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Next-Gen Filmmakers Populate Butterknife’s New York
Butterknife is an episodic web series starring real-life couple Ronald and Mary Bronstein and featuring a cast of their real-life filmmaker friends. The series, a collaboration between Joe Swanberg and the Bronsteins, was commissioned by Spout to promote some of the creative personalities the site is dedicated to supporting.
According to Spout’s content director, Paul Moore, the show was conceived by Ronald Bronstein, who directed Frownland, and Hannah Takes the Stairs director Swanberg as a tribute to Robert Altman’s neo-noir The Long Goodbye. It features Ronald dealing with the unromantic banality of private investigator work during the day and the romantic banality of his relationship at home during the evening — which is a lot of deconstructed banality, but then, such is life.
WGA Rank and File Vote to Ratify New Contract
The Writers Guild of America this afternoon says the ballots are in and the winner is (drum roll)…the new contract! Of 4,060 members in New York and Los Angeles who participated, 3,802 (93.6 percent) voted ‘yea’ on the new deal, which runs through April of 2011, according to an emailed press release. The WGA cites five groundbreaking wins for writers, all in new media — jurisdiction, separated rights, residuals calculated based on gross, and access to information in order to monitor the emerging business of online streaming and downloads.
Now the AMPTP has to make nice with the Screen Actors Guild by June 30th. In an email response to the WGA announcement, the production association wrote: “Now that our industry is back in business, our goal is to collaborate with everyone in the industry - writers, directors, actors and stagehands alike - to produce the highest-quality entertainment products without any further interruption.” SAG is reportedly considering holding the type of informal negotiation that was widely credited with resolving the Director’s Guild of America and WGA terms.
Moonves Bearish on Expensive Pilot Production
While discussing CBS’s quarterly numbers with reporters, CEO Leslie “Les” Moonves suggested that the network will be tweaking its show development model due to the expense of producing pilots, according to a partial transcript posted to Silicon Alley Insider.
Pilots are overated. Its all about episode 20 not episode one. The strike has allowed us to re-examine how you get from point A to point B. I don’t think you have to spend $5 million on a pilot to find a hit.
While I’d like to think that my prognostication has been vindicated, this doesn’t necessarily mean CBS will be developing lots of good content that will appear online first (though they did pick up Wall Strip). Think CSI coming to a city near you and Hawaii Five-O online, because “At CBS, crime has always paid.”
Maybe that’s a bit cynical. The optimist in me is dialing an agent with a pitch for an online, low-budget, short-form, reality police procedural.
Digg Goes Live, Kills Podcast Section
In an evening hour live on Ustream, Digg’s Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson answered questions from the audience. Fans looking for a live Diggnation might have been disappointed — Rose and Adelson didn’t start drinking beer until 17 minutes in. It was all business, and the pair mostly addressed functionality and feature issues.
The big video news is that the team plans to fold the podcast section into the main site, possibly via the video section. Which may actually bring new podcasts more traffic as they hit the front page — the current listings look pretty static (since I doubt Diggnation will be unseated from No. 1 any time soon).
The Great “Movies on an iPhone” Debate
It was one of the better jokes Jon Stewart told at the Academy Awards last night (though playing Wii tennis live at the Kodak Theater was probably my favorite). Holding an Apple iPhone, he told the audience he was watching David Lean’s ode to expansive landscapes, Lawrence of Arabia, on the tiny screen. The punchline? Playing off a popular iPhone feature, he turned the phone 90 degrees and quipped, “To really appreciate it, you have to see it in the widescreen.”
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My first thought was, “I wonder if Ezra Sacks was on the writing team for the show this year” (he wasn’t), because in an interview with Sacks last fall about the possibility of a WGA strike, he also used the analogy of having Lawrence on your phone to illustrate why writers were lobbying for new media residuals. It seems that the film is the go-to reference for the “cinema experience.”
But is watching such a big movie on such a small screen really such a bereft experience? The audience at the Oscars might think so. I disagree.
Weekend Vid Picks: The Oscars
It’s the Super Bowl for wannabe Pauline Kaels and Mr. Blackwells, when every frustrated film student and amateur thespian sharpens their witty bon mots to a gleaming edge. It’s the 2008 Academy Awards ceremony! And as ultimately pointless and bloatedly self-indulgent as the Hollywood royalty on display may be, that the show was almost derailed by the Writers’ Guild strike makes it a must-see, if only for Jon Stewart’s jokes about said labor unrest — not to mention which of the two Democratic presidential nominees pull the most star endorsements.
What could we have expected from an actor-free event? More dance numbers and clip montages! Who still isn’t coming, picket line or no picket line? Fidel Castro! OK, enough with the politics. We all know what the red carpet is really about — fashion. Though I’m a little disappointed that this 2008 fashion preview doesn’t feature menswear, so I don’t know exactly how behind the times my thrift-store Barney’s tux has become.
Industry Wins Again on Digital Switch Education Efforts
Broadcasters will be able to choose between the federally mandated guidelines or those set forth by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) for informing the public about the upcoming transition from analog to digital signals, according to an FCC report due to be released as early as today, reports the Washington Post. The NAB had already won more leeway in implementing the switch from a technical perspective.
The article cites consumer groups and members of Congress urging stronger steps to educate the public. Broadcast industry officials, meanwhile, have wanted more flexibility in getting the message out to customers. The NAB and cable companies have pledged a total of $1.2 billion toward outreach efforts. Only 360 days remain until the switch, when anyone left with traditional rabbit ears atop their sets will get nothing but static.
Blogs, Social Networks Shape a Modern Pilot
When I said that pilots were quickly becoming a thing of the past, I admit that I was a bit categorical. A new “reality” show about the lives of NYU students, Under the Arch, offers a prime example of a new show development model — the “backdoor pilot.”
The show began life about a year ago as a short video put together by undergraduate Sean Patrick Murray and friends as a New York-centric take on The Hills and similar teens-behaving-badly fare. Murray posted it to his Facebook profile and YouTube, where it was eventually discovered by Gawker’s Maggie Shnayerson — and playfully excoriated.
The YouTube version has since been taken down, and now that Murray has changed his privacy settings on Facebook, it’s no longer available to the public via that channel, either. But not before it was spotted by an intern working at Madwood Entertainment, which was looking to develop a show around just such a concept. Filming is now complete on a new, 22-minute version slated to be released online in three 8-minute installments.
BBC Plans for iPlayer Almost Anywhere
BBC’s iPlayer is seeing about one-tenth of the broadcast audience, with half a million viewers tuning in on the busiest days, according to a piece reported by Chris Williams at The Register that cites Anthony Rose, the Beeb’s head of media technology and Ashley Highfield, its director of new media and technology.
The two also reveal upcoming support from the BBC for the iPhone and iPod touch handhelds, but not necessarily via the iTunes store. The plan instead would allow iPlayer content to stream onto the devices via Wi-Fi.
Highfeld, left, and Rose, pictured.
Room for Optimism in Wake of Revver Sale?
Now that Revver has been sold to LiveUniverse, and LiveVideo has been officially launched, what’s the future for Revver’s business model? After all, it was just a few months ago that Revver revealed they’d paid $1 million to content creators since opening their doors to the public.
While no independent creators got rich from the plan, it did help a few pay some bills while they got their shows off the ground. Ask a Ninja earned Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine over $45,000 on Revver, which as they noted, “Helped us limp by until we found a better ad sales partner.” That’s the kind of nominal but critical support new shows need to be nurtured into the big leagues.
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