Sunday, November 18, 2007

Re-Arranging the Deck Chairs

This is the bit where I seem to contradict everything I've said for the last month.

Bill Cunningham -- who's done a far better job of covering alt-media production than I ever have -- links to this essay by smart guy Marc Andreessen about how Hollywood will evolve into a Silicon Valley-like indie-studio format where writers, actors, etc. are all equity partners in their own productions, which are financed by start-up capital, etc.

I absolutely agree. Which is why I proposed it about two years ago, or at least the beginnings of the system. That essay is actually just the theoretical framework of why a new model is possible, actually -- I can't find the damn execution post for the life of me. Should've frikkin' tagged ...

How does this square with my enthusiastic defense of the WGA strike, and insistence on residual payments? Particularly with my mocking of people who suggest that we just start our own studios?

Well, the issue is time and the word "just". As Andreessen notes, the system will head in this direction, and as someone who works in Hollywood while he works in Silicon Valley I'll argue that it'll go slower than he thinks, although probably faster than I believe. We already have indie movies, but not everyone out in viewer-land is going to be happy with talky-talk and horror flicks. They'd occasionally like some car crashes and exotic locations, please, not to mention actors they recognize. You're also in direct competition with the system you're trying to kill, who knows you're trying to kill it and also happens to control almost all mainstream distribution. Good luck. TV's no easier -- you can't partially finance a TV entertainment start-up. If you want to make TV shows, you need to finance an entire season. The pilot process is a monstrous waste of time and money, stunningly inefficient (an you say "amortize" kids? Knew ya could) and will make no sense in the Internet download model. Six to eight episodes at a time, costing about .5 to 1 million a pop, will be the base level of investment. That's with the sharpest producer on the planet, and a lot of people taking a flyer on their usual fees. Not even talking promotion, although that will change ... eventually. Not a ton of money in the grand scheme of things, but it's real money. Beyond the ken of all but the richest individuals, particularly when you build in the assumption that the first batch of these things, used as the sharp wedge on changing the business model and viewer/download habits, are almost guaranteed to fail pretty miserably. You can bring in outside money, sure -- how you keep venture capitalists from becoming essentially sharkier studio executives when it comes to creative input, that'll be a challenge.

Not only that, there is indeed a buyer/distribution system in place for software -- the entire corporate IT system -- which does not exist in entertainment outside the main studio/network distribution chains already in place. There's also the issue of the computer/television perception split still in place in America. That's changing, but it'll be a generational shift at best.

The answer is stochastic tinkering -- small evolutionary steps along the way. As I've noted, there was no studio involved in the pilot we shot in October (blogging on which will resume shortly). It was basically Dean Devlin and a bunch of very creative deals balanced in a small percentage by taking the usual license fee from TNT. If this works -- and Lord knows if it will -- then we've got a proof of concept that will choke an awful lot of people. All because Devlin has nuts the size of an (electric) SUV.

On the other hand, that's proof of concept on a pilot -- which is still part of a very flawed development process. The final product, if picked up in the normal pilot process, will still be broadcast on a cable network. There are a couple web shows, like Quarterlife which premieres on MySpace (hello, new distribution channel), which itself has been picked up for later broadcast by NBC. However, 36 eight-minute episodes do not a network-television viewer model replacement make. You'll note that Quarterlife is basically a salvaged pilot. There's also Sanctuary, which I'll be writing more on later, that was the most expensive direct-to-web program ever made. Its episodes are a direct pay-to-download system -- and all told add up to about two hours of entertainment. And like I said, this is the stuff on the bleeding edge. You'll see more come, and even faster, but unless a big player like Google gets involved, it'll all be on individual initiatives.

It may be worth diverting and answering an e-mail question about the difference between some terms Bill and I use -- open-source production and 4th generation media. One's a tactic, the other's a strategy. 4th Generation Media is based on the same idea as 4th Generation warfare -- that is, control of the traditional battlespace is no longer a priority.. Open-source warfare -- as discussed in John Robb's excellent book and blog -- is the new tactic by which you go about executing a 4th Generation warfare strategy.

