In 1971, D.B. Cooper hijacked a plane and parachuted out with $200K in cash. And he’s never been found. Until now. This is the first interview with legendary hijacker D.B. Cooper.
Find out more about D.B. Cooper at Kick Ass Oregon History.
I always hear about people making six figures a year from YouTube. I know a few people who make good money because they’re in the Partner program and they get a larger cut because they consistently drive views. But if you’re not a YouTube Partner and you don’t consistently drive views then how much can you expect to make? I have no idea, but I looked up a couple of my top videos and thought I’d share my own experience.
Here’s a video I shot on my iPhone during a lunch break. At one point, it was a Featured video alongside a much more popular video, which brought the views up to 34,394. But the video only ended up earning $17.06, which comes out to .0004 per view.
This video is a scene from my last feature film, Did You Kiss Anyone? There’s a link to buy the video in the description (marketing!) but I can trace exactly one sale back to this clip. How much did I earn for almost 75,000 views? $10.58 or .0004 cents per view.
Okay, here’s a big one. This video has over 850,000 views total. It’s three seconds long and we filmed it as a joke in one take on a point and shoot camera. The reporting won’t let me go back to 2007, so I got a report for the most recent 654,341 views. $35.84. That’s .00005 cents per view (note the extra zero).
I’m posting these for transparency, not because I’m trying to discourage anyone or call out Google. If you want to make money from YouTube, go read their Creator Playbook and try to become a YouTube Partner.
Here’s a first look at Phrenic, the app series/storyworld/transmedia/BBQ project I’ve been working on. (Okay, there is no barbeque. Three stars.) Hoping to have it launched by Halloween (pray to app store approval gods).
I love that I can go for a walk at lunch and watch two TV shows filming within two blocks of each other. All the trucks and lights mean a lot of Oregonians at work.
Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen at City Hall on set of Portlandia
Some giant lights on cranes. Probably to make it look more sunshiney inside.
David Giuntoli and Russell Hornsby filming Grimm
Earlier this week, a few people on Twitter were freaking about the fact that freshmen entering college this year were born after Kurt Cobain killed himself. And….? Is it supposed to remind us that time has passed and continues to pass? Is it supposed to make anyone who remembers Nirvana’s music feel old?
If I were going into college this year, my thought would be “Who the hell cares?”
I’ve never embraced the term Generation X (even though I enjoyed the novel by the same name and have read most Douglas Coupland books). But I do have many of the symptoms of Gen X: a decades long crush on Winona Ryder, memories of an Atari 2600 addiction, watching Raiders and Empire in a theater, listening to more grunge music than I care to admit, watching Challenger blow up while teachers cried at school. You’ve got a cultural touchstone? I remember that too! We share that! Yay!
Here’s what I remember more vividly: Baby Boomers forcing their nostalgia down my throat. They were the age I am now, endlessly talking about how historically important their Summer of Love was, declaring the music of their youth the best ever, inflating the relevance of memories they couldn’t let go of. Memories they wallowed in because their ’60s dreams died in the ’80s. “I saw a Dead Header sticker on a Cadillac… Don’t look back, you can never look back.” Not only did Baby Boomers look back, they made EVERYONE look back with them.
Generation X, we are now at the age where we need to be reminded to not look back. Let’s not get nostalgic and pretend our memories have any cultural value to anyone other than ourselves. The world now is amazing compared to then. It’s possible to do practically anything you want to do: publish books, make movies, create music, animate, design, pickle things (?), communicate with people in other cultures. Don’t start with the “Yeah, but before everyone had a cell phone people would–” SHHHH. Stop it! No one cares!
And if you’re a Millennial… first stop calling yourself a Millennial. I know many of you are amazingly gifted and embrace all the awesomeness of the time you’re living in, while some of you are too busy declaring your innate specialness because you’re a Digital Native, as if that’s a thing that even matters in 2012. I just want to warn you that you share a lot of traits with Baby Boomers when it comes to thinking the world revolves around you. So set a reminder to not be nostalgic in the future.
