Conventional wisdom holds that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Where the proverbial cat equals information technology, the solutions are as varied as needs. As a professional communicator and not a computer programmer, so much of my interactions on a personal and professional level are online, and within this artificial world, I’ve had to find ways to solve problems that are usually barriers to communicating. Whether you are a filmmaker or a nonprofit organization, you probably also need to have a website, to maintain a database of contacts and to communicate with those contacts, and perhaps to even sell merchandise or manage membership.

I don’t have any magical solutions, but as I’ve been doing some research for issues faced by the organization I work for, I’ve come across some very helpful new resources.

Idealware - “Through product comparisons, recommendations, case studies, and software news, Idealware allows nonprofits to make the software decisions that will help them be more effective.”

TechSoup - “Offers nonprofits a one-stop resource for technology needs by providing free information, resources, and support.”

Beth’s Blog - “A place to capture and share ideas, experiment with and publish links about nonprofit technology, educational technology, adoption challenges, information design, visual thinking, creativity, ICT in the developing world, and much more.” Thank you to David Tames for the lead on this one.

Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) - “NTEN aspires to a world where all nonprofit organizations skillfully and confidently use technology to meet community needs and fulfill their missions.”

Of course, there are a whole host of blogs on the topic; I included Beth’s because she has a host of useful links to said blogs, and of course, all of these sites will take you into the world of tools that nonprofits are using. The frustrating part is that there is no one solution that will fit all. You have to identify your needs, be realistic about your budget, and probably hire a consultant to help you make sense of it all. At least that is the point I am at.

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I was on my way home from work the other day when I heard that Yoko Ono and her sons are suing the producers of the “intelligent design” film Expelled over their unlicensed use of John Lennon’s song “Imagine.” The producers are claiming a fair use exemption. Going online to find some more information about the case, I’m finding that most news outlets don’t seem to be picking up the story, though I did find about 500 words or so at The Dallas Morning News on their Religion blog. Top Google results for the story come up as entertainment sites, like E! and Mediabistro, but all seem to assume that the fair use claim isn’t valid because of the subject of the film.

Has anyone seen the film that can comment on the context of the usage? Folks are always looking for legal challenges to fair use, and while I don’t personally support the ideas put forward in this particular film, it doesn’t negate the possibility that they could have a fair use claim depending on how they are using the material.

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I’m here to introduce a new blog that’s part of TFI’s new Reframe project. As a New York-based arts blogger and a film fan, I will be exploring the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival as well as discovering ties between new films and ones in the Reframe collection.

Think how many scenes you’ve seen in the movies of a character or characters strolling down the sidewalk or walking down steps of a courthouse or quietly strolling through a park. “Shoe Leather,” a term used in filmmaking, refers to these parts of a movie that precede other scenes and serve to make sense of the transitions. These sequences, while seemingly pedestrian, establish necessary continuities, open up the action to establish a sense of place, and give the viewer an understanding of how characters arrive at their destinations.

Read the rest of the post at Shoe Leather on Reframe.

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I recently interviewed indie filmmaker, Paola Mendoza, for my own blog. In our conversation, we talked about all the aspects or “jobs” one needs to master as an independent entity creating art in this country right now and the places filmmakers can turn in order to learn how to do those all-important tasks, such as fundraising, marketing and distribution, and creating a presence to draw people’s interest to your project. What’s inevitable about all this is the massive amount of labor this entails. Mendoza also talked about community and about the possibilities of building community online via entities such as IndieGoGo, a newly-launched site (they hung out their online shingle on January 14th) which is marketing itself upon the DIWO, Do It With Others, model of production. Like many sites cropping up, the company, spearheaded by Slava Rubin, Danae Ringelmann and Eric Schell, is an online social marketplace that connects filmmakers and fans, providing artists with a platform that provides tools for project funding, recruiting and promotion, while simultaneously allowing audiences to discover and connect directly with those artists and the causes they support.

A couple of months after the company’s official launch, I had a chance to catch up with Rubin, the company’s marketing guru, for a quick chat to check in and see how things are going and what they have in the works for the coming year as they trend-watch and keep their finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the online digital landscape.

Rubin told me that they don’t consider themselves a distribution site right now; however, they’ve partnered and are collaborating with companies and nonprofits such as IFP, The Workbook Project, From Here to Awesome, illumobile, UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and global law firm, Orrick. You can read more about how these partnerships work and how they benefit filmmakers here. Citing other fundraising models such as the “Causes” application on Facebook, Rubin claims that IndieGoGo’s model is so effective with its own fundraising model, people are finding much easier, quicker success in that quarter than ever before.

Rubin says that the company, closely modeled on Robert Greenwald’s way of fundraising and creating awareness for a project, is a mind-set. “It’s a site based on action, not necessarily about any kind of social interaction. The set-up is straightforward: projects, people, resources. So, right away, when you go to a project, you can immediately discern what their particular needs are in order to move forward. You know right away what someone is seeking. The question of ‘how can I help?,’ in other words, is already answered.

“We’re in the business of discovering content, and in that regard, different distribution entities are coming to us because they know that’s where we’re headed. But right now, it’s about getting the projects made, and that happens by creating promotion and raising awareness which needs to start well before the finished product.”

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