Our Jen Produced a Movie!

If you've slept through WebcamMurder.com (but were awake for a little while) you remember Jenna Edwards as Jen, the Internet lifecaster who organized the other webcammers in hopes of raising their ratings against competitors Google and Yahoo and the Weather Channel. In real life, Jen has been using those skills to produce April Showers, the new movie about the Columbine killings that's been getting lots of attention from audiences, reviewers and even the news.

Next to Jen in the photo above is Andrew Robinson, the movie's writer and director, who was a student at Columbine at the time of the shooting. The movie opened last night and DVDs can be pre-ordered on the April Showers website. You can find out why Jen and Andrew are glad they were turned down by Sundance and how they learned to distribute a movie on their own in Episode 12 of the April Showers podcast at the website and on iTunes. They also reveal their next project.

Congratulations, Jenna!

Will Twitter Help Movies Put You to Sleep?

What stuck with me from a teleseminar by marketer Dave Lakhani was finding out that tweets by moviegoers as they're still in the theater watching are starting to make or break the opening weekend box office. Twitterers with a massive following (@aplusk, 1,105,893/me, 50) could kill potential blockbusters with a word or two...say, "boring" and/or "puts me to sleep."

The question is: how will this immediacy affect the film sleepy genre as it gains a foothold in the entertainment industry? People who love the movie will be out like a light and in no condition to tweet. People who, for whatever reason, remain awake will text, "I am still awake," which, during the transition period, may be thought to be a good thing and widen the audience by default.

How this will play out as Twitter's popularity spreads remains to be seen. As the inventor of the genre, I am hopeful if wary that the 140 character limit will render reviews of my movies vague enough to entice viewers to take a chance on this latest upgrade to the 100+-year-old medium.

Do You Have to Be Real to Be Famous?

This clipart speaks her mind in Film Sleepy's entry for If.net's contest to win 15 seconds of fame. She asks the question everybody's wants to know but is afraid to ask, as we head into the age of robotics: "Do you have to be real to be famous?"

You can catch her whole 15 second speech on her entry page.

Movies to sleep through tweet too

Did I tell you you can reach me at http://twitter.com/Sondra? I know this post is short, but I’m practicing writing in 140 character bursts.