Final Blog: Reflection

Over the past year, I have been developing a blog.  Although it stemmed from class assignments, what I really wanted to achieve was to experiment with writing about different topics.  I wanted to try and touch upon many different topics to see where my writing and interests fit more. I decided that, for my final assigned post, I would review my work so far and touch upon the topics that really stimulated me, versus posts I had to struggle to write.

            Out of the 20 posts, I have grouped them into 5 different categories.  First, there were the posts that topics were chosen for me, ’Assigned,’ and the posts that seemed random and ungrouped, ‘Misc.’ The next three were categories that seemed to develop on their own through my own interests. These are ‘Album/Film reviews,’ ‘Artist reviews,’ and ‘Tech rants.’ 

Album/Film Review:

            These few reviews I found the most fun.  I love taking a single album, or film, and analyzing it thoroughly.  When I read album reviews, I don’t like just reading whether someone likes it or not.  I prefer when a reviewer takes a step deeper into the product and explains why he/she enjoys it so much.  To me, this really surfaced in my most recent post on Ridely Scott’s Prometheusmarketing campaign.  Instead of just saying I was excited, I openly speculated about the symbolism behind the campaign.  This gives the reader something to think about while they view the media.  I try not to include any types of spoilers and only use news the movie itself has put out.

Artist Review:

            Artist reviews tend to be pretty basic.  I enjoy them, mostly, because I never have to risk spoiling anything.  It is not like a film where there are secrets and plot details I shouldn’t disclose.  With artists, I can soak up their entire career and then translate that to generate interest.  This is like my review on Steve Metcalf, bassist known as BassCausality.  I analyzed his music and, from there, chose what would generate the most interest.   These reviews are easier and more general because I want the reader to search further.

Tech Rants:

            These are far more opinion based, but overall my favorite type of posts.  Tech rants consist of me finding something technology related that compiles information that I have not found together.  For example, I wrote about the chaos that Netflix brought on when they introduced Qwickstir.  Across the Internet, I could not find one article in support of Netflix, so I wrote one.  The post focused on how the public may have over reacted and didn’t take into consideration what that would mean for future business.  Although it wasn’t as tech heavy, it was still one of my favorite posts I’ve written to date.

In the coming weeks, I will actually be removing the posts that fall into the assigned and miscellaneous categories.  The main reason is because I don’t find that these articles reflect my best writing.  These articles tended to be a bit more forced and I believe it reflects that.  The second main reason is that I need to narrow my brand focus.  If I try to write about too many things, there is more a chance of not acquiring a loyal audience.  If I stay focused in a few topics, then my writing can develop further from there.

Prometheus Uses TED to Kick-off Viral Campaign

So who’s not excited for the summer movie season?  With so many big movies coming out, there has been plenty competition fighting for the buzz.  This immediately brings me to the marketing of Ridley Scott’s upcoming film, Prometheus.  Few movies have the advantage of having a massive budget, a famous director, and the convenience of being a loosely based prequel of the Alien franchise.  That would usually sell itself, right?  Well whether it would or not, Fox isn’t taking any chances.

Many movies are just marketed with loads of previews and ad space, but with that said, Prometheus has started marketing in a quite revolutionary way.  With a June 8, 2012 release date the initial teaser trailers were released in December of 2011, as expected.  Then, on February 28, 2012 a TEDTalk was posted on the TED website. TEDTalks are usually comprised of speakers exposing new and revolutionary ideas.  The odd thing was that this talk was dated from TED 2023 and featured a speaker, who was quite obviously actor, Guy Pearce.  He tells the compelling myth of Prometheus and talks about the development of technology in the middle of a massive stadium filled with people and flying cameras.  Pearce ends the talk by saying, “My name is Peter Weyland and if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to change the world.” What Prometheus co-writer and producer, Damon Lindelof, achieved was an official use of the TED brand.  He did this by contacting Tom Rielly, a production director of TED Talks.  Rielly was immediately on board for the idea even though TED has never officially been used to promote a product. 

The reason Lindelof thought this was an appropriate strategy, comes directly from the premise of the movie.  It is a common fact that the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is the ruthless company responsible for many of the Alien sequels. That places this talk before the merger. The Weyland Corporation and its founder Peter Weyland, at this time, are making further advances in technology, such as androids and terraforming.  These ideas propose big ethical questions, which in their infancy may have seemed crazy/futuristic…sci-fi.  These are, however, exactly the type of ideas that come through TEDTalks. People who think outside of the box and use a medium to share their ideas with like-minded individuals.  These talks often involve topics like social and scientific trends.

