The Hurt Locker, Indie Films, Financing TV Part II

I've cut this long post into two parts again as an experiment. Part I was posted Tuesday, May 11, 2010 here.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/hurt-locker-indie-films-financing-tv.html

Now for Part II.
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Introduction
The topic here is "If you want to understand the world, follow the money." And by following the business model and financing sources for the fiction delivery system, we might understand things well enough to boost the Alien Romance field's respectability. So here is Part I, a history lesson in financing fiction, followed by Part II, how that historical root has shaped what's happening now and reveals what might happen next. If you anticipate what's going to happen next, you can turn a profit on it.
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Part II

Today, a similar revolution is going on in film to what has happened in SF/F book publishing under the pressure from an exploding fanfic marketplace (and other sorts of pressure we're not talking about this time).

As fanzines were originally produced and distributed at a huge loss to the publishers, eventually publishers learned the business of publishing applied to fanzines as well. And the best fanzines became break-even.

That's right. They weren't allowed to make a profit, but they could break-even, that is cover the expenses with the price of the 'zine. If it were legal, they soon saw, they could indeed make a profit.

The fiction delivery system I've been talking about in these posts is a business model, and it can operate at a profit - if it's legal.

Hence, the pressure on the copyright system that makes it illegal to turn a profit on material copyrighted by others unless you pay the owner. Society is looking for a new model for the ownership of art by its creator.

The Indie Film community is meanwhile, tapping into Indie Writers, first-time screenwriters selling their first script. It's become a voracious market for scripts that could be filmed for way under a million dollars.

Use the LOOK INSIDE feature on Amazon to read the intro to the screenplay of THE HURT LOCKER.

http://www.amazon.com/Hurt-Locker-Shooting-Script-Newmarket/dp/1557049092/rereadablebooksr/

I have the book itself (it's good) and the end-notes or Production Notes at the end tell the story of how this film was funded.

As Indie film makers climb the ladder, they are able to attract investors and increase budgets to where those "fanzine" type flaws can be avoided. It's all about budget.

Really study how THE HURT LOCKER was created, and you'll see something very important is happening.

Now think about this. TV shows (long a product only of big studios) are now searching for and finding "independent financing."

Read this article in Daily Variety:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118016724.html?categoryid=1238&cs=1&query=%22by+Michael+Schneider%22+%2B+Leverage

The TV Show Leverage is looking to leverage some financing from a new source. Remember the original Star Trek was canceled because of low Nielsen Ratings (because there were no ratings boxes on College Dorm TV's), and Nielsen Ratings exist for the sole purpose of determining the sale price of commercial time (eyeballs = revenue). If you don't have at least 3 seasons of shows, you can't syndicate and monetize the investment in the first 2 seasons.

Thus the 3rd season of 16 shows of LEVERAGE are key to monetizing the investment.

In the early 1970's, Star Trek fen hatched the idea that we should buy stock in Paramount and NBC and force them to put Star Trek back on the air.  Good idea, before it's time.  Shareholders had no say over programming.

If this business model idea had existed then, Roddenberry would have had a ready source of all the cash needed to create a 4th and 5th Season of the original show, and probably most of the derivatives and the movies.  Fans were willing (and increasingly able) to raise that kind of money as many went on to very successful careers after college.

Remember always -- it's a business model. Invest and reap more than you invested. That's the only criterion of any interest, and the only thing that determines whether you the audience will have access to any bit of fiction.

EXCEPT -- now we have self-publishing and YouTube. Which are the "fanzines" of yesteryear manifesting in the Web-hubbed world.

Yes, the business model of fanzines was - pay nobody, throw your hobby-money into a fun project - the only profit is a boost to your ego (egoboo another coinage of fandom).

Have you seen the Star Trek Episode WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME -- made with unpaid actors, not paying for the script, out-of-pocket investment.

http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/weat_gateway.html

It's a TV Show Episode fanzine - and it's fabulous Indie Production.

