Rachel Gordon Media

News!

I’m very excited to report that Body & Soul: Diana & Kathy has added more international venues! During November and December it screened in Prague, Moscow, and Bangladesh through the American Documentary Showcase! Find out more at www.welcomechange.org

For the first time, I’m attending the Sundance Film Festival. I will be in Park City January 23-30 and if you’re going, or know people/films in the festival that I should see, please do let me know!

Ideas Percolating: As many of you know, I love coffee so had to use the analogy…

Over the past several months I’ve been forwarded many questions about educational marketing and distribution. The questions come from university faculty as well as filmmakers and distributors but they are all curious about the same issues. To save time, and make this journey a little more accessible, I am creating classes that can provide useful information about the subject, along with handouts that can be referred back to afterwards (and will be downloadable at my website). I’m writing one talk that I would do on my own, and another to be done in panel discussion format with other distribution experts (i.e. for home video, online delivery, other functions that I do not handle). The goal is not only to provide guidance to new and emerging filmmakers but also to help make media more accessible to communities that want to use it. Please let me know if this is something that your university or organization would find this useful.

Conferences??? are becoming more important – harder to get to because of expenses but more valuable because of the ability to share information and collaborate regardless of geography. Below are the conferences I plan on attending this year, but I would love to hear from you if there are others you’ve found useful so that I can plan better:

American Library Association – June in New Orleans

Consortium of College and University Media Center – October in Texas – for this event I will be submitting a panel discussion on making media accessible for people with disabilities, join me in hoping that it gets in!

National Media Market – also in October but will be in Las Vegas – but I may end up in China with my homeopathy documentary!

So this month is more about questions than information but I love to encourage the exchange of ideas, and I hope you will participate in that endeavor as well!

From many phone conversations and email exchanges I’ve had as of late about getting media into academic and social action environments, below are a few pointers everyone should understand and think about:

Effective strategic thinking:

1 – Using media as an educational tool takes time. Curriculum is put together months, often semesters, in advance and so it takes a while to make your content a part of it.

2 – Be flexible. If someone wants to preview your work to think about how to program it, don’t make it hard for them to do so. Have several delivery options for connecting to your content.

3 – Clarity – be able to explain in conversational terms why and how your content can serve students/communities in different capacities. This is usually my job, but every content creator needs to reflect on this. It usually helps if you start with the reason you chose to make your content to begin with.

4 – Technicalities – Chapters! Chapters! Chapters! If you have an hour long film, and you want it programmed by educators, it is absolutely necessary that you break up your content into usable segments for discussion purposes. This is what makes it “curricular”. Secondarily, but just as helpful, is having accessibility features such as captioning and audio description. The larger the audience it can reach the better off it is.

And now for the news…

Filmmaker Alice Elliott and subject/self-advocate Diana Braun are headed to Uzbekistan in February/March with the American Documentary Showcase! A Kickstarter project has been started to help raise the expenses of Diana’s travel as Alice is being sent by ADS but we wanted to have Diana go as well and speak from experience:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/972141640/alice-and-dianas-awesome-adventure-to-uzbekistan

In December The Beijing Film Academy will be screening Body & Soul: Diana & Kathy to an audience of nearly 1,000. It was one of only three films selected from The American Documentary Showcase.

I’m attending the Association of University Centers on Disability for filmmakers Joanne Hershfeld and Alice Elliott as the films The Gillian Film and The Collector of Bedford Street are to be screened there on November 1. I will be there all day to discuss the films, and assist with any relevant programming. Please let me know if you’d like to connect while there. The website is www.aucd.org

Yale University is in the midst of programming a multi-layered event with In Good Conscience, including having both Sister Jeannine Gramick and filmmaker Barbara Rick speak. www.InGoodConscience.com

Rachel’s Projects

I recently finished a 5 minute “work in progress” sample of the documentary I’ve been in production on about homeopathy: Full Body Centric. I’ve put the clip on YouTube in order to make it accessible, and easy to pass on. Here’s the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCf4EEDBpTo

I’m working to have a doctor trained in both conventional medicine and homeopathic treatment to help me put together a study guide to go with the finished product.

Also, the short fiction video I shot last year – but am still in post-production with – In the Family Way – is now a finalist for the Collaboration Awards, a competition organized by New York City Women in the Arts and Media.

Off to National Media Market in Kansas City this week. If you can’t come this year, hopefully you can come next! Check it out! www.nmm.net