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Hollywood’s Scarcity Thinking Will Be Transformed By The Internet’s Abundance Thinking

This is an idea I’ve been thinking about for a while (witness my last two posts), but I found it put really nicely in this New Yorker piece about YouTube:

Kyncl’s relationships in Hollywood would help in securing premium content; and, more important, he understood entertainment culture. He brought “the skill set of being able to bridge Silicon Valley and Hollywood—an information culture and an entertainment culture,” he told me. The crucial difference is that one culture is founded on abundance and the other on scarcity. He added, “Silicon Valley builds its bridges on abundance. Abundant bits of information floating out there, writing great programs to process it, then giving people a lot of useful tools to use it. Entertainment works by withholding content with the purpose of increasing its value. And, when you think about it, those two are just vastly different approaches, but they can be bridged.

”In TV, airtime is a scarce resource, and quality programming is scarcer still, and expensive to create. Writers spend months or years developing an idea, which they then pitch to network and cable executives, who make decisions based, at least in part, on their “gut.” The majority of the ideas never get produced. If a project is green-lighted, the networks or cable channels buy it and fund its production, and the creators have to give up some or all of their control over the material.

But on YouTube “airtime” is infinite, content costs almost nothing for YouTube to produce, and quantity, not quality, is the bottom line. “YouTube green-lights everything,” as Tim Shey, the director of the site’s division for coaching content creators, YouTube Next Lab, told me. It’s up to the audience, not the executive gut, to decide what’s worth watching. “I’ve worked in TV, and I’ve been the one green-lighting projects,” Shey went on. “Believe me, the YouTube way works much better.” Kyncl told me that at Google it makes no sense to bring “a gut-based decision-making process to a culture that is based on numerically quantifying everything. Ultimately, that kind of decision-making gets rejected, as if it were a foreign body.”

via Will Robert Kyncl and YouTube Revolutionize Television? : The New Yorker.

Why Hollywood Is So Dumb About Piracy (Part 2)

Hollywood © by Cynthia_x

A few people seemed confused by my last post on why Hollywood is wrong about piracy, so I wanted to clarify a bit.

I’m not suggesting anyone get rid of distribution. I am suggesting that piracy is not the threat Hollywood is making it out to be.

It’s best practices in many industries to give away a certain number of copies of your books or songs or images for free – because the more eyeballs that see it (or ears that hear it) – the more money it makes in the long run. This might appear counterintuitive to the kind of corporate executive who manages intellectual properties like commodities – who believes that media should be sold and managed like the goods on the shelves at Walmart. Reduce shrinkage. Prosecute shoplifters. Spend a fortune on traditional advertising, but show no one the actual product til they buy.

However, selling TV and movies is very different from selling a 24-pack of toilet paper. People are going to talk only so much about consumer goods like toilet paper – in person or online – no matter how good your marketing is. But people want to talk about culture. That’s one of the main things we talk about – we identify with what we like, we reference culture to signal we’re part of the gang who likes Bon Iver and Game of Thrones and Annie Hall, we use stories we saw in movies, TV or books to help us make sense of the chaotic mess that surrounds us in our own lives – we enjoy telling each other about what we’ve seen. It’s part of the fun of being human.

And Hollywood wants us talking about their shit. Because out of ten people – if two of them are talking about a movie they saw, the chances are far greater that the other eight may go buy a ticket. Or pay somewhere else down the revenue stream.

But to get more people talking about it, you have to seed the storm cloud a bit. They’re starting to catch on – like when they put Portlandia’s season premiere online before it aired and ratings in key demos jumped 81%. But that kind of thinking needs to extend across the entire industry, not just TV, which is used to giving its shit away for free.

Piracy achieves the same effect, though less formally. If Hollywood were to formalize the practice – legitimize piracy, make downloading titles fast and easy and inexpensive, none of this would be a problem. And yeah, certain distribution arms might have to change to accommodate this, but distribution always has to change to accommodate new technology. Outdated industry models will wither and die in the face of new technology and new consumer preferences. This is what market pricing is all about – letting consumer demand set prices. And if that’s readjusting prices downward, resetting what could be seen as a speculative bubble so that inflated movie budgets have to go away and huge marketing campaigns are replaced by good word-of-mouth buzz, then so be it. The industry will be healthier for it.

advice / Hollywood — 5 comments

Why Hollywood Is So Dumb About Piracy

Fireman Trying to Turn Off Broken Hydrant Under the Hollywood Sign, LA, 2006 © by exposo

Hollywood is always behind the times – whether being the last to know “oh no you didn’t” is not funny or the loudest objectors to new technologies (which they always say is going to decrease their profit, even though it always increases it) .

