The Changing Browser

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Post meta follows.

Other projects

• android app (I don’t have an iPhone)

• This seems insane, but I kind of want to get the site development completed on top of whatever platform makes sense, then replicate the site in N more platforms. Insane, right? The point of this entire endeavor is to learn and grow. If I just stick to squeezing the most out of wordpress, I won’t learn anything new. I have seen sites that allow visitors to select different stylesheets to completely change the experience. I want to do the same thing in reverse. I could develop this in:
  • Wordpress: Likely the first step. I will build a new theme from scratch because I am not sure the current one provides any value, other than the education it provide.
  • Drupal: A logical next step. I have worked with Drupal for a couple of years now and my PHP skills are much stronger than they were when I first started.
  • A Homemade CMS: Insane, likely last step. I could learn a lot about creating the framework.
  • Joomla: Not even sure that it is still called that. I picked this up once back in the day and hated it. There was something about Joomla vs Drupal back then: one was easier, but not as powerful and no documentation or community presence; the other had a lot higher barrier to entry, but the sky was the limit, with a large support community and documentation. I feel like Joomla was the former.
  • Blogger: I have used blogger the most for my own ranting. It has more drawbacks than positives, but I always felt like the Google tie-in would be great for promoting niche content. I am not sure I could use blogger the same way I plan to use the other systems: by harnessing as few databases as possible. If I have to manually input content into 50 databases or UIs, this will never work, (not that it is likely too work anyway.)
  • Tumblr: I LOVE tumblr. But the SEO barriers are a tough sell. Additionally, I just can’t imagine using for non-micro-blogging. I think people are including 2000 word posts, but I will have to think about it.
  • Django: Built on top of Python, which I know.
• As a web project manager, I tend to leave the cutting edge technical knowledge to the actual production team. This site should help me lean HTML/CSS best practices and new trends.
• As for new trends, I want to have a sandbox feature that allows me to just build something using new techniques just for the sake of learning. Something like a HTML 5 video player page. Or CSS 3 animation.
• Image sprites. I don’t know a damn thing about them, but I want to learn about them, and evaluate if they would be right for this project, and then use them regardless just to learn about them (maybe in only one CMS…)
• Learn optimization: faster load times, image optimization, script speed testing…
• I want to really refine the objectives
• Do lots of research
• Generate a lot of ideas
• Nail the concept
• I want the site to capture various streams:
  • link book marking
  • flickr
  • my external presence
  • tumblr fodder
• Learn to use social media successfully for a purpose
• SEO
• Learn the design process
• test various project management techniques
• Learn Photoshop better, Illustrator at all.
• I am sure there is more…

I don’t “know” PHP, but again, had leveraged my minimal Python/Perl/HTML/CSS knowledge to hack my way through the PHP on a couple of sites and felt that I could use this site as a platform to increase my PHP skills. I built a lot of custom functionality and accomplished my goal.

However, I never really finished the design, and thus development. I rushed to get a skeleton in place to give me a platform for putting in content with the intent of finishing later. The former happened, for a while; the latter did not.

So I am starting from scratch. Really this site was meant to be a pet project to teach me the entire process of web design (conception, design, development, content creation, etc). I still have that goal. Having to renew the domain name was a trigger to pick this goal up again and attempt to cross the finish line. However, I know have a longer term goal of using this site as a continuing means to hone my web project management skills and as a career development too.

I like that our agency has a variety of clients. Some are big, some small. They come from different industries. Each client contact has a different job description. That variety helps keep our work fresh. But it also allows us to see how smart our clients are, each in their own ways. They know their business, customers and business goals like the back of their hands. The reason they hire us is because they value what we do, and what we do falls outside of their areas of expertise. I would like to think that we do a good job of forming partnerships with our clients, to become the means to extend their brand, their presence and their business goals to exciting new markets. I hope that we help them articulate their frustrations and aspirations to find unique and successful solutions for them. I hope this is the case, because the alternative scares the hell out of me.

The digital and interactive sphere that we live and work in is constantly changing. We do a lot of research and a lot of experimenting to make sure that we stay ahead of the curve. We want to be experts. However, there are a lot of shops in our world who take the opposite approach. They see a world that is frequently misunderstood as an opportunity to sell digital snake oil. These vendors promise to work their black magic voodoo to send millions of visitors to your site through SEO or Social Media or Synergistic Buzzwordy Ninjery. If you feel like you are making a deal with the devil, be careful: you aren’t selling your soul, but you are probably being taken.

This digital wild west survives thanks to one thing: fear. Maybe you are afraid that your potential customers or competitors will pass you by in this crazy online/interactive/social landscape. Maybe you’re afraid that your boss or board or stakeholders will demand to know why you aren’t on Twitter, or why your site looks awful on a blackberry. Maybe you have seen your web traffic numbers for the first time and are shocked by the lack of impressions. But whatever you do, don’t hire a firm based on fear. Tackle this problem like you would any other business challenge: with strategic thinking and partners who have your best interests in mind.

You see, SEO or social media or many other seemingly crazy interactive strategies may be exactly what you need. The problem is that there is no miracle cure in this space. Every challenge demands an appropriate solution. But this appropriate solution is rarely the hot trend de jour.  We spend a lot of time and energy to ensure that we know the ins and outs of your situation and every possible option. At the end of the day we are going to recommend options that may seem like witchcraft, but we did not arrive at them through tarot or crystal balls or animal sacrifice. We want our clients to take our recommendations out of trust, not fear.

To that end, I am laying the groundwork for a series of posts that demystify what we do. My goal is to catch you up to speed on the latest trends and technology because they may actually be legitimate solutions for you. While you may not end up with enough technical skills to create your own HTML alternative to flash, you may be able to understand why we would advocate avoiding flash in some instances. Hopefully my collegues can chime in and cover their own areas of expertise. And even if you chose to work with a different firm, I hope that you are armed with the knowledge you need to make solid business decisions with a company you trust.