For example, Robb discusses how IED makers in Iraq are essentially unaffiliated shops. The bomb-builder's a specialist. So's the guy who places the bomb. Different insurgent groups would go to the same bomb-maker for their IED's. Open-source is also a function of the lowered price of entry into the market. In order to wage war against a super-power now, you don't need a billion-dollar army in order to take on their army head-to-head, because you're not going after control of that army's traditional battlespace. You need a white panel van and some unguarded oil pipeline. Or, as was mentioned in Buda's Wagon -- the car bomb is commonly known as "the poor man's air force."

This is particularly effective when your goal is not to confront an enemy or capture territory, but to cost the enemy more than he can morally or economically bear in the long run. That is, you're fighting in a different battlespace, moral or economic.

Ciiiircling back around, 4th Generation Media means that you're no longer trying to compete on the network's battlespace -- millions of viewers taken from other shows, in a zero sum game at every time slot, translating into ad revenue. You're trying to get money either directly from an advertiser -- a variation of the current streaming model -- or through direct audience payment for either episodic download or maybe a subscription-base streaming model with a password structure. *

The problem is, those battlespaces are very poorly developed, both in infrastructure terms -- shitty broadband penetration -- and perceptual terms. We need to train audiences to access this media in unfamiliar ways, and the media needs to be of a competitive quality to the broadcast model.

This is where open-source production comes in. $3-K HD cameras, micro-rigs that are orders of magnitude cheaper than usual dolly rigs, and computer editing packages have moved within striking distance of broadcast level quality -- a very recent development. Some of the new prosumer level cameras shoot at 24p, but they're still be road-tested by interested parties. Some very smart folks I know have a theory that you can put together a complete film gear kit -- and I mean, make a TV show and 99% of the viewers will never see the difference -- for about $15k. We'll see. That ain't talking post. Never mind sets and locations. But for sheer "get images on disk", it sounds about right. Controlling the production costs in this way will allow more aggressive experiments in bringing product to the new battlespace. The lower profits of entry level material in the new distribution channels will be matched by radically lowered production costs. (What this means for the TYPE of material we should be producing in these early experiments is a different conversation.)

In other words, prosumer 24p and Final Cut are the car bombs of television.

As achingly near as a new paradigm sounds, a.) it's still at least a decade away from being fully realized and b.) the established studios already have a good jump on transitioning viewer share from regular media to broadband, not to mention craploads of advertising dollars to create awareness that the start-ups won't have and corporate structures to absorb the losses involved in developing fire-hoses of entertainment with which to flood viewers' brain-space. So even as the little warm-blooded indie mammals will eventually skitter in the moist undergrowth of the internet-delivery system, the dinosaurs will still have a few good decades left in them -- at least. Therefore it's important to make sure the dinosaurs honor their obligations to pay the creators of material as it's delivered in the mew medium, even as those creators learn the ropes to produce and distribute their own material. The studios were kind of hoping we'd give them the pass, so they could eke out a few extra billion even as they try to grab the good early brain-space on the Web for entertainment distribution. This disagreement led to the Strike, which I hope will be settled very soon.

On a more personal note, this discussion skirts the edge of announcing the death of the pure screenwriter. And that, frankly, sucks. Although I'm lucky and geeky enough to want to play in the sandbox of indie media production, there are plenty of writers who are just really good goddam writers. They don't necessarily have the desire or temperment to become media/business experts. It's already a goddam miracle that out of competition with tens of thousands of other writers that they've managed to find a gig that will intermittently pay their rent. There should be a place for good writers while we weirdos are mucking about in the gears of the system. They write -- that's all. And that's enough.

Any asshole who asks why the all writers don't just start their own studio system should consider this: What would your life be like if, in order to keep your current job, you suddenly had to learn to do the of every person in the company above you, and a couple of your co-worker's jobs, just to stay employed. Given the choice of that radical new existence or just, say, making a bit of noise to make sure they're fairly compensated for their work, I'd bet most people would go for the bit of noise.

In the end we're re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. You can't stop the nature of the Internet from warping the distribution system of the future. The current production model will require radical restructuring for talent, advertisers, and production entities alike. It's going to be a bloodbath. But that sort of radical change is inherently resisted by human nature itself. It'll only be accomplished by existing power bases slowly evolving to accept them, not wholesale restructuring. Because of that time lag, we must make sure we get paid in the evolving structure, not just the end-state structure. There's no moral sin in trying to buffer the transition period for writers who will be put in harder and harder positions in order to keep working. The fact that this buffer happens to coincide with the obligations of the corporations who use our work is a nice coincidence.

