by Eric Volmers.

Katrin Bowen admits there is a certain irony to her enthusiastic embrace of new technology. The indie-filmmaker, one-time “Troma girl” and former Calgarian spent a large part of her youth in Linden, Alta. among the Mennonites, where she was taught to shun technology at all costs.

“It was so Luddite,” Bowen says with a laugh, in an interview from her home in Vancouver. “I resisted technology personally. And I’m embracing it now and it’s really exciting.”

How is she embracing it? As with many indie filmmakers, Bowen has seen the power of social networking first hand.

Next month, she will start shooting her second feature film in Vancouver, following a six-year journey to find the required funds to mount the production.

Random Acts of Romance, a comedy about the intersecting lives of various couples, has already been garnering buzz even though the cameras won’t start rolling until Jan. 31.

To drum up interest, Bowen is running a contest on filmroller. com, inviting people to submit their best, or worst, “dating stories” for a chance to win a visit to the Vancouver set.

Read the rest of this article from Calgary Herald.

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This article was written by Adam Mazo.

Social media is the worst form of media, besides all those others. Apologies to Winston Churchill for repurposing his famous quote on democracy. Isn’t that what we often do with social media, repurpose quotes and video (or sometimes just copy and paste)?

For independent filmmakers social media can be incredibly powerful and maybe Churchill would agree: democratizing. A filmmaker can engage with people via social media from the moment a project is conceived, share video throughout the process, find new stories to document and share with that same audience, and generate support for a film.

Read the rest of this article from Valley Advocate.

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This article was written by Jaskiran Kapoor.

“When filmmaker Onirban sat down to sort out his finances for his latest film I Am, he realised he was falling short of money. It was a bold film and not many producers were eager to invest. “That’s when I put up my film’s post on Facebook, and in no time we had money pouring in,” he says.

All donations and cheques were received via Facebook and the film was wrapped up in time. “It is one of the first films in India to be crowd-sourced,” says Onir, adding how he and his team requested users of Facebook and Twitter to be ‘co-owners’ in their venture, in the process evolving a novel model of financing movies.”

Read the rest of this article from Indian Express.

This article was written for ABC News.

“Twitter king Ashton Kutcher says there is room for both feature films and new media to co-exist in the entertainment landscape.”

Read the rest of this article from ABC News.

This article was written by Tanya Relf.

“With the continuing growth of user generated content, crowd sourcing, social commerce and social networks for entertainment the major entertainment markets have suffered a steady fall in influence and share of wallet over the last 5 years.

As consumers of film and game become more digitally sophisticated the technology is continuing to keep pace but are the publishers / developers fully leveraging the potential of Social Audiences?

Traditional strategies and tactics by the big studios include a standard checklist of platforms to deliver their content but are they fully embracing the peer-to-peer nature of social and Transmedia storytelling?”

Read the rest of this article from Ezine Articles.

This article was written by Tom Smith.

“On Friday 13th, sometime before 9PM, Graham Linehan had had a great idea he called Bad Movie Club. I heard about it from Phil Jupitus’ twitterings. I’d hastily followed him before I realised it was THE Phil Jupitus, dur!

The idea was brilliant-ish and was for everyone to get hold of and watch a really bad movie called The Happening (trust me it is really bloody awful) and after all hitting PLAY at 9PM everyone would be free to use the “#badmovieclub” hashtag whilst twittering.”

Read the rest of this article from The Other Blog.

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This article was written by Balázs Lóth.

This article was written by Patty Fantasia.

“Being fairly new to the filmmaking scene and living in Las Vegas, as opposed to L.A. or New York, I must say that I find social media to be an effective and inexpensive networking tool.  I launched Filmmakers Notebook in July and with the exception of conferences and seminars I attended in Los Angeles and the people I’ve become acquainted with locally, I really didn’t know anyone in the film world.

When you’re starting out,  this severely limits your ability to find colleagues to collaborate or share ideas with.  I’ve found that social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook , have helped to fill this gap.”

Read the rest of this article from Filmmakers Notebook.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

“Can the so-called Twitter effect boost a movie’s box-office performance faster than any traditional form of word-of-mouth? Not yet, say many top movie marketers and researchers, but the social networking platform’s impact on a studio’s media mix and campaign management has already taken shape.”

Read this article from Advertising Age.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

“As the news media focused on Jay Leno’s relocation into a regular five night a week prime time spot, the veteran Tonight Show host expressed growing confusion about the state of his medium. He told The Los Angeles Times, “I don’t know what TV is anymore.”

Well, if Leno doesn’t know what TV is, who does?

He’s not the only one scratching their heads these days. Joss Whedon, the veteran television producer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the current Dollhouse, expressed confusion over the Emmy he won for Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog, a program which was never aired on television (broadcast or cable): “If we were on TV, maybe we would’ve won an Oscar…We don’t understand.”

Read this article from The Huffington Post.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall