It’s been said before and there were some that didn’t want anyone to know… but it’s an unstoppable truth, I think. Animals Are Cute Sweeties. It’s written in the flowers.
I know, it’s a cliche now, but I still think it’s an important bandwagon to be on.
Last night I got the last little bits of the Duckie McGee engine working! It’s finally ready to accept silliness!
Here’s how it works: you go to the ‘feed the duck’ page and fill in all the fields with whatever you like. Do this step a few times if you can.
Next, you go to the synopsis page and see the results. The system takes all the things everyone’s input, randomizes them, and makes a story synopsis out of the parts. It probably makes very little logical sense, but that’s important.
Next, you take that synopsis and turn it into a story outline. I’ve got a nifty little page built that lets you click on various sentence fragments to edit them. This way, you can make your very own story out of a distributed set of craziness.
Finally, you can take that story and turn it into whatever you like. It’s easy, it’s fun, and it doesn’t cost anything. Except maybe your soul. I’ll get back to you on that.
This process is basically how professional screenwriters create scripts for TV, except I’ve 2.0′d it by using AJAX! Cha-ching!
Really, this is all just for fun. So have fun. And send me any cool things you dream up.
Michael Geist has a great column in the Toronto Star about how the Canadian broadcast industry is aiming to have CRTC oversight for the internet, to help reign in the internet media market. One particularly distressing part:
The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting go even further, maintaining that “Canadian broadcasting policy should recognize new delivery systems such as MP3 players, satellite radio receivers, and interactive Web clients as part of the new Canadian broadcasting system. If the commission is unable or unwilling to regulate their content, it should be charged with ensuring that a percentage of the revenue they generate from the distribution of these services is circulated into the system.”
I like the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. I agree with a lot of what they say, most of the time. But in this case, they’re looking for cash that doesn’t belong to them. The revenue generated from new media enterprises should not be circulated into the system, because the system is not built to support new media.
Could the system be adapted to handle both major broadcasting and on-the-fly online entertainment? Let’s think of how that works: I am a webcaster in Vancouver. I am required to send 10% of my revenues to the Canadian Television Fund to support Canadian Content. Of course, in return for that, I’ll want to be able to apply for funding from the CTF, because otherwise I’m being unfairly taxed with nothing to gain.
To meet CTF standards, I have to meet all sorts of requirements that push my production budget from $50,000 to close to $200,000… because I’m no longer allowed to do things cheaply or quickly. The bureaucracy involved in TV production is staggering… everybody at every stage along the way wants their piece of the pie, and it inflates costs beyond what a rational person would expect. And even worse, if I have my special effects team in Holland (which is plausible for a webcaster), and my writer’s in London, all of a sudden I don’t even qualify for CTF funds at all.
So now if I can’t find another $150,000 to finance my project, I can’t do it. Or I can do it without CTF money for $50,000, and give away 10% of my profits for nothing. Either way, I’m getting a bad deal, and I’ll either give up on the idea, or leave the country to get it done. The current make-your-own-luck online environment will be replaced with paperwork and forced mediocrity, because that’s what Canadian Content is all about.
New media is the one area where regulation has not yet managed to suck the innovation out of entertainment. If the CRTC gets into the game now, all they’ll be doing is lining the pockets of the established players, and locking out the next generation of content creators, who stand a good chance of making Canadian Content accessible and plentiful within our borders, and beyond.
Katy Towell is my new favourite artist because she evokes everything that is wrong in the back of my brain. When my wife gets over hating me* for buying the Ask A Ninja DVD, I will attempt to sneak this poster past her. Tho my kids’ll ask what it’s about. So I’ve got to think of some way to spin it. Hmmm…
* Stems from my younger daughter asking at dinner last night: “Daddy, can we watch the Ninja tonight?”. I swear she only saw episode 10. Honest.
Business Week has an article about Amanda Congdon’s jump to ABC as well as HBO. It covers the usual turf, including such great concepts as the web being a farm for old media. I shan’t get into how backward that thinking is, mostly because my intense Actionscript session over the last few days has left me fantastically inarticulate.
However, I will say this: I think agents for various people in the web world should stop looking for big Old Media deals and start looking for corporate partners to beef up the online presence. Looking at the budgets and salaries out there, you can get paid a nice hefty amount for appearing on a weekly TV show, but if your vidcast were sponsored for a year by one company at a rate comparable to just a single primetime TV ad spot, you would make a lot more cash, and have more freedom.
I guess it’s the fame thing, too, though. People want to know people know them. If you believe Nielsen ratings are accurate, vidcasts still have a ways to go before they are in the same league… but the gap is closing fast.
So to some enterprising former-advertising-exec out there: start a new business connecting vidcasters with sponsors, take a cut, and become rich quick. All the other agents are looking in the wrong direction!
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