Joni eccentricproductions.com.au

Until recently I was not aware of what an effect blogging was making on the world. It seems that Blogging has become another form of media expression for artists. Many filmmakers, including myself, are now using Blogs to record and disseminate information about their upcoming films.

Movie Blogs and on-line journals for how movies are created will further demystify the film making process. However, they will also give aspiring filmmakers the opportunity to have a voyeuristic understanding of the filmmaking process.

An interesting experiment would be to have a producer, director, actor and editor each write a Blog on the same project. It would be interesting to see the production of a film from many different perspectives. The aforementioned exercise would also help those, already in the industry, to understand what each person encounters in the film making process. In turn this might lead to interesting changes, which might be beneficial financially and intellectually.

Singer, songwriter Ben Lee has a blog attached to his web site. It is interesting to see what he writes and to whom he responds. The director, Bobby Roth, who recently made the independent film “ Berkley”, has also attached a blog to his movie’s website. In it he comments on the films progress, and his personal thoughts and feelings. It is also accompanied by photo blogging.

With the rise of Tivo, and the imminent loss of advertising potential on television, TV and film studios will have to look for new avenues to advertise. In an effort to keep up with changing times web-based portals such as Friendster have been used to market such programs as The Apprentice and Movies like “The Anchorman”. Consequently, it seems only natural that blogs will soon be used, publicly, to market people’s careers and progress. I believe it is not in the distant future before we see such actors as Tom Cruise and Russell Crow writing their own blog’s (of course with much help from their publicists) so that they are able to “have their own say”.

Web-blogs are already having a major impact on the corporate world. Due to the easy to use nature of web-blogs and wikis they are fast becoming one of the fastest growing forms of media dissemination with-in corporate environments. High profile companies such as Microsoft are already using blogs as a seemingly informal marketing tool. Robert Scoble one of Microsoft top marketing spokesmen uses his blog to humanise the company’s image, by using conversational style. General Motors vice Chairman Bob Lutz, writes his weblog in the voice of a knowledgable car-dealer.

Blogs are also part of a low cost software network that has streamlined the way information is published. Blogs allow all levels of an organisation to have an equal say. Furthermore, the seemingly natural style of blogging and lack of face to face contact allows people to feel less inhibited with their thoughts and feelings. In large corporations where CEO’s often do not have the time to interact with many employees blogging has created an environment to allow for more free flowing communication.

In an attempt to stay abreast of current innovative changes in the industry I created a blog “australianshortfilm.blogsome”, purely for the purpose of promoting my upcoming short film. I have started to record information in my blog so that everyone involved and everyone who wants to be involved are able to easily find out what is occurring, how and why.