Section 13.4. Other Internet


13.4. Other Internet "Film Festivals"

Your own Web site isn't the only place to post your movies on the Web. Fueled by the recent success of independent, low-budget movies, Web sites have sprung up whose sole purpose is to accept and show independent, student, and amateur movies.

A number of these sites went under during the Great Tech Industry Meltdown of 20002003. Those that remain have much more obvious links to commercial Hollywood studios (that is, they show ads and sell DVDs). But the independent gene is still alive within them.

Most of these sites don't accept porn or home movies. But if you've attempted anything more ambitious, you lose nothing by posting your work on the sites. There's no charge. You generally retain the rights to your movie. And if your work is great, it will be noticed.


Tip: Before posting your movies, watch a few of the featured movies already on these Web sites to get a feel for what people are doing and what kinds of movies each of these sites accepts. You may get more out of watching the movies that other people have posted than posting your own. The lessons you can learn from other amateurs and independentsboth in the mistakes they make and in the clever techniques they adoptmake this book's teachings look like only Chapter 1.

Perhaps the most accessible is video. google.com , run by, of course, Google. The cool thing here is that posting your video is freebut you can actually charge money for it. You can decide to charge nothing for viewing it, or 10 cents , or $10, or whatever you think the market will bear. (Google keeps 30 percent.)

Another post-anything-you-like site: www. youtube .com. It has a ten-minute length maximum and doesn't offer that charge-for-it feature, however.

Then there's www. atomfilms .com, the most commercial and professional Web site of its kind. The site specializes in short films and animations, from 30 seconds to 30 minutes long. Your stuff has to be good to make the cut, however, as Atom posts fewer than 10 percent of the movies it receives. Its explicit purpose is to get them sold to TV producers and Hollywood studios. (Unfortunately, very few of the movies here are available in QuickTime format. Atom isn't one of the most Mac-friendly movie sites.)

www.iFilm.com is Atom's biggest rival. Since it's less fussy about what gets posted, several hundred movies are available. The odds are pretty good, then, that some of its contributors will get picked up. As made famous by Time magazine, two guys who made the short black comedy Sunday's Game , for example, were offered a TV development deal from Fox.

iFilm provides a special Web page for each movie, complete with your synopsis, credits, and feedback ratings. And the site is overflowing with special resources for filmmakers, such as news, reviews, lists of film festivals, and so on.


Tip: Want to get your movie postedand popularizedon some of these Internet film festivals? Then make a spoof of a popular commercial movie. No matter how poor the quality, nor how inexpensively done, clever satires rise to the top on these sites and get thousands of viewings. Saving Ryan's Privates, Pies Wide Shut , and The Sick Scents , for example, constantly top the iFilm.com "Most Viewed" list.



iMovie 6 & iDVD
iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual
ISBN: B003R4ZK42
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 203
Authors: David Pogue

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