Of all these, I’ve only seen four of them more than once. Am I out of touch with television? Possibly. I own a television but I get no reception of any kind on it, not even the local channels. Therefore, let me give you my top show of the decade and a runner up.
Why? Because it’s a reboot/remake (they dominated our decade), because it’s about the event that defined our decade and the resulting quagmires, because it went to those dark places (the middle of season 2 still haunts me), because it rocked. This is without a doubt the best show of the decade.
Why? Because the first season was a near perfect season of television, because Kristen Bell owned it, because it’s a teen based high school noir powered by a revenge core that took teens seriously and nobody has done it better since, and lastly because it rocked!
Oh, there’s nothing like some Schadenfreude from The Hollywood Reporter. Here is their list of the ten biggest movie flops, in order of suck, from the last ten years.
If you’ve been keeping up with my posts, you know I’m looking for small shooting/editing gigs. I was recently put in contact with a San Francisco based company that primarily produces short videos for small businesses. Sounds like the perfect kind of work for me. I contacted them, they asked me to attend a webinar, I sent them a link to my films and I received this reply.
Thank you for attending our orientation webinar yesterday. I hope you found it informative.
I took at look at your links and they’re really create & good, but I had a difficult time assessing what kind of a job you’re capable of doing if sent out on a XXXXXXXX project. Do you have any links to your work that are more XXXXXXXX-style (b-roll over interview) that I can take a look at? If not, do you think you could create something like that for me to look at? Please let me know.
… they’re not sure if I can produce a 30-60 second video that’s interview driven yet intercut with b-roll (for the record, I taught at class at UCLA [proper, not extension] for three quarters where the students produced this exact kind of work) so they want me to shoot something for them to take a look at?
Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.
So this is where you help me help you. I need to produce a 30-60 second short that promotes something so why shouldn’t it be your small business/services/cause/whatever?
Did I mention I’m willing to do this for free?
But wait, there’s a catch (a few, actually):
I will come out and shoot for an hour, two max.
Half the time will be spent interviewing you (or whoever runs the organization/business in question).
The other half of the time I will be shooting b-roll.
I am willing to travel a short, reasonable distance from my home (let’s say 20 miles). Any further than that and you have to pay for all associated travel expenses upfront. I might be willing to forgo this expense if your business/organization/cause is super cool (e.g., I’d do this for Tippi Hedren but only if she lets me in the cage with the tiger).
I will upload the piece to my Vimeo account where you can grab the embed code and repost the video.
If you’re balking at my terms, remember that 1) I have a track record of high quality films, 2) I’m a professional using this piece to seek more work so it will be of the highest caliber and 3) I’m doing this for free for you.
Now, if you read her site recently and managed to shove past all the industry rumors and executive swaps there was a tiny story reporting that the Advanced Television Systems Committee just approved a mobile DTV standard.
So why should you or I care? Well, were you excited by the iPod Nano with built-in FM tuner? No, me neither, but I was excited by the possibility (actually, I kinda was but I’m trying to dramatize my point).
Well, what if you could use your iPod to tune into your local Fox station to watch FINGE? We are now one step closer to that possibility.
They also put me on the front page (click image to see more).
The bad news: they edited out my “more critical” points but “they appreciate my candor.” Also, they recently email blasted members with a review of the Filmmaker Forum but only included some other guy’s softball regurgitation of the weekend.
I think I just discovered the iPhone app you’ve been waiting for. It’s called Hitchcock and it seems pretty damn cool (although $20 is steep for an app). Take a look and judge for yourself.
And thanks to Wes Craven for turning me on to this.
In my lifetime as a filmgoer, I’ve been to over a thousand screenings that were followed by a question and answer session with the filmmakers and 99.9% of them were God f**king awful. I mean so bad you’d want to sacrifice your first born to Odin in the hope that he strike dead all those that approach the microphone.
Now, a good portion of these are awful because the subjects are boring but more often than not it’s the moderator, or lack of moderator, that is to blame. God help me every time the film ended, the lights went up and the “moderator” said, “wasn’t that great? Okay, the director is here and I’m gonna turn it over to you to ask him/her questions.” These “moderators” think they’re doing the audience a favor by allowing us more time to engage the filmmaker but instead we have to suffer through “how much did it cost?” and “how long did it take to shoot?” or other equally inane questions.
No, a good moderator asks the smart questions that illicit intriguing answers from subjects and leave the audience to ponder “that was a really good question, way better than what I was going to ask. Maybe there are stupid questions and they’re mine. Oh God, I hope I have a razor blade so I can end my life of insipid question asking and no longer bring shame upon my family name.”
Okay, yes, I’m am prone to hyperbole and that was a strong dose of “Dark Tony” but if you’d sat through as many awful Q&As as I have, you’d understand.
So it is with that preamble and with great sadness that I announce the departure of Rachel Rosen from Film Independent. Not only was she a great director of programming but she was one of the damn best moderators I’d ever seen in action. How good was she? When I was at Sundance in 2007, I saw her on a bus and I pushed my way through the crowd just so I could sit next to her and gush about how well she ran a FIND Q&A.
Yes, she’s that good.
So, with a bit of sadness (I never had the pleasure of having Rachel moderate a Q&A for one of my films) I wish her the best of luck in her return to San Francisco.
Back in 2006, Netflix offered a $1 million bounty for any team that could improve their Cinematch algorithm by 10%. If I remember correctly, a Netflix honcho called that 10% the “NAPOLEON DYNAMITE anomaly” because, well, here’s what I remember him saying.
It looks like someone finally did it. It took two teams combining their coding abilities, and the results still need to be verified, but I think we have a winner.
Or do we? The most interesting part of that Cinematical article is the question of Prize economics. See, by Netflix offering a prize to the winner, they get a lot of people working on their very specific problem, one that, if solved, would hypothetically generate more revenue for Netflix, for free. While this is a boon to the winners, couldn’t Netflix get the same results by hiring some coders, paying them a salary and offering them health benefits? Need another example of this? How about the Amazon contest for a user generated 30-second commercial that they plan to air on the major networks. What does the winner receive? One, possibly two, $10k gift certificates. Basically, you trade your winnings back to Amazon. Um, hey, look, if I had more time I’d enter but isn’t that just a bit fishy?
Or maybe I’m just getting all worked up since I have so little work at the moment.
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