Prometheus focused on blurring the line between fiction and reality.  By getting to know their own fictional universe and determining their message, they were able to translate it into today’s existent mediums.  They recognized TED as a brand, which coincided with what the message they wanted to achieve.  The campaign only started there.  In March, at WonderCon, viewers of the trailer premiere were given Weyland Corp business cards and encouraged to call **WEYLAND.  Upon calling you are greeted by Weyland Corp’s automated voice and simultaneously receive an MMS message with a video.  The video, narrated by Prometheus star Michael Fassbender, advertises the upcoming androids to be released by Weyland Corp.  It is the total, seamless, execution of this campaign that makes it so intriguing.  When movies have the resources and ability to fully envelope their audience, they create that much more buzz and genuine interest. 

Added References:

Weyland Industries

TED Interview with Damon Lindelof

Louis C.K. – A Model for Self-Publishing

One very steady, yet not exactly main stream, market is that of stand-up comedy.  Comedian Louis CK is currently at the forefront of this with a genius, yet some times offensive, live show and hit Tv show, Louie.  It is argued that one of the reasons he keeps such a consistent quality of content is the fact that he handles most of it himself.

Louie started out mainly as a writer for shows like Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Late Show with David Letterman, and no one can forget when he wrote and directed cult classic, Pootie Tang.  Besides all of his movie writing credits, he also writes, shoots, and edits his own stand up specials. His new show, Louie, is approaching its third season, and has already had Emmy nominations for outstanding writing and best lead actor.  His most recent release was a self distributed stand-up special, also produced, written, and edited by CK.

Paying for all the expnses of production between ticket sales for the gigs and his own pocket, CK chose to distribute it only through his website.  For a small Paypal fee of $5, a user can stream or download, or both, the special twice.  Louis addresses the fact that he was advised not to distribute this way because it would be so easy to pirate, but he chose to do it anyway.

But did it work out?

If you will notice, you will see over $1 million dollars…all to him.

He successfully did a stand up special totally DIY and it paid off.  With him being such a stand up guy, CK explain what he will do with the money. 

            250k – Production of the film

            220k – Himself (guy’s gotta eat)

            250k – He’s rewarding the staff that helped him on the special with a “big fat bonus”

            250k – He is donating to charities (listed on his site)

Here’s a guy doing it all himself and not being too greedy about it.  He is acting, whether he likes it or not, as a pioneer for online distribution of this kind.  A Radiohead of standup? Either way he has hit his stride as a comedian and I look forward to any of his releases.  Here is the preview he posted for the special.

**Warning** Topics may have language and topics not appropriate for everyone.

 References:

Louis CK (Go buy the special!)

Culture Map article on special

Laugh Spin - $200,000 profit four days after special is released

Made an Example of: the U.S. Government perfectly times the shut down of Megaupload

The past few weeks, the topic of discussion has been Internet piracy.  Between SOPA, PIPA, and Wikipedia, I’m sure you have run into it. What resulted was one of the largest public protests in history.  With an Internet outcry from users, and blackouts from websites, the public successfully postponed the bills.  Just as the dust of this was settling, however, the government indicted individuals and companies who are responsible for the file-sharing site, Megaupload.  Not only that, but they immediately shut the site down and put up this nice little welcome message:

The funny thing is that most people can name, off the top of their heads, at least half a dozen sites exactly like Megaupload. Right? Not so fast.  What differs is the fact that the owners of this website made millions of dollars from it.  The owner, a cleverly named Kim Dotcom, received millions, which he spent on lavish houses and cars.  They offered a premium membership for users to receive faster upload and download speeds if they paid a fee and helped share Megaupload links over the Internet.  They received high cost ads for their site, which drove them to try and generate more users.  It was reported that this money was laundered through coding teams spanning the US, Europe, and New Zealand; only some of the money going back into the site itself.

Now my question is, even with the blatant disregard for certain laws, was the shut down of Megaupload for justice, or a scare tactic after the small defeat of SOPA/PIPA?  Megaupload has been around since 2005 and the government had a 72-page indictment when they shut the site down January 19^th.  Scheduling coincidence? Or did the government pull one of those moves where, when a child sees he won’t get his way, tattles about something that happened forever ago? Reaching with that analogy? Meh, think about it.