Why am I so sure thing will plod along a little slower than most geeks predict? Let me send you off with another story, names dropped as usual. A while ago, a very smart producer and I cooked up a way to, basically, finance a pilot for zero cost. It was a very particular type of show, with very particular economic possibilities on DVD ... but it could be done, with product placement, pre-sales, etc. To tell you the truth, it made perfect sense to do 13 of the goddam things, it was as sure a bet as you'll find in Hollywood that we'd at least break even. And if I just managed to break even on a show I loved, then I consider that a big damn win.

So, very excited, the producer and I meet with a Very Important Studio Human. We lay out the model. The Studio Human nods. He says "That would absolutely work."

Beat.

"But it would put everybody in this building ..." He then pointed out his window to an adjacent office structure, "... and everybody in that building out of a job."

He leaned forward, sincere.

"Why would I do that?"

I honestly didn't have an answer for him.



*(DVD's the buffer zone now, the fat pipe that's keeping us all alive while the new pipe is being built. Going straight to DVD with nontraditional D2DVD forms is a similar model, but again, that's another post.)

69 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent post, sir. As always.
The interesting thing is that we're seeing smaller versions of this model pop up on the internet on YouTube, MySpace (My stomping ground.) and Funnyordie.com. People churning out stuff using camcorders and iMovie hoping that it's sticks. It's almost like a farm team for the majors.
And while a lot of it is shit (As per Sturgon's Law.) some of it's damn brilliant.

Lindsay Stewart said...

Goddamn. I am printing out this post to hand to the kids I'm working with. I hope to begin shooting in about 3 months time. My guerilla studio cost a tad more than the $15k but then quality means something to me. So I splurged on a proper boom, a Rycote zeppelin, a decent mid-range condenser mic and a Steadicam Merlin (vest and arm arriving this week, Woot!) and I have two Canon HD cameras, an XH A1 and an HV20.

With good will and ambition, luck and a bit of talent I am convinced that it is possible to create a good product, entertain people and break even. And the show owns itself. My goal, 40 12 minute episodes over the course of a year to 18 months. About the same as 10 conventional, one hour tv shows. I'm probably crazy, I'll probably fail but I won't know 'til I try and I just might pull it off. Either way, I plan to have a great time doing something I really love and learn a ton along the way. And I won't have to sit on my thumbs waiting for some toad in an office to smile down upon me.

Shameless plug for my friends! Another excellent example would be Earl and the guys at Stranger Things.

Thanks for all of your work and shared intelligence.

Unknown said...

Damn you Rogers. I don't need this on a Monday morning when I am simply sitting here wrapping out a production office (looking at how much more of wrap we have and trying to figure out why) and wanting to do something more substantial than make travel arrangements and figure out what is wrong in the various reports.

Damn that was a great piece.

I always find it interesting the people who are putting stuff online and wanting the studio gig when they are helping to bring about an end to that.

Trying to work out more of this in my head.

Deep Trunk said...

can you explain the quarterlife deal and why it is not breaking the strike (or if part of the motive it to provide content by breaking the strike without breaking the strike legally)

Anonymous said...

Yes, the end is near. My big concern about the internet as entertainment portal is, as this blogger states, who pays?

http://thesophist.wordpress.com/2007/11/13/hollywood-20-who-pays/

Anonymous said...

How much does it cost to make broadcast TV quality animation? (High quality, Dini/Timm level animation, not the CGI crap that's playing on Saturday mornings these days.) Most web-distributed content these days is simple Flash animation - it seems like high-quality cartoons would be a good package to start building the distribution channels with instead of waiting for live action to be affordable.

Anonymous said...

As to the Very Important Studio Human who asked "Why would I do that?", why wasn't the obvious answer "Because we could then lay hands on all the money that used to pay those peoples' salaries"?

Anonymous said...

"...you can put together a complete film gear kit [...] for about $15k."

