I was asked to an event at City Hall in Cardiff by the CF Trust this week, to provide my usual context for the evening’s fundraising efforts.

The night was truly astonishing, raising over £10,000 for the Trust in an economy where people just don’t have spare cash lying around. What’s more it was from ordinary people affected or touched by CF and not a room full of the high and mighty of Cardiff or millionaire businessmen.

I was privileged to be there and to meet some truly remarkable people. I also gave a speech, which received the best reception of any talk, speech or presentation I’ve ever done. I was truly humbled by the reaction.

I don’t speak from notes, but thanks to the ever-wonderful K who supported me last night, here’s a (rough) transcript of the speech:

“Hello, thanks for having me here tonight. I’m here to tell you that CF is rubbish. That’s pretty much my job.

I have to say this is much better than my only other visit to Cardiff, which was rubbish. I think that had more to do with Southampton losing 1-0 to Arsenal in the FA Cup final at the Millenium Stadium than the city itself – turns out it’s a lovely place when football isn’t involved.

As I said, I’m here this evening to provide a bit of context for tonight’s event, to talk about what life with CF is really like and why it’s so important that you give as generously as you can this evening. I can see you all thinking “he looks pretty well for a sick person”, but I’m only this well because someone took the decision to allow me a second chance at life after they had lost theirs.

I used to do a lot of these talks when I was ill and it was so much easier. I’d drag myself up onto the stage, lumbering my oxygen cylinder behind me, nasal specs in my nose, probably struggle to actually get up onto the stage and just have to stand here looking like death and say, “It’s rubbish”. Everyone sitting out there where you are would look up and me and think, ‘Wow – that looks rubbish,” and my job would be done. Now it’s a little trickier.

I was diagnosed with CF at 18 months, which is pretty late by today’s standards. It’s thanks to the pressure from the CF Trust, CF is now tested routinely through the heel-prick test at birth, which makes a huge difference in allowing early intervention. I went through 18 months of hell which, luckily, I don’t remember, but my parents do. They had no idea what was wrong with me and anything they tried to do was almost certainly the wrong thing because of that.

Once diagnosed, I lived fairly well for the first part of my life – right through my teens to my early 20’s things went pretty well and stayed pretty stable. Things really starting going badly in my 20’s when I got stuck in Texas.

You may think that getting stuck in Texas isn’t that bad, and you’d be right, it’s not. But the reason I was stuck there was because I’d had a very small lung collapse. It sounds very big and scary, but this wasn’t one of those full-blown collapses with tubes being stuck in and all that TV medical stuff, it was much smaller and less impressive than that.

The trouble with lung collapses, though, is that the doctors tell you if you do get on a plane to fly home, there’s a very high chance it will go completely and – at 30,000 feet – I’d more than likely die. So I kind of figured that not flying made sense.

The trouble with staying in Texas, though, was that you have to pay for your healthcare, especially if your insurance company tries to claim that a collapsed lung is a pre-existing condition. This meant I had to go with out my regular preventative antibiotic courses that were designed to keep me as well as I could.

I went to Texas for two weeks over New Year and came back at the end of April, by which time the infections had scarred my lungs so much further than they were already, I started a steady and fairly rapid decline. It’s not fair to blame it all on Texas, my lungs had been declining for a while, the trip just sped things up. The following winter I had one of the hardest conversations I’ve ever had with my doctors, where they essentially told me I had two years to live if I didn’t get a transplant.

The next two-and-a-half years that I waited were the hardest two-and-a-half years of my life. I – and my family – ended up living from event to event in my life. At the time I got my transplant, it was November and we had all been looking forward to Christmas, although it seemed a long way off. New Year was only a week later, but that seemed even further. My brother’s birthday is at the end of January and I know my family were trying to work out whether or organize a party at home so I could be there or a party at the pub because they knew I wasn’t going to be with them.

