Recently in social networking Category

Remember the old days?  We had to rely on Who Weekly reporters to publish embarrassing photos of celebrities.  Well now, thanks to Social Networking, celebrities are doing it themselves!  You may have seen this already, but Danny DeVito has set the Twitterverse alight with his brand new Twitter page. The real Danny DeVito.  Not just because he posts pearlers like "Don't follow the fake "DiVito" twitter! I know how to spell my name and I don't suck at photoshop!".  Danny doesn't know how to 'verify' his account.  Apparently if you're a celebrity, you need to take this step so that the average person knows that you're not an imposter. So Danny went one further and established a Facebook Fan Page, complete with a video so that you know it's really him. Check it out. 

Just as there are lots of lawsuits about television based material ending up on the web, the same challenge occurs when you try to make a TV show based around web content.  

MTV is about to launch it's new show 'It's on with Alexa Chung', the repacement show in the US for 'Total Request Live'.   They plan to have the show include links through social netowkring sites, such as Facebook and Twitter so that the audiece can interact live on air, they also plan to highlight viral videos on online content.   Yet this casues them a whole bunch of interlectual property and copyright challenges.

Read more here.

The Independent Television Service in San Francisco has just released a new report which looked into new ways of creating distributing and promoting films.    The report focuses on 10 case studies, and it's well worth a look.   The focus is on social filmmakers, but not strictly documentary.

They also highlight the Top 5 stategies in each area.   I particularly like the sugggestion that you could make an international film by collaborating with other idependent filmmakers in other countries.

Source: CinemaTech

This is possibly the video blogging equivellant of Twitter.    12 seconds posed a questions and allows you to give a 12 second response via your web cam.   of course you can update the world about other parts of your life in 12 seconds as well. 

I stumbled over an intriging and clever online marketing move today.

I have an account at Twitter, the mobile misco-blogging web site.   I rarely use it  and I've never connected it to my mobile - I'm way to busy to distracted by another thing.    My Facebook updates automatically repost to my Twitter account, and a few of my friends follow my activities through the Twitter feed.

One of the great (and possibly scary) things you can do on Twitter is you can start following people, every now and then I take a look at who is following me and block a couple of the more dubious ones.   Today I found someone following me who I wasn't expecting.    Cardinology.

The Cardinals are the backing band of one of my favorite performers, Ryan Adams, and Cardinology is their latest album.   I've blogged about Ryan Adams before and my love of his work is well known.   But surely I should be his fan - not the other way round.   It's very clever that someone in Cardinal land trolls the internet and makes connections with an artist's fans.

I clicked onto the Cardinology Twitter feed, their update from earlier today announced that Adams alter ego DJ Reggie had posted some more rap tunes online.   The link led me to the bands You Tube account and this beautiful new song, 'Dear Impossible'.   I didn't know this song.   What album is it on?   A google search revealed the answer.    Even though 'Cardinology' is only just in the shops, the next album is already underway.   My seach also revealed Ryan Adam's blog, on the tour bus he's been learning Final Cut Pro and posting simple videos to share the new songs, I found another one 'Sunflowers in Hotels' on Vimeo.

So what's all this got to do with filmmaking.    Well not a lot.    It has a lot to do with online distribution and marketing though.  

The BIG thing is that they didn't just create a online presence and hope I'd find it - they reach out and made contact with me.    Now I don't think anyone in the Ryan Adams camp is actually following my Twitter updates, mainly because they have 1995 friends to follow - but they made me feel like they were interested in me.

How many filmmakers just create a web page to promote their film and leave it at that?

The band is also cleverly getting me to like the songs from their new album - before it's released.    They're getting to me before the critics and the reviews.   Could this work for filmmakers?   Would you ever let me see your rough cut online?   Some footage from the shoot?   Something beyond the standard trailer?  

Listen to Cardinology on the band's My Space page.  

Ryan Adams is playing Metropolis Fremantle in January - he's more than welcome to drop by FTI for a FCP tutorial session.

..and while I don't believe that The Cardinals have a connection with all 1995 of their Twitter friends, I would like to take a moment to recognise my 584 Facebook friends...your all great. 

The WALL STREET JOURNAL has a catch up article on some of the newer technologies that are set to change the screen exhibition and distribution side of the business.

Amongst the news of Blu-Ray, 3D and Digital Projectors was one technology I had to think twice about.   A blu-ray DVD that links into social networking.   You watch a movie at home and friends who are watching it at the same time can comment and chat on the TV screen.  

Personally I hate people who talk in the movies, and I don't think I'm going to appreciate my facebook aquaintainces giving me their thoughts as I watch a film.   Do people want this?   Are there any signs?   Are we talking on our mobiles while friends watch films? do we text them SMS messages?   Do you hear teenagers parting in the playground with calls of 'let's all watch 'Gossip Girl' at the same time and chat'?

With all the calls for content to be free of time and space and the proclaimed death of appointment viewing - is this a little of target?

What do you think?

See the article at the WALL STREET JOURNAL

Over at READ-WRITE-WEB there is a great article by Alex Iskold about the rise of hyper local information.   If you've never comes across the discussions focusing on this phenomenon this is a great place to start. 

