Tag Archives: SXSW

The ITVS Indie Roundup

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A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

Now that social media can amplify the impact of documentaries, a “social action plan” is more useful than ever, according to MovieMaker Magazine. The must-have characteristics: “Hot Issue,” “Central Goal,” “Time Table,” “Activist Building,” and “Adaptability.”

The best of SXSW is still available online. According to Radiolab creator Jad Abumrad, ITVS’s Steve Goldbloom’s SXSW Diaries “are ACTUALLY FUNNY. Like really funny.”

San Franciscans: Check out The Center for Asian American Media Festival (a.k.a. CAAMFest)! From March 14 to 24, the festival will screen top-quality documentaries, feature films, and shorts.

From the 1980s TV show World of Photography, a young Annie Leibovitz talks about her already blossoming photography career, including portraits of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Steve Martin, John Belushi, Dolly Parton, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. “I can’t really say I’ve had much of a life outside of photography,” she said. “I think I’ve lived inside my pictures.”

Vimeo is apparently all about the indie filmmakers. This week, the company announced Vimeo On Demand, a self-distribution platform that allows filmmakers to reap a whopping 90 percent of the profits.

The ITVS Indie Roundup

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A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

These 22 storytelling tips by Emma Coates, Pixar’s former story artist, are as uplifting and imaginative as Pixar’s films, and the guidelines are useful for non-fiction and fiction storytellers alike.

If you’re hungry for more storytelling tips, check out this Kickstarter campaign for a “creative advice book” by 50 of the world’s preeminent documentary filmmakers. “Learn from your mistakes,” says James Marsh, director of Man on Wire. “Write them all down and torment yourself with them.”

There are so many interesting transmedia storytelling projects, it seems impossible to keep up. AIR’s Public Media Scan addresses this by featuring five projects weekly “at the intersection of technology, journalism, and blended media craft.” (via @povdocs)

Interested in making a short film? IFP shares how short videos can lift your overall filmmaking career.

SXSW rages on this week in Austin with a host of compelling documentary panels, screenings, and interactive storytelling workshops. Over at Indiewire, meet the filmmakers who are presenting their work at SXSW.

Doc lovers in Chicago have just as much to be excited about. The Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) 2013 Chicago Conference will unite legendary filmmakers and critics March 6 to 10.

Something for everyone this week! New Yorkers, check out POV Digital, Non-fiction Storytelling presented by the creator of the POV Hacakthon, Adnaan Wasey, March 19 at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. The event features “insights into cross-platform and immersive projects in a completely different way from many of the fiction projects StoryCode has presented.”

Public Media Puts Social TV Front and Center at SXSW

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ITVS will unveil the tablet version of OVEE, a social screening platform developed for PBS and public television stations, at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival on Friday, March 8, 2013.

This Friday, ITVS’s social screening platform, OVEE, will be featured at SXSW! Our own Dennis Palmieri and software developer Christian Nelson of Carbon Five will present all the interactive wizardry and audience engagement OVEE has to offer. If you happen to be in Austin for the big event, their panel will light up the stage 5 p.m. Friday at the Austin Convention Center, Room 12AB. If you aren’t lucky enough to be in Austin, follow the insights and discussions around the panel on Twitter through the hashtag #OVEE.

The breakthrough social platform, which fuses the functionality of second screen apps with a high-quality video player, offers interactive features for 500+ audiences, including live chat, real-time emoticators, polls, quizzes, live webcam capabilities, and one-click audience metrics snapshots.

Now available on the iPad, “OVEE re-creates the dynamics and the feel of a live screening event in the online space,” says Dennis Palmieri, ITVS’s OVEE project lead. “It’s as close as you can come to sitting in a theater and watching a film or video program with a live audience.”

Along with headlining a panel on opening day of the SXSW Interactive Festival, OVEE will also be featured at the Integrated Media Association (iMA) conference, the premier showcase for transmedia and multiplatform work in the public media sector, on March 7th in Austin, TX. Stay tuned for more updates from the field!

The ITVS Indie Roundup

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A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Jonathan Archer.

Miss SXSW? Catch up with all the keynotes and featured speakers online.

IndieWire shared The 8 Film Startups You Should Know From SXSW.

