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JFR

There is a must-read LA Times story today by Dawn C. Chmielewski and Meg James called, “Hollywood May Not Be Recession-Proof This Time“.

“Blame the Internet. The endless stream of free content means strapped consumers can escape without spending at the multiplex or subscribing to premium cable.”

Just like the 1930’s Depression solidified the audience’s taste for frequent Hollywood films, this time a similar phenomenon could occur regarding new distribution outlets and theatrical venues for the New Digital Cinema.  Remember, in transformational times, there is great opportunity for those that see the daylight and are flexible enough to react and commit to the new model.

I had a great two days in the San Jacentio mountains at the CineStory Retreat with a great group of screenwriters, producers, creative execs and one great literary agent. 

This was my first time at Cinestory and despite being a speaker, I learned a lot about story, writing and pitching and was really charged up about jumping into my next screenwriting project(s).  I had just finished a re-write the week before, so the timing was good.

There’s a great CineStory blog where you can follow the retreat almost as it happens… you should take a look. (no cell service up there in the mountains, but WiFi).

One highlight:

Barri Evins, Regina Lee  and Nana Greenwald  lead a “FLY ON THE WALL” pitching exercise. Barri said this was developed to help “demystify” the meeting process.  Crucial to the traditional Hollywood way of doing business, meetings are used as a way to “say hello” as Barri said. 

I’m personally not a big fan of pitch meetings, maybe because it is difficult for me, so this was helpful. I always feel that if a film ideas is worth pitching, it’s worth writing so people can see the film in a fully fleshed out form. The facts are that pitches are only good for 2 things, a New Idea by a very well established writer with great credits (who would like to be paid to write the first draft), or a writer with a very “high concept” idea.  I’m not the former exactly, and very seldom have the latter.  Independent film-type scripts need not apply to the pitching process.

This is how ”Fly on the Wall” works, which is a concept owned by CineStory. 

Three Producers/Production Executives act as if they are in a traditional pitch meeting with a writer, and one of the CineStory writers pitches them a project.  The execs can interrupt as if they were in a real meeting and say what they would normally say to the writer at the end of the pitch.  Then they toss him/her out and discuss the pitch and the writer among themselves.  Of course, that’s why it is called “Fly on the Wall” — the writer gets to hear how they would discuss the pitch in private, and if the execs feel like they could “sell it to their bosses”.  Actually this didn’t result in the kind of cruelty you might imagine…  it was enormously illustrative. Although every pitch was picked apart by the execs (except one micro-pitch designed to get them to agree to read a finished screenplay) it seemed that all the writers came away happy and were able to use the feedback in a positive way.

The end result was exactly what Barri had promised, the idea of taking a pitch meeting actually seemed fun, instead of dreadful.

Tomorrow – more Cinestory highlights.

Self Distribution at its most basic! Starting a “MobMov”, aka Guerrilla Drive-In- VIDEO: http://tinyurl.com/59ab64

Big Cuts at Yahoo… the downward roll of the giant string ball of media/marketing is just starting to gain speed.  12,000 smart people looking for jobs that don’t exist.

Yahoo Job Cuts

It’s going to be an Ugly, Ugly Christmas.

Unsolicited advice: sell everything, buy a backpack and start walking. Or just live in a hole in the ground and create that great novel, symphony or film you have always dreamed of. Let’s keep that tradition of Great Art coming from Bad Times. 

Cut overhead, pay off debt, live simply, love your family, nurture your friends.

My belief is that an artist, filmmaker or otherwise, that is truly producing authentic work of quality is richer “than any Rockefeller” as the old song goes.  That may mean we do something not-so-cool to pay the bills.  That’s fine.

We all have the chance to learn what is important out of this…

AUTHENTICITY – SIMPLICITY – TRUTH.

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/10/analysts-predic.html

Wim Wenders

A nice interview with Wim Wenders about winding his way as a filmmaker with an authentic voice.

Hitler knew it… there is no more powerful propaganda tool that the motion picture, it’s ability to create and manipulate emotions, tell a story (real or imagined) and generally mess with people’s “hearts and minds” is powerful & effective.  The Nazi film TRIUMPH OF THE WILL by Leni Riefenstahl is revered as a classic in the history of cinematic manipulation… it is still studied in film schools all over the world.  The bottom line, Propaganda Films Work. Turns out the Republican Party knows this as well, and is using the American Press to deliver political propaganda to citizens in swing states.  All it takes is cash. A fear-mongering motion picture called OBSESSION: RADICAL ISLAM’S WAR AGAINST THE WEST

 is being distributed free on DVD in newspapers throughout election battleground states in an effort to scare voters into voting for McCain.  If you are interested in film as an influencer, you should read this LA TIMES article by DeeDee Correll.   The film is produced by Clarion Fund.  28 million DVDs (yes… 28,000,000 DVDs) were included as advertising inserts in newspapers in vital swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Michigan, Florida and North Carolina.  Clarion says the cost was in the “multi-millions” but won’t give specifics and WON’T say where the money came from.  Nice… tell us again Senator McCain, about “Transparency”… Some excerpts:

