Conan O’Brien has been all over the South by Southwest festival this week, hawking a new documentary about his time wandering in the late-night talk television wilderness after he left “The Tonight Show” last year.

That included a lively live interview with Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg on Saturday, as well as a series of appearances related to “Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop.”

His hysterical journey, of course, was deftly played out by O’Brien all over the Internet, which was definitely on “Team Coco.”

The documentary, which will be distributed in the U.S. in a multi-platform deal with AT&T, follows O’Brien on his “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television” tour.

Here’s a clip from the film:

The idea is that instead of parsing through disjointed material, searchers can lean back and have a story told to them about what they’re looking for. The Qwiki results page experience feels like watching a low-budget TV documentary with panned-across stock footage and a robotic voice. (Side note: You probably don’t want to learn how to pronounce things by hearing them on Qwiki.) Eventually these presentations will be created for many more topics, and be playable on a variety of devices.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Qwiki, which just raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, is hedging on the public release by calling it an “alpha.” But the company, which won the TechCrunch Disrupt start-up competition in 2010, says it has “hundreds of thousands” of potential users signed up, of which about 60 percent have been given access so far.

Qwiki CEO Doug Imbruce said in a phone interview that Qwiki has received acquisition offers already, and took funding from individual investors rather than venture capitalists so its founders could retain control of the company and focus on product rather than monetization.

Imbruce emphasized that Qwiki is not a search engine and does not seek to be comprehensive. He said Qwiki plans soon to build its index by letting third-parties input material for new topics, including profiles of individuals.

An example Qwiki for Mount Everest is embedded below:

SnagFilms, the online video distribution site for professional documentaries, has nabbed $10 million in funding from Comcast’s investment arm and New Enterprise Associates, and will also now be distributing fictional independent film releases.

That and the new investment giving SnagFilms a valuation of $50 million should be big news at the 11th Sundance Film Festival, the famous independent film gathering opening in Park City, Utah, on Thursday.

And SnagFilms also announced that well-known industry exec Bingham Ray is joining the start-up to spearhead its distribution of fictional narrative and foreign-produced independent films.

The service, unlike the subscription-based video giant Netflix, currently distributes free non-fiction documentary films with advertising, as well as offers rental streaming and purchase options.

And it is profitable, said Ted Leonsis, the former AOL exec who is the founder and has been the driving investor in SnagFilms.

“It was always my personal frustration as a backer of documentaries that you could not get distribution far and wide,” he said in an interview earlier today.

He noted that while Netflix is really now focused on big studio fare, “what we’ve discovered is a big supply of independent video that has never seen light of day, but that has a big audience.”

SnagFilms’ strategy is to give broader reach to these films, which often don’t even have a theatrical opening–or, if they do, are very small.

Along with its site, which digitizes the films and adds advertising to them, SnagFilms also encourages Web sites and others to grab films and create a “virtual movie theater.” (You can see my effort below.)

It also has video-on-demand deals with Comcast, Verizon and more, as well as purchase options with Apple’s iTunes and others.

Earlier this month, SnagFilms also launched an impressive and free iPad full-movie-watching app.

SnagFilms also owns a popular news site called indieWIRE, which covers the independent film market, and the new funding will also be used to expand it.

That market has been in need of a boost of some kind, since it has been struggling as financing has dried up for the production of quality documentaries and outside-the-Hollywood-machine movies.

It has long been hoped that the Internet would perhaps save and strengthen the genre, with its supposed long-tail magic.

But the going has been slow. Currently, SnagFilms has 2,000 films in its online library, although Leonsis said the aim is to use the new funds to get 10,000 films on the service as soon as possible.

“We’re trying to build a beachhead in the independent film world,” he said of SnagFilms, which currently has about 40 employees in Washington, D.C., and New York. “We think we have a niche and video is the killer app on Web now.”

Leonsis, who has backed such notable documentaries as “The Rape of Nanking,” said NEA’s Peter Barris will join the board, along with existing investor Steve Case.

Case and Leonsis, of course, were the dynamic duo of AOL’s glory days.

So, I am rooting for another win in an arena that needs it.

Thus, here’s my own movie palace online and also the official press release from SnagFilms:

Watch more free documentaries

Industry Powerhouses NEA and Comcast Invest in SnagFilms

$10 million in new funding to distribute documentaries and fictional independent films on all digital platforms and devices, globally

Washington D.C.–January 17, 2011 – SnagFilms announced today it has received $10 million in growth capital from new investors New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Comcast Interactive Capital (CIC). Existing investors, including Ted Leonsis (SnagFilms’ Founder) and Steve Case, also participated. The financing will be used to expand its distribution of independent films–including, for the first time, fictional independent releases–across all digital platforms and devices, and on a global basis.

