Kickstarter raising millions for creative projects, prospective donors lining up with their wallets out, does the age of “Crowd Financing” shepard in an exciting new era of film financing? Actually I think there’s some potential troubles there worth talking about. To the shiny new videoblog thing!

External Links

• View on YouTube
• Kickstarter.com
• Parable of Software Estimating and Walking from SF to LA

The format for these new types of posts are still very much in progress – so be sure to let me know what you like (or loathe… or are indifferent to)! Also thanks to Jay for some “rough cut” feedback.

Episode Fun Fact ™: I actually shot this before the “Intro” episode, but have been playing around with format (and trying to cut down my long winded rambling) a little bit. Hope to refine both those in future episodes.

I’ve been talking a lot on Twitter about trying to find a new format to talk about issues in film and television and it’s finally time to share this “very-much-still-a-work-in-progress” experiment called Video BlogFox!

Episode Fun Fact ™: Yes, I absolutely shaved and put that shirt on specifically to resemble my cartoon avatar as much as possible.

I’ve been using the excellent “Disqus” WordPress plugin for a number of websites, but have been increasingly frustrated that there didn’t appear to be an easy way to modify the shorthand comment count links that appeared in the themes (usually “0 Comments”, “1 Comment”, or “# Comments”). Traditionally in WordPress this would be done through simply modifying the comments_popup_link function in the theme. However because Disqus overwrites this link any customization to this function (like not displaying “0 Comments” at all) were ignored.

I tried adapting a little code snippit from this wordpress support forums thread:

<?php $comment_count = get_comment_count($post->ID); ?>

<?php if ($comment_count['approved'] > 0) : ?>(original comments_popup_link code here)<?php endif; ?>

(Because my Disqus synch’s comments with my WordPress installation “just in case” – basically put everything in a big IF statement so that the comments_popup_link is *only* written if at least one “approved” comment exists).

It actually worked pretty well except that it turns out that get_comment_count (and a lot of wordpress comment functionality) counts trackbacks and pingbacks towards comment totals. So even with “0 Comments”, a lot of posts had a $comment_count > 0. Yes there are customizations and plugins to deal with this – but that’s not exactly an elegant fix at that point (not that anything I do is usually ever “elegant”).

So what’s the solution?

Finally I had the head-smacking realization that if you just log into your dashboard on Disqus, select the “Settings” tab, and the “Appearance” category – voila – there is a “comment count link” section at the bottom that let’s you set custom text for “Zero Comments”, “One Comments” or “Multiple Comments”. And (facepalm) these settings are propagated to your WordPress site.

One final hurdle is that Disqus doesn’t seem to let you set the “Zero Comments” field to hide (in fact entering no value caused a pretty scary error message). But you can set that field to, the webmasters favourite hack: “&nbsp;” (a non breaking space) – which effectively hides the “0 Comments”.

See what I mean about not exactly being “elegant”? Shut up. It works.

I thought this was a big hit?

Hey all – I’ve been working on a bold Blogfox experiment for this month, which I was hoping to roll out this week – but that’s been back-burnered for a few days… so I’ve given myself ten minutes to jot down a couple of things I *have* to get down regarding “ye olde funnybooks” before they become too dated: One is about the value of a “hit” in any media, and the other is how to really look at “profit margins” when comics publishers move into digital distribtuion. Napkin calculations ahoy!

1. I don’t mean to keep picking on Brian Hibbs “Tilting at Windmills” column, but as long as he remains one of the few retailers IN MEDIA (not just in Comics) willing to talk honestly about his business realities, I’m going to keep coming back to him. In his latest entry, Brian laments the lack of “top sellers” in his store (the economics of selling 100 issues of 10 top comics is, obviously, preferable than than 5 copies of 200 different comics… even if the total number of pieces is the same). Brian details this as a trend that he’s been seeing for a while, and calls publishers bloated lines on the carpet. “Make better stuff” is never the wrong answer, but it’s also not entirely fair since this is the exact same trend that’s being seen across all media: movies, books, magazines, music, television. “Hits” are drawing fewer and fewer distinct eyeballs across the board because there is so much more stuff available, in all media at all times. At some point I did a quick napkin calculation to show someone that “Avatar” had *half* the comparable attendance to the first “Star Wars” film in it’s initial release (not even counting for the wildly more profitable 3D ticket price or the fact that it had access to over twice the total number of theatres). “American Idol” finales draw 20-30 million viewers – “M*A*S*H”s finale drew 105 Million.

Once you’ve fragmented a market by giving them more choice – there’s no way to put that genie back in the bottle. This is the flip side of the long tail. Yes it’s great to have continuing library sales – but that money has to come from somewhere – and it comes from increasingly lower value of “blockbusters”. And since, to some extent, television networks, movie studios, record labels, and publishing houses are all financed on a “blockbuster model” (the few massive successes cover the majority of works which are unprofitable) welcome to the brave new future of everyone trying valiantly to ignore the fact their entire business models from the ground up work less each year. It’s just rare to see such a perfect example of this in action, backed up with numbers.

2. DC Comics is rebooting their whole line, along with day and date digital copies.
Along with the usual introspection on this announcement has been a reignited fan outcry that the price for digital copies is unreasonable at $2.99 (DC’s most usual “Day and Date” price… although many have also chimed in that $1.99 or even $0.99 is unreasonable).

I want to elaborate on something I wrote about digital pricing in the comments at MGK:

I’d love to see lower digital prices – but the numbers don’t really work (on new releases… I get the argument for back catalogue being “free” money… but it also ignores the biggest shift in the move to digital from a publisher perspective):

Most numbers I’ve seen put the retail/diamond margin on physical issues at about 65%, and printing costs at about $0.35 – so on a $2.99 comic DC is clearing about a buck.

The Apple + Comixology cut on digital is likely 40-45% (Apple is a hard 30% for in app purchasing) – so at $1.99 DC is clearing $1.10 per issue, so obviously they could cut per issue to at *least* $1.69 and maintain the same margin right?

The flaw here is that digital distribution is *sell through* (only comics that sell to customers bring in cash) while the DM has been built on *sell in* (the real “customer” is the store owner since they can’t return unsold product).

So when you look at sales figures of 20-50k (sad as they are), that’s not the number of issues actually being sold to paying customers, some proportion of that is sitting on shelves, dollar bins, or ultimately getting pulped. In a nutshell comic store owners are subsidizing the publishers since the actual customer market is (possibly *a lot*) smaller than we even think… so to even “match” the physical model – DC needs a (much?) bigger profit margin per issue.

I suspect this, more than anything, is why they’re reluctant to dump cheap back-issue content on-line. Your audience only has so much time in a day, and (personally) I know I’d probably buy less modern content if classic content was widely (and cheaply) available. It might create some new, energized buyers… but it also might depress the existing market even further.

This is also the real reason why “gimmick” events do boost sales. I don’t personally know any readers who care – but what store is going to risk not having a whole crossover line in stock if it becomes hot?

The obvious follow-up question is “so what should publishers do”? To which I’d point out there’s two possible things worth looking into:

a. Given my (limited) understanding of the digital marketplace – Apple has a lot less leeway on purchases made outside of their “app” ecosystem – and has a hard 30% cut on in-app sales. There is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to “subscribe” to titles through the Comixology (or Comics+ or Dark Horse) websites – arrange re-occurring billing (or pay in advance billing, or paypal subscription) – and just have that content *delivered* to whatever device you read it on (like when you use the Kindle app on a iPhone, but buy the book on Amazon.com). This changes the margin calculation significantly, even if you add some additional costs for payment processing and the like.

b. Start experimenting with different production models. Maybe it is time for a line wide hair-cut to try and better focus on more popular fare… but that needs to be coupled with trying to find entirely new models. Bi-monthly? Occasional “annual style” stories? Trade-length stand-alones? Throwing classic issues in with paid issues (buy a day and date title for $2.99 – get a free credit for two classic library titles of your choice)? If you are going to move away from the newsstand model – you need to stop thinking like that is the only way for your company to work.

Yes, that may mean you need to radically re-envision the size, scope, and scale of your entire organization.

That’s it for time – hope I get a chance to follow up on this soon with my own “radical re-envisioning” shortly.

Now that I’ve, hopefully, made a passable argument that dynamic and varied story engines were not a strength of 1980s kids television – let’s look at a different, but related, aspect of those shows (and kind of the underlying point of this whole series of posts) – The Universes they were set in.

Be forewarned: I’m about to make a huge generalization that may send serious academics screaming for the hills with it’s coarseness – but bear with me as I think it’s a necessary frame.

There are essentially two reasons to set any kind of artistic creation in an fictional Universe:

1. The “Allegorical Universe”(1) extricates personal / societal / cultural issues until they are abstracted enough from the everyday to bring a fresh or unique perspective to better explore those issues. This is especially useful when dealing with subject matter that’s controversial / difficult / or impossible to discuss overtly.

An absolutely “pure” example of an Allegorical fiction universe would be Plato’s Allegory Of the Cave (or any philosophical thought experiment really) – which uses a stylized fiction setting specifically to isolate a specific element from a complex system. A more obvious fiction example would be almost anything by George Orwell who used fantastical settings to explore issues that would have been more culturally difficult to do otherwise (in the case of “Animal Farm”, the rise of Stalinist Russia prior to WWII).

2. The “Campaign Universe” on the other hand builds a backdrop specifically to enable dynamic storytelling.

Again, the “pure” example of this would be any table-top role playing game source-book (say, Dungeons & Dragons). If you’ve ever read role playing game source material, they’re not books in a traditional fiction sense – but rather collections of locations, characters, and other trappings (religions, gods, animals, monsters, maps, languages, puzzles, traps, towns, conflicts, etc) to allow players to create their own adventures by combining story elements like Lego. A more conventional example (chosen specifically to annoy someone I had brunch with this week… JAY) would be “Speed Racer” – where an entire society was created not to hold a mirror to current society – but to enable the ability to tell an entire movie through the medium of ceaseless futuristic CG stock car racing.

Now, since you’re a clever sort, you’ve probably realized already that these aren’t exclusive options – they’re not even opposite points on a spectrum. Realistically they’re more each like an axis on a cartesian graph. You can have a universe that’s extremely allegorical, that also facilitates an extremely dynamic story (say “The Matrix”, or “Lord of the Rings” ), but the two are not dependant. There’s probably lots of good examples of quality fiction from all media that falls all along three quarters of such a graph.

