I think it's pretty evident that I am not a blogger. I definitely gave it a shot, but time is at a premium these days and this blog has been neglected beyond repair.
I'm going to shut 'er down and I'll probably have sleeplessnights.com redirect to stevewoolf.com, which I'll move from Tumblr and use more or less as a hub for contact with the outside world. I'll eventually put a blog up there, maybe post every now and again, but it'll be mainly for professional awareness and not too much for personal stuff.
If you're a subscriber here, thanks so much for reading and being a part of things. I'll migrate the feed over to stevewoolf.com so if you want to stay subscribed you won't have to do anything.
By the bye, I blog regularly at EPIC FU's blog and also irregularly on the Smashface blog.
Last October I posted my thoughts about the then-new Boing Boing TV web show. At that time the show was only a week or two old, and I was really disappointed in what I was seeing. I admit to having very high expectations because of how much I respect what Boing Boing has meant to Internet culture, and because DECA, the entertainment studio producing the show, is very well-funded.
Since then I've checked in every now and then to see how things were developing and changing. I'll say one thing, it's become far more interesting and has much more of the spirit of the blog now. They seem to have gone to an anthology-style approach, which works for a daily show with such diverse content. The day I'm writing this, they have an animated piece inspired by and created with images from early video games. The second half of the show has a piece of short traditional animation that is random and funny.
What I like even more are the videoblogs inserted with personal commentary. In this one Xeni Jardin gives us a running commentary as we watch a video shot by Sean Bonner of blogging.la documenting the Anonymous vs. Scientology protests in Los Angeles on February 10th. Something about the way the anthology shows are mixed in with news commentary seems much more like the spirit of the ecelctic and terrific blog that built the Boing Boing brand.
There's less original content and more repurposing of material created by others, but it brings attention to lots of talented creators from around the globe. This can feel a little weird with no commentary about the content, though. On EPIC-FU we frequently show 30-45 secs of videos from indie bands in the middle of our show in the Spotlight segment, but it's surrounded with commentary on other things to help balance out the presentation. Doing a daily show is quite a different animal, however, so as long as the entire week isn't like that I can't give them too much shit about it.
On the whole I'm glad to see that the folks at Boing Boing and DECA are not afraid to change the show and their approach to creating it. In my opinion the challenge facing the growth of Boing Boing TV appears to be to figure out a way to brand the show, because as it stands I'd have no idea how to tell someone about it who isn't already familiar with the Boing Boing blog. We have a similar challenge with EPIC-FU -- looking for the best way to communicate a focused brand message while still offering diverse and rich content from the web, which can seem totally random to someone who isn't immersed in it on a daily basis.
If anyone has any thoughts about how you'd describe Boing Boing TV or EPIC-FU in a single sentence, please post them in the comments. It should be something that makes you immediately get a picture of what the show is, who it's for, and why anyone should care about watching it. As Fred Seibert taught us, thinking about how to talk about a show can help focus the actual show content itself.
Our friend Brian Lerner worked with us in the early days of Jet Set Show, before we transitioned to JETSET and then to EPIC-FU. So we were really glad to see him get back into online video with his new series Drinks Anyone?, which is a serialized documentary about alcohol where he talks to people about their earliest memories of drinking, and their best and worst experiences with it. Check out the latest episode:
You can subscribe to the show here.
Those of you who follow the ups and downs of online video may have already heard the news, but the creative team of Rudy Jahchan and Casey McKinnon, creators of Galacticast and A Comic Book Orange, among other work, has parted ways.
The two of them helped raise the level of do-it-yourself special effects and consistently delivered a show that involved tons of long hours, learning new tools, and investing in themselves and their show.
Rudy was very clear that he would continue working on Galacticast, and I'm happy that he's been able to make that happen. Kneel before Zod!
Zadi and I know that they will both find success in their future projects, and we're glad that Galacticast will live on!
If you're in L.A. and into the entertainment industry, there's a panel that Zadi and I are on tomorrow at the Producer's Guild. Downside is it's $50 f you're not a PGA member ($20 with student ID), but it's a nice lineup of presenters and panelists.
