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.

Ha ha. I might well have to. Yesterday was the sad day B-side, the very innovative and funky film distribution company closed it’s doors. They’ve been around for 5 years. They were doing well too. And click, just like that, off they went.

It’s not sad because they won’t be replaced and we’re all doomed forever, although it feels recently like soon enough the only choice we’ll have in cinemas will be between Avatars and Alices in Wonderlands. It’s sad because I have been researching the alternative funding/distribution methods for a while now and this comes to show how hard it still is to be ahead of the curve. I read Ted Hope at Truly Free Film, I follow the endeavors of the workbook project. And occasionally I get on the happy-go-lucky high from hearing so many voices chanting about the need to think about film differently… Yet so often it feels like at the end of the day the big guys come and stomp on our throats and the party, again, is over.

If you are unaware of the wider context of B-side’s exit this is probably the best article you will read: Why exhibitors should be B-Side themselves by Stephen Saito. Another one I cried over last night is Antony Kaufmans observation from filmmaker magazine – about the never dying dream of traditional distribution purchase. Why? Why, why why?

I’m not up for that. As a matter of fact the premise of the earlier mentioned film is not having a commission, not aiming for a distribution deal, ideally not having any traditional solution in place. DIY baby, all the way. And see where this takes us…

With all the luck we can get, it will be a place big guys hope is hell.

This week some TED action. On a mild hangover, which makes any actual activity a ridiculous extravagance, but doesn’t switch your brain off there’s few things better than TED.

There’s generally few things better than TED, although I’m in a sort of love – hate relationship with it. On one side it’s a intellectualized mostly white middle-class festivity of talking about how to fix the world of those who could never afford the entry ticket. On the other hand, there’s a huge diversity of brilliant thought of some of the most intelligent and dedicated people on the planet. Some – others live lives which will never lead them to the stage of TED.

So here, few words about listening to people’s stories and the danger of a single story (obligatory for story-tellers of any sort). Have a great Sunday.

I’ve been insanely busy. The deadlines are looming and about million new ideas per day boil my head to the point of brain-bleed. I’m possibly about to embark on a year-long commitment project an that, as you might imagine, requires careful decision making. Not an easy thing with a breeding brain.

What I now know for sure is that I will be in Liverpool between 30 of April and 2nd of May for the Oggcamp10 shenanigans. This year it’s going to be even bigger, better and more subway sandwiches! Oggcamp is an open software & open culture un-conference (festival?), part barcamp, part piss up, part music gig (we’re kicking off on the 30th with the Rathole Radio CC music night).

If all luck permits we will also be showing the R.I.P Remix Manifesto movie, which is well worth seeing on a big screen with fellow geeks and geekettes. I’ll keep you posted on that matter. I might also share few ideas about open culture and open cinema, time allowing.

That would be it for now. I leave you with this gorgeous trailer for “Exploding Girl”…

…rather hysterical trailer for RSO [Registered Sex Offender]…

…and a link to the very good Kitsune Noir Mixcast no 26, so far my favorite out of the lot.

see ya.

Decent stationery is the little consolation one gets in a solitary, underpaid and under-published life of a writer – hey, at least I scribble on this nice paper, and hell aren’t the covers aesthetically pleasing.

For example, here is my new love, fieldnotes books. They are just under $10 for 3 books, 48 pages each (i’m into the  short model now, none of my project lasts that long these days, and who needs a tail of memories to follow them from one endeavor to another?). I can live with that price. Except the company is USA-based and international shipping costs $11.

If I could stash on them for a year to come and ship the whole thing at once… yeah, that would work. But did I mention underpaid? There’s very few writers who can spend like J.K. Rowling (and I’m pretty positive she buys a new laptop every time she starts a new shopping list…).

Yes, there’s absolutely nothing for you to take away from reading this post, except maybe some understanding to that crazed person, who will get offended if presented with a notebook with a smiling cartoony tiger on the front cover and red-line marked margins inside (ewwww!). Trust me, for them it’s not ‘just stationery’. It reminds them of how far they have to go, to get anywhere near where they want to be.

This is a trend I’ve seen before, some of my work colleagues favor it as well. The CGI (computer generated images) craze is slowing down… at least in some places. There’s avatar, two billion dollars, etc on one side, but there’s also Fantastic Mr. Fox on the other. The theme of 2010 Sundance was Rebelion – you can figure it out from here.

I know a lot of animators who are going back to the roots, if you like, getting their hands dirty with clay and scissors. It’s something to look out for.