Curtis asked me to write about the “big crunch/big bang” of digital content distribution.  I think this is a wonderful topic, but not something I can address at the moment. I would like to do a fair bit of research and reflection before tackling the subject. In the meantime, here is something completely unrelated. A couple of weeks ago I swear I saw a post in the NASA twitter feed that contained a nasa.gov branded shortened URL. I have combed the hundreds of posts from that time period but can’t seem to find it; perhaps I imagined it. Maybe I am crazy… like a fox.

As you might guess, URL shorteners take long, hierarchical or nonsensical URL strings and crunch them down in to a more manageable size. This involves two steps: creating a short unique replacement URL, then redirecting to the original URL. The reasons for doing this include hiding the original URL, making long URLs easier to copy and paste or saving space in text-limited applications, like Twitter. The last thing you want to do is waste a bunch space with huge URLs if you only have 140 characters of real estate to work with. If your goal is to get people to click a link, you can really use those extra characters to enhance your argument for doing so or adding more hash tags to help searchers find your content. For example, which of these calls-to-action are you most likely to execute:

dj_c_check I blogged about a thing: http://www.manningproductions.com/blog/2010/02/html5-vs-adobe-this-sunday-in-5-d-space/ (113 characters)

OR:

the99percent Cognitive science behind why you should keep that brand name, sales pitch, explanation, etc SIMPLE: http://cot.ag/c6vkT1 (121 characters)

I am not trying to throw Curtis under the bus, just illustrate a point. Many large internet brands are developing or have already rolled out their own shortening systems: amzn.com, flic.kr, goo.gl, youtu.be, fb.me and gop.am (LOL and LOL2). Could you guess what any of those major online organizations were? Most of these systems take things a bit further. Bit.ly, a popular free URL shortener allows you to pick your own key for the URL you are shortening and provide analytic data, while Flikr, YouTube and Amazon use the unique keys that each piece of content already has as the shortened key.

By creating their own branded URL shortening systems, these organizations have protected or enhanced their brands in an number of ways:

1. The brand is transmitted along with link when used by the general public, increasing exposure
2. These short, branded URLs are easier for mobile and social media users to spread, which may be the goal of the content and online strategy in the first place
3. Many people may be wary of unfamiliar domains and strange URLs that look like http://bit.ly/byQp52 or http://tinyurl.com/yjz5gka that the free services provide

While I may have imagined the NASA version of a branded URL shortener, I did discover go.usa.gov, which “lets government employees create short .gov URLs from official government domains, such as .gov, .mil, .si.edu, or .fed.us URLs.” NASA’s twitter authors have taken advantage of this beta program to help legitimize the links they post. If even the United States Government’s web strategy is more advanced than yours, perhaps it is time for you to rethink how you manage your brand online.

UPDATE: Found these brands with custom shortening systems this morning: arst.ch and nyti.ms. Cleverly, these online publications use this systems for their sharing tools, so when you use the “send to <social application>” button you spread the branded short URL.

As it should be obvious by now, I am Manning’s productivity nerd. I am a lay member of the cult of Getting Things Done. I wanted to offer up a brief observation from my day-to-day work. Like the GTD project planning model, the GTD system consists of five discrete steps:

1. Capture everything that you can possible think of
2. Process those thoughts into physical actions
3. Organize those actions in to contextual lists (Things that can only be done at work, or require an internet connection)
4. Review lists and grab the actions that make sense for your context, time, energy
5. Do the best action

Like any system, it is only as good as the weakest link. If you stop processing all your random thoughts, you will begin to realize that your lists are out of date and then you will stop trusting your system.

For me the key to staying current on my system is making sure I capture everything. The rule for capture is this: have as many capture tools as you need, but as few as you can get by on. The best way for me to accomplish this is to always have a pad of paper and pen at hand, but ideally, it will be the same pad every time. As the number of places that things are collected expands, the number of places you will have to process from later. Something that is not processed in a timely manner has no more value than if it was never captured.

A couple exciting things happened yesterday. Nearly all my attention was focused on the launch of the new First Vehicle Services website. Meanwhile the rest of the world was focused on this. Steve Jobs said that it is “our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price.” Adam at Gizmod said it sucks. My wife said “maybe we could get an iPad instead of the netbooks we have been looking at,” (no link, she said it in real life.) Well, I still haven’t gotten a chance to read or watch anything about the device, so I will leave the opinion to others. However, I do know a couple things.

Ergo, I think that the iPad will become a real platform for outreach and development. People have downloaded over one billion iPhone/iPod apps; if sold apps equaled even one tenth of 1 percent, that would be one million. And not all apps are time sucks; some of them connect you with actual content. Either way, that is a lot of impressions. I am watching the keynote in the background while I write this and have skipped to the app section. All iPhone apps will work natively and will even scale gracefully via pixel-doubling. Additionally, the SDK has been released for developing iPad that leverage the uniqueness of the device.

Can we use the iPad as either a revenue stream (sold apps) or delivery tool for focused content that serves a specific purpose? Hopefully other members of the team will continue the discussion.

UPDATE: Apparently the print industry believes the iPad “will breathe new life into their struggling industry“, which is not what I meant. I think said industry believes every new technology is magically going to solve their bloated, archaic business practices. This is misguided. Fix what is wrong, don’t just hold out for the next big thing that will allow you to keep making the same mistakes that have left your industry in serious trouble for the last decade. If Manning tried to sell every client on what we did 15 years ago, we would be dead. Our ability to thrive through the changing market requires acute awareness of the present and future landscape, and then use that understanding to help our clients achieve their business goals. We may pitch award-winning video services, but only if it is right for the goals, messages and audience. We sure as hell are not going to pitch

Last week we had a conference call with a client, one of the largest professional associations in the world. Twitter came up a few times and I couldn’t help be think of one of my favorite Twitter publishers, NASA. This led me to do some late night research on NASA’s Twitter strategy. What I found was interesting and thought others might find value in what I discovered.

