Strides in VR filmmaking

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Discovery has launched a new project: Discovery VR.

Although there are only 10 VR videos on the site right now, you can control each of them for a full 360 degrees with your mouse.

There’s diving with sharks, skateboarding in San Francisco and a surfing lesson.

I found that changing the control setting to Mouse Grab from the default Mouse Movement gave me more natural movement.

In addition to the website, there’s an app for iPhones and Android devices. Create a VR headset with Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear VR.

The company behind the magic is Littlstar.

My take: I remember the initial release of QuickTime VR in 1994 which gave me my first glimpses of ‘virtual reality’. GameSpot has an interesting history of VR. I think the application to narrative film will be fascinating. For instance, see Intimate Strangers : Chapter 1 — camera placement and mise en scene become very important. I like the way the ‘dream’ is projected onto the ceiling above the woman. A tip for VR directors, place the camera just to one side of the ‘line’ and let the viewer pan from one actor to the other and back.

Can Web Series catch on?

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Canada is betting web series will catch on.

On Screen Manitoba reports on a new web series development opportunity and lists web series festivals in Canada and abroad.

Cogeco is piloting a new development program for “Digital Drama Series.” Apply for $10,000 with your mentor to become pitch-ready. They are betting big:

“The Development and Packaging Mentorship Program is designed to fill the funding gap in the digital production industry in Canada by encouraging producers of web drama series to be “pitch ready” in order to attract distribution, platforms, talent and production financing. This pilot project will replace the Cogeco Fund’s existing television Development, Pre-development and Corporate Feature Film Development funding programs in 2015/16.”

The Independent Production Fund also lists the best of Canadian web series.

Netflix’s House of Cards and Orange is the New Black appear on Wikipedia’s list of web series, however, I think this is inaccurate due to their length and similarity to premium cable TV fare.

Got a web series or other web content? Buffer has a guide to promotion/distribution you might find helpful.

My take: my favourite web series is Jerry Seinfeld‘s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee on Sony’s Crackle app, which I Chromecast to my TV. Currently, I don’t watch anything on mobile or the web. I did like The Guild which I had heard about but didn’t watch until showing up on Netflix. I do remember the first episode of Red vs. Blue, but not as a web series — rather as one of the first examples of machinima.

Rooster Teeth set to deliver Lazer Team

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Rooster Teeth has announced that the world premiere for Lazer Team will be on September 24, 2015, at the Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas.

From the Fantastic Fest media release:

“Fantastic Fest will host the World Premiere of LAZER TEAM, the first feature film from web series gods Rooster Teeth. LAZER TEAM director Matt Hullum and cast members Burnie Burns, Alan Ritchson, Colton Dunn, Michael Jones, and Gavin Free will be in attendance to celebrate the highly anticipated sci-fi comedy and join Fantastic Fest’s official opening night party, presented by Rooster Teeth.”

Recall that in July 2014 this project became the third most crowd-funded film and video project on Indiegogo.com.

My take: kudos to Rooster Teeth for pulling this off. Their 37,000+ fan-funders must be giddy!

Filmmakers are dead. Long live filmmaking.

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Brandon Harris of The New Inquiry posted “There’s No Money in Movies” recently.

In it he discusses Abel Ferrara‘s unsuccessful attempt to crowd fund his latest film. Ferrara is a “notorious New York independent filmmaker” who wanted to raise half a million dollars on Kickstarter. And managed $20K. Harris writes:

“As traditional sources of specialty film financing have become harder and harder to come by connecting with audiences and donors through crowdfunding has become a burden many filmmakers of Ferrara’s generation have had to take on to continue working. The results for many of the elder statesmen in this new media landscape have been mixed.”

He then moves on to discuss Independent Filmmaker Project‘s Amy Dotson keynote speech at the Seattle International Film Festival.

It’s a fascinating speech. One favourite bit:

“We have to try to stop adjusting our realities to hold onto the ways we consume stories before rather than allow new forms and ideas to take hold.”

Harris takes umbrage and concludes by lamenting:

“Is this what every independent filmmaker should want? To be embraced by corporations and the entertainment mainstream? To have to be good at three or five different disciplines instead of just one? In Dotson’s telling, it’s unavoidable. These well-meaning artists will have to adopt another stance, as filmmakers are analog, too serious, and not platform-agnostic enough to allure corporate suits.”

