Lest any of you think I’m going to populate the blog with repeatedly grim tales of people being sucky (as I have for a couple Wednesdays and this morning), I just wanted to highlight the Patton Oswalt interview I linked in last week’s post about film distribution. Really, if you are at all interested in his career or perspective on things (he is a tremendous film geek in addition to his other geekdoms), the hour…
Last Wednesday’s post about how some film distributors led to some discussion amongst friends on the Interwebs and elsewhere. One colleague who’s been a filmmaker and exhibitor pointed out how there are so many sticky problems with film distribution, it’s a difficult problem to handle — and there are definitely some issues with some of the smaller distributors. However, that made me think of how the major distributors engage in creative accounting that’s about as…
If you read last Wednesday’s post about standardization of suck that is the McDonald’s ice cream machine, you hopefully felt a little irritation — assuming you believe in truth, justice, and lovely intangibles. Well, alas, I have more fuel for the ire fire, which I have a special interest due to my connection to filmmaking and knowing many a fellow indie producer who is either in this position or about to be. Now, if you’re…
The podcast hills may soon be alive with the sound of Netflix. That’s what I’m gleaning from this Bloomberg article about the new Netflix executive in charge of podcasts. N’Jeri Eaton comes to Netflix by way of Apple and NPR. An award-winning storyteller, she has roots in documentary filmmaking, something near and dear to many a DC filmmaker. While that’s all cool, the big surprise from the article for me was that not only that…
Given the traffic some of my project management posts get, I figured I should get back to being wonky on Wednesdays or other days. I’ve recently rediscovered the Vlogbrothers, aka John and Hank Green, and have been cycling through their videos at a fast pace. That’s easy, because most of them are under 5 minutes and they contain some thought nuggets that fire the synapses in the most delightful way. So then I came across…
As one filmmaking colleague I know has mentioned, “Money isn’t an issue, it’s the issue.” And many creative endeavors rely on crowdfunding these days. Hence my previous post about the audio drama Apollyon (which I should mention I and the other cast & crew really do want to get funded to continue the story). As many of you may know, the audio theater troupe I run, Jabberwocky Audio Theater, has its shows start on broadcast…
It’s been six years since I re-launched my personal website, which evidently is the “iron” anniversary, hence good ol’ shellhead above. As I mentioned in last year’s blogiversary post, I was going to try and make this more annual and — especially because last year felt like at least five years — it felt right to do a post. So here are some highlights and personal favorites. Star Trek My series Crisis of Infinite Star…
In traditional project management, the last phase is closing. It means the project is accepted as ‘completed’ on some level of formality. Not only that, what with project managers loving to document things, they like to document ‘”lessons learned.” In other words, what will you do better next time? What might you try to avoid doing altogether? What definitely worked? While users of agile and lean frameworks may think of continuous improvement, a good concept…
When you talk with your filmmaking peers, it comes as no surprise they have always have a few filmmakers they follow closely, perhaps someone who isn’t necessarily a household name… or even necessarily an art house movie theater name. Michael Apted was one of those filmmakers for me. He died at the age of 79, earlier in January (I’m just getting to writing this post now). You can read obituaries and remembrances from the BBC,…
The events of last Wednesday are still dwelling on my mind, so it was nice to catch this article by Lia Kvatum in the Washington Post Magazine about an itinerant creative who’s connecting communities to their history through theater. It provides some much needed light and joy… and the notion that we can communicate with one another. Reading about how Ashley Hanson has been traveling to different communities and talking with the people reminds me…