Month: June 2007

Fascinating article over at gaming and social software blog Wonderland, relating discussion with Jesse Alexander, Executive Producer of Heroes (and Alias, and Lost). The main topic concerns crossover between television and gaming, and not merely the usual ‘how do we exploit this property?’ nonsense. No no, this is bi-directional, with TV learning lessons from the games industry.

Let’s face it, gaming isn’t niche: PWC predicts spending on games in the US will surpass that on music this year – globally, that’s already the case. That there are games that tell fascinating, wonderful, gripping stories is not accidental – that only happens when people know what they’re doing.

While I wouldn’t describe myself as a huge fan of Heroes, it does put its finger on something fresh. Perhaps it’s that it’s fluffy and light – and could feel trivial – but somehow taking itself as seriously as it does invites the viewer to buy in. It doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t – which is lightweight entertainment – but given that, there’s a sense of buckling the belt and the show saying ‘right, let’s get this party started.’ That conviction is strangely infectious.

The best of the new Doctor Who episodes (Blink) have been similar; the BBC’s Jekyll (by the same writer) ditto; the games I tend to like (BioWare‘s stuff, notably) could be described similarly. But it needs a delicate touch: I’ve always considered Lost to be overblown, in the same sort of way that X-Files always was and, arguably, Battlestar Galactica is, unless you’re American in which case it’s probably about right (discuss, 20 marks).

Read the article; it’s interesting.

I’ve long said here that I dislike the phrase ‘user-generated content,’ for all the usual reasons (‘users’ sounds dismissive, blah blah blah). Also, ‘user-generated TV’ seems to me an oxymoron.

Ved Sen puts it rather elegantly, in a critique of Mint Digital’s second UGTV conference (I laid into the first one last year; from the second we at least have photos):

Television, by design works at a large scale. Because of its technology, capital intensity and overall structure, it only works for millions of people at a time. It simply doesn’t work for a few hundreds. That’s why Youtube works – not because of the half a dozen videos that get seen by the whole world, but because of the thousands of videos which individually get seen by a few people. For User Generated content to go on TV – it needs to be good enough for a million plus audiences. How many pieces of user-content merit that kind of audience. It seems a bit like forcing a square peg in a round hole. Think of going the other way – imagine trying to create mass-Internet content. Why would you do that?

To me, the whole concept of UGTV seems not so much backwards, as inside-out. Which doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen – as Sen goes on to note, Current.tv is interesting because it targets a very specific niche for which the approach might just work. But fixating on UGTV isn’t necessarily a way to get things done in general.

Last week I was giving informal advice on a funding pitch. ‘It’s so hard to get decent news coverage in this field,’ said the people preparing the pitch, ‘So: we want to fund someone to identify good stories, and to push them to the media.’

I thought they were crazy – they’d be paying an amateur to do high-level PR. Their thinking is based in an out-of-date concept: that ‘the media’ = press and broadcast. Don’t get me wrong, printing presses and television transmitters are expensive bits of infrastructure, and there’s a certain sense in having newspapers and television companies as gatekeepers. But you no longer have to play that game if you don’t want to.

My suggestion was that they instead pay the staffer to get out and make the news films they wanted to see, and publish themselves. Their contention is that the stories are of interest to the public, but not enough interest to make it past news editors. Fine – offer your stories to the public and see if they bite.

“But… where’s the audience?” they worried.
“I thought you said these stories were of interest to the public?” I countered.
“But…”
“Oh, come on. You want to target teenagers. What’s the audience penetration of BBC Local Radio News in that demographic, compared to – say – Bebo? And you see more risk in this approach?”

The BBC Local Radio News journo in the room didn’t look happy. But really, the only people with anything to fear are those who are too tightly-bound to the existing infrastructure and its gatekeepers.

People like… those at UGTV’07?

I’m back on the road again, by the way. Had a brilliant day in a school in Port Talbot yesterday – great kids, wonderful crazy films, hugely enthusiastic staff – and I’ve two more workshops this week, at Techniquest and in Mold. Next week I’m in Dorset and Devon, for four more days of workshop.

It’s all going to be a bit on the mad run-around side, but it’s a joy to be back into it. However, things are likely to be a bit slow on the blog front for a couple of weeks.

Mark Ravenhill writes in yesterday’s Media Guardian of his distaste for a world of script editing dominated by Robert McKee’s Story. I completely agree, though I fear he’s rather late jumping on the McKee-skeptic bandwagon.