The important thing is that some fictional elements exist to say something (Spoiler: Sauron is Industrialization), and some exist to enable something cool (The “Rebellion” in the first Start Wars is just to give a righteous case for the heroes with a ticking clock – it’s never entirely clear what exactly the sociopolitical structure of the universe is at all – and that’s fine).

But that leaves us with those unfortunate creations that reside in the “last quadrant” (“Limited / Mundane story potential and with little to no allegorical overtone”) the snark in me notes that this actually encompasses both bad “Literature” (capital L) writing, and most bad grade-school creative writing assignments. At least the latter benefits from mad-cap nature of randomly mashing up genre conventions as only kids can (used for maximum effect in any given issue of “Axe Cop” – perhaps the best comic ever written by a five year old). I digress.

So back to kids cartoons. Most of the shows discussed in the last post would fall heavily into the “Campaign Universe” camp, for obvious reasons: the creators (often of the toy lines) wanted to create dynamic backdrops for cool toys. That’s about it. A prime example is to compare the spin-off cartoon “The Real Ghostbusters” with “Ghostbusters“. The movie (to my mind) is certainly exciting and flashy (and funny), but it’s also got a specific bent given the turbulent economic backdrop of the 80s (if you don’t think the film has something to say about the double edged sword of Reganomics go back and watch Ric Moranis’ house-party – and note the number of guests who are in receivership, failing small business, or are severely financially overextended). The cartoon on the other hand doesn’t plot at all on the “Allegory” axis. It’s clearly just trying to capitalize on the fact that kids like to run around pretending to zap monsters with lasers. I’m not making a value judgment here – I recall fashioning a couple of makeshift Ghost Traps out of kleenex boxes in my younger days to facilitate such laser-zappery. My point is only that “Silverhawks” wasn’t chosen as a unique opportunity to look at the uneasy relationship between organized crime and law enforcement, or the difficulty of re-integrating veterans into peacetime society – it was chosen as a mash-up of space and western conventions to try and sell some robot-bird-space-cowboy toys.

Also, I don’t care what IMDB says. It’s “Ghostbusters” not “Ghost Busters”.

You’ll notice I’m (again) leading with “boys” cartoons here, because these kinds of generic adventure settings lend themselves better to “boy” storytelling for the same reason that the story engines themselves did. Again the competitive play that boys gravitate to (“Cowboys and Indians” style “bang bang you’re dead I win”) is much easier to fit in an episodic television structure than girl preferred co-operative play (“House” or “lets have a tea party”). As with story engines, no one really bothered to think about the need to adjust the underlying templates for more girl friendly shows. Cartoons were cartoons, right?

Let’s go back to our beleaguered friend Strawberry Shortcake. What is compelling about her universe? I’d argue it’s one of those deadly “fourth quadrants” – It’s not allegorical and neither is the universe conducive to any kind of dynamic storytelling. Miss Shortcake is a little girl (both literally and figuratively) who lives in some hollowed out plants. All her friends are named after desserts. They live a glorified idyllic agrarian lifestyle. There’s a demented baker outside of town who wants to steal her recipes (which she’d likely be willing to share if the two parties actually ever had a conversation, which makes the situation more tragic than tense). The shows creators clearly borrowed liberally from the “Smurfs” cartoon show, which is funny given that particular adaptation had already removed every drop of the political satire which is what made Peyo’s original cartoons work (if you haven’t had the pleasure they were closer to this than this).

It’s important to add that by “not being conducive to dynamic storytelling” I don’t mean “action/adventure” I just mean a scenario that facilitates engaging stories. Strawberry shortcake is, essentially, a hobbit – Strawberryland(2) is the Shire and the entire cannon of 80s specials lays out how “Lord of the Rings” would have played out if Bilbo had told Gandalf to take a flying leap back during “The Hobbit”. Frodo and Sam and their kin sit would sit around all day and discuss the weather or when the next pot-luck would be.

Is it any wonder the writers struggled to make “Strawberry Shortcake” compelling to little girls? I’ve heard people complain that the character herself is boring – but how appealing would even the most awesome character (say, Betsey Trotwood) be against such a berry bleak backdrop and berry unfortunate story engine?

And berry aggravating “berry” puns.

Pop quiz. Who is a more inherently “boring” character – Strawberry Shortcake or Barbie? My immediate gut reaction would be to say our friend from Strawberryland – but Barbie really isn’t a character at all. She’s a construction set, like Lego. Being such a blank slate is what makes her so compelling. Each time you sit down to play with Barbie you can create a whole new scenario for her (or return to a particular favourite) because even her supporting cast is entirely protean. She really can be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a movie star, because we know absolutely nothing about her. It’s only when someone tries to impose a singular vision on her, that the results could possibly be sexist (or at least embarassing). A key aspect of cooperative play is actually defining the cooperative play. I know that sounds like a tautology, but what’s the real game in playing “house” – playacting being in a household, or arguing about who is going to fill what role, what is going to happen, what props and scenery are required – even whose house you’re going to play at? There’s a fancy concept called “unstructured play” which most people agree is really important for kids, but what “unstructured play” really boils down to is “arguing with your friends about things”. The interesting thing is this isn’t a key component of competitive play (you can have organized sports, clubs, or lessons without it) but you can’t really have co-operative play without it(3). I recall lengthy, heated, arguments with my next door neighbours growing up about why Ken couldn’t be a professional wrestling manager a-la Jimmy Hart (and the fact that proto-Brad thought the “Mouth from the South” was an insanely cool role model to aspire to probably tells you just about everything you need to know about me in a nutshell). Barbie’s longevity works, in part, because she has no Universe restrictions whatsoever – she can never be dated, or uninteresting if you’re still willing to play with her. But it’s also why there’s never really been an singular “Barbie television show”(4).

One final point is that all the cartoons I’ve talked about, across the board, were ill equipped with trying to introduce educational content (and remember that, even in the 80s, the idea that television could have any kind of positive value was still relatively radical ground). What do you suppose happens when you take a “Campaign Universe” not conceived for any allegorical content – and then shoehorn a random and short morality lesson into it? If you guessed it seems stupid and forced you’re correct. I just picked a “Real Ghostbusters” episode summary at random and read about how Slimer befriends a boy who is the target of bullying and helps him stand up to the bullies. I don’t need to see this episode to tell you it is probably not a great episode. The elements just don’t work – the only way to introduce such a concept is to bring in whole new, unsupported, one-shot elements (the kid, the bullies, some reason for a ravenous poltergeist to be wandering around befriending small children)… and as soon as you do that you’re weakening both your Universe AND your story engine.

The most important element is that kids aren’t stupid, and know bad storytelling. You know exactly where the train is going if you get a “very special episode” of a sitcom where the main character(s) suddenly make a new friend / enemy / boy/girlfriend. You know this character is just a patsy waiting to fall in a pothole of drugs/gangs/abuse/teen pregnancy or some similar hot topic and then never be seen again. They’re not a part of the *real* universe.

I can’t tell you how many “very important” stories like that I must have watched in my lifetime, and I remember almost none of them off the top of my head because, even as I kid, I knew they weren’t important. Not in the same way that the “real” characters were. You know who I *do* remember? Mr. Hooper, and I guarantee. Guarantee. That there isn’t anyone alive today who was a kid of a certain age and saw that original broadcast in 1982 and doesn’t remember it today. I’m pretty sure I’ve never gotten through a Christmas (or rather Hanukkah) season since without thinking about Mr. Hooper at least once.

And you, Strawberry Shortcake, are no Mr. Hooper.

Wow did I get off track there. Thankfully the table is now set (I think) to finally address some of these issues with good examples. Good television. Play empowering television. Excellent stories. With ponies. Next time!

1. incidentally, this is entirely my own ad-hoc term, so if you start slinging this all hoity-toity in your English lit classes prepare for a lot of blank stares
2. which I am not particularly shocked to find out isn’t in my spellcheck library
3. A key example is that people who have never played “Dungeons & Dragons” don’t understand what an inseparable part of the game “arguing about the rules” is. What you’re really doing is trying to find common ground in how to jointly operate a very flexible game system that each individual would ideally play entirely differently. This compromise is also why pen and paper RPGs can both be far superior to, and much more frustrating than video games.
4. There’s certainly been periodic attempts to create genre backdrops like the “Princess Barbie” or “Fairy Barbie” movies, which were nominally popular when I worked at a video store in the mid-90s … but nothing with the broader cultural impact of, say, a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” or even a “Jem”

I’ve argued for years that yearly “tie in” events by the major publishers are actively harmful to the development of strong series and characters that can stand on their own, not to mention attracting casual interest – but how often have I, personally, not purchased a crossover issue because of it? The answer – never, because I know retail stores pre-order my pull lists up to two months in advance, and by the time I find out an issue is a tie-in, I don’t want to stick them with non-returnable product.

Have I ever immediately dumped a series that moved in directions that are juvenile, or exploitative? By the time my bi-weekly shop visit comes up will I remember how mediocre last months titles were? Or will inertia win out until it reaches a point, years later, I don’t even remember why I’m buying a series anymore – it’s been so long since I’ve actually enjoyed an issue?

Both these comics came out in Sept 2009. One of these series I automatically supported through a pre-order made months in advance and ignorant of any critical review. The other I managed to (finally) track down in a store in a different city after I had pretty much given up ever reading it. One of them is absolutely terrible.

How often do I remember that a favorite writer or artist is getting a shot on a series I don’t regularly buy and remember to add it in advance? Never.

How often do I protest a writer or artist I enjoy getting what I feel is an undeserved boot from a series (or being meddled to death by editorial fiat)? Never.

And by the same token, how bad have I been at supporting innovative up-and-coming new series or stellar concepts? I’m not a “there every Wednesday” buyer – and my regular haunt is a modest shop with an (understandably) limited selection – and so, again, unless I remember to order something months in advance or I’m willing to start epic city wide back-issue hunts – I often just wait around in the hopes that a trade will eventually come out, (and that I’ll remember the series, or notice when it does).

How can I blame publishers for recycling the same gameplan for the past decade when I haven’t changed how I buy the majority of my comics? Of course they just expect me to keep buying the same titles regardless of quality, because I just keep buying the same titles, regardless of quality. How can I blame the industry for becoming stale when I can’t even change my own buying behavior?

