Manifesto Television

That’s right, there’s a party brewing.

Venice. August 13th. Be there!

See unreleased footage from the documentary, meet the crew and cast, social justice advocates, documentarians, artists, and luminaries of all kinds!

Details and Flyer on the Facebook Page.

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Manifesto site is undergoing renovations. Enjoy as the visual feast unravels…

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That’s what’s happening.

Famed Hollywood publicist Michael Levine has come onboard MANIFESTO: Television. He will be providing publicity services for the film.

From his bio:

“Called by USA Today, “one of Hollywood’s brightest and most respected executives,” Levine has been responsible for public relations campaigns for, among others, Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand, Charlton Heston, Linda Evans, Jon Voight, Suzanne Somers, Demi Moore and Michael J. Fox. His clients have run from movie & TV stars, to sports heroes, to music figures, comics, producers and multi-national corporations. ”

He is the author of Guerilla P.R. among other best-selling tomes about modern public relations.

Need we say more? Well, maybe so. Let’s just say it’s amazing to have him onboard.

We will be shooting some of our meetings behind the scenes so you can see him in action. Can you dig it?

MANIFESTO

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THE MANIFESTO BLOGGER CONTEST

First there was the vlogger contest. Which proved to us that vloggers have a hard time stepping away from the mirror, err… camera for any period of time.

Now there is the Manifesto blogger contest.

It’s time for bloggers to showup those lazy vloggers!!!

WHAT IT IS

Manifesto is deeply interested in the work that blogs are doing covering activism related to the wide variety of social justice issues that we face (including environmental, animal welfare, human rights, health care, indigenous rights, civil rights, etc).

In the spirit of engaging bloggers and their readers in their local, physical communities, Manifesto is launching the SoCal Blogger Contest.

We are looking for bloggers who are committed to affecting change in their communities. If you are a concerned blogger, we are looking for you.

HOW TO ENTER:

1. Bloggers must make an open challenge to their readers to affect change in their communities.

2. Bloggers must ask their readers to document these efforts in some way, by journal/text, photo, and video (if available).

3. Blog readers should fill out and mail in the submission form and video (if available) to the address on the form.

4. Finally, blog readers should email all documentation (text, links, and photos) of these efforts to bloggercontest (at) manifestotv.com. *Be sure to ask your readers to mention that they heard about the challenge through your blog.*

Blogs which have concerns over net neutrality, civil liberties, and the future of television are especially urged to submit.

Up to four winning Southern California based bloggers and selected readers will be filmed and included in our feature length documentary “MANIFESTO: Television.”

DOWNLOAD (PDF) Submission Form Here.

PDF Hater? Submission form Page 1 & Page 2.

DEADLINE

January 3rd, 2008.

Technorati Tags: BLOGGER CONTEST, Manifesto blogger contest, activism, social justice issues, environmental, animal welfare, human rights, indigenous rights, , civil rights, SoCal Blogger Contest, affecting change, net neutrality, civil liberties

The Manifesto pilot is done. We finished our color correction yesterday. And we’re getting our sound mix back later tonight.

!!!

What’s next?

Well, we could use it as a tiny frisbee. Or maybe stack up the hard drives and make a chair out of it. But I think we’ll give it to one of the 5 or 6 networks/prodcos who’ve asked for it. Some, like A&E have been waiting for awhile. Not that they’ve stopped production of ‘mindfreak’ in solidarity or anything.

The documentary is rocking along as well. We made the Slamdance and the Pare Lorentz deadline. Next is South by Southwest SXSW. The rough cut edit continues and will continue through the end of the year.

If you are in Southern California, we hope that you stay safe. We all want these fires to end soon.

Technorati Tags: Manifesto pilot, South by Southwest, Southern California, fires

We have new interest on the horizon from two companies.

Namely a TV production company out of New York with 3 big shows on the air. Another is mostly a film production company notable for doing socially conscious film and television projects. Name one of the biggest docs of last year. They produced it.

That said, the G’dang Manifesto pilot is nearly finished. Whew. What a load of work…

The doc is rocking forward and was just entered into Sundance. Next is Slamdance, deadline is Tuesday.

MANIFESTATION NATION

Technorati Tags: TV production, film production company, socially conscious film, television, Manifesto pilot

Tomorrow at 4:31 am PST we will be releasing the details of the MANIFESTO: TELEVISION filmmaker and vlogger contest!

Video bloggers and filmmakers will be asked to answer certain questions (to be disclosed) that they want the world to know.

5 contest winners will receive placement in the feature length documentary, MANIFESTO: TELEVISION.

Never Surrender.

MANIFESTO

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The pilot edit is going really well. We’re assembling all the segments to take a look at the big picture tomorrow.

We should probably be celebrating!

But there’s no time for that… We’re too busy prepping to shoot some transitional elements (cutaways and interviews) this weekend to cause any trouble. What we’ll be shooting:

1. Interviews with our Manifesto subjects who have slipped through the cracks
2. Interviews with new subjects who have come us
3. At a closed event pitting 7o year old network execs against futurists (it’s not a death match, they’ll be discussing the future of television. So there will be no “Exec vs. Futurists” segment for all you dark hearted heathens.
4. Transitional stuff for the pilot

That’s it. A two day shoot. Hopefully painless.

We’re still working on those teasers for you, hopefully we’ll have some up soon…

Technorati Tags: the big picture, celebrating, shoot, Manifesto, heathens

We’re going to catch some flack for this one. Especially because our producers have a meeting with a big company doing webisode only series next month. Sometimes they license shows to network tv too, so there is hope beyond the web for that potential deal.

Here it is. Internet television from the small business end of things is not profitable. For the producer it’s not even sustainable. I said it.

Is it the future? Of course it is. But right now, as an independent producer or company, there is no way one can afford the bandwidth necessary to stream their films online. A P2P video application is necessary to even approach profitability. Even though the cost of production is going down for filmmakers, it still costs a chunk of money to create good content.

Can you go Revver or Brightcove? Sure you can. Maybe you can make a little money. But hardly enough to shoot your next film, that is unless you are getting millions of views.

You could even embed videos which are served from Youtube, Myspace, or Google into your site. But you won’t see ad revenue from the streams. You’ll see it from your pageviews/clickthroughs if you are savvy. I’m not even going to discuss how terrible the video encoding is on these sites.

I don’t desire to disrespect all of the hard working internet tv startups out there because I want to encourage the growing voices making films. However, I also think it’s important that independent producers realize that internet television is young. Right now, although it seems to be in the hands of the people, it’s really in the hands of the conglorporations. Which is nothing new. Something like five companies own the means of broadcast distribution. Why should the web be much different?

Read more

Technorati Tags: producers, network tv, Internet television, profitable, independent producer, bandwidth, filmmakers, Revver, Brightcove, Youtube, , Myspace, Google, pageviews, video encoding, internet tv startups, conglorporations, the web

So I think we’ve mentioned we’re creating a feature length doc about our show. A behind-the-scenes documentary. The manifesto of MANIFESTO, which is currently titled, MANIFESTO: TELEVISION.

Since we’re editing now, in the following days and weeks, we’re going to put up teaser videos about the making of the show so everyone can see just what it takes.

We’ll post them up until the film’s release. A little document of our pain.

The guts and the glory.

A transparent view behind the scenes of our show, where personal sacrifice is just another day at the office.

MANIFESTATE

Technorati Tags: feature length, documentary, MANIFESTO, MANIFESTO: TELEVISION, editing, videos, guts, glory, personal sacrifice