Interviews with Digital Media Thought Leaders
How A Young Film Producer Uses the Internet
Podcast Video | Posted by Phil Leigh on November 24, 2008
If you would like to learn how a successful college student produces movies and uses the Internet to organize his workforce, publicize the film release, and distribute the film itself, this interview is for you.
Our guest today is Jesse Newman who is a college senior at the University of South Florida. He is also a budding film director who has achieved notoriety on a national basis. For example, of the 750 films submitted in Florida to the national CampusMovieFest competition earlier this year, his was rated number one. The film moved on to become one of the top twenty in the United States. Owing to the film’s success, Jesse was chosen to intern at the Cannes Film Festival.
Jesse is a devoted Apple fanboy. He created his professional-looking website using the iWeb software that is included with all Apple computers. Jesse claims that iWeb is so easy to use that nearly anyone can create websites as professional-looking as www.jessenewmanfilms.com. His website and associated media files are hosted by the Apple Mobile Me service for which he pays $100 per year. In addition to being an incipient film director and full time college student, Jesse works 30-hours weeks in sales at the local Apple store where I met him.
For now, Jesse is focused on getting ready for his next CampusMovieFest competition. He needs to submit a new film in February. I found it fascinating to learn how Jesse is getting organized. (As a point of disclosure Campus Movie Fest is associated with Apple.)
One way was to invite his Facebook to join him in the project. He received over 200 responses for actors, actresses, cinematography and other specialists. None are expecting to get paid, but want to do the work for the experience and public exposure. Jesse also believes that Facebook is a good way to stimulate interest in his films and he has about 700 friends.
To enhance distribution of his films, Jesse has his own channel at YouTube.com. Often he even uses the YouTube “embed code” to place his movies on his Mobile Me website thereby avoiding the need to host the media files at Apple.
Length: This video interview is about 10 minutes long.
Categories: Podcast Video
Tags: Apple, CampusFilmFest, Cannes-Film-Festival, digital-media, Internet-Movies, Internet-video
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Thanks Phil, another great interview.
Tho, I must quibble with the “GenX” categorization. Folks my age were called Gen X back in the late 80s. At this point I’m old enough to be Jesse’s father. Some reporters have even been referring to president-elect Obama as the first GenX president!
[...] Phil Leigh at Inside Digital Media has an interview with USF senior and budding auteur Jesse Newman. [...]
Dave- Your point is well taken.