And not your target fan in your shoes. Amen.

Among other things, the matter of google+ demanding users give (and publish) their “real” names when using the service. The major point of the discussion was

Should google be allowed to do this?

To which the answer is: of course. Google has worked for the 20 000 g+ users within a month for years. They build a portfolio of services since gmail, adding google documents, experimenting with the rather unlucky google wave, implementing google Buzz, buying out smaller services for their technology and so on. At this stage, if you have the marketing force to start a new social platform – with facebook at over 640 million users and twitter at 175 million- you’re allowed a lot.

Google’s main responsibility is to their shareholders and if they can demand things without losing any larger portion of their user base – they will do it. As long as it’s along the lines of the terms and conditions every user signs and with the privacy policy published.

For me, however, this misses few bigger question, namely

what mechanisms does google have to enforce such a policy?

How exactly do they run through a 20 000 000 user base to find names that are not “real” – say that it looks for names that are unlikely to be some ones actual name and surname. However hard that might be in a world where people name their kids Apple, Bronx or Condom. But then, with suspects already lined up – what records do they run this list against to determine that ”doctor jingle” is not in fact the name of the person who registered for the account?

This comes back not only to the old matter of people being careless with what data they give to whom and how long do these institutions/services/companies keep it. If you watched the documentary Erasing David you will know that Amazon can, upon request, produce several hundred pages on your entire activity on the service. This goes beyond one’s address and bank account number and enters the sphere of one’s personal preferences, personal problems they were trying to fix with self-help books or underwear size.

The age old “you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be affraid of” can be turned around into - ”if you don’t intend to pass this data on – why keep it for so long?”. Why do my searches matter so much to google that it will store a record of them for years?

Again, this is not an issue of what this or that service does, it’s a matter of our awareness of what is happening.

(EDIT)
Suspended from google+ and feeling lonely? Forget facebook. Go all Real World on them, like Benny -

I guess P Didi is screwed…

The below doesn’t necessarily relate to my experience. I do very little direct communication work, I am usually hired at planning stages of any project and people who appreciate the importance of planning tend to be in the Purgatory, where most of us float, awaiting imminent redemption. But it is firmly based on observation, either mine of people’s I know.

1. the “PR is for promotion” client
It starts with p and r… right? With no understanding what PR really is, this type of client comes up with interesting alternative ideas. Best case scenario they pull the “I’ll have whatever they have over there” on you and demand a campaign identical to one they once saw work well for some one. Worst case scenario they will make you run around with their logo tattooed on your face.

2. the “customers? what customers?” client
Targeting is always tough. It’s also tough to tell a client, that doing a campaign/project “for every one” means they might well take the money and wash them down the kitchen sink. Not knowing, who the brand is trying to talk to, will likely result in:
- assumption that all customers are like the client. Hence they will like everything the client likes and respond well to everything the client responds too;
- caring primarily about keep industry’s big fish happy. Sod the clients.
- you wanting to drown in your morning coffee approximately on your third week in the job.

3. the “i want million likes” client
Inhabits both the private and 3rd sector (not so much the public sector – they don’t care either way). The million likes client responds only to numbers. They will have you set up a social media account and want it to have 500 000 subscribers within a week. Also, won’t understand that fans’ the level of engagement can often be of more importance.

4. the “internet is free advertising” client
Well, adverts in newspapers cost a lot and on the internet you can have them for free! Let’s spam every one with information about our brand. It has to be visible.
Make sure you collect all expressions of anger, that this will inevitably cause. This is your only chance.

5. the “fix my product” client
If the perception of a brand is somehow distorted good cooperation with a communications specialist will entail them looking at the way brand is perceived, coming back with insights and proposing ways of improving this state of affairs. However if the client persistently spoils their product with mismanagement and bad decisions they will likely expect their PR guy or gal to compensate for it. In which case they need a spin doctor, not a communication specialist.

6. the “what if I change my mind” client
If your central nervous system is made of steal and you value your free time, this will a perfect person to work for. They will never make any decision earlier than last minute and will likely change most critical arrangements 5 minutes before you go live with a project. Strategic planning and long-distance goal setting work is absolutely pointless. Also, you’ll lose all customers eventually, and go on much needed holidays.

7. the Louis XIV client
Along the line from a Louis XIV’s song “me me me me, that’s all I ever wanna talk about” this client is typical for creative industries. Any text that is on company’s website has to be written by them (with compulsory personal touch) and 95% of visual output has to feature their face. Or at least their leg.
They are the brand and the brand is them. Thus they will more likely spend 60% of the budget on business class flights and 5 star hotels for themselves, than let you order a batch of business cards.

8. the “put a pink square over there” client
The pink square approach refers to visual communications as much as any other communications related activity. Doesn’t understand that choices have to follow a logically constructed strategy and will step in any time they have spare time to give their precious directions. Not that they have any knowledge of typefaces and their influence on message. They do know however, that they like verdana 8 and shall therefore put an end to all the hours of brainstorming you did with your graphic designer.

