Susan Ee

Further on Dating Attempt 2.0

Had coffee with a producer from Hollywood yesterday.  She and her business partner were up in the Bay Area scouting out how business is done around here.  She has commitments from writers, talent and crew most of us can only dream about.  We had a quick chat about the differences in culture between LA and Silicon Valley.  What the money folks up here are looking for vs. what they look for down in LA.  The basics of how Internet startups work.  Stock option culture.  Online distribution analytics.  Stuff like that.

I know that Hollywood is in a world of hurt right now -- the ongoing actors' contract negotiations, the repercussions from the writers' strike, the tiny number of studio films being shot in LA.  And of course, the valley has plenty of startups cropping up trying to deliver online video, but it's hard to deliver the goods without the goods.  This is all adding fuel to the fire of LA and SF Dating Attempt 2.0. 

BTW, that Churchill event regarding this issue that I told you about?  It was sold out!  This LA and SF thing is HOT right now.

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

Nerd Poker

Gears of War

Writers and filmmakers -- check out today's LA Times article on Nerd Poker.  If you have an XBox and like to play Gears of War, this may be a fun networking opportunity for you.  Me?  I've been known to play a few games... but I don't own an XBox for the simple reason that if I did, you may never hear from me again...

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

Webisode gets DVD distribution

Here's what Stacy Parks of Filmspecific has to say about Prom Queen, a successful webisode:

Take Vuguru for example, Michael Eisner's year and a half-old
production company set up expressly to produce web content.
They have a big hit on their hands with PROM QUEEN, a 90 second daily
soap averaging over 200,000 viewers a day. The show was recently
picked up for a traditional DVD distribution deal by a major
company willing to experiment with this new medium. They are
packaging 2 seasons worth of shows together, adding in a ton of
never-seen-before footage, cast interviews, vlogs, and other
extras - and introducing it to the market to see if customers
are willing to actually buy a DVD of something, that they can
essentially see for free on the web.

But that's why all this 'extra' material is critical to the
equation....

In any case, PROM QUEEN is broadcast on a few different web
outlets including it's own PromQueen.tv, You Tube, and My
Space among others -- but to date, My Space has been the
biggest outlet, and with the thousands upon thousands of
registered My Space friends PROM QUEEN has, advertisers are
chomping at the bit to get in on this -- and thus is born
a very big revenue stream for PROM QUEEN.

Interesting, eh?  After the first 2 shows, Techcrunch said:

There was a three second pre-roll ad for the upcoming Hairspray movie, a short ad for Verizon Vcast and then a fifteen second post-roll ad for Hairspray again.

After the first season, Washington Post said:

Each episode? Just 90 seconds. ("When we were watching online content, we noticed that we started looking for something else after 90 seconds," explained show co-creator Chris Hampel.) The full season, in fact, is just two hours. Air date? Seven days a week, since on the Internet there are no programming schedules. Commercials? Let's just say the characters drink a lot of prominently placed POM Wonderful and Fiji Water for a reason.

The Post reported that the budget for the show was between $100k-$150k but I'm not sure if that's per episode or for a whole season.  I'm guessing it's for the season.  It's a whole lot of money if it's coming out of your piggy bank, but it's oh, so cheap compared to the overwhelming majority of production budgets.  And it's being reported as profitable.  Of course, you do have the Eisner brand behind it which engenders a whole lot of confidence with the advertisers...

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

Books and $$$

When I mentioned to a friend that I thought The Historian, a vampire novel, was bought for a million dollars by its publisher, my friend had a hard time believing me.  Well, he was right not to believe me.  Little, Brown & Company actually paid $2 million for it, according to the NY Times.

The Gargoyle, a more recent speculative fiction novel, was bought for $1.25 million by Doubleday, according to Entertainment Weekly.

I haven't read The Gargoyle but I read The Historian.  What did I think of it? 

Dude, I could TOTALLY write that for $2 mil.  Where do I sign up?

