Folks, I’m sorry to tell you (but not really to do) that Monday I’ll be leaving you for the Big Apple (and for 2 weeks). How sad (or awesome for me) is that?
So much to do and so little time!
I need to print out my short scripts because I have a little meeting with Tisch next Friday. And I haven’t bought yet my suitcase. Dammit.
Anyway, beyond my awesomely not particularly interesting life I was fortunately able to watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report because me love me some Comedy Central late-night show. I especially loved this little segment that was on last night:
The mixture of an MSNBC implosion coupled with not-so-subtle innuendoes in a Cenac/Bee/Stewart sketch is just…priceless?
You know how I talked about The WB’s online launch on August 27? Well now there’s another, again, new kid on the block. And his name is Strike.TV
Yes, that’s Kristen Wiig.
The idea for Strike.TV, like Whedon’s Dr. Horrible, was thought out during, you’ll never guess this, the writer’s strike. Strike.TV allows for screenwriters to create a content that will be filmed and produced, while still maintaining ownership of their work.
The writers behind the site’s content include writers for The Office, How I Met Your Mother and much more (see the above trailer). Several original series will be available on the website such as Global Warming, with Aasif Mandvi and Kristen Wiig.
The site will be paid, similarly to Hulu, with short ads before the program. Strike.TV is expected to open to everyone later this month.
And what about that “college love”? Well you certainly know that ABC, NBC and Coe like to stream their shows online, and also like to cash in the checks they earn with the ads in them. Fox is soon going to join them with Fringe and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. On September 8 and 9, both premiere will be streamed simultaneously with their TV broadcast. The catch is that this stream will only be available to college students, or rather people surfing the web with .edu domains. Why .edu domains in particular you may wonder. Well Bill Bradford (the VP of “content strategy”) saw that .edu domains were among the top visitors for Fox’s website and came up with the streaming idea. Brilliant. Especially when you know that “.edu people” are also the number one people to download illegally shows, such as, you know, the leaked Fringe pilot.
I’ve got this problem, well it’s not really a problem. More like a catch-22. Anyway, I’ve got this short film I wrote and directed where reality TV is mocked. Half the short is basically this clichéd clip show of the “greatest moments” of the program. For a clichéd clip show I obviously needed music that reinforced the ridicule of the situation. I was out of time (it was actually a school project) and didn’t think twice to use copyrighted music. Indeed, the crappy commercial music suited perfectly the short. So here we are now. I would like to send this movie to festivals but for obvious copyright issues I can’t. I faxed several request (8 in totals) to publishers and labels and stuff, only one got back to me so far: I had to pay between 250 to 500 dollars to use a 20-second background music (not even the crappy commercial one)! I should also point out the fact that this short is strictly non-commercial, and had/has a zero-dollar budget behind it. This leads me to either: a) wait for the other requests to come through and miraculously be free b) send the short to festivals despite not having the copyrighted rights to the music c) find copyright-free music
Ultimately I went with c). I came across this great site where there are tons of music from around the world under creative commons, which means (depending on the group) you can freely use the music as long as you credit the artist. This site is Jamendo. It’s awesome. One problem though. I’m looking for crappy commercial music, and I can’t seem to really find it over at this indy site. It’s been weeks now since I’ve tried to replace the copyrighted songs. Replacements has yet to be found.