SnagFilms is a leader in distributing free, ad-supported titles from a library of over 2,000 non-fiction films. Last year, SnagFilms entered the transactional world with launches of video on demand channels on Comcast and Verizon FiOS, as well as titles for sale through the Apple’s iTunes store. Earlier this month, SnagFilms debuted its iPad application with the largest collection of award-winning U.S. films offered free to iPad users.

“As a profitable company with substantial private investors, SnagFilms didn’t need to raise outside capital,” said company founder Ted Leonsis. “However, we saw overwhelming strategic value in involving NEA, a pioneer and leading venture capital firm, and CIC, the investment arm of Comcast. SnagFilms is very well-financed and uniquely positioned now to bring the full array of independent films–fiction and non-fiction, U.S. and foreign–to global audiences on all platforms and devices. We’ve amassed a library of 2,000 documentaries since our launch, and we’re now building distribution opportunities for tens of thousands of independent films in both categories. That’s great news for film fans and for filmmakers.”

“SnagFilms is perfectly positioned to fuse technology and content in a manner that has marked many of the transformational industry leaders we have helped build in the past,” said NEA Managing General Partner Peter Barris, who joins the Company’s Board of Directors. “New devices and digital platforms will allow consumers unprecedented access to quality content, and SnagFilms will be there to delight them. We are pleased to be able to invest in SnagFilms at this time, and to help them add fictional indie films to their expertise with documentaries–and to take both genres to the full swath of digital platforms and devices.” Among many other investments, Barris serves on the board of Groupon as its first VC investor.

“We are excited about the new opportunities SnagFilms creates, especially for independent filmmakers who historically could not get distribution,” said David Horowitz, Managing Director of Comcast Interactive Capital. “This investment reflects our view that consumers are demanding a diverse selection of high-quality content that can be watched on any platform or device.”

SnagFilms also announced that industry veteran Bingham Ray will join the Company to help guide its entry into distribution of fictional narrative and foreign-produced independent films. Ray, former President of United Artists, October Films and Kimmel Entertainment, and honored for Lifetime Achievement by the Gotham Awards, has deep experience in the acquisition, marketing and distribution of motion pictures, including “Hotel Rwanda,” “Bowling for Columbine,” “Secrets & Lies,” “War Room,” “High Art,” “Last Days” and “Breaking the Waves.”

“Bingham has been an advocate for filmmakers throughout his career,” noted Rick Allen, SnagFilms CEO. “His record of successful distribution on traditional platforms provides a strategic sense and depth of relationships that will be invaluable as we extend our model into a broader array of films. Bingham will be a key member of our large presence at the Sundance Film Festival this week and beyond.”

“I’ve been a big fan of SnagFilms from their earliest days, and am truly thrilled to be part of the team as they expand the service, bringing more filmmakers to bigger audiences on a wider array of platforms,” said Ray. “This is the future of our business.”

“SnagFilms plus Bingham Ray is a great combination,” said Tom Bernard, co-president and co-founder of Sony Pictures Classics. “Bingham knows the indie world as well as anyone alive and is admired for his experience and for always delivering for filmmakers. He’ll be a big asset to SnagFilms’ expansion.”

In addition, SnagFilms intends to use its new growth capital to expand its indieWIRE unit, now in its 15th year as the leading web source of news, reviews and analysis of independent film.

“indieWIRE’s traffic is now ten times what it was when we purchased it two and a half years ago,” Allen said. “Before the Academy Awards are announced later this month, you’ll see new editor-in-chief Dana Harris add ongoing features to our coverage of the indie world, and exciting new blogs to our Network, like the recently-added blog The Playlist.”

About SnagFilms

SnagFilms features free ad-supported viewing of more than 2,000 award-winning titles from some of the greatest names in documentary film. All films are shareable across the web. Since its launch in July 2008, SnagFilms’ library has been featured on over 2 billion web pageviews, with more than 325 million minutes of SnagFilms titles streamed across over more than 100,000 affiliated sites and webpages, including through partners such as Aol, Comcast, Hulu, the Starbucks Digital Network, IMDb, the Miami Herald, hundreds of non-profits, special interest sites and blogs. SnagFilms also offers selected titles via VOD (with Comcast and FiOS), on iTunes and through a new free application for the iPad.