I look back at the majority of the work I’ve told publishers (through my dollars) I want to support over the past decade and I don’t see the Phonograms, or the Chews, or Roger Legranges Muppet Show runs. I wasn’t buying Roger’s Blue Beetle, or Andrekyo’s Manhunter. And it’s not just the major publishers – I had a lengthy discussion with Jim Zubkavich about his (then-upcoming) Skullkickers at last years TCAF – A project that sounds pretty much like a read tailor made for me specifically (and from a creator I adore)… and I’ve never plunked down the $2.99 to support Jim, or to indicate to “the industry” this is what it should be making – because I never saw it in stores, and I didn’t order it weeks in advance, and by the time I found out it was actually being published the series was already at issue #6!

Meanwhile I own a complete run of “Cry for Justice”.

Pardon my french Mom, but that’s bullshit.

I love comic book stores, I respect the heck out of comic book retailers – but the realities of physical retail make purchasing a passive rather than active act, and for me – personally – that just enables many of the things I turn around and say I hate about the industry. The crossovers. The “stunt-events”. The “flavor of the week” creative teams, the “of course they’ll keep buying it”. I’m supporting comics I don’t even like, and in some cases haven’t liked in YEARS – and then I have the gall to bitch on the internet about Brightest Day? I have a *long box* full of a complete run of “Silver Sable” comics despite having no interest the character, a remembrance of reading any of them, or even a recollection of why I started buying the series in the first place (probably that shiny, shiny, Chrome #1 cover no doubt). How can I expect the industry to change in a progressive way when I have provided absolutely no economic feedback about the types of works I want to be purchasing?

And worse is that, functionally, there is absolutely no way in the DM to provide economic feedback. If you do immediately drop a title, that doesn’t hit the publishers in the pocket book – it leaves the retailers holding the bag. They’ve already placed their orders. The direct market essentially lets the major publishers use your friendly local shop owner as an economic airbag.

How can I then pretend to be surprised about “the cost of doing Phonogram“? I didn’t buy the floppies, and don’t know anyone who did. And you know what? If I was running my particular FLCS I wouldn’t have ordered any rack copies either given the audience I see in that particular neighbourhood and location. So how is this a model that works at all for how I thinks “comics should be”? Who do I expect to ride in on a white horse and make the system better? What overnight pokemon-like-evolution am I expecting any moment to level up the industry?

I wrote in my original post:

If the comics I am currently buying weekly in-store were available on some Comixology-esque application at the same date, and price that I’m currently paying in-store… I would buy all my monthly titles on-line.

but you know what? I don’t even enjoy a lot of the comics I read every month – and how do I expect anything to change if frustrated buyers like me just keep on doing the exact same things we’ve always done?

All of this in mind, I went to my FLCS and asked them how much lead time they’d need to not be stuck “holding the bag” if I cancelled my pulls – and then I shut it down like Walter Peck. All of them. As of the end of April for the first time since I was 11 I won’t have anything reserved for me at any physical comic store anywhere in the world.

I’ll still hit up my usual haunts I’m sure – I suspect there will always be trades and indie stuff that I’ll want physical copies of (“The Library” has to keep it’s stock current to reach out to the unconverted after all). But I’m drawing a small, personal, line.

Comics publishers of the world – if you want to sell serialized non-collected comic work to me starting May 1st, you better be selling digital, and directly, and you can bet your bottom dollar that every buy is going to be an active, rather than a passive decision.

Honestly, I don’t know what to expect from this experiment, but I figure instead of waiting for everyone else to do the legwork for once, it’s the absolute minimum I can do.

I got an e-mail from a friend (on his way to a Useage Based Billing consultation) yesterday curious as to what my thoughts were on the whole thing. I haven’t written anything about it at length (other than the odd tweet, mostly because my position generally falls outside both of the established “camps”, and when I have talked about it I generally found the discussion quickly deteriorated to me being asked to defend “the other side” and tenants I didn’t actually agree with.

Actually my biggest problem with the “debate” so far is that the two sides usually distill down to the arguments that “UBB is necessary” vs. “UBB is bad” and given that those aren’t actually mutually exclusive positions it’s frustrating to try and even define what the core issues are.

But in yesterdays exchange, I realized that I do have some thoughts which are a different viewpoint from most of what I’ve been seeing written – so if nothing else it might provide a different angle for people to contextualize their own positions – whatever they may be.

When I’m asked for advice on getting up to speed on the whole debate, I’ve lately been recommending Peter Nowak’s “10 myths from usage-based billing supporters“, but with the caveat that I don’t entirely agree with his conclusion. I could go the other route with a “pro UBB” article and then work backwards from that, but most of the people I chat with about this stuff are (as mostly end-users) generally more inclined to lean towards the “UBB is bad” camp, and it’s easier to initially flesh out a position they’re more likely to agree with(1).

But there’s two major elephants in the room in the Nowak article that seriously muddy the waters (that’s an outstanding mixed metaphor if there ever was one):

1. Regardless of how the structure *should* work in a perfect world, the fact is that data currently is a finite resource like a utility. Telephone calls don’t “consume” electrons any more than data does, but there is still a charge for both “delivery” and “useage” (to use Nowak’s terms). You pay both for a landline or cell phone (your delivery point) and then long distance or airtime (useage) because at at some point demand for finite capacity of long distance lines outpaced the network’s ability to deliver that connectivity. Same with cell phones. Calls engage limited capacity of physical cell towers so we pay for *all* airtime (long distance OR local) which is either capped or expensive(2). Furthermore this isn’t unique to the end-user consumers – servers pay bandwidth costs on the “publishing” side because exchanges pay bandwidth costs on the “delivery side”, every hop in network pays some type of both delivery and useage fee. Those oceanic fibre-optic runs aren’t infinite in their capacity (or cheap) and need to be financed somehow.(3)

Now there’s a valid argument to make that it is ludicrous to still be paying what we’re paying for long distance today (especially from landlines) given how much capacity there now is for global telecom, and how reduced actual phone service delivery costs have become. However, it is not that the rollout of the internet didn’t completely radicalize telecom in the 90s(4) and those inventions conversely forced an adjustment in LD calling rates. So the free market does self-regulate. Eventually. It just takes a long time, longer than most would like(5)

2. The second, and perhaps even bigger, issue is that the value of “bandwidth” to the end user isn’t just one of quantity – it’s also one of quality. This gets glossed over far too often in debates on UBB, but unlimited bandwidth doesn’t mean squat if you can’t negotiate a timely packet delivery. If I waved a magic wand and removed all bandwidth caps overnight, no one would be happy if their performance suddenly took such a hit it was impossible to play video games, or skype, or watch YouTube – or any other service where timely delivery was key. The raw numbers of connection speeds and bandwith caps are only one piece of the total picture of “quality of service”. A prime example is that my parents have a FiOS connection in Arizona that’s nowhere near as good an internet “experience” as my Toronto-based Rogers one. That there is a theoretical 16MBit difference in potential connection speed plus no cap on the American connection is functionally irrelevant to my actual user experience(6).

So – now we’ve swung back the other way. This is why UBB is such a compelling argument to some people (who aren’t necessarily only the big Telco’s, take Maclean’s for example). If you’ve got a product with scarcity, where both volume and timeliness of delivery are critical to the end user, free market regulation is an absolutely tried-and-true method of controlling distribution of that product. You raise prices until you balance demand and capacity (and profit), and you’re done. “QED!” say the UBB supporters and dust their hands, high fives for Adam Smith all around!(7)(8)

Well… maybe, but now we get into not just shades, but whole fields of gray. At the core the biggest problem with defining the terms of the UBB debate is the same major hurdle as Net Neutrality; To whit, no one really believes the information presented by the ISP’s. Not only do we not really have any idea what the major ISP’s are doing within their networks, the ISP’s have been demonstrably false in disclosing what they’re doing even when it directly affects end users. Ignoring the fact that those networks are (depending on your position) to some degree the results of government granted monopoly and investment to begin with, no one actually believes the ISP provided stats on congestion “as is”. Which is only fair given the track record of transparency with anyone (including the government).

Given many reasonable people believe that internet services are major profit generators for the telcos, and that those same players are getting beaten up in other areas of the broadcast/media/traditional telecommunications space – where is the incentive to re-invest significantly into network capacity? They *need* to be making large profits somewhere to even come close to breaking even overall. If a hypothetical company were (in “these economic times”) sinking huge amounts into future capacity – that’s not going to help keep the shareholders from their lobby with pitchforks and torches). So of course they’re going to cut as many corners as possible, and that means it’s perfectly logical to presume that capacity upgrades are underfunded. Heck, if congestion increases, a rational free-market response would be to decrease caps and increase prices – INCREASING profit margins further. This plan of action is entirely corporately sound, but is entirely backwards to what a progressive national internet policy should be trying to foster.

And just when you think things can’t get worse – don’t forget that Rogers, Bell, Shaw, Cogeco and the like are delivering other services (like television, and phone, and movies on demand) – all over the same physical connection into your house. If there is any investment in capacity are you, as a business-person with half a brain going to focus on improving the quality of the “public internet” (full of competitors to already declining traditional profit centres) or adding more “video on demand” options or HD channels to your proprietary set-top box? I know which makes more “bottom line” sense. And since either can technically be categorized as “network capacity investment” all the better!

Head hurt yet? Well here’s one last curveball. Where this whole thing goes off the rails entirely is that the current UBB debate has nothing to do with end-user policies. The CRTC allowed ISP’s to useage bill and cap customers way back in the 90s. We’ve all been subject to caps as long as we’ve had broadband(9). The whole thing only flared up again in November regarding a CRTC decision involving wholesale access to competitor ISP’s and what the the wholesale rates should be for access to certain “higher-level” connectivity(10). Wholesale access is, in my mind at least, one of the weakest planks in the anti-UBB platform. At it’s core arguing that competing businesses should all have *unlimited access* to finite resources is just bad for consumers. I don’t mean this from a competitive market sense, but more that it creates an ecosystem where it’s easier to improve a “competitive advantage” by taking action not in the benefit of the network as a whole. Who cares if my actions as ISP-A negatively affect ISP-B or ISP-C if it helps improve my bottom line? There’s just too many opportunities for that to go awry in a big, big way. But that means that ISP’s are never really going to be able to compete on quality because they’re ultimately dependant on Bell for their wholesale access. No matter how lousy Bell lets the national network get – they’re never going to be shown up by their DSL competitors because those competitors have to buy their connectivity from Bell.

And the snake eats its own tail.

So the whole thing is a big mess. This should probably not be a surprise.

