Crowdfunding

So I have stumbled onto the concept of crowdfunding recently.  I find myself again, talking about how media will be funded in the future.  Could crowdfunding be the answer?  Here's how it works: Traditionally, journalists, freelance or not, would pitch their pieces or be assigned them by editors of publications, who would then pay for the costs of doing the reporting.  However, as I'm pretty sure the whole world is aware of now, newspapers are not doing well.  Losing ad revenue because of the poor economy, is compounded by lower circulation numbers due to free online formats.  With the current model failing a lot of people, journalists have begun to use online networks to raise small amounts of money from a large group of people for their projects.  This has the effect of somewhat "democratizing" journalism, allowing people to choose what articles are written, whether that is a good thing is up for debate.  On the one hand, people can demand that journalists cover topics that large institutions such as newspapers or news networks might avoid because the have too much to lose.  On the other, it further polarizes society as groups of like-minded people cluster around ideas and journalists who are willing to support them, until journalism completely descends into a mere exercise of self-reaffirmation.  Whether it's good or bad or somewhere in between, it's scalability has yet to be seen.  If you want to know more about the details of crowdfunding, here is a really good article from MediaShift. There are numerous sites that act as hubs to help writers and filmmakers find funders such as:

Iconic Portaits

Nice collection: http://theimpossiblecool.tumblr.com/
A good resource.  There are a lot more on the site, but these are my favorites.
McQueen
















Davis

Cash

Gainsbourg

Kerouac

Avedon

Avatar: the verdict

So I broke down and went to see Avatar this weekend in IMAX 3D.  Spared no expense, got tickets a week in advance in the middle of the theater.  I was ready to be impressed by stunning visuals.  I knew the story was going to suck, so I wasn’t too disappointed with it.  The dialogue was unbearably predictable, but that was to be expected too.  The worst part was that I was expecting it to look amazing and while it looked pretty cool, it just wasn’t really that great.  I think the problem with Avatar is that basically the entire movie is CGI, even the landscape.  For me, the Lord of the Rings trilogy are the hallmark epic fantasy world adventure films.  The landscapes of those films are stunning, but also massive and immediate.  They draw you into a world of fantasy, something which Avatar's computer generated floating mountains never did.  I think what Peter Jackson had that James Cameron didn’t have was the spectacularly beautiful real backdrop of New Zealand upon which to build his world.  Another problem with Avatar is that while the Pandoran natives the Na’vi are all played by humans, it still like trying to connect with a cartoon character, that isn’t even in human form.  The animation is a natural barrier between us and the character, no matter how big their eyes are.  I think the moral of the story here is, it's still better to use CGI sparingly and interspersed with in-camera action and effects because no computer-generated, jellyfish-like floating seeds or glow-in-the-dark plants that man can imagine, can look as beautiful as what nature has already created.

Cameron vs. Jackson

A Town Called Panic (Panique Au Village)

On the must see list for sure is A Town Called Panic (Panique Au Village), the stop-animation film currently playing at limited engagements across the country.  I saw a screening at AFI in LA (which gave out all their tickets for free for all their films.  Here’s hoping they do the same next time.)  An official selection at Cannes, the film is the creation of Belgian animators Stephane Aubier and Vincent Patar.  Aubier and Patar created a painstakingly detailed world of the delightfully absurd.  Using what appears to be a collection of old-fashioned small plastic toys as inspiration, Aubier and Patar’s main characters are a cowboy, a horse, and an Indian, and a farmer, his wife, and their farm animals.
Quirky and hilarious, the film follows the antics of Cheval (Horse), Cowboy, and Indien as they attempt to defeat the devious sea creatures that have begun to rob their bucolic, if bizarre, village (most notably of brick walls).  For a taste, check out some of the episodes (4-5 minutes each) from the series on Daily Motion.  Unlike the film, these episodes have no subtitles, but they are really unnecessary because the action on screen carries everything.  I picked some of my favorites, but there are 20 in all, scattered across the web on various video aggregator sites. 

Episode 1: “Le gateau” (The Cake)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvff9_panique-au-villagele-gateau_creation

Episode 13: “Le Grand Sommeil” (The Big Sleep)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1igb8_panique-au-village-le-grand-sommeil_creation

Episode 15: Dejeuner sur l’herbe (The Picnic)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x59xzo_panique-au-village-dejeuner-sur-lhe_fun

NY Times Magazine interview of the creators:

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/the-insiders-vincent-patar-and-stephane-aubier/

Avatar: To see or not to see

So the blockbuster of the hour:  still Avatar.  It’s all anyone talked about at lunch the first day back.  The graphics are supposed to be mind-blowing, incredible, but the story looks lame and played.  My boss, the most fidgety person in the world, said it completely drew him in and he was absorbed for the 162 minutes.  That’s the best recommendation I’ve heard for it frankly, considering it has melded its advertising with McDonald’s Big Mac.  A truly global marketing campaign, but is it really a film?  My boyfriend is playing the purist and hates computer generated graphics anyway, so he says “No way!  I’m boycotting just because it’s receiving so much credit for looking cool, without actually having a good story.”  Everyone else says “it’s worth it, but you have to see it in 3D” (the diehard VFX guys say IMAX is the only way to go).  I don’t know.  I know I will end up seeing it, just because I need to keep current, but it’s depressing that they spent 10 years making a movie and couldn’t come up with a story that is as fresh and original and the graphics are supposed to be.  Maybe I just need to see a different trailer... Oh well, on the other hand, if you spend 10 years making a movie, you better pick a timeless plot I guess, or it will be outdated before you’ve hardly begun.