I have always been a huge fan of NASA. In fact NASA has done a lot to shape where I am today. I was accepted to the United States Military Academy at West Point. I would have gone too, until I realized that learning to fly choppers was not step 1 to get me into the astronaut program as I had planned. As a result I went to the University of Michigan where I began to study physics; if I couldn’t be an astronaut I could still work for NASA in another capacity. At this point college taught me a valuable life lesson: being good at something and loving it are two totally different things. Couple that with the startling realization of how a physicist makes a living, and I was looking for greener pastures (a film degree.) Even then I spent the first four years of my career in an R+D role for science education and collaborative tools. Turns out I was doing non-physics work, but still living like a physicist. Needless to say, once I stumbled upon the NASA twitter feed, I followed.

Now for the research.

First NASA, as an organization, has an official twitter account. This account is branded as “News from NASA” and probably represents at least a couple of low level communications people who are tasked to populate this feed with all kinds of news from all over NASA. Of course, NASA is a giant organization with lots of different divisions doing all kinds of interesting but unrelated things—the soon to be dead shuttle program is just the most well known.

This main feed covers everything, from key administrators commenting on timely political triggers:

# Administrator Bolden commemorates Dr. King’s legacy http://bit.ly/5OlV6G Are you working for your community?
2:09 PM Jan 14th from TweetGrid

Press releases:

# NASA Revises Cost and Schedule for Displaying Retired Shuttles: NASA has issued a follow-up Request for Informatio… http://bit.ly/91Cw2z
about 9 hours ago from twitterfeed

Retweeting the White House’s fund raising campaign for Haiti:

# RT @whitehouse Amazing! Americans raise $8M+ for @RedCross texting HAITI to 90999 ($10 charged to your cellphone bill)
about 11 hours agofrom TweetGrid

And space missions status updates:

# Today’s station spacewalk to outfit the new Russian Poisk module for future dockings by Russian spacecraft ended at 10:49aET.
8:34 AM Jan 14th from web

As you can see, this main feed is interesting, but is very scattered. I have followed NASA for a while but I will probably stop soon; the feed contains so many random posts I don’t care about. I am sure NASA will not miss me considering the other 220,000 followers.

Beyond the pure posting philosophy detailed above, NASA has some other Twitter activities that should be noted for large organizations. First, NASA has taken advantage of the  fairly new “Lists” feature on Twitter. Lists allow you to collect certain feeds in one spot that is also visible to the public. NASA has two lists: one for the collection of feeds from the 10 NASA centers, and one for the collective twittering astronauts.  There is substantial retweeting, republishing someone’s tweets with linked attribution,  between these 27 entities (NASA’s main news account, the 10 centers and each of the 16 astronauts.)

But it doesn’t stop there. NASA also has a “Connect and Collaborate” page that offers umpteen ways of staying connected to what NASA is doing. This includes Twitter, Facebook, Myspace (seriously?), Youtube, Flicker, chat tools, various outreach collaborative project and even Livestream.  Of course I will focus on Twitter here, but I encourage you to check out this outreach effort. If you click the twitter expansion link, you will see all of the various official twitter accounts. These accounts number in the mid-fifties, not counting the 16 astronauts. Each of these accounts are more niche and draw various numbers of followers who are interested in the unique content that these accounts can offer. Again, retweeting abounds with all the cross over between various projects and locations.

I would argue that the followers of each niche feed are more valuable than the couple hundred thousand followers of the scattered main feed. Twitter becomes an outreach tool connecting a very interested public to content tailored to the liking. One such feed offers even more insight into NASA’s social media savvy:

MarsPhoenix I hope you’ll follow another mission: @MarsRovers, @CassiniSaturn, @MarsScienceLab (the next Mars rover, FTW!) & more at http://is.gd/Sny
9:58 AM Oct 30th, 2008 from web

On October 30, 2008, Martian winter was approaching. The next Martian summer is not until May of 2010 (Martian winter == Chicago winter?). No one knew when the next time, if ever, the rover would be heard from again. This tweet introduced the audience to other chances to follow similar content streams in the future. Even if Phoenix does not survive, the relationship between the team and public can continue.

I encourage anyone interested in crafting a cohesive social media strategy for large organizations to look into what NASA is doing. Yes, NASA is part of the federal government; however, the more engagement it can create with the public the better its chances of staying funded in tough economic times. Government agency or not, I think this is an important lesson for organizations everywhere.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that during the course of this research I discovered that Google has rolled out a real-time Twitter timeline in search results, similar to it’s news timeline. This should precipitate as many accounts as necessary in order to control distribution to Twitter to maximize search engine traffic.

I am currently reading Ashley Friedlein’s book, Web Project Management .  While not exactly up to the project management standards of the PMBOK, the book presents a complete web project management method. I will post a review once I finish reading and have had sometime to test the method. Meanwhile, the book offers little tips in addition to the method itself. One early tip: Do It Yourself accelerated learning. The author advocates that a web project manager try to create an entire site alone. This includes generating the idea, strategy, “costing”, design, programming, … The idea is to put yourself in the shoes of other members of your team to learn what challenges they face. The goal is to improve your client and team communication skills and learn empathy for your teammates.

I really like this idea, but I feel like the author missed a benefit: undertaking the entire process of creating a site will give you a better understanding of the big picture of production and project management. This exercise allows you to see parts of the process that you may not even know exist. Discovering holes at one point in the process will teach you what you should have done earlier and should implement in your daily work.

I have attempted similar exercises in the past, but mostly to learn new production skills. I would really like to try this someday on a new project to focus on the project management method.