Most hilarious, though, is the way Hollywood is always first to pat themselves on the back for being cool, forward-looking, innovative, young (that just means they’re quick to hire young sociopath-douchebags with no track record then throw up their hands when they have no idea why the stuff they produce is such shit) -

But the fact remains, Hollywood is one of the oldest, whitest, crankiest-old-man businesses around.

The huge studios (which are all owned by enormous multinational corporations) are up in arms about piracy because they see themselves as the “authors” of their films and TV shows and think that anyone “stealing” their films and TV shows by downloading them illegally represents a dangerous threat to their bottom line. Or at least to the capitalist law and order system that has allowed their parent companies to rape and pillage our economies and natural resources for hundreds of years.

The biggest flaw in this logic is the idea that *money* is the greatest resource an audience can trade to the author of a film in exchange for the privilege of seeing that film. (That a corporation can be the “author” of a film is a debate for another day.)

Attention is a far more valuable commodity – one that Hollywood sometimes spends more money to acquire than they reap in money in return.

Which would you rather have:

- A movie that cost you $5 million to make and grossed $10 million, but that no one heard of, no one talked about, no one cared about, or -

- A movie that cost you $5 million to make and grossed $5 million, but that everyone heard of, everyone’s talking about, everyone cares about?

I would rather the second. Because in the former case, you have a commodity with a limited afterlife. In the latter case, you have a commodity with a far greater afterlife, both financially and culturally. Benefits accrue to the studio and the creative professionals involved in the film that are not measured in money but rather in terms of how much impact a project has – how many people saw it?

During awards season, important people (people who might be voting in the big awards) receive free screeners of anything that stands a chance of getting an award. Studios want to make sure the important people – the tastemakers – have seen their stuff. Considering it costs nothing to allow important people to download video for free – why not let the important people’s families also have access? They probably have a lot of important friends who vote too. And they probably spend a lot of time talking about this stuff at boring holiday parties. And if we’re expanding the circle of who is important, why not make it certain zip codes, because I think we can all agree that most taste is made in a few central taste zones in Brooklyn and Los Feliz.

My point is this: everyone is important. Everyone is a tastemaker. Do I want some kid in a village in India to be able to watch my movie for free because he downloaded it illegally? Fuck yeah. Because that kid is important. And getting my movie in the hands of that kid is more important than the pennies I/we could make off him. Pennies we no doubt would never make because he would have never made it to the theatre.

A huge part of a movie or TV show’s budget – sometimes WAY more than the costs of production – is marketing and advertising. Imagine there was a system where the youngest, most independent-minded, most hooked-in online could access and see movies and TV (sometimes before they’re even released) and spread word early whether something needs to be seen to be part of the conversation or not. We have that system in place and that’s piracy – and it’s the fairness at its heart – the fact that Hollywood can’t just throw a ton of plastic Happy Meal toys in our landfills to make us see their stupid movies – that they hate. It means quality stands on its own, and that getting firehosed in the face with marketing campaigns won’t blind us to the shitstorm you just made.

The bottom line is this: Hollywood spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on marketing to get people to see their stuff, trying to get them to talk about it – when the best marketing is and always has been – make something great and put it where people can see it.

Right now there is tension in the market between the way consumers want to consume their movies and T.V. – in my living room, with my twitter friends – and the way Hollywood wants us to consume it – in theaters, on the day and time they specify, on approved devices. However, it doesn’t serve them to continue resisting their own customers’ preferences. Just as the music industry no longer found piracy to be a major problem once digital downloads were widely available at the right price, so will Hollywood find this “problem” will go away once they get their heads out of their asses and wake up to the world we now live in.

*

Created by: Paralegal

women — 6 comments

Things Are Bad For Women, And Getting Worse

Releitura - Cindy Sherman © by BrunoEddy

Women are the bitch of society – and it’s getting worse and worse -

Between inequality in the workplace – TV shows starring domestic abusers – a political climate focused on diminishing women’s rights -

My question is – why aren’t we outraged?

Why aren’t women everywhere getting loud, and angry about this?

Why, in this moment where our rights and our respect are vanishing faster than boyfriend tees at a sample sale, are we more invested than ever in cutesy, girlish stuff – our Pinterest boards and our eyeframes without lenses and our Etsy hair accessories and our Young Adult novels – the kinds of clothes, hobbies, conversation topics, professions that are sure to never, ever make erections disappear -

Here’s why I think.

I think we have a strong interest in pleasing those who are in power.

