A Conscious Effort to Post Regularly - At least for the next month

Blog are hard for me to update. Especially when I know everyone has a million other things to do than read another freakin entry someplace else. What I'm looking to do this time however is regularly post small updates on the progress of the next music video I will be shooting for John Reuben. We've shot two already and they have both been projects I've been very proud of working on.

We locked script on the next one last week. The song is called Confident and I had a interesting concept for John about having him waking up in an alley, beat to a pulp and not knowing who he was. We're running with it. Next step is storyboards and concept art. I'll be looking to post some of that. Also, items I'll try to keep this blog updated with will be the location hunt, a little bit of casting, fight choreography, figuring out which camera we'll run with, the production itself and post production coverage. It should be fun!

What might someone pick up from reading the upcoming postings? We work very light and stripped down. We're come the opposite direction from a lot of other video professionals so we've learned to do more with less. A lot more in many cases!

Here are a few images from the last shoot. Total costs were around $4k including a little equipment rental on top of what we owned, all costumes and locations, paying the talent and craft service. Not bad!

I Love Prince and the WGA

Thank you Prince, Artist formerly known as, whatever you are referred to now these days, for pissing on your fanbase and having an ego big enough to not realize you're squandering what could end up being millions of fans. Article here

Thank you WGA and Hollywood for coming to what seems to be a standstill for quite a while. Article here

Thank you Warner Music for boycotting Nokia and refusing to offer your music through their service for the time being. Article here

I believe you all are bringing us to what will be a head in the entertainment industry. A revolution. Maybe that word "convergence" will finally happen. You know, the one everyone spoke of several years back where you could watch video and communicate across anything from your TV to your Toaster while telling mom on her 2 inch phone via video that you need her to watch the kids.

The last time the WGA striked, cable got the go ahead from consumers across America. What's going to happen this time? Ratings are flat, they are falling in most cases. Many in the WGA seem to be there by default. The lost art of storytelling may be the boon for the Internet.

100 years ago, entertainers weren't exactly rich. Not the multimillionaires and celebs that we have today that blow half that cash up their nose. No, they were hard working, traveling showmen that did it because they loved it. We may be close to seeing that happen again. Especially when you have ego touting icons like Prince that wont even honor his fanbase by letting them honor him. Go Prince, help me see the media revolution through.

Then of course you have the big labels like Warner who squabble with maybe one of the MOST viable outlets for making cash right now in Nokia. Wake up Warner, your music is being downloaded worldwide everywhere. You have a legitimate partner where ringtones are ridiculously overpriced and you are peeing on it.

I love it, in the face of the giants fighting, innovation takes root. It grows and becomes something new. Bring on the renaissance.

Net Neutrality, Consumerism and the Corporate Beast Fable

Net nuetrality, what is that? It's the idea that we dont run into areas on the Inter-web where "corporations" block access to other areas of the net. I'm for it. There's a big issue I see looming where if corporations are able to block, slow and grant special access to content from other places we're running into what is going to become another TV. Believe me, it only makes sense why they would. You control what you are pushing in to you "portal", you control the results you can expect from it. I.E. You can expect to make advertising, sponsorship deals, etc where you have an idea of how many eyeballs you will have, how much you can charge such-and-such partner, etc. The small guy gets stiffed, the end-viewer gets stiffed. And we have plain vanilla content, as seen on TV - oh, and the movies too.

This is a huge deal with the broadband companies - the guys we pay to get online. The AT&Ts and COMCASTs and Time Warners. Since they are our gateway online, if they get to control this stuff, we are seriously screwed. Their arguement? That content owners get free rides without having to pay broadband providers money for all the bandwidth they suck up. That is a load of crap. There are so many interchanges, unlit fiber runs (though shrinking SUPERFAST), and fat pipes that are shared, there isnt a noticable cost, in my opinion, to the providers. Rather, they have large margins in broadband that they DO NOT have in cable ect. $50/month for a cable router for a 8Mbps connection is largely profit. Their biggest cost is supporting the vast majority of customers that screw up their PC and need help rebooting their boxes. Guys like Google - and anyone else - they complain about, pay on the other side for the huge amounts of data they have to pass around. They pay huge amounts for the servers and DCs they have to maintain. So net nuetrality needs to be in place for reasons like this. I dont want to lose out on being able to self promote a film I spilled hundreds of hours into and thousands of dollars to get shut out because Im too small to have an agreement with the broadband providers. That's whats really at risk too by the way, the mom and pops here!