9. the “I only because I don’t have the time” client
Closely related to the pink square client and my personal favorite. Hires a PR specialist, only because they are too busy to do the PR for their project themselves. But were they not busy with actually running the joint, they would know how to do PR, sales, graphic design, make up, break up and producing soap. In fact they know it better than any person they might hire.

As far as I’m concerned this type is actually impossible to work with. Anything you do – they would do better. Which means they will modify your every idea, compromise your every strategy and later be unhappy with results. And blame you. Democratically, they probably didn’t like the work of any of your predecessors (some of whom might have actually simply been mediocre at what they do) and therefore not trust you from day one.

10. Satan
- Put “like this status if you like our brand” at the end of each update, please.

I tried and still try to deviate at times. The romance with documentary film started few years back and has been the longest and most serious affair thus far. It actually includes a lot of writing, at least in my case, proving perhaps that it all comes down to that one conviction I’ve had since the age of about 6.

But today, having watched a little flick called Beginners, especially the scene in which Ewan McGregor pats a butt on an Andrzej Krajewski poster hanging in his film-flat, and finding out a bit more about the director (again, I’m going to be writing about this film), I think I want to be Mike Mills when I grow up.

First of all the not too insolent mix between own experience portrait, mix of reality recreation and recreation of certain outlook. Second of all the thoughts of main character projected onto a dog – “While I understand up to 150 words, I don’t talk”. Thirdly – the graphic work, which is Mills’ own.

That thought that one can be a brilliant graphic designer, make amazing music videos and arrive at an amazing second feature, starring McGregor and Plummer – is very comforting to a 26 year old, who recently thought that maybe it was a big mistake to give up on natural sciences so early on. Maybe I would have been happy as a neuro-psychology researcher…

I’m far from being obsessed with starting early and obsess about a career from the cradle. But it’s tough to be good at things and it takes time. I have wanted – at one stage or the other – to write, to write songs, to be a journalist, to be a graphic designer,a developer, a photographer, an interactive media specialist, to direct films, to produce films… I imagine I’ll be a beginner for ever.

Beginner Mike Mills.

PS. you can actually learn a good few things about promoting an indie feature from the way Focus Features handles Beginners. Please meet – Cosmo the dog.

Anyway, today my RSS reader picked up an update from a blog of one of imaginary people-I-knew, first time in years (I might have filed for bankruptcy and hit “mark all read” few times, too). It was a somewhat nice find. So I thought, I’ll let you know that rumors of my death are exaggerated.

Since October following things happened:

My so called “professional career” picked up. I am… working in documentary film production. Which is why the word “career” is in quotation marks.

About 50% of my job is online or making content for online re documentaries. This is generally what I wanted to do for a while. So well done me, I guess.

Another 25% is spent on various festivals drinking heavily with other idiots who got themselves into this industry. It’s a really close bond.

I also make interviews for magazines and translate a lot between Polish and English. Texts vary, but at some point translations included CSR reports and a catalogue of descriptions of porn movies. Good times had by all.

I do social media and community relations for 3 different projects. I puke facebook and cry twitter.

I spent 10% of my time failing to communicate with graphic designers and webmasters. I have become that pain in the ass client.

10% is replying emails and writing global action plans for projects for the next 3 years. I started to have trouble differentiating between the two.

Then there’s 5% when I actually do my own creative work. Or lay on the bed.

So there. I hope this finds you well.

I hate it when cliches turn out to be truth. But life indeed happens when you’re making other plans. I am now in Warsaw for over a year, which initially was supposed to last 4 months. And I am – to the best of my knowledge – staying here for much longer. Hence, being the particular type of intellectual-ADHD person, I’ve taken on new writing projects that are appropriate for the place I’m in. It’s target=”_self” time for me.

abinarylife.com is over 2 years old and I feel it has come to its end as my writing/online experimental playground. Dan generously offered to host yet another of my crazed ideas, and so i packed my toys and went over to thewarsawblog.com. There are way too few English resources about urban life in this up and coming city and it only felt right that I should stick my beak in the matter. It’s not all Warsaw though, if you liked in here – you will enjoy it there. I’m just as cranky as I’ve always been.

All the binarylife archives are staying here for the time being. In case you only just got here, there’s a choice of most popular posts underneath. Come visit me in my new home. You can still find me on twitter as binarylife, and under the same uncanny name on identi.ca

Thanks for all your support and comments. You have made one self-proclaimed writer very happy.

always yours

Ana

The idea behind #AnaSellsBooks (August 10th, 2010) – about a DIY way to help finance your project, that I deployed to rise some founds for my film “30summers”. Few tips on how to use social media and particular other web tools to your benefit.

Audiotales: Erasing David Interview (Monday, May 31st) – audio recording of my interview with director David Bond for Exklusiv Magazine about his film “Erasing David”. Charming man and important matter of data privacy.