If I was talking to a regulator my points would (and have) been pretty simple – the telcos are increasingly going to use “congestion” to argue for all kinds of regulatory changes to their benefit (I have no doubt this is just the beginning) and we need a much more transparent way to evaluate “congestion”, and also actual tangible network capacity and infrastructure investment before regulatory approval is granted in such cases.(11)

If there was any belief of actual transparency on the big ISP’s side it would be much easier to actually have a reasonable discussion about the place of things like packet filtering, and bandwidth caps as part of an entire network management strategy. Without it, there’s nothing else to do but conclude that customers are likely getting shafted by corporate interests.

Personally? As a content producer who knows that the future of his entire industry is inextricably tied up in digital distribution, I absolutely want to see much higher or unlimited bandwidth caps on data plans – who doesn’t? I absolutely agree that today’s “high volume user” is tomorrows “average user” and that piracy(12) has absolutely nothing to do with it. Average user demand is going to increase exponentially no matter what is banned / filtered. We have no idea what new service lurks just around the bend, just like no one foresaw YouTube becoming the global bandwidth consumer that it has.(13) HOWEVER the quality of that bandwidth is even more important to me. The current situation for Netflix in Canada is certainly chilling to their ability to compete against the incumbent services, but swapping the status quo for a system where everyone has unlimited caps, but at the detriment of timely packet delivery would kill them in a matter of weeks.

So how’s that for talking out of both sides of my mouth? At it’s simplest I guess I’m willing to consider UBB (and even clearly disclosed packet filtering) as very short term solutions for network congestion – but given that network demand is always going to be increasing ISP’s that want to play that card have to be compelled to forfeit some of their rights to privacy about how they manage their network, and disclose actual capital capacity investment on access to the *public internet* (not just their overall, all-in network). If they’re not willing to do either of those things (which is fine, and I could see why they wouldn’t want to) you can’t go crying for regulatory variance because of “congestion”. The two have to have some type of correlation.

On the wholesale front, I don’t really have a problem with UBB at all… but I would agree with those who think the government mandated discount should likely be more than 15%, because I honestly beleive (like many folks) that the actual BELL profit margin on these services is significantly higher than 15% – they could charge less and still make a hefty profit. Here’s a radical thought: How about compelling the major wholesalers to invest all revenue from wholesale service (or a fixed percentage of retail service) into public internet service capacity? Not only is there precedence for this (with Broadcasters having to reinvest set percentages in content production) it would be of benefit to both Bell and the ISP’s who are paying the wholesale rates as well. With either lesser price, or greater network capacity smaller boutique retail ISP’s should have more flexibility to offer greater options and packages(14) (and it’s worth noting that for all it’s sabre-rattling, Teksavvy is still offering unlimited data plans).

At the end of the day, UBB boils down to trying to find a balance somewhere on a spectrum – which is why trying to view the debate solely through the lens of “network neutrality” or “free market economics” is so frustrating. UBB can be both bad, AND necessary – but until we can change the debate to what type of internet experience we want to have available in the future, it will be easy to get lost in semantics.

1. Plus I mostly agree with Nowak’s individual points – just not where he takes them
2. Or, more likely, both.
3. This has nothing to do with the bandwidth costs being fair or even appropriate. The data rate you’d pay for bulk bandwidth (say in a co-location facility let alone peering in a major exchange) is a fraction of what you’d pay at retail. The point is only that there is a cost greater than zero.
4. pre-paid cards, calling plans, voip are all relatively recent inventions in the big picture
5. Canada’s size and relative monopolies in telecom certainly slow this process down more than elsewhere – for proof just look at our cell phone rates which are some of the worst in the world.
6. I’m not implying anything about the relative overall quality of the two services – I recognize that comparing downtown Toronto in the middle of the night on a weekday to the middle of the desert at peak Christmas time isn’t remotely fair.
7. There is totally a joke involving Adam Smith, high fives, and “The Invisible Hand”, but I’m not sure what it is
8. I think it’s a physical gag: Walk up to some economist and demand an “Adam Smith High Five” but don’t raise either of your arms. Then stand there for far longer than is socially comfortable. I digress.
9. My first broadband connection was in 1997 and it sure as heck had a cap… but then again so did my 9600 baud dial in service in 1993
10. Yes it’s a simplification of the relationship between ISP’s and GAS, but it’s close enough for the point I’m making
11. That’s where I felt we *really* lost out in the net neutrality hearings
12. or whatever the “Service X” straw-man argument of the week (YouTube, Skype, BitTorrent) is
13. Do you ever imagine TBL or the old DARPANET engineers slaving away night and day in the hope that someday, somehow, a Child in the Amazon rain forest could access the sum total of human created videos of cat’s playing piano?
14. Yet more free market dynamics at work!

Thankfully I pretty much gave up on any notion of being “cool” a lifetime ago… but this is a big leap even by my standards. Against all odds, there are people out there who want me to write about “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic” (presumably because they want to laugh at me). Before I do however, I need to start somewhere else, and work around to it, because what’s really been turning my crank since Christmas is thinking about Universe Building and (ultimately) how I think a lot of ongoing fantasy series have really messed up the concept of Universe Building in both audience expectation, and also creator intent. But since Universe Building is such a meta concept, I need to craft a bit of a “grand unified kitchen sink” theory requiring all sorts of odd bits and pieces, so there’ll be a lot of ranting about seemingly non-related things for a bit, capice? I actually considered doing this as a video blog as I’m stronger at lecturing on this type of material rather than trying to write it, but I’m not sure I’m man enough to be confident I can pull off a YouTube video extolling the virtues of “Twilight Sparkle” and “Rainbow Dash”. So – bear with me for the next few days as we see where this crazy rabbit hole leads. First stop: The 80s!

Cartoons targeted at girls in the 80s were, for the most part, terrible. I can say this as an authority. I was the only boy on my street until grade school, so I’ve played more than my fair share of Barbie, My Little Pony, and – most of all – Strawberry Shortcake. Suffice it to say if I was going to be eternally stuck playing the Peculiar Purple Pieman (and I was, invariably, always The Peculiar Purple Pieman(1) ) I had to understand “the canon”, as it were.

What frustrated me most about the cartoons my friends were watching, wasn’t the female protagonists, or their stereotyped gender content – it was that the stories weren’t interesting.

Let’s shift gears and talk about “Story Engines” for a moment. Lots of people use this term meaning slightly different things, but I tend to use it as a shorthand for identifying the base distillation of a character or series. The iconic immutable core that makes something what it is. Take (for a very, very, Canadian example) The Littlest Hobo. The daughter of a friend, when she was three or four, referred to the show as “Dog running and helping”. That was exactly the Story Engine that ten seasons of television was based on: Every episode the titular German Shepard would (literally) run into a new group of characters, help them solve their personal problems Lassie / Rex-The-Wonderdog style and, forsaking any material reward, would run right out of frame at the end of each episode heading for another adventure. If I walked up to any Canadian (of a certain age) and said “Dog running and helping” they’d know what show I’m talking about. For a less domestic example I suspect most people could figure out “Teenagers (and their Great Dane) travel America to discredit paranormal activity”.

A double-aside: Scooby Doo is actually a really great study of Story Engines since it’s many incarnations each alter the core story engine in different ways so you can see how subtle shifts at that base level can really change your final product. Also it gives an interesting lens to investigate why Scrappy-Doo is so universally hated. All food for a future post.

So, back to 80s cartoons. The vast majority of 80s cartoons used a really generic cookie cutter template: “Protagonists idyllic lifestyle is interrupted by villain with non-specific goals.” Now this isn’t an impossible engine to work with but it’s just not terribly dynamic for serialized storytelling. Is there really any difference between Gargamel busting up the Smurfs picnic, Mum-Ra trying to steal the Thundercats Sword of Omens, Or the Misfits trying to sabotage Jem and the Holograms latest concert? You invariably just ignore the unique story opportunities of each universe because all you’re doing is re-skinning the same action setpieces leading to the requisite showdown chase sequence / sword fight / battle of the bands conclusion. Don’t get me started on Inspector Gadget.

I bring up Jem specifically as it was probably my favourite “girl targeted” show of the decade. Fractionally, because I strictly recall generally loving the first halves of many of the episodes, and then being frustrated by the conclusions. The setting, if you’re not up on your retro cartoons, was rife with fascinating story hooks. The protagonist (Jerrica Benton) was trying to run an orphanage, a charitable foundation, and a music label – and secretly keeping these entities solvent by fronting an all-girl rock band in disguise. Essentially Jem was Batman – an exceptionally talented individual forced to create an alter-ego to work outside the normal system in pursuit of an idealistic agenda. Episodes would start with hooks like business trouble, nosy journalists, family issues, the strain of a rock band touring on the road, recording a record, an orphan running away… but inevitably would distill down to “the evil punk band villains sabotage something” (usually a concert). Every. Episode. Heck, I suspect I would have happily watched a cootie-filled episode of Jerrica vacillating between her two boyfriends reverse Archie Andrews style if it meant we could have a Misfit-free episode. It’s one thing to have Batman fight villains every episode, as part of his unique universe is a never-ending supply of interesting distinct villains. It would be another thing if every Batman episode ended in him having a guitar solo contest with the Joker.

And Jem was (in my opinion at the time) the best of the lot. Does Strawberry Shortcake strike you as a character well suited to foiling plots, or sneaking into the Pieman’s castle to steal recipes, or anything else that essentially boils down to “fighting villains”? I still recall exactly one part of one particular Strawberry Shortcake special ( which wikipedia has since informed me was from Strawberry Shortcakes Homecoming Surprise) , given the fact I would have been five when it aired and we didn’t own a VCR at the time it clearly made an impression. I have no idea what actually happened in the special itself – but I clearly remember the ending: Strawberry Shortcake had made a bunch of friends, each from a different exotic country, and she held a party for them – each bringing a unique dessert from their respective homeland to the party. That’s it. Five year old me had his mind blown by the concept of a pot-luck dinner (As an added bonus, even on my deathbed, I will still have the lyrics to this completely asinine song seared into my brain… I can’t tell you how horrified I was to discover I could still sing this song from memory, over 27 years later).

So yes, Strawberry Shortcake who works so well throwing parties, was engaging in breaking-and-entering, and lord knows what other ill suited tasks every week. Any exciting story opportunities presented by any of these shows particular universes was just used, at best, to tart up very same-y stories.

Three final asides:

1. None of the above is not to say that kids didn’t love these cartoons. We did. Passionately. Which is why it really hurts to go back and watch some of them now and see how bad they were… but I hope to work around to (eventually) how kids understand Universe Building on an entirely different level than adults do, and can get something out of even the weakest shows.