Here’s my favorite and you can check out the other videos on the original post. You might want to watch it in full-screen mode, as it’s been designed for a movie theatre screen and lettering is rather small, while text in this one is quite important. And yeah, dare to tell your own story.

Sundance Pitch sml from Neil Miller on Vimeo.

I gave it some thought, about 20 seconds worth of it. A 4th generation of that thing might well be laying on my coffee table, waiting for when I feel like reading some RSS feeds, watching some soup.io TV or checking what’s left in my fridge. That’s when I’m a. rich enough to own a coffee table and not rent it with the flat, b. rich enough to splash on a coffee table dedicated Apple device. And that might never happen.

As I’m now fond of illustrating everything, I looked through some related visuals and decided this one fits impossibly well

I hope the author doesn’t mind me reposting it here (usually apologizing later is easier than asking permission up front in instances like this). You should check out the rest of his tumblr and his portfolio, a very elegant affair, so good it can be forgiven for small fonts.

Who cares any way! The grander scheme of things came knocking on our doors. There’s much sadder news in the pipe. JD Salinger has died and from purely egoistic point of view this means the hope of any new book from him is gone for ever. I’m also pretty uptight about the possibility of Catcher in the Rye film getting to be done soon, as the rights usually go flying once the author is no more holding onto them. At the present time I can’t really conceive of a screenwriter + director combination that could make a good job out of this… (any ideas?)

In other obituaries, MiraMax is no more. Fore those of you who have been hiding in a cinematographic cave, MiraMax was the film studio founded by the Weinstein brothers, which pretty much brought us Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith (more in the wikipedia article). Whatever its drawbacks it has induced a new quality into Hollywood film making and, perhaps even more importantly, made a lot of people feel that you can want to be a film maker and get away with it. It also gave the world Pulp Fiction and everybody knows that is priceless.

Oh, the irony – MiraMax is closed by Disney, who bought it nearly 17 years ago for $70 million. This is not the day indie film died, but an era is definitely over. With the Avatar taking most of the major film awards this year one can’t help but wonder where is this circus going… Let this be a motivation for the up and coming indie film makers – if we don’t get there fast enoug, we might one day wake up with our faces painted blue and an obligatory Celine Dion song stuck in our heads. If that doesn’t scare the shit out of you I don’t know what will.

The Winsteins have apparently said that they will be aiming at reclaiming the name.

Starting strong – Banksy. Say what you want the dude never loses class. Yes, make a film, yes show it at Sundance (and appropriately turn the place into your own playground). And then refer to it as “world’s first street art disaster movie”. Say what you want, you cannot not love him. Plus it is quite in line with my opinion on citing reviews in movie trailers.

As far as unusual film trailers go, here’s one for Spike Jonze’s, Absolut drenched short, “I’m here”. The dreamy haze gets me every time. You can check out the pretty cool website here, if you can handle in-your-face advertising, that tries to be not in your face.

And now for something (not so) completely different. At least aesthetically somewhat similar. This is really cool and it should also teach you once and for all that you should not move your camera unless there’s specific purpose to the move.

And lastly, since it’s Sunday, here goes something to make you perversely day dream about the beer-fetching possibilities of the future. As Surfstation’s Tom Dolan commented: File under “No F-ing way” and “how much?”

PS. Were you ever to compile a similar post you would notice the insane superiority of vimeo over youtube. It will not only make you understand how far we’ve gone as far as beautiful and creative visuals are concerned. It will also teach you what good user interface looks and works like. Go join. And let’s be friends

Oh the powers of soup.io, the graces of tumblr! Many a sleepless nights we spend together, cruising, preparing – for the day when all known monetary systems will collapse and the dollar will be replaced by funny pictures.

Not for nothing, but I had a methodology here. I went through film + funny, my dearest, ongoing collection of the funny, quirky and periodically film related pictures from the whole year. I chose the most spectacular ones, or ones representing something special about the year. Then I eliminated first load, and chose few runner ups for each of the catchegories (which are, of course, totally made up). Then went through it again and chose the winner. Neat, huh?

