10 rules for professional movie blogging

If you're thinking about starting a blog for a film you have to read Hugh Macleod's 10 rules for professional movie blogging. He gives great advice about what to do to get people interested and spread the word about your work. Hugh also draws cartoons on the back of business cards (but now he makes them on a computer...) and consistently provides advice and insight about the new world of blogging and enhancing or making your living through a blog at gapingvoid.

Insights into Participatory Video

Get some Insights into Participatory Video and find out how to change the world through enabling people to use video to tell their stories and share their voices.

(Via WorldChanging.)

Freevlog

Freevlog provides simple and clear instructions for creating your own video blog or vlog without spending any money. It's an exciting time when you can create and share your work for free!

Bound by Law

Bound by Law provides a comic book introduction for copyright for filmmakers. It's produced by the Duke Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain and it's available for download as a pdf (and is Creative Commons licensed) and you can also buy a printed version of it. Entertaining and incredibly useful and informative as well.

Creative Screenwriting Podcast

A great way to gain some insight in to writing for film can be found in the great Creative Screenwriting Podcast from Creative Screenwriting magazine. Lots of conversations with the writers who create the stories that we see on the screen.

earth+wind+fire+water

Until the end of March you can enter the earth+wind+fire+water competition on freesound. The challenge is to record (or synthesize) and upload at least 4 sounds that represent "earth", "wind", "water", and "fire". You can win a great collection of audio recording gear, so start recording and sharing!

Michel Gondry on Documentary Shooting

There is a brief interview with Michel Gondry on the Wired site where he talks about shooting Dave Chappelle's Block Party, editing, computer graphics and an upcoming project. One of the images with the article is a sketch that Gondry used to plan out the shooting of the music documentary.

Myspace Film

It's the hot thing for music and now there is Myspace Film where filmmakers can share and promote their work. This could be big.

(Via m-c.)

78th Academy Awards Preview

Tonight the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will give out their awards, commonly known as the Oscars. No matter how cynical I get about awards and the Oscars in particular, I still have to watch them. Slate has a discussion of How to Watch the Oscars and The Guardian has a good feature about Oscars 2006.
This year is fascinating in that most of the films nominated are more independent films that are outside of the Hollywood machine. They are the exceptions that prove the rule. Edward Jay Epstein writes in Slate that Art Flicks Make Beautiful Decoys, in that they are showered with awards, but not with money as they don't lend themselves to sequels or merchandising. Looking at the Independent Spirit Awards, a lot of the nominees are the same as those for the Academy Awards. Indiewire notices that if you add the budgets of four of the nominees for Best Picture, it comes to US$35 million and the other nominee, Munich had a budget of US$70 million. Is this a sign of things changing in Hollywood, or is it just a way to try and bring some prestige to a year that may have been a bit thin on great films from the big studio machine?