A few FlipCam conversations from DIY Days 2011 NYC. Host Lance Weiler, filmmaker and D-Word Captain Doug Block, and branding and business expert Jennifer Warren sum up.

Filmmakers can find this a bit depressing. Watching a film in a theatre is exciting. It’s big! It’s usually calibrated to look as good as it can. And most importantly, there are a bunch of people—strangers!—watching it together.

Creating this sense of spirit is a challenge for independents and perhaps the main opportunity to compete with the mainstream industry. We don’t have studio-size spends, but we can understand our audiences more precisely and have a more personal relationship.

For live settings, event screenings work very well. But can we make digital screenings social? We generally have little to no control over when people watch the films online, their physical circumstances, who, if anyone, they are with, or even if they watch the whole film.

Still, filmmakers have come up with some innovative ways of bringing the audience for digital screenings together. Transmedia, expressing your story in a different context, can play a great role. Lance Weiler’s Head Trauma featured a game that embedded clues in flash frames of the film itself, so viewers had to watch the film repeatedly to play and engaged with each other on the film’s site. You could offer live events to viewers of the movie during a digital rollout, such as a Skype-based Q&A. Using a technology like CrowdControls, viewers could identify their location and you could plan post-screening events in popular places.

Do you have other examples of ways to make online screenings exciting or social? Or are we doomed to living in a room with a virtual helmet?

Path one is gigantic studio films that cost a lot and still rely on a certain level of lockdown on copyright and general control of dissemination.

Path two is the small filmmaker with an emerging set of tools to reach an audience, whose work must be made cheaply and flexibly, and who must include an element of interactivity and audience participation.

Path three responds to an audience demand for aesthetically pleasing, well-made films. Since there won’t be a revenue model to create these anymore, we’ll have more sophisticated delivery systems for the catalogues already out there.

I kind of think it’s a little bit apocalyptic, but the general consensus at the conference seemed to be in agreement. Now, the consensus would probably be different at Sundance or Cannes, where the DIY model has the kind of science fiction quality of the singularity, despite various panels promoting self- and digital-distribution.

Perhaps the most engaging event at the conference had less to do with mobile app development or website technology and more to do with storytelling and economics. Douglas Rushkoff, while not imparting information I always agreed with (or in certain cases, was entirely happy to hear), was fascinating to watch and dynamic and had the level of engagement and expertise that are worth getting up at some ungodly hour for. His thoughts about alternative systems of consumption are essential for anyone interested in producing in the DIY model. AND he played with PTV; you really can’t get more cred than that.

*term by Astra

There is a part of me that feels a bit sad that there seems to be numbers of films that I think are good that would have a hard time reaching an audience in the emerging climates and I wonder if they will continue to be made. On the other hand, I’ve noticed that the spectrum of music that has awareness in general has really broadened in the past 20 years. The more people feel a direct relationship with the films they are accessing, the more they may be willing to branch out and explore.

Also, Ben suggests filmmakers have nothing else to sell? Why not? They could have games, ala Lance Weiler, cool swag like T-shirts for festivals or the web or speaking engagements for the filmmaker. Online they could give away the film and sell the extras, or create a community for the film with something value-added, or do contests or giveaways. Look at breakfast cereal- companies have been able to charge many times the cost of production because of packaging, extras, and perceived health benefits– filmmakers can learn from all kinds of marketing sources.

That said, it isn’t like a $5 million budget is redeemed with cracker jack prizes, but for filmmakers working on the cheap, making shorts or iTunes-friendly films, the indie rock model may not be that far-fetched.

Highlighting the eternal “this is my art” versus “this is a product” tension that is only getting more acute as online markets grow (and do not necessarily make more money per film), this discussion from the recent DIY Days isn’t exactly new info, but it does give a sense of what some issues are for filmmakers.

The somewhat deer-in-the-headlights initital reaction of the audience to Arin Crumley‘s demand to know what filmmakers need in the digital distribution realm I think is pretty reflective of where we’re at right now.  Also, small point, I don’t think Current TV is the only one following the online –> TV acquisition model- SuperU was one that came to mind.

Perhaps we can think about an East Coast 2.0?

Cinema studies grads may be the next to gasp. If When the Internet and Film Collide is the guide to the new film ouvre, ‘mobile cinema’ looks a lot like what we formerly called a “promo clip”. On mobile, attention spans are short and pixels are few. Even on laptops with giant 14″ screens, on services such as MySpace or YouTube, viewers prefer a film to be 2-3 minutes long. While technically the panel focused on a number of episodic videos (which function more like TV than film), certain challenges were shared by all the filmmakers.

Much of what was discussed was stuff you’ve heard a few times before: it’s unclear how to monetize the films (even in the shorter length); it’s hard to see how making these films will translate into future funding for filmmakers. Some of the evening’s participants were promoting their films in every available venue, from affinity partnerships to chatrooms, while others seemed content to simply make and post their content on the cheap and smile gratefully if anyone bothers to notice.

Unsurprisingly, the most developed ideas of the evening came from The Last Broadcast director and Workbook Project founder Lance Weiler. Discussing a project he had helped develop for Hammer Films called Beyond the Rave, an episodic Vampire-related series that broadcast on MySpace. In order to create stickiness for the shows, Weiler created a game that compelled viewers to find clues within the episodes (including links to other MySpace content and other sites) with the result of game-players watching episodes multiple times to get all the key info.

This strategy is one that could easily be employed by any filmmaker or content deliverer- it would not need to be particularly high-tech (inserting an individual frame with links or clues does not impair the viewing experience) and would likely have at least some resonance with viewers if there were the right reward (case-specific, naturally).