Most of the times I don’t know/remember the source or it’s impossible to figure out due to the fact that it was about 30th repost that reached me. I promise to be better next year!

hot girl of the year
Eva Green. There were few runner ups in this cathegory. for your enjoyment there’s Zooey Dechanel here and Juliane Moore here.

fuckyeahhotboy of the year
Jarmie Dornan. This was a tough choice, but it had to be made. Obviously some runner ups in this category: Josh Beach, Sam Riley and this dude, whomever he is.

photoshop of the year
The Kiss Pandas. Enough said.

badass of the year
Runner ups here: this young lady, this gent.

best meme

commentary of the year
I was also tempted by this one

best lolcat
(I mean, come on, you know why)

I like Pandas, obviously, but this has been hit with all my friends. Runner ups: my thoughts exactly, live LOLcats by ohjezebel on flickr, where the…,10 points for reference,broken minion, look of the year.

animated gif of the year
Tough competition in this one. I suggest you do check out the runner ups after the winner.

cyanide and happiness
(yes, they have their own category because they rock). the toughest choice. you should check them all out over at explosm.net

cool of the year
These three dudes are mates.

instant laughter of the year
So many nominees! Gallery below the winner.

WTF of the year
seriously, wtf?

no mercy of the year
I do love internet for the lack of mercy.

oldie of the year
Because God knows there is a queue.

quote of the year

I leave you with this one. Happy collecting in 2010!

moninavelarde.com/newyears/

Simon Pegg & Nick Frost, phot. Sarah Dunn

Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman, phot. Keith Bernstein

Jack Nicholson phot. Sarah Dunn

Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint phot. Matt Hollyoak

It’s a hot topic, since games are slowly entering the world of non-geeks, which in practice means mass market. My housemates want to buy a PS3. Granted, I will be the only one playing Modern Warfare, while they are after RockBand, Singstar and Buzz (or whatever the quiz game is called). Due to years spent on civilizations and theme hospitals I’m still miles ahead in any of the unholy, time-consuming facebook games. But the point is my friends play them at all. Geeks, hipsters and others alike (I’m using the lose generalizations just to show it’s generally group-independent). Obviously, these are people who are facebook users to begin with, I doubt they’d go out of their way to buy a farming game in their local mall, but that is also the point – it spreads through different platforms. It’s becoming main stream.

Today I’ve read a short piece by Jeremy Liew (Managing Director at Lightspeed Venture Partners) about the attraction that social games have for investors. He makes a point: making high class gaming platforms games is not unsimilar to making a big studio movie:

1. investment is huge, between 30 and 50 mln dollars,

2. distribution and promotion costs are insane; accordin to Liew “Modern Warfare 2 had a launch budget of $200 million”

3. returns are huge on hit games ($550 mln made in first 5 days of selling CoD Modern Warfare 2), but only few games become hits (and if it’s a miss you’re looking at pretty much no return),

4. development takes log, sometimes 2 to 3 years,

5. you need a big crew of specialists of all sorts working on a single title,

6. it takes a while to figure out whether the title is indeed a hit or miss,

and for all of the above reasons only big publishers, like big studios, can take the risk and pull all the resources into making several titles for one or two of them to hit the back of the net, make money and keep all involved happy and fed.

Gaming has not, as of yet, undergone the technological democratization that is currently revolutionizing the movie making industry and causing panic everywhere. The death of indie cinema was proclaimed high and wide. Whereas I personally think that it’s actually beginning of true independence and traditional movie making business is not dead either, just has to make space for the new model of production-distribution and share (sharing is death for some, apparently) – the fuss and mess is obviously present.

As we’re often told ‘anybody’ can now ‘pick up a camera for few grant and make a movie on zero budget’. This is not strictly true: few grant is no ‘zero budget’ and making a good film demands more skills than shooting your cat hanging upside down on the doors for youtube. But the technological divide is definitely smaller, it’s easier and cheaper to get a film made. I imagine shooting Clerks would now cost kevin Smith one or two maxed out credit cards less, than it did 15 years ago. However this also means that more films are made and it’s more difficult to get them distributed and seen.

Not so much in the gaming world. Yet. It’s a matter of time till coding and graphic design becomes more available to non-professionals than it is today, although the industry relations are a bit different, than in film. Camera manufacturers had obvious interests in making them more masses friendly. No such entity or obvious interest in coding. Still, I think it’s going to happen.

Until then the indie cinema of gaming world are social games start ups, such as Zynga and Playfish. Their main chance is still getting picked up by the biggies: Clerks got bought by Miramax and Playfish is now bought by EA Games. But they can do, what class A game makers can’t:

1. production costs are more in the realm of hundreds of thousands of dollars,

2. distribution through platforms like facebook is pretty much free and the power of viral spread works to game’s advantage (vide farmville); all of the facebook games have several mechanisms to encourage users to drag in friends,

4. development is short and sweet,

5. therefore a team of people can work on several titles at once (the game mechanics aren’t really that sophisticated and putting context of a farm or a restaurant or a fish tank on top of it is not much either),

6. being relatively cheap to make they’re also cheap to try out – beta tests are a universal practice and producers can quite accurately predict whether a game will hit the spot before they pull in all the resources.