OVGuide has twice named SnagFilms a Top Site and MovieMaker Magazine named SnagFilms to its annual list of “50 Best Websites for Moviemakers.”

Some were there because of the way Mr. Park made the movie: shooting it entirely on the latest version of Apple Inc.’s iPhone.

“From hunting for a film location, shooting auditions, to doing a documentary on the filming process, everything was shot with the iPhone 4,” Mr. Park said after the screening. “We went through all the same film-making processes except that the camera was small.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is certainly in the midst of a media bonanza.

Aside from all the heat over its recent investment whatever with Goldman Sachs, the young entrepreneur has been touted on CBS’s “60 Minutes” and been selected Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

Oh, yes, and that movie–”The Social Network”–which you just know is going to win some Oscars on February 27.

Now CNBC has just aired a documentary on the huge social networking site, titled–appropriately–“The Facebook Obsession.”

There is no new interview with Zuckerberg, and it’s essentially the same story about the Silicon Valley wunderkind, told yet again. But all the old video clips and photos collected all together on another television show are nice.

Also, I always enjoy the Winklevii spouting off hambone arguments about why they are owed more than $65 million for Zuckerberg’s kneecapping of them back at Harvard University.

And, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-me appearance, I also make a showing, apparently as the grumpy one.

But I did not see it, as CNBC did not deign to post the entire report online, as “60 Minutes” so kindly did.

CNBC did do a preview and provide some clips, which are embedded below, as well the the much funnier Jon Stewart take on it all on “The Daily Show,” titled “The Anti-Social Network”:

Of course he used the opportunity to engage in his favorite new hobby: Taunting rival Hewlett-Packard.

The announcement was straightforward. Oracle’s forthcoming SPARC T3-4 Supercluster has achieved a performance record of more than 30 million transactions per minute, as verified by the Transaction Processing Performance Council, an industry benchmarking organization. This bested the previous record holder, a model of IBM’s Power 780 Server, which delivered more than 10 million transactions per minute.

Farther down on the TPC’s list, in fifth position, is HP’s Integrity Superdome, clocking a performance of a little more than 4 million transactions per minute. Oracle is using the results in ads that portray Oracle as a cheetah, IBM as a respectable stallion and HP as a poky turtle. (Full disclosure: This ad ran in today’s print edition of The Wall Street Journal, which like this Web site is owned by News Corp.)

At this point in his remarks, Ellison beat the war drums against HP rather loudly: “We think the HP machines are vulnerable. We think they’re expensive. We think they’re vulnerable in the marketplace. We’re going to go after them. We’re going to go after them in the marketplace with better software, better hardware, and better people.”

I’ve asked HP for a response, and will update if I get one. [Update: And here it is, courtesy of company spokesman Michael Thacker: "HP is the number one provider of enterprise servers in the marketplace. We are focused on our customers, and the combination of our technology leadership, product performance, and pricing continues to meet the needs of those customers. The numbers prove it--we experienced 25 percent revenue growth year over year during our last quarter, and we are the only major UNIX vendor that reported server growth."]

[Another update: An HP spokesperson just sent the following additional statement: "Larry Ellison bought a money-losing business that had steady market share declines for years, and which still ranks at the bottom of the market. Customers aren’t fooled by outdated benchmarks, no matter what Oracle says. HP’s market share results prove it. Sun customers are running to HP in droves because they recognize we deliver superior technology, performance and pricing."]

One thing HP and IBM have going for them is that the Oracle system in question won’t be on the market until next June.

Failing schools in the U.S. is not a funny topic.

But somehow the odd CGI animators over at Next Media Animation did a very good job with this take on the bracing documentary “Waiting for Superman,” using a clown to signify bad teachers.

It might seem odd, but it seems to work just fine:

The question is: Which movie was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinking about when he decided recently to fork over $100 million to public schools in Newark, New Jersey?

Was it a bid to spiff up his image–with a splashy announcement on Oprah Winfrey’s popular television talk show tomorrow?

That would be the very same day of the New York premiere of “The Social Network,” a movie that rakes the now-26-year-old Silicon Valley wunderkind over some very hot coals in the sordid tale of how he founded the powerful social networking site while at Harvard University.

Or was it actually the impact of another film, “Waiting for Superman,” a just-released gripping documentary about the crisis in public education?