Obviously, it all ended happily for me. But I’m here to tell you that transplant isn’t a magic bullet. Yes, I’m better than I’ve ever been in my life: I feel amazing, I can do things I’d never dreamed of doing. But it comes with downsides. I’ve just been diagnosed as diabetic because the anti-rejection drugs I take to stop my body attacking the new lungs have fried and destroyed my pancreas. I know that eventually, the same will probably happen to my kidneys. I wouldn’t change it for the world, but I’m aware that the CF Trust can help stop people going through what I’ve been through.

When I was put on the transplant list, I was told that there was a 50% chance of me getting a transplant, otherwise I would die. That’s quite a stark statistic if you think about it. In fact, I remember vividly a very close friend of mine getting her transplant about nine months before me and I was doing a speech shortly afterwards at another charity event. I was speaking without notes, as I usually do, and I suddenly found myself telling the crowd, “Because Emily’s had her transplant, statistically, that means I won’t”. And that’s the reality I faced.

Since I’ve had my transplant, I’ve lost four very close friends who were waiting for transplants, and that’s hard. Just six months after my transplant, while I was preparing to celebrate my 26th birthday – a birthday my family and I never thought I’d see – about a week before, my friend Sam died.

I’m not here to tell you all to sign the organ donor register – although I will tell you, now, that you should. I’m here to tell you that the work the CF Trust is doing will help make sure that no one has to go through what I’ve been through.

If the research the CF Trust is doing works, no one like me will have to wait two-and-a-half years for a transplant; no one will need a transplant. No one will have to watch their friends die like I have. No parents will have to watch their children die. If you dig deep tonight and do whatever you can to contribute, we can help the CF Trust make sure that we can stop people losing their loved ones.

I’m going to leave you to it now, but there’s an auction coming up. There’s an auction later on and I want you all to bid for things – even if you’re petrified you’ll win it – I want you all to bid to push those prices up. Empty the change from your pockets into the pots on your table.

You’re here to have fun and enjoy your evening, so go to the bar, get some more beers in, enjoy the band, have a giggle, but just remember that you have the power tonight to help make sure no one has to endure what I and too many of my friends have been through.

Thank you, have a great night.”

This week’s Lowdown for The Production Office was part two of our look at blogs and blogging, this time focused on WordPress – the internet’s most powerful blogging tool.

THE TWO TYPES OF WORDPRESS

So WordPress comes in two forms: wordpress.com and wordpress.org.
The .com side is the simplest and easiest, web-based version of the the WordPress system. It’s by no means as powerful as the other side, but it does everything you want an entry-level blogging platform to do, including offer a huge number of themes or skins to deck your blog out and an array of widgets you can apply to your blog to include your Twitter stream etc. All you have to do is to is go to the site, think of a name, register and you’re away.

WordPress.org is the complicated side of WordPress that requires a little more knowledge and dedication, but you can learn everything you need to know about it from the WordPress website or by using a Google search.

HOSTING
First things first, you need to find a webhost that supports the software and to buy a domain name for it. There’s all kinds of places you can find decent web hosting, but the WordPress site itself offers some options. Or you can try HostGator or a personal favourite of mine, NoWhereLand, which is run by a friend of mine who offers great rates and totally unrivalled support in case you have any problems.

INSTALLATION
Next up, go to WordPress.org and follow their “five minute” install instructions. They’re quite technical, but actually perfectly easy if you follow them step-by-step. Once you’ve installed WordPress on your host’s servers, you can access everything you need via the online dashboard, which is similar to the wordpress.com dashboard but with many more options.

THE LOOK
Then you’re going to want to go looking for a theme. Hit Google with “free wordpress themes” and you’ll get a load of quick results with an array of themes that you can then import into your wordpress. I’d advise going for one that’s been designed as “search engine optimized” as you then don’t need to worry about that side of things too much.

CODING & DESIGN
Once you’ve found a theme you like, you can either throw it up on the site and start adding your content or – and this is the best bit of WordPress – you can go learn the basics of HTML and PHP and start fiddling about with the look of your site.

Unless you’re an utter programming genius (or can afford to pay one), I wouldn’t recommend building your wordpress site form scratch, although you can. Much better to take a theme that’s close to what you’re after and adapt it to what you want from it – that’s what I’ve done with all the sites I’ve created with wordpress, including this one.

