Friday Q&A: DIY Days founder Lance Weiler
Tomorrow more than 27 filmmakers, musicians, game developers, storytellers and tech geeks will speak to patrons gathered at the DIY Days conference, a free event being held at the University of the Arts, to talk about the future of the media entertainment business.
It’s a future that seems uncertain, yet exciting: the struggle and embrace between amateur and professional work. The transformation of storytelling. Creating sustainability in media.
But most importantly: Do-It-Yourself culture. A culture that the event’s founder and organizer Lance Weiler says is as much about doing-it-yourself as it is about community. And perhaps surprising to some, a culture in which technology is deeply ingrained.
Weiler got his break with The Last Broadcast, a low budget horror film that he and a partner cobbled together for next to nothing. The film ended up being the first desktop feature film made with consumer grade video materials, the first movie distributed via satellite, and grossed $4.5 million dollars through the years.
Some believe that the Blair Witch Project might have borrowed a few ideas from the film; both are horror films presented in documentary-narrative style about low-budget filmmakers searching haunted woods who go missing. Except Weiler’s was filmed a year before the latter (and featured Jersey instead of Maryland).
Out of that experience, Weiler learned how to self-distribute, negotiate with broadcasters, and taught himself all sides of the media business.
DIY Days, Weiler’s baby, is the result of a book deal gone bad. On his own volition, that is. Offered the opportunity to write about his self-made success, Weiler decided to create the same resource for folks free online. From that decision evolved the Workbook Project, a content-rich portal for digital creatives. DIY Days is what he considers physical manifestation of WBP.
We’d be lying if we said we weren’t stoked about it. After all, we’re doing it ourselves, too. So, we reached out to Weiler to hear the why’s, how’s and who’s of DIY Days. As it turns out, we don’t have to sell our computers to gain some DIY cred.
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It’s true, folks. Media is no longer the empire it once was.