It’s become a topic that has apparently become of great interest to Zuckerberg, as he has been considering his approach to big-time philanthropy in anticipation of huge wealth after Facebook eventually has its long-anticipated IPO.

In fact, said sources, the timing of the donation was hotly debated within the company, with worries that it would look like Zuckerberg was trying to counter the flood of negative press from “The Social Network.”

And for good reason.

After seeing a screening of the movie recently, MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka noted that “the film portrays him as an insecure jerk who screws over people and becomes a much-richer insecure jerk…He’s the bad guy in his own creation myth.”

In fact, said sources, Zuckerberg actually has been cooking up the deal since he and high-profile Newark Mayor Cory Booker started kibitzing over the idea while both attended the Allen & Co. conference in July.

From there, Zuckerberg decided it was best to flood the zone–in this case, the deeply troubled Newark school system, which had previously been taken over by the state.

Now, it will instead get a big dose of friending–um, funding–from a foundation that Zuckerberg is funding with $100 million worth of Facebook stock, which will be sold off in secondary markets as needed.

Sources said his interest in the area was apparently sparked by watching the up-and-down experience of his longtime girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, whose first job out of college was as a teacher. She is now a medical student.

It’s all an unusual bipartisan effort, with Zuckerberg working with the Democratic Booker and also New Jersey’s new Republican Governor Chris Christie.

The pair of politicians, who will formulate a plan, pushed for the announcement this particular week on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” in order to give the topic national attention.

Winfrey has been focusing on education reform this week on her show, and the Obama administration is reportedly going to do the same in the weeks ahead.

Thus, Zuckerberg himself decided to move forward now, sources said, apparently concluding that even if a prominent movie was portraying him as the villain, he did not have to act like one in real life.

Last night, BoomTown got to grill some “Catfish”–as in the three young hipsters responsible for the new documentary about a twisted online romance on Facebook.

That was for a Q&A after a screening in San Francisco, where I got to talk to Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost and the film’s subject, Nev Schulman, about how they decided to make it.

“Catfish” is being released by Universal Pictures, which picked it up after it got a lot of attention at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.

Before the social networking site’s CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg gets his knickers in a knot, “Catfish” is actually not the Facebook-bashing one.

Instead of a semi-fictional film–that would be “The Social Network” from Sony (SNE)–this one is a rumination on identity in the digital age.

As I previously wrote, I won’t give away the particulars, except to say it shows the range of human emotions that social networking engenders, from desperation and loneliness to serendipity and hope for love.

We talk about all that and more in the video of the interview I did before our discussion with the audience at the screening:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100903/the-catfish-aka-the-other-facebook-movie-dudes-speak/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100831/viral-video-i-want-your-money/ http://allthingsd.com/20100831/viral-video-i-want-your-money/#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 07:53:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=33112

In the interests of political fairness, here is a trailer for a documentary coming out in mid-October that takes aim at President Barack Obama’s economic policies.

Titled “I Want Your Money,” the controversial trailer has already gotten over 1.76 million views on YouTube. (Take that, Michael Moore!)

Here’s the description of the film:

“Set against the backdrop of America’s growing disproval of current economic policies, I WANT YOUR MONEY takes a provocative look at our nation’s deeply depressed economy using the words and actions of Presidents Reagan and Obama. The film exposes the shocking reality of a bloated government while offering alternatives to help steer the United States back towards firm fiscal ground.”

The right-leaning movie–which uses decidedly odd cartoons of Obama and Reagan–features the usual conservative suspects on the topic, such as Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Steve Forbes. And it makes Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi look nuts.

In other words, a Tea Party party!

Here’s the trailer:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100831/viral-video-i-want-your-money/feed/ 10 http://allthingsd.com/20100817/catfish-the-other-facebook-movie-speaks-real-truths-about-the-social-network-plus-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20100817/catfish-the-other-facebook-movie-speaks-real-truths-about-the-social-network-plus-video/#comments Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:15:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=32250

Last night, BoomTown attended a press screening of a new film, due out this fall, in which Facebook plays a big role.

No, not that movie.

Instead of a semi-fictional film–that would be “The Social Network” from Sony (SNE)–this one is a documentary, called “Catfish,” about a man who has a real-life encounter of the you-could-not-make-this-up kind on Facebook.

I won’t give away the particulars, except to say it shows the range of human emotions that social networking engenders, from desperation and loneliness to serendipity and hope for love.

