March 30, 2009

Thoughts on the First Streamys

Well the Streamys happened and it was a marvelous party.  It was one of those nights that was a marker in the quick history of online video.  Ten years ago at the edge of Web 1.0 there were some brave video pioneers making shows for the net alone in the wilderness with no standards of delivery, business model, or format.  Shorts like 405 and series like Homestar and Red vs. Blue and many, many others that haven’t endured are the giants upon which we all are standing.

Four years ago the second wave of video shows appeared, embracing podcasting and the first iterations of flash video (including YouTube).  This was the wave AskANinja, TikiBar, Rocketboom, French Maid TV, and LG15 were on.

And today we have 1000 plus people gathered to watch celebrities and weblebrities present and collect awards.

As Streamy Award winner Zadi Diaz OH’d from the afterparty:

L.A. has turned from “I have a screenplay” to “I have a webshow.”


That is a very true statement, everyone here now either has a show idea or an actual series.  The problem is that you still need the screenplay — or at least another show that you can sell to someone else.

But Felicia Day’s speech was a great reflection of the pentup frustration at how creatively deadly Hollywood can be, in her speech she thanked all of the casting directors and everyone else in Hollywood that refused to hire her because she didn’t look right, so she had to write something for herself to showcase her talents.

And that’s exactly right — the jobs I get to direct are the ones that I help create, same as it ever was.  No one will believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself.  Make something and prove yourself.

As for the Streamys the show itself?  Overall it was wonderful, the best awards show for online video thus far.  But it was an awards show — the banter was bad (but isn’t it always at every awards show), the speeches sometimes went a little long, and they should have acknowledged Tay Zonday from the outset, or put him on stage or something, and no one told me I had a reserved seat (but I chalk that up to my own idiocy :P ).

I thought it was great that the winners included so many celebs, old guard, and new comers.  It was a good mix.  I think in the future we should somehow put webisodes of TV series in their own category — having the Battle Star Gallactica show win so many awards with it being such an established brand was the only thing a little weird to me.

At the after party looking around with some other old hands in this game, we all had a bittersweet look in our eyes.  The days of being a small club of intimates were over, and it’s been replaced with the glitz and glamor of a Hollywood scene.

But that’s okay.

We knew it was going to happen and we wanted it to happen.  The important thing is to keep the doors open for those of us behind us, the unknowns just cutting their teeth and looking to entertain and delight us in the future.  If we somehow close those people out of the party, we’ll all be the poorer.

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March 17, 2009

Tom Bodett Says Pwned in a Motel 6 Radio Ad

I was driving around the other day and I hear Mr. Tom Bodett come on and do an ad for Motel6.com.  Nothing too unusual there, but then Tom says ‘Totally Pwned”.  OMFG.

I went to Tom’s site and Motel 6’s and googled, and couldn’t turn up the audio.

So I went oldskool and sent Tom an email and here was his response:

Kent,

Attached for your listening pleasure is the one.  Go forth and multiply.
Best,
Tom
So with that here it is!

(the streaming sounds awful for me, but clicking on the file link sounds great!)

The Whole Ad

Just Totally Pwned

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March 12, 2009

“Stealing” Indie Business Models

I’m sorta in the middle of an indie-filmmaking online scuffle, I know both parties involved and this post is meant not as a critique of any one party, but as an attempt to bring a larger perspective to the whole situation.

In this corner: Jessica Mae Stover, creative force behind ArtemisEternal.com, a site which is dedicated to destroying conventional filmmaking by raising $100,000 through small donations to make a 10-minute short film with the title of “Artemis Eternal.”  I appear in an upcoming promotional video for the site/film and know Jessica socially.

And in this corner, Mike Ambs and Amanda Walker, the creative force behind ProjectPedal.com, a site which documents Mike and Amanda’s five year struggle to produce a feature-length documentary about a cross-country bike trip which will ultimately be titled “For Thousands of Miles.”  It should be noted that Amanda and I were in a very serious relationship until recently and that her dog still loves me.