WIDGETS & PLUGINS
Next on your list of to-do’s on wordpress is going to be installing your widgets and plug-ins. We talked a little about widgets for blogs last time, which you can catch up with by watching back the last live show, or my previous post.

Plugins are extensions created by people independently of WordPress, so it is worth being a little careful with them, but usually the user reviews and star ratings are a good guideline. There are plugins for just about anything under the sun – if you can think of it, chances are a Google search or WordPress search will find something that’ll do it for you.

That’s a VERY quick run down of WordPress to get you started, but by far teh best thing for anyone to do is simply to go and try it. Get an account and see what you can do with it.

As Chris would say, onwards and upwards!

This weeks Lowdown for The Production Office was Part I of a 2-part special focused on blogs and blogging.

PLATFORMS

There are 3 main blogging platforms out there, although you’ll be able to find many more if you search around.  The most well-known and easiest to use are Typepad, Blogger and WordPress.  Wordpress is, I believe, the most powerful, versatile and useful of all the blogging tools on the web and because of that, part two of this Lowdown next time will look at WordPress as a standalone platform.

There is a fourth platform, Tumblr, which is a micro-blogging site design for short, concise updates of anything from text to pictures to video.  It’s a great site and could be really useful for you if that’s the sort of set-up you want, but most bloggers prefer a little more space to ramble (more on that later).

THE LOOK

All of these sites allow you to customise your pages to differing degrees.  At the very minimum they allow you to change the background and colours of your blog, but can also let you delve deeper into the construction of the blog to rearrange the layout and other elements.

WIDGETS

These sites also all allow the addition of widgets.  A widget is a small application that runs in a sidebar or on the main part of your website and – most commonly – connects you to other place.  Twitter and Facebook are the two key widgets for most blogs, directing your site traffic over to your other online presences and encouraging them to get in touch.  Most bloggers receive far more blog feedback through social networking sites than they do through comments on the blogs themselves.

DOMAIN NAME

It’s really important to your brand as a filmmaker, producer, artist or whatever you may be that you purchase yourself a domain name.  There are various sites to do it at, I usually use 123-reg, and they’re usually fairly cheap.  You don’t necessarily need hoting for your blog (unless you’re using WordPress.org – of which more in part II), you can simply redirect the domain to go to your blog home page using something known as “masked web forwarding”. That means that all your visitors will type in yourname.com and see that in their browser window, but they’ll actually be (secretly) directed to yourname.wordpress.com or yourname.blogspot.com.

Why spend your money on something so seemingly insignificant?  Two reasons: 1) It’s really not that expensive and 2) It just makes you look more professional.  You’re not just some chump who’s thrown up a blog, you’re a serious blogger/filmmaker/whatever with something to say to the world.  Even if you’re not.

POSTS

The key thing about blog posts are that they are there to engage and entertain.  That doesn’t mean you’ve got to be hilariously funny on every page, just that you need to know what it is you want your blog to achieve.  Unless you know that, your blog will rapidly descend into random ramblings that no one is really interested in.

Invest your posts with a little bit of your personality – even if it’s a corporate blog.  Keep them light and, preferably, short – under 500 words if you can – so that people can pop in, have a read and shoot off again.

And lastly, but definitely not least, make your posts regular.  Yes, you’ll be pimping your new blog posts through all your social media outlets (won’t you…?), but you want people to come back because they want to read what you have to say next.  The more regular your posts, the more chance of a regular, returning readership – any blogger’s ultimate goal.

Next time, I’ll delve into a full break-down of WordPress and how you can get started with the internet’s most powerful blogging platform.

Not only did the phenomenal weekend of new model distribution practices put on by Chris Jones feature keynote turns from Sheri Candler and Jon Reiss (detailed here and here respectively), it also managed to fit in several fascinating, inspiring and illuminating turns from key indie film supporters and enablers as well.  Here’s a (very) quick low down on what we got from them all.

