My SoCal-ed Life

A little background on my DV experience:

For the last 4 years, I've been associated with the SoCal Film Group, a creative collective of writers, directors, and producers who have come together to take their filmmaking destiny into their own hands.

The group has had 15-20 members at any particular time, and about as many reasons for participation. For some of us, the group has been a relatively cheap film school, for others it's been a place to hone talents and work towards the elusive "calling-card" short.

We've been able to leverage cheap, fast, light digital technology for a near-constant production schedule.

We're currently using a Panasonic DVX-100 with a prototype adapter that allows us to use 35mm lenses to achieve variable depth-of-field. We then input the mini-dv footage into Final Cut Pro or Avid, and lay in a soundtrack from other friendly musicians or from Garageband. We then burn everything to DVD, and put the whole thing in a case with our own graphic design on the inserts.

Some members have acquired a large collection of second-hand lights, professional sound gear, and miscellaneous equipment, so our productions are nearly entirely self-contained. Combined with some nice lightweight camera dolly and support gear on permanent loan to the group, our gear allows us to shoot a huge variety of material, and do it fast. Forty shorts in four years is a nice pace.

We've had some success with our shorts- numerous festivals, a TV screening or two, several fun screening parties. But it's time for the next step, getting our work to the larger audience. In that regard, I'm very excited about the potential of the internet for digital distribution. The barriers are gone, the gatekeepers are no more.

But...

Just because you can get your work to people doesn't mean they know they want to see it. Part of what I want to explore in this blog are ways of getting your projects in front of people. Given the vast flood of material out there (check out the endless stream on YouTube), how can you stand out of the crowd?

Now that everyone can reach an audience, how do we build that audience? What sorts of promotion and marketing will work with this new frontier? The world is indeed flat again, but it's also potentially very narrow. Is that good enough?

Time to find out.

SoCal Film Group | Short Film | Digital Distribution | Filmmaking