Okay, so with that, here’s the drama.  Jessica feels that Mike and Amanda have pulled off some sort of thievery in their recently re-launched “For Thousands of Miles” site.

There are certain similarities to both sites, both are about unfinished film projects, both feature a side scrolling timeline, and both ask for donations.

That’s it.

Sidescrolling is a bit novel, but it’s pretty out there already.  This collection of scrolling sites doesn’t include Artemis at all.

And donations?  Well, PBS, The One Second Film, and countless other projects (including projectpedal.com from 2005) have been seeking donations to make their visions a reality for decades.

So what’s the crime?

Not sure — I know I have been outright ripped off before (there are billions of Ask A Ninja homages out there…) but I never complain or let it get under my skin.  I compete by being better, funnier, and more creative than them.  And I actively try and promote our business model and try and learn from the success of others.  Because when it all comes down to it, we’re all just trying to do our art and make a living from it.

Mike and Amanda struggle just as mightily for their survival as Jessica does.  It’s one thing to steal source code or content and try and pass it off as your own (which no one claims happened), it’s another to see what works and make it your own.

It’s crazy to think there can’t be two indie film projects with a side scrolling timelines.  Just as it’s crazy to think that Jessica can’t open a twitter account for her film, or a myspace, or a facebook.

All of those things are just tools and techniques to talk to an audience.

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February 23, 2009

Democratizing The Tools And Acceptance

I was genuinely moved last night when Slumdog’s DP Anthony Dod Micahel won the Oscar for Best Cinematography.

This snippet from the Hollywood Reporter tells why:

Both “Slumdog” and nominee “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” were multiformat titles, lensed with a combination of film and digital-cinematography cameras. “The Dark Knight” is the first narrative studio feature to be lensed in part using Imax cameras.

I’ve Slumdog was 60% digital and 40% 35mm.

There was no heavier embrace for film as a theatrical experience than the Dark Knight shot in actual IMAX format (truly an expensive and amazing choice to make).  It was a huge film shot on huge film that everyone knew was best seen on a huge screen.  Which is why I picked it to win Best Cinematography.  It would have been a vote for the status quo of film acquisition.

But Slumdog won it.  Shot on an experimental digital camera and 35mm that were wildly intercut.  Unpolished, but polished.  Ugly, yet beautiful.  And completely appropriate to the story being told.  In many regards, this win stands on the shoulders of the 2004 Cinematography nomination for City of God (which is also about brothers in slums).

This award should be exciting to the indie filmmakers.  It means that we are quickly approaching a post-tool era.  What that means that the tools we are using will increasingly become irrelevant, what matters is what you shoot and how it advances the story.

Another film that is a good example of that is the 100% digital feature Frozen River, which was nominated for two Oscars last night (and sadly lost them both).  That was a $500,000 movie, that told a very compelling story with digital acquisition.

So this is the challenge: find a good story and tell it.  It doesn’t matter the format you shoot it on, if it’s a microindie, a well financed indie, or major studio franchise, just shoot in a manner that is appropriate to your story.

If the camera format is taking people out of the story?  You fail.  That’s your fault, not the tool’s.  Or more succinctly, you’re a tool if you let your tools tool you over.  Tool.

Focus on your craft and the rest will follow.

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February 21, 2009

Thoughts on Norway

Coming to the end of a great trip to Oslo, Norway for the By:Larm music fest.

Here some observations after the jump. Keep reading →

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February 9, 2009

Fine Bros Play With Fire And Get Burned

From NewTeeVee:

Since January of 2008, online video creators The Fine Brothers have been producing a comedic sendup of Lost called Lost: What Will Happen Next? using the series’ own official action figures.  Last week, ABC launched Lost Untangled, an comedic series of Lost recap videos … using the series’ own official action figures.

…

NewTeeVee:  In the end, though, it’s not so much that you’re accusing ABC of anything; you’re lamenting the opportunity that was lost because they didn’t come to you for the Untangled videos.  Even if they’d never heard of you or Lost: What Will Happen Next, your feeling is that it would have been a much smarter move on ABC’s part to seek out someone already making successful Lost-related web content, right?