To all people, regardless of when you were born, please don’t be nostalgic. Nostalgia seems harmless but it’s toxic and it makes you less interesting. And if you’re wondering if this rant is just a reminder/warning to myself, I can assure you it is.
A few months ago, I started selling direct downloads of my movie “Did You Kiss Anyone?” It seems like a lot of filmmakers are considering this option but don’t know how to do it for themselves or rely on third-party platforms that take a big cut of their profits, so I thought I’d write a quick guide to setting it up. I’m using WordPress, PayPal, and Amazon Web Services S3. I’m going to link to a lot of sites/services here but none of these are affiliate/sponsored links.
Okay, you want to sell your movie like Louis CK? Here’s how….
Here are the things you’ll need:
If you’re going to sell your movie, it’s a good idea to make sure it will work on as many devices and operating systems as possible. Right now, your best bet is an MP4 file. I used the resolution 1280 x 720 because it’s technically HD and isn’t as large a file to download as 1920 x 1080. (My 96 minute feature is 1.75 GB. I think it’s best to keep a download under 2 GB.)
You should be able to export an MP4 from your editing software (Premiere, Final Cut, etc). Or you can encode an MP4 using a program like HandBrake or VLC. (I love HandBrake!)
I try to give the file a clear name so when someone downloads it, they’ll remember what it is. Avoid acronyms and spaces, use underscores. For example, instead of DYKA-HD-1280 x 720.mp4, use Did_You_Kiss_Anyone.mp4
Once you have the MP4 file encoded, you’ll need to transfer it to your web host or to a third-party cloud storage company like Dropbox or Amazon Web Services S3.
Easy Digital Downloads is a free plugin for WordPress. This will make it easy for you to create a shopping cart environment on your WordPress site and deliver downloadable files to your customers who have paid via PayPal. If you’ve just started your WordPress site and only plan to use it to sell downloads, EDD has designed free Themes as well. (If you like the EDD plugin, consider buying the developer a coffee!)
To install “Easy Digital Downloads,” log into your WordPress admin console and go to:
Go into the Downloads sections of your WordPress admin console and click Settings. There is a good YouTube tutorial and some official documentation, but here is what I did:
Go into the Downloads sections of your WordPress admin console and click Add New.
Go into the Downloads sections of your WordPress admin console and click Discount Codes.
I created two discount codes to test. One is a 100% discount and the other is 99% discount. I used the 100% discount code to check to make sure the emails are formatted correctly and that the download link works. Once that was squared away, I used the 99% discount code to check and make sure PayPal is working.
When you’re done testing, don’t forget to Deactivate or Delete the discount code.
You have different options when spamming informing your social networks…
Individual link: Each product has it’s own page, so you can send a link out to that specific movie:
http://mikevogel.com/downloads/did-you-kiss-anyone-digital-download-mp4-hd/
Link to all downloads: Or you can send people to all of your downloads, which show up on a /downloads page:
http://mikevogel.com/downloads
Widgets: It’s also important to keep links to your downloads present on your site. I added a link to my Downloads page on a Widget, so it’s available on any page. I also used the “Downloads Cart” Widget that comes installed with Easy Digital Downloads to add a shopping cart type presence in case someone wants to navigate to other products.
Shortcodes: Every product you create has a shortcode that can be found in your WordPress admin console under the All Downloads page or on each individual product. It will look something like this (but in brackets):
purchase_link id=”2560″ text=”Buy: The Waiting List” style=”button” color=”orange”
When a shortcode is pasted anywhere on your site, it looks like this (shameless plug!):
You can also use Discount Codes to promote your movie. Since my movie has “kiss” in the title, I discounted it on Valentine’s day so it would only cost $2.14. You can also set limits on the number of times a discount code can be used, so if you want to give away 5 copies or give a 25% discount on the weekend, you can easily do that.
