Well, another film is being heralded as the next "Blair Witch" of viral web marketing. It's no surprise that it's another faux documentary (or "docu-fiction" as these filmmakers prefer to term it.) "September Tapes" is creating all the confusion that a good mixture of reality and fiction should (even though the film has been widely covered from its screenings this year at Sundance and Cannes.) Mike and I have been having some lively email discussions about the campaign, but I think the important issues relate more to the faux doc format (and why that drives filmmakers to build natural virals.)

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Keeping up with multiple blogs has become a tremendous pain, especially now that I've got yet another one going on another niche of topics. I think I've worked out a new system to keep myself on track and publishing to each of them (ah, famous last words) and now I just need to jury rig a system so that it's clearer when I'm not particularly active posting here I might still be posting thoughts about independence and film or thoughts on the exchange of attention for revenue in another spot.

When we took "Nothing So Strange" to Slamdance in 2002, the actor that played Bill Gates in the movie came with us to the bustle of Park City. Among the amusing moments were the looks on the faces of the people staffing the Apple booth when Steve Sires went to check his email on an iMac. Two and a half years later, a photo from that is getting passed around again -- from Adam Curry to Wiredblogs to others. Perhaps one of the DVD easter eggs Flemming snuck into the release? Even I don't know all the easter eggs he stuck in that DVD.

As further evidence that the digital downloading culture is about to crash like a wave upon feature films, a press release for Ipsos-Insight’s Quarterly Digital Music Study Tempo reveals that between late-December and early-January 21% of their study group had downloaded a full-length feature film from the Internet (in fact, 9% of them had done so in the last 30 days.) It's time for filmmakers to starting getting the product out there ... otherwise that landscape is going to be dominated by rips of commercial DVDs (sorry Artisan ... sorry Focus Features ... sorry Newmarket.) Of course, if you listen to the MPAA when they quote AT&T Labs, "77% of popular movies being illegally traded online were leaked by Hollywood insiders." Studios aren't going to lead the way on this one anymore than they did on MP3s: it's up to the independents to find the business models that work.

/. points out a fascinating Scientific American interview from last month with the founder of the Moving Picture Experts Group (responsible for such formats as MP3 and MPEG-2) about the future of digital media. Leonardo bemoans the current issues that have kept digital media from expanding to it's potentials, and his common sense approach is a breath of fresh air.

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Now that my second blog is basically public as well, I've had to crystalize my thoughts on what goes in each blog. The best I've been able to come up with is that this blog is more raw, more about experiments in process, and written more for my "inner circle of collaborators" than the other blog (which I'll try to treat as writing for people who are not as initiated in the topics I'm writing about.)

The quiet launch of one of our newest experiments means that I can at last start talking a little bit more about plans in the work. Where brands like indieWIRE used to be the "new media pressure on traditional brands," those same new media brands could very well suffer if they don't embrace the power of community publishing.

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