OPEN INDIE

Kieran Masterton stopped in on Day 1 to talk to us about OpenIndie.com, the great new website for indie filmmakers designed to help organise screenings of flicks where they’re most in demand.  I’m not going to go into heaps of detail, as it’s all available on their website, but I did learn a huge amount from Kieran about a platform I’d previously been a little dismissive of.  Although I’m still somewhat sceptical about how many non-filmmakers will join the site and thus the number of potential audience members who’ll be requesting films, I do think that given the right support and promotion among filmmakers and film fans, it has the potential to be a game-changing site for indie distribution.  I’ve gone from disinterested disbeliever to fascinated, active observer, so Kieran clearly did his job well.

He also treated us to an impromptu masterclass on websites for filmmakers which was remarkably insightful seeing as he was essentially riffing unprepared from his own experiences.  His key advice: know what you want your site to do before approaching a developer.  And don’t confuse development with design – they’re two VERY separate things.

SHOOTING PEOPLE

Although I have to say I didn’t learn anything new about SP from James’ talk to us on Day 1, it did serve as a reminder of just how effective it is as a tool to connect filmmakers across the country and – potentially – the globe.  As part of the new model of distribution and marketing, I think its use is limited given that it’s an audience of filmmakers, but as a resource to help you get your movie made it’s clearly invaluable.

OPEN CINEMA

Not to be confused with Open Indie, our presentation from Christoph of Open Cinema served as a stark reminder as to how we as filmmakers can make a real difference.  Open Cinema is a project aimed at kitting out hostels for rough sleepers with their own cinemas to show challenging, thought-provoking films to some of the most under-priviledged people of our country.  They also run projects to help homeless people tell their stories through film by partnering with established filmmakers.

This presentation really hit home to me and is something I very much want to be involved with.  I hope to have a meeting with Christoph in the next week or so to see how I can apply my skills in education to helping out with the Open Cinema project.  And I would encourage any filmmakers who can spare a little time to check out Open Cinema and see about volunteering to help brighten the lives of some truly wonderful but over-looked people, even just for a day.

NOVEMBER FILMS

We also had a great presentation on true DIY distribution from James of November Films, whose documentary BEYOND BIBA has been sold all over the world from James’ office at Ealing through judicious phone calls and constant hard work.  Along with global sales, the film is also a prime example of Jon’s “Live Event/Theatrical” model, having held over 60 screenings all over the UK that have been hugely successful.  They also highlighted the fact that merchandise can play a key role; at one screening, the team took over £1500 in sales.  Granted they had the film’s subject there and a packed auditorium of her biggest fans, but it still shows how making your screenings an event can turn a profit for you.

As I’ve said before, I could write reams of stuff on here about the weekend, but I could never do the experience justice.  I cannot recommend this workshop enough, nor the importance for filmmakers to follow, interact with and learn from Sheri, Jon and Chris.

What makes these three unique is there truly unselfish willingness to share their knowledge, insights and theories with all filmmakers and to enter into discussions over how to get this model out there.  They’re not precious; they want the best for all indie filmmakers and are willing to debate the issues we face from dawn ’til dusk (and then a little after that, too).  If they’re coming anywhere near you with this workshop, you HAVE to do it.

So Sheri Candler supplied us with a wealth of information, tips and tricks on Day 1 of the Chris Jones-organised marketing and distribution seminar and we all left with our heads ringing with Sheri’s “engage, engage, engage” message.

Little did we know Day 2 was going to bring on even more information to cram into our little heads as fast as we could assimilate it.

Jon Reiss, through the self-distribution of his feature-length documentary BOMB IT, has become a pioneer of the new model for indie filmmakers to get their film out there.  He’s collected his experiences and thoughts into his book, Think Outside the Box Office, and Sunday was spent going over some of his key concepts.  As for Sheri’s day, I’m not about to take you through it line-by-line, but rather highlight the salient points as they stood out to me.

The essence of what Jon was teaching throughout the day – in various different guises – was that self-distribution is both achievable and, potentially, profitable, but that the very best model to adopt is a kind of hybrid model between doing it all yourself and partnering with distributors to help you reach markets you may not be able to tackle on your own.