Or you can get literally full-res film quality for just a bit more than that. It's called the Red One. A 4k (ie twice the resolution of HD) camera for 1/10th of what Sony will charge you for their best effort.

Anonymous said...

My movie used exactly this concept in 2004, and was released to an unsuspecting world 2005. I don't think we'll see this system main-stream until 2009 (I am typically 5 years ahead of the status quo). We may see British film industry (albeit digitised) rather than today's British film service industry. My movie may be parody, but many a true word has been said in jest!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSjm7Ius09Q

Anonymous said...

Hmmm...wouldn't the correct response to that guy have been, "Well, because someone's going to do it, eventually, and better it be us than your competition?"

Anonymous said...

Long-time lurker, first-time poster...

I have a friend who is in-house counsel for Google, handling the barrage of lawsuits against YouTube. (Picture him as a firewall, Google as a PC, and lawsuits as network attacks, and you get the picture). He brought up an interesting point: If Viacom/Universal/et al are claiming to the WGA that internet distribution of content is not a monetized media, than what are they suing YouTube for?

Anonymous said...

I'm no Marc Andreesen, but I am someone who has lived and worked as a software developer in Si Valley for a long time. I think it would be fun to compare equity partnership in the Valley as a concept to points of gross as desired by WGA and others.

Points are a lot more reliable. One of the dangers of equity partnership is dilution. You might get, as a non-management senior engineer, about .1% of the equity as options. This is early, well before any IPO. Along with a salary. But if the company needs further funding rounds, and most of them do, the money people are gonna demand a big piece of the pie, a bunch of new shares will be issued, and you won't be getting any.

Non-IPO exits can be a big problem for you, too. Lots of termsheets are written giving the VC's "liquidation preference" for their stock. Meaning, if it's sold privately before IPO, they get their money back first, and if there isn't any left, you get squat. That's assuming the business/product is good enough to not just disappear quietly.

A second point about equity. If the owner of your work (in my case, software) goes into bankruptcy, your equity becomes worthless, and you might well have to suffer silently (or perhaps loudly) while your work gets sold out of the bankruptcy to someone else who makes lots of money with it for which you get zip. I don't know if the WGA contracts cover that contingency, though studios don't go bankrupt very often, though I'd bet you would still get paid.

The final problem with an equity solution is that it always tries to perpetuate itself, often when it shouldn't have bothered. You have a company and a job, and so you try doing version 2.0 which has a bunch of features that are only really marginally useful, but the money is rolling in, so let's keep working on it.

I often have felt that if we could just cut it loose, collect the money and pass it out while we all go on to other things, we'd be better off, but that's against human nature, I guess.

So I envied the business structure of a film with its definite ending. Of course, there are always sequels that shouldn't have been bothered with.

Deep Trunk said...

More on Quarterdeck

http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/zwickherskovitz-wga-friends-or-foes/

Anonymous said...

Jaysus, John. Synchronicity again.

I just ran across this and came here to see if you had written about it:

Blowtorch Raises $50 Million to Launch a New Hollywood Studio

Peter said...

Great frakkin post. Definitely doing to be sending it around the office...

Cunningham said...

I jumped in and posted a reply over at my joint. While it may be grossly over-simplified (guilty!), I think there are certain parallels between today's internet movie and tv distribution to the early 80's comic book direct market distribution system that are worth exploring.

I'm not so certain that it is an "apples and oranges" comparison. Let me know what you think.

Anonymous said...

You need a white panel van and some unguarded oil pipeline or some vulnerable noncombatants.

Fixed.

I apologize for being kind of a stick in the mud about this, but Fourth-Generation Warfare, unlike whatever you may want to call the next generation or two of media, isn't about happily sticking it to The Man, or The System, or The Establishment, or escaping The Man et al. and rocking on down the highway of one's particular enthusiasms with a targeted audience of fellow nerds, as much as it is about concentrating on killing people whom the traditional laws and customs of war would protect (imperfectly and perhaps haphazardly, but that is humanity for you).

Again, apologies.

Cunningham said...

4GM theory allows for the distribution of content (in a cost effective manner) to those the traditional forms of media have excluded or marginalized.

You see the parallel.

Anonymous said...