Deliver us from discourse (April 13th, 2010) – getting political about DIY/independent cinema. This was particularly popular with the film community on twitter. And sprung most emails out all my post.

Open models for digital projects (#oggcamp10 talk) (March 16th, 2010) – Prospect of talk planned for Oggcamp10 in Liverpool. I wanted to first discuss it with folk on the blog and identi.ca turns out heading the crew at Oggcamp was so much work, my talk didn’t happen. It’s still in the back of my head. Maybe next year.

Best Pictures of 2009 (January 5th, 2010) – I loath any type of annual lists/countdowns/summaries, because they mainly provide cheap material for lazy journalists, that can be chewed over and over. So – beat them with their own weapon! I decided to summarize the year in funny pictures – one thing I am truly an expert in, making this the most viewed post EVER.

4 things they won’t tell you about Linux (May 26th, 2009) – popular among my Open Source friends. This was an interesting experiment.

fun with research (May 12th, 2009) – 3rd most viewed post and probably most linked to. Apparently many people want to have fun while they work. Few tips on how to make research stage of any project more pleasurable.

Portrait by Laura Cuch (January 16th, 2009) – Meet me. Laura is a great photographer.

To Kill a Mocking Bird (January 9th, 2009) – an article on life and death of online communities based on the story of one jaiku.com. Great service that encouraged community building just by the way it was constructed. A cautionary tale.

A Day in Brands (May 22nd, 2008) – the true start of abinarylife.com. First post which went over 2 000 views. Part of an online experiment with branding, identity and place of logos in our routine. Back in the days before whiskas became one of the most prominent brands in my life.

“European day without a car. 22nd September” hu-effing-rahh

this one says “Free bike rental”. Location unknown.

Turns out the renting booth was some 20 meters away on a parking lot, nearby the central tube station. I asked the gentlemen who were looking after it how’s the renting going and they said “well… so-so”. Judging by the amount of bikes I saw there about 3 p.m. that so-so meant “rubbish”. Apparently there were 3 spots in the city one could borrow or drop off a bike.

I can see the way it went in the Environmental Office in the City Hall. “So guys, we have this day without a car, what can we do to put as little effort in as we can and spend some public money?”.

I mean, I understand I’m a touch crowd when it comes to information. I hardly watch TV, I don’t listen to the radio and when I go online I spend 2 hours checking the websites I always check. But come on! Had I not been on my bike already, I wouldn’t even see those morbid little signs.

If you’re unfamiliar with any of the characters here – check out the links in the lead. If you are, you probably realise how orgasmic is the thought of Ben Folds and Nick Hornby together.

Sadly the only way I can get hold of the album at the minute is via iTunes and I don’t want to do that.
Patience, patience.

You can read the whole story over at cyclefabric.co.uk. Apparently UK sends 1 million tonnes of textiles to landfills a year – mostly used clothes. Emma salvages them and turns them into comfy, resistant saddles. She also acquires fabrics from apparel designing friends and takes on commissions using fabrics chosen by clients. I’m after getting my Gustav Klimt “Kiss” bag (handles went to hell) made into a saddle that fits my yellow bike.

Emma says, “I’m a geek when it come to saddles totally. You should see me these days, I see people in nice T-shirts and think it would be a compliment to tell them how nice their shirt would be on a saddle.”

Since I’m a newly made bike enthusiast I also guest post over at CycleFabric tumblog – it’s updated with short posts about cool biking stuff, places, pictures, videos and some such.

If you’d like to find out more or order a saddle catch Emma at:
www.cyclefabric.co.uk
Emma (at) cyclefabric.co.uk

At the age of circa 13 I demanded a bike – as many 13 years olds do. My mum got me this lovely yellow “Piranha”, which was also the bike I wanted. Love affair lasted about a week. Then it stood in my room gathering dust, although still being an object of my adoration. Then I moved out and my room at my folks’ place turned into a storage any way. Then I moved to London and considered buying a bike for the 4 years I was there.

Cut to 2010. In an effort to be a get a bit more fit, avoid public transport and see more of the city I dragged the bike down to a friendly bike shop and got it taken care of (by a rather good looking young gentleman, may I add). I installed a tracking app on my Android G1. And I got sucked in.

I use it for transportation, but if the day goes by without going anywhere I take it on a ride in the evening. This is as close to Hunter S Thompson as you get in Warsaw. Was I living in Aspen, I’d probably buy a rocking motor and drive at 120 km/h out of the town. Living in the center of almost 4 millions strong city I can only comfort myself with the thought that I’m eco friendly.

If you’re a rather stationary geek, like myself, there’s nothing better to get you moving than adding a bit of tech into your biking. Trust me. Endomondo does it all, tracking, times, maps, networking yada yada. And by default your weight is only visible to you (how thoughtful). It’s works on a bunch of different make and models phones. If you go for it search for “Ana Bee” and add me as your friend. Predictably, I’m rather lonely with my passion for techo-workouts.

