"Some little fat girl in Ohio is going to make a beautiful movie with her father's camcorder...."

— Francis Ford Coppola,
Hearts of Darkness

"Film will only become art when the materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper."

— Jean Cocteau

IN A WORLD OF FRAGMENTING MARKETS...
IN A TIME OF GREAT UPHEAVAL AND DISMAY...
IN A THEATER OF EMPTY SEATS...
AN AUDIENCE FINDS A NEW CHANNEL...
A F T E R   T H E   B I G   S T U D I O S

Okay, sure, it's a little premature to be eulogizing the Hollywood system but it's a FACT the Old Way is certainly closer to the end than the beginning.

The recent marketing-driven Hollywood hubbub over the "day-and-date" model (simultaneous distribution via theaters, DVD and cable) of Steven Soderbergh's low-budget flick Bubble has many media analysts' web columns filled with the stink of entrail speculation about the whole idea's impact for the future of Hollywood. Gotta love the free press gimmick. Good job, who cares, I'll have a friend download it from USENET next Thursday.

What's really interesting and potentially threatening to the Old Guard is the growing trend of the free public online video market as demonstrated by You Tube and Google Video. Most likely, you've already been to these sites a couple of times in the past few months so I don't need to flesh-out what their business models might be. You already know. Now that's good marketing.

If by some fluke, however, you've missed all the recent video meming flying around emails and blogs, here's a quick catch-up lesson plan:

• Dancing Man - my hero
• Hey by the Pixies
• Poop Today?
• Tom Kills Oprah
• I Want It That Way by BSB
• Florence Oregon News Station 2

Okay, so you get the idea and there are certainly possibilities. As the tools for movie making becoming cheaper and better and users more sophisticated by the day, some real talent may start to boil-up out of the muck. Kind of reminds you of the Hollywood system.

The recently released PC game "The Movies" offers up a nice entertainment diversion and movie-making engine. The game might not produce the next Magnolia but it will certainly allow its players to rack up some half-honest film production experience and techniques. Check out a few of the movie shorts that have been produced so far with "The Movies". At some future date, some famous directors will point back to this game as why they wanted to make movies. They could do it themselves.

The biggest success of this do-it-without-the-studio-yokels trend belongs to the Star Wars fan film REVELATIONS, which has recorded over 3 million downloads and counting. Scripted, directed, acted and special effected just about as well as any of the official Episodes I, II or III Star Wars prequels, it makes you wonder what-the-heck George Lucas wasted all his money and vast talent pool on for those wet-mop productions. The REVELATIONS team pulled-off a half-decent 40-minute Star Wars movie for about $20K with just over 200 people using readily available software and computers. REVELATIONS director Shane Felux didn't have much access and less use for the Hollywood system, so he navigated around it. As he puts it:

"To hell with studios, if you don't see a good thing and realize what is going on here then just get the hell out of my way because I'm going to do it myself."

And he did. Check out Felux's blog to find out what he's planning next. Lucas isn't interested, he's got Indy 4 to ruin.

The break-through run-away smash hit hasn't been released yet, but it's just a matter of time before some true talent's homegrown start-up inspires media web columns to announce the impending doom, no for real this time, of the Hollywood system. It might not be the End Times for Hollywood, it can adjust to meet the market, but a realignment of the system is on its way.

And let's not forget the non-studio Los Angeles-based digital filmmaking collectives. SoCal Film Group, whose motto is aptly "Film Fast, Film Well, Film Often", delivers product on the fringes of the Big Studio's sphere-of-influence while using digital filmmaking technology for rapid production and release. With a modest investment in the right digital equipment and a lot of honest effort, these groups' relatively short production schedules can build an amazing body of work over months instead of years. Then using these works as marketing tools, getting noticed by those greenlighters in The Biz is just a matter of well-designed self-promotion. These future stars will have the practical experience and learned lessons of shoe-string budget limitations while employing the enormous power of modern digital technology that their elders could only fantasize about. Their experience will help force the coming change and save Hollywood.

And it's coming soon to some kind of screen near you.

Movies | Online Distribution | Gaming

Delivered unto you by Grouchogandhi precisely at 11:31:00 PM

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PKD's Out-of-Book Experiences

If there's one person who best approximates the folly of the FACT phenomenon, it's science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. Everything he wrote was Fictitious And Completely True.

Dick's 40+ novels and 1 million+ words of short stories uniquely envisioned the possibilites and horrors of future worlds full of techno-grit, depressed characters and shifting realities while revealing our modern world as a maze of twisty passages, all-alike. Reading Dick's fiction today seems strikingly like an Opinion Page Letter-to-the-Editor on current events and issues rather than some far-off vision of future imaginings.