Not that Story is a bad book – it’s not[1]. It’s more that people who’ve been on McKee’s course have an annoying habit of ending up as disciples, evangelising The One True Way of Writing Screenplays. They apply this to everything, from blockbuster films to hour-long documentaries to make&do magazine shows for children. And yes, I have had a discussion with a (very) senior children’s TV figure, in which he invited me to learn lessons from McKee for a 2-minute item that involved yoghurt pots and string.

There are lessons to learn. But slavishly sticking to McKee’s structure is at best a creative straight-jacket, and at worse a crutch for the lazy and talentless.

(if any journos are reading: there’s your pull-quote. Heh)

A few years ago I attended a conference session about McKee’s Story, in a meeting of science documentary makers. The panel unanimously extolled the virtues of the approach and derided anyone who queried their methods. Those of us at the back shuffled uncomfortably – finally, I understood why I hadn’t been able to watch Horizon for years; the editors gently enforced a Story-esque conflict/antagonist/turning-point/three-act structure. Whether it suited the narrative or not.

Eventually I could bear it no longer. I stood and said – almost certainly less-elegantly than I recall, sadly – “This session has had an excellent set-up and a modicum of conflict. However, it’s sadly lacking in turning-point or hope of resolution. I propose a solution: I’m off to the bar.”

A surprising number of people walked out with me.

[1] – Come to think of it, I’ve not read it. I’ve read someone’s session notes from the 1-day workshop, but not the book. From some accounts (see the Amazon reviews) this is the best way to find out what McKee’s banging on about.

I’ve worked out why there’s no SDK for the iPhone: the multi-touch panel would allow you to build a software theremin. And as we all know, the only thing that sounds worse than a kazoo is… a theremin. Hence: no SDK. Boom.

While I’m being geeky: has anyone else noticed that Apple’s new website is quite wide? How’s that going to render on an iPhone?

One of the things I’ve regularly found amusing about predictive text input is that where there’s more than one match for the button pushes (which is usually the case), the default choice tends towards the whimsical rather than the useful. For example, 686 defaults to ‘nun’ rather than the perhaps more regularly-used ‘mum’.

I’ve just found another one: 2564 defaults to ‘clog.’ I don’t know about you, but I find myself wanting to discuss Dutch footwear far more regularly than, say, blogs.

how would we visit the South Devon Chilli Farm?

The irrepressible Fake Steve Jobs has a neat post on the we-haven’t-seen-one-but-we-have-to-cover-it-anyway-so-let’s-be-snarky iPhone stories that are cropping up all over the place, but mostly at Zdnet. The bit I really like is where he posits assessing press coverage using Fourier techniques. Much under-used for gags, Fourier analysis is.

For reference: I’ve been buying blank miniDV tapes from APR Media in Somerset. Nice people on the phone, their know their stock well, and I can’t argue with their prices – £1.53/tape for standard Sony miniDV, including VAT, and with reasonable delivery costs.

Today marks the third occasion on which I’ve remembered to call them only at about half past three in the afternoon. They’ve always said ‘the tapes will be with you tomorrow,’ and they’ve not been wrong yet. Yeah, I know, I’ve jinxed it now.

Recommended, anyway. They do everything from DigiBeta stock through blank DVDs, to hard drives and odd bits of digital camera gear.

[Update 20/06: predictably, within minutes of placing my order (which did indeed arrive promptly, hurrah), John emailed to tell me of a place in Bradford that’s selling JVC miniDV stock for 99p/roll +VAT. If you can stomach the minimum order of 50 rolls: yow, that’s cheap.]

Most Blockbuster stores in the US will offer high-def films on Blu-Ray but not HD-DVD. Remember, folks, that the Beta vs. VHS war was decided largely by which format the rental shops supported.

One could argue that in the next few years Blockbuster will matter less, as people increasingly download high-def movies. But that doesn’t end well for HD-DVD either, since once the physical medium is out of the loop, who cares about formats?

As for Blockbuster’s move being rushed: remember that a bricks-and-mortar store has a vested interest in there being just one successful format. Two formats take up more shelf space and/or cost more to acquire and manage. In fact, I’d be fascinated to know the deals that were put on the table by the respective industry groups – who was able to move further on pricing? The conventional wisdom has it that Blu-Ray discs are more expensive to manufacture, but I guess we don’t really know.