The biggest thing Jon stressed is something I mentioned in yesterday’s post: budgeting.  Not just having the money to do it, although that’s a key part of it, but also your time.  Getting your picture out there, especially if you’re doing all the work, is at least 12 months of full-time labour.  That’s a lot.  To help us think of it in a clearer way, Jon has introduced the concept of “The New 50/50” whereby you should be spending 50% of your resources on making the film and 50% on marketing and distribution.  And by “resources” we’re talking everything from cash budget to man-power.

There are bound to be arguments (and probably already have been) about a model that proposes that cash-strapped filmmakers should “wave goodbye” to half of their production budget, but that is fast become short-sighted in the extreme.  If independent filmmakers truly want our film to reach an audience and achieve our goals, it’s essential that we learn to embrace this sort of model.

For those who are still shifting uncomfortably at the thought of having to “market” your picture, Jon has another solution – the PMD.  Intended as a team member as vital as the producer, director or DP, the Producer of Marketing and Distribution is a new role who should be brought on board as early as humanly (and budgetarily) possible to start the audience outreach that is crucial for the successful marketing of the film – that early-stage engagement I spoke of yesterday.  Through pre-production, production and post, the PMD connects with and primes the audience so that they can leverage this support and transform it into sales of your movie – whether that be DVD through your own website or a sale to a distributor, the PMD takes care of it all, in close connection with the filmmaker.

It’s undoubtedly going to take time to build this kind of role enough in stature to convince indie filmmakers on a tight budget that it’s necessary, and for them to trust someone else with building this level of engagement, but I believe it’s crucial to the monetization of indie film.

It is also worth noting – and investigating – Jon’s ideas about the re-branding of a “Theatrical” release to his definition of “Live Event/Theatrical” – a concept that is defined as being any screening of a film in the way the filmmaker intended – ie, in controlled conditions with an audience.  That may be in a traditional cinema, or a church, community hall or anywhere you can project your movie in any capacity.

Key to this model for smaller indie pictures who can’t or won’t achieve the traditional theatrical run is making any screening an “event” by adding value beyond just that of the film.  That may be a Q&A with some of the team, it could include raffles, give-aways or similar.  But by embracing the short run and making the most of it, it’s possible for a filmmaker to earn more from a single screening in a town than a week-long run, as Jon himself can attest.

I could write a dozen essays on things we learned this weekend and I’m sure more of Jon and Sheri’s tips are going to be bubbling up and landing in my writings here over the next weeks and months, whether it’s specific to a project or in general discussion.  But I would encourage any filmmaker who wants to make a living from this to check out both Jon and Sheri’s blogs (jonreiss.com/blog and shericandler.com), as well – of course – as keeping up-to-date with what Chris is up to.  His courses are second to none and I have no doubt this one will end up repaying its costs many times over as we all apply these theories to our projects both current and future.

Thanks to all three of the marvellous trio for giving us such insight, help and knowledge.  Tomorrow, I’ll talk a little more about some of the visiting speakers over the weekend.  For now, you’re free to go make tea.

This weekend I headed down for Chris Jones’s 2-day course on the new models of distribution for independent film with Sheri Candler, indie film marketing guru, and Jon Reiss, pioneer of DIY distribution and author of the “new model” bible Think Outside the Box Office.

I could spent hours here – and thousands of words – going over everything we learned, but to be honest, you’d be better off buying the book.  Instead, I thought  I’d see what elements have really stuck in my brain and give a few notes.  This is not intended to be a comprehensive review of the weekend, but rather a toe-dipping to introduce any of you unfamiliar with these people’s work.

DAY 1 – Sheri Candler

Sheri Candler – indie film legend and marketing supremo – spent the first day introducing us to the “new” concepts of marketing.  I say “new” with inverted commas because actually, a lot of what Sheri was teaching us is fairly standard practice in the commercial and business worlds.  It’s just that not many filmmakers consider any of it at all and if they do, they approach it way too late.

What Sheri is preaching (and preaching really is the right kind of word for it) is audience identification and engagement.

