When Communities Unite Around Mobile Filmmaking

It happens here and you are invited to be a part of it.

Connecting dots is a very good way to see the whole picture. Sometimes it’s hard to see the dots because we are in the trenches with them and we just see dots everywhere or we see them scattered among the vastness.

This week, I’ve been feeling something I felt back in 2009. An invigoration of sorts, that’s been evolving a few years. It comes as things come together.

When it comes to my role in the mobile filmmaking community, I am a pioneer. And that means nothing by itself. Being the first did not give me the passion, the energy and inspiration to keep going.

The Mobile Film School (non-accredited) was formed before the inaugural film festival but launched officially in September 2012.

But it does give me an introspective based on the origin of why I did what I did. Why I felt so confident to do something in such a bold way.

I put so many professional relationships at risk…I am almost sure the progress in mobile filmmaking today still makes some of them angry and I pop up in their minds, not as a “pioneer” but as a memory of someone who first brought it up in their own instance.

One of the things that came together for me this week is that the regular deadline for submitting a feature length film 1 hour to 2 hours long, is October 19.

I had to evolve and set new bounds on the horizon ahead.

When I think about how I put a call out for feature films shot with mobile phones in 2016, during our film festival, and how many incredible feature films we’ve had the pleasure of screening at our film festival, I get inspired.

But there are more amazing feature films that did not make it into our selection, or missed the submission deadlines.

Some of the feature films from our festival, and some which are not in our festival, are a part of our community of mobile indie filmmakers from all over the world. And they come to present them in person, from Australia to the UK.

In 2017, on October sixth, I published the first test episode of my new podcast, SBP Podcast (S. Botello Productions Podcast).

On October 27th, of that same year, I published the first full official episode of the podcast. The podcast had been a plan since late 2016 and I spent about a year researching it before I launched it. The podcast is six years old!

It’s only appropriate that my mind went wild this week!

Those dots that spread out all over the place are connected already. Everything is connected.

I have some pretty cool ideas to do some pretty cool things. Many ahead of their time. But none have been held so deep in my heart as the International Mobile Film Festival (2009) and the SBP Podcast Mobile Filmmaking (2017).

You know how they say good things happen in three’s?

A weeks ago I was receiving emails with news from Patreon.

I’ve had a Patreon account for the podcast for years. It has a number of exclusive/bonus podcast episodes with some of my guests.

I also used it to promote, and provide some benefits to paid members for the festival both in-person and online.

The community that we form in our festival sometimes participates in the podcast as guests. Guests from the podcast, and listeners too, sometimes participate at the festival.

SBP Podcast Mobile Filmmaking ongoing series Fade In To Film Panelists, launched in July 2023.

Wild things happen when your brain connects everything all at once.

October is the month that brought Patreon to officially announce their intentions to revamp their strategy for content creators and their members.

Thanks to how crazy the social media landscape has become since Twitter was sold, Patreon has connected its own dots. I think, and hope, they take the necessary steps internally to promote smaller creators like me.

Most social media companies that erupted since the Twitter drama, have since catered to the bigger content creators and influencers.

If Patreon does this right, as it says they plan to, it will bring attention to their smaller creators like me to bring these communities together online. This will really be a game changer for the social media landscape for creators online.

Substack’s chat feature.

Last year, we tried to use Substack’s chat feature to connect online and in-person participants in our film festival. Mostly everyone was on Instagram and wanted that exposure instead of one on Substack which was, and still is, not a social media platform.

Today’s Instagram is failing with users quickly. They’ve practically killed hashtags and reset their algorithm. Seeing each other’s posts is hard. Stories that disappear and have no way for people to connect, see each other, or comment are more popular thanks to the algorithm updates. Behind the curtain, it has more views than our posts.

Patreon is not a social media platform.

Patreon is a widely used platform with content creators who are upset with Instagram. They came to the rescue for Podcasters and YouTubers when YouTube in 2017-18 cut their ability to raise funds for their content.

Now with Patreon’s revamp of its platform, it appears they are finally allowing us to open memberships to the public. Free.

That means, that in a similar way to Substack, you can have paid subscribers/members access your media through monthly subscriptions.

However, like BMC’s (BuyMeACoffee) Extras, it also allows your free members and non-members of the public at large to purchase digital things from you.

Whether you sell tickets to our film festival, which we sold through BMC’s Extras last year, or whether it’s something like the podcasting course I’ve been working on and researching platforms for.

Even though Patreon is not a social media platform, it appears to bring creators and users together without algorithns, at least that is their plan. And I personally like that.

Mobile filmmaking podcast at the film festival?

Our next in-person film festival has been planning to bring a podcast element to the festival since last summer, as a means to bring both communities closer together.

But last week, I realized that I should bring this to the world as I did with the festival in 2009—with a big bang! A plan to design our program for the festival in a way that takes advantage of what really made our attendees last year fall in love with the event, and expanding it to include our podcast community into the in-person space.

The plan has been in the works for months.

Creators want to socialize and connect.

If social media wants to keep neglecting how communities form and stay connected online, then it’s up to us to keep growing our in-person events with our online events, and make it easier to support one another online leading up to, and post the festival.

Smartphone filmmakers unite!

I am hopeful to pull this off with Patreon as we unite our communities. We’ve been connecting mobile filmmakers since the beginning, so our plan moves forward with or without Patreon.

Photo credit: Mario Sevilla. Graphic by Susy Botello © 2023. All rights reserved.

We’re all connected.

Unity is the last part of the word CommUnity, and it begins with Communication, the first part of Community.

We communicate sharing stories and that’s how we connect and can make the world better through storytelling with film.

Levi Austin Morris (center) with Allison Lobel and Jamie Tobias of the winning feature film Paralysis presents their film during IMFF 2023. Photo by Susy Botello.

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Become a paid member to support the festival and the podcast so we can keep doing what we so better and promote more people and bring them together in San Diego in person and online. Or become a member free.

You can also subscribe to this publication with a paid subscription to keep me inspired to do what I do, to share my thoughts and my stories with you. And I thank the few who have already paid for a subscription. From the bottom of my heart…thank you!

Submit your films.

© 2023 S. Botello Productions™ All rights reserved.