This came bang on time, since a very talented designer and a friend, Emma, is working on a website for her custom, recycle-savvy biking parts business. We’re working on temp website before hopefully launching an online store. It shall be unveiled soon. Meanwhile expect some biking posts over here and healthy portion of boasting about my sad achievements across social media.

Needless to say this took interwebz by storm. The video pleases all hip design blogs out there and the tune is pleasing the rest of us. Always had a soft spot for his voice. Maybe I’m craaaaaaaazyyyy…

Also, if you want to learn a thing or two about getting viral videos out there, take a good look at Cee-lo’s website. Make it good AND make it easy to share.

Some of the books are great, some are bizarre, some are 30 or 40 years old. None of them are really worth more than between 1 and 10 pounds (budget of the short isn’t huge either, but any day of shooting costs, as we know). The thing is, by buying one of them you’re not only acquiring a book, but also helping getting a film made.

Information is the key here, as well as using tools you will not spend hours getting to know and customizing. What I did for #AnaSellsBooks:

1. A dedicated email – this is easy for me, as you see I have my own domain. Use gmail, if you don’t – you’ll get the benefit of being able to chat instantly with whomever writes to you and uses gmail as well. What you need is an address that people can easily associate with your project, easily remember and most of all – easily pass on to others. No intricate spelling, is advised.

2. A facebook event – because god knows you don’t exist without one. Also, it is handy while spreading information, because people can share easily (my mum knows how to do it). And many did because they liked the idea. You also automatically acquire a kind of mailing list – to get in touch with all interested, when something important happens.

3. A tumblr blog – smooth and easy, and with a social edge. I put up snippets about my favorite books, photos of myself and friends with books and so forth. Any additional info goes up there.

Now with my basis covered, this is what I am going to do next:

- a mobile-friendly website with basic info about the action and most important links (more on this soon, you can use mippin.com to familiarize yourself with the whole thing),

- a simple monochrome, eco-friendly (not much printing needed) poster with basic info (web address, QR code for the mobile site, so mobile users don’t have to write things down) – to put around town in cafes/galleries, accessible online in case some one would like to download it and put it around where they live,

- a simple button for friends who offered to put it on their websites/blogs,

- hand written thank you cards for buyers, also easily fill-able in case a book is bought to be a gift,

- emails to my favorite book-related blogs asking if they like the idea and would hence write about it. This needs to come with – a nice high-res photo and/or graphics, all the useful links and a non-pompous description of the entire thing. Trust me, I’ve been blogging for a while.

- I’m going to stay on top of answering any one who contacts me in regards to this.

This is rather basic, but if you’re not very familiar with these tools, hope this gets you started. And if you’re looking for any more advanced ideas for your project – do get in touch. As long as you’re a filmmaker, it won’t cost you more than a pint of beer..

The documentary is about David’s adventures with meeting his long time idol David Lynch and the TM movement that he’s a member of. But – perhaps even more importantly – it’s a great insight into the process of independent film-making, the worries, the joys, the impact on personal life. “David wants to fly” took 5 years to make and several threats of law suits, as well as an occasional hash smoking with Buddhist monks over 1000 meters above sea level. Here’s the trailer.

The file is 14:18 long, mp3. You might hear some not too delicate cut outs – there was a girl translating the Q&A as it went on and I decided to skip it. Audience was laughing often, however some of it is cut out as she was talking over.

Quality might vary as it was recorded at random from a seat at the film theatre audience. I did my best to make it as clear as possible. Also apologies for slight distortion towards the end. I think the story and anecdotes are worth bearing it.

Enjoy. Any feedback – as always – much appreciated.

Gombrowicz hunts me from the depths of 1958 with hideous timeliness. I do realise one tends to seek related meanings if things are praying on their mind and if one seeks long and hard enough one will find. But, but…

Our current discourse of “environment”. Not even nature, “environment” – of humans, because it only matters when it surrounds us. We speak of protecting the environment, because it turned out not to be an bottomless, never ending resource. And as this resource runs out it endangers our way of living. Panic! We call to stop damaging environment, but in order to protect us. The actual pain of other life forms is not even considered in nomenclature.

The indifference is a part of preservation instinct – if we were to feel the pain of every fly or grass with full empathy, we’d all end up safely placed in appropriate mental institutions by the age of 22. However – save the Bengal tiger, so that our kids can see it not only on photographs?

Yes, that’s what I think about. Especially when struck down by a killer migraine and completely helpless.

We talked about how the idea for a film about the data base state came about, productions, headaches of independent documentary promotion and who dug in David’s trash. There’s also a word from Ashley Jones, film’s producer. Given a chance I would have asked few more geeky questions, but time was limited and magazine readers have their preferences, which I had to cater to.

