remixable

The WBP network will be growing in the coming months as we bring on additional contributors and finalize a new site design. The following are some recent posts by contributors.

Over at the New Breed

The SABI Festival Strategy

by Zak Forsman

STEP ZERO: ASK YOURSELF WHY

Be honest with yourself and ask why you want to do this. It will be a financial, emotional and physical drain to be sure. So you must define your goals and the reason why they are goals. For us, we have solidified our plans to release HEART OF NOW and WHITE KNUCKLES through our own distribution company, CINEFIST. So we are not seeking traditional distribution. And by “traditional” I mean selling the domestic rights for 25 years, for less than $100,000 in advance and a tiny cut of the profit. Instead, we ARE seeking some rather important things to support a direct-to-audience distribution effort:

* To meet new friends, filmmakers, fans and partners
* To garner laurels, prestige, press and reviews
* To announce a platform release to a larger audience
* To make a little $$$ on DVD, soundtrack and merch sales at each screening
* To get additional feedback from audiences

So, what does a modern, forward-thinking festival strategy look like? From the outside, it looks like the picture above – a bucket full of submission packets amounting to $1500 in fees for 40 festivals. I’ve come to define our festival strategy by working backwards from our direct-to-audience distribution plan. We know we want to begin the latter in July 2010 so the focus had to go toward festivals that would play between now and the end of June. The intent being that if we are accepted, we can incorporate that opportunity into the distribution road map, without relying on it “for direction”.

So how did I decide which festivals to submit to?

Read More

Over at Culture Hacker

Doing the Wave

Dee Cook tries to make sense of Google Wave. Now that Google Wave has been out for a while, have you joined up? Is it living up to all your expectations, plus some? Or is it just something that you slobbered over because invitations were rare, but now you just keep forgetting to check in because you can’t figure out what to do with it? Read More

The First Ever Culture Hacker Gift Guide

- games, books, interactive experiences and tech are presented in a nice roundup by Haley Moore.

Missing: Since January and Evidence: The Last Ritual
Dreamcatcher Interactive, $19.99 and $29.99
These two games are actually on my Christmas list this year, because in spite of a ringing endorsement from Penny Arcade, I never got around to playing them. Released in 2004 and 2006, respectively, these games come as close as you can get to being an Alternate Reality Game in a box. Characters contact you through e-mail and solicit your help to catch a serial killer. (I haven’t played yet, but I hear serial killers have email, too! Eep!)

Uplink
Introversion Software, £10.00 – £5.00
When talking to friends about Rushkoff’s Exoriare ARG, I made plenty of mention of how much it reminds me of Uplink, only to find very few people have played this cyberpunk indie classic. If you love feeling 1337 and jamming out to fantastic electronic music, this is a must-play.

The Hidden Park
James Kane, $7.99
Granted, Bulpadok’s geocaching/augmented reality mashup game isn’t everywhere…yet. But if you have an iPhone and live near one of these parks, the game should not be missed. Unfortunately, there’s no way to gift a single iPhone app, so I suggest wrapping an iTunes gift card in a printout of one of these sweet wallpapers.

After Jump – books, experiences, swag