I was a non-coffee drinker not too long ago. Then one day, in the middle of an intense project, we landed another intense job with a very short turn around. Conference calls with Europe before sunrise, some late nights, and a lot of stress led to my introduction to the bitter brew (I prefer mine iced [it was summer, but I also have a strange obsession with frozen water] with a kiss of French Vanilla Coffee-mate [okay, maybe a little more than a kiss]). In just a few months I have drank a lot of coffee.

I have learned that everyone makes coffee differently; some prefer it strong, some weak. Eventually I had to learn how to make it myself. So I approached this educational experience just like I approach cooking. I read the directions on the back of a pack of Starbucks grounds and grabbed the coffeemaker’s manual from the web. Then, I followed those directions; over, and over, and over making small adjustments as needed (turning down the carafe warming plate to avoid the burnt taste, making less coffee with the same ratio to avoid waste, moving to different machines and brewing methods, etc).

We are all creatures of habit. Some people haphazardly dump some amount of ground coffee and water. My habit is to research the heck out of something then repeat the same process time after time.

I have really started to enjoy cooking over the couple of years. But I do not cook like a lot of other people. I prefer cookbooks that are more encyclopedia than recipe repository. I have learned two thing about myself via cooking and coffee: I am a process oriented person, and very consistent. You may not like my coffee (it is strong) or my homemade gyro meat (ground turkey, not lamb; made meatloaf style) or granola; but it comes out nearly the same every time. Yes, this can be boring to some people, but I actually like it. This process/detail orientation drives my wife crazy some times, but she puts up with it because I make damn good coffee and cookies (baking is far more chemistry lab than cooking).

I know this recipe will never lead to a hip, innovate restaurant or the creation of an awe-inspiring piece of art. I am okay with that because I enjoy what I do and I think that it has merit and value.

UPDATE: Check out Patrick’s follow-up post about the art (direction) of chili cooking.

I thought the film was fantastic, but very expository, which I have come to resent in movies. To be fair, I am not sure how else you would tell this story on motion pictures.  Lately though, that has lead to me to suggest that perhaps there should be a few less movies made, and a few more books written (or a few less books adapted for screen.) I guess you can blame Linda Seger and Joseph Campbell for that.

The movie may not be as action driven as I would have liked, but all of the performances were fantastic. I did struggle every time the father was on screen, not because he gave a poor performance, but because I could not place where I knew him from. Thankfully IMDB was able to put 2 and 2 together for me. I also know him as Mr. Noodle from the Elmo’s World segment from Seseme Street.

Definitely worth a watch.

I have never really considered myself a creative person, so it is strange that I have picked up a couple of “unblocking your inner artist” books this year. I was a math and science oriented person for the first 20 or so years of my life. I played several instruments and even wrote a few songs, but my strength was always “technical proficiency.” Even in film school I was consumed with the technical side of productions. How do lenses work, or how do different film stocks compare? While classmates ran on about Goddard I was studying depth of field charts. My screenwriting class was a disaster. I was told that every good writer is at worst an amateur psychologist. As I always considered psychology a soft art at best, and at worst, one step above new age religion. As I struggled to craft a coherent, character driven story, I resolved myself to leaving the creativity to others. Luckily, I got to work on enough student films to persuade me away from running off to be a Hollywood cable puller. The only difference between my material and most of the other stuff I read was that I knew my writing sucked.

Earlier this year a friend loaned me Julie Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way.” It is a type of workbook for unleashing your inner creative spirit. As I have slowly tried to undertake more creative endeavors, I have come to feel the frustration of a frustrated artist, though likely in a less painful and debilitating way than many of Ms. Cameron’s other readers. The book is a quick read, which is almost detrimental considering that you only read a few pages weekly during a 3 month process. She describes the process of growth eloquently and accessibly. However, her AA style reliance on a higher power was not something I could ever really get behind. I am, above all else, a humanist. Cameron insists that her method is just as effective for people who refuse to accept a higher power and suggest that such readers feel free to think of said power as the subconscious while unceasingly referring to it as God. However, she always externalizes this force, making that task difficult. Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell are far more convincing in internalizing this power within the subconscious than Cameron is in externalizing it in God. The other knock I have with “The Artist’s Way” is that, at least early on, I felt it was forcing me to turn out garbage and preventing me from focusing on work that I was already very excited about. Perhaps I was not quite blocked enough to dive into this book.

While it seems as though I am reviewing “The Artist’s Way” instead of “The War of Art”, it is important for me to frame my remarks by Cameron’s work. I was very excited to finally get my hands on “War of Art” and started reading it immediately. To my dismay, the introduction was written by Robert McKee (famously lampooned in Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Adaptation’.) I decided that poor association would not be enough to ruin the book for me, so I dove in anyway.

I as quickly stopped in my tracks. McKee praises Pressfield heavily and actually convinced me to add a lot of Pressfield’s non-golf related books to my queue. He further praises the first two sections (or ‘books’) of “War of Art” as being spot on. McKee has been around, and if he feels Pressfield has his finger on the pulse of creative blockage, I am at least willing to listen. Then McKee droped a bomb. He criticizes the 3rd section for externalizing inspiration, clinging to muses and angles. I immediately had visions of “Artist’s Way.” McKee then jolted me back to earth by saying he felt inspiration and creativity were internal stimuli. The fact that this heavy language actually made it into the book made me hope that perhaps I could at least read the book without offending my sensibilities.

But McKee was not done there. He goes on to say that he personally believes that creative talent is no different than basketball talent. You can’t teach seven foot tall; it is genetic and you have either got it, or you don’t. I am not sure who McKee is writing that sentence too. Perhaps himself or the millions at stake for him as a screenwriting yogi. But the juxtaposition created in the span of a few sentences created a crack. Perhaps there was some middle ground between Julia Cameron’s creative father figure and McKee’s raging ego. Perhaps that middle ground was Pressfield.

