One of the great things about being a great organization is that we get to work with other great organizations who share the same values that we do. Plus we get to use the word GREAT pretty often. If you don’t know, ED 08’s full name is Strong American Schools and they are pressing for a more efficient,clear, and thorough discussion about education between candidates in the upcoming election. Also, we have a banner on their front page; furthering the fact that both our organizations are working towards great things. Visit ED in 08

We are ecstatic about the launch of our MySpace page. Here is where you will upload your video, view other entries, share ideas, and meet other socially conscious fellow filmmakers. We encourage you to become part of this global initiative! Tell us what your issue is, pick up a camera, reach the masses!

Visit Film Your Issue on MySpace

Today we launched the 4th round of Film Your Issue Monday at the United Nations, co-hosted by USA TODAY, Associated Press and MTV.

The luncheon in the Delegates Dining Room, facing the east river of Manhattan, was an inspiring experience for all of us in the room, and an exhilarating start to the global competition that has grown from its modest beginnings, on a state level, four years ago.

The Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations' Department of Public Information, Kiyo Akasaka, arrived as the official program was underway, joining Special Guests Christina Norman, president of MTV; Kevin Roach, Executive Producer of the Online Video Division of the Associated Press; Eric Falt, Director of the United Nations DPI; Ed Cassidy, a Vice President at USA TODAY; and Joe Trippi, political advisor to John Edwards and architect of Howard Dean's online presidential campaign.

The consortium of media companies and cause organizations uniting to outreach to young adults globally is unprecedented for this type of competition and initiative: The United Nations, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the NAACP, USA TODAY, The Associated Press, MTV, The Humane Society of the United States, the NRDC, Starz, The Human Rights Campaign, the National Association of Student Councils, AFI Silverdocs and AFI Screen Nation, International Documentary Association, MySpace, the award-winning PBS series P.O.V., the American Association of University Professors, the University Film and Video Association and the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

The theme of remarks by these important cultural leaders was the growing power of the internet to impact social consciousness and change the landscape as to how we all receive news — notably the younger generation; the growth and significance of user-generated content, and how the interplay of the internet and USC underscores the growing democratization of media and the power of the individual voice to impact change.

We are all experience a groundswell of change in media, news, politics, and where change comes from. It's an exciting time.

The vision of Film Your Issue is giving a global platform to young adults to share your issues, local to national, from your neighborhood and personal home, to your country or ethnicity. It's an opportunity to spotlight issues, give voice to your passions and concerns.

We focus for this round on 14 to 24 year olds because we feel that young adults need to be enouraged to participate in the public dialogue, in a way that older people have already experienced, or understand. Our hope is to expand the competition so that we give voice to everybody, to express their issue!

And as a sidebar: special thanks to Jackson Family Winery for the Atalon cabernet and Freemark Abbey chardonnay, and the UN catering for the chicken medallions, lasagna and other fine food. And thanks to The Alex Hotel for their hospitality.

And to USA TODAY, MTV, Associated Press and The United Nations Department of Public Information for co-hosting the launch event, and for AP for producing the launch film on FYI's 4th year.

Event will be co-hosted by USA TODAY with Special Guest, USA TODAY Publisher Craig Moon

The date has been set for the FYI – FILM YOUR ISSUE 2007 Awards, to take place in the Delegates Dining Room of United Nations headquarters in New York City, for Tuesday, June 26, 2007.

The co-host for the cocktail awards event is USA TODAY, and Special Guest is Craig Moon, publisher of USA TODAY. Let us know as soon as possible your intentions to attend. We have rooms blocked at a special rate at the boutique Alex Hotel on East 45th Street, a few blocks from the U.N.

as an additional “Call to Action” for young adults 16 to 25 to create their own “Celebrity Badges”, invite friends to join their cause, and donate to charity

Both Kevin Bacon’s SixDegrees.org and FYI FILM YOUR ISSUE have a vision to encourage engagement in pressing social issues and taking action to make a difference. To that end, FYI and SIX DEGREES have joined forces, to cross-promote their initiatives. Kevin Bacon previously joined the VIP Jury of FYI FILM YOUR ISSUE, and was Special Guest at the launch in Park City, Utah, in January.

Participants in FYI FILM YOUR ISSUE will be encouraged, via links from the FYI homepage and a dedicated page, to create their own celebrity badge, like Kevin Bacon and other prominent leaders, to encourage their friends and relatives to support their cause. Filmmakers will also be able to attach their FYI film to the badge.

Kevin Bacon started SixDegrees.org to utilize the now-famous “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game as a way to help the planet. As he says:

“You’ve probably heard of the Six Degrees concept. Any one person (including me, Kevin Bacon) is connected to any other person through six or fewer relationships, because it’s a small world. SixDegrees.org is about using this idea to accomplish something good. It’s social networking with a social conscience. Through this web site, you can learn about and support the charities of celebrities and your friends, as well as fundraise for the causes close to your heart.

28,000 Pageviews in February and Trending Toward 40,000 Pageviews in March

In a partnership between ASCAP and FYI Film Your Issue, ASCAP executives have selected five submissions to FYI 2007as scoring opportunities to its members, to highlight the impact of musical scoring in film. Finalists with the new scores will be presented at the upcoming ASCAP Industry Expo in Los Angeles in late April. The microsite for the Los Angeles ASCAP Expo, which features details of the FYI – ASCAP joint initiative and panel (below), had 28,000 hits in February and is trending toward 40,000 in March.

The partnership between the United Nations Department of Public Information and FYI - Film Your Issue is currently featured on the homepage of the UN Chronicle magazine website, which links to a joint UN DPI- FYI page describing the initiative, offering suggested global topics of Peace, Tolerance and Migration, as well as specially-selected film clips from U.N. archives for use by young filmmakers.