As you’ll be able to tell this took place in May, so yes, I took time editing the thing together. As usually life happened and I didn’t have as much time as I would want to, but hopefully I’ll have something to show for it in terms of audio too.

So here goes.It should be soon available for subscription on iTunes and few others. If you’d rather subscribe to a standard RSS feed, here it is.

I can’t promise audio content will show up regularly or even what it will be, but there’s few things in the pipes. It all has to do with content, arts, digital, culture – erm, well, binary life.

Audi quality is so-so, but this is Skype recorded via Audio Hijack Pro.

enjoy.

I write this as a journalist documenting events, for the record. So that few years from now I will look back at it and know what this whole business was about.

I remember a young (my age, therefore young) producer telling me that most of the money, really, “is in the speaking gigs”. I remember her as a very nice and helpful lady and I can assure you she wasn’t being a jerk. That was just some realities of media production we were discussing after a session at Sheffield Doc/Fest. I loved Doc/Fest as an experience of being surrounded by fellow geeks, avid content creators and story tellers, pretty conscious of fiscal hopelessness of their endeavors. Second day of the festival there was a session discussing whether you can make a living out of making documentaries, the general consensus being that you cannot.

I remember that because recently I’m constantly finding out about more workshops, panels, discussions, classes about how to deal with the digital age, how to make our film seen, how to distribute, how to produce, how to finance. Except no one yet knows exactly how to finance or distribute. The countless panels seem to consist mostly of reinstating that one has to be able to communicate with different modalities of transmedia landscape or some such sh… and I can’t help but wonder  - is it not a case of one of these short lived advice industries that breed on general confusion and lure with the perspectives of answers it does not provide? The best that comes of it is few extra bucks for more experienced producers and filmmakers. I’m all for them making money, may I add, so as long as people are willing to pay, so it be.

Just remember, the prices of admissions might sum up to good part of your next projects budget. Especially when you are the DIY filmmaker, trying to get your story told by all means possible, asking all available favors and sleeping in a tent outside SXSW.

If you need reminding that it’s the compelling story that matters – I will happily give it to you for free. Because I’m confident you know that already.

“Stop being afraid of your own pictures, stop worshiping art, treat it the Polish way, condescendingly, make it obedient, and then your originality will release itself in you, new roads will open in front of you and you will gain what is most valuable, most fertile: your own reality.”

After some years from the last read I’m back to Gombrowicz’s diaries. I translated this for you, below the original.

“Przestańcie się bać własnych obrazów, przestańcie wielbić sztukę, potraktujcie ją po polsku, z góry, poddajcie ją sobie, a wówczas wyzwoli się w was oryginalność, otworzą się przed wami nowe drogi i pozyskacie to co jest najcenniejsze, najpłodniejsze: własną rzeczywistość.”
Dzienniki tom I

This isn’t really a film about Banksy. You will gather that from this preview (online hype building – you’re doing it right), it’s also about Thierry Guetta, the filmmaker who set out to make a doc about street art and ended up on Banksy’s… erm doorstep.

The filmmaker in a film is my all time favorite motive, when it’s more than putting them in front of the camera but also making them part of the story or even the vehicle that drives it forward.

So stop whatever you’re doing and watch the preview of this “world’s first street art disaster movie”:

Are you familiar with awkward family photos? I wrote about it some time ago (this is a post from Polish version of abinarylife, but you can have a look at some of my favorites over there), it’s one of these photography blogs designed to make you LOL. Also a good, although fragmented, portion of documentation of social life. So good, that the time has come for live action, because what is more awkward than an awkward family photo? An awkward family video, of course.

Song is called “I’ve Got Friends”, band is called Shark? and the EP is “Fear!’ I found this gem via The Daily What (not to be mistaken for the daily wtf), one of my favorite sources of all things awesome. If you don’t follow them, go there NOW (also if you’re a tumblr junkie you can subscribe over there).

Speaking of favorite sources of awesome things: kitsune noir is another must read and even must listen. Yes, you can’t pronounce the name correctly, but on this one occasion i’m suspending my general dislike for unpronounceable names. It could be called catfoodwrappedinabrownpaperbag.com for all i care. Bobby Solomon is doing a hell of a job showcasing art, design, music and it’s not even pretentious. You should check out his

desktop wallpapers project (pretty self explanatory)

and Mixcast, which is somewhat like a receiving a weekly mixtape (remember these?). I actually wait for these and hunt them down as soon as they’re out.

Recently I saw this video by Dustin Cretton for Joel P West over at Bobby’s. Enjoy.

I wanted to start by saying 2 years is the longest I ever continuously wrote something. And then continue to get soppier and soppier from there. But actually my printed column has been going monthly since 2005; first for one title and then for businessman.pl, when the magazines merged. Back when I started it was a novelty in Poland to write about blogging CEOs. Obviously so much has changed since, but sometimes one has to wonder – has it really?

what’s up?