Here is the description of the movie, being released by Universal Pictures, which got a lot of attention at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year:

In late 2007, filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost sensed a story unfolding and began to film the life of Ariel’s brother, Nev. Nev, a 24-year-old New York City photographer, was contacted on Facebook by Abby, an eight-year-old girl who asked permission to paint one of his photographs. After she sent him her remarkable painting, Nev began an online friendship with Abby and her family, eventually falling in love with her older sister, Megan. When Nev uncovered some startling revelations about Megan, the boys set off on a road trip to find out the truth.

Nev, Ariel and Henry had no idea that their project would turn into the most exhilarating and unsettling months of their lives. A reality thriller, CATFISH centers on a riveting mystery that is a product of our times, where social networking, mobile devices and electronic communication so often replace face-to-face contact. The film is a powerful story of love, deception, and grace within a labyrinth of online intrigue.

And here’s the video of the trailer for “Catfish,” to get a taste:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100817/catfish-the-other-facebook-movie-speaks-real-truths-about-the-social-network-plus-video/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100303/web-video-youll-want-to-watch-five-digital-ellie-finalists/ http://allthingsd.com/20100303/web-video-youll-want-to-watch-five-digital-ellie-finalists/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:03:06 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=16933 Just like everything else on the Web, it’s exceptionally easy to make and distribute video. But making a good one? That’s one of the hardest tasks you can take on.

If you don’t believe me, see for yourself: Head over to any major Web publisher and try to watch more than 15 seconds of its clips. Tough odds.

So I have a lot of admiration for people who are figuring out how to do interesting stuff with Web video.

And I kept that in mind last month when I spent the day judging video entries for the “digital Ellies,” the online awards handed out by the American Society of Magazine Editors every year.

The new list of finalists is out now, and you can see some of them below.

The ASME folks have asked me not to talk about the specifics of our discussions (or to identify fellow judges), but I did want to make one note: All of those I worked with have to deal with the reality of Web economics in their day jobs. So we’re not oblivious to the fact that some of this stuff may not be a practical option for some Web publishers.

You’ll have a hard time selling ads against a 20-minute documentary on environmental destruction in West Virginia, for instance. But we also wanted people to see just how many options Web video offers if you think broadly about this stuff. And we also made a point of including some stuff that a publisher could conceivably use to generate dollars, like interviews with movie stars.

One big bummer: The majority of our finalists don’t allow embedding. So I can’t actually show you their stuff, and will have to settle for directing you to their sites. Apologies. The list of all the digital ASME finalists is here, and winners will be announced March 18.

Reason.tv: UPS vs. Fedex: Ultimate Whiteboard Remix

Oxford American: “SoLost” series

SoLost: Wayne White Goes Thrifting from Oxford American on Vimeo.

Yale Environment 360: Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy
of Mountaintop Removal Mining

National Geographic: Redwoods: The Super Trees

“T,” New York Times Style Magazine, Screen Test series

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100303/web-video-youll-want-to-watch-five-digital-ellie-finalists/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100204/pbs-frontline-considers-the-digital-nation-a-lot-of-handwringing-over-the-inevitable-but-watch-it-anyway/ http://allthingsd.com/20100204/pbs-frontline-considers-the-digital-nation-a-lot-of-handwringing-over-the-inevitable-but-watch-it-anyway/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:26:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24055

Earlier this week, the reliably erudite PBS public affairs program, “Frontline,” aired a documentary called “Digital Nation,” which I caught on television in one of the rare moments I find myself actually in front of one.

Produced by Rachel Dretzin, in collaboration with tech author and pundit Douglas Rushkoff, it’s the second in a series–the first, which aired in 2008, was titled “Growing Up Online”–about how the inevitable digital onslaught is affecting everyone.

As the site for the show describes itself, in part:

Over a single generation, the Web and digital media have remade nearly every aspect of modern culture, transforming the way we work, learn and connect in ways that we’re only beginning to understand…Dretzin and her team report from the front lines of digital culture–from love affairs blossoming in virtual worlds, to the thoroughly wired classrooms of the future, to military bases where the Air Force is fighting a new form of digital warfare. Along the way, they begin to map the critical ways that technology is transforming us–and what we may be learning about ourselves in the process.

And, indeed, Dretzin and her team race hither and yon interviewing a pile of smart folks–most of whom, thankfully, are not from Silicon Valley–to uncover what’s up with this Internet thing, which the kids seem to love.