And I think we have an instinct not to do anything that feels threatening, aggressive, masculine. We have been strongly warned (culturally, inter-personally, professionally) that getting assertive, threatening dicks in any way, will sideline us, turn us into laughing stocks, leave us the single spinster alone with her handmade cat blankets and her angry diatribes. If we speak the truth – if we even say the same thing a man might say – we risk being marginalized socially or even losing jobs, as we make ourselves vulnerable to looking ridiculous by going against the tide.

And we risk love, being loved, if we seem up in arms, angry, embattled. Standing behind lines drawn in the sand.

So I do see why this is happening – and why we’re letting it.

But I don’t think those are the only two choices.

I know for a fact it’s possible to be both assertive and feminine – to both stand up for the rights and respect of women and still value and hold the respect of men. I think if change is going to happen anywhere – it’s going to be with the 51% of Americans who are women, who have to be watching what is happening with some dismay, and who need to know they can still be loved, still be part of the great club we call society, even if they speak out and stand up against these trends.

We are powerful. But we have to stop undercutting our power with every sartorial and conversational choice we make. If we’re afraid of being sidelined, marginalized, ridiculed, we have to know that over there where we’re going to be is where the cool people hang out – the adults. The ones who don’t put up with this sick psychosexual infantilizing game where one gender is on top, one is on the bottom, and both work hard to keep it that way.

This is a great breakdown of the current and most recent numbers of women of all the different jobs in Hollywood. All the numbers are flat around or (way) below 25%. This is obviously my area of interest in terms of employment – but it also affects us all because this is our culture, what we see on TV, what we see in movies. The piece mentions that studies show that the more women involved with a project, the more likely it is to have a woman character.

advice / storytelling — 2 comments

Cults, Community, and The Heidi & Frank Show

The roar of my neighbor’s un-mufflered pick-up greeted me in the carport. She got out and told me she was going to a live broadcast of her favorite pirated internet radio show – The Heidi & Frank Show – at the Hooter’s in North Hollywood. She strongly encouraged me to come.

As appealing as that sounded, I had to regretfully decline. However, I was struck by her zeal in proselytizing on behalf of Heidi and/or Frank. I’m from the rural South, so I’ve been on the receiving end of my share of well-meaning invitations to church suppers, youth groups, baptismal founts and lock-ins.

It wasn’t till a while later when her truck roared up – backwards (she always backs in) – when I noticed a giant “Heidi & Frank Show” banner covering the entire back of her truck gate – that I realized the full extent of her Heidi & Frank conversion.

“Where’d you get that banner?” I asked.

“I had it made,” she said. “To support the show.”

This was like lightning striking me dumb, the idea that anyone could care so much about Heidi & Frank – who, from what I’ve gathered online appear to be a couple of profane idiot-whisperers (“Topics discussed on today’s After Hours: tweets out of context, downs, swollen lady bits, fly hair quests, and lit hickeys… it’s radio worth watching!”) who specialize in the kind of community-building first espoused by the Hitler Youth.

I was blown away by my neighbor’s banner – by the idea that anyone could care so much about a show, feel so identified with and invested in a *money-making corporate enterprise* as to spend her own money to help advertise for them – till she drove up a while later with her new Heidi & Frank mudflaps.

That’s when I realized – isn’t this a goal of anyone who makes stuff, who tells stories for a living and depends on the enthusiasm and support of others to help spread those stories around? Don’t we all want our listeners, our blog readers, our T.V. show watchers or movie watchers or novel readers to feel so invested in and identified with our stories they create their own mudflaps on their trucks, to extend those myths those mud-encrusted-rubber couple inches further into the world?

I guess we can all learn a think or two from Heidi & Frank, and not just about swollen lady bits.

I’ve spent all of 60 seconds studying this Heidi & Frank, but seems like they’re following the cult leader’s handbook:

People are put in physical or emotionally distressing situations [Hooter's in North Hollywood]
Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized [I'm listening to Heidi & Frank.]
They receive what seems to be unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic leader or group [this is the logline of any radio show]
They get a new identity based on the group [my neighbor feels so identified with the show she used her own money to make a banner for her truck to advertise for them]
They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled. [the more they listen to Heidi & Frank, the less contact they have with the outside world]

I’m reading

advice — 4 comments

What To Do If You Are Depressed

Lounging Pup © by Teeejayy

There are a few people in my life whom I suspect may be depressed. This isn’t the kind of thing you can just ask about – unless you’re super close. Even then, it feels presumptuous, like advice-giving (which I’m trying to avoid).

But I have a strong urge to help, and I feel like I know a lot about this stuff (from struggling to help myself with migraine disorder.) So I thought I might post some links here just in case.