Once I actually got to Pressfield’s text, I could not have been happier. The book is an incredibly fast read. It is written in short observational essays that describe Pressfield’s outlook on blockage, the solution and philosophy. Pressfield is careful to not push “artist” down our throat, and frequently includes references to a would-be “plumbing supply venture” that could benefit from his insight. I think this is wise because his observations are so universal. You don’t need to aspire to be the next Goethe to get something out of this book.

To me, the nuts and bolts of the book is the middle section, which espouses Professionalism as the cure for Resistance. His outlook is very rational, very pragmatic, and I hope, very applicable. I think a combination of “War of Art” and “Getting Things Done” could unblock nearly anyone creatively.

I really think that McKee gets it wrong as well. Yes, Pressfield is infatuated with the iconography of Homer’s muses and medieval angels. However, I think he describes his vision of a transcendent artistic plane that could exist anywhere: heaven, nature or subconscious. He states that he believes in God, but is far more convincing that his outlook allows for many different world views.

After reading this book, I am inspired to get to work and churn out “art.” You have got to punch in, and pay your dues. And that is what I am doing right now.

The song is a cover of a David Bowie song, Space Oddity.  Said song is about Bowie’s fictional astronaut character, Major Tom.

Here is a new commercial for the 2010 MKZ:

This iteration contains a cover of Peter Shillings Major Tom (Coming Home), starring Bowie’s same fictional character.

Very cleaver meta campaign.

This is in the same campaign as the ad that conflates every pop sci-fi franchise:

“Anecdote – it used to be that the hot new movie directing talent came up through commercials and music videos – think David Fincher. McG is, I think, the last name I can think of that came up that route that has achieved commercial success. Anybody else? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? There was a list of top 50 hot talent something or other. Nobody under 30. Where’s the new talent coming from? Not from music videos anymore – there’s barely a market, and certainly no real money, in that anymore.”

The reason this jumped out at me is because I had just seen another one of those “win a marginal amount of money for creating our viral ad campaign for us” contests. I have been generally down on this type of thing in the past, mainly because you really are guaranteed to forfeit all ownership and rights to your work upon submission, with only a small chance of any compensation. Further, most of said contest yield so much garbage, even the lucky winner.

However, with the supposed decline of one development path for filmmaking talent, and no end in sight for theses contests, could the latter serve as a possible replacement for the former, at least in a very small way? Probably not, but if a young/student filmmaker were to scour the web for contests that suited his interests, deconstructed the judging criteria, product in question and marketing strategies, and use these elements as real world exercises for honing their craft, it might pay off. Call it the Lazlo Hollyfeld film school.

Bias warning: I personally am not a fan of the horror genre. I have a variety of personality traits that prevent me from getting much enjoyment horror movies. Mostly I prefer to be in control of as much as possible at all times. Perhaps I am just not able to let go of this, and thus the idea of impending doom actually creates more anxiety for me rather than releasing it. Regardless, my general ambivalence to the genre has prevented me from studying it too closely. However, the above theories are very intriguing to me as a filmmaker.

It seems there are hundreds, if not more, awful horror flicks made each year. Most of the movies made by my casual acquaintances and friends of friends are horror movies. These movies are poorly written and made, but never seem to lack for cast or crew, or strangely audience. Perhaps the genre itself is able to ignite enough passion to perpetuate itself, even in spite of the fact that so many works lack the quality that other films and filmmakers strive for.

If this is true, and also, if there is any merit to the theories of vicarious catharsis, horror might serve as a perfect case study for what indie filmmaking can achieve. Horror tackles deep psychological ailments of the masses. It has a built-in audience (though this is a characteristic of all genres), and it is able to inspire people to sweat the unglamorous parts of production with little to no hope of money or recognition. If a filmmaker were to explore complex and universal elements of the human psyche and to write and produce to pre-existing communities united by a common passion, they might be able to repackage the success of the horror genre to further their own unique point-of-view. I am not advocating using the horror genre as a veil for any theme that may inspire you. But, if you were to truly study why horror works and deconstruct it, you might be able to harness the potential that keeps Hollywood churning out slasher films. Further, the tumultuous times within which horror thrives, times like the one I am writing in, present ample opportunity for art to raise a voice. Whether by tackling political issues (Frost|Nixon, Good Night and Good Luck) or the precious and precarious balance of security and justice/freedom (Bourne Ultimatum, The Dark Knight), indie filmmakers can couple the unique contexts of their time and space with the lessons of the horror genre, and perhaps carve a place for themselves in the public consciousness.
]]> http://mitchmclachlan.com/2009/01/horror-as-a-model-for-indie-film/feed/ 1 http://mitchmclachlan.com/2009/01/polymathism-and-indie-film/ http://mitchmclachlan.com/2009/01/polymathism-and-indie-film/#comments Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:15:00 +0000 Mitch http://mitchmclachlan.com/2009/01/polymathism-and-indie-film/ On one hand, some of the most important intellectual work of our civilization was done by great, creative thinkers not bound to one area of specialization. Da Vinci was “a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer”; Newton a “physicist, mathematician, astronomer, theologian, natural philosopher”. Modern society is built upon work by polymaths.

On the other hand, one of the most oft cited (and very valid) criticisms to auteur theory is that filmmaking is a collaborative process. However, I have already discussed how current economic conditions now allow for the entire industrial side of filmmaking to be executed by teams as small as one. So how could a creative, intelligent individual perfectly execute every step in the filmmaking workflow to create a film of unified vision, high art and quality?

Yes, filmmaking is a very industrial process. It has many integral parts that must be executed at a high level to achieve a certain amount of quality. Writing, directing, editing are just some of the more sexy rolls that must be strong to make a movie good, but there is many subtle things that must happen in between too. I believe if one was creative, talented and systematic enough, they could hone skills across the filmmaking workflow and create a tight, cohesive and quality movie worthy of auteur study.