There are ruminations on the out-of-focus students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the evils of multitasking, fretting over how this digital submersion is affecting the brains of schoolchildren and more jaw-dropping over the creepily compelling oddness of virtual worlds and online relationships.

Dretzin even features and–natch!–clucks over her own computer-savvy children and what it all means to them. She plays the role of the less-plugged-in mother, complete with a furrowed brow about it all, although the kids are obviously sharp as tacks, digital French flashcards or not.

This egads-no-one-know-where-this-geekery-is-taking-us worrywartness is probably appropriate, and though nothing new, is well told.

Perhaps the best part is a visit to the spanking new gaming-heavy center the Army has built that sucks in teen boys like nobody’s business.

While the piece has aired, you still can watch the whole thing on the well done Digital Nation Web site, the best part of which is the contributions of regular people who added their own voices to the digital conversation.

Which is remarkably robust, as far as I can tell, so perhaps we have not gone to hell in a cloud-computing handbasket quite yet.

Here are two of the more adorkable of those videos:

Here is the whole “Digital Nation” doc, in nine chapters:

Distracted by Everything

What’s It Doing to Their Brains

South Korea’s Gaming Craze

Teaching With Technology

The Dumbest Generation?

Relationships

Virtual Worlds

Can Virtual Experiences Change Us?

Where Are We Headed?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100204/pbs-frontline-considers-the-digital-nation-a-lot-of-handwringing-over-the-inevitable-but-watch-it-anyway/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100125/social-media-storytelling-at-sundance-myspace-youtube-and-oprah-dudes-and-also-my-twitter-hating-mom-discuss/ http://allthingsd.com/20100125/social-media-storytelling-at-sundance-myspace-youtube-and-oprah-dudes-and-also-my-twitter-hating-mom-discuss/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:01:46 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=23364 On Friday, BoomTown was back at the Sundance Film Festival for the fifth time for my annual techie panel at the famous independent film confab.

This year, we opened the New Frontier on Main series with a session titled, “Spotlight on Social Media: Successful Strategies for Storytellers.”

Panelists included Robert Tercek, president of digital media for OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network; filmmaker Ondi Timoner; Chris Gebhardt, head of Participant Media’s TakePart social media platform, which just sold a documentary featuring Bill Gates of Microsoft (MSFT); David Eun, head of film partnerships for Google (GOOG) video unit YouTube; Jason Hirschhorn, chief product officer of News Corp. (NWS) social site MySpace; and Matt Jacobson, Facebook’s market development exec.

The conversation was super lively about how social tools can bring filmmakers closer to their audience–before, during and after a work’s creation. There was also a lot of talk about how the Web gives movies with little chance of theatrical distribution more opportunity to be seen and possibly make money.

But still, with ever more disaggregation of entertainment and the confusing array of new mobile devices to receive content, it is not clear that Silicon Valley can save the day for anyone trying to reignite the indie space via software, hardware or any Web innovation.

Incredibly, Oprah dude Tercek ignored my brilliant idea for an Oprah-cam attached to the television host’s head. As in Oprah 24-7! Talk about social storytelling!

Here are my video interviews on this and more with three of the panelists–Hirschhorn, Tercek and Eun–as well as thoughts from my mother, Lucky, who most recently was bashing Twitter in this column and does so again here (although she said she would be happy to watch a movie via magic glasses).

Also, at the end of the video, I ski and use my Flip camera, for no good reason.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100125/social-media-storytelling-at-sundance-myspace-youtube-and-oprah-dudes-and-also-my-twitter-hating-mom-discuss/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20100125/education-documentary-featuring-bill-gates-gets-first-distribution-deal-at-sundance/ http://allthingsd.com/20100125/education-documentary-featuring-bill-gates-gets-first-distribution-deal-at-sundance/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:03:01 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=23357

Like BoomTown, Bill Gates was at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend–not just to sample some of the fare at the well-known independent film festival, held annually in Park City, Utah, but also to appear at the screening of a documentary about the crisis in public education in which he appears and that scored the first distribution deal at the event.

The worldwide rights for “Waiting for Superman,” directed by Davis Guggenheim and produced by Participant Media, were sold to Paramount Vantage, a unit of the Viacom (VIA) movie studio.

The film premiered Friday at Sundance, with Gates in attendance. The Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder took questions at the screening and made it to several Sundance events, surprising several film types.

“I couldn’t believe it was him,” said one participant at a filmmakers’ gathering.