Marc Zicree engineering and produced WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME with all legal permissions. And it's been hugely successful.

Here's one more datapoint to consider.

Wired Magazine featured in March 2010 an article on using Twitter to transfer money person to person -- better and faster than PayPal.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_futureofmoney

The article talks about uninventing "money" as something printed on paper or coined from something of value. Whole new concept of making a business model work. And the concept arises from a new style of thinking, a new internal or mental model of the universe.

This kind of thinking is native to the Web 2.0+ generation.

But it is transforming the business model of the Fiction Delivery System I've been talking about.

I've been following several people on Twitter who are soliciting investors in Indie films.

Yes, for $25 or $50 you can "own" a fraction of a film - which like HURT LOCKER might win an Academy Award or perhaps a lesser accolade, and become worth money. Or it might be a paradigm transforming addition to this new world. There are lots of different sorts of "deals" out there for investing in Indie Films.

Here's one from Twitter:
@FilmCourageWe are 74% Funded, Over $11,000 raised. $3855 left to go & 17 hours left.... http://bit.ly/aVDeQP

And another one from twitter (@syfy is the official syfy channel tweeter)

Syfy Q) @dspringfield Would Syfy ever consider a cost sharing arrangement like Friday Night Lights on DirecTV? A) We'd probably consider it.

And I'm in some Film groups on Twitter where there's a lot of funding activity going on. Innovation in funding procedures will drive innovation in the kinds of fiction that can be delivered to different fractional audiences -- and then those little audiences grow and change the whole world.

The overall thrust of this series of posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com is all about presenting Alien and SF/Paranormal Romance to the general audience in such a way as to reveal to them why this kind of story deserves attention and ultimately respect. The boring business of tracing how funding sources changes the whole business model is just one tiny part of this investigation.

So here's another illustration of the results of this kind of thinking, not so much focused on entertainment as on the kind of tech innovation that is pushing the world of entertainment financing (and thus ownership issues such as copyright) in new directions:

An article in Businessweek titled "And Google Begat..." shows how the entrepreneurial training employees at Google absorb even non-verbally is driving a new wave of tech innovation:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_10/b4169039637367.htm

These datapoints are important not only because of their content, but also because of where I found them.

As Star Trek fanfic began slowly to be mentioned in major media, so also these innovative ways of financing the fiction delivery system are surfacing first here-and-there, and now in the hugely influential national media.

The source of financing for the endeavor actually shapes the endeavor, more even than the objective or driving ambition to communicate.

Financing and its sources belong to the Tarot Suit of Pentacles, the World of manifestation. Here is a list of the 10 posts on the Suit of Pentacles I've done on this blog.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html

Money is not the root of all evil, but rather the manifestation of whatever (good or bad) has been conceptualized "above" that level.

There is a dynamic tension in play between the established system of profiting from large audiences which is explained here in a Review of a book about the film industry and its business model (you probably should read the book; but I haven't yet):

http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/04/20/noted-journalist-jay-epstein-explains-why-movies-suck/?icid=main|aim|dl9|link4|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.walletpop.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F04%2F20%2Fnoted-journalist-jay-epstein-explains-why-movies-suck%2F

and the system profiting from do-it-yourself entertainment (Indie Films, YouTube, Self-publishing, and now TV Series independently funded), which is discussed further down in the Review.

The walletpop.com review says:
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Independent film financing has collapsed. Studios rarely make money on a film. Although the industry may not be putting out films to your taste, you're still paying tax dollars to support them. And Wal-Mart is one reason skin is so rare in major studio releases.
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And a little further down in the article (which you really should read in whole) it says:
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What happened to sex?
There was a time when nudity was almost obligatory in major films. Now, even James Bond's arm candy is modestly attired, and Epstein points out that, of the top 25 highest grossing films since 2000, none have had any sex-related nudity.
There are two reasons for this, according to Epstein.
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Remember earlier here I pointed out how the sex scene has replaced the action scene in SF/F - especially kickbutt heroine urban fantasy. And have you looked at Romance covers as a group lately? Two figures, suggestively intertwined -- the artists must be horrendously bored by that order from editors.

