I made another movie that was shown at the Filmed By Bike festival! It’s sort of based on this craiglist Missed Connections where a guy fell in love with the woman who doored him.
I’ve been working on writing stories and scripts for Phrenic lately, but I realized some people have a hard time understanding what it is. It doesn’t help to say things like “It’s a transmedia app series where– wait, where are you going? Don’t walk away!”
So here’s a quick demo of Phrenic, which you can download on the App Store.
I’m getting closer to launching my transmedia project, Phrenic. The app is being reviewed by the App Store and I’ve got an idea in the works so people who aren’t on Apple devices can watch as well. My hope is to have a story I can continually add to in different ways over the course of the next year or longer. An interactive story here, a five episode video series there. I’m looking at some options for additional video games (there are three mini-games in the app). It’s an exciting project that allows me to be creative in many different ways.
And if you haven’t checked out Life Identical yet, please do, although it is vaguely spoiler-y.
Here are a few screenshots of the app…
I am filming another short for Filmed By Bike. It’s about someone who gets doored. It’s hard to storyboard in general, but I’m really terrible when I need to draw bikes and cars (and people). I can draw trees okay though.
This will be a movie you can see sometime in April.
I decided to start a new blog dedicated to transmedia. While working on Phrenic, I realized that there aren’t a lot of sites covering transmedia projects. My goal is to write about transmedia the way tech blogs cover startups or the way movie blogs cover new releases. I’ve got a few interviews lined up with transmedia producers as well as some other ideas in the mix. It was a lot of work in December, but I’m excited because I think transmedia is going to get big this year.
The first post is off to a good start and hopefully sets the tone. If you’re not really sure what I’m even talking about right now, I’m going to have a video explaining it soon. If transmedia is interesting or intriguing to you, head over to the site and follow it on Facebook or Twitter.
If you’ve got a transmedia project (or are working on one) let me know on the Submit page.
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.