www.James-Strocel.com

My brother has worked in the television business for over 15 years, and in that time my family was privy to all the bloopers and bureaucracy of the television business. Every time someone dropped a tape or forgot to flip a switch in broadcast TV, we were sure to know about it. For those of you out there who didn’t have the benefit of my brother’s running commentary, there’s Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe. It’s a BBC documentary series on the business of television. It goes into the enormous cost and complexity of creating a television show

The show’s most interesting segments delve into the thinking behind what gets aired on television. As a business, television producers don’t sell content per se, they sell audiences for the consumption of advertisement. So television producers essentially have to guess at what kind of person would watch their program. Sure they have statistical sampling methods like the nielsen box, but that only tracks the people that want to be sampled. This seems as reliable as checking chicken entrails in the age of contextualized advertisement. With the advent of Google you can now tailor ads to specific content. Ads are paid for on a click through basis, and the advertisers website can track where the visitors of coming from. That means that the effectiveness of ads can be measured without any invasive samplings. With luck, the next 20 years could see the end of the insidious practices of “consumer surveys” and “focus groups”.

Clip found at Mayerson on Animation.

Apparently my analogy of comparing the AMPTP to litigators wasn’t entirely the result of an old head injury. Former corporate attorney and current WGA strike captain Alfredo Barrios explains the method behind the madness that is the Hollywood Writer’s Strike. Check out the rest of the article here.

BASIC RULES

First, understand the relationship between Nick Counter and the studios. It’s essentially a lawyer-client relationship. The AMPTP is run by lawyers like Nick Counter and Carol Lombardini. Think of it as an in-house law firm. Their goal is to “negotiate” deals with unions on behalf of their clients – the studios.

As lawyers, Counter and Lombardi have to justify their paycheck. What does that mean? They have to add value. They’ve promised to deliver a more favorable labor deal than the studios would get without them. Otherwise, there would be no point in hiring them (or more aptly, keeping them around). So our loss is their gain. And the bigger our loss, the bigger their gain.

Now here’s the thing to remember, fairness and reasonableness have NOTHING TO DO with their approach. No corporate lawyer I’ve ever known has ever met with a client and promised to get them the most “fair and equitable deal” possible. That’s not their goal. Instead, they promise to save them a lot of money – remember, added value. If the studios were genuinely interested in reaching a fair and equitable deal, the CEOs and their CFOs would talk directly to our negotiating committee and financial people, and a deal could be reached today – by the way, this is what we’re driving towards.

What’s this you say? Wasn’t James done solemnly eulogizing last year? Aren’t all the Year In Reviews supposed to be done by now? What’s going on? Where am I?! You are in front of your computer reading my latest attempt at improving my writing. Yes, I know, I get a lot of compliments on my writing from those readers who are not search robots (unless ads for phentermine and online casinos are a form of compliment), but wouldn’t it be nice if my pithy observations were made more often? How do I know if I have any skills to improve if I don’t use them? Long story short, I tried to write novel last year. I started in May and gave myself until December 31st to finish the first draft. Unfortunately, since I am not mailing copies to myself and prospecting literary agents right now, something has to be done about my rate of output. We live in an ultra-industrialized society based on results, so if I’m not pumping out pages every day, I have no right to call myself a writer. Since I have more time now to write, I’ve decided that if I increase my overall writing output, a 10 page a day sort of regimen might not be so daunting. So in the interest of volume, I’d just like to talk about a couple of things I’ve learned last year about writing.

The Online Market:

There was a time when pulp and glossy magazines were so prolific that a semi-competent writer could make a living long enough to find his or her voice and build some semblance of a career. With all of these other media options out there it seems like those days are gone forever. I did a little research, and it appears that this isn’t the case. Writers today are now making money from the advertisements on weblogs. I had thought that this sort of business model had been quashed earlier in the decade, but with the advancements made in applications like Google adsense, the effectiveness of online advertisements is much better managed. Businesses can essentially pay by the eyeball for visitors to their websites. Professional blogger sites like problogger.net and copyblogger.com have extensive articles on how to make money in weblogs. The advice essentially boils down to a few choice steps

1. Choose a niche. This can be a specific interest that provides enough research for at least one article a week. The target audience for this niche interest must also be computer savvy in order to grace your site with traffic. You can also generate interest by aggregating information from many different sources with a common theme.

