Guest blogger Melissa Kirkendall is the director of the Fearless Film Festival.

This is the first year for the Fearless Film Festival to offer free panels for filmmakers and the public to attend.  If that isn’t incentive enough, I’ll elaborate on each one, explaining how they might benefit you or someone you know:

The first panel, “Copyright Law and Fair Usage,” I am recommending to both filmmakers and musicians as the majority of the focus will be on music licensing issues. It takes place Saturday at 1 p.m. in the Chappell Meeting Room of the Fort Worth Public Library’s Central Branch. I pushed for this panel from my experience both with Fearless and as a filmmaker with filmmakers not having a clear understanding of what is free and clear or when something can be free and clear.  The last 2 years for Fearless we regrettably had to throw a couple of really good shorts out due to their not getting proper permission for the music in their films.  As a filmmaker, I was given bad advice from other filmmakers on what I needed to do for my own film – a documentary on music.  Had my producer and I not discovered what we could and couldn’t do, and had we not hired a great attorney who specializes in this, we either wouldn’t have been able to finish our film or we would have had to pay unnecessary expenses for music permissions.  The panelists for this panel are Tamera Bennett (copyright attorney), Linda Kordek (musical talent agent), Carty Talkington (director of Love & a .45) and Mark A. Nobles (producer for Teen A Go Go).  If you are filmmaker or a musician I strongly recommend you try to attend this panel.

The second panel is the “Texas Resources Panel.” It immeditately follows the first panel at 2:30 p.m. in the same location.  This panel is geared more towards filmmakers, as it will cover the how’s and where’s to get whatever you may need during the course of making your film in Texas.  The panelists are Meg Gould (assistant director of the Dallas Film Commission), Bryan Poyser (director of artist services for the Austin Film Society) and Tiffany Kieran (producer/production manager in DFW area).  This panel will roll over into the “Texas Film Grant Workshop” led by Bryan Poyser.  Bryan will walk you through the process of applying for a Texas Filmmaker’s Grant.  If you’ve ever thought about making a professional movie, I recommend attending this panel/ workshop.  The information and potential contacts you will receive in both of these could prove to be invaluable in your filmmaking future.  I can’t imagine why a striving filmmaker wouldn’t attend any of our panels.

My hope for these “extras” we are offering this year is to see some old and new blood attend, learn and go out and make some movies to submit in next years Fearless Film Festival!

For detailed descriptions of this years panels and panelists, as well as the selected films we are screening, click here.