Digital Hollywood 2010 Content Summit Panel Wrap Up Part I

Thanks to a twitter contest from DigitalLA I was able to win a pass to Digital Hollywood 2010. I was able to catch a few panels and just about all of them were for the Content Summit. In these panel wrap ups I'll give you what I felt were the key points made by the panelists followed by a Key Panel Takeaway. If you are interested in some of the other panels from Digital Hollywood video is available on their site.

Web Indies Explosion-How to Create, Produce, Fund and Own Your Own Web Show and Make a Living in the Process.

• Mark Vega, Founder, Libertas Law Group, Moderator
• Laurent Touil Tartour, Creator, Urban Wolf- Tartour state that what lead him to the web was that his goal was to get his movie worldwide distribution, which is impossible for an indie filmmaker. He went on to tell the amusing story of how he secured funding by going to venture capitalists and telling them his project was a start up and not a web series. His strategy was based on the philosophy, “if the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.”
• Jacob Rosenberg, filmmaker & CTO, Bandito Bros.- Rosenberg revealed that when a company secures them to create stills for print and a :30 second spot they will budget it so they have money left to create and present a web film.
• Daniel Tibbets, SVP & Studio Chief, GoTV- Tibbets advocated doing “work for hire” to establish yourself while building your own brands.
• John Heinsen, Founder, Bunnygraph Entertainment- Heinsen related that the studios didn’t get it and wouldn’t put the That 70’s Show website at the end of episodes because they didn’t want people turning off the TV.
• Doug Cheney, Partner, Big Fantastic- Cheney described the path in which Big Fantastic took, starting with “Sam has 7 Friends” which lead to getting repped by UTA which lead to meeting with Eisner which lead to “Prom Queen.”
• Key Panel Takeaway- The strategy of two of these panelists was to trick or misdirect the people they hoped to get money from. I'm not sure that should be the model to follow but I guess you can't argue with success.