Remember the joy with which NAC greeted the 2005 release of WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price? Here's the scoop on the documentary film company's recent activities, as mailed to the film company's e-list.
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Dear activists, colleagues, and friends,
The last few months have been a time of intense debate, experimentation and trying new story telling and distribution at Brave New Films. Let me take a minute to fill you in as to where we are and then ask for your thoughts as we go forward.
Last year when we launched Iraq for Sale, our satirical ad of Halliburton's CEO attempting to cover up their obscene war profiteering garnered a tremendous response with over 100,000 views. We realized something was going on here. Soon after that we all saw the macaca moment and more as YouTube began to rock all conventional ways of thinking about story telling, impact and distribution.
And so we began intense conversations about our working in this short film area. Here was a radical game changer with the possibility for reaching millions of younger and more diverse people who are not part of our choir. Additionally, we could provide the choir with tools to quickly and easily pass around.
In a faster moving world, the ability to quickly create campaigns around immediate issues was exciting, demanding, and frankly, anxiety producing. How could we tell stories of political substance in 3 minutes? Would people pass them around as they do with cats chasing their tails and other culturally significant pieces? :) It was clear with the longer films that hundreds of thousands were motivated to organize and act, but would people take action from a short video?
Despite not having all the funding in place, we decided to change our course for 2007 in an effort to learn and master this new form before things really heat up in 2008. And then the political winds blew our way. Our first short was The Real McCain, which the LA Times ran a front page story on, and Cliff Schecter and the blogging community ran with. 250,000 views later, McCain's poll numbers are dropping and we are very happy campers.
Next up was a piece on Fox Noise Channel attacking Barack Obama. This time, we understood we were not just creating video, but building a campaign. We launched FoxAttacks.com with our wonderful partners in the netroots and MoveOn. We asked people to sign a petition to stop Democrats from shooting themselves in the foot by pretending Fox was a news station, and the response was off the charts with 150,000 signatures and over half a million video views. Best of all, we actually beat Fox with the campaign, putting an end to their presidential debate in Nevada. Then we went and ended a second Fox-hosted debate with the Fox Attacks Black America film.
So here we are... passionate, excited, and with a growing list of ideas, plans, dreams to use these campaigns to help the fight for social justice.
Here are a few question we want your thoughts on:
What are the most important campaigns/subjects to take on? We can't do them all, but tell us which ones and why.
How can we build large coalitions of activist groups around the issues you care about? It's important that each campaign bring together diverse groups and strengthen the broader movement.
How can we generate income? Unlike the films, there is no income
from these campaigns. The great folks at the Democracy Alliance are giving us support, but we will need more to take on a full plate.
What role can our 5,000 screening hosts play in this new world going forward?
What do you think about this whole approach? Strengths? Problems to look out for?
Don't hit that reply button! Instead, go to my blog and post a comment so we can all get a discussion going:
Your input on Brave New Films' future projects
That's plenty for now. As always, thanks for your time and attention.
Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films
P.S. We've got a new short film coming out later in the week. The fourth anniversary of "Mission Accomplished" is May 1st. Stay tuned!
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