Yes, the point number 3 is missing. How do social games earn? That is the question. As far as I understand:

- facebook pays application developers, as they drive in traffic. But how much?

- the in-game offer-based advertising model (go to an outside site and do/buy something to receive points you can later spend in game) has been hugely criticized and Zynga had to back out of it after its title Fishville was blocked by facebook. It’s still causing them some trouble.

- games sell in-gmae cash via micropayments - you can spend on special in-game items. But  buying them is not necessary for game play. How many people actually pay for them?

- then there’s banner adds income, potentially big due to huge amount of traffic (according to the article I cited “Zynga now has more than 100 million unique visitors per month”. But banner advertising is just about now proving insufficient to sustain online news publishers, so where is it going to provide for game makers?

Similarities with indie film are not strict enough to predict future of gaming along the lines of film industry development. Also the times, as we know, the are changin’. I’m no expert, definitely not on online revenues, to be honest I hate the subject and tend to avoid it (the ‘yes, but what’s the business model?’ question is the biggest kill-joy since the Grinch, who stole Christmas). This is now biting me on the ass, because for once I find this particular case interesting. If you can shed some light on the matter – please get in touch!

OK, admittedly this post is going to be a bit of cheating. I already wrote it in Polish, which took all too long because I was emailing and yp-yapping online at the same time. It’s now almost 6 pm, I have an hour until the Bill Hicks movie screening and I’m running out of the boost 2 XXL cappuccinos gave me. So I’m going to more or less translate it and hope there’s not many people who follow both binarylife and zyciebinarne (as far as I know not many follow either, so I’m not too worried, really).

I have been working as the festival’s minion for past 3 days, but today and tomorrow is indulgence time. Yay! So much for that though; I went to the editing master class with the editor of All tomorrow’s parties, then crawled to the delegate center and been sat here ever since trying to get the wilderness of unattended online life under control. In short then:

There are two things I can easily make out from my chaotic notes (they’re in big lettering and capitals):
AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT and
MOVE TO CANADA

Audience engagement is one of these magic phrases of the festival, which everybody is very keen on, but few understand what it means in practice. Perhaps with the exclusion of the Shooting People folk, who ran the digital bootcamp yesterday, about which I’ll write more later. The other magic combination is cross-platform. It had its own summit on Wednesday, rather disappointing when it comes to anything concrete (rather than the statement of good intentions from the BBC North about the Media City etc). But it’s early days. At least Steve Johnson was funny at times. He was talking, among other things, about Twitter changing the way we live. On that occassion we were giving festival goers copies of Times June 15th issue (screw you imdiacy of digital media), in which he wrote about the sam thing. Cover as follows:

We didn’t hesitate to tweet about it too. I believe this is one of them things poetically related to as a mild “mind-fuck”.

The story with Canada is that, from what I can make out, it has the best and biggest funding for documentary filmmakers and cross-platform doers. The rest of the world is less generous.

So far the best movie I’ve seen was Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, thing about, well, yeah – muslim punk rockers. Again, I will write more, for now watch the trailer:

I will also be looking for an ocassion/excuse to have this screened in Poland. Should you have any ideas (even vague ones) – email please ana(at)abnarylife(dot)com

I will attempt writing about these and other things in more detail once I’m back in Warsaw. There is about 1 to 3 odds that I will make my plane, judging from previous achievements. I don’t have a video camera on me – this is how it is, kids, you either film it or you live it and I’m rather selfish. I’ve got a photo camera, which works on 35 mm film (shock! horror!), so the photos will take a while to come out. I might shoot a bit tomorrow with my famous G1 phone. I might not. So for now no rich multimedia coverage. I suggest you do, however, follow my witty ‘live’ coverage here or others’ updates tagged #dfsheffdocfest (isn’t this the most awkward official tag.. erm, ever?)

So details in few days. Really, I write this now just so that you’re jealous.

I’m arriving on the 10th to hit the Kevin Smith London Q&A in the evening at O2Indigo – I think this show is sold out by now, but you can still see “the clerks guy” talk funny on the 13, or in Dublin or in Glasgow. Dates and details here.