But sexuality has disappeared from the big screen - (still a lot of hot stuff on TV, but that may change soon too).

On the third hand, read this article:

'Harry Potter' Star Says Filming a Sex Scene is Hard, Watching It With Parents is Harder

http://www.popeater.com/2010/04/22/rupert-grint-cherrybomb-sex-scene/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+aol%2Fmovies%2Ftop+%28Movie+News%29

Lesson for the writer - if you want a big audience, delete all the sex scenes.

Remember the writing lesson where you are required to write 10 pages, then the instructor tells you to go over it and delete every single adjective and adverb, and you absolutely die over that drill?

Well, do the same thing with your sex scenes. Delete them all and see if you still have a story in there somewhere. See what that does to the story you are telling. Maybe you have a major motion picture on your hands. Or an Indie.

I have no reason to suspect that what this review on walletpop.com says about Indie Film financing or the 10 items in the big screen blockbuster formula is not currently true. But to the kind of thinkers the Wired article referenced above talks about, that is an opportunity not an obstacle.

I recall my grandparents remembering the days before radio when families would gather in the living room in the evening and play piano, violin, and sing-along, entertaining themselves.

Perhaps we're headed back to that life rhythm on a new arc. Families sitting around concocting a YouTube video; what an image.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

The Hurt Locker, Indie Films, Financing TV - Part I

I'll cut this long post into two parts again as an experiment.
-----------
Introduction
The topic here is "If you want to understand the world, follow the money." And by following the business model and financing sources for the fiction delivery system, we might understand things well enough to boost the Alien Romance field's respectability. So here is a history lesson in financing fiction, followed by how that historical root has shaped what's happening now and reveals what might happen next. If you anticipate what's going to happen next, you can turn a profit on it.
---------
Part I

The world of commercial fiction has been turned inside out, upside down, and backwards by the advent of the Web, and especially Web 2.0 with Web 3.0 and even 4.0, all going mobile.

iPhones, iPads, TV sets that hook up to your home network and let you fish for TV shows and films posted online, with or without a fee, nevermind Kindle and now iPads that can access Kindle's library.

The result of all this technology is a world which closely resembles the world STAR TREK fanzine writers really wanted to create.

And I don't mean in their fiction. Most portrayals of The Enterprise in STAR TREK fanzine stories was less futuristic than the 1960's TV show itself.

I mean in the ability to participate in joint story creations, to communicate instantly, to collaborate and share, all to the purpose of expressing in fiction what is nearest and dearest to the heart. To share universes.

In order to create and purvey their pastiche fiction based on a TV show, fan writers invented an entirely new world.

But they didn't do it all by themselves out of nothing.

Here's how it happened, and I'll show you below what all this has to do with The Hurt Locker (the film about a bomb squad in Iraq that won an Academy Award in 2010).

This also relates to the transformation of the artist's business model by the re-defining of "copyright" erupting from the whole Open Source software movement, and Creative Commons Licensing.

And that copyright issue can be traced back to Star Trek fanzine writers too. Oh, what a tangled web!

Before 1966 and Star Trek, in the 1930's, science fiction magazines connected readers of science fiction and basically invented modern SF as well as SF fandom. In fact, the very people who invented modern SF and created that community (called First Fandom) actually invented the word "fandom" out of "fanatic" and "domain" or "Kingdom."

Science Fiction fans, a bunch of guys, mostly in New York and Philadelphia, got together (physically met in one physical place), and kept meeting regularly and irregularly and created "conventions" as the events where the most of them would turn up.

They admired the writers in the magazines and the very few books. As it became hard to get together physically, they began writing to each other about the stories in the magazines and books, and about the writers, and about each other, and about the most recent gatherings. They invented an entire language to discuss these matters.