Either way, this leads me to a few more questions:

What will happen to sites, and seemingly legitimate services, like Dropbox?

If there is a crackdown on online cloud computing, the so called future of the Internet, how will this affect heavy hitters like Apple with their iCloud service?

References:
What's left of Megaupload.com
CNN Tech Story on Megaupload
Gizmodo on the Shutdown

High Existence - An outlet for the Intellectual

The Internet is saturated.

Saturated with what?

Insert anything here.

High Existence is an online community of relatively like-minded people who seem to actually function as a community.  Not a forum that has a topic followed by the standard Internet posts of constant negativity and belittlement.  I am so used to this that I usually don’t involve myself in forums; but at High Existence (HE), I haven’t found any of this.  Actually, to bring it a step further, I’m finding people using words that are rare to forums. (i.e. please)  These ‘6907 HEthens strong’ are exploring articles and topics all relative to self-enlightenment.  Not in a religious sense, but at a human condition level.  Call it the mind or the soul, but these people (myself included) are not trying to focus on what’s wrong.  They are focusing on how to make things/themselves better.

Aside from the discussions, there is a main blog that posts articles of the same sort.  The articles aim at making the reader think on their own life and reflect.  A very interesting article was titled “Life Experiment: An Alien on Your Own Planet”, in which it suggests readers to observe the world from the point of view of an alien that just landed on Earth.  These simple sounding activities make it easy for hours of thinking that stays with the reader long after they have read it.

Jordan Lejuwaan is the creator of High Existence.  He outlines here why he started HE and his story leading up to the epiphany.  He was in his freshman year of college where, after a little over a semester, he realized he wasn’t benefitting from school as he thought he should.  He started this site to help fund his traveling.  He believes that you can learn far more traveling the world, experiencing different culture and people, than you can in a business class for four years. Jordan was actually nice enough to respond to a message I sent him asking why he started the site.  He pointed out that even though there are plenty of articles, books, etc. to gain this wisdom from, there wasn't really a good place to compile all of this.  So Jordan made one.  It is evident he made a great choice and that there are thousands of others who feel the same way.

All in all, this site is great.  Whether you wish to join the cause and involve yourself in discussions or just read an article here and there, you’ll more than likely learn something about yourself.  

Netflix: Am I the only one who thought Qwickster was a good idea?

       Over the past few years, Netflix has exponentially grown.  It has killed most of the market when it comes to renting movies.  Blockbuster is only now trying to make a comeback.  But in early September, Netflix tried a new business plan.  They proposed having Netflix handle online streaming while setting up a new company, Qwikster, to handle by-mail DVDs, Blu-rays, and video games.  For some reason the public became outraged at this, and Netflix’s small price increase, which resulted in 800,000 members canceling their service.  Shortly after, Netflix announced they would stay as one company and ditch the Qwikster idea.  My question is why this was such a bad idea in the first place?

            The future of media clearly points to subscription based, online services like Netflix.  Most people who are reading this have seen the demise of VHS to DVD and now DVD is moving to Blu-ray (remember HD-DVD briefly?).  As this migration happens, the online channels, such as iTunes and Netflix, now provide a pretty high quality product at the ease of the public.  What I think Netflix did was notice this shit and decided to consolidate their forces.  To have one company, Netflix, focused on streaming alone it allows for them to stay ahead and refine their service.  This also would work great from their new company, Qwikster, to focus on the tangible renting market; noting that they planned on adding video games, a service Netflix has yet to offer. 

Now I saw this as an advantage to both the company and their customers.  If Netflix stuck exclusively to streaming, then they would have had to add movies to their library.  They may have even made the majority of all their movies available for instant streaming for their same $8 monthly price.  That would be extremely attractive to new customers.  Since they decided to keep it one company though, now they can keep many popular titles to dvd only.  And what will this mean for the video games?  The company can have the advantage of having two companies.  Years from now, when media is predominantly online, Netflix would have the comfort of already having a company just for online.  They can make the switch now and just hold Qwikster as an expendable company.  The way they were designing it wasn’t even going to follow the same brand scheme as Netflix.    Qwikster could have been dropped or re-absorbed when physical copies become more obsolete.

            Instead, the public freaked out.  Now Netflix will remain one company.  Blockbuster is now on the rise again as well, providing streaming, rentals, and video games….they may still even have a store or two open.  I’m interested to see how this all plays out.