HAL — An Indie Filmmaker’s Best Friend Dept.: It’s hard to believe futurist Arthur C. Clarke‘s much-anticipated year has finally arrived, but any confirmation I could have needed arrived in the form of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey being utterly absent from any and all video outlets when I went looking for it over the weekend. Thank goodness for American Movie Classics, which, true to form, screened the epic sci-fi film on the appropriate night for those of us slow on the uptake in the vid-rental department. And since this is traditionally the slowest time of the year for local film news, projects, et al., it gives me an opportunity to cover a subject I don’t usually get to tackle all that much in “Short Cuts” (but one which is more and more playing a key role in local, national, and international film production): the emerging indispensability of the World Wide Web in indie film production and distribution. What follows is by no means a complete list of all the important and wildly useful sites I’ve come across in the past year or so, but I guarantee that if you’re searching for the cutting edge of indie filmmaking, you could do a lot worse than checking out the following sites. And if you have a film of your own, here are a few ways to get that puppy seen by a worldwide audience (literally). 1) Blastro.com is not only one of the best film, animation, and multimedia sites around, it’s also produced right here in Austin. Head honcho Rob Campanell, late of the groundbreaking Internetv.com, has lovingly crafted a massive, uh, tool for filmmakers, musicians, and artists in general to display their work, featuring everything from major videos (Paul Van Dyk) to up-and-coming animators (Jim Luhan) and live-in-studio streaming concerts (junglista DJ Firewheel). 2) Thousand-Words.com is a godsend to filmmakers who’ve already tapped out Uncle Bob for those much-needed finishing funds. Touted as “an independent film production and financing company,” the site offers a half-million-dollar finishing fund, available to filmmakers who meet the site’s requirements. Past and current films from Thousand-Words include Darren Aronofsky‘s Requiem for a Dream and Richard Linklater‘s upcoming Waking Life, though much of the company’s funding goes to far smaller projects. Check ’em out before you decide to check yourself into Pharmaco, guinea-pig-boy. 3) Two-years-old and still going strong, the buzz-heavy iFilm.com remains one of the strongest available Web-based film distribution outfits around. Success stories abound (and are chronicled on the site, in blow-by-blow detail), but it’s the ever-changing panoply of oddball shorts — comedies, anime, erotica — that draws you back time and again, whether you’re submitting a film or just submitting to the bizarre joy of watching a Barbie-doll version of Stephen King‘s Misery. And, of course, they’re looking for just about anything aspiring DV filmmakers have to offer. 4) Eveo.com‘s tagline — “Everyone’s a director!” — may be closer to the truth than you think, considering how many DV cameras Mistah Claus had to lug around this year. Now that you’ve got the means, here’s the end: a professional site that’s practically begging you for content. Shoot a short, send it to Eveo.com, and they put it on the site. Simple as that. 5) We saved the best for last: 2-Pop.com is the final word on digital video production, encompassing everything from the often-arcane ins and outs of desktop editing systems such as Adobe Premiere and the wildly popular Final Cut Pro to daily filmmaker journals chronicling what they’re doing and what you should do, too. Absolutely indispensable and the single best DV filmmaker’s site on the web today. It’s 2001 — go make your own movie, already.
This article appears in 2000.