2. “Boy” targeted cartoons weren’t any more diverse in structure, mind you, but they at least tended to feel a lot less dissonant. The characters were generally more suited to a competitive fight-of-the-week environment (of course The Real Ghostbusters were going to fight the ghost-of-the-week, of course the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would foil Shredder and/or Krang). As an added bonus there was a lot less preaching in the boys shows; The GI JOE team may tack on a PSA at the end of each episode about waiting a half hour before you go swimming – but we knew that wasn’t the point of the show – the point was blowing up stuff with lasers. Thundercats would maybe work in a moral about lying to your parents, just so long as it didn’t take away from the sword fight with the alien space-mummy. In retrospect I wonder if the real issue was that the moralizing just stuck out more given how paper-thin a lot of the girl show plots were. To resolve this would require watching a lot more 80s TV than I’m willing to do… any takers?

3. I also don’t want this to come off as an attack on any of the creative teams involved with these shows. Maybe some were just cranking out product for a pay cheque, but I’m sure a lot just boiled down to the available resources or support available to them (and what general corporate thought was about what this product was supposed to be and who it was for). I’m not ignorant of the fact that the production team for The Snorks went on to make Tiny Toon Adventures so it’s not that they didn’t have skill.

Things got a little better towards the end of the decade. I can remember watching cartoons with my brother (younger brothers being an excellent excuse to watch television “that only babies would like” on the sly) and thinking they was already an evolution going on. I specifically recall thinking “The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin” was cutting edge storytelling with it’s continuing plot-lines, and story engine of “Three Friends hunt for treasure exploring a new universe” – but within a year or two of that I had discovered the “Comic Book Store” (much to the detriment of every allowance I’d ever have again). It’s too bad, as I really missed the heyday of the relaunched Warner Brothers Animation department (with Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, The Batman Adventures) and Disney (with Talespin, Chip and Dale, Darkwing Duck…) . There were a number of series which really re-energized the field and considerably raised the bar. Then towards the end of the decade we got another big surge with a generation of kids raised on cartoons (and exposed to foreign animation from France and Japan like never before) getting out of art school and bringing radically innovative design sensibilities to a new wave of cartoons like Ren and Stimpy, The Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack and the like.

So there – it’s taken me nearly fourteen hundred words to get through “80’s Cartoons were NOT VERY GOOD.” But now we’re finally all on the same page and can proceed on this particular adventure!

UP NEXT: Now what about those Universes themselves?

1. from Porcupine Creek – ya-ta-ta-tah-ta-ta-tah-ta-ta-ta-CHA!

Rise of the Pop-Culture Tribes

If you follow my twitter at all (bastion of such visionary insight as this) you know that I have nothing but the highest opinion for the Savage Critic himself Mr. Brian Hibbs. He’s one of the strongest writers about the realities of the direct market in comics, and is a true credit to all the hard working retailers out there who have really kept the comics market alive through the various recession periods (as Brian himself will point out the comics retailers, not the individual fans are the actual customers of the distributors since what they buy is largely nonreturnable).

I do want to write a bit of a counter-point to his latest post though – not because I wish him, or any retailer really, ill – but because it’d help clarify some thoughts I’ve had for a while about the state of digital distribution in comics.

I’d urge you to read the post in question in it’s entirety (and actually go ahead and hit up the rest of the site, and Brian’s must read “Tilting at Windmills” columns for CBR while you’re at it). But in a nutshell he’s heartened by the relatively small portion of overall industry revenue that digital is currently drawing. I am sure this was one of the major issues at the most recent ComicsPRO meetings, because digital distribution is surely a huge spectre for all brick-and-mortar comics retailers out there.

Here’s my obligatory preamble. I have been a regular weekly customer of physical comic books stores for well over two decades. I have had a regular “pull” list awaiting me at some physical location since the late 80s. I often narrow past events (real and fictional) down to specific years based on recall of what “my store” was at the time. I’ve been a customer of amazing stores with exceptional owners (my all time favourite used to lend my broke-ass teenage self out-of-print trades from his personal collection to try and introduce me to new artists and genres) and some from the other end of the spectrum (to this day most of my immediate social circle (not one of whom also reads comics) knows where I’m referring to if I mention “the shitty comic book store”).

All this is to just set the stage for the following hard truth about digital distribution: If the comics I am currently buying weekly in-store were available on some Comixology-esque application at the same date, and price that I’m currently paying in-store… I would buy all my monthly titles on-line. Period. I don’t require any kind of other incentive, no advance release or discount. Day and date. Same cover price. Digital would get 100% of my business.

If I have currently contributed $0 to the “digital economy” from the (considerable) amount I spend weekly on floppies it’s only because they’re not offering what I’m looking for, yet. This isn’t hyperbole, I would go out and buy an iPad this minute (I don’t care for reading anything longer than a page or two on a laptop – but quite like what I’ve tested on co-workers tablet devices). The reality, for me, is that physical distribution of comics is woefully inefficient, and always has been. I’m tired of having to make a weekly trek into my (sometimes) friendly local comic book store. I’m tired of wanting to sample a new series or issue and not having it in stock because I didn’t pre-order it. I’m tired of thousands of floppies threatening to take over my house. I’m tired of having to visit three different stores to get the range and breadth of titles I want. I’m tired of having management of my title subscriptions being “a process”. I’m tired of not being able to read a story of series someone’s recommended on-line if I forget the title when I’m actually at the store. I’m tired of not being able to jump on series mid-stream because there isn’t a complete run of back-issues or a trade collection yet. Ditto wanting to read certain key arcs or classic runs that haven’t been collected in a trade. I could go on.

Now many would argue that much of my frustration with the physical market could be solved by having *better* retailers near me, but I have some pretty good stores I frequent (two of them would probably show up in a poll of top ten comic retailers in all of Canada). If the state of your industry hangs in the balance of crafting a near-perfect retail uber-experience – a platonic ideal of Adam Smith’s invisible hand – that’s not a good sign for your industry. Digital doesn’t just have the potential to mitigate what’s driving me away from retail… it has the potential to mitigate what’s driving me away from mainstream comics.

Assuming that I had a true “apples to apples” comparison – a “perfect retailer” offering exactly the goods I would purchase on-line, I’d still go on-line for the increased flexibility in adding and dropping titles, to not have to physically shlep to a store, to not have to manage unweildly physical books. (An aside; I know there’s a huge contingent of “reading comics is a tactile experience” purists, and I appreciate your dedication, but I can only speak for myself and I don’t care. To me comics are about art, and writing, and (sometimes) serialization – and none of those aspects are dependant on paper. I also think a move away from physical would finally stick a pin in the “comics as investment” nonsense that I believe has really hurt the growth of the artform – but that’s a different rant for a different day).

Now I don’t believe that this means that physical retail is dead, I don’t speak for “all customers” – just myself. But I know concretely in my case that publishers are leaving significant money on the table by not selling to me directly (presuming their cut of digital is higher than of physical retail which it would have to be given no need to actually produce or ship a physical product). And I presume they’re smart enough to be doing surveys and research and focus groups to eventually determine how much money they’re leaving money on the table. If the numbers like me are few, then there’s no harm in rapidly evolving their on-line strategy. If the numbers like me aren’t few, there’s even more reason to. And if I’m the lone individual who feels this way, I’m eventually going to quit buying floppies anyway – so no matter what my money is likely headed out of the DM.

I’d like to hope that this doesn’t hurt retailers, like I said I have too many good personal experiences to wish that, but at the end of the day I don’t feel like I have a responsibility to the direct market per se. I have heard retailers (not Brian) argue that the DM is comics, and that’s a position I fundamentally disagree with. If I have a responsibility as a fan of the medium it’s to the creators of comics content – and that means if I (me personally) put a value proposition on how I buy comics I’m going to put it on prioritizing a distribution mechanism that can put more money into the publishers pockets short-term (and hopefully the writers and artists long-term as I do believe that, ultimately, non-physical distribution has to open up more independent distribution opportunities).

So while I’m happy for Brian that the boogeyman is not yet on the doorstep, I know that there’s a number equal or greater to 1 that would jump full into digital in a heartbeat if the offering was on equal footing with the retail one. I’m certainly no pundit willing to make projections about what “the market” would do in that situation, but I know I have no interest in “the paper” and am waiting on “the floss”.

Your nickle tour summary is that Smith had a much-hyped event yesterday after the Sundance premiere of the film (replete with protesting Fred Phelps), where he was to auction off the distribution rights to his new horror film “Red State”. What actually happened was the classic “old switcheroo” where Smith actually sold himself the distribution rights, and announced he’d be four-walling the film for several months – prior to a wider October 19th release (presumably with a traditional distributor). “Four Walling”, if you’re not familiar with the term, is when a distributor pays to rent out an entire theatre in advance, and then keeps the entirety of the ticket proceeds… as opposed to regular exhibition where the distributor and the exhibitor split ticket revenues.

It was at this point that the film bloggosphere exploded with rage, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me. Writers were alternately angry that Smith lied to them about his intentions, or that he was using them for promotion of his new distribution company, or that he plans to charge $60 to $70 for tickets to these advance screenings when critics are used to getting promotional screenings for free… or… something. They were certainly angry. The one thing that surprises me is that more prominent film-bloggers didn’t grow up watching professional wrestling – since the “vaguely worded *big reveal* let-down” is pretty much the oldest game in town. I don’t really have anything to say about any of that. I wasn’t even aware of the film until e-mail started trickling in today on the topic.

What I do care about is that some writer’s take-away from this seems to be gushy badly-researched prose that Smith has discovered some revolutionary new distribution style that all of film-dom should be tapping into. [Edit - One day later a lot of the most egregious examples have vanished, or been re-written, but I'm sure others are still out there - drop some links in the comments if you've got some good examples] As Smith himself pointed out on Twitter, this is actually a really old distribution style – the “throw a print in the trunk and drive from theatre to theatre” model. He specifically mentioned the Weinsteins as inspirational of this venture, but huge numbers of 70s and 80s filmmakers did the exact same thing (the two exact parallels that come to mind with Smith’s plan would be Warren Miller and Uwe Boll – Miller had the grand “evening with the filmmaker” event, Boll had (believe it or not) a supremely dedicated genre fan following).

