passion lies in finding new ways to tell stories. Skot is currently bridging his experience and interests in a project called Lost Zombies. Lost Zombies is a community generated zombie documentary. Members of Lost Zombies are able contribute content to www.lostzombies.com
Alex Afterman is the co-founder and Vice President of Heretic Films, a San Francisco based independent DVD/VOD/Digital label founded in 2003. As label head Alex is responsible for managing everything from acquisition of new titles for distribution, co-ordinating the creation of key art, authoring, production and replication of the DVDs, logistics, and marketing and publicity, including determining advertising budget, co-op purchases and handling all media relations. Prior to founding Heretic Films Alex spent several years working as a Product Manager and Account Manager for various new media companies including internet content syndication company iSyndicate and web based real estate portal LoopNet. In addition to his responsibilities for Heretic Films Alex also co-produced the documentary ‘24 Hours on Craigslist’, which had a successful theatrical run before being released on DVD through Heretic Films.
Bryan Kennedy is a web developer from San Francisco who started the Mobile Movie in 2005. Tired of the high ticket prices and bland experience of the cineplex, and hungering for a challenge, he wired up his projector, a DVD player, and an FM transmitter in his car and started holding drive-ins in Berkeley. The MobMov has since grown to over 200 chapters and 8,000 members across the globe. Today, MobMov shows in San Francisco draw 100-150 people and are held monthly throughout the city. Bryan graduated from UC Berkeley in 2004 and currently works for a startup called Xobni in downtown SF.
Jerry Paffendorf is a futurist and creative director working on metaverse projects — the emerging mixed-reality internet combining features of the social web, video games, virtual worlds, and maps. You may or may not remember him from such hits as the Acceleration Studies Foundation and the Electric Sheep Company. He’s a co-founder of the shtill shtealth shtartup Wello Horld and spends his time between Brooklyn, NY (Silicon Ghetto) and San Francisco (Silicon Valley).
Lance Weiler is a critically acclaimed award winning writer / director. Recognized as a pioneer because of the way he makes and distributes his work - Millimeter magazine called Lance a “tech iconoclast” and Wired magazine named him “One of twenty-five people helping to re-invent entertainment and change the face of Hollywood.” He has successfully self distributed his films The Last Broadcast and Head Trauma to over 20 countries while grossing over 5 million dollars in the process. Always interested in experimenting with new ways to tell stories and reach audiences, Lance developed a cinema ARG (alternate realty game) around “Head Trauma.” The cinematic ARG is a mashup of movies, music, theatrics and gaming. Over 2.5 million people experienced elements of the game across theaters, mobile drive-ins, mobile phones and online. Lance is also the founder of the Workbook Project a “social open source” project for filmmakers. The Workbook Project’s goal is to help filmmakers understand the changing landscape of funding, production, promotion, and distribution in a digital age. He is the co-founder of From Here to Awesome and DIY DAYS. In addition he is a partner in Seize the Media a social entertainment company that focuses on cross-media story architecture.
M dot Strange is a mixed media animator from San Jose, Ca. He recently singlehandedly completed an 88 minute animated film entitled “We are the Strange” which made its world premiere in January of this year at the Sundance Film Festival. A reviewer that saw the film M dot made in his bedroom with 9 PC’s over the course of 3 years said “it looked like something Hollywood would make for 70 million” He has recently been featured in the NY Times, ABC World News , Wired.com and his youtube videos have been viewed over a million times.
Arin Crumley - The Wall Street Journal lists Arin among the top 20 new media moguls, and applauds the co-creation of the popular independent film and online video series, Four Eyed Monsters. In late 2002, Arin met his future co-director and collaborator, Susan Buice, beginning a relationship that evolved into the creation of Four Eyed Monsters. The project has become a cult phenomenon. To date, the video podcast has received over two million views, theaters across the nation have booked the film due to its online fan-base, the film was nominated for two Spirit Awards and in June 2007 became the first feature film to be posted in it’s entirety to YouTube. Now with all of this online exposure the film has been licensed to IFC TV to air April 25th and be released on exclusively in Borders across the US April 29th 2008. Now 27-year-old Arin Crumley is busy promoting the DVD release as well as the 5 new final episodes of the online component to Four Eyed Monsters and is in pre-production on several new projects in the works for 2009. Also in development is a brand new film festival he co-founded called From Here to Awesome designed to demonstrate a new distribution model available to all filmmakers that have internet connections.
