Month: January 2009

Categories
Bowl Of Noses

Fatworld!

Fatworld is a free downloadable video game.  It looks fun, and may teach something too (oh no!).

Their website explains:

FATWORLD is a video game about the politics of nutrition. It explores the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and socioeconomics in the contemporary U.S. The game’s goal is not to tell people what to eat or how to exercise, but to demonstrate the complex, interwoven relationships between nutrition and factors like budgets, the physical world, subsidies, and regulations. 

It’s one thing to explain that daily exercise and nutrition are important, but people, young and old, have a very hard time wrapping their heads around outcomes five, 10, 50 years away.

You can choose starting weights and health conditions, including predispositions towards ailments like diabetes, heart disease, or food allergies. You’ll have to construct menus and recipes, decide what to eat and what to avoid, exercise (or not), and run a restaurant business to serve the members of your community.

FATWORLD comes with numerous foods, recipes, and meal plans, or players can create their own from the foods in their pantry or their imaginations.

Categories
Bowl Of Noses

The New Doctor


Matt Smith (who?), age 26 is the eleventh.

Categories
Truly Free Film

Data Portability, Facebook, & Filmmaker

Filmmaker has a post on Lance Weiler’s upcoming article on data portability.  I have been hungering for this one for a long time now.  Data portability’s a key issue for all of us.  It would have been on my list of what I want our film culture to be but I thought it was an issue or practicality more than a way of being.  Open source practices and general transparency in actions and practices is something though that is essential to a truly free film culture and it definitely should have been on my list (I have now added it).  What else did I forget?

Scott’s post goes on to discuss Facebook’s policy of dropping the accounts of those who have grown too large.  It’s an irksome situation and something to be aware of.  Check it out.
Categories
These Are Those Things

I Never Want My Cable Back

It’s been about five years now since I swore off cable TV.  It all felt like the same with one or two distinctions.  I have always preferred my news in print form, and of course the WWW provides the opportunity to always find what I missed.

I have to admit that I expected there to be much more interesting programing produced for the web than I have found.  Maybe I am not looking hard enough.  I would appreciate some more tips.
I did have the pleasure of finding Doctor Steel though.  He is a wonderful whack job, blending Pee Wee Herman with a fascist mad scientist in bondage gear vibe.  He’s got quite a few episodes up on YouTube now and I recommend checking them out when you’ve decided you have some time to kill.  They are nice work all around: great performance, art direction, archive sourcing, and overall  directing.
This is episode 2 to give you a taste:

Categories
Truly Free Film

Hope For The Future pt. 6: The List #’s 22- 25

22. Financiers are collaborating with each other. Groups like Impact Partners that provide regular deal flow, vetting, and producerial oversight for investors with common interests lowers the threshold number for investors interested in entering the film business. IndieVest is another model based on subscription, deal flow, and perqs. The high amount of capital needed to enter the film business has limited its participants. The film business has its own vernacular, and mysterious business practices. It is an industry of relationships. Collaborative ventures like this help to solve many of these threshold issues.

23. The US Government, at the city, state, and federal levels, recognize the positive economic impact of film production and have created a highly competitive market for tax subsidies and credits. The vast amount of experimentation in this field has allowed for it to grow forever more efficient. Although these benefits are designed to attract the highest amount of spend, and are thus most beneficial to Hollywood style models, the steady employment these credits have helped to deliver, develop a crew and talent base more able to also take risks on projects of more limited means. The “soft” money they provide a project is often key to getting the green light.

24. A greater acceptance of a variety of windows in terms of release platforms is emerging. Filmmakers were once the greatest roadblock to a pre-theatrical release DVD. Filmmakers are experimenting with everything from free streaming to the filmic equivalent to a roadshow tour. It is only through such endeavors that we will find a new model that works.

25. Industry leaders have said publicly that they will share the meta-data that a VOD release generates with the filmmakers. Although license fees have dropped considerably, filmmakers have new options on what to ask for in return. I spoke on a panel with two notable industry leaders who said they would put it in their contracts that filmmakers can receive and share the data the VOD screenings of their films generate. This information will become important the more filmmakers seek to maintain direct communication with their audiences.

Categories
Truly Free Film

Printing: Posters & Postcards

As mentioned a few days back, our Film Festival Strategy brainstorm continues…

Jon Reiss offers this up:

A very necessary expense in your publicity campaign are postcards and posters. These can be expensive but fortunately there are a number of on-line printers that are relatively inexpensive (eg 4000-5000 postcards for $100). One hidden cost when it comes to printing is shipping so I do recommend using a printer near you – so before you buy – make sure you include shipping in your cost estimate. I actually send an assistant or intern to pick up my printing from “Next Day Flyers” since the shipping almost costs as much as the printing. Sometimes your local printer will even match an on-line printers prices – or come close enough to make it worth your while. But they won’t cut their prices unless you have a comparison price.

Regarding Postcards – they are cheap enough online that you could print them for each festival or theatrical screening even if you only print 500 at a time. The old way of doing this was to order a ton and then use stickers for your specific screening time. Unless you have some slave labor around – buying new postcards for $50 is going to be cheaper than paying someone to print and apply stickers to each post card – you have better things to do with your time.

Three important notes about posters:

1. Most on-line printers will not print one sheet size posters.

2. Printing standard film size posters – 27″x41″ – is very expensive (for film festivals you only need one or two which will cost about $50 each – but for a theatrical release you will need more than that). The reason that these posters are so expensive to print is that they are too large for standard offset printing (the cheapest kind of bulk printing). However nearly all theaters (all the ones that I dealt with) will accept posters that are 24.5″x37.5″ which is the largest size that you can have printed offset. This will save you thousands. (Although the best price I found was $1200 for 2000 posters – a pretty good price).

3. You can get a lot of mileage from 11×17 posters. Most storefronts won’t put up a standard or near standard one sheet when you are promoting in a town. But they will put up a 11×17 poster. And these are much cheaper. You can get a 1000 for around $300. They are also good for wildposting/wheatpasting as they fit on most electrical boxes. (18x24s are also a good size for this) But be careful with wildposting – you can be fined thousands of dollars for illegal posting if there is anything on the poster that will track back to you or the theater!)

Printers:

Next Day Flyers based in Compton California

Got Print based in Burbank California

jon@jonreiss.com

Categories
Truly Free Film

What Got This Blog Started (For Me)

The conditions were there.  People were already talking.  Everyone over at The Workbook Project and FH2A were already leading the charge.  More voices were needed though.  And I was asked to give this talk, see…

Now you can truly see how much I need my hands to be able to speak.  This is just part one of six.  And  yes, it is my way to stay nasally through all six.  The rest are all there on Vimeo — so I just learned.  Check them all out, or not.

What of course will keep this blog going in the new year will be your participation.  We have so much ground to cover.  What is working well?  What isn’t? What are the goals and what are the steps to take us there?  We can’t wait for someone to lead us.  We must collaborate.  
Independent film culture — its content and its infrastructure — is at stake.  
I tell my son that it is a great time to be young because there is so much exciting stuff that MUST get done to save the planet.  Okay, so I give him a bit bigger agenda.  All I want from  you is to save indie film.  Happy New Year!