The Fine Brothers: We would have jumped to do it, and we know we would have been able to produce an even better product than they made themselves, based off our experience.  Not only that, but we had the ability get the video seen by more people online, not only because of our connections and following but because of the great success story it would have been for Internet filmmakers.

I don’t know anyone involved in this chain, either on the web side or on the ABC side, so here’s my blind analysis of the situation.

These guys are talented and they deserve to be paid for their efforts, but expecting a rights holder to embrace your unlicensed efforts are not the best way to go about it.

ABC would never in a billion years ever hire the Fine Brothers to do this series for them.

Here’s why, first and foremost, it would put them into legal jeopardy in regards to clearing the preexisting series.  Every joke and unlicensed figure would be viewed as a potential liability.  That sort of cost would aleready make execs twitchy.

Secondly, it’s low production value.  Why hire people that have potential leverage over the studio?  And the only people that could bite them in the ass in terms of the above liability.  They can hire a clean slate production company that can meet Disney’s hefty insurance requirements and produce in the way that Disney likes things produced.

Thirdly, they are being kind by not suing the Fine Brothers into submission.  The recaps are fairgame, but using the figures in that matter is pretty grey, arugments could be made on both sides and Disney has a pretty deep war chest.

As for the Brother’s Fine wanting to get paid to do such things, that’s a great idea.  But their best hope would be for someone like NBC to hire them to do Heroes recaps or CBS to do CSI, etc.  It’s the same principle that writer’s have used for years when writing spec TV scripts.

Never write a spec script for a show you want to work on, because they’ll never be able to read it or use it due to legal concerns.

Sometimes the stars do align and the rightsholder does love the remix and reuse of their IP, see roosterteeth.com, but that’s rare and should be viewed as the exception.  If you’re going to make your mark riding on the back of someone else’s IP, be sure that you’ve got a great follow up idea ready to go, because it’ll be very diffuclt to make a living off of that one.

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February 9, 2009

Courage and Comedy: How Oprah Saw Me In My Undies

_MBB2820, originally uploaded by TED Conference.


So that happened.

Now we’ve been getting a lot of responses on how brave we were to get on stage in front of thousands of very important strangers in our tighty whitey underwear.  But for us, it was never questioned once we came upon the idea.  This post will hopefully shed a little light on our process and why we did this.

First and foremost, we wanted to be memorable and make a big splash — we only had three minutes and we felt we had a clear reason for being asked to be on the TED stage, to make people laugh.   We knew that we had to stand out quickly, and that the main thrust of our piece was a video of the Ninja introducing the United Tunnels of America, LLC .com.

We also knew that we were going to be making fun of specific noble (and Nobel) individuals (Bill Gates and Al Gore, both in the audience) in that video, but also the very concept of trying to save the world and make it a better place for us all to live.  The United Tunnels of America, encourages the elites of the world to abandon that folly and give up and go into hiding 40 stories below the Earth’s surface.

So with that we needed to instantly remove all credibility on ourselves and make us look like fools.  Hence the underwear.  The context of the gag was that the Ninja was going to show up in his undies and be the ‘D’ of TED, but instead he showed up on the video screen and mocked us for falling for the oldest joke in the TED book.

I think it’s the sign of being really creatively in sync with each other that we both knew it was what we needed to be done.  Even when uber motivational speaker Tony Robbins slipped into take Douglas’s chair as he was heading back stage to undress and tape up, we never wavered in our commitment to the gag and to each other.

And the gag serves on another level too, most people are completely fearful of public speaking, especially on such a large stage.  There’s the hackneyed advice of imagine everyone else in their underwear, and the age old nightmare of being in your underwear while giving your speech.  We just embraced that common fear and turned it on it’s head.

So that was that and there we were in our tighty whiteys in front of the world.  And would I do it again?

In a heartbeat.[/

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January 28, 2009

YouTube + William Morris == So?