The News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., rejected the insert, calling the DVD “fear-mongering and divisive.”  “Of course, it’s not free speech,” wrote the paper’s editor, John Robinson, on his blog.  “It’s a paid advertisement making the case for one side of a complicated, controversial issue,” he wrote, noting that the other side would go unheard unless it buys its own ads.  He continued: “Newspapers decide not to publish information every day. Most of the time we call it news judgment.”  Some readers also haven’t accepted newspapers’ explanations for distributing the DVD. “If I paid you to distribute an anti-Semitic DVD, would you be so obliging?” Laurel Thompson wrote in a letter to the editor of the Denver Post, which distributed more than 553,000 copies of the DVD in its Sept. 14 edition. “Or how about a DVD celebrating the courage of [Columbine High School killers] Harris and Klebold?” Newspapers should not have accepted the advertising, said Marianne Weigand, 50, of Arvada, Colo., who complained to the Rocky Mountain News in a letter to the editor.  If she wanted to watch such a film, she would have sought it out, she said. “If you’re going to send something out, it’s a sample of Tylenol, not a movie full of something so violent, something that not everybody wants to watch,” Weigand said. “It’s propaganda about terrorism. . . . I don’t see anybody benefiting from watching that.”

The Republicans know that fear is their best (and only) selling tool… It has kept them in power for 8 years and was first proven to work in TV ads that got Reagan re-elected in 1984. Lord knows the Republicans have shown themselves to be incompetent in handling natural disasters, foreign affairs, the economy and protecting the constitution… fear is all they have left to sell the American people. Here’s my problem: there is no downside for a political party if they lie to us, none whatsoever. Why is that? If I park 5 minutes after 6 PM on my street in LA I get fined $35.  But if I spout outragious lies on public airwaves to get a candidate elected, there is no no judge, no jury, no consequences. In theory, the media outlet is supposed to filter this, but then THEY ARE BEING PAID to enclose the DVD, at a time that print advertising revenues are reaching an all-time low.  Some filter.  It is only a small minority of editors with a integrity like John Robinson (no relation) of News & Record in Greensboro, N.C. that are saying “no”.  But big papers owned by big corporations? No questions asked and thanks for doing business with us!  The ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS sent out more than 1/2 million DVDs! Shouldn’t the political party benefiting from these lies lose funding, or access to the public airwaves?  If you curse on the radio or TV or threaten the President, or break some other rule, the station’s license is revoked.  They are PUBLIC AIRWAVES after all and the stations LICENSE THEM, they don’t own them.

Nice post by Loren McDonald at Media Post about the effects of Social Networks on email marketing…  

The new numbers show the tremendous growth and influence of social networking on advertising.  Could the days of massive BS be over for marketing folk?  With social networking, consumers are more than delighted to debunk claims, recut and make parodies of commercial spots and generally point out and ridicule marketing fluff.  These numbers were quoted from the book Groundswell, published by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research:

Recent studies show this shift:

• 42 percent of adults 18-65 now know what social media is (Synovate study, June 2008)
• 58.5 percent of college students use social media daily, up from 32.8 percent in 2006 (EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, August 2008)
• In June 2008, Facebook.com had 132 million unique visitors, a 153 percent increase over June 2007 (comScore World Metrix)

I’ve just finished reading Gerd Leonhard’s dead-on collection of essays MUSIC 2.0 which has some valuable insights for anyone in digital media… not just music.  If you have been paying attention at all over the last decade, you know than the moving picture’s fate closely follows that of music… now that we have a generation that has come of age in the “click to download” culture.   The book is available for download with a donation, or via Amazon.com.

music 2.0

Let’s not spend any more time mourning the death of the late 20th centuries media revenue models… it was rank with abuse and promoted mediocrity and a brain-dead mass market. And remember that the arts, the written word, theater and music especially have been with us for a very long time.  Things are going to be new, invigorating, and worth paying attention to. Those of who care, should celebrate our good fortune at being present at the birth of something truly NEW.

The quick and flexible will flourish…  music and cinema and the rest of the arts are not going away… in fact they are becoming more important than ever. Bad news for the Industry leeches (you know who you are), but good news for all of us that value the quality of the work over the boxoffice receipts.