Yes, it was him, especially since issues in public education have been a big focus of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he has been spending most of his time since leaving day-to-day work at the software giant in 2008.

Interestingly, Participant Media–along with Guggenheim–put out “An Inconvenient Truth,” the global-warming doc starring former VP Al Gore, which was a huge success.

And in yet another Silicon Valley connection, Los Angeles-based Participant was founded by former eBay (EBAY) exec Jeff Skoll.

Here are highlights from a terrific interview Walt Mossberg did with Melinda Gates at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference in 2008, where she talked eloquently about the problems faced by U.S. schoolchildren:

And here’s the press release from Participant on the “Superman” deal:

HOLLYWOOD, CA (January 21, 2010)–Worldwide rights for the new documentary from Oscar®-winning director Davis Guggenheim (AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH) and Participant Media have been acquired by Paramount Vantage, it was announced today by Adam Goodman, Paramount Film Group President and by Participant Media’s CEO Jim Berk.

The documentary will have its world premiere tomorrow, January 22, at the Sundance Film Festival. Paramount Vantage will release the movie in the fall of 2010 in the U.S. with international release dates not yet determined.

The studio’s specialty division Paramount Classics released Guggenheim’s acclaimed AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH in 2006. The influential documentary, financed and executive produced by Participant Media, received two Academy Awards®, and was a worldwide box office hit, grossing more than $24 million in the U.S. and nearly $50 million worldwide.

The new film, developed, financed and executive produced by Participant Media, examines the crisis of public education in the United States through multiple interlocking stories–from a handful of students and their families whose futures hang in the balance, to the educators and reformers trying to find real and lasting solutions within a dysfunctional system.

The documentary features several leaders in the field of education, including philanthropist Bill Gates of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; President and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone in Harlem, New York Geoffrey Canada; Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools Michelle Rhee; Knowledge is Power Program Founders (KIPP) David Levin and Mike Feinberg; and President and CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation Bill Strickland.

Six-time Grammy Award-winning recording artist, concert performer and philanthropist John Legend composed the end title song “Shine.” Legend’s own Show Me campaign uses education to break the cycle of poverty through sustainable development at the individual, family, and community levels.

Said Paramount’s Goodman: “Our commitment to this movie and the issue of education is urgently important to all of us at Paramount. In collaboration with our partners, we hope to bring about a real solution.”

Said Davis Guggenheim: “With these two great partners, Participant Media and Paramount Pictures, we have a chance to create public awareness around this issue, and this is the only way we can make real change in our children’s schools.”

Said Jim Berk, CEO, Participant Media: “The movie creates an emotional personal connection to an issue which underpins the very future of our country. By reuniting with our good friends at Paramount, we have the chance to build on our ground breaking partnership on AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH to launch a national conversation from movie theaters, to kitchen tables all across the country.”

“It’s wonderful to have Paramount as partners on this film,” says the film’s producer, Lesley Chilcott, who was also a producer on AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. “It’s crucial to have experts like Paramount and Participant that understand the power of a film to create urgency about an important issue. We need to get the message out there. Millions of kids are waiting.”

The film is directed and produced by Davis Guggenheim. Lesley Chilcott is the producer, with Jeff Skoll and Diane Weyermann serving as executive producers. Written by Davis Guggenheim and Billy Kimball. The cinematographers are Erich Roland and Bob Richman. Greg Finton, Jay Cassidy, and Kim Roberts served as the editors.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100125/education-documentary-featuring-bill-gates-gets-first-distribution-deal-at-sundance/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20091014/condes-cuts-come-to-vogue/ http://allthingsd.com/20091014/condes-cuts-come-to-vogue/#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:32:31 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=12103 As expected, Condé Nast executives are swinging the layoff ax around the fabled magazine publisher. Today’s cuts are at Vogue, where I’m told at least six people have been let go from one of the company’s best-known titles.

There will be more to come at the publisher, which shut down four magazines last week and is trying to bring down costs at its remaining titles by 25 percent. “Everybody’s tense and anxious here,” says a still-employed Condé Nast worker. “A terrible environment. We know the layoffs are coming but don’t know how many or when.”

Statement from Condé spokeswoman Maurie Perl:

We announced last week when we closed the four titles that there would be companywide expense cost reductions and some workforce reductions in association with the 2010 budget process. These Vogue layoffs are  part of that and we have no further comment on the subject.

