If only 30% of people’s online time is spent viewing content, then there is real hope for indie film. The other 70% of users’ time is spent in search and social. We know that people not only want to discover stuff (like great stories and films) but even more so, they want to talk about it.
One way to define Film is as the transformation of leisure time into intellectual capital and then into social capital.
The question all filmmakers need to ask themselves is what can we do to get the others to talk about film more. How can we improve the conversation people have about film? We have the tools.
I loved B-side’s Festival Genius and hope it doesn’t go away now that the company has. One of major festivals, or indie film support orgs should acquire it (for their own benefit as well as ours).
(UPDATE 4/10 : Okay, I admit I have a crystal ball: the day after I wrote this, IFP announced it was acquiring Festival Genius.)
I was recently hipped to Dan Zeitman’s FilmFest from a comment on this blog by Weak Species‘ Dan Faltz. FilmFest looks like it is much of the same thing as FestivalGenius. All festivals should utilize these tools (please!). As they are available, it is safe to say that a festival that does not provide these tools are doing both their audience and their filmmakers a disservice.
Filmmakers should INSIST all festivals to utilize these tools, or refuse participation in them. Or maybe it’s the other approach: Let’s build a list of all the festivals that use these tools and encourage participation in them.
I spoke before about the idea of film festivals using Foursquare to engage audiences, but there are no doubt many more of this sort of ideas. It might be time to develop a new list! If only I had wasn’t trying to get my movies made, I would have some time to do something really important. Lend a hand though: we can make it better together.