From the NYTimes:

YouTube and the William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent agency, are close to signing a deal that would place the company’s clients in made-for-the-Web productions.

The deal would underscore the ways that distribution models are evolving on the Internet. Already, some actors and other celebrities are creating their own content for the Web, bypassing the often arduous process of developing a program for a television network. The YouTube deal would give William Morris clients an ownership stake in the videos they create for the Web site.

Why is this news?  Just go back and re-read that.  Where does it say that YouTube will be providing production financing?  That’s right it doesn’t.  So how is this news?  Or important?  Or any different than any other user from just, you know, creating an account and uploading something to YouTube?

I guess this will now just be another job your WMA Agent’s assistant will do for you.  But seriously, where’s the meat to this?  It look like it’s just an easy way for famous people to join the partner program and I assume that these “professionals” will get a better deal than the scummy amateurs of the world that join the rev share program.

Revolutionary news would be that YouTube will be paying for production.  Even at a paltry $1000/per finished minute which is the average cost of web production, they’d see an explosion of professional content exclusive on their site.

Until that happens, people, celebrities or not that want to participate in the YouTube world just need to create an account.

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January 28, 2009

Che, Soderbergh, VOD, and the Oscars

Viva la Che!

First off, I’m a fan of Steven Soderbergh, and I believe his remake of Ocean’s 11 is one of the perfect films in terms balancing craft and entertainment factors.  And his work on Traffic and Erin Brokovich are unrivaled.

And I admire his willingness to be on the bleeding edge of technology and filmmaking.  He’s been a constant advocate of digital acquisition and shot Che entirely on the Red Camera system.  (Except I wanted to scream when he deliberately made the DV footage in Full Frontal look intentionally crappy, which I felt damaged the reputation of DV.)

His pushing the edge with the release of Bubble and now Che by collapsing the theatrical window continues to go boldly where no other filmmaker wants to go.

But the industry hates what he’s doing and is, I think, punishing him for his efforts.  That Benecio del Toro wasn’t nominated for any acting awards is a crime.  True the marketing budget for Che has been miniscule, but industry folks have gotten the screeners and been to the screenings.  And there’s been a tremendous amount of PR around it.  The right people have seen this movie and dismissed it and del Toro’s performance.

But I think that people are looking at Che not as a film, but as a indie miniseries.  It’s four hours long, in two parts, and is all in Spanish.  They overlook the fact that it had a very successful screening run, despite it’s massive runtime, and look at it only as a VOD property, or as some sort of artistic folly.

And maybe it is a folly.  A more awards friendly strategy would have been to put out only part one in 2008 and part two (if you produced it at all) in 2009.  An arthouse Lord of the Rings.  But he didn’t, he wanted it shown like this, commercial viabilities be damned.

The larger trend will be what becomes of situations like Che in the future.  Collapsing the windows between theatrical release, VOD and DVD are all big benefits to smaller producers, producers like you and me because you only have to spend marketing dollars once and the majority of smaller films will never go wide to theaters for any length of time.

The major studios are trending towards continuing to produce major event movies that will premiere on 3000 plus screens and opting for 3D and other spectacles that will drive people out of their homes and into theater seats.  These films will continue to have marketing budgets many times greater than the production budgets of an indie.

I’ve watched the majority of the Academy nominated films in my home on my laptop and haven’t felt like I’ve missed anything in terms of experience — the films I saw on the big screen, most notably the Dark Knight, were big and expansive films that begged to be seen in a theatrical environment.

But the Dark Knight was snubbed by smaller films, films that you could imagine HBO or the BBC producing, i.e., quality entertainment and drama for people over the age of 18 that is produced on a reasonable budget.

As I see it, over the next ten years things are still going to be confusing for the Oscars.  More and more awards-caliber films will be forced to take the VOD/cable route with limited theatrical runs in LA and NYC.  The academy rules currently state that a film must run for a week in LA County to be in consideration, so I think you’ll see a film released to meet this minimum, and then be available for purchase, VOD, or cable the week after to consolidate marketing expenses.  The films that get a good buzz will then be carpet bombed to awards voters on DVD with an additional theatrical run during nominating times.