Why this isn’t a model that’s transportable outside of this specific case is the same reason that four-walling died out almost exactly at the same time as the adoption of home video: With increasingly pervasive media It starts to get exponentially more difficult to do small releases in singular geographic centers without major marketing funds. When Warren Miller used to bring a new extreme skiing film to town in the 80s it had an immediate built-in hook – “If you want to watch an extreme sports movie this year – here is pretty much your only chance!” Ditto why so many 80s horror and sci-fi films attracted cult followings: there was only a limited number of them each year and you had very few chances to catch them. As home video increased it became harder and harder to attract attention in one-off screenings and marketing and promotion became more and more key components to get an audience to come out and see a film – if there’s more *stuff* constantly, it’s harder to stand out. Plus you’re now even just focusing on “people who are going to watch a movie tonight” you’re now competing against multiplexes, studios, television specialty channels, console streaming, and the like at every stage (competing for audience, for press, for any kind of mind-share really).

This is exactly the same problem that Canadian distributors face daily – the cost of marketing a film *IN CANADA* doesn’t really scale with the returns from an audience the size of the population OF CANADA. One of the key problems is the “spillover” from marketing efforts in the US are so much greater than any Canadian distributor could ever independently compete with. Which explains, in about half a paragraph, why there is (if you live in a major metropolitan city in Canada) likely exactly one Canadian film playing this week at your local multiplex. Usually it would be none, but then Paul Giamatti had to go win a Golden Globe for “Barney’s Version”, and ruin my parable.

Back to Kevin Smith – obviously he is a known quantity independent of his films (with a hugely engaged fan-following), so he can invert the traditional model – charging a huge premium to his most devoted fans for the privilege of seeing the film first, and then try to use that as leverage into a more traditional general opening much later. In this case the marketing and promotion you need for a limited release is just Smith’s magic inherent promotional ability – which is unique to him as he was such a key, charismatic, figure at the inception of the “film blogger age”.

Now having said all that, I don’t believe the business plan Smith set out with was “overcharge my most passionate fans for as long as I can, because they’ll pay it”. I absolutely have no problem understanding where Smith is claiming to come from. There is nothing more infuriating than pinching every single penny to try and make a film as economically as possible only to see any potential of a return get swallowed up in gargantuan “marketing expenses” that will never recoup. It’s the same math that horrifies people when I point out how if you make a $10M film, that grosses $30M at the box office it has still likely not come close to making a profit. But any alternative model really only works if you have a known property with built in marketing and promotion. And let’s not kid ourselves on the economics – they’re still tough. If (as suggested) “Red State” had a paltry (for a Kevin Smith film) $4M price tag, you’d have to sell out all 6,000 seats of Radio City Music Hall (at a steep $60 a ticket) for twelve consecutive nights to earn that kind of revenue (and you still probably wouldn’t have broken even at that point, what with the cost of renting out the theatre and staff and, travel and accommodation and whatnot). But if you can do that, without putting up so much as a single poster, you’d be in the ballpark of actually making money on exhibition (and let’s be clear here, making money on theatrical exhibition of any is beyond rare).

But that’s with a beloved filmmaker, with the most passionately mobilized fans that exist on the internet, and a $4M budget. This model doesn’t work with an average (or unknown) director or property. $60 for a sneak peak film of your favourite director (presumably with him in attendance) is not the same as, say, paying $60 for a screening of “Vulgar” (the 2000 film Smith exec produced for his buddy Bryan Johnson). Even if you could get fans to pony up $10 based entirely on your “brand recognition” – you’d now need to sell more than 400,000 seats for that same $4M film to be profitable (and remember the more screenings you need the less profitable four-walling becomes – not to mention the increased risk of losing money if you don’t recoup your theater rental fees in admissions). And once we get into having to reach hundreds of thousands of people, you really start needing significant advertising and promotion. And once you get into any kind of advertising buys “one film, one night, one location” becomes grossly inefficient (if not impossible). Just as napkin math – one full page ad in an alternative “arts” weekly (circulation of 50-100k or so) is likely going to run you $1-2k which is pretty much the entire gross for a screening. Without a wider release you’re throwing money away (albeit on a much smaller scale).

Finally all of this avoids the whole other part of the “profitable exhibition” discussion which is that theatrical exhibition is really, when you come down to it, just a fancy form of marketing and promotion itself, as all the other revenue streams for film (home video, television licensing and the like) are the avenues that are most profitable – but depend to some extent on theatrical (this odd relationship being one of the main reasons DVD’s cost what they do. But Smith seems to be very clearly talking about finding a way to make theatrical exhibition work better (at least from what I’ve heard) so let’s not muddy the issue at the moment.

I guess what it comes down to, is that I’ll be interested where this all leads. I absolutely think Smith has the tens of thousands of fans willing to shell out the $60-70 to make this an interesting experiment on his (and his investors) part – but there’s absolutely no way to adapt this model to anything outside of his unique position. I certainly don’t share his passion that this is a model he can use for upcoming indie films not directed by himself. What it really does, though, is gives a very nice low-budget case study to highlight how difficult it is to make money on theatrical exhibition of feature films.

[Edit - I purposely avoided broaching the issue of the film's quality. I have no idea, don't really want to argue about something I haven't seen, and don't think it particularly matters to any of the above. I do however stand by my assertion that "Mallrats" was criminally misunderstood]

Aaannnd we’re back…. welcome to the FUTURE!

I’ve written before about how hard it is to resume blogging after coming out of a “production coma” (which is a weird inversion of a regular coma, in that you are actually functioning ridiculously more than the mean, and yet your friends all think you’ve been kidnapped or something).

The reason why I usually don’t blog in production are many. Not just because time is at an incredible premium (which is true), or because of “teh spoilers” – but more because I tend to get incredible “tunnel vision of interest” and I’m well aware that blogging about, say, ACTRA bonds would get old fast.

So, mum’s the word.

If you haven’t been on twitter – the last five months have been a mad-cap sprint on an adaptation of “Billy Bishop Goes To War” that I’ve been (no hyoerbole) honoured to be involved with, and I hope we’ve done some small measure of justice to. There’ll likely be more news on the “Billy Bishop” front in the new year, so I’ll maybe talk about it then (hopefully when I’ve got some more distance).

But the important thing is that I’m back in 2011 with even more things I want to discuss – starting with my new obsession with “My Little Pony”.

…

This would be known as the “cliffhanger ending”.

As I’m neck deep in production, the twitter box to your right might be a little more active than the site over the next few weeks – but probably not very. Hope everyone’s having a great Summer!

–

I am so sorry for the spam groupmail, but it completely escaped my notice that the deadline for public Canadian Comedy Award voting is coming up at the end of the week.

Once again the Rocket Ace is up for another award for “Web Clip of the Year” with “The Running of the Bullshitters” – another piece with the very funny Imponderables. Since our record-setting string of nominations will likely come to an end this year due to working on various “non-stupid-web-clip” projects we’d love to go out in glorious, glorious, victory and YOU can help!

To cast your vote visit:

http://www.canadiancomedy.ca/register.php

before July 31, 2010.

Sign up only takes a few moments and if you’ve registered for the CCA’s in past years you can use the same login and password again this year.

Once you’re registered cast a “Web Clip” category vote for “Running of the Bullshitters”… or any of the other, worthy nominees.

I said that last part just to be polite. I didn’t send this e-mail out so you could vote for “Being Erica”. They’re not even a new-media thing, and I have it on good authority that the cast and crew eat adorable puppies for craft service. You wouldn’t want to support that kind of behavior would you? Think of the puppies.

Don’t even get me started on Andrew Bush, guy makes a decent funny web-clip – but you don’t even want to know what kind of depravity he gets into. So don’t vote for him either.

Don’t vote for any of them. Except us. Because you know *exactly* what kind of depravity we get into. I’ve lost the thread here… where was I going with this?

Vote for “Running of the Bullshitters”, is essentially the central theme I’m trying to get across here.

Basically.

Best,

- Brad

I’m not quite sure where I first read about Jonathan Schwarz’s Five Dollar Friday project – but it immediately struck a chord with me.

For me, the concept of finding a different on-line project, foundation, cause, or artwork to donate a fiver to every week isn’t really about creating “a new economic model” for such work, but rather is a meditative way for me to be more mindful about not taking the hard work of others, freely given, for granted.

It’s very easy to get a sense of entitlement about all the great material that’s on-line, I’m just as bad as anyone: What do you mean no one has crafted the exact WordPress plugin I need? What do you mean no one has updated this piece of software in a month? What do you mean my favourite webcomic is taking a week off? When the miraculous (a global pool of fantastic work out there to draw from that costs nothing) surrounds you daily, it’s only human you’d begin to trivialize it (perhaps Messieurs J and 2 Dope said it best).

Let’s be frank – most people waste $5 a week on something that matters a lot less to them than the on-line services, products, and people who make a genuine difference in their week. I bought a keychain for $5 yesterday in the shape of a little 8mm camera. It lights up and makes a “filming” sound when you press the trigger and a little led flickers in the lens. It will be broken within the month, I am sure.

This is just a token effort at thinking a little bit about who makes my Internet the great place it is – spending, even a nominal amount keeps me from assuming that “free” equates to “valueless” in an interesting way – and if others can benefit from that – more the better.

I’ll admit it, I’m torn. The Toronto Comic Arts Festival used to be this cool little bi-annual secret of the city. I was there at the beginning in 2003 and it was like hanging out at the worlds coolest indie comic shop book-signing; Fast forward six years and I’m sitting in a sold-out Harborfront Center listening to Adrian Tomine, Seth, and freaking Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Scott McCloud is sitting in front of me and a veritable horde of girls keep chattering behind me because they are trying to surreptitiously photograph a guy they assumed was Jeph Jacques. I don’t actually remember if it was Jeph Jaques or not… (although it’s pretty funny if they just assumed some random guy was Jeph Jacques) but that’s not the point. My point is that this memory is the diametric opposite of a “tiny well kept secret”. </preamble>

This years line-up is ridiculous, and there’s a truly staggering amount of info available on-line to plan an assault on the ‘fest – given that it’s free – there’s not a single reason to not at least drop by the Toronto Reference Library. The size actually is now well into dangerous territory. In the past I could always wander around the exhibitors and pick up some random mini-comic stuff just for the heck of it. Those on twitter know I’ve been devouring The Comics Journals exhibitor preview and, I kid you not, my first draft “have to pick up” list would literally run seven hundred dollars. May need a re-think on that one. But there is a bounty of riches.