In terms of tech and what it made available to us – surely. But since my interests became less tech-centric and more tech-for-creativity I noticed underneath it all the pace is a lot slower. Most of the big business in creative industries (I’m mostly referring to film and music here) is still in the mindset it was 2 years ago. In other words: something is happening to our revenue streams and we have to tame it as much as we can, occasionally playing along to satisfy particular audience.

The rest of us? Still on the verge of some sort of DIY era, which is uncertain to come and no one quite knows what it will be like. Main trends seem to be: diversification, regionalization (in terms of audiences, not geographically, though that still holds too). So 1000 films which cost 30 000 or 100 which cost 300 000 instead of one for 30 million. But is this going to be a whole era? What starts it, revolution? Evolution? The market crash made it very difficult to find funding for even the 30 000 flicks. We seem to be in the process of figuring out new models to accommodate production of those. Perhaps it has to be a constant flexibility. Can we cope without models, if it comes ot it?

I mentioned Dan, my awesome friend and host of this website (and all around genius web activist). Before we met in person up North England, we “met” while using  jaiku – a cute, little microbloging service, which seemed to attract lot of creative web types at that point. 2 years on jaiku – for us – is pretty much no more, since it got swallowed by google. Google buzz is hidden in my gmail labels (though I’m hearing it’s the only service with geo-tagging with any number of users in Poland, where I currently am).

Obviously there is an easy conclusion to draw here. Nothing substantially changes; the big ones eat the small ones with all the usual consequences. Only we have new big ones now. But that is perhaps too easy.

what’s next?

You might have noticed abinarylife has recently become very film-oriented. Being a child of the times I change focus . Or, quite likely, being a child i’m about now figuring where my focus really is. It’s quite likely my next project will involve quite a website and around-website activity (twitters, facebooks, digital content production) of it’s own. Still I hope to keep abinarylife as it has afforded me all the benefits of a democratic new medium: I can blabber freely adding to the general blahblahblah repository of the internet. And to share things not important enough to ever be shared was it not so democratic. I’m very thankful to have you, my dear readers (well, friends, family…) along for the ride.

If it was an actual 2 year old, with birthday in March it would be one of the children of happy summer loving. Right now is a hot birthday parties season. “They say it’s your birthday, It’s my birthday too yeah“. Let’s have a drink and celebrate.

I’m always waiting for the new stuff from Edgar Wright, who by the way can be followed on twitter. Hopefully it’ll also be something different for Michael Cera, whom I somewhat like, but the akwardly-getting-the-girl business is really doing everybody’s head in by now. Though I have to say, judging form the behind this scenes video, he even eats soup awkwardly…

No trailer a of yet – that I could find.

Less than a talk, I would like to host a sort of a workshop that would be interesting for both hard-core geeks and more artistically inclined digital creators as well as every one who enjoys having a beer early in the day and not being judged. For the talk to have broader appeal I need you to tell me, what sort of knowledge you’d like to exchange more. So here is the rough idea, which hopefully you could help me shape into something more precise.

open production & distribution of content:

what it means (and it doesn’t necessarily mean open source!), what are the possibilities and limitations? differences in film, applications and music. How to open up the production process?

what creators could learn from the open-source community and vice versus:

sharing, community building, approach to audience (user), fiscal responsibility etc – characteristics that make a project successful. Also general internet saavy, licensing issues, online platforms…

how to sustain digital project? various models

can it be done? how? There are few known approaches here, I’d like to talk about. This is, however, open for discussion, perhaps we can generate some ideas together.

let’s talk about our projects:

whomever would like to could say few words about  the projects (be it film, music, applications or something else) they are developing and if we figure there is some knowledge to be shared between the creators or potential audience-members we can take it to the bar later.

I’ll illustrate this with few examples from film, since this is my are of… erm.. dare I say it ‘expertise’. I’m sure Dan will have the music bit pretty well covered.

Please let me know what you think, what I should include or not to make the whole thing interesting and informative. You can drop me a line at ana(at)abinarylife(dot)com or find me on identi.ca as binarylife, on twitter as binarylife and there’s always comments form below. Thanks!

I was too cynical to have any sort of idols when I was a teenager (heck, I was too cynical to like boys… these were the days). I consider my lasting relationship with the works of Witold Gombrowicz closest to that sort of thing, but I’m often fairly critical of them plus I don’t have his photo hanging on the wall, so I don’t think it counts.

Any way, I’m kind of trying to imply here that I gained an idol of sorts and that would be Lena. There is generally few independent filmmakers that I’m immensely impressed with. It’s not that teenage thing, sadly. It’s a feeling akin to watching somebody play the same instrument you play – if they do it well they make it look easy, but you tried and you know how much fecking work went into getting this sound. So based on that sophisticated comparison I will do my John Peel thing and introduce you to my new found idols, starting with Lena, as her film premiers tomorrow at SXSW.

