Waist Deep in the Media Swamp

Why bother with tying the dog on the roof when you can put it on the hood?

Note that this was shot in Michigan…

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m advising a startup called RipplFX that adapts all kinds of books into iPad and iPhone apps.

We recently released a great parody called ‘Monster for President,’ from author Hal Pollock. It takes aim at the political process and elections with the headline “Politicians May Behave Like Monsters, But What If They Were Monsters?” It is very humorous and has beautiful illustrations by Anthony Parisi, which we animated in comic book layout form.

I also liked the fact we used a real movie trailer VO artist, Andrew Dawson, in the video promo.

It is an interesting marketing challenge as it is a definite PG13 rating since it has some mild sexual innuendo. However, it’s presented like a kid’s book – and that’s part of the satire.

We’ll see how it goes as we attempt to get traction over the next few months.

You can purchase the app here.

[a slightly shorter version of this article originally appeared in Write On! Online]

Pitch Video for Mary Kerr’s IndieGoGo Project “Swinging in the Shadows”

Many writers, filmmakers and other creatives are considering using crowdfunding sites to help raise funds for their projects. These sites allow you to pitch your projects to the public so that funds can be collectively raised. You can create your pitch from a mix video, images, and text. Like PBS or NPR fund drives, potential patrons are offered cumulative ‘rewards’ or ‘perks’ at levels determined by the amount they contribute.

The main crowdfunding sites are IndieGoGo and Kickstarter. IndieGoGo was founded in 2008, Kickstarter in 2009. Both have raised millions of dollars for thousands of projects. Recently, Kickstarter had some headline grabbing projects, such as an iPod Nano watch that raised nearly $1 million (when their goal was to raise $15,000).

That is the exception rather than the rule. Many projects attempt to raise less than $3,000. Regardless of the goal, most fail to reach it.

I was asked by producer/director Mary Kerr to help her set up a crowdfunding campaign to raise finishing money for a two-part documentary she’d been shooting on and off over the last 15 years about the untold story of the California Beat Era. She has self-funded the project until now and the docs are now complete and edited. She needs to raise $8,500 to add audio sweetening, pay her editor, create a boxed set of DVDs with bonus materials, etc.

The biggest difference between the two is that in order to receive contributions at the end of the campaign, you have to make or surpass your goal on Kickstarter (all or nothing), where IndieGoGo dispenses whatever funds have been pledged, whether or not the goal is reached (any money raised is yours). Kickstarter takes a 5% fee; IndieGoGo takes 4% if the goal is reached and 9% if it is not.

In addition, Kickstarter requires contributors to use Amazon Payments (limiting contributors to having a US bank account or a US address); IndieGoGo accepts direct credit card or PayPal.

Check both sites FAQs for more details.

Ultimately, we went with IndieGoGo as Mary wanted to be able to receive whatever funds are contributed.

The process for both is the same:

1. Decide how much money to raise and set the goal.
2. Determine how long it may take you to reach the goal (up to 120 days)
3. Post a project and create a pitch
4. Offer gifts and perks to donors based on how much they contribute
5. Share your pitch with others

In the pitch video, description text and the perk levels, being clear and clever is a big plus. For example, here are clever, successful Kickstarter campaigns for a book on design and another by a musician.

Perhaps the most important part of a campaign is what you do after you launch – marketing and sharing the pitch to others. Both of the examples had a built in fan base to start and that helped.

As I post this we only have a weeks to go. Feel free to contribute to the project or encourage others to do so.

For the last few weeks, I’ve had a lot of fun working with RipplFX.

They are adapting illustrated books into animated, interactive apps for iPad & iPhone. They have a very flexible development system which takes original assets, allows them to be animated, etc., and turned into smooth apps.

Being a veteran of the old CD-ROM heyday of the early 1990′s, I find the storybooks RipplFX are creating do everything the old CD-ROMs projects promised, but never delivered.  The ability to touch, turn, and angle the iPad screen allows for some extremely interesting storytelling innovations.

They have quite a few projects in the pipeline and I will be writing about them as they become available (or I can discuss them). They are also opening to talking to authors and publishers about adapting titles for them. I hope they do a graphic novel soon.

