By Charles Peirce
As I alluded to in a previous post, Transmedia is in the midst of a debate about its definition and who has the authority to determine that definition. It is one of those discussions I think best observed from the sidelines, but then I have no financial or artistic stake in that debate. However, I do think they’re important terms to understand.
By Reid Rosefelt
Social Media networks go through phases in their lives, just as we do in ours.
Most of us go through periods of adjustment which we handle with varying degrees of success. Many of us don’t climb very high up the ladder of success, and it’s a rare few that become superstars like Justin Timberlake, Jennifer Lawrence, Facebook or Twitter.
By Reid Rosefelt
When you finish reading this post you will possess the key to becoming a mighty internet power user.
For no charge, I’m going to share a huge breakthrough I made. That’s the kind of guy I am.
It all started just as the Chris Christie Bridge-ghazi scandal was gathering steam. Like many, I googled the besieged Governor to see if there were any new developments.
One day, I saw something that surprised me: on the first page, right under CBS News, MSNBC, Chicago Tribune, the Office of the New Jersey Governor, Christie’s Wikipedia entry, the Chicago Tribune again, and the Washington Post, was a link to something from my friend, celebrated indie film man Ira Deutchman. “Wow,” I thought. “Ira must have generated something pretty big to generate a search engine smasheroo like that.” As you might imagine, I was on pins and needles to find out what Ira had come up with.
By Charles Peirce
Everyone, I’d hope, has some thoughts about what makes a film good. Perhaps it displays a degree of craft or a particular aesthetic sensibility, covers specific subject matter, has a quality story, certain stars, etc. As you get older and your exposure to cinema becomes both richer and more refined, that definition probably becomes more nuanced. Still, if further pressed most people will also have some few “guilty pleasures” — films that don’t fulfill all their own requirements of what makes for a good film but which they like anyway. Perhaps they were childhood favorites, particular genres or kinds of stories that give comfort, or they just have an indescribable something. It can all seem very subjective, but that discrepancy, between our self-defined tastes and our secret loves, is a telling one.
By Reid Rosefelt
Have you ever thought about the miracle of the humble one-sheet poster?
Whether a film costs a hundred thousand or a hundred million–it gets the same 27” by 40” poster in the display case.
Now imagine you prefer squares, so you make 40” x 40” posters for your independent film. Or maybe you’re nostalgic for the good old days of Lobby Cards, so you make your posters 11” x 14” on sturdy cardboard stock. So now there’s room for 27” x 40” but you’ve elected to leave most of it blank.
But why would you do that? It wouldn’t make any sense.
But that’s what people often do in social media.
Image orientation and size makes a huge difference on different social channels. A tall picture on Pinterest is striking; a wide one is tiny. Tall pictures look great on Google+ too. On the other hand, wide aspect ratios look best on Facebook and Twitter.
If you read this blog you know that I do love innovation, and social media, but…
Call me an Old Fogie or something, but
this wave just washed over me
and I remembered (again)
I was HAPPIER when:
By Reid Rosefelt
Who was the person who decided that the plain vanilla word “content” was going to stand for all the stuff that gets put up on social media?
Whoever it was should hang their head in shame.
If the history of human experience is an empty vessel, I suppose if you were a dullard you could opine that “content” is what fills it up: literature, music, movies, religion, politics, sex, joke-telling, criticism, talk show hosting, blogging, Power Point presentations, tweeting, posting, and pinteresting–it’s all content.
But I don’t think that Steven Spielberg, Kathryn Bigelow, Steve McQueen, Lorde, Vince Gilligan, Banksy, Jim Jarmusch, Louis C.K., Jane Campion, Jay-Z, Guillermo del Toro, Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers, Jony Ive, Park Chan-wook and Sara Bareilles, woke up this morning and said, “I can’t wait to start making content!” There is no poetry in “content.” There is no transcendence in “content.” There is no glory in a life devoted to content.
People who live to make beautiful things know that language is a glorious stew–spicy, subtle, sweet, sour, creamy, crunchy, familiar and foreign–so they aren’t aroused by the bland mush of words like “content.”