It’s called Tiny Furniture and I posted the trailer some time ago. It’s her second feature, first one being Creative Nonfiction, a film about a college student who eventually writes a script for a film based on her recent experiences. There you go, if you followed this blog you can see where I’m going with this. Self-shot film about creative utilization of life for making a film…

Back then Lena made the Filmmaker Magazine’s list of 25 new talents of indie film to watch. Now, Tiny Furniture is a whole new quality, by the looks of the trailer. From what I figure it was done on canon 7D, too. It really looks pretty and don’t tell me this is not as important as the story. This is film, we’re talking about. You can watch the progress of Lena’s works over at her vimeo page. TF is shot by Jody Lee Lipes, who also did Afterschool (much cannes-hyped flick from 2009 if I’m not mistaken)

TF’s main character, Aura, played by the director, comes home from College to find herself suffering from a familiar case of  post-degree blues (god, I don’t know a single person who didn’t get hit by that). If you’re in your 20s or 30s you can probably indentify with it or memory of it. If you’re above 40 you might want to watch it to understand your kid’s confusion and despair. You’ll figure out, because “Aura would like you to know that she is having a very, very hard time.”

[via the daily what - not to be mistaken with the daily wtf]

voices: Whoopie Goldberg and Christy Scott Cashman

3D Core Team:
Heiko van der Scherm . . . Writer, Director, Design, Modeling
Bernhard Haux . . . . . . . . .Character TD Flower main actors
Goro Fujita . . . . . . . . . . . Supervising Animator
Felix Graf . . . . . . . . . . . . Animator
Holger Schönberger . . . . .Pipeline, Shading, Lighting, Compositing

Time Frame:
Production time (First script to final short) . . . 3 Years
Work time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Full time, 6 days a week
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.75 – 1.5 Years per core person

I personally don’t buy into the teory that it’s particularily because they recruit mostly from failed, frustrated filmmakers. It takes work to be acclaimed, so most of these folks probably didn’t even have the time to really try and fail. it takes no work what so ever to self-proclaim, which indicates people who are in for an easy ride. They probably didn’t have the ambition to try in the first place.

Why, then? Because it’s so easy to slip into.

I base that theory on rigorous self-observation. Two items in my film RSS feed made me slightly chuckle today. And I was going to write about them in the ‘look at what these idiots are doing’ manner on this blog to share my instant disgus. Fortunately, just in time, i kicked myself on the arse with a good ‘ole ‘who the fuck do you think you are, lady’.

Evidence item no. 1:  The Suicide Girls: Guide to living trailer.

Why it made me chuckle? Because somewhere in the trailer they make the proclamation that suicide girls present an alternative for every chick tired of not fitting into society’s standards of female beauty. This is ridiculous, they are all skinny, and yes they don’t wear a tone of make up, but they have a tone of tattoos and breasts to die for. if you don’t fit into norms, you won’t fit in with them, because they are pretty rigugorous with their own standards.I don’t like Suicide Girls phenomenon also because of the idiotic use of the word suicide (hence no photos of naked tits here, would be hypocritical to bust my readership this way) . BUT – this has nothing to do with the film. I haven’t seen the film. I saw the trailer, which yes, is rather bad, but is this something worth writing about?

Evidence item no. 2: Book of Genesis in 3D, the new enterprise  of Paramount entitled In The Beginning.

Instant thought – Jesus, what the hell? (pun not intended) Of course, after the success of Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, every one will be looking left and right, to create a miraculous 3D world and gross over 100 mln on the opening weekend. But the Bible? Seriously? It all has to be garden-themed now? Can’t you come up with anything more creative..? I’m right to feel tiny bit jaded, I think. But, again, is this something worth writing about?

I don’t read community-based film review websites, because most of all I’m jaded with the ‘Kevin Smith is fat and his wife has big ears’ reviews. And I’ll be damned if I contribute to the amount of rubbish floating around internet – disputable, I know, but at least this type of rubbish. There are 3 film blogs I trust and I rarely read even their reviews, because they scarcely review documentaries – and docs are what i watch most.

How to avoid falling into this trap? answer these questions:

1. have you seen the film?

2. do you have any criticism/praise for the film? (and not the subject matter, the filmmaker’s private life or other works etc)

3. is it really worth writing about?

If the answer to any of the above is ‘no’ – restrain yourself. Don’t be a jerk.

OK. I finished writing and then I saw this. It’s about film critics in the slightly different register to what I write about. At least I hope the question number one doesn’t even apply.  If you read, read some of the comments too.

The Hot Blog is, by the way, in my top 3 film blogs.

Yes, I do know I’m late to the party, but frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. There are blogs and websites that did it much better and live. If you’re after film news, you’re at the wrong address; this is film whining and over-indulgence underpinned by film-naive-idealism.

Any way. I follow a lot of film-related folk on twitter (aside from occasional jokes from my friends and @shitmydadsays, this is the appeal of twitter for me). No wonder then, that on Sunday night my feed was pretty much taken over by the Oscars. A bit more surprising that it was 90% about the outfits on the red carpet, but then I went to sleep before the actual circus started.

