Produced By Conference Welcome to Part Deux of my time spent at the 2009 Produced by Conference!

The next seminar I attended was pretty cool and inspirational which had a lot to do with the panel.

Independent Filmmaking: The Way It Was, The Way It Is and The Way It Ought To Be

The panel here consisted of:
Moderator,  David Picker Former Head of Production at Three Studio Producer and Executive Producer of such movies as The Crucible, Lenny and The Jerk
and Speakers …
Lawrence Bender Oscar-winning Producer of Pulp Fiction, An Inconvenient Truth and the upcoming Tarantino film, Inglourious Basterds
Roger Corman Producer, Death Race 2000, Grand Theft Auto, Rock N’ Roll High School
Norman Lear CEO Concord Music Group and Act III Productions
Michael London Producer, Sideways, Milk, The Visitor

To start off, they first first introduced Arthur Gardner, who at 99 is the oldest member of the Producers Guild.  He, of course got a huge round of applause.  Then it was on to a great discussion about how it used to be and how it is now to produce movies.  And here are a few of those notes …

  • Napster got a generation used to free stuff, but now with iTunes, Hulu, and such … companies are making strides in getting people used to a monetary model again (I think there’s still a long way to go, but yes I think strides are being made)
  • Lawrence: Believes with newspapers going … local film critics are a dying breed and are having to become more entertainment reporters than film critics (tend to agree, but it’s just changed a bit .. with social networks the consumer is becoming more of the film critic and there are local film critics out there, they’re just on the internet now … for example, Scene Stealers, their video reviews are fun & informative critiques)
  • Michael: believes we’re looking at a time of darkest before the dawn right now …
  • Good thing is that distribution costs less now so smaller films are being able to be made
  • Norman Lear put it simple … “Just go with your gut!”
  • Diane Ladd spoke up loud & clear from the audience … she was very excited about creative content coming back (where it went I’m not sure)
  • Producers always have their A B C Plan: A) Fantasy Plan, B) a mixture of Fantasy/Realistic Plan, and C) the Realistic Plan
  • What would you do if you had to start over from where things are now?  YOU NEVER GIVE UP!

Digital Rights: What They Are, What Are They Worth, and How Do You Protect Them?

The panel here consisted of Speakers:
Ian Ballon Greenberg Traurig, LLP
Gaurav Dhillon Chairman and CEO, Jaman.com, Inc
Jeff Gomez CEO, Starlight Runner Entertainment, Transmedia Producer, Hasbro’s Transformers, Coca-Cola’s Happiness Factory, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean
Laura Tunberg Principal Partner, We Get It Consulting
Marc Zachary Senior Vice President, Business Development Auditude

  • Jaman – Online Distribution & on Tivo (Submissions)
  • Auditude – They fingerprint videos (their software knows what video it is across sites) … a non-punitive way to take back control of your work …
  • Need to make easier ways to buy content … as easy as it is download it illegally
  • ehow.com & Hulu is making money (both of which are advertisement based like television)
  • Gaurav: With advertising, people watch more unknown films
  • What’s working … shorter form content of a television nature with 30 sec commercial
  • Mood matters … why tv on couch is good … need way to get from computer to tv screen (download model, tivo, netflix)

Well there ya have it … a little bit of what I gathered from these two great & inspirational seminars, please leave a comment if you have any thoughts or ideas on these subjects.

If you’d like to check out what I learned about Music Licensing please click here.

Next up, the 2009 Camera Assessment Series … we’re talking high-end digitial cameras and whether they match up to film.