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For creative people, there's often an ongoing tension between how much effort one should devote to creating great content by telling original stories, and how much effort one should put towards marketing/promotion of your creative project...in effect, "pitching" the story to the industry.

The tension exists because quality story-telling takes time --time for an idea to germinate, characters to develop and grow more complex, plots to thicken. Creative development and early productions can be fraught with logistical delays, equipment failures, the rise of unexpected needs: twists and turns in casting and crewing, re-writes, changes in schedules, etc.

On one hand, there's the DIY school of rejecting traditional fund-raising paths completely, and producing and distributing independently. Much like a non-profit theatre group, pro's who have suffered through the industry's perpetual disillusionment often choose to forge their own path outside of the industry, and patch together a short film project --or god forbid, an entire feature film-- with scotch tape and glue. Usually this is achieved the old fashion way: a small team of genuine, passionate people become relentless in getting behind a project, and are resilient as Teflon in facing the above mentioned obstacles. Pushing aside the fast-talking ways of the pitch-session, the call upon the empathy and humanity of others in the biz, and through the powers of charisma and ingratiating, they secure immeasurable sums of goodwill in the form of free labor, equipment access and promotional "buzz."

Nay sayers will point to the estimated 500 "indie" films a year that are produced through equity financing that cost in and around $1million that does not achieve any measurable distribution. That's $500 million/year in private net worth that does not see any return. The traditional assumption is that in order to produce better content, you must secure better funding. This is sometimes true and sometimes false. As the much-repeated William Goldman quote goes, in Hollywood, "Nobody knows anything."

Every film or music festival you go to, you'll hear the same debate on panel about the ever-elusive "Marketing" or "Selling Your Work." There's a publicity or marketing pro who will stand up and describe the necessity of knowing your audience, positioning your project, relentlessly networking, making sure you're on the "industry radar,"...emphasizing how critical it is to use street teams and postcards and accumulate the population of small countries as your MySpace "friends."

It's the ageless "If A Tree Falls in a Forest-" concept: no matter how gorgeous and awe-inspiring the falling tree is, was it meaningful --not to mention commercially viable-- if no one was there to hear it?

As soon as this pleas is completed, another marketing person will stand up and say that approach is completely wrong. "People...you are American Independents. If you can't be original here, what is the fate of artists worldwide--?"

And so the battle continues between the "Content is King" hopefuls versus the "Best Project Still Needs Millions to Win Awards and Market Share" realists.

Recently, there were several articles on how bloggers should put their heads down and focus exclusively on their content, and how bloggers typically over-emphasize promotional techniques when what they really should be focusing on is blogging better.

One post that summarizes these articles is called Secret Confessions of a Link-A-Holic">Secret Confessions of a Link-A-Holic.

The second link is to 4 short videos of Ira Glass on The Art of Storytelling. We produced a podcast with Glass --from NPR's This American Life-- and our