The Oscars will either change the rules to explicitly punish these practices and nominate films that are conventionally theatrical (i.e., the Dark Knight and Paul Blart, Mall Cop) or more insidiously continue to ignore the indie films that collapse the windows.

The least likely approach is that they can embrace the change and face tremendous backlash from the exhibitors.  I think we’re in the insidous ignore them phase right now, but the identity crisis will continue to loom until they are forced to make a decision through either overwhelmingly mass exodus of talent from conventionally theatrical small films.

As one of my Twitter peeps said, the new art house is your house and the sooner the business realities of film reflect this, the better off we’ll all be.

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January 20, 2009

If I Were In Charge Of Sundance

John August writes:

Ten of the 80 short films featured this week at the Sundance Film Festival are available free on iTunes until January 25th. It’s a great way to see some work you’d almost certainly never catch.

…

I’m happy to see shorts featured this way, and hope it expands to features in coming years. By offering movies for a limited window, Sundance and Apple can give exposure to films and filmmakers far beyond Park City, Utah.

And according to the Hollywood Reporter, we’re also seeing a lot of low money deals happen again this year.

With those two pieces of info and with this being the 20th Anniversary of the sale of sex, lies, and videotape, the film that made Sundance into a place where dreams come true, here’s what I would do.

Distribute films immediately after the Festival closes.  VOD, web, DVD, everything.  For most of these films, doing well at Sundance is going to be the high point of their lifecycle and there are millions of film fans that can’t make it to the actual festival and the films should be available to audiences when they are front of mind.

This would change everything and it’s sorta crazy to even talk about it.  But, but, but, hear me out.  This is the Sundance Mission statement:

Sundance Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to the discovery and development of independent artists and audiences.  Through its programs, the Institute seeks to discover, support, and inspire independent film and theatre artists from the United States and around the world, and to introduce audiences to their new work.

No where does it state that it’s going to be a film market and officials over the years have explicitly denied that being a film market is its intended purpose.

But wouldn’t that erode the theatrical market even further and take incentives away from distributors to buy films from the festival.

YES!  But, films already have a bazillion production companies at the head of the flick, what’s one more?  It would really winnow away the poseurs from the ones that want an original voice to find it’s way to audiences.

And this deal wouldn’t be outright ownership,  just a small percentage that would allow Sundance to put the film into immediate circulation after the Festival (launch them a week after the fest closes for the films that don’t sign separate distro deals).

Those that don’t want to cut Redford and Co. in on their sweet, sweet, high-six figure action could go showcase somewhere else, they obviously dont need a stage like Sundance to make their way in the world.

So why would anyone go for this?  Filmmakers giving up an added percentage of their gross!  Sundance adding to their already massive workflow by having everything ready for distribution by the time of the festival!  Insanity!

But look at this Sundance experience from last year.  I heard from a friend that Baghead was great.  Awesome, cool, let’s check that out.  Wait, it’s not out yet.  Okay cool.  Months go by and I remember about Baghead, it was bought by Netflix and did a tour around the US.  Which I missed the tiny window it played in LA — LA!  Film captial of the world, and then sorta forgot about.  Wash, rinse, repeat every few months.  Until finally right before Christmas I got fed up and got it through alternate means.  The DVD hit shelves Dec. 27th.

And that was a movie I really, really wanted to see.

So right now I’m sitting here in LA reading all of the reviews of the Sundance movies.  Most of which I will never see.  And I love films.  And I know there are others out there like me — millions of others.

The problem is like everything else in this digital realm.  The money.  I think it’ll work out with the Freemium model — charging for the best and commercial free access and streaming with commercials for free.  Also the DVDs should be fairly barebones, films only no extras, only invest in more special features, etc. if the film warrants.

This is the way that Sundance can grow into the future and become something more than it already is.

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