This is from Dr. Mark Hyman, who is an extremely knowledgable functional medicine doctor who can help with a lot of different conditions:

“7 Steps to Treat Depression without Drugs

Try an anti-inflammatory elimination diet that gets rid of common food allergens. As I mentioned above, food allergies and the resultant inflammation have been connected with depression and other mood disorders.
Check for hypothyroidism. This unrecognized epidemic is a leading cause of depression. Make sure to have thorough thyroid exam if you are depressed.
Take vitamin D. Deficiency in this essential vitamin can lead to depression. Supplement with at least 2,000 to 5,000 IU of vitamin D3 a day.
Take omega-3 fats. Your brain is made of up this fat, and deficiency can lead to a host of problems. Supplement with 1,000 to 2,000 mg of purified fish oil a day.
Take adequate B12 (1,000 micrograms, or mcg, a day), B6 (25 mg) and folic acid(800 mcg). These vitamins are critical for metabolizing homocysteine, which can play a factor in depression.
Get checked for mercury. Heavy metal toxicity has been correlated with depression and other mood and neurological problems.
Exercise vigorously five times a week for 30 minutes. This increases levels of BDNF, a natural antidepressant in your brain.”

Chris Kresser is another very knowledgable functional medicine practiotioner who has an entire series about depression here. He also has a great podcast I listen to which you can find here.

Kris Carr survived cancer by radically changing her diet, life and mindset — and now she writes about it on her blog. Here you can find her site’s posts about depression.

I wish I had more time to write about this, but at least this is a start. Mood disorders are such a plague on creative people. Most of all, I want you to know you are not alone. And you are loved. By me.

X Julie

I am reading:

storytelling — 3 comments

Co-Sign

Hollywood Hills © by djjewelz

I hadn’t talked to my dad in a few months because I was buried in script-mode. So I almost forgot just how crazy he is.

The point of the call was just to catch up – as I drove to a doctor’s appointment across town. But since all I’ve been doing for months is writing, I don’t have a lot to catch people up on. So I told him what I’m excited about – which is that I’m thinking about buying a house.

I asked him if he would consider co-signing a mortgage with me, since I don’t exactly have two years of stable job history. (One of the many perks of being a writer.)

I don’t even feel like trying to put down here all the crazy things he said. Like when he kept bringing up his divorce from my mother – and how we and all the lawyers keep going after him for everything he’s got. (If that were true, how did he end up on the sailboat, and we ended up with our lights cut off?)

In the midst of sobbing and trying to make sense of this craziness – I forgot I was actually on my way somewhere.

I think I’m posting this because I want to remind myself some day – in case I forget again – that I can’t keep treating him like a normal father. Because he just doesn’t want to be that for me. He refuses. He’d rather pathologically lie – claiming his credit is too poor to co-sign for me (p.s. he owns a Ferrari), claiming he was hit so hard by the recession he’s had to dip into his retirement (p.s. he “retired” a few years ago – isn’t “retirement” when you “dip into your retirement”?), he’d rather go on meaningless angry rants about how he doesn’t cheat people and walk away from mortgages the way all these other scumbags do -

I remember I had an appointment but I forget where.

I kept trying to pin him down as to why this innocuous (to me) request made him so upset. The way I see it – if co-signing the mortgage isn’t something he feels like he can do or wants to do, all he has to do is give me a normal reason (or not), be nice about it and move on. I don’t see the need to get vicious, cruel, and mean about it. To rip apart and belittle every part of what I’m doing (including the city I’ve chosen (Los Angeles), my chosen career, my idea to get a roommate to help off-set the costs of home-ownership (“you don’t think that would look ridiculous and weird?” any weirder than my own father refusing to co-sign with me?), and everything I know about the real estate process.) Oh and he managed to compare me to my sister (who has owned a house with her husband for a few years in a vastly cheaper market) – making the implication both about my being single compared to her, and their joint income being more, and their joint job history being stable – and I just wanted to scream at him -

I am single because you have mistreated me my entire life.

I didn’t say that – but I did say variations of -

Don’t you get – the way your father treated you – that’s how you’re treating me.

And -

You want to know why I don’t call you or visit you ever? This is why. Because this is what awaits me on the other end. Would you call you?

I keep driving and driving – maybe if I just keep moving I’ll see it when I pass.

He wanted to know why I didn’t ask my “mother and father” (stepfather) to co-sign. I was like “you’re the one with the mansion and the yacht out back – seems obvious that you would be the one with the great credit.” He said something like “you treat me like shit. The only reason you ever call is because you want something from me.”

I pull off to the side of the road. I give up.