Then I’m out and about in London for several days, attending the PaidContent UK London Mixer. It’s an event dedicated to all things digital content-related, with some panel discussion and general mingling, as most of these things are. I subscribe to the site and am sometimes quite impressed with how on top of the messy subject they can be. It will be good to see the people behind the stories (as usual). Tickets are free and available – for the time being. Again, if you’re going to be there, definitely give me a shout.

On the 23rd I’m hitting the Lug Radio Live pre-party in Wolverhampton and with some luck will stay there to witness the birth of OggCamp on the 25th. Again – digital content, free culture and, if last year is anything to judge by, probably some jager-bombs.

Then the plans may vary, I will keep you posted. At any rate I will make an appearance and do some work for the good of documentary film industry at the Sheffield Doc/Fest between 4th and 8th of November.

Hope to see you/meet you somewhere along the way

View ana’s travel 09 in a larger map

I am pleased to say that my list is not far off the list compiled from opinions of the experts. This is probably as close to an ‘expert’ as I will ever get too:

1. Trainspotting (imdb)

2. This is England (imdb)

3. Withnail and I (imdb)

4. Boy A – I still feel the 2007 production went relatively unnoticed. It’s a gripping film, about as ruthless to the viewers well being as Hunger… The poster is great in its own right. (imdb)

5. Control – and this is not only because I have a version of teenage crush on Sam Riley! I was close to doing one of my major researches about importance of biopics based on this film, but actually found it too heavy to watch over so many times. (imbd)

6. My Summer of Love – not only because I have a crush on Emily Blunt. Don’t know what Pawlikowski has been doing since this last production in 2004, but unfortunately it wasn’t movies. Shame. (imbd)

7. Nil by mouth – this is a movie one of my English friends, a visual artist, told me to watch if I want to know shit about shit. (imdb)

8. Shaun of the Dead – credit where it’s due, that is to Edgard Wright. If I could, I would put in ‘Spaced’. I actually watched this while still in Poland. Also ended up living close to the original pub where it was shot, which unfortunately is no more. I have spent better part of my time in London in my local and I’m pretty positive I run into many a relationship  trouble because of it. (imdb)

9. 24 hours party people – yes, this has taught me (imdb)

10.  Human Traffic – and I stick by it! And you would understand if you were there many a nights when we were celebrating our heritage as party goers. Also +10 points for one of the best movie titles in history. (imdb)

honorary mention: Rain in my heart – which is a documentary, but hands down one of the British best – ever.

honorary mention 2: Moon – I saw Moon lured in solely by its amazing poster – yes I have a thing for movie posters. It wouldn’t maybe make this list, but I consider it to be the best of the future of British film-making. (imdb)

The discussion about content still revolves around the notion of ownership and authorship as it was understood  pre-Internet. It’s not only the distribution of news that changed, but also who authors it. There’s a very good article about aggregation on The Hot Blog, and I maintain it’s good even though I only agree with half of it. “And the problem with news as a commodity… as much work as can go into getting it, it really doesn’t belong to anyone. Information IS free. And as immoral as theft may be, trying to keep “the news” to yourself is not only impossible, but also kinda immoral.” Well… exactly. The profit in media industry is still based on the notion of right to authorship which equals the right to profit (from reporting the information). What I argue is that the proliferation of news via new channels cannot be stopped. Not by a pay wall, not by anything. DRM is a rather sad attempt to stop proliferation of digital music and even that cannot be applied to news. This proliferation will only be faster and faster and soon it will become instant – and all over the shop.

Let go of it.

Let go of the authorship and start thinking about something completely new. Let go of google and aggregation and who earns on the piece of news. Soon it all won’t matter.

The value of news is how it’s turned into content. The value of content is probably in 50% in the way it is delivered. And what I mean that is not form (functionality), thought that too.

Let me explain. Why do we read certain commentators or blogs – be it online or off? Why, for instance, do I chose to follow film news on The Hot blog or /film?

- I agree with their views most of the times (they have similar tastes in films, so I relay on their opinion)
- They are interested in the same things (they chose topics that are of interest to me)
- I enjoy the style in which they deliver their content

Sometimes they do have ‘exclusive’ material, and that is great, but that is not specifically why I follow them – especially that anything exclusive will be all over the web within two hours. Whereas their tastes, expertise and opinion is subjective and the combination of these things is unique. I don’t have the time to read 10 film blogs everyday. I want 2 or 3 bloggers that are essentially like me, only smarter and better informed. This is actually return of the authorship in its purest form. I chose the author that is interesting in the totality of their production. We’re similar, or polar opposite, but it’s them that is interesting. Their choice of news to cover, their commentary. And to deliver what they deliver they have to be on it full time (yes, I dig for film news but not to this extent, I don’t have the time – or the knowledge). They will find and know what I  don’t have the time for – and for that I would pay.

