My friend, James Beard award-winning chef Tiberio Simone, announced this morning that his book is available for pre-order. This is a project I had the privilege of filming several times during its 5-year development, and a book that I’m looking forward to giving a home on my living room table. Congratulations to Matt Freedman, the photographer, and Tiberio. You did it!

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The documentary film I’m currently making passed a milestone yesterday. With two months go until the Fremont Solstice Parade, we found the fourth and final rider willing to accept our challenge to ride naked in the parade. Emily Resling’s father died suddenly last year, and the joy vanished from her life. She hopes that being part of this film will help her get it back. So do I.

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Lisa and I are taking a day off shooting Beyond Naked to attend Canon Filmmakers Live with Philip Bloom today.

Philip’s combination of talent, humor and boundless curiosity for the latest thing in DSLR filmmaking have made him an icon of the revolution.

I’ve been following Philip’s blog for two years, and it’s safe to say that half of what I (technically) know about DSLR filmmaking I learned from him. Kind of a strange thing, to have learned so much from someone so far away, who I’ve never met. Looking forward to thanking him in person today.

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There’s an excellent conversation happening right now on D-Word, the online community for documentary filmmakers. Peter Broderick, host of the conversation, is an expert on the changing distribution models that every filmmaker needs to understand.

I learned about a couple of new services that I’d never heard of, in particular one called Distrify that allows you to embed your film as a free preview or instant paid viewing on social media sites, in same way you would a Vimeo player, only you get to charge money. Distrify takes a 30 percent cut. And, I got some great ideas for promoting and distributing the film I’m currently making.

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I tuned in today to Vince Laforet’s CreativeLive workshop, and much to my surprise I discovered that my friend Miguel Edwards is the artist who is being featured in the documentary film that students are creating this weekend. Go Miguel! Yesterday’s workshop was pretty lame, with Laforet spending a lot of time doing weak overviews of Adobe products that he obviously didn’t know how to use himself. But today is back on track and well worth watching. Here’s the link: http://creativelive.com/live. I also caught a glimpse of Seattle photographer John Cornicello in the background of some of the shots, where it appears he’s on the crew as gaffer. He’s one of the people I’ve interviewed for Beyond Naked. Nice to see some familiar faces at this high-profile workshop.

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This Seattle documentary film has been shot and needs to raise a small amount of money to complete the film. A small donation can help it across the finish line.

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Let me begin with a disclaimer: I hate internet advertising. And I know hate is a strong word. But let’s face it: advertising sucked in newspapers, and who reads them any more? It sucked on TV and it sucks on billboards. Advertising is the primary reason I almost never listen to the radio (but joyfully listen to podcasts), and don’t EVER watch TV (No, I don’t count watching Battle Star Galactica on Netflix as watching TV).

When I was running Biznik, we experimented with advertising as a business model. It failed utterly. So few people clicked the ads, that we didn’t even generate enough revenue to operate the servers. It’s my opinion that advertising as a revenue model works on only the largest of sites. I doubted it would ever work on Facebook, and it didn’t for the longest time. But then Facebook became so big that even a ridiculous, antique business model that depended on them annoying their members could, and does work for them. But I’ve never clicked on a Facebook ad.

Until today. This is the ad that caught my eye:

I was reading a post that my friend Hazel Grace made about my film, Shine: The Entrepreneur’s Journey, which became available online last week (thanks Hazel for posting that!) and the words “Economist,” “independent” and “film” entered my consciousness somehow from the right sidebar that I normally tune out completely. Just goes to show that advertising does penetrate our consciousness on some level. So I click on the ad, and discover what is perhaps the PERFECT venue for my film: The Economist, in partnership with PBS NewsHour, is looking for films that they can cut into 6-8 minute segments for airing on NewsHour.

“…the project will feature films whose new ideas, perspectives, and insights not only help make sense of the world, but also take a stand and provoke debate.”

Well I read that and immediately realized SHINE is a perfect fit for this venue. 15 minutes later, I’d submitted the film at the Economist Film Project website, which makes it a snap (allowing the submission of films posted on Vimeo, thank you very much).

If my film gets aired on PBS as a result of this ad, I may have to amend my hardline position against internet advertising. If advertising can help an indie filmmaker find an audience for a niche film, is it totally evil?

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I’m pleased to announce that my first film is now watchable online. I made this film with co-director Ben Medina, from whom I learned much of what I know about filmmaking. It’s a talkumentary about the elation, fears, dreams, and tears that accompany anyone on the entrepreneur’s path.

We had a nice review of shine today on AllBusiness.com, who sent a reporter to our premier of the film which happened Sunday evening at a small theater in Seattle.

Through intimate interviews with entrepreneurs, experts, and educators, the journey of entrepreneurship unfolds revealing the challenges, pitfalls, rewards and successes of self employment. SHINE encourages you to ask yourself what kind of entrepreneur you are, and inspires you to think about what kind of entrepreneur you want to be.

The film includes interviews with typical entrepreneurs as well as a handful of high-profile entrepreneurs including iStockphoto founder Bruce Livingstone and Scott Shane, a professor at Case Western Reserve and author of 13 books about entrepreneurship.

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Today was my first day of filming with my custom shoulder rig. And to sum it up in a word: sweet. The rig is light, easily shifts aside so I can have off-camera conversations, and rock-steady when I need it to be.

One limitation is that everything starts to look like it’s shot at eye level because, well, it is. But I discovered a workaround for that today: wear knee pads. Seriously. With knee pads on, I can drop lightly to one knee while shooting, and put the camera at the same level as I’d be if I were hand-holding the camera football style. Touchdown!

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Visual Contact relaunches officially today, a company that I’ve been running for more than a decade, but that until until now was focused on web development. As of today, Visual Contact will focus exclusively on producing videos for commercial clients, with a focus on the needs of schools. Check out the new site at http://www.visualcontact.com.

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