Paul Devlin, five-time Emmy Award-winner and Independent Spirit Award nominee, has been doing some creative financing in the making of his latest work, Blast!, about cosmologists launching a special telescope to the top of the atmosphere via a high-altitude balloon. (Blast is short for Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope.)

He invited his supporters to help finance Blast! for as little as $19.95 as "Blast! Participants," who have access to deleted scenes and production update videos to $40,000 for "Blast! Adventure Participants," who can host a lecture and get a guest lecture from the director and the lead scientist.

The Independent Documentary Association (IDA) wanted Devlin to join a "DOC U " panel scheduled for Monday in LA: "Creative Financing: What's the Deal?"

However, IDA board member and filmmaker Sara Z. Hutchison said Devlin was tied up in France on an assignment.

But she said Peter Broderick, president of Paradigm Consulting and moderator of the panel, and Sandra Ruch, IDA executive director, were aware that Skype had been used last May at the Cannes Film Festival, connecting some Hollywood types to a meeting in France.

James Cameron (Academy Award-winning director of Titanic, Aliens, The Terminator, etc.) and cinematographer Vince Pace participated in a 90-minute session from their Hollywood studio via a live Skype video call to talk about the stereoscopic camera they developed and are using to film the 3D movie Avatar.

So thanks to creative communications, Devlin will be joining the panel Monday from France via a Skype Video call. (Other panelists include Broderick; Jim Gilliam, Brave New Films; Danae Ringlemann, IndieGoGo; Jill Sobule, recording artist.)

Hutchison said many in the IDA community are familiar with Skype, especially "taking a meeting on Skype" and holding IDA committee meetings on Skype audio calls.
"People use Skype all the time," she said.

Video is a nice addition for the visual artists.

This is Skype's latest foray into the world of documentaries. Last April, a documentary came out about a blind adventurer who used Skype to "see."