There are two problems with this model: the culture of getting everything for free online and the middle man. I entitled my recent piece for the Polish Businessman “who will feed the journalists?” – because that is fundamentally the problem. We read the blog, we look at the page and presumably the author can monetize in form of adverts. Well, they cannot – not enough (see the first part of this article). If Murdoch cannot, the rest is pretty much doomed, unless they have a devoted or rich (or both) audience that will pay even though they don’t have to. Radiohead tested that with In Rainbows, which was available to download for whatever price one was willing to pay. But in came the middleman, or more like – the top man. Even though they earned handsome amount of money they somehow backed out of this model. I have a sneaky suspicion that the distributors (shops, ituneses and amazons of this world) vetoed that sort of democracy.

And that, I agree, is the problem. If the news can be delivered by social media users, if they can be turned into valuable content by independent bloggers (on their own or in groups) cutting out the costs of publishing and physical distribution – what will happen to the army of people who live off of the collection of news stories and the distribution of media outlets?

There might not be enough space in the new media for every one. The again print laid off hand scribers en masse and then became an industry employing many, many more.

I will certainly follow the blog for more updates and I wish the guys all the best of luck with the madness bound to come once official distribution is in place.

I don’t tend to blog about films much, as it’s a subject really too close to home. Suffice to say that documentaries I really hold dear I have seen probably about 20 or so times each. But this is a special occasion as my memory of John Hughes’ films ties in with my affection for Kevin Smith (more the public person than the films, to be honest, but there you go), who’s Q&A in London is approaching fast. We’re going to hit the Indigo2 at the O2 arena in London, so if you’re around on October 10th, or better yet going to the event, drop me a line!

This all comes at the time when I’m seriously working on some writing of my own and is a great inspiration. One of Smith quotes I think about often is that “if you have an idea for a flick go make it, because sooner or later some one else is going to do it”.

Will people actually pay for news online enough to sustain the media industry? An important differentiation must be made here. Having a paywall around online content has been no trouble for some newspapers – such as Wall Street Journal. WSJ’r readers have rather deep pockets and paying for good economy news coverage and comment is simply an investment. And here is the clue: WSJ has specialist who’s opinion is unique and matters – therefore it has content that cannot be found anywhere else. For such news outlets the question is a bit easier: content is unique, but will the readers care enough to pay?

Not so easy with general news. If Murdoch suddenly decides to announce his strategic moves a year in advance he must be counting on the rest of the industry to follow. This is a risky bid, especially in UK, where there is always BBC, one of word’s most potent news networks which as far as the current legislation goes is and will remain free. Granted the BBC might not have shocking pics of one or the other celebrity who gained weight or cheated on their significant other, but how much is the gossip really worth?

Another diffrentiation here: if paying for news online is to have any chance of becoming a norm it has to be easy enough to become a daily routine. For some audiences, more than for others, this is still a no go area. I have no numbers to support this, but I would bid some money on the fact, that paying online is more of a habit for the readers of The Guardian, than for majority of readers of The Sun. Charlie Brooker (as usually) has a point – Rupert better makes this easy and attractive.

How could this look like? There are few models, which already operate: subscription to whole or parts of the content, paying for access to the archive, pay-per-article, paying for premium content or additional features. While the first two are rather simple, the latter two pose more problems: who’s to decide what is premium? And how does one pay per article/video/audio without setting up tens of accounts for each newspaper, giving away credit card and personal details each time – something we all hate and have no time for? Some sort of newspaper iTunes? But then we’d need a newspaper iPod.

I am a rather regular Guardian reader and I used to buy the print version regularly when I was living in London, mainly because it was available in my College (which was also my work) shop and I got it together with my morning coffee. I also like the ritual of reading my morning paper and despite being in my twenties I’d rather not read off the screen if I can avoid it – it’s enough to stare at it hours no end while I work. This stopped for several reasons: disposing of huge amounts of paper became a pain in just about everything, I started working from home a lot and I had to cut back on caffeine. Finally I moved abroad and that was the end of it. Now I am the perfect customer: give me an attractive access online and I will pay the equivalent of 1.20 GBP to read what I read now in my RSS feeds for free – for the attractiveness.

