Austin Texas is the place to be next week with the South by Southwest Music, Internet and Film Festival. Better known as SXSW, beginning on the 9th, people from all over the world will join together for a fabulously good time with great music and inspiring movies.

Besides the Festival events cinematographers will have the chance to attend several meet-n-greet events and seminars. Nikon is partnering with The Bui Brothers who are going to be running a session on how to shoot a music video. What’s cool is that it will incorporate Nikon’s latest gear – the D800 and D4 – and will feature a live band, a local group from Austin called The Statesboro Revue.

The check out MAXON’s free show. Motion graphics company MAXON along with Austin Motion Graphics Meetup is sponsoring a free event with presentations from motion graphics rockstars Nick Campbell and TRON: Legacy VFX artist, David Lewandowski.

NewTek will be delivering many of the live events through their awesome live production and streaming process at the event and to the web with broadcasts of SXSW itself along with the  John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, Gibson Guitars, GeekBeat Live and TechCrunch.

The festival started in 1987 as a music festival to draw headliners to the eclectic music scene in the middle of Texas. In 1994 they added film and interactive elements and the SXWS has become one of the major film festivals to show, attend see and be seen on the levels of Sundance Film Festival, the Chicago International  Film Festival and Cannes in France.

Many films have their debut screening at SXWS before moving on to other festivals and, for the hopeful, commercial success.

Among this year’s films are 8 documentary films competing from more than 800 submissions, 8 narrative features from more than 900 submissions as well as a showing of festival favorites from other premiere, animated, documentary and narrative shorts, and what looks like a fun event: “Midnighters” – scary, funny or controversial movies playing for a night owl crowd.

To find out more about the many film festivals nationwide and a few throughout the world, check out Videomaker‘s Festivals and Event page: http://www.videomaker.com/community/festival/. If you are having an event, festival or contest, or knw of one not lsited, you can add that yourself – we welcome all entries, our mission is toe spread the word for video producers to find new places to showcase their work. Learn about entering festivals here: www.videomaker.com/article/14945 and find out what the judges are looking for in video contests here: http://www.videomaker.com/article/12760/
The SXSW festival runs March 9th through the 17th and it’s not too late to register , although access to all events will hit you at more than a thousand dollars, you can still get tickets to the Film Festival for $595. (Of course, accommodations might be difficult if you haven’t booked yet!)

The recent South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, TX saw quite the gathering of filmmakers discuss the contentious issue of making money by way of digital distribution. Although the common belief is that DVDs will be obsolete sooner rather than later and that online video sharing sites are the future the truth is that the Digital Distribution doesnt provide the same reliable numbers as film and television does.

According to panelist Morgan Spurlock ( “Super Size Me” and “Where In The World Is Osama bin Laden?,”) “The reason numbers aren’t released (for digital distribution revenues) is because the numbers are pathetic,” he said. “The numbers are sadly low in comparison to what we expect from film and television. If you’re looking to pay your rent, not so much, if you’re looking to pay your phone bill, you have a great chance. It’s getting to a point where it’s down the road from being profitable, but we’re just not at that point yet.”

The panelists had many different ideas concerning what the best method to digital distribution is. Whether or not filmmakers should try to get the content out everywhere, or be much more selective was the main question that the panel couldn’t come to terms on. According to president of distributor New Video, Steve Savage, “It’s good to be agnostic, and I think it’s a good way to put everything out there and see what sticks but there’s also other ways to do it,” he asserted, “to be really strategic, to find where the money is.”

Discovering where that money lies may be the biggest challenge, what do you guys think? Let us know.