Shane Carruth and Robert Rodriguez may one day achieve this modern day Renaissance Man/Auteur/indie status. Carruth’s very first movie won two awards at Sundance. Rodriguez’s first picked up one prize at Sundance. Not bad for ~$10K in productions costs, combined.

Carruth reversed engineered the process of filmmaking, keeping costs down by doing as much himself as possible (writer, director, producer, actor, editor, composer. Does this list remind you of anything?). Rodriguez has spent most of his life honing every facet of production. If one day either of these filmmakers has the body of work to study in the context of auteur theory, it would be interesting to see what the effects of the “one man crew” method might have on the subject. Additionally, the free/powerful animation tool Blender, putting Pixar (circa 1994) power in the hands of every potential auteur, making possible things like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUPcimeiqLE

and this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUPcimeiqLE

In the mean time, I believe this approach to filmmaking could produce some of the most original work in decades, and would be the perfect laboratory for developing a modern day auteur school.

What went wrong? My goal was to workout the digital, no-budget workflow. And I did that, at least somewhat. But making awful movies for the sake of production kills your creative drive. Every time I locked the edit of another bad movie, I had a little less desire to write the next one.

Now, I am a producer first and foremost. Soon I may post about why every filmmaker should think of themselves as a producer first and director when it is necessary, instead of the other way around. Producers do a lot more than make some calls and pick up best picture Oscars. But they are often misunderstood and often mistrusted (rightfully so, in some cases.) However, you need to learn to be a fantastic producer for you own work, or you are not going to understand why it sucks.

So my new plan: Be a producer first. I will still work out workflows to optimize my product and post. But the producer in me will use every tool available, like modified classical film theory and market research, to do things right this time.

My plan as a producer is as follows: find ways to make production as economically viable as possible (minimize production, distribution and marketing costs), develop the ideas that have the best chances of making a good movie and finding an audience, and getting the most out of the other roles by having a clear vision of each project, so that while I am writing, directing, editing, etc, I am making one cohesive picture that is the best that it can be.

Because, like many critical studies, the politique des auteurs ignored the contexts that helped shape it, once social and economic conditions changed, the framework as practiced by the New Wave filmmakers was too rigid to adapt and survive.

It should be reinforced that very real conditions were responsible for the formation of the framework: production became cheaper, smaller budget films had some financial success in distribution, an influx of products from the Hollywood studio system, the marginalized voice of a political movement. These conditions allowed the New Wave filmmakers to make new and personal films with a new message, using a new cinematic language. This is a fine development, but as conditions changed, the theory did not change with it. New Wave filmmakers stuck with a framework that was tied to no longer existing contexts, and eventually the movement was choked out.

Modern critical studies, especially those practiced by filmmakers, should learn from this lesson. Recognize your context, develop a framework that tackles your current conditions, but be willing to tweak or even reinvent your framework at anytime, even your height, if the conditions dictate it.

I have observed the large role played by the critic in critical studies. Of course this should be obvious, but the critic commands too large a role and can directly cancel out some parts of his or her framework. The hierarchy of importance in most studies appears to be:

1. Critic, who imposes meaning on films after the fact
2. Director, whose work has no meaning without the critic revealing to the masses, even if the director himself had an explicit purpose
3. Audience, who must rely on the critic to filter and value movies

I should note that two and three above might be switched, depending on the school of thought, if required by the theory.

The role of critic as filter is certainly important, as are all filters. However, because we are concerned with the filmmaker’s perspective, unless a producer is specifically targeting the loyal following audience of one particular critic, which in most cases would not be productive, focusing on a critic’s perspective would be harmful noise in the creative process.

Critics also tend to completely ignore context and conditions. The usefulness of this practice is important; if a critic’s work can be marginalized tomorrow by changing conditions, then what inherent value does that work possess? In many cases, the results of film study must be beyond context in order to have any longevity or legacy. However, this will eventually limit the effectiveness or credibility of the work. For example, the outlook of some British theorists on authorship resembled that of the Cahier critics. However, because both devalued context, they had very different opinions on Hollywood. The French New Wave critics, who were completely deprived of American films, romanticized Hollywood once access was restored. Their British counterparts, who felt over run by American cinema, completely rejected it. This rejection of context is of little use to a filmmaker. If I make a film that could be a critical success 5 years after I make it, and perhaps achieve a real following even later, it is likely that that work will never be of much value to me. In order to see any return at all I am likely to take a very unfavorable deal, lose all rights completely or, the work itself could become orphaned, lost to the world completely. If instead I am able to apply the knowledge of the critic to my present or likely future conditions, there is a greater chance for me to be able to profit from that knowledge.

It seems that criticism, in general, is not self-aware enough to be useful for filmmakers. By ignoring the privileged place of the critic, and the present conditions within which the observations are made, criticism is quickly devalued. If instead we can apply this observation and theory to the context of any time or place, we then have a framework that can be helpful for the production of new artistic works.

1. It does not take very much study of Auteur Theory to run into some of the fundamental conflicts I have alluded to earlier. One of the biggest is this: can film even be art (like a painting or poem) since it is a commercial commodity (like orange juice or gasoline).
2. I am in no way an advocate of art cinema. I think Ingmar Bergman and Truffaut made amazing, and important films. I think La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc is one of the most artistic works I have ever seen, in any medium. However, Bergman, Truffaut and Dreyer made some of the most boring movies in history. They are perfectly suited for the darkened screening rooms of film schools or the endless Netflix queues of budding critics. However, the will never be mainstream.

The new economics of the Long Tail and digital video production make modern art cinema a viable endeavor. Yes, today as much as ever, filmmaking is a capitalistic exercise. However, these new economics can open a lot of doors. Let’s explore how the process of art cinema production might work today.