The attractiveness of a printed newspaper to me is that I can start at the beginning and finish at the end, making sure I don’t miss anything that might be of interest. Jumping around guardian.co.uk proves a bit too much. There is too much content. So say I receive a daily email asking if I feel like buying the paper today. If I do can pay with one click and get all the pages put together rather nicely (make it a .pdf if you don’t have a better idea), but hey – lay them out just for me. It’s rather easy to analyze my reading habits and interests (google ads tries all the time, though it doesn’t have much success). I like the world news section, sports, culture and media news, reportage part in the g2, books reviews. I couldn’t care less for cooking, gardening, travel or work advice – not very much for the comment section either. So stash that at the end (just in case there’s something interesting I will look through the summaries). And while we’re at it give me the links to relating podcasts (I would pay for Guardian’s MediaTalk, as I consider it to be one of the best media podcasts available and I’m interested in the opinion of its usual guests – but then again, I am in the industry). Done, that’s £1.20 for The Guardian Media Group from me.

But that’s me – and what about any one else?

Stay tuned for part 3 on Tuesday to find out how media industry can incorporate ‘citizen’ journalists, regroup and perhaps keep some of the jobs. If we’re lucky…

Rupert Murdoch fancies himself a bit of a visionary. In 2005 he claimed that online news will in the future live entirely off of advertising. Now he revealed the plan to make the consumer pay for online access to his newspapers, like The Sun, and seems pretty positive other publishers will follow suit. But had he been right with his first prophecy, he wouldn’t be making the second one.

The debate on this – or mainly on whether consumers will indeed pay for online news in the culture of internet’s something for nothing – has been heated in the industry. The reason is simple – investments in advertising in all of the ‘old’ media is shrinking, with only Internet’s still growing (and that growth has in UK slipped below double figures last year). That has obviously to do with general economic crisis, investments in most industries are getting rather humble, as there is not much money (of real value) to go around. Except in entertainment, which seems to be doing pretty well (check out the prices for footballers in Premiere League this summer, if you don’t believe). By the looks of it Internet hasn’t yet killed neither filmmakers nor musicians. But news are scarcely entertaining, lay-offs in media are massive and the general panic amongst journalists and publishers is growing.

The problem here seems to be also that for all the talk about new media so far the old measurements have been applied to it – which lead into the dark corner. The massive audience of online news turned out not to generate as much profit from advertising as expected. Yes, one can have hundreds of thousands of unique users visit newspaper’s website per day and look at the online ads. This is what the advertisers paid for. Some of the users might even click on the ad – that has been even more valuable. But how many of them actually buy the product? This is the real measurement, because in the end no matter how many people see the ad, if they don’t buy the product there will be no profit to invest in further advertising. Oooops.

There also is the old argument of creating brand recognition – in the longer run, the more we see the ad for certain washing up liquid (car, tv, cereal)  the more the brand gets carved into our brains and finally, once we are in the super-marked faced with the choice between 20 brands, we will more than likely go for the one we somewhat recognize. Or will we?

The generation of new consumers, like myself in their 20s and 30s, especially the part that is active on-line might be getting their brand loyalty from somewhere completely else. I don’t care for the brand of my washing up liquid. I’ll buy according to the price or the design of the packaging (seriously, think about the latter point next time you buy every day stuff you don’t care much about). Once I have kids I might start caring about what brand of yogurts I buy for them, but if I’ll use Internet to inform my choice I’ll rather go on some sort of mum-forum and ask other more experienced mums, than relay on google ads. And to convince a bunch of mums you need much better strategy than to show them something when they read their everyday portion of news. So no, Rupert, you won’t live from advertising online (or maybe you will, but not the journalists at the end of your food-chain). In this sense it is a more general crisis of traditional advertising – this is not the 50s and it’s not Madmen. Media’s problem is that it lived and planned to live of off this advertising, practically imposing the old ads onto new media, for ever.

There is a whole industry that needs to be fed of these shrinking profits. The only realistic solution to this so far seems to be imposition of the so-called paywall. There are few models of these already in practice (subscription, payments for access to premium content, pay-per-view for materials, paid access to archives), that sometimes do work. The burning question is, however – will it sustain the entire army of media professionals?

Stay tuned for part 2 this weekend.

