The words pictured above weren’t my 2011 “three words,” those were C.C. Chapman’s, co-author of the bestselling Content Rules. Mine were actually these (and while you’re at it, don’t forget to watch this). Sadly, I couldn’t track down a suitable screenshot of my PROJECT, RESOLUTE, and LEGACY to replace CC’s so this will have to do.

I’ve finally decided what 2012’s Three Words are to be – after a month and a bit of deliberation – so I thought I’d unspool them today during The Downtime. I’ll return to these at least twice more during final week of December, before “the Bris” as it were on January 1st, but in the meantime allow me to explain why I chose these particular three and why I’ll be gunning hard for these during the third year of the second decade of the third millennium, aka “2012.”

Enough with the suspense already. Here they are:

• KIN.
• HONE.
• MITIGATE.

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There was this bit of business from the summer where I made a point of examining my past twenty tweets, determining how many were self-directed or self-aggrandizing versus how many were for the benefit of my community.

Basically the question came down to: how much did I hoard versus how much did I share? How much did I make it all about me versus how much did I make it (mostly) about others?

Let’s look at my past twenty tweets as of today’s writing. Here’s the tally…

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Yesterday’s post about the differences between Canadian and American filmmakers garnered a couple of interesting replies at the blog. It would seem there are more than just a handful of people who’ve been thinking about the same issue and I thought I’d highlight the best responses of the day, which came courtesy of David J. Fulde of Halifax, Nova Scotia. By the way, that’s here in Canada, for those who don’t know – and yes, it’s a separate province with its own capital city and provincial government. It even has a nice port city, great bars, and a small international scene. How ‘bout them apples?

Here was David’s reply, which I’m going to parse through with my own comments…

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My clients know I’m not a huge advocate of financing your film or documentary project through soft money sources. It’s typically not a strategy I include in a list of possible marketing approaches, and in terms of relative weightings, landing public cash usually ranks mega-low on the totem.

Naturally, clients (and others) are curious as to my reticence and why I remain a staunch advocate of more DIY tactics and methodologies as opposed to feeding from the same trough most Canuck indie filmmakers do.

Explanation. That’s what a blog’s for. Shall we dive in?

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