There came to be more and more of them, so they needed many copies of their letters to each other, and invented "fanzines." At first these were a few pages filled with letters and essays, copied on a spirit duplicator (which printed in purple ink), and later on mimeograph (decades before xerox copiers were invented), and stapled, then mailed to each other via the Post Office. Yes, snail mailed.

The letters would typically be a few weeks or a few months old by the time you got to read them.

At first, nobody charged money for these fanzines. You got them by contributing a letter or article. The publisher footed the expense out of pocket.

Some 'zines became so large that publishers asked non-contributors to pay a fee for paper, printing and postage. Audiences grew.

I have a fanzine of this variety with a letter from me in it, and my contributor's copy took more than 3 years to catch up with me, what with all the forwarded addresses.

I joined SF snailmail fandom when I was in 7th grade and have been a member of the N3F ever since (National Fantasy Fan Federation - founded by damon knight who also founded SFWA, the profession SF writer's organization where I'm also a Life Member).

Into this world of SF Fandom, Star Trek was born. The show captured the attention of SF Fen (the plural of fan is fen). They discussed it in fanzines.

Devra Langsam and some other New York fen who were captivated by Star Trek started a Star Trek fanzine called Spockanalia -- on mimeo, paper now totally disintegrated, ink faded, and I still have my copies. I had an article MR. SPOCK ON LOGIC, in the 4th issue.

The idea caught on, and suddenly Spockanalia was publishing fiction.

SF 'zines usually didn't publish fiction except as send-ups, spoofs, farces and gotcha's.

But suddenly, dozens of Star Trek fanzines were publishing fiction and articles and letters of comments on the fan written fiction and articles. A whole new world of Star Trek was born.

And Star Trek conventions where fanzines were sold, and story ideas concocted for more fanzines.

I created the Star Trek Welcommittee (modeled on the N3F Welcommittee which had welcomed me into fandom)to answer fan mail from STAR TREK LIVES! ST Welcommittee connected thousands of new and isolated Star Trek fans to the snailmail network. It's being reincarnated on facebook by another fan now.

Today that snailmail world of fanfic and letters of comment on fanfic lives and grows online. Last week here (May 4th, 2010) we derived a writing lesson in SHOW DON'T TELL from a bit of fanfic based on the TV show White Collar published on fanfiction.net.

What has SF Snailmail Fandom to do with Indie Films?

Star Trek fandom produced (is still producing) billions of words of fiction derived from a TV show. It connected thousands of writers and readers in a network that spanned the globe and discussed life in terms of fiction.

The content of that fanfiction violated all the "rules" and requirements of published SF, but was in most cases actually SF.

For a quick overview of classic Star Trek fanfic and some prime examples you can read free see:

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/

The SF-Romance was, I believe, first explored in one of those fanzines, an Inspirational SF Romance.

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/showcase/

Those first classic ST fanzines sold and traded at Star Trek conventions gave rise to the "genzine" -- 'zines that contained not just Star Trek but pastiche derived from other TV shows (Man From Uncle, The Professionals). Then whole 'zines devoted to other shows (Dr. Who, etc).

Today, fanfiction.net has almost every TV show's fans posting fanfic.

These original TV spinoff fanzines had to be non-profit (and able to prove it) because of violation of copyright. At first, Star Trek, and other shows tried to stop fanzines being printed and circulated with actual legal cease and desist notices for copyright infringement.

This led to a clarification of the copyright law called today "fair use" and with a proper disclaimer and proof you make no profit, you can distribute fanfic.

That re-energized the fanfic community, and now a whole generation has grown up with a very different idea of what copyright is and what it's for.

Remember, Star Trek gathered, connected and energized whole communities of very geekish tech-minded young people. Out of that community's attitudes and activities has arisen the "Open Source" software movement and Creative Commons licensing.

Now we have a whole philosophy of life based on the "Open Source" concepts.

Meanwhile, also out of the (mostly) women fiction writers and readers arose another boundary shattering behavior.

