Erica Harrell
Producer

Thank you all for your support of our first episode of Behind The Attic Door our weekly web-series. A new episode will be up on Wednesday!

Ted Hope’s new blog (which Danny featured in an earlier post) has alerted me to CinemaTech’s blog and specifically a blog by Scott Kirshner. Scott’s called New Business Models for Distribution focuses on a panel he was a part of regarding DVD sales and distribution versus digital means of distribution. Scott believes that digital distribution is going to gain a lot of steam over the next few years. Scott points out the past growth of theaters versus the growth to get VHS and DVD’s at home.

He also posted some new business models for getting the most digital dollars from movie releases like iTunes and serial releases, but the one that is really interesting is “Live Speaking Gigs Via Videochat” working on the idea that filmmakers can give speeches about their films around the world using technology like the iChat or Skype and can be paid a fee to do so. For the group who is sponsoring this can be more cost effective than flying in filmmakers, but also the filmmakers can do more of these appearances and earn some money.

Danny and I are really familiar with working with the iChat as our primary communication device when I was in Los Angeles and he was in Orlando. We were also interviewed using the TracStar interactive satellite system when we spoke at a conference in Moab, Utah. Students were able to log on and ask us questions live from all over the world. Phil Petersm one of our mentors on this project, uses TracStar for interactive educational purposes for a wide array of projects. We hope to be able to use technology like this as well as the iChat and Skype to help us with outreach and eventually digital dollars for the distribution of The Attic Door.