Brian Chirls is a filmmaker and technologist in New York. He has worked on the film Four Eyed Monsters as Manager of Distribution and Marketing and consulted on the distribution of John Sayles’s latest film, Honeydripper. Brian continues to develop and write about ways for independent artists to create and distribute their work. Brian has also produced and directed a number of short films, video blogs and a bit of machinima. Before becoming a filmmaker, Brian built financial software and worked in construction management on subway stations and highways. He graduated from the Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Blair Erickson is Creative Director at an interactive agency named Millions of Us creating experiences for clients like Warner Bros, Scion, Coca-Cola, and Nike in virtual worlds and social communities. Rcently Blair finished writing and directing an alternate reality live-action thriller for Fox’s “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” developed interactive worlds inside Playstation Home and created a virtual experience for National Geographic inside Google’s new virtual world Lively. In 2007 he launched an Innovation Grant Program for virtual inventors sponsored by Electrolux, brought CNN’s I-Report program to Second Life and won the LACP Spotlight award for a first-of-its-kind campaign bringing a WWE wrestler invasion into Gaia Online. Before his stint at Millions of Us, Blair worked in film and television production both for new and traditional media. He’s created several popular videos on YouTube, as well as writing and producing for the SciFi Channel, Discovery Channel, E! Entertainment Television, and the TV Guide Network.
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LA SPEAKERS
Arin Crumley - The Wall Street Journal lists Arin among the top 20 new media moguls, and applauds the co-creation of the popular independent film and online video series, Four Eyed Monsters. In late 2002, Arin met his future co-director and collaborator, Susan Buice, beginning a relationship that evolved into the creation of Four Eyed Monsters. The project has become a cult phenomenon. To date, the video podcast has received over two million views, theaters across the nation have booked the film due to its online fan-base, the film was nominated for two Spirit Awards and in June 2007 became the first feature film to be posted in it’s entirety to YouTube. Now with all of this online exposure the film has been licensed to IFC TV to air April 25th and be released on exclusively in Borders across the US April 29th 2008. Now 27-year-old Arin Crumley is busy promoting the DVD release as well as the 5 new final episodes of the online component to Four Eyed Monsters and is in pre-production on several new projects in the works for 2009. Also in development is a brand new film festival he co-founded called From Here to Awesome designed to demonstrate a new distribution model available to all filmmakers that have internet connections.
Robert Greenwald is a producer, director and political activist. Greenwald is the founder and president of Brave New Films, a new media company that uses moving images to educate, influence, and empower viewers to take action around issues that matter. Under Greenwald’s direction, BNF has produced a series of short viral videos, including the Fox Attacks and Real McCain campaigns. In total, BNF’s short videos have been viewed over 23 million times in the past year and a half, inspired hundreds of thousands of people to sign petitions and forced pressing issues into the mainstream media. Greenwald is also the director/producer of several documentaries: “Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers http://iraqforsale.org” (2006), an expose of what happens when corporations go to war; as well as “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price http://www.walmartmovie.com ” (2005), detailing the retail giant’s assault on families and American values; and “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism http://www.outfoxed.org ” (2004), about the right-wing opinion factory known as Fox “News.” Millions of viewers have seen these films via grassroots “house parties” and independent online DVD sales, a groundbreaking method of alternative distribution. Greenwald also executive produced a trilogy of political documentaries: “Unprecedented: The 2000 Election http://www.unprecedented.org/UnprecedentedFirstPage.html ” (2002); “Uncovered: The War on Iraq http://www.truthuncovered.com ” (2003), which he also directed; and “Unconstitutional http://pipdocs.org/order_films/unconstitutional ” (2004).
Marshall Herskovitz is a writer, producer, and director in Los Angeles who has won many awards for his work in television and films. Born in Philadelphia, he attended Brandeis University, then moved to Los Angeles in 1975, where he attended the American Film Institute and met his longtime creative partner Edward Zwick. In the years since he helped create such series as “thirtysomething”, “My So-Called Life”, and “Once and Again”. Among the films he has produced are “Legends of the Fall”, “Traffic”, “I Am Sam”, “The Last Samurai”, and “Blood Diamond”. He also directed “Jack the Bear” and “Dangerous Beauty”. In 2007 Herskovitz migrated to the Internet with “quarterlife”, the ground-breaking online series and social network dedicated to artistic, activist twentysomethings. Less than a year after launch, the fast-growing website – www.quarterlife.com – has become an international destination with members in 60 countries, and the series has become the third most successful scripted program in Internet history. Herskovitz is a longtime environmentalist, having served on the board of several organizations dedicated to preserving America’s precious natural resources. He is also a founding member of the 1Sky campaign. He is currently serving as President of the Producers Guild of America.