Remember to give people an easy way to contact you in case things go wrong. And reply quickly if there’s an issue. I make sure they know they can reply to their confirmation email, and I have my Contact info on my website.
If you’re reading this, you probably took a DIY approach to making your movie. Don’t just hand that over to a third-party platform and give them 30% of your earnings (possibly tempting you to raise your price to absorb that loss) when you have all the tools to do it yourself. You made your movie, now go sell it. Make it easy for people to buy it. Cool (and famous, established) people like Louis CK are doing this. It’s okay to try and do something awesome too.
Before I made movies, I always thought of festivals as a gateway to having the Weinsteins pluck my movie from obscurity before starting their aggressive Oscar campaign on my behalf. But now I see them as an opportunity to show my movie to an audience and any time I can show my movies to an audience, I feel very appreciative. Unless your film is in one of the top five festivals, there will be no Weinsteins there, no matter how many all-caps, self-inflating press releases you send.
That’s totally okay because the people who attend film festivals really love movies. Why else would you show up to watch a bunch of films you’ve probably never heard of unless you were the type of person who loved to discover new movies? At a time in cinematic history where they’re making an ALF movie and continually rebooting superhero franchises, it’s nice to know some people still take risks when going to the movies. If you’ve ever attended a film festival, you are OK in my book. If you’ve ever organized a film festival, please keep doing it. I hate paying your entry fees, but I’d hate it more if you didn’t exist.
So… my second movie, Did You Kiss Anyone?, is playing at the Columbia Gorge International Film Festival on August 18th, 2012 at 6pm. It’s in Vancouver. This will be the first time the movie has ever been shown in HD. Ever. Oh, and the whole festival is FREE! And there’s some sort of after party with beverages and possibly salty snacks.
Here’s the trailer, which (for me) plays like a moving yearbook of memories of the 13 months we spent filming it. We showed it at the Bagdad and the Salem Film Festival and people really liked it, so please come and see it if you’re in the Portland/Vancouver area!
I always love summer in Oregon. Here are a few shots from summer 2012.
Killed some time at Duniway elementary while my daughter had soccer practice. This seemed regulation, but I think it might be a few inches shy. I’ll be going back with a tape measure…
I was taking a quick flight from Portland to San Jose and when I got to the airport, I realized my flight was delayed and I had two hours to kill. I decided to try and shoot and edit a little movie on my phone and upload it before leaving (thanks free WiFi at PDX). I asked Twitter for suggestions, and Twitter never disappoints in situations like these…
@MikeVogelCom “Frisked in Love” “Shoes Off, Hearts Broken”
— Amanda Lin Costa (@TheLoneOlive) July 4, 2012
@MikeVogelCom A shot for shot remake of The Terminal. Am I too late?
— Brandon Doughan (@BrandonDoughan) July 4, 2012
@MikeVogelCom A large wedding of ethnic, cheerful people who have quirks and racist tendencies
— You’ve been… (@Tuckerstruck) July 4, 2012
Gum chewers in airports? MT @MikeVogelCom: My plane leaves in two hours. I’m going to try and make a movie in that time. Ideas?
— Polly (@QMpolly) July 4, 2012
I decided to work gum into the movie because I like chewing gum.
One thing I liked about making a movie this way is that you have to use your limitations to your advantage. Just like regular filmmaking. I balanced my phone on the railing of the people mover (the flat escalators) and used it for a dolly shot. There were empty gates where I was able to set my phone up and walk away from it. I had to balance my phone on my bag and wrap a strap around it for the clip where I unwrap my gum.
Another limitation was my phone’s battery. It was draining fast and I didn’t have a charger with me, knowing there was one where I was going. My fear was shooting too much, or editing too long, would cause the battery to die and the upload to fail. And part of this exercise was getting it all edited and uploaded before the plane took off.
I ended up getting the movie uploaded before my flight took off, but my phone was dead when I arrived. It worked hard enough for one night.