Now, there is also the arguement that content sites are starting to do the same things - only more so. Such as MySpace blocking Revver as one example. Let me tell you why this is one of the dumbest ideas I've heard and I dont think really needs regulated. There once was a company called Sears. Back in the 1980's, Sears was the end-all-be-all in consumerism. It got cocky, complacent. What happened? People left it in droves. Especially once a new player named Walmart started to show up. The same cycle is becoming apparent with the big WM right now if you look closely.

The perfect online example of a company thinking it has it all but really has nothing. AOL. AOL grew quickly, had a closed network and a large captive audience. It was able to get away with a lot of things that wouldnt happen in the physical service world because nobody at that point knew where else they could go, let alone how to move the bookmarks they've stacked up over the years to that thing called Firefox. AOL knew this, they also knew they had this captive audience and were able to push around ad agencies and media buyers with stiff demands, "if you want to work with our network, you have to work by our rules, no negotiating on CPMs" They got away with a lot of that with the smaller guys. They were notorious for being very slow, not being on the ball and not giving you reliable tracking data of your campaign. Hmm, then recently they had the brilliant idea that they would phase out the dialup service, go free, ad based. What has happened? Nobody outside of AOL and the agencies it is now clamouring over ever hear anything about it. Hardly anyone knows you can even go there for free. Nobody wants to, they think theyll have to install a bunch of stuff. Now a supposed 2nd year in a row huge round of layoffs is immenent. Why? Because of poor advertising sales and dropping page views. Hows that happen?

Look, you treat your customers - whatever side they are on - poorly and in the neutral net, they are going to leave. And it's not a slow burn like Sears or Walmart. It's instantaneous. Look at the climb Facebook is currently experiencing as MySpace is starting to become the grandmother everyone would rather have in the "home".

What does this have to do with film and video? I think plenty. Madonna, Radiohead, among a growing number of others are leaving their labels along with falling CD sales. At the same time, record labels are STILL moving slowly to find new ways (or cutting edge artists) to entice fans. The fans are leaving, seeing themselves get sued and becoming extremely wary. Not in todays world. I think we are trending towards small, where the 15 minutes of fame is really there online. This is the place where self promotion is king and not being aligned with any one giant is a safe bet. Especially if they continue on their quests for growing ever larger through what amount to greedy moves. Youll see them buried before they even get started.

It has been an extremely long time since my last post. So, to keep this thing live for the moment, I'll post again. How about that!

Something I'm finding I want to really keep my eye on are several new Internet shows that have been popping up and been funded on the low side but have a really nice production value to them. Oh, and they seemingly have some story minus the over-the-top studio bland cookie cutter involvement. Sanctuary and The Interior, article here both are gathering a strong enough following that they are moving into new years of the show. Thats good. I know the Interior directors fronted 75k of their own money. Thats a fantastic value though for a multi-episode shot on location in Central America. I really hope they make their money. It would be fantastic to see new avenues start to really emerge and trends set where people actually want to look online for shortform content. See current.tv for another great crossbreed example!

Wake Up!

Great and funny article by Lore Sjöberg in Wired on how in 100 years people will have the ability to recreate the movie theatre environment everyone loved in the early 21st century.

But seriously...How does big entertainment think that they have such a captive audience that they can continue to raise prices AND add other forms of revenue to their pockets and STILL think the customer is going to be happy. They whine about online piracy and talk about how it hurts the little man in the food chain of movie making.That's a farce. The gaffer makes less or the same or more bacause of union/non-union issues moreso that a downloaded movie. Quit raising prices, allow the theatre to be a clean, welcoming place where its fun again to go see a movie and not worry about getting stabbed because you told the moron in front of you to quit talking on his phone. The falloff in revenueisn'tt because some kid is downloading a crappy version thatdoesn'tt have finished sound and the picture sucks onto his PC. It's because half the time the stroryline sucks, the environment to watch the flick is lousy and it costs $40 to go as a family to something where you don't have a very good guarantee if it will be any good.