Their first two titles released this week are from Seasons Studios. The founders, Bethany Argisle & Dr. Elson Hass, turned out to be long-time associates of my friends at Invision Productions.

The two new storybook apps are:

Blimps & Whales – a journey of friendship between sky and sea, which also promotes the protection of our delicate natural world.

Count Broccula – “Eat your vegetables before they eat you!” – where a young boy has a comic adventure while overcoming his fear of eating vegetables, especially broccoli.

You can download them from the App Store.

Here are their video trailers:

These great videos celebrate the basic fact that rhythm is everywhere. Life is constantly moving vibrations.

We’re just a biological speculation, sittin’ here vibratin’ ~ Funkmaster George Clinton

Keep bangin’!

As an addendum to my post about the Italian government classifying YouTube as a TV channel, in looking through J. Walter Thompson’s top 100 things to watch for 2011, coming in at number 100 is:

As YouTube transforms, there will be host of challenges ahead.

It will be fascinating to see the response of the networks & Hollywood. Thus will get ugly, as the old guard fights a turf war with the new kid.

A kid that can purchase them with the cash it has on hand.

What an interesting way to start the year!

According to Geekosystem, Italy’s version of the FCC (Italian Authority for Communications Guarantees) has classified any UGC (user generated content) site as television stations.

The reasoning is that if a site in any way curates their user generated content, even with automatic algorithms, “this amounts to editorial control,” and the site should be held to the same rules that apply to Italy’s broadcast television stations.  This would subject these sites to a small tax, would require them to take down videos within 48 hours of the request of anyone who feels they have been slandered, and to not broadcast videos unsuitable for children at certain times of day (whatever that would actually mean for a completely online service).

Most importantly, however, the new resolutions would make YouTube and other sites legally responsible for all of their content.

Wow. Keep in mind that

Last Februrary, four Google employees were arrested and charged with “criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code” in regards to a clip uploaded to Google video that none of them appeared in, filmed, uploaded, or even found out about until after it had been taken down.

I’m sure there are many people in this country that would like UGC sites and aggregators to be held responsible for all their content. I wonder if this will affect the continuing Viacom/YouTube copyright litigation & appeals in any way.

If it gains any traction, this line of thought might have ramifications in the net neutrality debate, too.

We’ll have to watch this one closely in the coming months.

It is always tremendous fun to see George Clinton & P-Funk. Over the years, I’ve probably experienced at least a dozen shows going back to the ’80s.

This show was in Yoshi’s Jazz Club – a medium sized venue in the Fillmore District of San Francisco. We went to the late show. As the early show was letting out, the building’s fire alarm went off – but the club staff indicated nothing was amiss, so we did not evacuate.

The fire crew arrived and as they left they were laughing… as you may have guessed -  too much smoke backstage triggered the aarm. LOL. My friend & P-Funk guitarist Shaunna Hall wrote,  When the fire dept arrived at the club, the first man in called it a “Code 4 – there’s… a SKUNK LOOSE IN THE BUILDING!! Nice!”

As the song says, “Ain’t no party like a P-Funk party…” and this show did not disappoint. Superb musicianship + outrageous costumes = one of the finest musical grooves in the universe.

It took a bit getting used to to see George without long hair (he’s got the Panama boater hat on). I apologize for not getting any close shots of him myself – as I was having too much fun dancing. But I did shoot a few segments from our perch in the back to the club:

Here’s Shaunna, RonKat and some of the band jamming after the show:

So you can see some closeups, here’s a video shot by RatedFFF, who apparently had total access, including getting a live audio mix:

From the earliest days of video games and CD-ROMs, Silicon Valley and Hollywood have attempted to work together. Many hundreds of thousands of words later, we’re still trying to work it all out.

Super talent-agent Ariel Emanuel, CEO of William Morris Endeavor (the inspiration for the character Ari in the show Entourage) spoke last week at the Web 2.0 Summit. His client, Julia Boorstin (from CNBC) interviews him on topics ranging from a discussion of the future of content distribution to how Steve Jobs got over on the music labels to piracy to monetizing via going direct.

Some quotes:

Content is the asset… Content creators are the assets.

I don’t care what (content) costs, I care what its worth.

Apple built a great business for Apple. They music companies failed (to build a good business).

Hollywood’s job is to figure out how to create the market for content – or we’ll be just like the music business.