DROWING IN INFORMATION
As we drown in the ‘The Age of Information’ we can find more and more information about particular people, places and events.    The challenge as always been in managing and organising the masses of information.   While tagging has allowed for a different methodology geo-tagging linking a photo or video or story to its latitude and longitude opens up a whole new world.   Imagine if everyone who ever lived in a house loaded up their home movies and photos and linked them to the physical location.   The history of a particular space is exposed.         

FILMS FOR A SMALL AUDIENCE
We often here that the future of film is in mass global audiences and our key to open the door is the unique qualities of our locale.   Sure this is true, W.A. looks amazing if your not here everyday – just as I think Iceland looks spectacular.   Yet there is another way to look at this, as hyper-local information increases we know more about our local audience, and filmmaking gets cheaper and cheaper.   Will we soon be making films for tight select groups of people? 

Some would argue that many filmmakers already do this.   (but joke’s aside)

Yet there are films for small audiences, corporate film often falls into this category.   Large corporations might make their quarterly report into a visual format.   When I worked at Crown Entertainment Centre in Melbourne they used to produce an internal thrice weekly news bulletin – The Crown News.   Video Blogging is often for a small audience.

Will hyperlocal geo-tagged information show us some select small markets?   What happens when you know there are 57 young guys interested in snowboarding in Mount Lawley, who also drinks at the Flying Scotsman and like rap music – is that a Market of the fragmented future?

A SIDE COMMENT
If you have predictive texting on your mobile phone and you’re not careful your phone may call the ‘Scotsman’ the ‘Pantsman’.    This has caused many trendy young filmmakers to send an SMS asking their friends to ‘Meet them at the Pants Man’.   This has lead to the popular drinking spot rapidly being given a new informal name.     

This article at NEWS.COM highlights recent research that reveals that most Australians have up to 10 online virtual profiles of themselves - creating a fragmented online personality.

I thought I would do a personal count to see how fragmented I may be;

Email Addresses - 8 comprising 7 business and 1 personal, but they fileter through to just two actual in-boxes, work and home.

Social Networking - 3 Facebook, MySpace, Linked In.

Virtual World - 2 Habo and Second Life (rarely accessed)

Content Sharing - 3 YouTube, Odeo and Flickr

Blogs - 7 This one, the other one on the FTI site called Training Wheels,  personal bog (sleeping), Scribbel blog (dead- left over from 2006 action learning), three course related blogs.

so 23 online versions of me, I I think I've been fairly honest with the facts on all of them, how do you compare? 

One of the things I love about Facebook is that it shows you how your friends are interconnected, your mutual aquaintances.   It can reveal some surprising connections that you were previously unaware of.   For example, I know Khrob Edmonds because he's a filmmaker and Ricci Lee Adams becasue she dated my younger brother a decade ago - but Khrob knows Ricci because half a decade ago she was an agent and he was an actor.   I know Sunissa Brown because of her work in the screen industry and television actress Zoe Ventoura because I studied dance under her mother choreographer Ruth Osborne.   Sunissa knows Zoe because they both went to High School together.        

Now a new application on the social networking site allows you to create a 'friend wheel' a visual representation of your online aquaintainces.

This is instantly a very revealing process.   If you travel around my friend wheel in a clockwise direction, you come across the following groups of people. 

A few local film producers and people who previously worked in the WA screen industry or visited us from interstate.

Then there is a purple section that is completely disconnected from the rest of my circle of friends.   Ten names in a row - who know each other but none of my other aquaintances.   They are all people I worked with at Star Cruises, another career, another country, another life.  

In the red at three o'clock are a few people on my circle who only know me and nobody else in the circle.   They comprise people I worked with in the casino industry in Australia,  people I was in Boy Scouts with and one new student at FTI, who just joined Facebook recently.

The next section in orange is animators, they know each other and at first glance appear to have a high level of links to people in the video/film area of the screen  industry.    A closer inspection though reveals that the people they connect to are largely FTI employees.

The yellow section at 5pm moves into people working in the intenrnet, new media area in Perth before moving into the busiest section, the green section - which is local early career filmmakers.    Filmmakers extends up through the blue section past 10pm.   

Dancers arrive at 11pm, people who I know from  Steps Youth Dance Company, Contempory Dance Centre and the WA Academy of Performing Arts.    

At 11:55 is the last group, people who have lived with my younger brother.    It's a combination of his flatmates and our nephew.

So there it is, all my online social interactions in one clear picture.   A life that includes phases of being a High School Student, a Dancer, A Casino Manager and working in the Screen Industry.  

There are other valubale insights in a diagram like this though.   It is reguarly stated that animators are less social that video/film based filmmakers - and this would back up that claim.    Another part of the local screen industry that is less connected appear to be early career writers and producers - another observation that has often be made.

This is very subjective though, it is people I know, it's entirely from my point of view, there could be a whole bunch of filmmakers or animators out there who we have just never met.    However as more connections are made through facebook a continuing more ellaborate picture will begin to emerge. 

Visualisations such as these can also be useful from the persepctive of marketing activities, spreading the word.   From the diagram it is clear if I wanted someone who had a lot of interconnection with particular subgroups - they stand out clearly in the visualisation.

If we're friends on Facebook you can check out the diagram in detail.   If we're not friends and you read this blog, send a friend request through.   




























        

Check out this great video about Viewer Habbits or this one about independent filmmaking, or this one about being a student in 2007.