Just in case you need something cool to check out at TCAF – here’s a really quick list of five Toronto-based projects I’m totally stoked about – and you should be too:

SWORD OF MY MOUTH – I’m 100% jonesing for Jim Munroe and Shannon Gerard’s stand-alone follow up to the post-rapture adventure THEREFORE REPENT! I unfortunately can’t make their launch party tomorrow (so no free seeds for me… but it’s stop number one on Saturday before you all buy up all the copies. Well maybe stop number two. Depends on who’s closest to the front door between them and my other Toronto art-crush…

THE ABOMINABLE CHARLES CHRISTOPHER. Karl Kerschl’s art is sublime, and the story he’s telling over at Abominable.cc is so subtle and nuanced I actually have had a hard time following it on line. As such I’ve been really looking forward to a collected volume – and one this good looking is just icing on the cake.

I possibly e-mailed the folks at TX just to make sure they were going to have enough copies at the show.

I don’t know what to make of Aaron Lieghton’s SPIRIT CITY TORONTO. The first I heard of it, at all, was it showed up – almost as a footnote – today in a list of works debuing at TCAF. So it’s a (kids?) book where Leighton has drawn some of his trademark cool spirt-characters on photos of Toronto? Except it’s never been mentioned anywhere on-line? And I thought Leighton lived in Calgary. There is only one possible solution. This is an actual ghost book. Then I found this on-line preview. Which is kind of awesome.

Jason Keiffer’s THE RABBLE OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO isn’t new (It’s been out for several months) and I’ve actually passed on picking it up a couple of times, but it keeps popping up in newspapers, and blogs that I read over and over and has now firmly planted itself in my head as “something I need to read to form an opinion on”. So… good job on that front Jason!

And in that same vein KENK.
A 300-page.
“Journalistic Comic”.
Fumetti.
About Toronto bicycle-crimelord Igor Kenk.

Roll that around on your tongue for a while.

Other than that I’ll be out and about – there’s a number of the panels at the Pilot that I hope to be checking out on both days as well – so if you see me feel free to say hello!

I have no doubt this is reliable information – but I’m not going to write about it at any length (or with any vitriol) until something is actually tabled. Arguing about a theoretical is almost as big a waste as summarily ignoring a year long national consultation process (zing!).

I don’t hold out any hope that I’ll be pleasantly surprised by the bill (In fact I mentioned several times in last summer’s posts on the copyright consultation that I suspected the real irony of the process was that everyone involved was going to be disappointed – but it’s hard to argue in detail against an unknown quantity.

Obviously, I stand by my longstanding argument that draconian end-user copyright restrictions will take a huge toll on independent content producers in the new media space. Given that it’s not exactly an industry secret, I’m still shocked at how few creators understand that content locks work two ways – preventing piracy (which they don’t do very well) and locking creators out from accessing platform-specific audiences.

I’ll obviously have more to say once the actual legislation comes down (supposedly June-ish).

Step Right Up and Be Validated As Art

Dear Family and/or Friends and/or Random Acquaintances and/or Twitter Followers and/or Random Strangers:

Please stop asking me my opinion about Roger Ebert’s post about videogames and wether they (have, do, or will ever) constitute “art”. I understand given my occupation, hobbies, educational background, and unabashed love of pedantic petty argument that I would be a likely candidate for strong feelings on this topic – but I tried to avoid for three reasons:

One: I presume folks were looking for fiery counter-argument, and lots of thoughtful writers with much closer ties to gaming have already done that. That last article by Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft was, perhaps, the most interesting to me personally given Brian’s background.

Two: At it’s core this is a debate about terms, and anyone who has actively engaged in debate as an abstract pursuit will tell you, “term haggling” is the last refuge of someone who doesn’t care about the issue. Even a neophyte high-school debate team knows when you haven’t done your prep – or are faced with a subject that holds no interest, you can always muddle through by dickering on terminology, and often the first to define the terms claims the “high ground” in the battle.

Roger Ebert has lasted longer than anyone in the film reviewing game because he has that rare combination of being absolutely brilliant about film, and being able to stir up gigantic amounts of ire with the things he writes. Read some of his legendary feuding with Gene Siskel from back in “the day” prior to their TV show. He knows what buttons to press to inspire vitriolic reaction (which is good for a syndicated columnist) and he’s smart enough to craft the grounds of his argument so that he can’t actually lose (or vaguely enough that he can extend the debate for as long as he feels he can get mileage out of it). It’s not a coincidence that he’s been poking this particular wasps nest for more than five years, but never more than once every couple of years.

As others have pointed out already, this “contest” is essentially rigged. Ebert is not interested in videogames, doesn’t play them, and likely wouldn’t like them if he did play them, and he’s the one setting the terms of the argument. So how do you propose to prevail with your position (and why would you try)? By the same token most gamers personal venn diagrams only overlap “Roger Ebert’s Opinion” on these rare bi-annual potshots. So why does it matter?

Yes, I get that a generation raised with authority figures telling them that electronic passtimes were juvenile distractions (at best) has a collective cultural sore-spot regarding external validation but at it’s core this debate has nothing do with gaming… which brings me to my last point.

Three: Boiled down, this is an art-theory debate, and there is nothing (and I mean nothing) less interesting than arguing about what does, or does not, constitute “art” – especially with combatants of (mostly) wildly disparate (and likely incompatible) backgrounds. This particular brand of conflict doesn’t lead to resolution, or insight; It leads to outlandish haberdashery, smoking kreteks and writing manifestos. And no one wants that.

The short summary, for those unfamiliar with China/Nollywood/Bollywood filmmaking, is that there is a thriving low (or no) budget domestic filmmaking culture in these countries which one would presume would be impossible, given the widespread piracy in each.

It’s a very comprehensive, well written read – but I think his conclusions miss the mark, and often gloss over (or conveniently ignore) some of the realities of the situations and solutions he raises.

What do these gray zones have to teach us? I think the emerging pattern is clear. If you are a producer of films in the future you will:

1) Price your copies near the cost of pirated copies. Maybe 99 cents, like iTunes. Even decent pirated copies are not free; there is some cost to maintain integrity, authenticity, or accessibility to the work.

The problem with this approach is that Kevin is thinking in terms of the lessons he’s learned in three countries where physical media is the primary distribution channel of pirated material. In the west, the “cost of a pirated copy” for many movies is zero (or, at best, the pro-rated cost of a low-end computer and a couple of hours of internet time to snag a torrent. This, in most cases, doesn’t even get you a fuzzy multiple-generation bootleg, or shaky handicam movie, but a pristine, DVD-quality film – better than what you’d get at most theatres in Nigeria or India.

Let’s assume we ignore this tricky reality for a moment – there’s still a fundamental problem with Kelly’s assumption about film pricing when you apply digital rates to physical mediums. I recently talked to a number of Canadian duplication houses on quotes for replication and packaging of a very vanilla DVD for a run of more than ten thousand units. The quotes I got back averaged around $0.83 per unit for a bare-bones disc and clamshell that would meet the bare minimum of retail requirements (which are – be robust enough to survive packing and shipping to retail). Let’s assume I could, with some more volume, manage to get that per unit cost down to $0.75. So that leaves us with 24 cents on a 99-cent purchase. Now retail has to get their cut – the most I could offer would be 50% of that remaining 24 cents… but why would anyone stock that product? Compare the operational costs of a pirate DVD market stall in Nigeria and a Best Buy in Winnipeg. One has significant rent, wages, insurance to pay… even Amazon, with their tremendous volume would have a hard time justifying stocking a product with a profit margin to them of 0.12 cents per unit (someone’s got to box and ship that sucker). Of the remaining 0.12 the producer would still have to cut at least one (and usually two or more) distributors of some stripe in… let’s be charitable and say they’d only take 6 cents… if all these miraculous stars aligned (and lets be frank, I’m trying to prove a point here, no retail, distributor, or wholesaler would touch this hypothetical release) the producer would pocket – at most – 0.06 a disc. Which would mean that if you sold 33 million copies – one DVD to every single man woman and child living in Canada and the United States – you could perhaps break even on a budget of $10 million dollars (presuming you have very conservative P&A costs). Incidentally, the average cost of a Canadian feature film, is ~$3 Million, and an American film is ~$20 Million. Do the math.

Of course the (rational) response then would be “make films cheaper” – which is true… to a point, but there’s a huge elephant in the room relating to the disparity in production cost between producing a domestic film in China / Nigeria / India and the Western countries. An average Nollywood film costs between $10,000-20,000 (Wikipedia would suggest a touch higher but I’m basing on figures from a “Nollywood” panel I moderated at TIFF last year which included Nigerian super-producer Peace Aniyam-Fiberesima). Thats a factor of hundreds less than an average Canadian film, which is itself a factor of ten less than an average US one. But this isn’t because of massive profit taking, or pork, it’s a higher overall cost of living and that Western filmmaking nations cannot grossly exploit a large, extremely poor, labour pool.

No matter how cheap I propose a budget (even working guerrilla style), if it’s a commercial project I still will encumber minimum, unalterable, costs such as minimum wage, workers compensation, general liability insurance, and the maximum number of hours you can work a crew in a row before the police show up. That’s presuming I can avoid ever having to deal with a union, or an artist who would like to be paid something resembling a living wage. Even shows I’ve done entirely with donated cast and crew have cost more than a Nollywood budget on pizza, gas, and beer. And I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret that film schools don’t want you to know: Even the most amazing low-budget success stories from the independent film movement (“Paranormal Activity”, “Clerks”, “The Blair Witch Project”, “El Mariachi”, “The Celebration”) still required hundreds of thousands (in some cases millions) of dollars of post-production work (and tens of millions of dollars in P&A) to get them to the finished product audiences saw in theatres and video rental stores. The “average” Nollywood / Bollywood film would be unwatchable to Western audiences (I’ve tried, and failed, to watch several, and I’ve got a really high tolerence for production value).

2) Milk the uncopyable experience of a theater for all that it is worth, using the ubiquitous cheap copies as advertising. In the west, where air-conditioning is not enough to bring people to the theater, Hollywood will turn to convincing 3D projection, state-of-the-art sound, and other immersive sensations as the reward for paying. Theaters become hi-tech showcases always trying to stay one step ahead of ambitious homeowners in offering ultimate viewing experiences, and in turn manufacturing films to be primarily viewed this way.

