Is There a Doc in the House?

For those of you with documentaries, you might want to check this out in the New York Times.

LOS ANGELES — The little business of documentary film just got bigger.

SnagFilms, until now an ad-supported online aggregator of documentary films with a journalistic adjunct in its IndieWIRE news service, is expected on Monday to announce a series of deals that will make it a significant distributor of documentaries through a half-dozen on-demand services.

Rest of the NYT article here. Hat tip to Donna Wheeler.

Wellywood Woman Blog

The Wellywood Woman blog has a great overview of women who support women making films. She names the women working in all these areas.  The posting is full of information and so it is not a quick, breezy read.  But I am grateful because I want to know who these women are who are advocating for all female filmmakers.  Check it out here.

Distribution leads and links

Donna Wheeler shares some great links if you're looking to distribute content. The first one to bookmark is a distributor rating site called Distripedia. Now, if you are interested in one of the distributors listed in the links below, you can find out what kind of reputation they have before contacting them.

The first link is to The Film Collaborative, the folks who run distripedia.

There's a site called Film Tiki that is currently offering a free tool for 2010 that I think they plan to charge for in the future that is supposed to help filmmakers plan and promote their films.  Post a comment if you try it out and let us know what your experience was.

Finally there's a site called GoScreening that lets you submit privately to distributors who list what they are looking for.

Barbara Cole's One-Woman Show

Up Chick CreekWe gave a shout out to Barbara Cole, who starred in this year's winning No Budget Film, Casualties, whose one-woman show, Surviving Chrysalis, played at the Hollywood Fringe festival and will have one more encore performance in Santa Monica this Friday.  Theater is an alternate route for people who want to get their work out there and seen.  But theater ain't easy. Here's what Barbara has to say about self-producing.

WHAT an experience that was!  So many emotions and lessons - some good, some... bad. Can we tawk?   Self producing is HARD with no budget - lots of highs and lows, but performing this show in LA  was something I just  had to do, despite advice to the contrary.  Five years in development - and damn it  I f#@!ing did IT!.  I have SO much respect for producers.  And I'm glad its over... until I land a series regular and can do it with a real budget - or find a kick ass producer.

I felt lucky actually, because my small theatre was half full -- and with 175 other fringe shows going on in the same 10 day period, that was a pretty decent count...and the audiences were SO frickin' awesome!  The show went pretty awesome too with one great review on the fringe website.

She is performing it again Friday night with two other women in a show called Up Chick Creek.  It's at the Santa Monica Playhouse at 8 pm and is part of the Save the Playhouse campaign. Check it out if you can.

You Tube VidCon Partners Meeting

Donna Wheeler and I went to the LA Partner Meeting hosted by YouTube as part of the VidCon events happening in LA this weekend, and, oh my, did we learn A LOT.  Mainly, the presentations and panels gave the Partners teriffic insights on how to build an audience and make a living with video content.  But the biggest message is that you can't just put up a video or even a series of videos and expect to succeed.  Everybody who succeeds works long hours and participates in the online video community.  If you don't and are looking for a magic way to suddenly become a YouTube star,  your energy would be better spent where your heart really is.
 
That's not to say that you might not come up with some new way to use video content on the web to reach your goals.  I'm thinking of the guys who shot the mock movie trailer, "The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon" and used its success to leverage a movie deal.  But if you want to make your living from your videos on the web, you have to make it your job and treat is at least somewhat professionally.