I am not blind to the putative parallel. I find it distasteful -- unintentionally, I am sure.

The reference to an unguarded pipeline seemed an inadvertent omission of the most frequent beneficiaries (to put it ironically) of Fourth Generation Warfare's redistribution of destructive capacity, and one that lends a bit too much chest-thumping machismo to the enthusiasts of the Every-Man-His-Own-Production-Company stripe.

De gustibus, etc., etc.

Barry DeCicco said...

josh said...

"I have a friend who is in-house counsel for Google, handling the barrage of lawsuits against YouTube. (Picture him as a firewall, Google as a PC, and lawsuits as network attacks, and you get the picture). He brought up an interesting point: If Viacom/Universal/et al are claiming to the WGA that internet distribution of content is not a monetized media, than what are they suing YouTube for?"

IANAL, but I imagine that anybody who can't come up with several good ways of resolving a contradiction don't beomce corporate lawyers.

Off of the top of my head:

(a) Don't sue for damages, but sue for violation of property rights (i.e., to get orders to refrain), and recover only lawyer's fees. "Only lawer's fees" meaning 'pad the bill of the in-house lawyers like crazy, and transfer the money to the bottom line'.

(b) Sue for damages to reputation (fill in the blanks with a sob story about how YouTube ruins the virtues of Pure, Maidenly Films).

(c) Sue for violation of advertisers' contractual rights, if they have guarantees of exclusivity. If YouTube has clips without the adds, then the advertisers' contractual rights might well indeed have been violated. Again, come up with some mythical massive damages which this allegedly did.

Antid Oto said...

This isn't really on topic, except that it's TV on the internet and it's the greatest thing ever.

Patrick Linnen said...

What I'd like to know is how these indie shows get to DVD if the DVD distribution is still mainstream? Samizdat is all well and good, but how will I get a physical copy to put in my disc player/set top/game console box?

PS. When will we see the DVD for the pilot of 'Global Frequency'?

Geoff Thorne said...

This is the crux i think. We are on the verge of something really wonderful, much the same as a bunch of other peasants were when the printing press got going.

Very soon the thing all artists have wanted forever, to cut out the middleman and bring their wares to the marketplace directly, will be a reality.

A lot of folks will die in that gladiatorial arena but a LOT MORE will rise. There will be a new Shakespeare (finally), a new Wells. She's out there. She's only ten right now but she's out there.

People who want to make movies won't have to go begging (well, not the same way or as often) to create.

But the age of the dinosaurs isn't actually over yet. The comet hasn't actually hit.

What QUARTERLIFE and the lovely SANCTUARY are doing isn't new. They just have more financial and, in some ways, creative muscle to apply. Let me have a couple million bucks and access to top shelf actors, directors and CGIers and watch me dance too. I'll mambo all over your punk asses.

A lot of us have been at this for a long time. Since the fan-filmmakers blew the hell up.

It's coming. You can hear it. You can see the lights in the not-so-distance. But until the train actually arrives, folks gotta eat.

And that's the crux.

And, since we're shamelessly plugging

THE DARK

DREAMNASIUM

Kirk said...

Redjack, I disagree. Oh, there may be a wells and a shakespeare out there, but the person who can do it all is UNCOMMON.

My suspicion is that there will actually be several competitive models - that the 4GW will be such that no single model "wins" by shutting down the others. And so in addition to your shops you'll see something not a lot different from what you see today - or rather, what was before and has grown into what it is today.

You need an actor or 20 - a couple of leads, and some bits? You talk to an expert who tracks these people. You need some special camera work? Editing? You need a specialist in marketing? costume? You hire them. And here's the real trick, where the whole muddle will get confused indeed -- you don't have to know the expert costumer, you just have to know the person (or people) who can find that person.

The big studio's power is that all these people are in-house. To repeat myself, I think the power of the 4GW will be when and where all the various components are available independently. We'll see, of course.

Geoff Thorne said...

Understand that we're talking about the future here. The near future but still.

In some ways the medium defines the artist. You say there aren't a lot of people who can do it all? I disagree. There are stacks of people who can handle one or two of the primary jobs it takes to make a film already. Some work in Hollywood now.

Everyone who has grown up watching TV knows what it is supposed to look like. It is as much a common language as, well, our common language.