IDENTIFICATION – it’s no good, as an indie filmmaker, making a horror movie and saying that you want to target horror fans.  There are far too many out there for you to successfully reach and you’ll end up throwing away money that you don’t have and won’t recoup.  Instead, you need to drill right down into you audience and find the core.  That may be, for instance, people who like independent horror movies featuring zombies.  If you can, it should be even narrower than that; the more precise you can get your target – or core – audience, the better you’ll be able to connect with them.

ENGAGEMENT – isn’t just sending out flyers and posting on internet forums.  To get a true following for your movie – a hardcore fanbase who will spread the word into wider circles – you need to full engage with them.  From the start.  That means finding out where they congregate (usually where online – forums, websites etc) and joining with them to start discussions about the subject – not just YOUR MOVIE.  This is a crucial soft-sell approach, without which it’s not real engagement, it’s just advertising.  At this level of movie making, advertising doesn’t really work – connecting with and befriending your audience is the key.

The biggest lesson I took out of day one is, without doubt, that the earlier you start the better.  You should be starting your audience “outreach” in pre-production or even as you’re finishing your script, but you should certainly do it before you reach post-production.  The kind of engagement you need to promote your small indie flick is too complex to take a stab at once you’re ready to release – you need to be building it from the beginning.

The other key element to this is budgeting – when you’re budgeting and fundraising for your film, make sure you include the marketing costs in there, too.  This isn’t simply advertisements (in fact, they may not feature at all), but you will need GREAT key art, a BRILLIANT website and also the TIME to engage your audience.  All of this costs – especially if you’re hiring a pro, which is something that’s really worth thinking about.  A professional can handle things for you while you focus on your movie and keep an over view of all the rest, because it will take up a lot of your time and your mental “bandwidth” to be doing both.

At the very least, you’ll need help in doing it.  You have help making the film (more than likely) so why not get help marketing the film?  As Jon would go on to tell us on Day 2, reinforced by Sheri herself, the ideal marketing, publicity and distribution spend is going to be 50% of your budget.  Allow for it.

Tomorrow, I’ll hit you with the key take-aways from Jon’s 2nd day session with us, which was packed with a ton of information and ended up running long without losing any of the filmmakers listening.  The whole weekend was exceptionally generous in the sharing of information and tips and none of the filmmakers there could thank Jon, Sheri and Chris enough for their help.

On Wednesday, I’ll also talk about some of the guest speakers we had visit over the course of the 2 days.  Right now, I think this is enough for one blog!

The last week or so I’ve been in a bit of a whirlwind and have therefore utterly failed to keep the blog up-to-date, including uploading my new Lowdown for Chris’s live show last week (which was the best so far, and can be seen again here).

The culprit is our new house. K and I have thrown our money into bricks and mortar and are now officially on the property ladder – and much higher up than we first thought.

It’s a great house, a lovely village and is perfect for our needs: a study for K to, well, study in and lay out all of her papers somewhere other than the living room floor and a separate study for me to work in, where I’ll have room to write, edit and store all of my various bits and pieces.

But it’s also got enough bedrooms to have people over to stay and enough room for great house parties.

It needs a lot of work to bring it into the 2010’s, being as it is slightly stuck in the 70’s, but that’s all worked into the budget and reflected in the brilliant price we got it for.

The only downside is that it’s starting to feel like we might be proper growed ups now.

Nah, that’s never gonna happen.

The Lowdown is a new segment on The Production Office, a weekly live show on LiveStream: LiveStream.com/guerillafilm. The show is broadcast live by Guerilla Film and Chris Jones on Thursday nights at 7.30pm GMT. You can also catch up with the show on VoD on the site.

Twitter is one of the most useful marketing and networking tools for filmmakers out there. Here’s a quick guide to how to make the most of Twitter:

It’s all about you
Twitter is the perfect place to build your brand as a person and a filmmaker. You can use whatever screen name you like: I use my own name – @olilewington – but Chris uses his company name – @livingspiritpix – and Judy uses @applestax, which is neither her name nor her company, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that all three of us have our full names and links to our sites on our Twitter profile pages.

People want to connect with YOU as a person, not an abstract notion at the end of a computer, so make sure you include your full name somewhere on the profile and a link to your sites. Using a good headshot of yourself as your Avatar is another great way to establish a quick connection with people.

