New Blog: The Stairs

I'm not abandoning "from my POV" but I've started a new blog called "The Stairs" with some colleagues about being a young women in the film industry.  I'll be writing my film reviews over there from now on, but I'll still post photos, articles on media topics, and the occasional rant and rave over here.

Check our my latest post at "The Stairs" a profile of director/actress/writer Lena Dunham: http://thestairscwe.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/profile-lena-dunham-directoractresswriter/

We Dream Together 2013

This project is still in the works, but some of my friends and colleagues have banded together to help form the We Dream Together 2013 collective.  We are a group of Americans who want to do anything we can to help pass the Dream Act in the year 2013.  We are starting out with a campaign to help people understand the issue and to put them in the shoes of an undocumented young person trying to pursue an education and her American Dream.  We have launched our fledgling group with a Facebook page to help gather supporters and we posted our logo today, designed by Venti Hristova.  It's very exciting to be part of something that just spontaneously came together like this.  Can't wait to share our first clip with everyone.  Check out the page and our new logo: http://www.facebook.com/WeDreamTogether2013.

Netflix: The Big Flip Flop

So Netflix has abandoned the Qwikster plan for now.  But I still am not sure we are keeping our subscription.  The whole thing is priced inefficiently if you want to have both services and the reason is noted in this New York Times Blog Article : Netflix, in Reversal, Will Keep Its Services Together: 

"Netflix said it never actually separated the services or started Qwikster. But the planned breakup was rooted in Mr. Hastings’ belief that DVDs and online streams have different cost structures and different consumer demographics."  Hastings couldn't be more wrong in terms of the consumer demographics.  The public outcry at the planned breakup has proved there is a significant overlap between people who consume DVDs/blu-rays and those who consume streaming content.  And this, for the most part, is created by the fact that their streaming library is still not as extensive as their DVD library.  Without this problem, he would likely be correct.  I don't know what the cost structures are for Netflix for the two different services, but I know I'd be willing to pay more for streaming than I currently do if I could be guaranteed HD streaming of every title in the DVD library.  Alas, I think it's the studios and media conglomerates that stand in the way of that.  They would rather sell DVDs than streaming rights it seems.  This will obviously evolve, but these media behemoths move and change slowly and Netflix just got a little too impatient for their own good.

More Commentary, interesting point of view from Popular Science:

Forbes: Netflix Did the Right Thing
Popular Science: We Should Forgive Netflix—But Maybe Netflix Shouldn't Forgive Us

"Restrepo" Co-Director Tim Hetherington Killed in Libya

Tim Hetherington, co-director of the documentary film Restrepo, was killed today in Libya during an explosion that killed another photo-journalist and injured several others.  Hetherington's photos have a fine art quality to them, bringing an aestheticism to chaos.  I have heard people critique the notion of making decay and despair look beautiful, but I think in many cases he brought a humanity to his subjects by photographing them in this way.  He also used his style to create contrast that is poignant and sometimes achingly sad.

It is not surprising that he was killed in the field, considering that he frequented the world's battle grounds, documenting the human suffering he encountered there.  However, it is even more tragic to lose a principled journalist whose stated purpose was to document the reality on the ground, without being tainted by politics.  This is the spirit of journalism that media needs.

Stay tuned for a review of Hetherington and Sebastian Junger's film Restrepo about American soldiers defending an observation post in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley.
Below is more of Hetherington's work that can be found on his site.

LA Times: "Libya blast kills photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros"
Vanity Fair: "Tim Hetherington, 40, Killed in Libya"
The Atlantic: "Tim Hetherington in Sierra Leone"
Tim Hetherington's Website

News and Media Part 3: Good Night and Good Luck

As part of my series on the state and future of media and news reporting, I’d love to add a plug for George Clooney’s 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck. If you haven’t seen it, you should. The film tells the story of CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow’s battle against Senator McCarthy and his witch-hunt in the 1950’s. 

Besides being lit meticulously and filmed beautifully, its message is clear and compelling: do not let fear and cowardice shout down the truth. An interesting message for a film that looks a bit like a polished film noir, with low light shots and interesting angles.  Films noir, the stories of the human condition, our unfailing ability to sabotage our own happiness, inevitably ensuring we are evicted from the garden; seem at once so close and so far from  Clooney's story of the height of honorable journalism ethics. This story probably the only thing on this earth that can make me seem nostalgic for the 1950’s. 