A reminder: Vogue’s September 2007 issue was supposedly the biggest in magazine history, and its production has been chronicled in a documentary you can see in theaters today. But Vogue’s September 2009 issue’s ad count was down more than 50 percent compared with the previous year.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091014/condes-cuts-come-to-vogue/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090805/vital-video-the-national-parks-americas-best-idea/ http://allthingsd.com/20090805/vital-video-the-national-parks-americas-best-idea/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:00:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=17006

How much should you ponder this amazing video from an upcoming new documentary series by Ken Burns–titled “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea”–on America’s national parks system?

Muchly much, as the national parks have indeed been one of this country’s most amazing gifts to itself.

Set to air on PBS on September 27, the creators stuck a video clip that is almost 27 minutes long on YouTube and on the series’ own really nice Web site, which is a pretty terrific thing to do.

The real series is 12 hours long and in six parts, directed by the still-elfish Burns and co-produced with Dayton Duncan, who also wrote the script.

As they describe it, the series “is the story of an idea as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence and just as radical: that the most special places in the nation should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone.”

After having recently just visited the wonder that is Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which is much featured in the series, you can say that again.

Here’s the video clip (it’s August, so take the time to watch it):

[Photo above: Tourists at an erupting Old Faithful. Yellowstone National Park, 1884. Source: Haynes Foundation Collection, Montana Historical Society]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090805/vital-video-the-national-parks-americas-best-idea/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20090721/heres-why-mckinseys-coming-to-conde-nast-the-coming-black-september/ http://allthingsd.com/20090721/heres-why-mckinseys-coming-to-conde-nast-the-coming-black-september/#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:53:26 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=9493 Here’s why Condé Nast is bringing in McKinsey & Co. for an emergency overhaul: The publisher’s lousy year isn’t getting any better. New numbers Condé released today show that its September issues will be miserable across the board, with ad pages down anywhere from 17 percent to 47 percent. And that’s if you interpret the data favorably.

CEO Chuck Townsend said as much in a memo yesterday announcing that he’d hired McKinsey to figure out how to survive “in an emerging economy that is now predicted to be painfully slow in recovering.”

But when you see Condé’s projected numbers for its fall issues, which are traditionally bulging with ads, it’s even more startling. Particularly when you realize that the economy had already been slowing down a year ago (Disclosure: I do some free-lance work for Condé title Vanity Fair).

Take a look for yourself in the table below (click to enlarge): The numbers in the middle (faintly highlighted in blue) represent the year-over-year decline in ad pages, if you factor out the publisher’s special “Fashion Rocks” issues, which it gave up on last year. The more brutal numbers on the right are the “real” numbers. All of them are unpleasant.

Using the more favorable set of numbers, Teen Vogue is Condé’s relative star, down a mere 17 percent. And if Vogue was a publicly traded stock, it would have beaten expectations, since it came in above 400 pages–which is still down 29.7 percent (or more).

Not included the above chart: Totals for The New Yorker, Golf World, Modern Bride or Elegant Bride, since they aren’t monthlies and don’t have comparable September issues.

And here’s a trailer for “The September Issue,” a much-buzzed about documentary about Vogue’s effort to put out…well, you can figure it out.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090721/heres-why-mckinseys-coming-to-conde-nast-the-coming-black-september/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090615/making-documentaries-in-the-digital-age-a-chat-with-autumn-gem-co-producers/ http://allthingsd.com/20090615/making-documentaries-in-the-digital-age-a-chat-with-autumn-gem-co-producers/#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:49:14 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=14497

At the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, besides interviewing a lot of tech and media muckety-mucks, the All Things Digital staff and friends also got a terrific screening of a new documentary–“Autumn Gem”–by our Webmaster, Adam Tow, and his wife, Rae Chang.

The pair co-produced the project, which explores the extraordinary life of the Chinese revolutionary heroine and women’s rights activist, Qiu Jin (1875 – 1907).

As Tow and Chang wrote on their Web site for “Autumn Gem”:

“During the reign of the last dynasty in China, Qiu Jin boldly challenged traditional gender roles and demanded equal rights and opportunities for women. At a time when women’s lives were often marked by repressive practices such as footbinding, arranged marriages, and denial of education, she envisioned a future where women would free themselves from the confines of tradition and emerge as strong and active citizens of a new and modern nation.”

Even more interesting is what it is like to get an indie film made and distributed in the digital age, which I talked about with Tow and Chang last week.

Here’s the video with my interview with Tow and Chang (and, below it, a preview of “Autumn Gem”) :

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