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Sujewa Ekanayake

Tell us about your blog (in a few sentences)

I started blogging at a blog called Filmmaking For The Poor which focused on ultra-low budget, D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) filmmaking and self-distribution. Then after about a year, I started my current main blog, identified by different names from time to time, but generally known as DIY Filmmaker Sujewa.  I focus on my own filmmaking & distribution adventures. My feature comedy project called Date Number One has given me lots to write about. I also write about other indie films & filmmakers,  with interviews whenever possible. I’ve written about the film festival SilverDocs, and I write about humanitarian activism and Sri Lanka-related issues from time to time; those are two topics that I care about. And sometimes, if I really feel like it, I write about Hollywood or indiewood projects & related news.

How would you describe your readers? Do you have much contact with the people who read you?

Most of my readers are probably indie filmmakers or indie film bloggers.  There is no way to know for sure.  But I have met and or talked with (usually through email) several dozen readers over the past few months. I have weekly contact with some of my readers.  I have a stat counter on my blog so I can tell how many times a day, roughly, the blog gets visited. This is not a highly scientific estimate, but I would say my blog gets read a couple of hundred times a day. Low numbers, but the readers – usually filmmakers or bloggers – are the types of people I want to communicate with. So a small but high quality readership, as far as I can tell.

Tell us how – and why – you started your blog?

I started the blog in order to promote my movie and myself as a filmmaker, and to network with other filmmakers, bloggers, and anyone relevant to indie filmmaking and distribution, and to get info about things that I consider important out to the world. I went to Blogger and started my blog –– the site was being used by other people and has so far been are easy to work with.

Describe your blog day – do you work at home? Go to a café? Sit in an office?

I blog when I have to or when I feel like it. Either way, I try to do at least one new blog post a day. There is always a ton of stuff that I can blog about; the world is huge and indie film is a deep subject. A lot happens in this field every month. Sometimes I blog from the computers at home, sometimes from work at my day job at a book store.  And sometimes when I am on the road, traveling - I have blogged from a friend's house in Seattle & I have blogged from a cafe in NYC while eating oatmeal.  I guess my favorite place to blog is from work after hours.

How do you find things to blog about and how do you decide that a entry is worth being in your blog?

Well, I am not a journalist or a professional writer. My chosen medium is film/filmmaking, so writing/blogging/self-publishing is a fun thing for me to do. It's a hobby, but a very useful one for my filmmaking work. I blog about whatever I feel like, whatever I am moved to comment on. Only very occasionally do I not publish posts, and usually it’s because the subject of a given post required a lot of research and by the time I was done with it or when I would get to it the topic may have already been discussed by another blogger or news outlet to a very detailed degree. So, when I start writing a post I know that it is like 99% guaranteed that I will publish it. And, as I said before, I have to be inspired by a subject in order to blog about it or I have to feel that blogging about a certain topic is essential to my film work, or for the general well being of the world.

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DIY Filmmaker Sujewa

What is your favorite blog entry?

That's a tough question but if I had to choose one I can't go wrong with the post I wrote about self-distribution being the new frontier of US indie filmmaking.

What was your most popular/controversial blog entry?

One was when I asked, through a post, if film festivals should share a part of their revenue with filmmakers. That was pretty controversial and I think won me a couple of enemies. But over time everyone, myself included, has chilled out about that post.  At present, I think that most indie film festivals do go to great lengths to do right by the filmmakers but I think it would still be very cool to see fests share a small percentage of their box office from a given film's screening with the director/owner of that film. Perhaps this will become a reality in the future.

Is blogging the new path to fame and fortune?

Maybe for some.  But for many indie filmmakers, myself included, it is a path to getting some publicity and keeping in touch with people who may be interested in our work. It’s a path that leads to comparatively limited results (compared to advertising on television or nationwide newspaper advertising), but something that can help sustain enthusiasm for projects that often take months or years to complete.

What separates journalism from blogging?

Some bloggers are journalists in a classical, old media sense, as in they are trained to be journalists and work for a professional media outlet in a news gathering and reporting capacity. So I think what separates journalism from blogging is who’s doing the writing, that person’s goals, and the intended audience for the piece. In the greater world, for many readers, there probably isn't a big difference between journalism and blogging. Blogging is a type of journalism, or is a tool of journalism, I would say.  Some blogging now is indie journalism. Just as the difference between a Hollywood movie and an indie movie has faded in the eyes of many ordinary audience members, I think in time blogging that resembles news reporting will be considered mainstream journalism.

Who are the bloggers that you read religiously?

I read the blogs page at indieWIRE, where lots of indie film bloggers post. Also I regularly read GreenCine Daily (where editor David Hudson puts out an amazing amount of film links and other posts every day), The Chutry Experiment (by media professor Chuck Tryon) and Hollywood Is Talking (LA area-based indie & other film-focused blog). I also regularly read Pamela Cohn's blog Still In Motion. She's got a lot of great interviews & other indie film biz & personal writing there.

How has your life changed because of your blog? Has it gone in any new directions because of your newfound prominence?

Blogging about indie film and my own filmmaking and distribution work has allowed me to get to know various people in the industry: other bloggers, film journalists, festival programmers, movie theater programmers, other filmmakers. So it has made my work of making and distributing indie films easier. Probably the best reward is getting to know some quality, like-minded individuals who also blog. Blogging has improved the quality of my life. One concrete example of that on the film biz front was getting press access to SilverDocs '07, which would not have happened without my blog. I was able to see pretty much any film I wanted at the fest and attend any party & talk to any director –– and that was a very cool experience.