How To Make a Long Tail Movie

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, posted some excerpts from The DV Rebel’s Guide on his blog.

I'm flattered to have the DV Rebel approach categorized as a long tail concept. It's great to have some confirmation from the man himself that democratization of production and distribution doesn't mean that everything we make and watch has to be webcam videos of kids lip-synching!

Update: The Cool Tools review that Anderson was quoting has been posted. Kevin Kelly really seems to "get" The Guide—he points out the stuff I knowingly skipped over because it's been done well in other books, and advocates The Guide's software-centric approach.

Google SketchUp 6 & Photo Match

I wrote a bit in The Guide about using the free Google SketchUp as a planning tool for shoots. Version 6 was just released, and it has some great new features. By far the coolest is Photo Match—I see all kinds of potential here for filmmakers.

I have a dorky laugh

...but if you can get over that, the TWiM (updated link) podcast turned out great. They haven't updated the site yet (busy week for those cats), but it's available on their feed.

In other news, the response to the Rebel Café has been great. Big ups to the participants!

Rebel's Guide on TWiM

I had the great pleasure of joining the This Week in Media crew on their excellent podcast today. The episode goes live in the next couple of days.

If you're reading this blog but not listening to TWiM, you are missing out. It's the best conversation going on the radical changes in media that are happening right under our noses. To get a taste, dig back in their archives to TWiM 16, which stands to this day as the best recorded summary of the perenial "film vs. video" question.

I'm thrilled to be on the show. We talked about The Guide, Colorista, Red, and a couple other things.

TWiM in iTunes

Levels Quick Reference Guide

John Dickinson of Motionworks has created a handy Quick Reference Guide for what-does-what in Levels.

I confess that mastering Levels took me many years, some of which were included the occasional over-the-shoulder tutorials from the guy who invented it. So you are not wussing out if you set this image as your desktop wallpaper. Nice work John!