It begs the question, what has happened that has caused the state of journalism to be so far from the right and honorable these days. The shattering of our societal consensus has certainly contributed to the fall in honor and respect held by the public for those who report the news, but they have also brought about their own downfall. In the 1950’s, disseminators of news sources were much more highly respected and people were much less skeptical. Now we take it for granted that there are many sides to the story and we only ever hear one. Not only that, but often there is no attempt at all to either tell the truth or even pretend to be unbiased. Commentary now passes for news. One wonders where this sense of duty to fight to show the public the truth has gone. Perhaps we no longer care to know it. Or are we all so jaded that we think there is nothing good and honorable in this world for which to take a stand anymore? But what is truth? We are exposed to so many different viewpoints now, that maybe we are of the mind that there is no absolute truth, and reality is not so immutable as it once seemed.

Previous Posts in News and Media:
News and Media Part 2: LA Times' "Ink Spots" Spot
News and Media Part 1: Review of Dennis McDougal's "Privileged Son"

News and Media Part 2: LA Times' "Ink Spots" Spot

I remember see this spot and thinking it was graphically really cool.  I actually really like all their print ads with the ink spot motif as well.  I think using the ink evokes that feeling of  realized creativity  and accomplishment that a newspaper represents.  Something has been created and you can hold it in your hand.  To me this spot tries to say, not only is the LA Times relevant to Angelenos, but it is a work of art and scholarship.

LA Times "Ink Spot" from Süperfad on Vimeo.

Previous Posts in News and Media:
News and Media Part 1: Review of Dennis McDougal's "Privileged Son"

News and Media Part 1: Review of Dennis McDougal's "Privileged Son"

Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty the Micheneresque history of the LA Times written by former LA Times journalist Dennis McDougal is enlightening and an entertaining read.  The book traces the story of the Los Angeles Times and the powerful family that owned it for over a century until its sale the Tribune Company in 2000.  The dynasty that used its power, wealth, and influence to control the City of Los Angeles and its environs for nearly half a century was founded by staunchly anti-union newspaperman General Harrison Gray Otis and passed on to his acquisitive son-in-law with a rapaciousness that complemented his Protestant work ethic, Harry Chandler, the inspiration for Robert Towne's character Noah Cross in Chinatown.  The book is very well written and much less sugar-coated, apparently, than numerous histories of the Times that have preceded it.  For a resident of Los Angeles, I consider it no less than required reading if one wishes to understand this sprawling megapolis.  So much becomes clear; just by understanding a detailed history of the Chandler family financial interests, one can trace the development or lack thereof of numerous components of this fair city including the LADWP, the LAPD, public transit, urban sprawl, the aerospace industry, the ports...  The Chandlers had a hand in almost everything.

While the intrigue and corruption make for an interesting read, one through-line that appealed to me was the development of the Times as a paper and how it attempted to cover the news.  During the lifetime of General Otis and Harry Chandler, the paper was merely a tool for controlling local politicians and a mouthpiece for their virulent anti-union, arch-conservative politics.  Even with the control of the paper passing to Harry's son Norman, the paper remained a "Republican" paper.  It was not until Norman's son Otis took control of the paper in 1960 that the Los Angeles Times attempted to emulate the New York Times in terms of quality.  Intensely competitive, Otis Chandler wanted to have a good product and to him that meant critical recognition.  Otis wanted Pulitzers and  he wanted to beat the New York Times and for that he had to allow his paper to become a more "neutral" observer of society, and spend a lot more money hiring better reporters, comic artists, and opiners.  This brings up the questions of what  approach makes a paper "good," what sells, and what, if any, is the duty of journalists and publishers in publishing the news?

The 20th century saw a development of a set of codified journalism ethics that rely on objectivity and the public's right to know.  However, with the newspaper business seemingly in trouble, it has brought into the public debate the questions above as well as those of "why are newspapers failing?" and "what will be the vehicles and platforms of news and media consumption in the future?"  In a series of articles I intend to explore a number of these issues and at the risk of sounding like a media studies syllabus, I hope to delve into the following topics: the moral and civic "duty" of journalists, centrism vs. objectivity, and the fate of newspapers and future consumption platforms.