Alex Johnson spent two years freelancing within the commercial & music video world (including Radical Media, RHB, Partizan) in London before joining Sally Potter’s production company Adventure Pictures where she headed up online outreach & New Media initiatives. Alongside low budget feature film promotion, and cross-media project development for Endemol, Channel 4 & the ENO, she conceived The Spark Project, a Social Learning web application. She then joined interactive marketing agency Deep Focus in LA as an Experience Planner (clients included New Line, Universal, HBO, Random House, Vitamin Water, Havaianas, Sundance channel & The N) guiding thinking on audience insight, branding and strategic approach across creative, publicity & media departments. Alex is currently a freelance Digital Strategist in NYC. Most recently she worked with Seize The Media on Myspace/Hammer project ‘Beyond The Rave’ an online film release/social game; and is consulting for the IFP, guiding the organization’s rebrand and interactive re-launch. Alex is also a writer and director and is in post on a short film, working on a feature script, developing several online projects and writing a webisode case study series for the Workbook Project. She can be reached via her website alexjohnsononline.com
Micki Krimmel is the founder of Sugar Packet, Inc. - a tiny company with a big mission – to fundamentally change our relationship with material items. Micki is well known in the “Web 2.0″ space for her work in online community development and her popular website and video show at www.Mickipedia.com. As a social media consultant, Micki helps technology startups and media companies build sustainable communities for authentic conversation and engaged participation. Previously, Micki worked as Director of Community for Revver.com. She also built and managed the interactive department at Participant Productions, a media company founded with the express mission to engage audiences in movements for social change. While at Participant, Micki created the company’s first online activist community and led the interactive media efforts for An Inconvenient Truth as well as Participant’s other award-winning films.
M dot Strange is a mixed media animator from San Jose, Ca. He recently singlehandedly completed an 88 minute animated film entitled “We are the Strange” which made its world premiere in January of this year at the Sundance Film Festival. A reviewer that saw the film M dot made in his bedroom with 9 PC’s over the course of 3 years said “it looked like something Hollywood would make for 70 million” He has recently been featured in the NY Times, ABC World News , Wired.com and his youtube videos have been viewed over a million times.
Tommy Pallotta produced A SCANNER DARKLY (2006) which is based on the novel by Philip K. Dick, directed by Richard Linklater and starring Keanu Reeves. He helmed an interactive project based on Jonathan Lethem’s novel AMNESIA MOON (2004) for Microsoft’s Research and Development team. He also directed the first machinima music video IN THE WAITING LINE (2003) and the rotoscoped MTV “Breakthrough Video” DESTINY (2002), both for the band ZERO 7. He first connected Richard Linklater with animation by producing the feature film WAKING LIFE (2001). He has also produced several short animated films including SNACK AND DRINK (2000), which resides as part of a permanent collection in the New York Museum of Modern Art.
Mark Stolaroff is an LA-based independent producer and the founder of No Budget Film School, (www.NoBudgetFilmSchool.com) a unique series of classes specifically designed for the no-budget filmmaker. Stolaroff was formerly a principal at Next Wave Films, a company of the Independent Film Channel that gave finishing funds to exceptional, low-budget films. Included in Next Wave’s 13 films were the first features of directors Chris Nolan, Joe Carnahan, and Amir Bar-Lev; the Academy Award-nominated documentary “Sound & Fury”; and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner “Southern Comfort.” Stolaroff is currently in pre-production on his third project with award-winning writer/director Henry Barrial. Stolaroff was a producer on Barrial’s first feature, “Some Body,” which was in Dramatic Competition at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival; and Stolaroff produced Barrial’s last film, “True Love,” a Sundance Screenwriters Lab Project currently playing festivals. “Pig” is shooting in August on an appropriately tiny budget.