Again, I don’t argue with the logic of Kevin’s point here – just that he’s glossing over an uncomfortable truth… that – increasingly – the theatre experience is *worse* for Western audiences than the home viewing ones. While the Indian and Nigerian theatres in Kevin’s article offered better fidelity and air-conditioning, my local Cineplex offer a lovely technical experience (most of the time, I have had more than once had to report an out-of-focus projector or mis-set aspect ratio or sound setting), but relatively expensive tickets, extremely expensive food, and a theatre full of people talking and using their cell phones. Ironically this is a positive feedback loop – the better the average home-theatre experience gets, the worse the average audience they behaves in public theatres because they’re used to watching films at home where such behavior is common. 3D (like THX and Dolby Digital in the 90s) will briefly keep the fidelity gap from closing entirely, at least until home televisions catch up (and 3D TV is a only couple years out at most for some reasonable early market penetration)… but where do you go from that? Certainly I still prefer the shared experience of seeing some types of films with large groupsm but I have several friends, film fanatics in their 20s and 30s, who refuse to go to the theatre any longer. Period. As home electronic and computer equipment get cheaper and higher quality theatrical is going to increasingly become just another marginalized niche exhibition platform.

3) Films, even fine-art films, will migrate to channels were these films are viewed with advertisements and commercials. Like the infinite channels promised for cable TV, the internet is already delivering ad-supported free copies of films.

I don’t really have an argument with this point per se, rather just the comment that as more film material is constantly available on multiple platforms (what I referred to in this post as the “pervasive library”) the value of each individual piece in that library decreases. Hence ad revenue on television and new media platforms will decrease with the increase of material available on those channels. That’s not to say that producers shouldn’t try to squeeze every cent out of these revenue streams (we’re trying, trust me) but also that as on-line platforms offer new sources of ad revenue, the value to be had from traditional television licenses is decreasing significantly – so it’s not a positive-sum game (and sadly the reality is that it’s not break-even either… broadcast license revenue is significantly less than what it was even a few years ago – and no on-line platform that exists yet comes close to making up the difference). There are other problems with relying exclusively on ad-supported revenue (especially with financing projects) – but that’s a post for a different day.

The other huge issue with using those particular countries as case studies (which Kevin readily acknowledges – but avoids come conclusion time) is that they are heavily subsidized by organized crime – as laundering opportunities, and vanity projects – so how sustainable they’d be entirely on their own merits is debatable. That’s not to cast aspersions on any film creators working in Bollywood/Nollywood/China – but even their staunchest artistic supporters would have to admit that a large portion of their industrial infrastructure (from venture capital, through the star system, to distribution) is tied up heavily with organized crime, money laundering, and the black/grey markets.

Having said all of that, I certainly think there are certainly valuable lessons to be learned from all of these national cinemas. I’m just not sure Kevin concludes with the right ones. Fundamentally I don’t beleive these systems are sustainable without a large, mostly poor, audience, highly exploitable labour, and cash influx from organized crime.

Incidentally one conclusion where Kelly and I are right in agreement is that legitimate distribution methods have to be as convenient (if not moreso) as illegitimate ones. I find it quaint when the National Post crows that retail piracy is down because of police raids. Retail piracy is down, because it’s a pain in the ass compared to booting up your favourite torrent engine, and having a film in twenty minutes. Zero cost, remember?

Another point I do always take from these film cultures is their liveliness, a willingness to buck traditional production values, assumptions, and techniques and a real “can-do spirit” that’s infectious. My favourite part of “Peace Mission”, Dorothee Wenner’s solid documentary on Nollywood, is an interview with a young man running his own CGI company in a small town. His work certainly isn’t going to be mistaken for WETA anytime soon – but every time I’m shocked when, after a clip of a giant robot shooting up Abuja, the young man proudly shows off his “workstation” – an original pentium 90 with a cracked copy of 3D Studio Pro. That attitude has been at the heart of film since the Lumiere’s, and the moment the industry ignores it, is the moment that “the industry” is no more.

(edit 04/09/10 – Moved some paragraphs around to better consolidate a couple of points)

YOU SHOULD HAVE SPECIFIED

I hope everyone is having as lovely an Easter weekend as I’ve been blessed with (although in my case that’s a long weekend where I can do the same work I was doing during the week… but from home… so I don’t have to walk so far to the tea kettle… or wear pants).

In any case just a last minute note that I’m auctioning off one of the very rate Kate Beaton / Nikki Rice Malki Ponys with all proceeds (and then some) going to the (awesome) Operation Sock Monkey. You’ve got until tomorrow afternoon (EST) so get bidding!

Content has, indeed, been pretty light lately – mostly because what’s been occupying my time for the last couple months doesn’t really lend itself to discussion. If you think comic writers and artists get frustrated when wanting to discuss work with months of lead time, imagine my frustration when there’s a chance some of the seeds currently being planted will pay off next year. Maybe.

However, I am… slowly… starting to warm to the whole Twitter thing, thus cementing my reign as “that guy who alternates between being way ahead of, and way behind, the curve.” It turns out that the excellent Tweetie client was the tipping point, if you’ve found it equally hard to get into this tweet-business. I’m going to look at embedding a twitter widget here as soon as I get a chance – but I will warn in advance my tweeting is pretty asinine (irreverent if you’re charitable).

So – given that I’ve just returned from a Beantown roadtrip, that included (amongst other things) a visit to Ye old PAX East, and that people seem interested in my thoughts on the same I present one of those grand traditions of lazy blog-posts since time immemorial – THE NUMBERED LIST:

Best Five Surprises in Boston Over the Weekend:

• 1. Plants vs. Zombies – PopCap’s trademark addictive crack provides a welcome PAX moment of respite (and, unlike Bookworm Adventures, it’s good to go for mac)!
• 2. The Oak Bar’s (expectedly) pricey cocktails came in… like… a bucket. A bucket of cocktail.
• 3. Gabe’s impromptu DM panel.
• 4. Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm show up to sing “Diseases of Yore” at the MC Frontalot set on Friday… (which likely only surprised me because I was unaware that this was a thing).
• 5. Charlie’s Turkey Hash.

Worst Disappointments in Boston Over the Weekend:

• 1. Went to dinner instead of picking up a PAX scarf. Of course they sold out immediately.
• 2. Bruins score first two goals of the game on Saturday.
• 3. 3-0 Bruins
• 4. 4-0 Bruins
• 5. 5-0 Bruins

I don’t know what else to do people. You can come over and borrow my copy of Never Learn Anything From History, you can flip through her exceptional National Post work (which probably plays a larger part than I’d like to admit in why I subscribe to a daily newspaper where I disagree with a significant portion of the editorials). Heck it’ll cost you nothing (but some well spent time) to just go read the Hark a Vagrant archives.

The important thing is that we immediately start the movement to get Kate Beaton officially appointed Canada’s Cartoonist Laureate.

I got my wrist slapped today for not cross posting here more often. The slapper (correctly) pointed out that I e-mail friends and family lots of asides, and post in a number of comment threads on things that interest me, and have started dabbling in tweeting – all of which would make fine content for this here page, which (as you all well know) I tend to ignore when I’m in hardcore “project on the go” mode, and don’t feel like writing anything substantive (or as “substantive” as we get around these parts).

This is all absolutely true. So let’s see if I can’t get better about that, by starting with a quick re-post of a comment I made to Denis McGrath’s great Dead Things On Sticks. Denis wrote a post wondering why he was getting a particularly grim predictive search result about killing babies in Google, and since I’ve been dealing with something similar (albeit on the search side) relating to the High Life website, I thought I’d lay down a quick note on why I believe bizarre, shocking, outliers can get promoted on Google (particularly in lists of predictive results).

I should have pointed out on Dead Things that this is simply a working theory – anyone who tells you they know exactly how Google weights results is lying (unless they’re Google engineers), and there’s a whole creepy sub-industry of geek Shaman telling you they know how to scatter the entrails, and read the bones to influence the mighty Google PageRank in the sky. Many of them are snake-oil salesmen of the worst kind.

What I can say, is that this is the best working theory I’ve got and fits not only this available data from this case, but many similar ones I’ve seen as well. So let’s file this all under “Scientific process in progress” shall we?

One of the problems with Google’s predictive search is that (like page results itself) it tends to equate what people actually click on with quality of result.

For example – if thousands of people searching for “screenwriting tips” click on your site from the resulting list, your site will start to come up higher in the rankings, because clearly it contains what people are looking for when they search for “screenwriting tips”. By comparison, perhaps not a lot of people click on your site when they’re searching for “dead things”, so your results would be depreciated on that list. This works pretty well for something like search where the act of searching requires you to input a complete phrase before getting results.

However when you apply this to predictive results, what happens is that occasional outlier results (which you get in any search database), are often so disconcerting that a large percentage of people searching for something else entirely (“how do I kill the mice in my attic”) stop their search to click on early, outlier results. This isn’t because it’s what they’re looking for, it’s entertainment, shock value, voyeurism, or just to figure out why the heck so many people are searching for “x” (did I miss a news story?)

This creates a classic positive feedback loop – Google considers that item “x” is a valuable result for search term “y”, promotes the outlier higher in the list, where it attracts more attention, gets more clicks, and moves higher until it sticks at (or close to) the top of the results list.

You’ll notice, often in these cases if you search for “thematic synonyms” (say “how do I”, “how can one”, “how to”) there’s usually no sign of the oddity results – while others trends are clearly visible (for example all three of the above variants generally have results about losing weight in the top couple… which one would expect).

And in related (heh) news – Denis also had a post I completely agree on about the Google Superbowl Ad

Now THAT is how you re-launch a franchise.

Submitted without comment.

The CRTC has issued their net neutrality decision. Personally, I’m a little dissapointed in the ruling. Michael Geist points out a couple of areas to feel good about the ruling, but I tend to agree with this quote given to the CBC by Public Interest Advisory Committee legal counsel John Lawford:

“It approves all of the throttling practices that ISPs currently engage in. It requires consumers to prove something funny is going on and consumers don’t have the means to figure out what ISPs are doing and they don’t have the resources to bring that to the commission’s attention,”

Where Geist is absolutely correct that this is a win, is that people are clearly talking about the issue now – and on the heels of Canada’s dismal showing in the recent FCC sponsored Berkman Center report (22nd out of the 30 countries studied) hopefully digital issues will continue to gain momentum as a high profile political issue.

Also positive is the clear statement that the same guidelines should apply to wireless and wireline services – a clear signal that differentiations between the two categories of data service are increasingly negligible.

The CRTC has clearly left the door open to reevaluate this decision going forward, so we certainly haven’t heard the last on the neutrality front – no doubt with lots more challenges and counter-challenges and political bickering to come (political opinion will be especially interesting given the likely net neutrality legislation being brought forth in the US in coming weeks). All that is true, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for more hard and fast guidelines to restrict ISP’s traffic management practices going forward.

• time shifting
• format shifting
• personal backup

Interesting read.