Note to Independent Producers: Be More Social! | ITVS Beyond the Box

By Jonathan Archer

As part of ITVS Programming’s ongoing mission to serve the filmmaking community, Jonathan Archer has been seeking out filmmakers to provide their perspectives and experiences from the trenches. First up, The Weather Underground producer, Marc Smolowitz. He recently presented on a panel entitled The Power of Storytelling and was kind enough to share some of his thoughts and strategies with BTB.

Scene from The Power of Two by Marc Smolowitz

Last month, I presented at the Netsquared Meetup in San Francisco on “The Power Of Storytelling.” I decided to connect my remarks to two current labors of love — The Power Of Two — my feature documentary inspired by the life stories of twin double lung recipients; and The HIV Story Project — a new nonprofit that I co-founded in 2009.

Both projects are anchored by social issue filmmaking and wrapped around by global calls-to-action that are uniquely tied to story and character. Produced concurrently in less than two years, my starting point on both has always been a creative one: “What are the stories I am trying to tell?” and “Who are the characters I am trying to bring to the screen?”

From there, a well-developed engagement campaign combined with a broad range of interactive, cross-platform components has fueled funding, capacity, and the ability to execute.

Marc Smolowitz

In fact, these projects — and the strategies that made them possible — have confirmed for me that there is no such thing as powerful storytelling without some or all of the following “non-story” strategies in the mix....." Read the full post:

via beyondthebox.org

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales