DIY Days

Woke up at 6am for some reason. That means the blood in the brain isn't sleeping. Started workin on the puter. emailing ideablob links and coding. Day passed. kept forgetting to eat, lost in pixel dust. Checked twitter, and saw a tweet from Mickipedia about DIY Days. I'd completely forgot! Grabbed some Ideablob flier strips, hopped on bike, and peddled to the cornfield gallery. Wandered into a large garage space full of steamy air and filmmakers dripping with ideas. This free event was put together by a bunch of really smart filmmakers who have explored the new nooks and crannies of self distribution, self- funding, and just getting things done. every story was unique, organic to their films personaliy, and their own. i missed most of the day, workin away in my cave. but really enjoyed what i saw. one of the organizers, Lance Weiller really was amazing. i had not heard of or seen his films, but his ideas (and execution of) for getting his work out there was absolutely brilliant. Head Trauma. I need to watch and explore it when i get time. Watch for video of his talk on DIY Days.

Met Arin Crumley from Four Eyed Monsters, who you've probably heard of. he has been down many DIY avenues since his days at Slamdance. There were a lot of other amazing thinkers, producers, filmmakers, all sharing ideas while folding up the chairs. The whole event was organized according to its Do It Yourself principles. Also, there were always people filming people. It reminded me of art school when everynone would be sketching everyone. You would be drawing someone, then look to your left and someone would be drawing you, etc. it was like that, but with cameras.

These folks who organized have been working on putting this event together for a year. It was free and speakers included heavy DIY hitters like Robert Greenwald, who I missed. But there was obviously a lot of love put into organizing this. They have a film festival as well called From Here to Awesome, with a dozen or so films, several of which I want to check out. Especially one called Abel Raises Cain about cult media prankster, Alan Abel. The  doc  was 10 years in the making (i can totally relate!) and lovingly made by his daughter Jenny, who is pretty hilarious.

i ended up missing 2 parties I was supposed to go to and staying to hang out with these folks, many of whom were from out of state. also ran into our producers #7807, Mike Hedge, whom I had never met in person. it's cool to have a conceptual connection with folks. to know we share an idea.

I also met Slave, one of the folks behind IndieGoGo.com, an online micro-fundraising platform for filmmakers. I posted a link to them a while. It was cool to talk to him and share perspectives about micro-funding films; he had researched our project before they launched. Check em out if your looking to start raising funds for a film project. They weren't around when this started, or I might have used it. :)

Meanwhile, still gettin out the vote for the Ideablob. We are currently 200 votes behind... Please vote for the Collaboration Foundation here if you havent yet:

http://ideablob.com/ideas/1247-The-Collaboration-Foundation-C

back to work. Best to all. nm