Imagine the automaker saying thanks for buying our car, now please allow us to stick bumper stickers for candy, cola, and tampons all over your car. Also, before you can drive, you have to listen to at least 5 minutes of commercials. Oh, and that could be longer. And by the way, we are going to have to raise the price of that car on you because the guy in Mexico who builds it is getting screwed because so many people are making their own soapbox racers in their garage and painting them the same silver coating... I'm rambling but you get the point.

Emerging Distributors

Problem: Currently to have a movie make it to an audience, a film needs to a) get acquired by a large distributor or b) make the endless film festival route where if distribution does occur, said film then is pushed with a front loaded marketing/advertising campaign to promote it meaning it better catch on immediately or its lost in the distributor's closet.

If you ask me, that's a pretty big problem. As a filmmaker, you face huge bottlenecks including creative control, who's overseeing the marketing, is there a decent budget behind the advertising, is the festival worth paying for, how exactly is the distributor's lawyer looking to stick it to you...

Let's move past the given (it needs to be more of a given - but more on that later), the story needs to be good! It needs to hook. OK, so your story has a great setup and payoff. People who see it, love it! They tell their friends about it. But what does that do for you if you can't get the friggin thing into another theatre?

Welcome to 2006, the start of something big! Broadband is keeping the promises that the Internet is the great deliverer for the little guy. Throw out what you know and start thinking differently. You now have a CHEAP distribution route. Reverse what you know about movie marketing. You now are looking at a promotional ramp up. Let me explain. It is now becoming possible to push your media anywhere in a protected format. That means mobile, computer desktops, even the television settop box, and if you can hit that, you can begin thinking how small theatres will be able to also pickup and stream a film. 2929 Studios and Mark Cuban has the right idea, release in a manner that anyone can get however they feel like getting it. When they signed the deal with Steven Soderbergh to produce a series of low budget films that would be immediately released on dvd, HDTV and in the theatres, they set what I believe will be a common method for moviemaking in the near future. Does this mean every film will be and should be? No. There will probably always be the big budget blockbusters and superstar love stories. What is different however is there is now a way for a filmmaker in the middle of Ohio or Croatia to make a movie and look to distribute it for longterm gain... and make a living!

Keep an eye on trends like the following:

1. More studios like 2929 releasing pictures across multiple venues simulateously
2. The bigger Internet players like AOL, Yahoo, and Apple among a plethora others looking to acquire more independent content and moving away from simply being a web portal but more of a content company providing it across many devices and venues... (Want an example? Look at the agreement with Brightcove and TIVO and check out this vid with Jeremy Allaire talking more about what they're up to.)
   
3. Its getting cheaper - you know longer are required to produce packaging and author and print a large load of DVDs the Blockbuster will send back if the rentals suck.
   
4. Word of mouth, the gem of and envious drive of every advertiser, is becoming easier - though it may take longer than you hope. Look at the YouTube and MySpace successes within the past month that you can remember getting a link for.
5. File level DRM isn't too bad if you arent a fanatic like the big distributors. Learn how to make it work for you. DRM can and will provide you opportunities to make your money as well as giving you the level of control that doesnt piss off your buyers while making sure friends pay their dues as well.
6. Portable and mobile devices with big storage and Internet connections. Think small again because that DVX100 you are shooting with is all you need to push some great quality to these little media hungry devices! Short form works best here too...
7. Convergence between devices, formats and delivery channels. Watch for big and small companies to pop up and give consumers the option of picking up their entertainment across any device. Imagine watching half a show on your TV and the rest while you are waiting for your flight at the airport.
8. Advertising is moving online, particularly preroll and postroll video ads.

Here's the opportunities its creating for filmmakers:

1. The ability to distribute at a low cost as well as produce at a low cost - just PLEASE be sure the story is good!
2. Long-term word-of-mouth and guerilla campaigns that allow film payoffs to be more profitable in the long term rather than a quick shot in the dark upfront.
3. Many more routes to distribute like on the desktop, the TV, portable devices, mobile TV and a ton of emerging channels or content aggregators.
4. Since big boys in other mediums are now able to compete, look for more opportunities to sell your content.
   
5. Shorts are going to be in more and more. The lunchtime fixation, the stuck in traffic boredom killer, the "I-hate-this-get-together" movie all need something to watch.
   

The rules are changing. There will always be the case for the big business model but keep an eye open on the changing landscape at the bottom and how it could have the ability to make you the next media darling.