For the record, that I’m not the token indie film snob, who poopoos the Oscars. I don’t poopoo the outfits craze either. I like the idea of bunch of film folk parading in recognizable brands (somehow the Oscars journalists always know what’s Dior and what’s de la Renta??). They are known to borrow the tuxes and the dresses so effectively they are sponsored – like sports people are sponsored to show up in CocaCola or Nike. Way to go.

Now, as you might already know, none of the above, aside from The Hurt Locker, had luck with the awards (full list here). But that’s ok, because most of them still have a good chance to win the golden dude, especially Maggie Gyllenhaal (her and Eva Green, two women which would very likely turn me lesbian within 15 seconds). Not the case with Burma VJs, one of a kind event, but I’m used to the fact that the Academy does not understand what documentary even means. They gave this award to Michael Moore, I rest my case.

As the internets already stated, it’s “pretty badass” to be the first women to win the Oscar for directorial achievement. I imagine this sounds like an outdated sentiment, but had this been the case, Kathryn Bigelow would not be the first woman to win this prize as well as one of the very few women directors in general.

Tiny Furniture premiers at this year’s SXSW narrative competition. The film is written, directed and stars Lena Dunham, who has been one of my favorites since I came across her project Creative Nonfiction. Go Lena!

But how to find them? I have a dream…

Few days back I read this rather interesting post on how to make a screening of your indie flick a festivity of sorts, in order to bring more folks in to see it (by Mike Vogel, maker of The waiting list, guest posting at Truly Free Film). Great ideas and inexpensive. As it happens I like telling people that they have great ideas (and if you don’t you’re a mean, cold fish), so I joined the discussion in the comments. Well, not so much the discussion as general congratulatory thread (nothing wrong with that). And we shortly discussed the following idea.

On a long list of cheap film-promotion activities (more on that soon), I have one which includes cross-promotion with another film via, among other things, trailers. The idea is thus: you pick a sort of sister-film for your film, based on ideas, style, the filmmaker, whatever indicates that people interested in your film could be interested in the other one and vice versus. It’s a basic fundament of all amazons and ebays: “people who bought this book were also interested in…”

Big studios do it too: they chose carefully the films, before which their trailers appear.

The grandest implementation of this idea in terms of art is perhaps last.fm – built, at least originally, to make it easy to find new music based on the music you already listened to and liked, based on what your friends like and a crowd-sourced system of recommendations.

And that’s the dream: last.fm for indie film trailers. It will perhaps remain a dream, although a system of this sort is readily available (it’s called libre.fm, and it’s an open source version of last.fm as well as the answer to the later service going slightly too… proprietary). The costs of hosting of that many film clips would, however, be insane. Youtube is not coming even, so what chances do we have. Actually, it’s pretty much only Apple, who can afford to host consistent catalogue of trailers and we all know where their heart lays when it’s comes to indie vs studio.

So for now I’m just throwing it out here as something to think about.

Let me tell you. Quentin Tarantino isn’t independent cinema. Or at the very least it cannot be put in the same bag as the actually independent filmmakers who, rise, collect, borrow budgets for their films. On such productions there is no studio involvement (hence no money up front for the budget). ANd therefore executive who sticks his beak in, that’s how they are independent (from…). Arguably Tarantion is a brand and I would guess has the most creative freedom possible. Yet it was the studio (MiraMax!), who eventually decided to split GrindHouse, not him. (infographic source /Film)

Quite like in music, indie came to stand for certain style, not so much the method of creation.

The style, of course, evolved from certain method, but then started living its own life. yet the name still comes from the method.

By going totally independent you exchange financial security for creative freedom,

because you don’t have the initial investor – the studio. You also often go totally independent because no studio will make your film. And these days you might also distribute the flick yourself. You will spend long hours promoting it over the internet and organizing independent screenings – because again there is no initial investment to run an advertising campaign.

Some small studios are considered independent, as they often have to go DIY to make a film happen too. It’s just that there’s a team of them and not the film maker on their own. Still if they help you out they might come in and say, hey dude, can you make this a bit more funny? No one will watch it the way it is…

And then you, the filmmaker, weep silently in the corner. However on both occasions such intrusion might in the end improve your film… This above is obviously an over-simplified explanation. All is up for discussion.

I object to the use of word free because again there is a hell lot of difference between free as in beer and free from

something or open (say software) which is often overlooked. Making a film is never free. EVER. Do not believe in that. If we don’t call these totally independent filmmakers indie and leave the label for Quentin and the gang, that’s fine too. Just remember – in practice there is a difference.

Independent filmmakers sleep less and during the last two years of production their self-confidence has been put to more test than average person’s over entire life-time. They probably know the schedule of the coming festival season by heart. And they make magic happen. So when you see one – give them a hug and a fiver to buy a sandwich.