2. Generate enough posts consistently to generate traffic. Googlebots love it when your site updates regularly

3. Contact advertisers with a media kit describing your site. Sure, you could make some money using contextual ads, but if you actually have that personal rapport with your readers, you should be able to provide them with ads they can actually use. This will also provide your advertisers with consumers they can use.

And voila, you have your new revenue stream. Blogs like Gizmodo.com, consumerist.com and lifehacker.com are great examples of blogs that make money. As you may have noticed, james-strocel.com is not in the format of a money-making blog. The interests are too broad, and let’s face it, it doesn’t update enough. Hopefully within the next year I can come up with a blogging concept that’ll result in some groceries.

Novels: Screenplays are for suckers

Even before the writer’s strike, there was tons of literature by former television and movie writers that both media were becoming creatively bankrupt. The shows were being bankrolled to enhance the names of executives rather than to make any real profit. Works of art simply can’t be designed like cars or mp3 players. The ones that worked the best are very personal and specific in nature, so to make a movie all things to all people is an exercise in futility. So why not go it alone? Keeping ownership of your idea is not only good for future income, it preserves the idea’s potential income. When you buy a movie ticket or turn on the TV, you’re looking to experience a personal connection with whoever made the show. Film, television and print are after all only means of communication, they are not products in and of themselves. You only need to look as far as J.K. Rowling to see that we live in the era of the billionaire novelist. The potential gains of the novel far outweigh that of a screenplay that may never see the light of day anyway.

2007 started off for me in Bellevue, where Sara and I enjoyed a rosing blow-out at our friend Sandy’s. Explosions of party-poppers and the drunk-dialing of loved ones abounded as the last incandescent new year ball dropped. I had no idea that I had passed all my courses at BCIT and Sara was wondering why I was waxing poetic because for her, the year had started back in September. I was still working my way through a GIS diploma, and even though I had a practicum all set and ready, the jury was still out as to whether I would have a job at the end of it all. The nuts and bolts section of the course had finished, so we were now studying more specific subjects like photogrammetry and object-oriented programming, and more holistic areas like presentations and proposal writing. No sooner did my final exams end did I move on to my practicum at Environmental Criminal Research Incorporated. I spent two months working out of a loft office on beautiful Granville island. Although it was unpaid, it was my first job where I was NOT an entry-level mook interchangeable with thousands of other random hipsters in the city. It was almost like I was being paid to think. I liked it.

I completed all of my development targets and pretty soon ECRI had a serial criminal detector that would automatically load up map files. I also gained the distinction of having worked on software that had military applications, which was unfortunate because I had no desire to use it to pick up chicks. When the District of Maple Ridge called me back saying I had won a 6-month contract with them, high fives were had by all. Not only was I now getting paid to think, but they also provided me with Bose noise-cancelling headphones! Can you believe that? Of course, their purpose was to drown out the rack of servers set up behind me, but Bose Headphones! The District has become my favorite place to work so far. I got to make maps, scripts and data models for departments all over the city. When I got out of school, I was afraid of getting into a specialized discipline and having to perform the same tasks over and over again. Luckily for me, GIS is a generalist’s discipline, and will remain so as long as the world keeps changing and evolving.

I could’ve spent the next 20 years working at DMR, but alas for now it is not the case. Last Friday my contract ended and once again I’m out there looking for a patron to fund my calling. It’s odd though, after 4 contracts with some very diverse companies, unemployment feels like coming home after a long vacation. Work has piled up on my desk and I’m ready to approach it with a new resolve. I don’t have any more doubts about if I’ll find work, it’s more a question of where and when. All told, this year is ending on an up note. I’ve got a host of new skills and I am better able to work on projects on my own. My family is also doing well across the board. My sister is moving in with her boyfriend in Dawson Creek, and is looking forward to a new job there. My brother Jon still has plenty of video work, his wife Amber is still making the world’s printers run, and Hannah, my niece is figuring out preschool. Sara’s sister Megan is on a part-time contract teaching kindergarten, and her boyfriend Ryan is starting a new program at BCIT. Jen is finishing her fourth year at UCFV, and her boyfriend which we call “Other Ryan” is an assistant manager at Milestones. Sara, my Fiancee, is balancing her grade 7’s at Clayburn Middle with our upcoming wedding in March, but thankfully I’m now at home with her to help. As for myself, we’ll just have to see. Happy New Year, and God bless.