1. Message: At its core, art cinema tries to say something. All movies should have a message (explore the family storyline in the action film Last Crusade), but art cinema tends to value its message much more vehemently than filmmakers creating entertainment. Often avant garde filmmakers belong, or at least feel they belong, to a slighted political minority. They are searching for a creative outlet and a voice. Today, self-publishing, such as blogging, coupled with the intrinsic community building and information filtering properties of the internet allow anyone to have and hone their unique message. Further, there are pre-built niche communities that can actively seek and promote such new content. If you can harness these aspects of the internet and niche communities, you can have an audience for your art movie.
2. Production: For as little as a couple hundred dollars, anyone can buy a digital camera and couple it with free video editing software bundled with their operating system. Instant movie studio. You will have a difficult time moving your opus to 35mm, but likely, not more than a handful of your audience will ever be within driving distance of each other anyway, so theatrical distribution should not concern you. Of course there are technical limitations to a $200 movie studio, but you are not competing with Speilburg, you are competing with blogs and YouTube videos. Further, there are no conventions in art cinema. What George Lucas may see as a limitation can actually enhance your ability to craft you art piece. Carl Dreyer made Jeanne d’Arc without sound; instead he made one of the most visually compelling movies ever.
3. Clarity: This is really a combination of the above two points. If you know your message, and have an artistic vision, the production economy allows you to put your film together, from beginning to end without outside influence. Filmmaking has always been a very collaborative enterprise, because scores of people, or at least a handful were needed for production and post. Today you can write, direct, star, produce, edit and score your movie fairly easily, regardless of talent level. Again, this is a conventionless platform. You need not rely on anyone else’s interpretation of your vision. In the end this independence and freedom can help you fully realize you vision as clearly as possible.
4. Distribution/Marketing: We have established that audience building tools exist, and that the cost of production is approaching zero. As a result, very little return from the finish product is needed to make the entire exercise economically feasible. You do not need to bankrupt yourself to make your works, and therefore you don’t need to sell your work to Hollywood. In fact digital distribution can be absolutely free via video sharing sites and free blogging tools. You can now afford to give away your incredibly cheaply produced work for as long as you need to until you have cultivated an audience that can support you financially. Again, in art cinema, your production costs do not need to scale with scope. Later, you can use essentially free publishing-on-demand tools like Lulu and Amazon’s offerings, free store applications via Amazon, which will also freely market your work through filtering and suggestion algorithms, and even freely set your prices based on market demands.

Let’s design a theoretical example. Say I am someone completely unfamiliar with filmmaking, but incredibly passionate about fighting poverty in developed countries. I spend my time volunteering at shelters and soup kitchens; I attend rallies and local city council meetings; I spend 10 hours a week or so on internet message boards, forums and grassroots websites.

One day I watch some abstract art cinema piece recommended by a friend. I am moved by the starkness, the inherent power of the work. Suddenly I realize that I can make a movie with the same aesthetic but focus on my own message, ending poverty.

I journal for a few weeks, grab up every avant garde movie at my local arty DVD rental store and start sketching out my idea. Perhaps I tell the story of a man who is homeless due to mental illness; a simple story of the struggle to survive for one day in world that is abstract, disorienting and dangerous, told through the lens of his dementia. Or instead I craft a short montage of juxtaposed images and sounds, things I know from my daily life as an affluent person: cabs, office buildings, restaurants with the equivalents I might encounter if I lived in poverty: walking in dark and forboding alleys, panhandling amongst disgusted citizens, digging recyclable cans and bottles or food out of garbage cans.

I shoot my piece over a few weeks or even months, carefully selecting the images that encapsulate my developed notes. I spend months or even a year editing. During that time I tell my volunteering friends what I am working on, and ask for technical help from my grassroots web community. I am constantly fostering an audience from those who are already inherently interested in my message, who are searching for media that addresses their concerns.

After many months of working out of my element I complete my movie and post it online or organize local screenings with organizations favorable to my cause. My friends and web communities embrace it, my coworkers and family members humor me and then dismiss it and friends of friends or random people who stumble upon it are challenged by its message. In the end, I would consider such a result a success. I have invested nothing more than my time to a cause I believe in, and maybe just maybe, I am able to get my message across.

I may not give up my day job and have dreams of being David Lynch, but in the end I have accomplished my mission and created a unique work that adds value to its genre and medium. With such favorable economics, the barrier to entry for such a scenario and the risk involved is incredible low, but the potential reward is limited only by my message and my vision.

Even though I think that art cinema is a form that more often than not attracts pretentious and shallow work, I am glad that the scenario described above is at least economically feasible as modern broadcast and mainstream media continues its lowest common denominator driven production models. There are thousands of important messages or uniquely artistic voices that can be served by the advantageous contexts that we are currently apart of. This excites even the skeptic in me.
]]> http://mitchmclachlan.com/2008/08/the-economics-of-modern-art-cinema/feed/ 0 http://mitchmclachlan.com/2008/08/the-foundation-for-auteur-theory/ http://mitchmclachlan.com/2008/08/the-foundation-for-auteur-theory/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 03:06:00 +0000 Mitch http://mitchmclachlan.com/2008/08/the-foundation-for-auteur-theory/ I am deeply entrenched in The Cinema Book, 2nd Ed. edited by Pam Cook and Mieke Bernink (third edition now out, no idea what the difference might be, other than less used copies available for film students). I am walking through the book in my study of Auteur Theory. Thus far, I have covered a brief section on the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave), a brief illustration of the studio system/golden age of Hollywood and today I began an entire section (~80 small print 8.5″x11″ pages) on authorship in film studies. The brief introduction has given me the following insight into la politique des auteurs, crafted by Andre Bazin and colleagues.

