Internet
Fights are sometimes lame.
01/25/09 11:54 PM Filed in: Film Festivals
(Disclaimer: I fully realize that there is some layer of irony in this post. I just want to say that it's not intended to be the kitschy sort-of irony like when I proudly wear my Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift shirt to screenings of French New Wave films or listen to celebrity-made music. A friend once accused me of getting to the point where I don't know whether I legitimately enjoy something or enjoy it ironically. I assure you, this is not one of those instances. Really.)
(Disclaimer 2: The video described in this post was deleted pretty much as I was uploading this. Follow-up at the bottom)
So, I'm not even a month into the revamped blog here, and I already have to retract a statement. I'm not sure whether to be proud of that, or not. But in my last post I claimed that fighting was awesome, and that it brought a level of excitement to film fests that I felt was positive.
Well, I was wrong.
Today my twitter feed was all abuzz about slashfilm's reporting of the escalation of a feud between Chud's Devin Faraci and FirstShowing's Alex Billington. The two have had a "feud" (not really sure you can call it that) since Billington published a piece on how the new Batman movie was "revolutionary", Faraci did not agree. For those of you wondering, yes, this is a feud lamer than the Soulja Boy/Ice-T YouTube video wars of 08.
(For full disclosure: Here's my relations - I read slashfilm, I've met Faraci briefly at Fantastic Fest, and never really heard of Billington)
Slashfilm posted a video of the culmination of the feud - a somewhat drunken bitchfest between the two (I'll save you some time and tell you not to click it, but if you're bored [which shouldn't be an excuse] scroll down all the way). (Update: Video was removed)
This is what people are talking about today.
Meanwhile, Sundance has just wrapped up with not one of the award winners securing US distribution.
Let me repeat that.
At the premiere US Film Festival for discovery and purchasing of independent feature films, not one of the major award winners has secured US distribution rights. Not one. Shouldn't that be worthy of analysis? Is it because people aren’t buying? Did the films cost too much? Are there just too many good films out there?
Maybe we should be talking about the films that did secure distribution?
But that's not the topic of conversation today.
This lame argument is.
People are describing it as "epic" and "something that lives up to the Sundance hype". Today, I've seen more about this than a lot of films that I was interested in hearing about from the dance.
Now, let me take a moment and clear up why the previous fight is good and this fight is bad. In the fight involving Dowd and Anderson, the dispute was centered around a film at the festival and it brings up all sorts of interesting debates like the place of criticism at a festival and the power that it can hold and whether it's too much, etc. This fight takes a quibble from the internet and brings it to real life where it just makes it embarrassing for all parties involved - including the watchers.
I feel bad for the other internet-based journalists, this looks bad for everyone that this can attract so much attention over real topics.
In this fast-paced world of film, the internet has become a vital tool in getting the news and information fast and easily. Naturally the intersection of computers and movies attracts geeks (which I don't use as a pejorative) of all types, which has helped create some new superpowers in the film world (Aint it Cool), and a lot of resources (Cinematical), and venues (Hulu). However, with it comes the rest of the internet.
The debate at hand has a discourse at the level of YouTube comments. It's juvenile and anti-climatic, and petty. In other words, it's everything that an internet debate is (except that it doesn’t ever go into George W. Bush for no reason). Overly-long insults of a sexual nature that ends when somebody gets distracted.
Here, the sword of instant information comes back to cut us.
With no real news cycle, we're getting information as it happens. Unfortunately, sometimes, even at Sundance, nothing is happening. Behind every headline is weeks and months of preparation and build-up. When's nothing's announced, we get other things, some are fun, some encourage discussion, some are easily forgettable. That's fine. Sometimes the non-stories grow to insane proportions, like the Roger Ebert jacket-debacle of a few years ago. We're now treated to every step of a story that would never have been allowed in newspapers a decade ago. Reporting in this way quickly becomes petty.
And soon things become too incestuous. The internet allows us all some level of self-importance, and it's certainly not a foreign concept to the film sites. It allows for accountability, recognition and reliability. None of which are bad things. Sites recognize each other for good reporting and bad, helping us to filter out information. Then these things start to take precedence, as they have here. If the feud was between two nameless bloggers the story wouldn't have gathered any steam. But because of the established nature of the people involved... we get this. As the recognition of the people and their personalities grow, soon the focus is no longer on the films.
So, while this fight is super-lame and not worth talking about, the problems it suggests are: The film world, and independent film world especially, are semi-closed circles. Go to a film festival in New England and one in LA and you'll see a number of the same people, follow the news and you'll see a number of names that pop up time after time. With near-instant reporting on the goings on with these people, can we rely on our specialized media to remain reporters instead of gossips?