It’s not all about you
Your page is all about you, yes, but what you do on Twitter isn’t.

Twitter is a community and that’s how you need to treat it. If you keep plugging your own stuff constantly you become the social networking equivalent of a guy walking into a party and just handing out fliers; no one wants to be that bloke and, more importantly, no one wants to follow that bloke.

Get involved: take part in conversations, discussions and post links to interesting things you find on the ‘net. They don’t even have to be film-related – on Twitter right now there’s a lot of people sharing stuff they’ve found on the elections happening in a few weeks in the UK. If it’s interesting and worth sharing, share it.

RTs
The letters RT are something you’ll see a lot on Twitter. It means Re-Tweet and is usually done by a click of a button next to a Tweet from someone you follow.

If someone says something interesting, funny or just something you want to pass on, hit the RT button and let all of your followers know about it. It’s a really easy way to support other people in their campaigns, whatever they may be.

Gary King, a filmmakers based in New York has just rasied nearly $3000 in two days largely down to the fact that the community around him RT’d his updates as he drew frantically close to his fundraising deadline. Never underestimate the power of RTs, because when your Tweets are RT’d you know about it, so people can see that you’re supporting them.

Hashtags
Twitter also uses a great little resource called hashtags. This is where you put a hash mark (#) with a specific word after it, like #prodoffice for The Production Office. That then enables any Twitter user to search for that hashtag and it’ll come up with a constantly updated stream of tweets from anyone who puts that hashtag into their messages.

It’s a great way to hold a conversation over Twitter and connect to people you wouldn’t normally see Tweets from.

For screenwriters, there’s a great example of this every Sunday night where #scriptchat takes place, for people to discuss issue with their current projection and seek support and advice – I’ve connected with loads of writers who’ve helped me out through the #scriptchat hashtag.

#ff
Once you start using Twitter you’ll also see the hashtag #FF come up every Friday.

The FF in question stands for Follow Friday and is a way of Twitterers recommending people they follow to others. So this Friday I may decide that Chris and Judy have some interesting stuff going on, so I’ll add #FF to a Tweet and include @livingspiritpix and @applestax, which is a shorthand way of telling everyone who follows me that they should also follow them.

It’s like a personalized Amazon system where you can say to people: if you like me, you might like to try this person, too.

Making the most of Twitter
Twitter is undoubtedly one of the best ways to find and support filmmakers around the world. Watching other people pushing their projects forward and pushing themselves to be the best they can be is utterly inspiring.

Filmmakers of all kinds, from the top directors and celebrities to people scratching out no-budget shorts all come together to help, support and drive each other.

Be part of the conversation – get involved, offer advice, offer opinions, get into the debate and get your ideas across. Like a lot of things in life, the more you put in, the more you get out.

Twitter is what you make of it – it can be all about your breakfast or it can be all about what you have to offer. Just don’t make it all about you.

The Lowdown
That’s this week’s lowdown – if you have any ideas for topics you’d like to see covered here then leave me a comment and we’ll see what we can do. You can also find me on Twitter @olilewington.

I’m on record in many places as saying that I’m a big fan of the Guerilla Film Makers Handbook series and I’ve got the complete set sitting on my shelves as I type. I was, I supposed, pre-destined to be a fan of the all new Guerilla Film Makers Pocketbook, but at the same time I had my reservations.

Mostly it’s to do with size: the thing I always loved about the Handbooks was that they’re SO comprehensive, covering all areas of production, post-production and beyond in such minute detail even the most confused newbie to the film world could come out of it with a really solid background of knowledge.

I kind of felt, then, that Chris Jones, Andrew Zinnes and Genevieve Jolliffe were doing themselves a disservice in boiling it all down to something that slides neatly into your pocket – which it does. Very neatly.

As I’ve discovered in the last few days, being wrong can be great. And boy, was I wrong to worry about this book.

The Guerilla Film Makers Pocketbook is everything that the other GFHs are and more besides. Remarkably (and I want to know what kind of witchcraft the authors used) they seem to have distilled all the information down into prime nuggets of need-to-know info, combined with great interviews with people who are at the cutting – nay, bleeding – edge of the New Indie Filmmaking Order.