Ondi Timoner is a critically-acclaimed and internationally-recognized talent, having received a Grammy nomination for her long-form music video for the band Fastball, and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for her documentary, DIG!, a film she financed, produced, directed, and edited. JOIN US, her latest feature documentary tells a compelling story about mind control in the United States (www.joinusthemovie.com.) JOIN US follows four families as they come to realize that they have been members of a cult and check into the only accredited live-in cult treatment facility in the world to be deprogrammed. Timoner is currently in post-production on WE LIVE IN PUBLIC which traces the internet’s effect social interaction by following the story and predictions of dot.com pioneer/millionaire Josh Harris. On the narrative end, Interloper and Timoner are developing to produce/direct I Think I Killed a Sorority Girl, about gangs and sororities in South Central Los Angeles, and The Perfect Moment, about the life of Robert Mapplethorpe.
Hunter Weeks directed and produced 10 MPH and 10 Yards: Fantasy Football. Currently, he’s directing a film about a 2700-mile mountain bike race from Canada through the USA in the Rocky Mountains. He’s led efforts to bring major partners on board to help fund and promote the films, including such companies as CBS Sports, YouTube, Crocs, SmartWool, and Chipotle. He’s also the author of the 10 MPH DIY Manual, which discusses unique PR, Marketing, and distribution insights on how to distribute indie films both digitally and conventionally without a major distributor. Known for his strong eye for composition, Hunter has a passion for photography and world travel. He’s been published in numerous periodicals, including FHM, Maxim, Boston Globe, CNET, Sync Magazine, Hemispheres, and Intersection Magazine. Hunter currently lives in Denver, Colorado, where he splits his time between the mountains, film projects, and photography.
Lance Weiler is a critically acclaimed award winning writer / director. Recognized as a pioneer because of the way he makes and distributes his work - Millimeter magazine called Lance a “tech iconoclast” and Wired magazine named him “One of twenty-five people helping to re-invent entertainment and change the face of Hollywood.” He has successfully self distributed his films The Last Broadcast and Head Trauma to over 20 countries while grossing over 5 million dollars in the process. Always interested in experimenting with new ways to tell stories and reach audiences, Lance developed a cinema ARG (alternate realty game) around “Head Trauma.” The cinematic ARG is a mashup of movies, music, theatrics and gaming. Over 2.5 million people experienced elements of the game across theaters, mobile drive-ins, mobile phones and online. Lance is also the founder of the Workbook Project a “social open source” project for filmmakers. The Workbook Project’s goal is to help filmmakers understand the changing landscape of funding, production, promotion, and distribution in a digital age. He is the co-founder of From Here to Awesome and DIY DAYS. In addition he is a partner in Seize the Media a social entertainment company that focuses on cross-media story architecture.
Saskia Wilson-Brown was raised between California and France, obtained her Bachelor’s at UC Berkeley, and her Masters at Central Saint Martin’s College in London. Starting her media career in the art department for music videos and commercials – working with such luminaries as Dayton & Faris, Madonna, Marilyn Manson - she quickly moved into production design for the likes of hip-hop don Master P. Eventually moving on to become co-director of the Silver Lake Film Festival, Saskia honed her chops by creating a new media arm to the festival, dubbed MP4Fest. Aimed at showcasing emerging online content ranging in style from Machinima to viral videos, MP4Fest was one of the first large-scale digital media exhibition programs of its kind in LA. Her focus in her directorial capacity at SLFF was in implementing a multi-arts, community-driven approach to film exhibition, and placing a strong programming emphasis on local, documentary, and music films. Since leaving SLFF, Saskia has maintained her ties to the film festival world, serving as programmer, film juror, board member, advisor and/or panelist for festivals and organizations such as Slamdance, Gen Art, IFP, the Queer Lounge, MixFest LA, and more. Saskia currently works at Emmy-Award winning Current TV as the head of filmmaker Outreach for VC2 (viewer-created content) and CJ (collective journalism), where she spearheads projects designed to gain new short format documentary content for the network from international filmmakers, while initiating content partnerships on a global scale.