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:

"The Sing-Off" and the future of media

For the most part, NBC produced a piece of schmaltzy nonsense, but the highlight of this mini-series was the number of extremely talented young (and older) people that were thrust upon the national consciousness.  A cleverly laid out mini-series, “The Sing-Off” chose a shorter format that would minimize DVR usage, thus maximizing eyeballs on ads, while maintaining the public interest in A capella music throughout the duration of the series.  With one hour shows on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday during the third week of December, followed by a live two-hour finale the following Monday, it was just enough exposure to whip up interest in the Idol-style competition show, without losing people over a long season, which an A capella only competition show probably could not support.  With anticipation running high about the live finale, fewer people would pre-record it, because the whole point was to find out who would win the $100,000 grand prize and Sony recording contract.  Would it be Voices of Lee, the Christian college co-eds, led by future R&B star Candace?  Or the Beelzebubs, the wildly entertaining and charismatic group of jokers from Tufts University?  Or would it be Nota, the soulful group with Peurto Rican flair?

In the end Nota prevails and probably rightfully so, considering the ultimate prize was a recording contract, not a tour.  While the Beezelbubs were entertaining, Nota was the only group that could possible get me to buy a cd.

NBC, for some reason, which doesn’t really make sense to me, decided to pull down its Sing-Off Channel from YouTube today, leaving fans completely dependent on other YouTube channels for the songs.  I guess they want to redirect traffic back to their site to watch their pieces of shows with all the commercials.  Very clever, but really irritating because when the judges talk, you mostly want to shoot yourself in the head.  The only interesting part is the singing.  They should pretty much just cut out the other stuff and keep the songs, bookended with commercials if that’s how it needs to be.

This brings back the question that is constantly on my mind, as someone who hopes to create media content one day: what is the format of the future and who is going to pay for it?  Typically it’s been advertisers who pay for most content.  They consumer pays for some things: theatrical movies, dvds, cds, and some for cable, but most of this is all underwritten by advertisers.  This is basically the case for most of the media we consume, even though we pay a nominal fee for it, we rarely really pay for the whole cost of its production, be it newspapers, magazines, or televisions shows.  The consumer has become used to voraciously consuming media often without paying a dime.  Particularly my generation, weened on Napster and graduating to Limewire and BitTorrent, we thought nothing of downloading any song, television, or movie on a whim.  Our motto was search and ye shall find.  Inconvenient PR laws slowed us down, but we are creatures of innovation and most young computer savvy people can still find most mainstream media if they look hard enough.  Besides that, there is now a wealth of legally free entertainment to be had on the web, much of it hosted on sites that are now also using an advertising based model to turn a profit (i.e. YouTube).  If the true cost of producing media were passed on to the consumer, in many cases they would rebel. 

That said, certain formats do make a lot of money, particularly films, merely from selling to consumers.  Let’s take “Avatar” for instance.  While IMDB claims they had a budget of $230 million, it’s widely rumored to have cost over $300 million to produce.  After one weekend, it has already grossed $238.5 million worldwide, well on track to turn a huge profit for Twentieth Century-Fox and James Cameron, king of the box-office mega movie.  Besides the massive amount of money they will make in ticket and dvd sales, Avatar will capitalize on toy sales, video games, and various other types of merchandise.  To maximize marketing dollars they have even teamed up with McDonalds to advertise the Big Mac and the movie at the same time.

While that’s all well and good for films like “Avatar” the rest of us are typically scrambling for funding and most likely not making even close to a profit in the end with just consumer contributions.  Most films lose money...  With a society obsessed with consumption, advertising underwrites everything from sports teams to charity events to media production.  But at what cost?  The biggest concern for me with media underwriting is in the category of news.  This is the area that one feels should be free of outside influence and possible sources of inappropriate restraint, but how can that truly be possible?  It’s difficult enough for news sources today to be unbiased when there are so many choices the consumer can chose whatever newspaper or network or blog that echoes their own opinion.  The temptation to fall into a political niche and preserve a core audience is strong, but that’s another can of worms entirely.  No logic in the world can convince me that news sources underwritten by sponsors can ever truly be objective.