My take: surely the new economics of film is not news and only further proves that the Long Tail now rules the mediascape. A handful of media companies/franchises/directors get the majority of the money/tickets/attention. The bad new is that there is less room in the middle for small, esoteric ventures to make an economic go of it. The good news is that the rest of us at the shallow end can now play digitally and globally — and just stop dreaming of dollars.

The Creative Class

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Mike Bielenberg of MusicRevolution has posted twice this year on The Creative Class.

In April, he introduced ‘my group of people’ — ‘people from whom original thought constantly emanates‘ — whose job is to be creative and innovative or use information to solve problems.

From Wikipedia:

“The Creative Class is a posited socioeconomic class identified by American economist and social scientist Richard Florida, a professor and head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.”

In his July post, Mike reports on the job growth of the creative class in the United Kingdom between 2011 and 2013.

Analyzing data from the Office for National Statistics, he concludes:

“Information technology outpaced every category in terms of volume…. With concert ticket prices at an all time high, live music must be the primary economic driver behind the growth in music…. Nobody reads books or goes to museums anymore; because that would require the slow, meaningful absorption of text that isn’t floating on a screen with music blaring underneath. Who’s got time?”

Ultimately he’s encouraged because the ‘creative thought pie’ is not finite and will never stop growing.

My take: I think the denizens of today’s creative class are the modern equivalent of the artisans of the analogue age. In the past, you had a patron, a shop or gallery representation. Now, geography is less restrictive and digital production potentially allows for unlimited duplication. Your reach is global, but so is your competition. Looking forward to Mike’s next post on the creative class.

The Disapproval Matrix

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Natalie Sejean of Mentorless.com recently pointed me to Ann Friedman‘s Disapproval Matrix.

There are four quadrants: Critics, Lovers, Frenemies and Haters.

And two axes: Rational/Irrational and Know You/Don’t Know You.

“The general rule of thumb? When you receive negative feedback that falls into one of the top two quadrants—from experts or people who care about you who are engaging with and rationally critiquing your work—you should probably take their comments to heart. When you receive negative feedback that falls into the bottom two quadrants, you should just let it roll off your back and just keep doin’ what you’re doin’.”

My take: I love 2×2 matrices! As a visual learner, I love how a simple diagram can bring clarity to a complex concept.

Review: Steal Like an Artist

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I just read Austin Kleon‘s short book Steal Like an Artist.

It’s short at 140 pages, with lots of pictures, so it’s an easy read.

There are ten ‘chapters’:

  1. Steal like an artist
  2. Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started
  3. Write the book you want to read
  4. Use your hands
  5. Side projects and hobbies are important
  6. The secret: do good work and share it with people
  7. Geography is no longer our master
  8. Be nice (the world is a small town)
  9. Be boring (it’s the only way to get work done)
  10. Creativity is subtraction

Austin begins:

“All advice is autobiographical. It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past. This book is me talking to a previous version of myself…. These ideas apply to anyone who’s trying to inject some creativity into their lives and their work.”

It’s peppered with quotes by famous artists like ‘Art is theft.’ Pablo Picasso.

Austin’s central tenet is that since no ideas are original we are free to remix or mashup other ideas to create new ones.

He then explores ways to do that.

Austin’s call to action:

“The manifesto is this: Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use — do the work you want to see done.”

My take: I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Would make a great gift. Hint hint.

West-coast TV and film writers earn over $1 billion in 2014

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Variety reports that motion picture writer earnings are down, whereas TV writer earnings are up for 2014:

“Hollywood screenwriter earnings slid 5.4% last year to $313.9 million — the fifth straight year of decline — while TV writing earnings rose 2.3% to $725.6 million, according to the Writers Guild of America West…. A total of 3,888 writers reported TV earnings, a gain of 39 slots. Feature film employment fell 5.6% to 1,556 writers, or 96 fewer than in 2013.”

Note that this totals over $1 billion and includes almost $400 million for residuals:

“The WGA West, which has about 8,000 members, reported that residuals surged 2.5% to a record high of $383.7 million with gains of 4.8% in TV to $245.4 million while sliding 1.5% in features to $138.3 million. But the five-year comparisons show that film has been flat while TV has been surging. Film residuals are up 2.8% since 2009 while TV has gained 60.4% since 2008.”