Not to say that gossip isn't a part of Hollywood, Variety has long-covered feuds within the industry. However, when it's Robert Evans and Francis Ford Coppola going at it ending with the re-editing of The Godfather, it's news, it's affecting a product. It's big players with consequences for a lot of people. This just keeps people on the internet posting comments over which site is better. Is this really where we're going? Will this sort of noise override the real stories?
So, there you go - a post on the internet complaining about people posting on the internet, and, a lot of words and focus on something that I say should be ignored. Yeah. That's right.
Follow Up: The video in question was deleted as I was putting this up, which does add a nice dimension to all of this - when something like this does catch on, when it does pick up steam, and it becomes a distraction, the site can easily remove the video. Slashfilm’s Peter Sciretta pulled the video because he felt that it was not good for anyone involved. He was not pressured by anyone. I leave this post up because I think the comments on the reporting that goes on are still relevant, even if the post is not live.
(Disclaimer 2: The video described in this post was deleted pretty much as I was uploading this. Follow-up at the bottom)
So, I'm not even a month into the revamped blog here, and I already have to retract a statement. I'm not sure whether to be proud of that, or not. But in my last post I claimed that fighting was awesome, and that it brought a level of excitement to film fests that I felt was positive.
Well, I was wrong.
Today my twitter feed was all abuzz about slashfilm's reporting of the escalation of a feud between Chud's Devin Faraci and FirstShowing's Alex Billington. The two have had a "feud" (not really sure you can call it that) since Billington published a piece on how the new Batman movie was "revolutionary", Faraci did not agree. For those of you wondering, yes, this is a feud lamer than the Soulja Boy/Ice-T YouTube video wars of 08.
(For full disclosure: Here's my relations - I read slashfilm, I've met Faraci briefly at Fantastic Fest, and never really heard of Billington)
Slashfilm posted a video of the culmination of the feud - a somewhat drunken bitchfest between the two (I'll save you some time and tell you not to click it, but if you're bored [which shouldn't be an excuse] scroll down all the way). (Update: Video was removed)
This is what people are talking about today.
Meanwhile, Sundance has just wrapped up with not one of the award winners securing US distribution.
Let me repeat that.
At the premiere US Film Festival for discovery and purchasing of independent feature films, not one of the major award winners has secured US distribution rights. Not one. Shouldn't that be worthy of analysis? Is it because people aren’t buying? Did the films cost too much? Are there just too many good films out there?
Maybe we should be talking about the films that did secure distribution?
But that's not the topic of conversation today.
This lame argument is.
People are describing it as "epic" and "something that lives up to the Sundance hype". Today, I've seen more about this than a lot of films that I was interested in hearing about from the dance.
Now, let me take a moment and clear up why the previous fight is good and this fight is bad. In the fight involving Dowd and Anderson, the dispute was centered around a film at the festival and it brings up all sorts of interesting debates like the place of criticism at a festival and the power that it can hold and whether it's too much, etc. This fight takes a quibble from the internet and brings it to real life where it just makes it embarrassing for all parties involved - including the watchers.
I feel bad for the other internet-based journalists, this looks bad for everyone that this can attract so much attention over real topics.
In this fast-paced world of film, the internet has become a vital tool in getting the news and information fast and easily. Naturally the intersection of computers and movies attracts geeks (which I don't use as a pejorative) of all types, which has helped create some new superpowers in the film world (Aint it Cool), and a lot of resources (Cinematical), and venues (Hulu). However, with it comes the rest of the internet.
The debate at hand has a discourse at the level of YouTube comments. It's juvenile and anti-climatic, and petty. In other words, it's everything that an internet debate is (except that it doesn’t ever go into George W. Bush for no reason). Overly-long insults of a sexual nature that ends when somebody gets distracted.
Here, the sword of instant information comes back to cut us.
With no real news cycle, we're getting information as it happens. Unfortunately, sometimes, even at Sundance, nothing is happening. Behind every headline is weeks and months of preparation and build-up. When's nothing's announced, we get other things, some are fun, some encourage discussion, some are easily forgettable. That's fine. Sometimes the non-stories grow to insane proportions, like the Roger Ebert jacket-debacle of a few years ago. We're now treated to every step of a story that would never have been allowed in newspapers a decade ago. Reporting in this way quickly becomes petty.
