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.