Today, Twitter and Apple announced that iTunes Ping can now be integrated in Twitter.

I’m not convinced it will help independent musicians, but it will surely generate more revenue for Apple.

It will be interesting to see how deeply this is adopted. We’ll be watching this closely over the next few months.

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

(l to r) Jack Hanson, Debbie Brubaker, Diane Baker, Mikey Kelly, Rose Duignan

A few weeks ago, Anne Jordan and Randy Gordon from Northern California ScreenArtists held a networking  and panel event at Kerner Studios in San Rafael. The panel focused on the current state of the local production community and what might be done to help encourage its growth and success.

The panelists:

• Diane Baker (moderator) – Actress and Educator
• Debbie Brubaker - award winning Producer
• Rose Duignan -  Executive Producer, Kerner Group
• Jack Hanson – Broadcaster, Reporter
• Mikey Kelly – Public Relations Entrepreneur, Broadcaster, Columnist

Though the problems we confront are not unique to us, we have the talent and wherewithal to overcome many of them, if we work together. The whole discussion is worth watching (and all links are included below).

Here is the video second section, notable for Mikey Kelly’s extremely interesting and informative encapsulation of the history of production in the Bay Area. You’ll be surprised at all the innovation milestones and activity that has taken place locally since the very earliest days of filmmaking (especially if you are not from the Bay Area).

Links to videos of the other sections:

• Part One
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five

From the first moment I experienced the band Fishbone I immediately recognized they were perhaps the most unique band in the known universe. Their seemingly boundless balls-to-the-wall energy and their blend of funk/punk/ska/metal/reggae twisted and altered my mind and left an indelible impression.

They never let up. They never disappointed. Every time I saw them was an amazing experience. They inspired and influenced a gazillion other bands, but no one has yet to equal their manic-ness plus their superb musicianship. The same was true in their later spin-off incarnation as Trulio Disgracious.

At the Mill Valley Film Festival last night, we got to see a new documentary about the band, Everyday Sunshine, followed by a concert at The Woods.

Narrated by Laurence Fishburne, it not only tells the story of how they formed and their career ups and downs, their idealism, internal struggles, etc. – it does so with a humor and grace rarely seen in this genre. Besides all the standard interviews and behind the scenes discussions and arguments, there is a beautiful, sometimes humorous, animation running throughout highlighting many events that they did not have pictures or video for.

Here’s the trailer:

The film also detailed what happened when the original guitar player, Kendall Jones, left the band and joined a pseudo-religious cult run by his Father, based near here in Novato, California. It explained how the band’s attempted intervention was turned into a charge of kidnapping by a ambitious district attorney – which was later completely thrown out by a jury.

After the film, there was a question and answer session where the filmmakers where joined by Angelo Moore and Kendall, who still resides here in Marin:

(l to r) Filmmakers Lev Anderson & Chris Metzler with Angelo & Kendall

Kendall was asked “What lesson did you learn?”

He replied, “Jesus Christ is no reason to leave a band.”

The concert was as good as any of their shows I’d seen. Their energy was amazing considering they’ve all aged a bit. The crowd moshed like crazy. It was obvious many folks had not done anything like that for a decade or more.

Kendall joined original members Norwood Fisher, Angelo Moore & Walter Kibby for the encore of Party At Ground Zero. Here’s an excerpt (sorry I did not record more, but I had to dance):

Here’s a medley of some other songs:

Chris Anderson is the curator of the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conferences. In this short interview, he discusses the impact video on the web is having on us all.

I totally agree when he says web video is a “bigger deal than people realize.” We have only begun to understand the changes it is bringing.

OK, so it’s not the DIY Steadicam for the iPhone 4 but the Glif will be very useful. They are funding their first manufacturing run through Kickstarter.

They’ve already reached their goal, but pledge now to get one as soon as they are made.

‘Smut Capital’ a new documentary about San Francisco’s Tenderloin and the porn business during in the early 1970′s, is being funded through Kickstarter.

Through my video store in Marin, I had peripheral involvement with this local industry. It was an interesting time, to say the least… It would be great to see this project funded so we can see the whole story.

Here’s the trailer (NSFW):

Thanks to Violet Blue for the head’s up.
An interview with director Michael Stabile can be found here.