This list of the top 15 worst films of 2010 is worth reading because it is funny. And because these lists are the most fun when you aren’t on them.
Oh, Outlaw, you might be saying, your little independent films wish they were seen widely enough to end up on a list like this. And you would be wrong. I’d rather remain anonymous. And number 6 is a little known indie film.
So, movies tend to repeat certain wrong things so often that they become face, and this article talks about seven things movies always get wrong about police works.
To me, the surprise was the call tracing. I did think it took some time. But then, I might have been fooled by the line crossing the map on the computer screen leading to…oh, no! They hung up!
Enjoy!
A producer friend of mine was making fun of my phone the other day. I have a dumb phone, you know, for making phone calls, and I can’t bring myself to get anything smarter.
He said, “How can you possibly be a filmmaker with that phone?” But which he meant, how can you not use every tool possible, and also you are good looking and very cool.
That reminded me of this article. It’s about how some people think they can get away with all kinds of things, in this case, being late, and that they will only be judged on their actual work.
Keep dreaming. Everything matters. So there’s a smart phone in my future.
When I saw this, my first thought was, movie announcer voice! Here’s a guy so down on his luck that he’s homeless. And here are hundreds of filmmakers trying to find a voice like his that they can use for free in their trailers. Win, meet win.
We are all doing our various celebrations, but be sure this year to stop and think, what does a sound designer want me to do?
This week’s link is brought to you by Dwight Cenac, who through his own sound design adventures, has come to believe that this is the best thing ever in the world, including air.
I cannot vouch for it, because sound makes me cry and hide under my bed. Which is a lousy way to pass the new year.
Making independent film into a business is tough stuff. That is why these profiles of Indie producers is so cool. These people are either very smart or very dumb, but they are all persistent and for the most part, hanging in there and making it work. My cowboy hat’s off to them all.
I found this terrific article, written by Craig Engler, the general manager and vice president of SyFy digital, about how the money moves with an episodic television show. Informative and interesting to us movie types.
If you are not interested in budgets and licensing, you should probably skip this one.
But this article, written back in March, you really should read.
Because there is a law firm now that specializes in suing bit torrent down loaders, and they have, on the money side, a very effective business plan: make the people you catch pay $500-1000, and you will basically make up for the lost revenue of fifty other down loaders.
They pick individual titles, and not titles anyone has heard of, like Call of the Wild 3D, file an injunction to get the names and addresses of down loaders, and bam!
And they are doing very, very well.
I’ve written before about my movie revenue concerns. Studios are losing money, and that has made them less adventurous, and led to 3-D. Attempts at monetizing the internet, like Hulu, have failed to create revenue streams that compensate for the internet created losses. I believe that it will take a few more years to figure it out, but the end result will be either all the studios collapse into bankruptcy or they figure out how to make people pay for content.
In the meantime, this seems pretty smarmy on all sides. A culture of theft (through bit torrent downloads) meets a culture of exploitation, lawyers. Downloaders, you will never win in court. Declaring copyright laws obsolete does not make copyright laws obsolete, or anything less than the a fundamental tenant upon which our society was built. There’s a lady who keep appealing her music downloading lawsuit. She was just a regular person who got a ton of free music, and who thought she could get out of paying when the music studios started making examples of people. She’s been to court three times now. Every time she appeals, the damages she is required to pay get bigger. The music industry offered each time to let her settle for a small amount and an admission of guilt instead of the court ordered $1.9 million or $1.5 million, and she keeps appealing. In lawyer fees alone, she has to have gone way over the settlement cost. She is a stupid, stupid woman.
On the other hand, the lawyers in this article are taking a third of the settlement money (probably). They have found what amounts to fish in a barrel, and they are going to clean that barrel out but good. They just have to get the addresses. They are threatening people who know what they did is illegal, but as far as I can tell, aren’t taking anyone to court because that would cost too much. This isn’t a moral issue for them. It is financial.
In a perfect world, no one would illegally download anything, and I believe the industry will find a workable internet business model in the future that will relegate bit torrents to genuine thieves and tech geeks. But in the meantime, wouldn’t it be better to find those down loaders’ addresses, which is surprisingly easy to do, and charge people $10 per movie download? Send a bill. For some people, it will be a mighty big bill, but not $1.5 million. And if people don’t pay up, hand them over to a collection agency. If you have to sue, use it as a last resort. It’s sort of a win win, or I guess, less of a lose lose.
Contrary to popular belief, movie people need to get paid, too. MGM is in bankruptcy, other studios are treading water. You liked James Bond? Piracy will make sure we never see another one.
Also, here is another rundown of terrific apps for the Ipad to make me want an Ipad even more (come on, 2nd generation, come out already!) The bast part? A Celtx app! The best screen writing and post production software can now be used on an Ipad (or Iphone, but who would?) and then sync with your bigger, bulkier computer. Sweet!
So the internet has ruined things for arts based businesses. Music was drowning until I-tunes sort of saved them, though they still lose plenty of revenue to pirating. The movie industry keeps hovering nervously over the next possible disaster. And now, Netfilx, in anticipation of the end of DVD rentals, is raising prices and licencing more streaming material.
When the internet first came out, many people thought that it required a new business model, one where people didn’t pay for anything. That didn’t work out too well. But still, stupid people keep thinking they are the exception. Yeah, I’m talking about you, YouTube. Just because millions of people come to you to see videos of cute cats doesn’t mean you are a viable business. Granted, YouTube has turned things around by putting the ads on top of the actual video. But here’s the thing. A lot of people upload stuff that doesn’t belong to them. TV shows, movies, songs. Because the beginning of the internet convinced people that movies and songs and television shows are free, and ought to be free, which is the opposite of reality, where it takes a lot of time and money to make a movie.
Netflix is raising their monthly price by a dollar. So how cheap are they getting these streaming rights for, anyhow?
Now that streaming seems to be the future of distribution, I wonder how revenue is going to get back to the people who actually make the movies. Specifically, I wonder how it is ever going to get back to me.
Where will independent films fall at the end of the day? When studios make big profits, they take more risks and buy more indies. When crap like this cuts in to the revenue, studios are still going to make the next Batman movie, but they aren’t going to buy the next quirky indie comedy.
Right now, if I set up a system to independently distribute my movie via DVD sales, I will get $2 for every $15 DVD. I tunes will let me sell downloads, but they will take the biggest bite out of whatever that makes, (leaving me with about $1 per download) and that without them paying a penny for advertising or anything to actually sell the thing. What is Netflix going to offer? A cheery smile and a “screw you”?
As far as I can tell, what the internet has done for the arts is given many more artists the opportunity to work for free.
Screenwriter John August gave this talk to students at Trinity university in San Antonio. It’s long.
The main point I took away is that the internet has changed the definition of professional. Before, if you were an idiot, there were people between you and public discourse. Now there isn’t, and even people who know better are acting like idiots, because the idiots are profiting from their idiocy.
Professionalism now has to be a standard that comes from within, instead of a standard imposed from without. And I keep thinking about The Making of Iridium Consequence, and the standards we are imposing on ourselves for that. We are being professonals. Even though it is harder and takes a lot more time.
Celluloid Outlaw--all about independent film 