No Borders accounts for 25 out of the 150 films (including both narrative and documentary entries) participating in the Project Forum. Our project 3rd Rail was previously selected for London’s Pixel Pitch event, and we’ve also shopped the project around to just about every studio in Hollywood. Suffice to say that transmedia projects are a hard sell because they’re new, and the revenue models are somewhat unknown. Zack and I are currently piecing together a strategy for sharing the project publicly, so we’ll have more on 3rd Rail in the weeks and months to come. For now, here’s the official IFP press release:

Project Forum is the centerpiece of Independent Film Week, designed specifically as a place for industry to meet with new talent, as well as discover fresh projects from emerging and veteran filmmakers. The program is also qualitatively and quantitatively the best opportunity in the nation for independent film and media artists to find funders, supporters and/or producers.

I’ve previously participated in Independent Film Week as a panelist, and I can say that it’s a wonderful opportunity to meet like-minded independent film folk from all over the country (and indeed, the world). For filmmakers interested in participating in the Project Forum next year — this goes for anyone, not just New Yorkers — mark your calendars: deadlines to apply for the three different programs fall in April and May. The three programs are:

• Emerging Narrative – For writers and writer/directors seeking producers and agents to develop, produce, represent, and finance their scripts.
• No Borders International Co-Production Market – For producers with partial financing seeking additional partners and funders.
• Spotlight on Documentaries – For filmmakers in production or post seeking financing partners, broadcast, distribution, and festival invitations..

There are a lot of well-respected and better-known filmmakers selected for this year’s Project Forum; Zack and I are honored to be among them. Congratulations to the other participants!

Link: 150 New Films for IFP’s 2010 Project Forum

Note that there were a hundred docs at Full Frame, so many of these I saw, some I didn’t, and I had to leave out several that don’t have trailers online yet. It’s surprising how hard it is to find trailers for films that are already on the festival circuit; they should be in their promotional phase…

The Invention of Dr. Nakamats

Restrepo

Summer Pasture

Last Train Home

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

Videocracy (NSFW)

Waste Land

Casino Jack and the United States of Money

I did the titles and transitions in After Effects; they’re hand-drawn masks with the “Wiggle – gelatin” behavior applied.

On the web, my name is often misspelled, and in person, no one knows how to pronounce it (even though it’s phonetic). So at the start of the panel I spoke on, Writing for a New Landscape: New Media & Cross-Platform Opportunities, I ripped my name placard down the middle, eliminating the “Bilsborrow.” I placed the two end pieces together, and in doing so, changed my public-facing name to Ryan Koo (I’m not legally changing it). My logic: “In terms of personal branding, you have to have a name that people can spell.”

Mobilizing audiences from project to project is an increasingly important component of realizing a self-sustainable career, so this move seems like a no-brainer. As a filmmaker, or as any kind of artist, your name is more important than any corporate brand. The music industry is learning this the hard way: ”Nobody really cares about Sony records or Universal. You don’t seek out stuff that’s being released on Universal as a fan.” But you do seek out a band or individual’s work. When I saw a recent article that attributed Avatar to “20th Century Fox,” I just shook my head; no one outside of the film business cares that it’s a 20th Century Fox film. They care that it’s a James Cameron film.

Afterward, I opened the guide to read about the next panel, and immediately realized I’d done the right thing: there in the conference guide was my name misspelled as Ryan Kilsborrow-Koo.

[Photo from eisenw]

I’ll be speaking on a panel titled “Writing for a New Landscape: New Media & Cross-Platform Opportunities” at IFP’s upcoming Script to Screen Conference. The conference explores new opportunities available to independent filmmakers and directly connects aspiring and working filmmakers to the decision-makers of the film, television, and digital media business. Here are some of the presenters:

Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown), Steve Bodow (Head Writer, The Daily Show), Brian Koppelman (Solitary Man, Rounders, Ocean’s Thirteen), Peter Hedges (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, About a Boy), Adam Brooks (Definitely Maybe, Wimbledon), Monty Ross (Do The Right Thing), along with representatives from Focus Features International, the Sundance Channel, Filmmaker Magazine, and more! Like Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and Zachary Lieberman, who wrote The West Side two years ago and haven’t been heard from since, thanks to the evil machinations of the film industry!¹

The conference takes place Saturday and Sunday, March 20th and 21st at 92Y Tribeca (200 Hudson Street). For IFP members, tickets to the conference are $150; for non-members, $200. However if you use the special nofilmschool code FREE2010 you can get the member rate as a non-member.²

Writing for a New Landscape: New Media & Cross-Platform Opportunities will be an interesting panel, as I suspect most of the helpful information Zack and I can impart comes from our experiences shopping our feature-length, transmedia screenplay for Third Rail, rather than from our experiences producing the DIY The West Side. Regardless, I promise our panel will be interesting, and I might even wear pants.

1. I added that last sentence.
2. Okay, the code is not specific to nofilmschool. However, it will save you $50.