Various and Sundry

Ranked Choice Voted First

My local primaries were not particularly interesting, but I found Maine’s primary elections very interesting to watch because they were using ranked-choice voting. What is ranked-choice voting, you ask? Why not explain it with dinosaurs? Or, you could look at this longer piece by CGP Grey: I like this because it also explains how ranked choice voting (here called “alternative vote/instant runoff voting”) is not the end-all, be-all panacea, yet has advantages over “first past…

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Producing

Increasingly, Netflix Prefers Its Shows Homemade

Netflix is spending billions of dollars each year on content, so –love ’em or hate ’em– it’s usually good to know what they’re up to. Adam Levy, over at the Motley Fool, has a piece that goes over Netflix’s drive to spend billions in creating original content is actually trying to save money in the long run (even if Fools don’t think Netflix is going to be truly “50% originals” as sometimes reported). For indie filmmakers, definitely check out…

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Writing

The Ever-Elusive Audience

We officially launched Jabberwocky Audio Theater on the broadcast airwaves yesterday. It was exciting. It took a lot of work to get to this point — and really, the main point of the work was to share these stories with people. But, as with all creative endeavors –heck, with any endeavors that depend on public reaction to thrive– the enduring question is: will enough people be interested… enough? And that multi-faceted question is important: because we…

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Voiceover

Voiceover Update: And (once again) Bjorn Munson as the Vorta

I mentioned this back in March when the prologue episode dropped, but I got a chance to play a Vorta, one of the villains of Star Trek, in an audio fan production last year. The series, A Call to Unity, is now posted on iTunes so you can subscribe and get your post-Romulus destruction Trek fix. Enjoy… maybe not as much as my character enjoys tormenting Starfleet captains, but, well, you know…

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Producing

Indie Film Financiers

One filmmaker friend I know is fond of saying that “How do I find the money to make my film?” isn’t just a indie filmmaker’s question, it’s the question. So granted, the odds of you being in a room –or even an elevator– with them are probably not the greatest, but just in case, here’s Hollywood Reporter‘s list of 25 financiers who could actually greenlight and bankroll your feature. (My one friend, meanwhile, is not…

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Various and Sundry

The Lego Crime Ring Movie

People think I joke about Lego sets being a highly fenced item. Okay, they also wonder what it means “to fence” something. Do people really not know that terminology? Mickey Spillane’s ghost just choked on a salted peanut. I may have consumed too many hardboiled detective tales in my youth. Anyway, criminals love Legos precisely because so many other people love Legos — and are willing to pay for said Legos. Cops know that criminals…

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