And soon things become too incestuous. The internet allows us all some level of self-importance, and it's certainly not a foreign concept to the film sites. It allows for accountability, recognition and reliability. None of which are bad things. Sites recognize each other for good reporting and bad, helping us to filter out information. Then these things start to take precedence, as they have here. If the feud was between two nameless bloggers the story wouldn't have gathered any steam. But because of the established nature of the people involved... we get this. As the recognition of the people and their personalities grow, soon the focus is no longer on the films.
So, while this fight is super-lame and not worth talking about, the problems it suggests are: The film world, and independent film world especially, are semi-closed circles. Go to a film festival in New England and one in LA and you'll see a number of the same people, follow the news and you'll see a number of names that pop up time after time. With near-instant reporting on the goings on with these people, can we rely on our specialized media to remain reporters instead of gossips?
Not to say that gossip isn't a part of Hollywood, Variety has long-covered feuds within the industry. However, when it's Robert Evans and Francis Ford Coppola going at it ending with the re-editing of The Godfather, it's news, it's affecting a product. It's big players with consequences for a lot of people. This just keeps people on the internet posting comments over which site is better. Is this really where we're going? Will this sort of noise override the real stories?
So, there you go - a post on the internet complaining about people posting on the internet, and, a lot of words and focus on something that I say should be ignored. Yeah. That's right.
Follow Up: The video in question was deleted as I was putting this up, which does add a nice dimension to all of this - when something like this does catch on, when it does pick up steam, and it becomes a distraction, the site can easily remove the video. Slashfilm’s Peter Sciretta pulled the video because he felt that it was not good for anyone involved. He was not pressured by anyone. I leave this post up because I think the comments on the reporting that goes on are still relevant, even if the post is not live.
Comments
Viral Videos: From the other side.
I never set out to make a viral video. Really, I think a lot of the stuff caches on for just the wrong reason. Taking a look at the top videos on YouTube always seems to be a race to the bottom. Looking at the all-time top YouTube videos doesn't get much better. Don't get me wrong, it's really funny to see somebody make a complete idiot out of themselves or a crazy commercial from Japan, but since the advent of YouTube and the whole coining of the term, we're in a complete sea of these sorts of videos. How many three-year-olds dancing to pop songs and cats falling off of shelves can you watch? There's also the glut of YouTube celebrities, which I really don't even pretend to understand that bit. It kinda makes me feel old.
So of course when a video that I co-directed with Thomas Humphreys starts to go viral (go to 3:25)... I can't help but try to push it along, get it out there. Being on the other side of the viral video gives an interesting perspective on the whole situation - it's hard to get stuff out there. A complete uphill struggle if you're trying to get things moving. I think now that we're trying to push the video that it's slowing down the viral progression. When we didn't do anything, it caught on.
The irony of the situation is that the video that we always felt had the most potential to go viral, to spread, to be a joy in people's lives - Beastmaster, Jr - has never caught on. Powder 2: Powder 2 The People had a limited scope and took off to a limited degree - people got it or they didn't, I Love You, Jean Claude (which, funnily enough, is a title that none of the websites featuring it has used) has the sort of pop-culture baiting that people love, so I can see it's spreading around. The Steve Wiebe "Don't Talk" trailer has a celebrated icon in the Donkey Kong world (I'm not making that up) doing his thing. Beastmaster is just family friendly fun, has some pop culture, even has a celebrity cameo, and, I think, is a really good video. But so far it sits at around seven thousand hits on YouTube.
Now, I have to point out, my life doesn't revolve around YouTube hits. I had this conversation with a friend of mine who put it simply - "They're not your audience, Nick. Don't worry about them." He's right, of course, but... with these videos, I kind of feel they are in some little way. Long term, wide scope of things, yeah, it's not important, but I would like for people to see these videos. A lot of work went into them, and they're better than somebody's crappy Batman fan film.
So, with our JCVD video getting attention, we're trying to segue that attention to Beastmaster, which stars the same kid, Eli, who's becoming a pretty great actor. (Although, when we asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said that he'd like to act in movies. I feel bad about sending him towards this difficult life.) So, you'd think that people who liked one video would be willing to check out the next, right? Well... it's not quite so easy. Here's the challenges we're running into:
1.) Time - As we all know it's hard to get your friends to sit down and watch anything that you ask them to. I still have friends who haven't started on Mad Men despite hearing me talk about it endlessly. I'm the same way - I've been told about some movies that I know that I would love that I just haven't gotten around to for whatever reason. It's difficult to get a friend to watch something - getting a stranger to see something is nigh-on impossible.
