“Mashing Up Copyright” – a screening of the new NFB film RiP: A Remix Manifesto and a discussion. Presented by the NY Film and Video Council.

WHEN: Friday May 1st; 6:30 pm

WHERE: The Cooper Union’s Wollman Auditorium, 51 Astor Place.

RSVP: 212-330-0450. The event is free.

If you’re at Hot Docs next month, you’re welcome to check out this panel on ‘The New Distribution’ I’ll be on. It’s Tuesday, May 5th at the Rogers Industry Centre and will concern:

As commissioning budgets shrink, distribution bucks the trend with acquisition and sales windfalls. Is it a sign of the times, or the ebb and flow of the market? Join our international sales and distribution powerbrokers’ status report on their theatrical, broadcast, DVD and online media ventures. Find out how they are working for filmmakers and adapting sales techniques to the new economy.

Not sure if there’s really any bucking but it should be a good time. & After that I hope to be powerbroking at some nice TO bars and movie theatres.

Taking a small meander away from distribution to look at an example of what’s going on in the ‘indies financing on the web’ scene, “You and Charlie Wu” is a microbudget project ($35K) hoping to entirely finance through Paypal donations. They have created a referral scheme in which supporters receive ‘points’ for donations made by friends, and the points are worth certain credit levels within the final crawl (sort of like selling off your special thanks section, I guess).

Anyway, thus far they are at 5% with this plan, so perhaps it’s not quite sure-fire- but it seems like it might be a good way for certain projects to jump-start early funding from more traditional sources, if the filmmaker is able to reliably demonstrate a general excitement for the project.

However, an investment with no equity and no tax write-off might be a tough sell in the current marketplace.

There are a lot of people trying to get financing through the internet. Have you had any luck? Or any painful reality checks?

HT: Wil Wheaton

I’ll be moderating a panel organized by NY Women in Film called “Digital Docs: Case Studies of Distributing Documentaries Online”. It’s on April 27 at 6:30 PM at NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, 20 Cooper Square. Panelists are Greta Schiller, Aaron Woolf, Lilibet Foster and Mark Lipsky.

We’ll definitely be talking about reaching audiences and how to maximize the potential of the internet without hurting (and ideally while complementing) your DVD, television, and screening revenues. What advice do you have for documentary filmmakers putting films online? Any words of caution?