The fabulous Brian Newman will be presenting a panel on audience building at DCTV on Monday, February 22 at 7:30PM. As this falls just a couple weeks before my own audience engagement panel at SXSW, I will totally be mining Brian’s mind for great ideas- and it’s sure to be a fun event.

Ted Hope interviewed for the new documentary Press/Pause/Play. Hope may be the most important voice right now in the emerging film–>next world, not only because he has had success with the old model but because he has an intuitive understanding of how technology, creativity and communication with the audience intersect. And he is still making movies.

You can watch the Free Culture X conference here live. The Twitter tag for the event is #fcx.

Unfortunately, Making Your Media Matter 2010 has been postponed due to Snomageddon or whatever you prefer to call the massive storms of late in DC. For the wait, here’s an interview from NPR’s On the Media with MYMM organizer and Center for Social Media director Pat Aufderheide.

I’m super excited about my upcoming panel at South by Southwest- THE MAIN EVENT: Finding an Audience for Your Film on Sunday the 14th. This will not be your typical distro panel with a bunch of talking heads bemoaning the lack of money in the digital market. NO! Instead we’ll be sharing with filmmakers and enterprising folks some of the new (and tried-and-true) tools that can get people out to your movie.

The essential theory for me is that any event that costs money has to have a way to meet people- “meet” in the special get-dressed-up-on-a-Saturday-night way but also meet like “this is my community.” People will always want to get out of the house and stop being all lonely. Screenings have a much better potential of fulfilling that function when there’s an element of “meet”.

To that end, one of the fabulous SXSW panelists, Brian Chirls, technologist extraordinaire, just launched a brand new company to help filmmakers get to know and mobilize their audiences. Crowd Controls is an awesome new tool for filmmakers of all genres.

Just flagging some upcoming events I’ll be attending at which I hope to see you and give you one of my new cards.

Making Your Media Matter- DC, February 11-12 “Cutting-edge practices for making your media matter”

Free Culture X- DC, February 13-14 “Free software and open standards, open access scholarship, open educational resources, network neutrality, and university patent policy”

South By Southwest- Austin, March 12-18 (Presenting a panel about event screenings and attracting audiences)

The Conversation NY- March 27 “New business and creative opportunities” in film and media

Recently I was honoured to be part of a list made by Brian Newman of 20 media people under the age of 40 whom he felt were leaders. What’s interesting to me is the frequency that I hear people who are young (on the list and otherwise) saying how older people “just don’t get it” and by virtue of their age, they will naturally be left behind in any digital revolution.

Even having crossed the big-3-oh-mark, I can feel a little anecdotal truth to the notion that the youth have a more natural, ingrained facility with technology and social media. However, I’ve also learned that the people who went before me usually know a lot more than me about the big picture and how people behave in general.

With that in mind, I thought I’d begin a list that I hope will be appended of leaders over 50 in film- who get that ineffable “it”. (I know that 50 is pretty young still, but gotta start somewhere). Sorry if these are the “usual suspects”- that’s why I need everyone else to bring this list up to 20 or more. And these are all lions in the industry- but with the kind of changes that we’re experiencing now, it’s interesting to try and predict who can roll with the digital world order.

Ira Deutchman- he does it all, producing, distribution, sales agent-ing, marketing, running a business- and still finds time to blog and twitter (@nyindieguy). He’s also raising the next generation of the film biz, quite literally. But Ira is accessible in the way that the new media promises everyone should be.

Richard Abromovitz- he does tend to be ubiquitous on various panels and festivals, for the simple reason that he and his company Abramorama have been involved successfully in a large percentage of the successful self-released films of the last few years. Last year’s Anvil was a good case in point- it hit on so many points, with sponsorship, promotion and social media working together (can I say “in concert”?)

Robert Greenwald- On the marketing side, filmmaker Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films have been a master at capturing the power of emerging social media to make a huge impact with issues like the Iraq war, health care, the economy, and other causes. He’s also adapted to new filmmaking technologies to get quick, inexpensive work out to social media sites.

Jonathan Sehring- The president of IFC Entertainment, Sehring is both blamed by some for the demise of the old school theatrical model and lauded for his irreverent and iconoclastic approach to distribution. IFC’s ‘buy more pay less’ model is not beloved by all filmmakers, but their approach to the marketplace is aggressive, flexible and innovative. He had a great quote in the NY Times last year:

I never hear anyone in the music industry say there are too many songs, no one in publishing says there are too many books, no gallery or museum says there are too many paintings, no one in fashion says there are too many designers — why too many movies? When my colleagues say this it sounds like the anti-immigration, protectionist rhetoric from the far right.

OK, so I didn’t really mean this to be five white dudes over 50.

How about Sheila Nevins- though many documentary filmmakers struggle with HBO’s unyielding lockdown on digital rights, Nevins and HBO are developing a digital strategy that will benefit the network and prolong the brand’s dominance. I’m not sure they “get it” in a filmmaker-friendly way, but without HBO, many great docs would not have been made- and Ms. Nevins’ great instincts are the essence of HBO’s success.

Still not extremely diverse- but 5 is a mere starting point. Who are your picks?

Recently in The National Republic, Lawrence Lessig addressed the issue of copyright in documentaries and how it is keeping classic films like Eyes on the Prize out of commercial circulation. The problem is that filmmakers must clear copyright for archival elements in their work such as television clips and music, and generally the licenses for these clips is for a limited time period like 10 or 20 years. After that time, the filmmaker would need to clear (i.e. re-license) all of the archivals again in order to sell the work.

For most docs, this can be extremely onerous since the opportunity for revenue is small whereas the cost of the licenses is often significant.

I’m on the committee for the Women’s Film Preservation Committee through NY Women in Film and we worry about preserving the negatives of films that are decaying, fading, or otherwise in danger of being lost. But Lessig’s point is well-taken that without adjusting the issues around copyright, many of these films are effectively vanishing regardless of the quality of available prints.

Digital distribution has changed the meaning of copyright, and in some ways it’s made the original copyright holders more avaricious. They feel like they need to get all they can from television clips and music placed in films, as it’s one of the few reliable revenue sources left for content.

But Lessig’s essay prompts an interesting solution. What if, for example, there were some kind of limitation placed on the initial license period, after which all usage reverted to a straight royalty system based on percentage of the work? For example, if you used a clip of the Kennedy assassination in your film, you would have to pay whatever the market rate was for a 20-year license.

But after that time, you would have to pay a royalty to the rightsholder based on how long the clip was versus how long your film was against whatever revenue you received from the film, unless you got a deferral or consideration from the rightsholder. This could be used for music rights for fiction films as well, in theory.