iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Other Internet “Film Festivals”

Your own Web site isn’t the only place to post your movies on the Web. Fueled by the recent success of independent, low-budget movies, Web sites have sprung up whose sole purpose is to accept and show independent, student, and amateur movies.

A number of these sites went under during the Great Tech Industry Meltdown of 2000–2003. Those that remain have much more obvious links to commercial Hollywood studios (that is, they show ads and sell DVDs). But the independent gene is still alive within them.

Most of these sites don’t accept porn or home movies. But if you’ve attempted anything more ambitious, you lose nothing by posting your work on the sites. There’s no charge. You generally retain the rights to your movie. And if your work is great, it will be noticed.

Tip

Before posting your movies, watch a few of the featured movies already on these Web sites to get a feel for what people are doing and what kinds of movies each of these sites accepts. You may get more out of watching the movies that other people have posted than posting your own. The lessons you can learn from other amateurs and independents—both in the mistakes they make and in the clever techniques they adopt—make this book’s teachings look like only Chapter 1.

Perhaps the most accessible is video. google.com, run by, of course, Google. The cool thing here is that posting your video is free—but you can actually charge money for it. You can decide to charge nothing for viewing it, or 10 cents, ...