Nick DeMartino (formerly Director of AFI Digital Labs) asked, do we need “An Accelerator For Entertainment?” One of the more interesting and provocative ideas going around these days…
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Feedback from a SXSW Rookie

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By Robin Suchman
Digital Projects Manager, ITVS

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Conferences & Festivals (March 9-18, 2012) offer the unique convergence of original music, independent films, and emerging technologies. 

As the line between film and digital projects continues to blur, it makes perfect sense that the Interactive and Film portions of SXSW run concurrently (along with ScreenBurn- the gaming tract), followed closely by the Music portion.  Social TV, the crossover between television viewing and social media, was a topic mentioned quite often during many of the sessions I attended.

Although this was my first time at SXSW (and Austin), I heard that the Interactive portion has grown quite significantly over the past few years; now being held in nine different locations with complimentary shuttles for badge holders to move freely between them (although I preferred to walk, despite the persistent rain!).  Moreover, the Interactive conference is broken down into 18 different themes, each being housed in a specific building, so you really do not need to move between the different buildings if you intend to focus on a single track. Continue reading →

Vote for ITVS’s Women Lead Panel at SXSW 2012!

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SXSW Panel Picker allows the community to have a significant voice in programming conference activities for SXSW 2012.  Make your voice heard by voting for our Women Lead Panel which will focus on public media in the 21st Century. Vote now!  Thanks.

Women are transforming the landscape of public media through innovation, audience engagement and new forms of storytelling. Our proposed SXSW panel, Women Lead: Public Media in the 21st Century, presents women as innovators and collaborators and will examine how multiple stories told through both traditional and digital media can work in concert to illuminate issues, create sustained, global conversations and invite the public to get involved.

The entry point to the conversation is our new public media initiative, Women and Girls Lead– an unprecedented campaign that activates public television and radio producers, social media strategists, interactive and game designers, and multiple NGO partners committed to affecting change for women and girls around the world. Watch, listen and interact with a variety of content created for this campaign and hear from some 0of the leading women in their field about their experiences working in a 21st century media environment.

Click here to vote for ITVS’s Women Lead Panel at SXSW 2012.

Peek into the Future with Fresh FUTURESTATES Predictions

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Forecast future events and explore the predictions left by others on the FUTURESTATES Predict-O-Meter.

Find your shades … it’s getting bright around here!

The producers of FUTURESTATES have launched brand new predictions … think of these as “forward stories” (as opposed to “back”). Just fire up the Predict-O-Meter and take a walk down Premonition Lane to see what’s ahead.

And that’s not all…Check back on the FUTURESTATES site  in the weeks to come to cast your vote in our Predict-O-Meter poll, where you get to vote on which prediction is most likely to come true and find out how you can join a live online event with the winning filmmaker.

Don’t get left in the past! Follow FUTURESTATES on Twitter and Facebook.  Watch the trailer after the jump >>
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Announcing the FUTURESTATES Audience Award!

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You’ve watched the films. You’ve shared, commented, and liked. Maybe even loved. There have been ups and downs, laughter and tears. And this May, you get to decide who will take the laurels in our inaugural FUTURESTATES Audience Award.

From today until May 30 at midnight, the race is on to launch your favorite FUTURESTATES film into hyperspace. Head back to FUTURESTATES.TV, catch up on any films you missed, and check out the fan pages for each of the films.

You can vote once a day, and polling closes at midnight on May 30. We’ll announce the winner on June 1, 2011.
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A Love Story Set Within an Environmental Nightmare

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Filmmaker Bennett Cohen sets his FUTURESTATES short The Dig on the verge of an environmental collapse. The film is streaming free today on FUTURESTATES.tv.

As the world faces an environmental apocalypse, a group of archaeologists venture into a toxic desert wasteland, determined to unearth a lost civilization. Can this ancient disaster help them avert their own ruin? Watch The Dig today, and find other shorts from the second season of the online original series FUTURESTATES.

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In J.P. Chan’s FUTURESTATES, Digital Lives in the Clouds

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Filmmaker J.P. Chan’s short Digital Antiquities is streaming free, starting today on FUTURESTATES.tv.

Think your CD collection is out of date? Welcome to 2036 where data loss has become a thing of the past and all digital media is permanently stored on cloud servers scattered round the world.

Digital Antiquities follows one man’s pursuit to recover archival footage that will help answer important questions about his family history. Watch the film by J.P. Chan, streaming free on FUTURESTATES.tv.

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