Should you blog during production? http://bit.ly/d9JEVH Director v money (and the answer is yes!) Great discussion of the issues.
It’s long been part of my discourse that producers and directors (at a minimum) should be blogging their production from the first story ideas. It’s a fundamental part of building an audience for an independent production (as opposed to throwing $47 million at marketing a $35-50 million movie as MGM/UA did for Hot Tub Time Machine). It never occurred to me that there was a potential argument against it!
As it turns out, once Raymond De Felitta wrote that he’d been asked to stop posting by his “money people” the response changed those minds and the blog of outtakes, stories etc now gets thousands of hits per day.
“As to what message I’m sending by complying with the request to not show the dailies, clearly I’m agreeing that the last century and its thinking is still correct, that the world order is unchanged, that 19th- and 20th-century notions of ownership and control (as well as 19th- and 20th-century fears) are still wagging the dog. But let’s face it: Even large corporations realize that in the current world, any viral presence is a help, not a hindrance. Clips of movies on YouTube are a non-starter in terms of harming people’s copyrights. Clips are clips. Not movies. They are their to educate you on the existence of the finished product, not rob you of the opportunity to see it.”