2025 Year End Reachout!

1. 2025 Is Closing

2. Only 14 Days Left

3. 2026: What Will You Do?

2025 IS CLOSING

The IPG has made incremental but consistent progress in 2025, and it’s in no small part due to the support of committed IPG members like you!

This year we refined the Direct To Audience Initiative into a workable structure, entitled FilmPod and Digital Box Office, and took the first steps to manifesting those into a new platform. Some IPG members are involved directly in this initiative - now spun off into a separate platform that will serve the growing independent film community. Anticipated launch is early summer 2026. If you want to be involved - if you have film business skills, administrative skills, or a film title, or you want in on the ground floor of the next paradigm of film distribution - there’s still time to get in. Contact Shadow at the email below.

We also have worked on the new expanded Members Handbook, which will be out shortly. Edited by Shadow Dragu-Mihai and co-edited by Matthew Frazier.

We have done so much more this last year, and will be doing so much more in 2026.

We put several early career producers through the PUNC program, creating the show Uncharted Freedom (currently in post production). They are ALL working in the industry at this point, from positions on independent productions to TMZ.

The PUNC program through Stage And Screen Innovations (our 501(C)(3)) did NOT receive any grant funding this year. We were able to progress our mission through the financial and time contributions of myself and SSI Artistic Director Diamond Monique Washington IPG, and some very small but valuable contributions from IPG members and outside. We anticipate that in 2026 SSI will be able to receive grant funding, but we need to hire a proper grant writer - and we need to keep moving forward. PUNC and SSI are helping the next generation of talented creators affect the industry. Share the vision - get involved as a mentor, as a producing instructor or as a financial supporter at any level. On that:

ONLY 14 DAYS LEFT TO GET YOUR 2025 TAX DEDUCTION

Support film education, advance the arts and get a tax deduction to boot at https://stagescreen.org/support-arts

2026: What Will YOU Do In The Disruptive Year To Come?

2026 is going to be a disruptive and tumultuous year in the film industry, more so than the last few.

Here are my RANDOM THOUGHTS and what I and my partner are doing this year:

The IPG has a monthly virtual meet and greet, on a weekend, time announced the week before. And each Tuesday Diamond Shadow Productions has a virtual meet and greet at 2pm Pacific. Reach out to me here at [email protected] to get your link to either of those. We’ve been doing this for several months now. It’s a great time to meet new people, talk about our projects, talk about the IPG and possibly collaborate, get hired, or hire someone. You are all welcome!

AI has changed the world already. AI is here to stay. We are, in fact in an industrial revolution which is moving forward on a monthly timeline instead of the decades timeline of past industrial revolutions. Entire industries are in upheaval. The film industry - not really, yet. But it will be. However, AI is anticipated to finally stabilize late 2026 or 2027, maybe even crash (or not). If that comforts you, I am sorry to say AI is just the beginning. The next change, and it will be a sea-change, is quantum computing (QC). QC in the last year has moved from crazy theory to practical proof, and it is passing milestones weekly. QC was hoped to be practical by 2050 or 206. Not it is anticipated to be viable as early as 2028 - just 2 years away. The smart money is already moving to QC. So what is QC? The shortest answer is that for complex applications, even the prototypes that we use now have solved problems in seconds which would take networked supercomputers 10,000 years or longer. Quantum computing is going to change our world fundamentally. And the change is going to overlap and surpass the AI revolution. Interesting times.

So we at Diamond Shadow Productions Inc. have formed Aerith AI, (SSL certs are pending on that landing page, so your browser may throw and error). We are moving all our actual production into that entity. This includes the live action features Dark Veil and Nightcrossings. Aerith AI is a new startup which integrates generative AI into the current 3D/2D/cgi Visual Effects pipeline, but also is developing quantum computing solutions to VFX. We are modeled after Pixar. Interestingly, the Virtual Theatrical program undertaken by Stage And Screen Innovations will also be able to benefit from that work. The Virtual Theatrical program is developing new directions in immersive and interactive theater, including technology like holographic projection. The first production being developed is an adaptation of Three Gothic Doctors And Their Sons, an immersive production of Joey Madia’s book of the same title.

Other changes: Will Netflix or Paramount get the WB? Some are saying Apple will end up buying it. Some say Apple still is after Disney. Some say Sony and Apple will end up the main film distributors on the planet (as they are the main music distributors). In any event, the studio cartel is moving inexorably to monopoly.

AI has changed search engines. AI summarizes your website so that, when it comes up in a search, no one need click through to it - creating the “zero click search” (ZCS). This is a nightmare for those of us who need to market - traffic need not ever reach your site, potential market need never see your actual content. This

One of the ongoing research tasks the IPG is doing is how to get our film product direct to an audience, while the distribution and streaming nets are controlled by are cartel, who has structured the industry to extract all revenues and keep them itself. And how do we get around the monopoly who controls the search engine, and the corporate algorithm on every platform - which is the only real way to market generally these days? We are studying disruptive historical responses to monopolies in other industries - we do have some answers forming.

The IPG will be expanding membership widely in 2026 - we will be introducing seminars, panels and educational workshops for members and non-members. We will be pushing to become the leading voice advocating for the independent creator. YOU are invited.

We are facing great change - how will you respond?

WHAT ARE YOU PLANNING FOR 2026? Contact me, discuss, share and explore. If you have a seminar, workshop or panel you would like to conduct, be part of, or suggest, let us know! Contact me at [email protected] and get the time and link to one or our ongoing virtual drop-in sessions. Or just arrange a meet to discuss the future of the industry or your projects!