Now that said, this is the internet, which has become the de-facto place to go when you're bored, which leads to...
2.) The finicky nature of link sites: You know the sites, the BuzzFeeds and IamBoreds of the world. It's interesting when it's just a random video that's pretty fun, they're quick to put it up. However as soon as you try to follow it up, they see you as trying to use them as a promotion tool... Which is, basically, what they are in the first place. They need links, they need content, but will only take it to a certain point. If I was trying to sell a product, I could understand a "No Free Advertising" policy, but I'm just trying to get people to watch a kid shoot fireballs that set a man's jacket on fire.
Of course, with the link sites comes the...
3.) The Rebranders. Some sites will feature your video, but host it on their site and with their logo. So people are seeing it, but you're not getting the hits that you deserve and it looks like they produced it. We've found a site doing that and just aren't really sure what to do. Yes, they've given us some eyeballs, but they've basically hijacked it. I'm told we can get a free t-shirt by contacting them. I guess the desire for free advertising goes both ways.
There's a lot of difficulties in the viral process. I've started to read up on the process more. Granted, it's not something I really want to be pursuing for a while, but it's an interesting world and interesting process behind it all.
So of course when a video that I co-directed with Thomas Humphreys starts to go viral (go to 3:25)... I can't help but try to push it along, get it out there. Being on the other side of the viral video gives an interesting perspective on the whole situation - it's hard to get stuff out there. A complete uphill struggle if you're trying to get things moving. I think now that we're trying to push the video that it's slowing down the viral progression. When we didn't do anything, it caught on.
The irony of the situation is that the video that we always felt had the most potential to go viral, to spread, to be a joy in people's lives - Beastmaster, Jr - has never caught on. Powder 2: Powder 2 The People had a limited scope and took off to a limited degree - people got it or they didn't, I Love You, Jean Claude (which, funnily enough, is a title that none of the websites featuring it has used) has the sort of pop-culture baiting that people love, so I can see it's spreading around. The Steve Wiebe "Don't Talk" trailer has a celebrated icon in the Donkey Kong world (I'm not making that up) doing his thing. Beastmaster is just family friendly fun, has some pop culture, even has a celebrity cameo, and, I think, is a really good video. But so far it sits at around seven thousand hits on YouTube.
Now, I have to point out, my life doesn't revolve around YouTube hits. I had this conversation with a friend of mine who put it simply - "They're not your audience, Nick. Don't worry about them." He's right, of course, but... with these videos, I kind of feel they are in some little way. Long term, wide scope of things, yeah, it's not important, but I would like for people to see these videos. A lot of work went into them, and they're better than somebody's crappy Batman fan film.
So, with our JCVD video getting attention, we're trying to segue that attention to Beastmaster, which stars the same kid, Eli, who's becoming a pretty great actor. (Although, when we asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said that he'd like to act in movies. I feel bad about sending him towards this difficult life.) So, you'd think that people who liked one video would be willing to check out the next, right? Well... it's not quite so easy. Here's the challenges we're running into:
1.) Time - As we all know it's hard to get your friends to sit down and watch anything that you ask them to. I still have friends who haven't started on Mad Men despite hearing me talk about it endlessly. I'm the same way - I've been told about some movies that I know that I would love that I just haven't gotten around to for whatever reason. It's difficult to get a friend to watch something - getting a stranger to see something is nigh-on impossible.
Now that said, this is the internet, which has become the de-facto place to go when you're bored, which leads to...
2.) The finicky nature of link sites: You know the sites, the BuzzFeeds and IamBoreds of the world. It's interesting when it's just a random video that's pretty fun, they're quick to put it up. However as soon as you try to follow it up, they see you as trying to use them as a promotion tool... Which is, basically, what they are in the first place. They need links, they need content, but will only take it to a certain point. If I was trying to sell a product, I could understand a "No Free Advertising" policy, but I'm just trying to get people to watch a kid shoot fireballs that set a man's jacket on fire.
Of course, with the link sites comes the...
3.) The Rebranders. Some sites will feature your video, but host it on their site and with their logo. So people are seeing it, but you're not getting the hits that you deserve and it looks like they produced it. We've found a site doing that and just aren't really sure what to do. Yes, they've given us some eyeballs, but they've basically hijacked it. I'm told we can get a free t-shirt by contacting them. I guess the desire for free advertising goes both ways.
There's a lot of difficulties in the viral process. I've started to read up on the process more. Granted, it's not something I really want to be pursuing for a while, but it's an interesting world and interesting process behind it all.