1. Trigger: Astruc pens a famous essay (La Camera-Stylo (still looking for a good external reference, but it means Camera-Pen…)) calling for a new cinematic language that would allow for individual artistic expression.
2. Production Economics: For news gathering/propaganda purposes, Americans develop smaller, more manageable cameras; this enables small teams to possess the tools of film production previously reserved for large, well-financed or government backed enterprises.
3. Voice: A subset of film critics also happened to be members of a politically marginalized and silenced movement. They were looking for a voice.
4. Access to New Art and Information: Previously banned films from America were finally open to French audiences and critics (these include the works of Alfred Hitchcock and films like The Maltese Falcon).
5. Authorship: Authors of the Cahiers du Cinéma discussed the difference between directors who could merely competently tell a story using regurgitated cinematic conventions, and those who could do the same, but also present deeper themes and more coherent artistic visions.

These are the contextual footers for the development of the politique des auteurs. However, these contexts are not unique. Let’s explore these topics within the context of digital media in the present-day West:

1. Trigger: Today we probably lack a cohesive trigger like Astruc’s article. Perhaps some such trigger is now available, likely roughly developed by small teams of guerrilla filmmaking networks, and either I am unaware of it or its relevance will only be available after some longer period of time. Perhaps it is Robert Rodriguez’s Rebel Without a Crew. I will continue to search for such a manifesto.
2. Production Economics: I would argue that the development of digital video workflows of the last decade are a far greater enabler than the 20 lb 16mm camera. Certainly current economics put full production and post tools in more hands today than the earlier developments ever could have. These systems can even shrink production teams to the size of one (animation and most of YouTube’s non-copyrighted content, for example).
3. Voice: This, in combination with #1 above, is a dicey subject. I would argue that the enablement of internet publishing has created an atmosphere that allows any marginalized group an outlet for their ideas and frustrations. However, the niche dynamics of the internet may actually nullify this aspect. Groups of like-minded individuals can form small, tight communities very easily, communicate freely amongst themselves, and yet still be completely invisible to those who are unfamiliar with their plight or the community building and aggregating aspects of the internet. Also, political censorship of the internet can endanger this as well.
4. Access to New Art and Information: Netflix, Amazon, Google (Pandora, Rhapsody, Technoroti, …). Long Tail economics and information filters such as the services mentioned create incredibly low barriers of entry into any type of content in nearly any medium. I am constantly adding works that reflect my eclectic interests in really old movies to my Netflix queue. Google and Wikipedia make my research quick and painless. Goodreads allows me to find books about philosophy, religion, science and filmmaking and then collect those books in a queue that I can pick off as my current context changes, all the while allowing me to focus my interests more tightly and further removed from the mainstream. I concede though, that if I were a Chinese blogger, Google might be a far less useful tool.
5. Authorship: Without a more specific and driving treatise, the jury is out on this.

What can we learn by comparing these two lists? What jumps out at me is the fact that all of the really difficult contextual elements, the socio-economics ones, are currently favorable for a digital revolution, which has been often promised, to actually occur in filmmaking. What seems to be missing is the theoretical framework that guides individuals to harness these economic conditions. However, I would like to stress that such critical legwork may actually already be done (and likely has been done be an increasing number of media studies Ph.D. candidates.) Perhaps it is only the infamy of such a work that is currently missing. Certainly hundreds of new media artists have been testing the waters and developing new ideas and systems perpetually since bandwidth became affordable, gaining the practical skills needed.

Now, where do we find our treatise?

Auteur Theory, for instance, rose out of a specific set of socio-economic conditions in a very specific place and time (post-WWII France.) One could just as easily study the early incarnations of the theory in the context of those conditions, filmmakers and theorists (in this case, the same people) who developed it. It is often said that a historical work is more a reflection of the author and author’s society than the subject, because there is no such thing as an unbiased account. Within these contexts, Auteur Theory may be the most important development in the industry of filmmaking, at least for a small group of people within a small subset of time. Here enters the most basic conflict in criticism in general, thanks to modern criticism: Even if Auteur Theory is relevant or even important in such a narrow place and time, film itself is a commodity, a reflection of capitalistic forces. Auteur theory cannot grant artful status upon this commodity any more than classical economics can bestow artful status upon any other assembly line product. The conflict is this: no matter how elegant or interesting studying these other contexts of production and product may be, the just don’t mean anything; it is useless.

Trust me, there is no better way to turn off college kids on a subject than to force them to spend many precious, sleep-deprived hours reading incredibly dry material on tightly focused topics, and then to spend ten minutes in lecture telling them that, in the end those hundred pages of text are worthless. Modern criticism has morphed into a study of audiences, not works or artists. Art can only be defined through its interaction with an audience, regardless of the creator, the production method or even the work itself. Audience is king.

This is nothing new. We now shift the labeling of artistic status from one determining context (production or aurthorship) to another (audience interaction). This modern critical framework is essentially the same equation as other older models: the same result, the same operations, just different variables. The real problem is the fact that modern criticism is so good at marginalizing the other methods. It allows a model, such as Auteur theory to be as elegant and interesting as it wants, but at the end of the day, my context means that yours is entirely meaningless in the conversation of film as art.

Even modern criticism has its own detractors and even nullifiers. In fact, some of the most basic elements of every new school are the elements that cancel out the other leading contemporary or historically important thoughts. This perpetual conflict within criticism numbs the field to everyone but the most ardent disciples of one binary school or another. Unless you are extremely vested in one theory or another (like the authors of the Cahier du Cinema) you are very likely to see all of film criticism as a pointless exercise of ego-stroking.

However, there is another angle we can take. If we return to studying the context of these theories, we can make these theories more relevant and therefore more useful for our modern applications. The contexts of digital production, the state of Hollywood and our current recession economy are not a unique combination. What makes Auteur Theory so attractive to me, is the fact that the French politique des Auteurs, the groundwork for Auteur Theory, was developed as a responds to the conditions of that time and place, and was subsequently a trigger for real change in that world. I believe what has really prevented the “digital revolution” of filmmaking is that the potential foot soilders in this uprising are ignoring the contexts that we live in. Once we turn a critical eye to these contexts, we may be able to follow in the footsteps of Truffaut and Goddard, and make a real impact on the modern economics of filmmaking.