Dick's stories nail us right to our virtual walls: the future's not what it used to be. The future is now. Our current world of rapid-fire IM relationships, enhancement pills, corporate lifestyle marketing and menus of instant reality-tunnel filtering fit well within Dick's pages. Robert Silverberg — like Dick, he's also a prolific Hugo Award-winning science fiction author — finds the same scenerio to be true in his article Reflections: The Days of Perky Vivienne:

At the core of [Dick's] thinking was an astonishingly keen understanding of the real world he lived in — the world of the United States, subsection California, between 1928 and 1982 — and it was because he had such powerful insight into the reality around him that he was able to perform with such great imaginative force one of the primary jobs of the science fiction writer, which is to project present-day reality into a portrayal of worlds to come.

To further his point, Silverberg finds great amusement and Dickian flavor in a new cellphone product being marketed by a Hong Kong company:

A case in point is the announcement last spring that a Hong Kong company, Artificial Life, Inc. — what a Dickian name! — is about to provide the lonely men of this world with a virtual girlfriend named Vivienne, who can be accessed via cellphone for a basic monthly fee of six dollars. If you sign up for Vivienne’s friendship, she will chat with you about matters of love and romance or almost anything else you might want to discuss, and you will be able to buy her virtual flowers and chocolates, take her to the movies, even — beautifully creepy Dickian touch — marry her. (Which will get you a virtual mother-in-law who will call you in the middle of the night to find out whether you’re treating her little girl the right way.)

Network this product with a Fleshlight and what more could a fella ask for? How far off can "The Days of Perky Pat" be? Soon enough we'll be subscribing to the "mood organs" of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Sign me up!

For Dick, these ideas were all too obvious. For us, they're novelties becoming common day subscription-based appliances.

Welcome to PKD's World where The Empire Never Ended.

Learn More:
Philip K. Dick - Official Site
The Quasi-Official Robert Silverberg Web Site

Science Fiction | Philip K Dick | Robert Silverberg

Delivered unto you by Grouchogandhi precisely at 8:23:00 PM

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FACT: Dan Brown has sold more than 40 million copies of his The Da Vinci Code.

That's an amazing achievement, especially considering the esoteric nature of the book's premise: a conspiracy through history to suppress the Sacred Feminine. Now just the kind of fringe subject people are expected to flock to.

Either by plan or luck, Brown was able to distill from such Gnostic/Knights Templar/Freemasonry classics like Holy Blood, Holy Grail, The Templar Revelation and Born in Blood a huge untapped marketing demographic. Women who want to know they're a goddess. It makes sense after all. As women already know and aren't afraid to let you know, again and again, they're supposed to be worshipped and adored as divine sparks in humanity's endless night of profane masculinity. And, see, here comes along a book with an affirmation that proves it straight-up. Every Woman Is A Goddess. And supported by FACTs. Lots of them. One after another. With reference materials included even. Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon! More proof!

And moving on from this success, Brown is working his formulaic plot magick on the same genre but different focus: Freemasonry. Brown's The Solomon Key is whispered to be based upon that super-Masonic-designed city of Washington, DC. I bet the tourism board is just creaming in their pants in anticipation of setting up Solomon Key guided tours to all of the zillion Masonic must-see sites. Luckily, since it's DC-as-Masonic-Layout-City-Planning, they'll just have to rebrand the current guidebooks with a Masonic title for the expected crowds of housewives and families this is going to inspire.

After the publication of The Solomon Key, I can't wait to hear all the housewives and soccer moms going off about the Widow's Son, Hiram Abiff, the pillars of Boaz and Jachin on Solomon's Temple. It'll be like living in a third-rate Twilight Zone episode: A man finds himself in a world where everything he knew about the Lunatic Fringe is now mainstream culture. Starring Tom Hanks.

I'll make my bets now that Brown's next subject is likely to be based on the premise that an Internet company owned by modern day Cathars is organizing the world's information. Every man, woman and child is a search term.

But some of you may not be prepared. Let's get you up-to-date with Freemasonry and impress your friends, family and workmates: check out this must-read Masonic blog, The Burning Taper to become a Masonic scholar before The Solomon Key is published. Not to mention, it's a great way to pick-up Sacred Fems.

Speaking of which, if you missed the boat on that subject as well, Sacred Fems will get you caught up in anticipation of what ranting you'll hear around the office cooler once the movie version of The Da Vinci Code is released.

Marketing | Sacred Feminine | Freemasonry

Delivered unto you by Grouchogandhi precisely at 5:07:00 AM

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