I went to my first Overeaters Anonymous meeting last week. I don’t know yet if it’s right for me – though my experiences clearly resonate with those of OA. However, I started listening to this podcast of OA speakers. And I am ob-sessed. I listened to Martha O. (12/17/11) tonight – who described getting cancer while bulimic, and looking forward to how thin she’d be. There’s something about how honest and raw these people are – how much I relate to what they’re saying – I just can’t stop listening to them.

advice / storytelling — 4 comments

See Your Own Trouble Reflected

lynda barry card w/ purple paint spatters © by xinem

… [Lynda Barry] told a story about the neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran, who helps patients experiencing phantom-limb pain. Barry discussed one patient who felt that his missing left hand was clenched in a fist and could never shake the discomfort — could never “unclench” it.

So Ramachandran used a mirror box — a compartment into which the patient could insert his right hand and see it reflected at the end of his left arm. “And Ramachandran said, ‘Open your hands.’ And the patient saw this” — Barry opened two clenched fists in unison. “That’s what I think images do.

“I think that in the course of human life,” she continued softly, “we have events that cause” — she clenched her fist and held it up, inspecting it from all angles. “Losing your parents might cause it. Or a war. Or things going bad in a family.”

The only way to open that fist, she said, is to see your own trouble reflected in an image, as the patient saw his hand reflected in a mirror. It might be a story you write, or a book you read, or a song that means the world to you. “And then?” She opened her hand and waved.

I read this article about Lynda Barry – who became a writing and creativity teacher when the market for her comic strips dried up.

I was pretty troubled in college – and whenever people (people like the other girls in my eating disorders recovery group, for instance) would suggest to me that writing was therapeutic for me – I thought this idea was bullshit at best.

However, I do think writing has a cathartic quality – not in a confessional, I’m-making-my-audience-my-therapists! way. Rather, in the way Barry describes above.

If something has caused you to close, cave in, get smaller – writing about it, creating around it, reflecting it in the world again and again – gets you bigger again.

via Cartoonist Lynda Barry Will Make You Believe In Yourself – NYTimes.com.

storytelling — 5 comments

Provoke Anxiety

I don't know what nationality this werewolf perched in London is, but I have to think he's American.

If I were to make blog t-shirts, the first would say PROVOKE ANXIETY.

This feels like a founding principle to me – of the way I write, the way I live, the way I encounter the world.

If I’m doing something that doesn’t make me anxious – that doesn’t make me delay, worry, perseverate, talk about it endlessly – it doesn’t feel worth doing.

I don’t want to waste my time feeling safe and comfortable.

I provoke anxiety – in myself, in others – because that’s where art lives.

Art is anxious. Not safe.

In an effort to take you behind the scenes here on the blog, I bring you a picture of this blog post being written -- in the lobby of The Hoxton, London.

I’m listening to Julie Klausner’s amazing podcast “How Was Your Week.” She really loves the things she loves (1970′s stars, animals reading her book, musical theatre, reality T.V.) — and helps you love them too.

advice / screenwriting — 5 comments

Don’t Stare At One Thing For Too Long

I took this pic yesterday while writing at a Soho pub. This image feels so London.

One of the many bad habits I have is I tend to spend too much time staring at one thing.

I’m thinking of scripts and novels right now, but I’m also thinking of life.

I freeze. I hesitate. I spend way, way too long staring at the same thing – when I should just keep moving the minute I realize I don’t know what to do.

Because doing nothing is almost always worse than doing anything at all. When you’re moving, you may be moving in the wrong direction – but it’s easier to figure that out when you’re doing something, when you’re in motion. Because when you freeze, you stop course-correcting, you lose any sense of your bearings. You forget where you are.

Worst of all, when you freeze you send yourself and the world the message that yeah, you shouldn’t be going anywhere. This spot right here feels safer and less uncertain than any random direction you might pick. And since staying in one place is far less anxiety-provoking than moving, you feel a sense of relief. But it’s illusory relief, akin to the relief you may feel when you refuse to get out of bed in the morning. Yes it feels better in the moment, but as your life and your work grind to a halt, your losses far outweigh the temporary comfort.

It’s the same with staring at the same beat in a script for too long – or staying at the wrong job or relationship or whatever it is – it feels better in the moment, but it can be subtly, silently devastating.

Any moment in your writing (or job or relationship or whatever) requires some thought, yes. But you know when you’ve paused too long. And when you do, make yourself go somewhere else, try a different spot. You’ll have a million excuses for why you can’t or don’t want to, but also you can just try it and see how it feels.

This is the outside of the pub pictured above. I'm in love with all the window boxes and hanging plants everywhere in London.

I’m reading Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour by Kate Fox. It’s an entertaining ethnographic study of what makes the English tick – the perfect thing for my hostess to give me to read during my first visit here in London.

J BUSH