Outfest 2011, LA’s gay and lesbian film festival, opened on Thursday, July 7th with sold out shows and lots of excitement.
During the opening ceremonies on Thursday night, two producers, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato received the Outfest Achievement Award. On Saturday, they participated in a discussion about their careers. Actress Tori Spelling moderated the event and was proud that the two award winners had been the producers of her reality series.
On Sunday, a group of directors and producers gave tips on how to raise money to make independent films and shared some of the mistakes they made along the way. Their No. 1 tip was to have a strong business plan to present to potential investors.
Many celebrities are attending the 10-day event that is a celebration of film and television shows. Besides Spelling, celebrities attending the fest include, Neil Patrick Harris, David Burtka, Margaret Cho, Clay Aiken, Lance Bass, and Kathleen Turner.
The film festival will run through Sunday, July 17, 2011. For more information, contact the Outfest website.
On Monday, July 11th, Digital Music News ran a short article on musicians and their use of twitter.
The article stated that artists are continually being told to tweet… just to stay connected with their fans and stay relevant. But is twitter really important to musicians? Digital Music News decided to look at some number comparisons. According to the article:
The answer is not for every artist, especially for those courting a less-mainstream, music-focused crowd. Even worse, it could be stealing valuable time away from songwriting, touring, collaborating, and other pursuits that form deeper audience connections.
The author looked at the list of the best-selling albums of the year from Nielsen Soundscan. Then they compared these rankings with the twitter rankings of the recording artists to see if there was a connection between twitter rankings and sales of albums.
The results were rather interesting. For artists like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, this is part of a broader mainstream marketing blitz. For others outside of mainstream pop that are breaking through, constant Twittering frankly seems like a waste of time. The following chart is from Digital Music News.
Many fans of Clay Aiken have been concerned that Clay does not use twitter. Perhaps Clay knows more than we give him credit for.
What do you think? Do you think using twitter is a good idea for musicians or is it a needless waste of time?