No word on what the WGA East writers earned in 2014.

See the WGA Schedule of Minimums.

My take: TV writing seems to earn twice as much as film work, even though film pays more. I think that’s because there are just so many more TV episodes to write. One of the takeaways for me is to learn just how few professional media writers there are actually writing.

How you will be paid, post-capitalism

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For the last ten years, I’ve been wondering about the future of the media industry. I realized in 2004 when video first started showing up on the web that the old ways of doing business were threatened and would be replaced with a new model, one day.

Now, I have a glimpse of that future.

In a new book, Postcapitalism, Paul Mason makes the case that we are living through the end of one era and witnessing the dawn of another. Capitalism is dying and the Collaborative Commons is rising.

Paul writes in The Guardian:

“Postcapitalism is possible because of three major changes information technology has brought about in the past 25 years. First, it has reduced the need for work, blurred the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages. Second, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant. Third, we’re seeing the spontaneous rise of collaborative production: goods, services and organisations are appearing that no longer respond to the dictates of the market and the managerial hierarchy.”

Further:

“Today, the thing that is corroding capitalism, barely rationalised by mainstream economics, is information. Most laws concerning information define the right of corporations to hoard it and the right of states to access it, irrespective of the human rights of citizens. The equivalent of the printing press and the scientific method is information technology and its spillover into all other technologies, from genetics to healthcare to agriculture to the movies, where it is quickly reducing costs.”

So, what’s the future?

Christopher J. Dew lays out some thoughts in Post-Capitalism: Rise of the Collaborative Commons on Medium.

Christopher believes:

“Vast increases in productivity and efficiency will be realized in the years ahead through an integrated network of smart-products (termed the Internet of Things, or IoT), accessible renewable energy harvesting technologies, energy sharing across a distributed smart-grid, the decentralization of manufacturing through 3D printing, open online education, the decentralization of finance, legal contracts and governance through Blockchain applications, and the progressive automation of the workforce.”

He argues:

“On the Collaborative Commons, a new type of incentive is driving creativity and innovation. The expectation of financial reward loses relevance when prosumers begin to produce their own products for use and exchange, and marginal costs approach zero. In the Commons, the expectation of financial reward is quickly being replaced by the desire to advance the social well-being of humanity.”

How will all this be paid for? A Universal Basic Income and the Blockchain.

“Smart contracts are computer programs that can automatically execute the terms of a contract once the agreed upon conditions are fulfilled. These could include simple transactions such as an online shopping purchase, or executing the terms of a will. Moreover, as smart devices and products continue to proliferate across an Internet of Things infrastructure they will increasingly integrate and register with the Blockchain and be able to be bought, sold and operated in line with the terms of smart contracts.”

My take: I love this big picture! Imagine a world where every piece of media was recognized by the Blockchain so its creator could be fairly compensated. I called for something like this in my short animation Right2Copy, only in this future, we don’t need any middlemen at all.

A novel way to search for films

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Folks in the UK are in for a treat.

The British Film Institute has added Britain on Film to its BFI Player.

What makes this stand out is the both the film collection and the search method.

Enter the site and you’re prompted to enter a place: favourite childhood holiday, where your parents met, favourite place in the UK.

Next, you are shown a map of the spot, surrounded by markers indicating place-specific films. On the right, you can refine the results by decade and subject or simply ‘See all the films.’

From the media release:

“Many of these films have never – or rarely – been seen since their first appearance and can now be searched for by specific UK locations through BFI Player’s ground-breaking new Film and TV Map of the UK, which also enables people to share films with their family, friends and communities.”

The only catch is that you have to have a UK IP address.

In the meantime, Canadians can make do with the National Film Board‘s excellent site, albeit with standard searching. (I thought Mudflats Living was fascinating, as Victoria currently debates ‘micro-housing.’)

My take: I love maps, so I particularly like the way Britain on Film organizes searches first by location, displaying the results on a map, and then by subject. I think it would be fascinating to geo-locate scenes from all movies this way. Hey Google, can you implement this feature on YouTube soon?