There's another approach for those of you outside of Hollywood.

You need actors? Spend a month or two investigating local reparatory theatres. Every major city has more than one and, pound for pound, you'll find those kids can hang with the proiest pro Hollywood ever put up. Some would kill them in stand up fight. You can entice such people with nominal fees, profit share or, JUST FOR THE NOTORIETY. This last is especially good if the work is meant to showcase you all rather than generate revenue. Money can come with your second project, the one someone begs you to make for them.

I presume you are the writer in this model and, as the originator of the piece, you are also the producer. So there's no need to spend money there. You own what you write outright. Tally ho.

Cameras? Really? Costco is selling a KID'S GREEN SCREEN system for under 100 bucks. Who says only kids can use it? Editing? I cut my webshow using the iMovie batched software and worked the sound with Garage Band and storebought sound fx cds.

Not to mention royalty-free images galore. Sure the original recording was midi but, that tech is old hat now. you can do it all for under 5k. Well under. And lets not get into off-the-shelf CGI software. I'm not talking MAYA here. I'm talking Bryce 3, Poser and Anime Studio (50 bucks, man). Find a college student, call him your FX Supervisor, let him or her go to town. They do this crap for FUN anyway. Why not let them have fun to your benefit?

Giving the mass of people cheap means to express means more do-it-all practitioners will appear. We know because it happened the last time with the printed word. We know because they already exist in the film industry and it's still wicked hard to make a movie without a stack of people. What is audio podcasting but the regular Joe FINALLY having access to radio production without having to ASK permission?

The fewer permissions necessary, the more people show up to play. More people means more competition. More competition means superior (or massively inferior in the case of porn) product.

That paradigm took about a century to produce Shakespeare. Less than 50 years to produce Orson Welles. Much less than fifty to produce Griffith.

Do the math. If every kid or cluster of kids can make a high quality filmed peice as easily as they organize a baseball game, you're going to get your Mozarts and Shakespeares pretty damned fast.

I know I will live to see that kid. Moreover I'll still be young enough to appreciate it.

Darius Kazemi said...

The game industry is starting to move in a similar direction. Wide Load Games has tried it recently, here's an interview with their founder about what they're doing:

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050929/wen_01.shtml

Cunningham said...

"To repeat myself, I think the power of the 4GW will be when and where all the various components are available independently. We'll see, of course."

It's called Craigslist.

Anonymous said...

Have you heard of What the Funny by cautionzero in Seattle? It's thirteen 10-minute shorts that look very professional shot for a shockingly low price. I'm not part of the project, though I am friends with people who are. It's worth a look in this context.

Unknown said...

Could you list the $15k film making shopping list? I'm working on a sitcom for the Internet and I want to have a detailed equipment list for when I go asking for funding. I'd like to see how your list compare sto the one I'm putting together.

Anonymous said...

redjack,

There are two Firefly fanfilm projects underway that are pretty much following the model you describe, including visual effects by amateur CGI artists: Into the Black from Canada and Bellflower from Australia.

Kirk said...

No, Redjack, you miss the point. Or rather, you've a good point, but you've missed mine. Let me see if I can run at this sideways.

Emerson was wrong. If you build a better mouse trap, the world will not beat a path to your door. Not until the world knows you have it, at least.

Once upon a time I worked for a magnificent chef who'd just opened his restaurant. Genius at cooking, excellent understanding of patron tastes, had a better than average understanding of budgets... His restaurant went under in less than a year because he sucked at advertising. And because he was so good at so many other parts he didn't hire or contract for someone to do that part.

The number of people who can do it ALL are amazingly tiny. I, for one, refuse to accept I shall spend my entire life living on the creative production of that handful of people. What I expect instead is for all the individuals who are, say, creative writers but terrible directors/publicists/cameramen/etc... to contribute their part, much as already happens. The existing model works (mostly) for a darn good reason -- a team of excellent people will outdo a single genius on sustained projects most of the time.

