Category: Opinion

Warner Bros. Turns A Kickstarter Success Story Into A Flaming Mess With Proprietary Platforms And DRM

We hate discussing failures. But dishing is a whole nuther thing. Big thanks to Techdirt for giving us the discussion to dish about. (That kinda makes sense, yeah?) Anyway:

by Mike Masnick

veronicamarsfrom the how-not-to-do-it dept

Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about a rather encouraging development in filmmaking, highlighting the story of Warner Bros. film studio working out a deal with the producer and actors of the popular Veronica Mars TV show, that if they could prove demand for a film via Kickstarter, Warner Bros. would fund the rest of the film. Basically, Warner Bros. had been unconvinced that there was enough demand for a movie to finance it upfront. But, with tools like Kickstarter today, you can prove demand upfront, taking away a big part of the risk. And that’s exactly what happened, as the project raised over the $2 million target very quickly, and eventually brought in $5.7 million. Part of what was interesting about this was it showed how movie studios could actually embrace crowdfunding as well, creating some interesting hybrid models that don’t always involve some studio head deciding what people will and won’t like.

The movie came out last week to very good reviews… but leave it to Warner Bros. to totally muck it up, screw over the goodwill from all those backers and scare people off from such future collaborations. That’s because one of the popular tiers promised supporters that they would get a digital download of the movie within days of it opening. But, of course, this is a major Hollywood studio, and due to their irrational fear of (oh noes!) “piracy” they had to lock things down completely. That means that backers were shunted off to a crappy and inconvenient service owned by Warner Bros called Flixster, which very few people use, and then forced to use Hollywood’s super hyped up but dreadful DRM known as UltraViolet. read article

Gerry Conway: The Ultimate Early Adopter

by Gerry Conway

beautifulsightI’m a radical technologist.

By this, I mean I love tech– all tech, any tech, indiscriminately. I’ve always been intrigued and often infatuated by each new gadget that promises to bring me a taste of that ever-receding tommowland of the mind, The Future. I am the ultimate, hopeless early-adopter. (Though not as much lately, I admit, as I was in my youth.)

In the early 1970s, I owned a ridiculously expensive Digital Watch that told the time in glowing red numerals when you pushed a button on the side. I owned a Texas Instruments handheld electronic calculator when professional accountants were still using the old type-and-crank manual machines. I wrote on an IBM Selectric when the only way to buy one was to make an appointment with a corporate salesman at the IBM office on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. I bought a Sony Betamax video recorder the week it went on sale. I was the first person in my family and among my group of friends to use an answering machine. (It drove my mother crazy; she never quite learned how to leave an impromptu message, and for a couple of months she was afraid to call me because she didn’t want to speak to a “robot.”) read article

Stereotyping: Lazy Writing or Necessary Evil?

THE GRINDER: THE GRINDER premieres this Fall on FOX. Pictured L-R: Rob Lowe and Fred Savage. ©2015 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Ray Mickshaw/FOX

by Diana Black

Stereotyping – Laziness or Necessity?

You’ve written ‘the great’ teleplay – an ensemble cast that’s sure to please everybody, a tight, compelling narrative arc, characters put through hell, the ‘flavor of the month’ genre – sounds great – more power to you, but how many of those beloved characters you’ve slaved over are stereotypes?  And if so, why do you deem them necessary – what purpose do they serve? read article

PEAKS AND VALLEYS: THE FINANCIAL REALITIES OF THE WRITER’S LIFE

Knowledge is power. But it may not make you rich. For that you need articles like this:

gunsandmoney

by Chuck Wendig

Two pieces of reading homework before we begin:

First up, the ever-smart Kameron Hurley — the Cold Equations that govern publishing. read article

How Twitter is warping your favorite TV shows

Here at TVWriter™ we like to look at the bright side. After all, if Twitter wasn’t up there on the interwebs with its denizens tweeting away their demands re how their favorite – and not so favorite – TV series should be written, directed, and acted (hey, nobody knows what to say about producing, you know?), somebody else would.

Alice Walker, however, has a different, darker perspective:

bird.shitby Alice Walker

The rise of social media has fundamentally altered the way viewers interact with shows. For decades, the only way a fan could express love for a TV show was through a P.O. Box. Now, fans can directly reach showrunners, writers, producers, and actors in the split-second it takes to send a tweet. read article