The women who wrote TV pastiche wanted SF-Romance, and wouldn't let the traditional publishers deny it to them. They wrote it themselves.

At that time, you could not sell (professionally) any original SF or Fantasy that had even ONE sex scene in it.

Fanzine markets grew explosively after STAR TREK LIVES! was published by Bantam.

Then you could have go-to-black sex scenes in prof SF/F novels but human/non-human sexual relationship was considered, well, ...kinky?

1985, my SF Romance DUSHAU won the first Romantic Times Award for SF. (3rd novel in that trilogy gets right down to the sexual issue)

For Kindle edition and free chapters see
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

November 16, 1986 issue of The New York Times Book Review published (now famous traditionally published SF author) Camille Bacon-Smith's article SPOCK AMONG THE WOMEN featuring Jean Lorrah and Jacqueline Lichtenberg's Star Trek fan fiction.

Then you could have chaste, non-anatomical-language sex scenes in prof SF/F novels.

Academic books mentioned ST fanfic, other newspapers, TV interviews, the internet -- online fanfic explosion.

And now you can hardly sell SF or Fantasy without fully orchestrated, every detailed action revealed, sex scenes. And prof Romance novels use sex scenes the way SF novels once used action-scenes -- as a pacing, punctuation between plot developments.

As the teen fanfic writers and readers grew up, the professional market accommodated their demand for more sex in their adventure fiction (i.e. mixing genres).

Now the biggest professional market is kickass heroine fantasy with combat punctuated by sex scenes. SF without sex isn't selling so well.

SF Snailmail Fandom formed the basis of ST snailmail fandom which created a market which is now served by traditional publishers.

The Indie Film community is following the same developmental path.

The Hurt Locker is an Indie Film. (Independent Film; not a product of Disney, Warner Brothers, big studios).

It's not even the first Indie to win that kind of major attention. Low budget, non-studio films, have done this before.

And that's not a new path. The women's Gothic Novel, once circulated in handwritten manuscripts woman-to-woman, eventually emerged into professionally printed novels.

What young teen fans do quietly on their own, even privately, eventually (used to take 40 years; now it may be only 10 years) emerges to dominate the adult world.

The Indie Film was essentially a fanzine until recent years, and at some levels still is. Most of the indies made are made by beginners or amateurs just for the fun of it.

YouTube has unleashed a flood of talent among the youngest people, learning to entertain an audience with a video, just as young people learned to entertain readers with fanfic and moved on to become professional writers and editors -- who now publish material with those same quirks professionally.

Recent works, like The Hurt Locker, are blazing a trail for works done as much from love of the subject and the medium as for the profit, are reaching award levels.

You must see this one, starring Nichelle Nichols -- click this link to see all the very interesting awards this film won --

Lady Magdelene's
(if you've got 2 or 3 hours - you can watch it on amazon video on-demand for $3)

http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Magdalenes/dp/B002XKK3ZM/rereadablebooksr/

Clicking that link won't force you to pay. You can see all about the movie.

This is a well marketed indie film.

I loved it because the flaws don't bother me any more than the flaws in a fanzine. It showed me a lot about what's happening in the low budget, indie film market, and what real professional skill used in a bare-bones budget film can achieve.

And this one won a number of film festival awards besides the one listed on imdb.com

The point here is that Indie Films have become the modern fanzine, even more than text pastiche on fanfiction.net

And the off-beat, violate-all-the-rules content of these films is becoming mainstream because these indie films are creating an audience.

This Indie Film audience is like the readers of SF in the 1970's who stopped buying traditionally published SF to spend their time and money on Star Trek fanzines.

And then, when Star Trek novels were published by Pocket, they might read those novels, but flatly refuse to follow the professional SF authors who wrote those novels into the author's other SF/F universes.

The publishers concluded that Star Trek fans were not interested in SF/F.

They were wrong.

It was the traditional publisher's rules that turned the readers off.
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So here I'll cut you off in suspense. Look for Part II next Tuesday.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://www.simegen.com/jl/