There's a couple ways of thinking about Twitter. One is that it's a waste of time, a bunch of people writing about what they ate for breakfast. Yes, there's some of that.

But you can also use the service to monitor news and network for jobs.

I use Twitter as a sort of link blog. As a filmmaker, I follow a lot of movie news and horror genre bloggers to get the latest headlines. Here are some recommended accounts worth following:

MOVIE NEWS
http://twitter.com/Variety
http://twitter.com/twitchfilm
http://twitter.com/slashfilm
http://twitter.com/cinematical
http://twitter.com/Chud_News_Feed
http://twitter.com/DrewAtHitFix
http://twitter.com/rejectnation

HORROR MOVIE NEWS
http://twitter.com/dreadcentral
http://twitter.com/BGhorror
http://twitter.com/BD_News
http://twitter.com/horrorsociety
http://twitter.com/FEARnet

FILMMAKING INFO
http://twitter.com/TriggerStreet
http://twitter.com/FansOfFilm
http://twitter.com/bcfilmmaker
http://twitter.com/scriptmag
http://twitter.com/ScreenplayTips
http://twitter.com/filmlab

FILM FESTIVAL LISTINGS
http://twitter.com/filmfestlounge
http://twitter.com/ominous_events
http://twitter.com/bsidenews

TIPS ON USING TWITTER AND FACEBOOK
http://twitter.com/mashable
http://twitter.com/twfeed
http://twitter.com/MrTweet

I also put out content on a number of blogs. How do I get that information in front of eyeballs? I post promotional links on Twitter... but that's not all. Not everyone is on Twitter, of course. It's growing, but it's nowhere near the size of the growing Facebook or the fading Myspace.

Ping.fm is a site that aims to make the dissemination of information easier. I can post something once to my Ping account and let them repost it to my Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace status updates.

Easy, right? Get ready for the black belt stuff.

With a Twitterfeed account, you can hook up your blog RSS feeds to automatically repost to Twitter... or even Ping. So now I write a new blog post, RSS sends the info to Twitterfeed, which Pings it to all three accounts. This is not for the amateur -- I've run into some glitches, but if you understand RSS, it's worth it.

(I'm not even going to get into how I hooked up Ping to AIM so I could post via chat in Gmail. Yeesh.)

(I'm also not going into detail about FriendFeed, mostly because I haven't quite figured it out yet. Some people love it as an alternative to Twitter.)

The point is, I'm putting things out there. Not all of it is going to interest everybody, but Twitter and status updates are for short thoughts, like headlines. It's a great way scan what others are writing, but also build a personal audience by feeding info about your own projects. An engaged audience can be a powerful resource for you down the road.

...Tweeting like a true Captain of the Internet at http://twitter.com/mikeboas

Up until now, iTunes has made it difficult for independent filmmakers to sell their work through their service. They want to deal with big studios or distributors, not a million little guys who require a million little checks once a month. The alternative has been to give away iPod friendly files in podcast feeds, but you don't make any money that way.

There are a couple distributors who are dipping into the indie well for content to sell. One such is ShortsInternational at britshorts.com, which handles a lot of high end award winning shorts.

A recent episode of This Week in Media alerted me to TuneCore.com , which will take your hard copy submissions and run them by the "editorial staff" at iTunes. Users pay iTunes, iTunes pays TuneCore, and TuneCore pays you. Not a perfect solution, but it's a start. This is similar to the way CD Baby works with indie musicians, although I doubt there's a gatekeeper that judges the content of songs.

While iTunes is the holy grail for filmmakers -- as it's already being used by a huge chunk of the population -- there are some alternatives. MeDeploy.com is a competing service, an "iTunes for indie film producers." There's also Amazon Video On Demand (formerly Amazon Unbox), which works with CreateSpace.com (formerly CustomFlix). These services sound great, but are they really that different than video-on-demand sites I've submitted to in the past, like Dave.tv and Vuze.com?

Most likely not, but Amazon does have something going for it -- a name that people trust. And that is a huge deal when it comes time to promote. If I send out an email blast saying "buy my film," I think people will be more likely to pay if they already have an Amazon or iTunes account. Asking someone to pay AND download a program they've never heard of is a hard sell.

Edit 10/06/08

See the comments for a clarification on MeDeploy.

I was also contacted by Indieflix, which I've considered using for DVD sales in the past. Indieflix now distributes films through iTunes, the first of which should be up late October early November.

Edit 10/08/08

Since posting this article, I've heard feedback that Shorts International is notorious for not paying royalties to filmmakers. That's reason enough to be wary of them, along with their exclusive contracts that restrict you from selling to other online distributors.

I'd like to know more about selling shorts on iTunes, but I'll need to do some research. (To give something away in iTunes, you simply put it in a podcast feed.) Basically, I know how to give away content, but not how to sell it. That's one of the topics discussed in a recent Mad Dog Movies Podcast.

Will the general public pay for shorts, especially after sites like Youtube have conditioned an audience into expecting short form content for free? It may be a long shot, but it can't hurt to try.

Here's an article from Deep Structure that raises the same questions.

I've been looking through the Shorts area of the Itunes store. It's not easy to find -- shorts are listed in the lower right (ghetto) corner of the movies page.

I can see all the shorts listed by distributor. Everything is Disney, Pixar, Sundance, Tezuka (out of Japan?), Shorts International, and two wild cards. One is The Tribe, mentioned in the above article as having special circumstances.

Like any distributor, if they wanted your film they'd have you sign a contract. Non-exclusive is the way to go -- you don't want to give away exclusive distro rights. Also, they may want rights to DVD, too. You can usually negotiate those issues.

One cartoon/music video I had my eye on was the Doogtoons produced Weird Al video, "Trapped in the Drive Thru." I contacted Bryan at Doogtoons.com, and he said that the Weird Al video was handled through Sony. That makes sense, since it's in the music video (not the short film) section.

He suggested using Payloadz.com to sell hi-res versions of short films, which is something they do. I've used Payloadz for other files before, and it's fairly simple to set up. You accept payments from consumers through Paypal, and then they get access to the file to download from Payloadz as a one time thing.

The problem there is that people have to know about you, seek you out, find your website, and then pay. The advantage of iTunes is the huge numbers of random people finding you accidentally. There would certainly be more sales through iTunes. (Although you'd have to split the $1.99 with the distributor.)

Over at the CinemaTech blog, there's a run-down of the companies that have dealt with iTunes or might have dealings in the future. Check it out here.

"New Video" is another company that caught my attention, handling mostly long form documentary content. Read about it here.

I know musicians who use CD Baby to get their music into iTunes. Could this happen for filmmakers with sister company Film Baby? CD Baby was recently purchased by replication giant Disc Makers, so that may become a factor in future distribution deals.

Stay tuned for more blogs on the subject.

Here's a collection of film related links for the Rochester, NY area. I'll be updating this periodically.

Read more

Over at the NY Times website, there's an incredible demonstration of box office trends. It's an interactive flash graph of every(?) movie from 1986 through 2007.

Rollover the peaks and valleys to see how much cash each movie made. If you move the slider at the bottom, you can go back all the way to 1986. I wonder how many films are listed? Hundreds?

Click the pic below: