On a more pure social collaboration level, Stage 32, a new site for filmmakers, screenwriters, actors, crew, agents, etc., is quite live and active, with over 10,000 members in more than 120 countries.  While getting funding is part of what the site enables with networking, it’s also about casting, getting crew, finding directors and classes, and just getting advice.  We love the registration via Facebook and how easily it’s integrated there.

The founders of Stage 32 are in the filmmaker’s corner.  The two are Richard “RB” Botto, a screenwriter/actor/producer and Curt Blakeney, president of Edge Public Relations.  They’ve made it a very personal experience, with your home page containing all the things you have added and want to add, suggestions of networking, wall communications.

We’ll be watching in the months ahead to see how it grows, but it’s certainly active, with multiple projects being added at all hours.  Any social network is only as strong as the socializing it attracts, but the tools are here on Stage 32 for filmmakers to connect in meaningful ways — not just in a contest.

(via New Work)

“Design should not be a one-way street, with artists creating work in a vacuum. We believe the best design, art and content comes at the request of a specific brief, mission or client. Speculative design competitions and processes result in superficial assessments of the project at hand that are not grounded in a client’s specific needs. Art always has something to say.

There are few professions where all possible candidates are asked to do the work first, allowing the buyer to choose which one to compensate for their efforts. (Just consider the response if you were to ask a dozen lawyers to write a brief for you, from which you would then choose which one to pay!)”

Read the whole letter here. Motionographer has always had its thumb on the pulse of the creative community and this call to arms is no exception. Although crowd sourcing (in the form of contests) was initially (and continues to be) hyped as a new, democratic production model, it is suffering from  inevitable backlash, and agencies and brands should take notice.

At least designing a card is the fun part, regardless of what it says. I’d love to get this book, MyOwnBusinessCard, a collection of real designers’ own business cards, published by Marc Praquin at Design and Design. There’s something voyeuristic about scoping the intimate details of creative professionals’ cards, but since they’re designers they really know what they’re doing. My favorite is painter/street artist Matt W. Moore‘s (I learned about the book via his blog), which is both a card and a sick sticker.

Dubizzling in Dubai.

I recently went out to Dubai to visit a friend who runs dubizzle.com (basically the craigslist of the United Arab Emirates and a good resource for filmmakers if they are traveling in the region). We also made some good future connections out there for production work. Dubai is booming in every possible way and the filmmaking world is no exception. There’s a ton of money being thrown around out there which accounts for the surreal growth of the city. Comparisons to Vegas do it absolutely no justice. It dwarfs Vegas in size, money and sheer ridiculous extravagance.

We shot a piece on the World Islands ( a reconstruction of our planet using man made islands off of the persian gulf), a piece on an up and coming fashion designer in the Muslim world and a quick piece on street fashion in Dubai. All three of these pieces required us to do a lot of Broll gathering. General cityscape shots, shots of locals, signage, etc…and the experience was quite different than anywhere I’d shot before. If you’re shooting in Dubai, you realize that Dubai, like a number of middle eastern countries, is a dictatorship, and although capitalistic, it is very privatized as such. Consequently, public space, one of the things we as filmmakers take for granted, is essentially non-existent. I depend on public space to shoot stand ups, do outdoor interviews, and to visually cover a city and not having it was a unique challenge. Essentially, in most of Dubai, there are very few sidewalks and really most of the places you set foot in are privately owned developments the size of a small US city.

What does all this mean for covering Dubai??? You have to be discreet. I shot a lot of footage from the rooftops of friends buildings. I shot a ton from cars which includes some of the best shots of women in full islamic dress I got during the trip. With a DVX pointed out of stopped car window, you make considerably less noise than say, planting yourself on a tripod outside of a hotel and attempting to shoot women whose entire fashion is devoted to not being seen in public. yikes.

We also just bit the bullet and tried to shoot on the developments. We got kicked out of a number of them. Essentially you need a unique press pass for every development in the city. That kind of diplomatic haggling was not in the cards. So discreet and sneaky, like a DVX100 filmmaking ninja, I managed to get good coverage that I was pleased with. But, it was not easy. And I am glad to be back in Barcelona and the West, where public space is now a new personal favorite in the democratic privileges category.

A guest post from Urgensia affiliate, Josh Soskin, of HouseBlend Media.

The one point he mentioned which I found really interested was that 30% of his business comes to him, via the internet. He tells it like this:

I have a decent website and I made sure I was listed on every “industry” directory I can find.  I come up in the first 20 searches most of the time for “Geneva cameraman”  “Switzerland photographer” etc…..

If you’re not making sure you’re listed everywhere possible, making sure your site includes lots of searchable terms and not getting links back to your site, you’re sleeping.

I’m curious what other tips freelancers have in terms of SEO, as well as what clients look for in a producer’s website. Any thoughts?