Because of the existing narrow distribution channel -- it costs a LOT of money to get the world to know of your mousetrap -- the existing systems have a major advantage. I can see where they're going to break in the 4GM, but it's mainly because of the way the avenues are so open and (relatively) uncontrolled. You will see the single genius production house. But what is more powerful is the communication structure that will allow A to find B, C, D, and D and work together, then put their product to half a dozen others for output, all as relative independents or as members of smaller specialty houses.

And the houses that do what the studios today do will have a lot of power and money, still. They'll have the knowledge of who to ask for a second unit scout, of what Chicago units are good for "this" and which aren't. They'll have made contracts for those peculiar but absolutely critical specialists - - be they as simple as foleys, or something even more obscure - - so that if 20 independents are asking, THEIR project gets priority.

The studios have all the money because they control the distribution. But the role of catalyst they perform is absolutely essential, and whether they continue or it becomes the province of many, many others, the role will stay. And will continue to outdo - in quantity, and sometimes in quality - the single gems of the independent do-it-all genius.

Jeff Lipton said...

Where does closed-captioning fit in this Brave New World of yours? Or are the hard-of-hearing just told "The ADA doesn't apply to anything but network TV, so ALL new media are closed to you. Sucks to be you, huh?"

I really HATE the fact that cable shows, and DVD extras don't need to be closed-captioned. Now the Internet (and other 4GMs are going to be closed to us, too. Yay!

Church said...

"You need an actor or 20 - a couple of leads, and some bits? You talk to an expert who tracks these people. You need some special camera work? Editing? You need a specialist in marketing? costume? You hire them. And here's the real trick, where the whole muddle will get confused indeed -- you don't have to know the expert costumer, you just have to know the person (or people) who can find that person.

"The big studio's power is that all these people are in-house."

No, they're not. Some are but the rest, especially outside of CA, are contractors.

I was telling just such a person the other day, after he was bitching about clueless producers, that there needs to be a contractor who's a Production Consultant. He'd be the guy who knows the other guys, as well as the other productions tricks of the trade (scheduling is the big one.)

Right now, there's a need for such a position, but no real awareness of it. That could, and probably will, change shortly.

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hugh "Nomad" Hancock said...

(Sorry, realised I'd missed a bit.)

Interesting post. I'm less pessimistic than you, though - from my experience, which is admittedly not with live-action, I think that the indie series model is perfectly practical now on a much lower budget, and will become very visible pretty darn quickly.

On that note, I take it that when you say $.5 -> $1 million per episode absolute baseline, you're not talking about animation? Particularly if you're using performance capture/mocap techniques, Machinima, or other speed improvements, you can make a 45-minute full 3D episode for a good deal less than that (at decent animation quality - not Pixar, but watchable by the normal punter). Your main expenses are 3D asset creation - which, if you're smart about a series, lends itself to a hell of a lot of reuse - and raw animation, hence my mention of Machinima and performance capture. Plus, if you're making animation, you can have car chases, big action sequences, alien worlds, exploding gunships, all that good stuff.

(Seen the trailers for Mass Effect? That's the kind of quality you can get from Machinima these days - and a lot of that work was *fast* to do.)

Rep actors - yes, they absolutely rock. FWIW, the microbudget Machinima animated feature I've just finished ("BloodSpell" - you may have seen it mentioned around the place on Boingboing and so on) was voiced by rep actors, amongst others, and they did an amazingly professional job - and these were young guys, not 25-year veterans.

Death of writers? Nah. I'm exactly the kind of do-it-all guy you describe - I write, direct, produce, distibute, advertise. If we do a series production, though, I'm certainly going to look at hiring in dedicated writers. A) They're dedicated - which means that they're probably better than I am, and B) even if I'm as good a writer, I'm in a showrunner-plus-strings position - I'm doing so much that I physically can't write everything! Realistically, even someone like me, who is basically in this to write (and I'm told is pretty good), isn't going to be writing more than 3-4 episodes of a year. There's still room for writers - and directors, and producers, and marketers, and advertisers - in this model. It's just a lot more small and scrappy, and rather than having a dozen people on marketing, for example, you'll have one overworked person who's primarily marketing and PR, with a sideline in writing web copy, getting dragged into test screenings, making the coffee and cleaning the loo because no other bugger will. Typical startup stuff, in other words.

Kirk said...

Nomad, thanks, you triggered my memory of my main point - which I failed to mention.