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

SF Film Society & Film Arts

I'd heard rumors of Film Arts Foundation being in trouble.  Now, it looks like SF Film Society is taking over Film Arts functions.  It's unclear to me whether they will rent gear the way Film Arts used to but they are taking over the fiscal sponsorship role for those of you who need a fiscal sponsor to channel your funding through.  They are also launching a couple of interesting programs:  grants, and filmhouse residencies.  Details and applications will be published in September but it looks like there will be money and free production offices available to local filmmakers.  Nice, eh?  There will also be a monthly networking/conference event for filmmakers starting in Nov.

Cheers,
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

DIY Day

DIY Day was filmed, and some of the footage is on line on their site.  Arin Crumley of Four Eyed Monsters did a terrific job MC'ing /moderating.  It was quite an enjoyable and informative day.  Here are some of the resources and interesting experiments I learned about:

Indiegogo allows filmmakers to raise money via their audience. 
Tubemogal lets you upload your film in one place for download on various sites.  It also has analytic tools to give you consolidated info across the various sites on which your film is available.
The Workshop Project has all kinds of info for the indie filmmaker.
Lost Zombies is compiling user generated videos about zombies to use in a zombie "documentary."  Kinda like World War Z:  The Oral History of the Zombie Wars, only in video form.  (BTW, World War Z is pretty good.)  Hard core zombie fans have collected on this site so if you have a short zombie video, this is probably a great place to get some fans.
Mobmov organizes spontaneous "drive-in" showings where people drive up to a wall and one of the cars projects a movie onto the wall.  An interesting alternative/ addition to 4-walling it.
Millions of Us designs marketing programs for the virtual world.  What I found particularly interesting about them is that their rep said the story usually comes first, then they go after the brand.  For example, they came up with the idea of letting people submit photos of their neighborhood and then showing them what it would look like in the future (i.e. 2070).  Then they approached the Terminator brand because that would be great marketing for them.  I found that fascinating since most ad/marketing agencies take the opposite approach of getting the client first, then designing the campaign.

Kudos to the organizers for putting this great program together for the indie community.

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

Nemesis Wanted Ad

You gotta check this out:  Nemesis Wanted
It's a Craigslist ad.  Here's the text:

"I've been trying to think of ways to spice up my life. I'm 35 years old, happily married with two kids and I have a good job in insurance. But somethings missing. I feel like I'm old before my time. I need to inject some excitement into my daily routine through my arm before its too late. I need a challenge, something to get the adrenaline pumping again. An addiction would be nice, but, in short, I need a nemesis. I'm willing to pay $350 up front for you services as an arch enemy over the next six months. Nothing crazy. Steal my parking space, knock my coffee over, trip me when Im running to catch the BART and occasionaly whisper in my ear, "Ahha, we meet again". That kind of thing. Just keep me on my toes. Complacency will be the death of me. You need to have an evil streak and be blessed with innate guile and cunning. You should also be adept at inconsicuous pursuit. Evil laugh preferred. Send me a photo and a brief explanation why you would be a good nemesis.

British accent preferred."

HA!  Maybe I should get into the nemesis business...

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

Summer Summary

Wow, that was my longest break from the blog.  Here's a quick summary of what's been happening this summer:

1. Iowa - hot, humid and fun.  I made friends.  I wrote.  I wrote.  I wrote.  James McPherson is writing me a recommendation.  To what, I don't know yet -- but it's handy to have a recommendation letter from a Pulitzer Prize winning writer in case I want to apply to some program somewhere that requires recommendations.  I wrote/ revised 5 stories while in Iowa.  I think I would have written 6 but for the fact that the 5th is the one we committed to submit to the anthology.  Turns out it's harder to write on cue than we anticipated.  I've written 3 completely different versions of the anthology story and am still not happy with any of them. Haven't given up, though.

2.  48-hr Film Fest - just participated this weekend.  I was assistant director on this project.  Amazingly, we wrapped in one day.  The script was written Friday night.  We shot on Sat.  Today, the editor was locked in his room all day, making sense out of what we shot.

3.  DIY Days - spent the day today at this awesome conference.  Wow, I was impressed.  It was free, cutting-edge, informative.  More on this later.

Cheers,
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com