People like DP Philip Bloom who’s been instrumental in showing just what DSLR filmmaking can achieve, having impressed the likes of Lucasfilm and others enough that they’ve converted to using Canon 5DMkII cameras for some recent shoots. People like Sheri Candler and John Reiss who are working to help revolutionise the way indie filmmakers approach the marketing and distribution of their films at a time when it’s getting harder and harder to get huge sums for your finished flicks.

This book covers all the basic elements and nitty-gritty of producing quality short or feature films, but so much more besides. The great strength of the Guerilla books across the board is to give you all the information you want, all the information you need and then a whole load of truly vital information you had no idea you needed, wanted or could even ask about.

Congratulations to Jones, Zinnes and Jolliffe on another outstanding addition to their library. If you’re a filmmaker and you’re serious about learning, expanding and exploiting your craft, art and talent, you simply cannot afford not to buy this book.

The Pocketbook is available here via the authors themselves and will be available on Amazon shortly here. Buy it. Now.

As I mentioned in my previous post, last night (Thursday) saw the launch of The Production Office from Chris Jones and his Guerilla team.  And as it happens, shortly after I wrote my previous post, I had a perfect example of excellent feedback.  Not positive feedback, but constructive criticism.

A short while ago, when Chris was first putting the new show together – in fact, when they were first batting the idea around – he approached me with a view to providing extra content for the show by way of short VTs he could slip in between the studio stuff.

Excited to be involved in the new venture, I started working on some ideas.  This week, one of those ideas came to fruition and I created the folllowing video.  Watch it now and then read on:

In the end, Chris didn’t use it in the show.  Today, he called me to explain why it had been dropped.  In essence, it wasn’t good enough.  But that’s not how Chris couched his feedback.   Instead, he carefully explained WHY it wasn’t good enough and what I can do to improve my work. He offered pitch-perfect feedback which communicated his point in a way that didn’t make me feel a) like a total failure and loser or b) like he was the bigger boy who knew how to do it better.

Firstly, it was too long.  At 5.07 it’s still a short (still a relatively short short), but it’s too long for the show Chris is making – the audience’s attention would have wandered and that’s fatal for a show like The Production Office when people can quickly and easily click off.

Secondly, it was about a fairly boring subject.  In Chris’s own words: “talking about procrastination is the very worst kind of procrastination.”  In other words, people should be out writing, not watching 5 minutes of me telling them how to.

Thirdly, it was the wrong form for the show. Chris explained very succinctly that internet TV is something that many people can watch, but will often be doing other things, too – as we all experienced in the chatrrom on the LiveStream channel last night.  That means the show is essentially radio with pictures, not a TV show where people are following the visuals 100% of the time.  Making a short with no audio other than keystrokes and kettle noises doesn’t hold up to this.

Lastly, it’s not the right feel for the show.  Both the Guerilla Film Makers’ Handbooks (and the new Pocketbook) and The Production Office are about PEOPLE, by PEOPLE.  And my short…wasn’t.

Once he’d taken me through all of these points, he then explained more carefully exactly what he was looking for in terms of videos for the show and I gained a much greater understanding of what he wants me to deliver – and also grew in confidence that I can deliver what he’s asking for. In truth, this is a conversation I should have had with Chris a long time ago to avoid the stab in the dark that was the above film.

More importantly, the feedback has helped me to see the short in a new light.  I still like it – I think it’s quite clever, pretty well cut (although could be better) and has some cute moments as well as good, solid advice that I stand by.  But I know it’s not the best I can do and I also recognise that it’s not fit for purpose, which in a way makes it a total failure.

And sure, I’m not going to pretend I didn’t have a moment of gutted disappointment there.  But as the online buzz has been lauding recently, failure is a vital step to achieving greatness.  If I’d not made this, I’d not have submitted it to Chris, who wouldn’t have taken the time to give me the feedback he did and I wouldn’t have learned.  I’ve taken all he’s said on board and my next piece will be better.  Much better.

And the key to all this: feedback makes your end-product better. Full stop.