Why in most cases it won't be a one-man shop? Because doing it all means doing less. And even if you are better at EVERY SINGLE THING than EVERYONE ELSE, you lose. Even if you crank out nothing but gems that everyone loves, you could be doing more.

Ricardo's law of comparative advantage still applies.

Anonymous said...

WGA = Whining pussies

Geoff Thorne said...

I don't think it's an either/or.

There will be prodcutions structured the way silicon valley start-ups are structured and there will be one-stop shops and everything between.

We know this because, on the creative end, that's precisely what's happening now. All that's needed is that marketting Shakespeare to throw in her hat and somebody is going to break out.

I'm not home now but, yes, for between 15 and 20k you can saddle up equipment wise. Locations can always be stolen of finegled. A Hollywood centric model certainly will dominate for the forseeable future in practice as well as in goal setting but, as these children mature, you will se less and less attention paid to the dinosaurs.

You can't make STAR WARS for that but, yeah, you can make something worth looking at that isn't embarassing provided your skillset is up to the task. And if you're REALLY good, your work will be indistinguishable form the pros.

I am a huge fan of INTO THE BLACK. I just wish they had made something that wasn't fan oriented. Then they would OWN it. The amount of work they put in and its quality is, frankly, humbling, but, dammit, that shouldn't be something to make Joss Whedon happy. It should be theirs. Outright.

That's just me. I have issues.

Machinima is also part of the next wave as a there are now two generations of people raised to accept the images they see in game clips as reasonable and those clips are getting more and more photorealistic. Synchronicity approaches. Beowulf, anybody? Smells like machinima to me.

The total cost of your show will, of course, exceed 20k per if you mean to pay anyone but even that can be negotiatied with REAL profit share deals, royalties, merch participation etc.

It really doesn't have to be arcane. People who want it to be are being bastardy for a reason.

The biggest hurdle is the Paul Revering of your project and it is, admittedly, a whopper.

But, remember, the literary model works for unknowns as well as well-knowns. Who the hell was JK Rowling eight years ago? Some chick on the dole with ADD.

Make it. Make it well. Bring it to market and I have to think people will-

Well, they'll steal it off the 'net and distribute it without paying you but, if you merch up or get your revenue from ads sold on your site, they can bootleg to their little hearts' contents.

At the end of the day it will boil down to group or individual talent. Which is bloody fine with me.

This isn't pie in the sky. The Big Guys will maintain somewhat of a stranglehold. They are too rich and too well situated to be aced out. But their total dominance will vanish and, if they want to distribute LOST to make a buck, they have to pay the same licencing fee for that right that authors curently get when someone wants to turn their novel into something with actors and FX.

Yeah. I'm optimistic. I'm just pissed off I was born too early. The most fun will happen whn I'm too old to really dig in.

Anonymous said...

I am a huge fan of INTO THE BLACK. I just wish they had made something that wasn't fan oriented. Then they would OWN it. The amount of work they put in and its quality is, frankly, humbling, but, dammit, that shouldn't be something to make Joss Whedon happy. It should be theirs. Outright.

Have you seen Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning? It's a Finnish fanfilm spoofing Star Trek and Babylon 5. Not only has it enjoyed a commercial DVD release in Finland, but the producers are now working on an entirely original project, Iron Sky, in collaboration with an award-winning Finnish science fiction author.

Geoff Thorne said...

Thanks, Gag.

I'm on the mailing list now.

Their work looks pretty damned awesome already.

About Me said...

JR

Way to evagelize the truth behind the Darwinism at play regarding big content and the web. Sanctuary continues to arouse interest from everyone from networks (NBC, Sci Fi Channel) to huge media world creators like Microsoft. Everyone wants to touch the canary - in case it actually lives. And you know what? I think there may be - just may be - enough air in the new media mineshafts for the sweet bird to survive until we hit the motherlode. But totally agree bigs like google (who own the entire 'net's eyeballs) have to step up and see the revenue potential. A tough case with zero $$$ metrics and only speculation.

Was great chatting in San Diego last July. Check out my spankin' new blog at www.stage3media.blogspot.com.

Keep the faith, and rock on to the gates of hell and take no prisoners!

Damian Kindler

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