Amazing: Sundance and Topspin Bring D2F Direct to Fan Marketing to Indie Film | via Topspin Media

This morning, the Sundance Institute announced an expansion of their incredibly forward-thinking Sundance Artist Services program, and we at Topspin are honored to be included alongside distribution outlets iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, Hulu, New Video, Netflix and Sundance Now as the provider of Direct-To-Fan Marketing and Distribution tools. We’re humbled to have our first major expansion outside of music to be with such a storied and benevolent institution, and we’re quite literally stoked to start helping Sundance filmmakers connect with fans and create new channels for their amazing work.

This quote from Robert Redford really says it all:

“When I founded the Institute in 1981, it was at a time when a few studios ran the industry and an artist’s biggest concern was whether their film would get made,” Redford said. “Technology has lessened that burden, but the big challenge today is how audiences can see these films. The Artist Services program is a direct response to that need. We’re not in the distribution business; we’re in the business of helping independent voices be heard.”

If you’d like to read the official press release, you can DOWNLOAD HERE.

In addition to the expansion of the Artist Services program today, Sundance also launched an online alumni community containing blog posts and essays from some of the brightest and bravest minds in indie film, like Tim League and Ted Hope. The goal is to provide a place where Sundance artists can share data and advice, and interact with distributors, technology partners and each other. Somehow, I managed to sneak my two cents in there, too. Below is a reprint of my “Direct-To-Fan Keynote” that appears inside the Sundance Artist Services site.

My hope is that all filmmakers find it useful. Please share it liberally.
You can it download it as a VIDEO or as a PDF.

Hello. My name is Bob.
I’m here to talk about Direct-to-Fan Marketing (D2F) and Distribution. I work at a software company called Topspin. We’re honored to be a part of Sundance Artist Services.

Topspin makes software used by 
Kevin Smith, David Lynch, Ed Burns, Trent Reznor, Arcade Fire and thousands of other artists to sell downloads, merchandise, tickets and memberships directly to fans. Our company mission is to create an artistic middle class, and we’re doing it by building a self-serve application you can use to market and distribute your work yourself.

You may think I mean self-release. Or DIY Distro. Or “creative” distribution. But those are not the same as Direct-to-Fan. What I’m talking about is a distribution and marketing strategy that should be a part of every filmmaker’s career. I’m talking about making sure you are directly connected to your core audience. I’m talking about selling premium products to super fans. And I’m hoping to persuade you to treat your audience like your most important asset. It is time to invest in your fans.

Very cool grad project at UChicago: Oscillation Transmedia Game Trailer | HASTAC

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Very cool grad project at UChicago:

"A portion of my research concerns the emergent artistic form of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), which are also often called "transmedia," "pervasive," or "immersive" games. One early vision of ARGs is David Fincher's film The Game (1997), which is about an investment banker (Michael Douglas) who begins playing a game that quickly becomes indistinguishable from his daily life. Popular ARGs released after this film have included The Beast (2001), I Love Bees (2004), and Year Zero (2007). Recently, Jane McGonigal has written extensively about this form in her book Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. She has also designed ARGs such as Evoke (a World Bank Institute project that won the 2010 Games for Change social game of the year award)...."

Must Read!: The Social Bridges to Creating Open Standards for Privacy & Innovation (The Real Value of #GooglePlus) #LeonhardEuler - A Literacy of the Imagination

New Post from Gunther Sonnenfeld on Google+:

"The Social Bridges to Creating Open Standards for Privacy & Innovation (The Real Value of #GooglePlus) #LeonhardEuler

If there is anything we've learned from the arrival of Google+ it is this: "social media" is a behavior. Not a channel. Not a feature. Not a product. A behavior.

Case in point: Google has created some of the coolest social utilities on the planet, from Google Maps, to Google Earth, to Google Goggles, to Places, to video chat and more recently, Wallet. It also created Buzz and other programs that more or less flopped by today's commercial standards. But the social networking damn broke, so to speak, when Google decided that in order to be social, it needed to understand the value of personal interactions. Once it did, once it got a taste of what it meant to be transparent, vulnerable and authentic (dare we say through those intricate little Circles)... Well, everything changed.

Let's forget, for a moment, about the alarming growth rate of G+, or its pending world domination of all things personal and professional, and think about what this really means to us as individals, groups and business of all types and sizes..."

Grazie Maria Popova! A Beginner's Guide to Infographics and Data-Driven Storytelling - via The Atlantic

Love Maria Popova's thinking & terrific site: brainpickings.com

"Data visualization is a frequent fixation of mine and, just recently, I looked at seven essential books that explore the discipline's capacity for creative storytelling. Today, a highly anticipated new book joins their ranks—Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics, penned by Nathan Yau of the fantastic FlowingData blog. (Which also makes this a fine addition to my running list of blog-turned-book success stories.) Yu offers a practical guide to creating data graphics that mean something, that captivate and illuminate and tell stories of what matters—a pinnacle of the discipline's sensemaking potential in a world of ever-increasing information overload.

And in a culture of equally increasing infographics overload, where we are constantly bombarded with mediocre graphics that lack context and provide little actionable insight, Yau makes a special point of separating the signal from the noise and equipping you with the tools to not only create better data graphics but also be a more educated consumer and critic of the discipline...."