I have to admit, however that there is another reason for that. I have become one of them – these people who tweet. I can see the appeal, which I’ve failed to see for good few years: when things get hectic there’s only time for 140 characters (if that!). Not to mention time to engage in a conversation following a statement (self-proclaimed new media gurus, who write about the “dialogue” on twitter crack me no end). So there I went, joining millions and millions of people talking at each other, occasionally getting feedback, birthday wishes, gossip from the set of Madmen or the life of one Kevin Smith, safe in the knowledge that nothing I will miss on twitter is ever going to be of vital importance.

It is, I have to admit, much easier to pop things to share out on twitter and leave them there for the generations never to pay attention to. However while I’ve been communicating in 140 characters few things happen in my immediate world. I managed production of an installation which was succesfully shown at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (Sir Connery called it “mesmerizing” – hell yeah). I moved to Warsaw, Poland, my home town and resource of endless cheap booze and cigarettes. The film I am going to make got put of indefinitely due to things beyond my control. I decided to get a tattoo. I finished another early year of life. Leszek Kolakowski, one of the greatest thinkers of our times, died. Carlos Tevez got sold to Manchester City – and copious other things, to which I reacted in a 140 characters written comment, almost equivalent of nothing at all.

Enough of the serious. Also on twitter can be found the little germs previously known as Lazy Sunday Surf, bunch of things that can be enjoyed online on a lazy sunday, perhaps slightly hangover, with a volvic lemon and lime water and a fish and chips – or your local equivalent (what would it be?). For your convinience and because it’s a pleasure to share good stuff, here they are collected:

Self-referentially here is a list of tweeting directors, writers and actors from /Film. If you are more-less a film buff this might well make you feel quite orgasmic.

The semi-documentary shooting style is finally getting its deserved grip on the main-ish stream cinema. Both these films will blow you away, I promise. Following District 9’s very creative viral campaign has been a pleasure. And if that is not enough suspension for you watch the trailer for Hurt Locker and have your brain blown off.

On a lighter note Kevin Smith is coming to London October 10th for a Q&A. Rest assured I will be there. That’s for the occasion of a Smodcast book coming out. And if you don’t know what Smodcast is your Lazy Sundays have been, well – remotely inferior?

My new favorite photoblog light-test.com (rather self explanatory). Second only to the PhotoshopDisaster – now I see them everywhere.

And the best left for the dessert. What equates to the Best Lazy Sunday Evening? High quality waffling + high quality, eclectic music choice all served with a charming, deep radio voice! My favorite Northerner (if you count artist Hannah Perry as a Northernesse), Dan Lynch is at it again – every other Sunday live over at ratholeradio.org and later in form of a podcast.

And remember – lazy surf like a pro:

Jack Nicholson on Holidays

I am traveling to the Edinburgh International Film Festival on the 18th of June! Starting from the 20th of June, it will be showcasing My Secret Heart, the multi-media piece of beautiful artistic work commissioned by Streetwise Opera, a charity which works with homeless people. The music, written by Mira Calix, is inspired by Gregorio Allegri’s 17th-century choral masterpiece, Miserere mei – apparently the beauty of the piece was such that the Vatican put an embargo on it, preventing it from being performed anywhere but the Sistine Chapel (later Mozart visited the Chapel, was able to memorise the work and transcribe it).

The animation was made by my favorite partners in crime at flat-e based on the motions they captured during Streetwise Opera’s workshops, together with programmer and artist Memo Akten, whom you might stalk on twitter if you so please. The animation is projected on a round screen (360 degrees in fact) with surround sound.

Needless to say I am very excited about the whole enterprise. I am now attached to the project so if you have any questions please contact me on ana @ flat-e.com

We will bw in the Dovecot Studios, 10 Infirmary Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1LT. Admission is free, so all the more I’m looking forward to seeing you there!

Here is our Edinburgh flyer (click to enlarge):

Here is the preview of what you will be able to experience at EIFF:

My Secret Heart Teaser from Flat-e on Vimeo.

I have discovered today that swurl.com is no more. Sad day it is as I liked the service, but life is cruel and fast, especially if it’s the on-line life. With a typical promiscuity of a new media user I swiftly moved on to a new, shiny application. 

Introducing: soup.io, a tublr-like service (I parted with tumblr in a very teary, i-can’t-do-this-any-more way some time ago) concentrated on re-posting. Something for Internet recycling age, when there’s so much content we mainly keep repeating ourselves or others – handy to share with these remaining 2 friends who don’t use google reader.

As I realized I mainly like to share funny things and exciting film news (I’m a film news junkie and self-indulgently I assume others are too), therefore meet my new pet  Film + Funny.

Hope you enjoy x