The popular UN Chronicle magazine site recorded just under 150,000 total page views in January 2006, and 62,000+ total visits.

In announcing the partnership, the U.N. DPI highlighted the aim of its collaboration "to further awareness on critical global issues, and recommend to young film makers several topics of immediate concern to the world community."

» Visit the U.N. DPI - FYI page

It was an unusually high-leveled panel at U of Colorado at Boulder last evening:

• Kevin Shand. Chair, Colorado Film Commission
• Diane Sieber, Faculty Co-Director, ATLAS Institute & Associate Professor, Herbst Humanities in Engineering
• Brad Bernthal, Silicon Flatirons Telecommunications Program
• Jill Pulver, USA TODAY
• Josh Weinberg, Co-Founder, First Look Student Film Festival
• Brit Withey, Program Director, Denver Film Society
• Emilio ‘Che Che’ Mata, SVP Creative Services, Starz

As Colorado Film Commission Chair Kevin Shand pointed out, “the panel truly represented a wide cross section of the industry and all brought different perspectives to the conversation. It was interesting to learn more about what is going on outside of the traditional filmmaking model and what is going on in the minds of America’s youth.”

As Adjunct Professor at the School of Law, Bernthal said that initiatives such as FYI Film Your Issue, which underscores user-generated content, “embodies one of the most important trends in technology: the power of pushing intelligence to the edges of the network.”

He elaborated: “Consider the many vectors that make something like FYI possible, which include: a move from an analog to a digital world; processing power which makes cameras and editing capability affordable and accessible; the ease of storing (recording) and moving (uploading) information. The net result of these and other innovations is that the film fan who used to be relegated the role of the passive viewer now becomes a filmmaker.

“Rather than network edges filled with passive viewers, technology has transformed network edges into interactive sources of content. FYI leverages this fundamental development and provides a platform where the images and voices of the edges are now seen and heard.”

In a partnership between ASCAP and FYI Film Your Issue, ASCAP executives have selected five submissions to FYI 2007 as scoring opportunities to its members, to highlight the impact of musical scoring in film. Finalists with the new scores will be presented at the upcoming ASCAP Industry Expo in Los Angeles in late April.

Today, March 12, 2007, the 5 film entries went live on the ASCAP website (below), for viewing and selection by members, who are being invited to select and score one of the films and submit their entry by April 2.

At the ASCAP Industry Expo, a high-powered panel of music and film executives will screen and discuss the five films with three different scores.

Visit http://www.ascap.com/eventsawards/events/expo/fyi.html

A young woman stood up at the March 5 panel hosted by FYI and Cal Arts to explain that her generation is as engaged and concerned as those previously -- "but we haven't found the way to be activist that fits us," she explained, comparing her generation to the legendary marches and public protests by baby boomers during the 1960s Vietnam-war era.

Her assessment -- and confusion -- echoed sentiments we've heard repeatedly at public events elsewhere as the 2007 FYI competition unfolds.

The latest panel, screening and student Q&A was held at the Bijou Theatre on the Valencia campus of Cal Arts.

Overall, young adults appear as engaged and aware as previous generations.

While a young woman in the audience said that she didn't herself and her peers as equally engaged as those past, others were vehement that being aware and caring about pressing social issues was widespread among young adults.

There was heavy participation in the audience, as students clamored to discuss the current political landscape during the Bush era, the numerous media options available today, and the role of print within the landscape that now includes internet and other options.

The lively 45-minute Q&A followed the screening of winners of the last round of FYI Film Your Issue as well as a description of the international initiative which launched during the Sundance Film Festival, soliticing one-minute films from anyone age 16 to 25 on issues that matter to them. The panel of media experts and academics focused on this year's FYI theme, "Expressing Your Issue in the Digital Age," a broad overview of the activist landscape that now factors in filmmaking technologica advances and the World Wide Web to previous forms of activism, including marches.

The panelists, led by moderator HeathCliff Rothman, founder of FYI, included Deborah LaVine, Film Directing, Program Co-Director, School of Film and Video, Cal Arts; Travis Wilkerson, Documentary filmmaker and Cal Arts professor; Joe Werlinich, General Manager, Los Angeles regional office, USA TODAY; Barr Potter, Film producer and consultant; and Gabor Kalman, documentarian and film professor at USC and Art Center, Pasadena.

Several panelists remarked that documentary films focusing on social issues are becoming more popular and commercial, both in this country and overseas. Even feature films with a message are being produced, which is very evident in the themes of those pictures nominated this year for an Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film, proving that mainstream filmmakers recognize the universal appeal of films that address major social issues. One panelist pointed out that certain production companies will only finance and produce movies that deal with such issues, indicating that Hollywood is embracing the concept that films can be both socially relevant and entertaining at the same time.

As Kalman said afterwards, continuing the discussion, "In my opinion, today's students are becoming more and more engaged in social activism, compared to students of the previous couple of decades. In the documentary production classes I teach both at USC and Art Center College of Design, the subjects students choose for their documentaries are often dealing with issues of our times both on the local and global level. At Art Center, an institution-wide initiative called Designmatter was created to explore social and humanitarian applications of design and responsible business practices. In my Non-Fiction Film and Video Workshop students make short videos for non-profit organizations dedicated to humanitarian and social issues. These works examine some of the most pressing current concerns, including educational, environmental and public health issues; from reduction of violence, programs for at risk youth, aging populations, homelessness etc. The experience of working on these films is often the first exposure to these subjects for many students."

Lastly, Kalman noted that "FYI is a terrific opportunity for a large number of students to engage in an immediate, easy access and personal way, expressing their critical concerns facing us in an empowering alternative to traditional forums. I would be happy to promote it in all my classes."