SF360 Revealed! Part Two: Cool Tools
Hey, didja hear about SF360's upcoming website? The SF Film Society and Indiewire.com promise that the site (to be launched in March) will offer a slew of new tools for local filmmakers and audiences -- "blogs, video blogs, photo blogs, event planning, announcements, virtual production offices, project-based LANs," the SFFS's Exec Direc Graham Leggat told us, but what he said next is what really grabbed our attention: "We don't have a revenue model for this." What what what?
"How much is this going to cost people to use?" we asked him. "Zero," he replied. We paused. It didn't compute. "How much is this going to cost people to use?" we said again, a little slower and louder (he's from the UK, so maybe he didn't understand us). "Zzzeeerrro," he replied. "We don't imagine it making money on the user end. As publishers, we will leverage it as publication platform, for partners, sponsors, advertisers. But we will not take subscription fees ... It's meant to be a community-building site, to strengthen and brand SF as an extraordinatry film and media scene. And you do that by enabling people and bringing them together. So it's an open forum." Cool!
After the jump: API-type info for the nerds.
There's good news for geeky programmer-types, too; much like they can with Flickr, third-party developers will be able to build nifty new indie apps to take advantage of SF360's tools and data. "We hope to have as open of a system as possible for third-party tool development," we were told by Brian Clark, publisher and "back-office meta-geek" of Indiewire. The site's being built via the multifunctional/PHP-based Sparta Networking Software, which comes with an open API. Just how open SF360's site will be remains to be seen (f'r instance, will we be able to plug it into our Flock browser?) but we can't wait to start fiddling around with its guts and seeing what cool new widgets its users dream up.
This is part two in a five-part series examining the anticipated impact of the new SF360 program. The series examined a new local film-news site on Monday; it continues Wednesday with a One-City/One-Film event; on Thursday with a network of projectors to be installed in local high schools; and on Friday with a slew of new fests.