Femke Wolting is co-founder and head of Submarine, an Amsterdam based production studio that develops and produces documentaries and cross media programs for broadcasters and media companies. Since its formation in January 2000, Submarine has produced documentaries for directors such as Rob Smits and Alexander Oey, created an extensive game for renowned director Peter Greenaway and released a variety of interactive productions by international new media artists. From 1994 to 2002 Femke Wolting was the initiator and programmer of Exploding Cinema - part of the International Film Festival Rotterdam - which explored the future of media, and featured exhibitions, conferences and filmprograms. Between 1995-2000 she worked at the Dutch national public broadcasting network VPRO as staff member of the digital department and from 1998 as editor for VPRO?s documentary series Laat op de Avond na een korte wandeling and De Nieuwe Wereld. Since 1999 Femke Wolting has directed documentaries such as It?s The End Of TV As We Know It, a two-hour television documentary and web documentary about the future of television, the cross media documentary Sneakers about the rise and rise of the sportsshoe and Viktor & Rolf: Because We Are Worth It, which followed a year in the lives of avant-garde fashion designers Viktor & Rolf.
Video Presentations by
Auidence Building Tools
Brian Chirls is a filmmaker and technologist in New York. He has worked on the film Four Eyed Monsters as Manager of Distribution and Marketing and consulted on the distribution of John Sayles’s latest film, Honeydripper. Brian continues to develop and write about ways for independent artists to create and distribute their work. Brian has also produced and directed a number of short films, video blogs and a bit of machinima. Before becoming a filmmaker, Brian built financial software and worked in construction management on subway stations and highways. He graduated from the Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of the Craft of Cross-Media
Christy Dena is a cross-media specialist who consults with filmmakers, novelists, gamers and TV makers on the strategies and design of cross-media projects. Christy runs two popular blogs: www.Cross-MediaEntertainment.com and co-edits www.WriterResponseTheory.org. She will be launching a podcast in July at www.UniverseCreation101.com and has her bio information at www.christydena.com
Remixing Cinema
Brett Gaylor’s new documentary, Basement Tapes, examines the fascinating debate over copyright and intellectual property in the 21st-Century, a subject matter that encompasses musicians like the sample-heavy Girl Talk and thinkers like Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig. But what may be the most interesting subject of Gaylor’s film is the making of Basement Tapes itself. Gaylor’s “Open Source Cinema” project allows anyone to remix or re-edit his footage, upload their own, and generally opens up filmmaking in much the same way that the open-source software movement opened up programming.
A Swarm of Angels
Matt Hanson is a film futurist; a writer and filmmaker described as an “International film visionary” by Screen International magazine. His current project — A Swarm of Angels (www.aswarmofangels.com) — is an ambitious Cinema 2.0 endeavour to fund, film, and distribute, a feature film using the Internet, all-digital technologies, and a global community of members. Previously he founded the massively influential onedotzero digital film festival in 1996 at the dawn of digital filmmaking, which he directed until 2002. The writer of a series of digital-age cinema books including The End of Celluloid, and Reinventing Music Video, he lives in Brighton, England.
Conversation with Mark Pellington
Mark Pellington is internationally recognized as one of the world’s Premiere music video directors having made videos for U2, Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen, the Foo Fighters and Public Enemy. Pellington’s feature film debut, Going All the Way, bowed at the Sundance Film Festival and was released by Gramercy Pictures. Pellington helmeed his second feature film, Arlington Road, starring Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins. Screen Gems released the controversial political thriller in the summer of 1999. The Mothman Prophecies, arrived in the winter of 2002. A cerebral, paranormal thriller, Mothman starred Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Alan Bates and Debra Messing. Also in ‘02, Mark wrote and directed The Place We Call Earth, a 40 minute narrative. The summer of ‘07 saw the commencement of Pellington’s fourth feature Henry Poole is Here. An uplifting story about hope and faith the film stars Luke Wilson, Rahda Mitchell, and Academy Award Nominee Adriana Barraza. The film was financed by Lakeshore Entertainment and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. It was aquired by Overture Films and will be released in the Summer of ‘08.
Wreck A Movie
Timo Vuorensola is a filmmaker from Finland, whose goal is to bring filmmaking and Internet closer together. His first film, Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, was created through the aid of a vast Internet community, and after it’s release on the Internet in 2005 has received over 8 million downloads to date. Timo is right now working on a collaborative film production platform on the Internet called Wreck A Movie, as well as with his second feature film Iron Sky, a story about Nazis returning back to Earth from their hideout on the Far Side of the Moon.
