Tag Archives: entertainment - Page 3

Making It On Your Own After You’ve Made It

Posted by on January 12, 2012 No comments

I saw a posting online about a comedian who produced his own show and distributed it himself. I guess it was supposed to be some amazing feat because he made something like a million dollars, but only invested a couple hundred thousand and only charged customers five bucks.  And I think there was something extra about the rights on the product, which were far less restrictive than normal.

So from this, people will jump to a few conclusions.  Marketing companies are greedy, middlemen are bad, and everyone should be doing this.  Some people can point to cases where this has been done before, like Radiohead.  Why aren’t there more people doing this?

The thing is, a lot of people are doing this.  Most everyone that’s trying to get started in the entertainment business is doing this.  Find a local musician and ask if they have a CD of their original music for sale.  I’ll bet they do.  Find a budding author and ask if they have any self-published digital eBooks on Amazon.

What’s the difference?  First, it’s economy of scale.  When someone famous cuts out the middleman, they are able to make more and the customer saves more because of the volume.  Actually, after you make back your production costs, you could give the product away, especially when dealing with digital products.  So this famous comedian sells 200,000 copies of his video.  Is your local musician or author going to sell 200,000 copies of their product?  Not so likely.

Secondly, it’s a perception of value.  When you have a famous person selling something for cheap, it’s viewed with high value.  When an unknown person sells something for cheap, it’s seen as having no value.  When an unknown person sells something for a high price, it gets mixed results, it may be seen as valuable or as unrealistic.  So, the local artists have an immediate hurdle to overcome.

Does that mean it’s a case of either “paying your dues” or getting your big break?  For every success, there are countless failures.  Not everyone can be a superstar.  Does it also prove out another aspect of “the rich get richer”, where they have the luxury of cutting out the middleman and can operate on their own, where lesser people have to rely on expensive assistance to accomplish the same goals.

I Might As Well Get In On This

Posted by on September 12, 2010 No comments

I don’t watch a whole lot of movies, so when I do, and it sucks, I’m not pleased.  Movies where only the beginning and end matters; movies that can be summed up in a couple of sentences; movies that have tons of buildup and a bullshit resolution.  I can do this.

My movie is in the apocalyptic genre.  Like War of the Worlds, in which (spoiler) the aliens die because they have AIDS.  No really, they don’t have the antibodies for things our immune system battles daily.  That’s a bullshit copout.  Like Signs, where the aliens (spoiler) are allergic to water.  Really?  What kind of h2o-adverse alien race is dumb enough to plan an invasion of a planet that is 70% covered with water, inhabited by beings that are made up of 60% water, and where the atmosphere rains… water.  These are movies that are just full of “duh”, so here’s my plotline.  It’s really short, because this is all that really matters.  Just fill the middle with people stressing out and world governments holding important meeting.

So anyway, some oceanographer discovers something strange.  Something huge has been discovered deep in the sea.    They’ve never explored this deep before and now they’ve found something new.  But it’s big and unknown.  There’s a scary moment and the undersea probe is lost. (This is probably the meat of the TV commercial)

The team reports their findings to the government, because that’s what they do and government has to know everything.  Obviously, the scientists are not believed (cliché).  However, they get funding for another probe and go back.  This new probe survives a little longer and they get video footage of sea monsters.  Yes, more than one.  They present their findings and in a solemn moment, the government leader determines that this means war.

Then there’s a whole bunch of dumb stuff, like exaggerated use of the Internet between scientists who corroborate their findings, since these monsters have been found in other deep sea areas.  Military intrusion into civilian life (another good cliché) and the regular updates that there are more monsters and they are coming closer.  Maybe some morality message about misunderstanding other creatures or how we invaded their turf first.

Then at the end, the monsters never make it because they are used to living in the deep sea under massive atmospheric pressure and when they near the surface, they die because of loss of pressure.  Oops, I guess their invasion didn’t work out.  And on top of that, while everyone’s focused on the fear of these monsters and how many they are and how big they are, there’s really not much to be afraid of.  They’re sea monsters.  We live on the land.  They can’t get us.  So a double-duh for the hapless audience.

This could make me millions.  Really, this stuff isn’t hard when you look at the competition.