Not so sure this is a good idea

The big thing about the web and media is how do you produce content for the web and make money off of it?

You got some people with online stores, such as Apple, who rent and sell digital coppies of movies and TV shows. You have online video portals, such as Revver and Youtube, that monetize free videos with advertising content.

In a way these two models make sense. With feature films and TV shows, these are commodities that people actively seek out to watch. A demand for that content has been built out marketing and promotion. People will pay for the content.

The content on sites such as Revver (I'm pushing them because their video quality is higher than Youtube's. YT transcodes and overcompresses video in my opinion.) the videos aren't necessarily something that people have a desire to see. More likely, the viewer wants a brief distraction for a few minutes. While something like Mediocre Film's Retarded Policeman are funny and awesome, I found it merely by happenstance. I viewed it because it seemed like a fun two minute break to a day full of emails and outlines. If there had been a charge to watch it, I most likely would've hit the back button on Firefox and done something else.

That's the beauty of the video portal sites though, they offer free user-generated content. We're entertaining ourselves. Some videos will suck, sure, but some will also be awesome. Fact is, it doesn't cost us to sift through the dreck to find the gems.

However, there's a start up that wants to change the video portal model. Gorilla Tango thinks that you will pay money to watch videos on their site. Their idea is to have user-generated video content and charge you a pay-per-minute rate to watch these videos. The worst part of this is that we're not talking about professionally made video here, we're talking amateur video. Take a look at a sample of the Gorilla Tango experience.

I don't know about you, but that sample video is pretty awful and the idea of spending any sort of cash to watch what looks like a bad After Effects 101 class project offends me.

Skimming through their FAQ, it seems as if the proprietors are assuming that people will pay. They seem to have a superiority complex over sites such as Youtube, calling their content garbage. They just assume that people will pay for their videos instead. (Of course, they also suggest using YT as a promotional tool to drive people to your Gorilla Tango video, so go figure.) Also, take this quote from their FAQ:

Why don't I just put it on YouTube (and the like)?
Free video sites are great for generating traffic to short content but they will not generate you any revenue. If you want to put the movie that you put your valuable time, effort and money into on YouTube next to yet another video of some guy getting kicked in the balls, go ahead, it's your movie.

My main concern is that assumption of people paying. While people are wanting higher quality content, no one I know would want to spend cash on a what is essentially a pay-per-view Youtube. Besides, sites such as OnNetworks.com, Revision3.com, and Ted.com are offering high-quality, professional internet video for free.

I'm curious though, any thoughts?

I Am Legend's original ending!

FirstShowing.net has posted the original ending of the Will Smith flick, I Am Legend, that will be included when the DVD is released in a few weeks. Here's the link: http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/03/05/must-watch-i-am-legends-original-ending-this-is-amazing/

Those of you who know me know that I Am Legend has always been my dream project. The themes in the book are ones I usually hit on when attempting dramatic works, so it's always really grabbed me. When I saw the flick, I was disappointed. The movie is good, but the way Hollywood cocked it up (the project was in development hell for many years) just betrayed the book and paradigm-shifting concept.

The original ending is amazing. While still not close to the book's plot, the original ending at least stays thematically correct. It's worth watching.

I feel cheated that this was not the ending I saw in the theater.

The Model Needs Changing

I just read this article over at Slate.com titled Please Pirate My Sundance Film. In the article, Tim Wu writes about all of the anti-piracy measures that the Sundance Film Festival is using to prevent bootlegging of the films shown. However, Wu points out that the measures are mostly unnecessary since the more obscure the film, the less likely it is to be pirated. In fact, he could find no 2008 Sundance film on any BitTorrent search, nor could he find more than a scant few of the 2007 films.

Checking out his claim, I did a search for what had to have been the most notorious of last year’s films, Teeth. (See the trailer here.) This is the film about a teen girl with the mythical condition of vagina dentata. It seemed as if the film was doomed to never find distribution until it recently got picked up for theatrical release later this year. I couldn’t find one copy of Teeth anywhere.

Unfortunately, for every film like Teeth or even the sweet-but-kitschy Fido that gets a distribution deal, there are a number of well made and good films that will never be seen outside of the festival circuit, if at all. This leaves the filmmaker in a predicament: they want the film to be seen, but they also want to make back some of the exorbitant costs from the production.

As Wu points out in his article, “[Allowing piracy of your film] isn’t likely to happen. For that would mean accepting that your film isn’t going anywhere, and at Sundance that kind of pessimism is strictly verboten.”

Besides, if you let your flick get pirated over BitTorrent, you’d kill any chance of ever getting it distributed. I mean, if the film is already easily available for free, who’d pay to see it? Right?

Well, releasing a free version of the film over Torrent shares may not be as crazy as one would think. According to a report at Torrentfreak.com, author Paulo Coelho has pirated his books over Torrent sites and the result has been a huge increase in the sales of his books. While there is a huge difference between books and films, the article definitely shows that there could be gains for the feature filmmaker gutsy enough to leak their film onto the web.

In these times where the majors aren’t willing to take as many risks as they used to with independent film, maybe it’s time to change the model used to get a movie out into the pop culture. I personally would love to see someone try this and be successful with it.

What do you guys think? Feel free to comment and discuss.

One Last Note: According to Billboard.com, Radiohead's In Rainbows album is the top selling independent CD right now. You may remember when this was released months ago on the web for a "pay-what-you-feel-is-right" price. Their CD sales seem to not have taken a hit, eh?

EW's Top action movie?

So Entertainment Weekly listed Die Hard as the number 1 action movie. I'm sure that this has absolutely nothing to do with the new Die Hard film coming out soon. Nothing whatsoever.

Ah fuck, who am I kidding? Fucking marketing. This type of marketing pisses me off. Like how the Red Eye splashes the movie of the week on their Friday paper.

The NC-17 works when used right

In the current issue of Entertainment Weekly, Mark Harris writes about the failure of the current MPAA ratings system and argues for the end of the NC-17 rating. He specifically cites the release of Eli Roth's Hostel 2 with it's over the top torture sequences and it’s R rating.

I do have to say that Harris makes a valid point about how even a 5-year old can get into an R movie with the addition of an accompanying adult. When I saw Hostel 2 a week ago, there were three teenagers in the audience (and thanks to the understaffed theater, these kids didn't even have that accompanying adult). Of course, the kids decided to irritate people in the audience with their incessant yapping and cell phone gabbing. I had dearly wished for an NC-17 rating on the film so I wouldn’t have to put up with that. (This is why I never see a movie on the opening weekend.)

I think the real issue to address here isn't that “the NC-17 rating…preserves the illusion that R-rated films like Hostel 2 are okay for kids,” but that the MPAA is a failure that either needs to be overhauled or done away with completely.

The real tragedy here is that Mark Harris touches on why a film like Hostel 2 can get the R-rating. There’s the single phrase, “The indies have it harder than the studio films.” That's it. But right there is your reason why Hostel 2 evaded the NC-17 even though it breaks a number of previous taboos for R-rated films.

Hostel 2, for all intents and purposes, is a studio film. It's being distributed by Sony. Sony and Lionsgate have the pull necessary to take a flick and push it through the MPAA with an R, while Killer Films and IFC films can't get John Water's A Dirty Shame through the MPAA without an NC-17. Aside from a pair of enormous, prosthetic breasts and a bare ass, there’s no nudity in A Dirty Shame and definitely no extreme violence.

The NC-17 rating works when it's implemented correctly and not undermined for the sake of a larger studio getting the coveted R-rating that will draw in the spendthrift teens.