Hollywood Clicks on the Work of Web Auteurs [Are candidates paying attention this?]

The NY Times ^ | July 23, 2006 | John Clark

[summer]

Scenes from “MySpace: The Movie,” created by David Lehre. The 11-minute parody of... MySpace and its users has had millions of hits since it first appeared on the site YouTube on Jan. 31.

EVEN as David Lehre’s “MySpace: The Movie,” ... spawned a high-profile feeding frenzy, some of the Hollywood agents, managers and lawyers who were clamoring to represent him didn’t know much about who he was...

“It’s their fear of not being a part of it,” said Scott Vener, Mr. Lehre’s manager...

,,,“Their nightmare is a direct feed from moviemaker to audience,” said Walter Kirn ...

Geoffrey Gilmore, director of the Sundance Film Festival, said: “We are probably at a period of greater change than we have had in the past 50 years. The industry is scared about what they should make and how they should deliver it. What’s the next step? Where’s the development coming from?”

“MySpace: The Movie” first appeared on YouTube on Jan. 31 and since then has had millions of hits, enough viewers to rival big-budget films or TV shows. Mr. Lehre, who is 21 and lived at his parents’ home ...

... Mr. Gilmore also wondered what sort of “filtering mechanisms” would evolve on the Internet, if any. Of course what makes the Web attractive is that there are no gatekeepers — managers, agents, studio executives, or film-festival programmers — to get past. ...

Mr. Kirn predicted that “all of the zoo animals are going to get out.” He continued, “The question is whether they will be paid,” ...

“The Net is going to unleash a hybrid talent and a hybrid sensibility,” he said. “What it needs is an Orson Welles, an unclassifiable polymath. It will reward someone with that kind of talent.

[summer]

someone with command presence on this new medium

Yes, exactly right. And, as to what else you said -- that's kind of a funny thought: that a party can't get its message out because its online font is too small for most people to read. LOL... :)

[Milhous]

“Their nightmare is a direct feed from moviemaker to audience,”

Welcome to your nightmare:

Life after Television

. . .

The central message of Life After Television for the film industry is that the new technologies are targeted directly at Hollywood. Today some 70 percent of the costs of a film go to distribution and advertising. In every industry -- from retailing to insurance -- the key impact of the computer-networking revolution is to collapse the costs of distribution and remove the middlemen. In an information industry such as the movie business, distribution costs will predictably plummet. p 203

Anyone with access to the information highway will be able to distribute a film at a tiny fraction of current costs. Moreover, webs of glass and light will free the producer from the burden of creating a product that can attract miscellaneous audiences to theaters. Instead producers will be able to reach equally large but more specialized audiences dispersed around the globe. Rather than making lowest-common-denominator appeals to the masses, film-makers will be able to appeal to the special interests, ambitions, and curiosities of individuals anywhere, anytime. p 204

Just as digital desktop publishing equipment unleashed thousands of new text publishing companies, so the new digital desktop video publishing will unleash thousands of new filmmakers. The video business will increasingly resemble not the current film business, in which output is a hundred or so movies a year, but the book business, in which some 55,000 new hardcover titles are published annually in the U.S. alone. After all, scores of thousands of screenplays are already written every year. In the next decade, thousands of screenwriters will be able to make and distribute their own films. p 204

Of course what makes the Web attractive is that there are no gatekeepers — managers, agents, studio executives, or film-festival programmers — to get past. ...

All your gates are belong to us.

Gn 22:17 your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies

Newspaper sale$ decline should be blamed on the Journos

. . .

People who work at journalism full time ought to be able to do a better job of it than people for whom it is a hobby. But that's not going to happen as long as we "professional" journalists ignore stories we don't like and try to hide our mistakes. We think of ourselves as "gatekeepers." But there is not much future in being a gatekeeper when the walls are down.

Study: Web is the No. 1 media - 06/06/2006

[spudsmaki]

“Their nightmare is a direct feed from moviemaker to audience,”

Just think what the next John Belushi Dan Ackroyd is gonna do, they'll turn moviemaking on its head. I just looked at the Myspace Movie, they're so many, it's hilarious. I saw one of two guys making a photo for Mother's Day, it was a good as the Stooges.

Network TV and the movies will get better or die, quickly.

[Liz]

bttt

[pyx]

One of the greatest examples of independant video in terms of learning technique that I have seen in many many years, is called, "Tales of the Swine Family". Its over on YouTube.

I have the mpeg. I have studied it for hours on end because it very very clearly illustrates what someone with an ordinary inexpensive digital camera, a mp3 recorder and Linux can do. I found the subject matter is admittedly quite funny. The quality and meter of the voice of narration is between very good to excellent. None-the-less, its the way the effects which are all available FREELY in Linux (Kino) and the meshing with the audio that transfixes me. As mention, in this one narrative film, I found it to be a learning goldmine. Thanks to the author.

Hollywierd is simply unnecessary and they know it.
http://www.youtube.com/
And to a search for, "Tales of the Swine Family"

Warning: Four letter words are used in two or three places and may offend some and are not suitable for younger listeners.

[nygoose]

Drudge seems to be getting is share of hits. 12,952,000 in the past 24 hours. Anyone care to venture a guess how much revenue is generated for him by each hit?

[summer]

I'm thinking he does pretty well for himself.

[summer]

Thanks for that info; I will take a look.

[summer]

Re your post #42 - Very interesting. Thanks for taking the time to share that.

[summer]

And, I see a lot of analogies here with what has already happened to the newspaper business, and what will be happening soon to Hollywood, once the middle man is out of the feeding chain and the product goes directly to the audience. A lot of MBA's in LA will be unemployed and looking for work.

Too bad the elimination of all gatekeepers can't also happen in education. That would be great: teachers would get to fire current disasterous principals, and classrooms i public schools would be available to teachers to "rent" provided the teacher can attract students, much like a rental hair salon booth. Then, finally, better teachers can enter the profession, and achievement and schools can soar.

Oh well. We can dream...

[summer]

Interesting article in today's NY Post Business Section -- the owner of Youtube has been offered $600 million for Youtube, more than the $400 million some thought he would get, but, he is holding out for $1 billion. And, he has been meeting with these media big shots all week. But, he's holding out for more...

[Milhous]

A couple years ago Matt publicly admitted to earning about $1 mil annually from the ad at the top of his page.

[Milhous]

Too bad the elimination of all gatekeepers can't also happen in education.

Give it time. For now, as the Inet becomes the reference source of choice, we can expect diminished Leftist clout in the classroom due to California's textbook gatekeeper role. (Publishers try to use CA's large population as their excuse to force CA mandated Leftist bias in textbooks onto the rest of America.)

[PJ-Comix]

And, my own belief is this: You don't need to post it on youtube. You could post a cool movie here on FR on your homepage.

Um...actually you can post it on YouTube AND here. The advantage of YouTube is that you are using THEIR bandwidth with the videos.

[summer]

Yes, that point later crossed my mind -- posting it in both places. Thanks for mentioning it, PJ.

[nygoose]

Thanks for the explicit comment.

[Hemingway's Ghost]

But, now, with the internet -- the gatekeepers are really gone.

Sometimes you need the gatekeepers. Like podcasts, 99% of the material out there is utter crap.

[summer]

I haven't listened to a lot of podcasts, but you may be right. On the other hand, it's the consumers themselves who are the real gatekeepers. :)