PGA SEMINAR - "PREPARING FOR THE INFINITE CHANNEL UNIVERSE"
DATE: November 10th
TIME: 10:00am to 4:00pm
LOCATION: CBS Radford Studios (4024 Radford Ave. Studio City, CA 91604)PGA Members: No Charge
Non-Members: $50
Students w/ valid ID: $20CONFIRMED PRESENTERS INCLUDE:
YouTube.com - Head of Product Marketing Jamie Byrne
Break.com - CEO Keith Richman
Broadcaster.com - CEO Martin Wade & VP of Marketing Robert Gould
Revver.com - VP of Marketing Angela Wilson Gyetvan
Metacafe.com - Founder Eyal Hertzog
Veoh.com - Founder Dmitry Shapiro
Zattoo.com - VP of Business Development Gagan Palrecha and VP of Content Ian Greenblatt
Brightcove.com - Director of Product Marketing Sanjay Desai1ST PANEL: CASE-STUDIES FROM CONTENT-CREATORS
- Dan Harmon, creator of Channel101.com and Comedy Central's "The Sarah Silverman Program"
- Matt Price co-creator of Comedy Central's Guacamole.
- Douglas Sarine and Kent Nichols of Beatbox Giant Productions "Ask a Ninja"
- Steve Woolf and Zadi Diaz of Smashface Productions "Epic-FU.com"2ND PANEL: DEALMAKING & THE FUTURE OF DISTRIBUTION
- Lydia Antonini: Director of Development at Warner Premiere
- Kevin Tidwell: Columnist/Blogger Allthings.tv
- Gary Bryman: VP Creative - Short Form Content The Walt Disney Studios
- Bruce Smith: Owner of Omnipop ManagementSEMINAR PRODUCER & MODERATOR: Dan Abrams, Executive Producer at BodogTV and Writer/Director/Creator of the "Bif Naked Bride" webisode series.
RSVP: kyle [AT] producersguild [DOT] org
SCHEDULE:
9:00am - Coffee & Bagels / Networking
10:00am - 8 Companies' Presentations
12:30pm - Lunch / Networking (attendees may submit their written questions to our "question jar" for vetting)
1:30pm - 1st Panel : Case-studies from Content-Creators
2:30pm - 2nd Panel : Dealmaking & the Future of Distribution
3:30pm - Selected Q&A for panelists & presenters
4:00pm - Event ends / Networking
Seems like lately all Zadi and I have been doing is bitching about things. We bitch about the show, we bitch about business, we bitch about people on the street, you name it. Part of that is stress, part of that is burnout, and part of it is misplaced indignation about things that are not really important.
Tonight we went for a late night jog to clear our heads and get a little exercise. On the cooldown walk back, we started talking and, as usual, bitching about things. Then then strangest thing happened.
A van pulled up next to us and an elderly woman lowered her window. She asked if we could help her by picking up her husband, who had fallen out of his seat inside the van. Zadi and I looked at each other and considered the situation. There was no way we were going near that van without her opening the doors and turning on the lights.
When she slid open the van's side door, there was a little old man crumpled up on the floor. He had fallen off of his motorized chair. It was obviously not a threatening situation, so I stepped inside to see what I could do.
I'm 6'3", about 200 lbs, and this elderly fellow was probably half my size. After considering the best way to lift him without hurting him, I picked him up off the floor and put him back into his seat. He was was clearly humiliated by the situation. Imagine having to ask a perfect stranger, sweaty from jogging, 11:30 at night, to lift him up like a child and help him sit back down in his chair. I got him settled in, told him no thanks were necessary, and they drove off to destinations unknown.
I believe life is really about noticing the small things. There we were, a young couple with everything in the world going for us, and what were we doing? We were complaining, as usual. Well, that was it. If you believe in signs, there was none clearer that this one. Shut our stupid mouths. Our problems are nothing, they are meaningless. Almost anyone would trade positions with us. We felt like fools.
There will always be reasons to bitch about things. Someone not treating you right? Sucks. Bad luck? Man, I feel for you. But you know what? That's about as far as it should go. Because that stuff just circles right back to you and pollutes your thinking.
Tonight really helped me locate my focus. When we got back home a situation we'd been dealing with suddenly came into very clear focus. It is amazing how clear your mind can become when you simply decide to turn off the unnecessary noise.
Very cool! JETSET and Smashface were mentioned in a nice article by our friend Casey McKinnon in today's Guardian Unlimited newspaper. :)
In case you don't already know, Casey is co-creator, producer, and star of two current online shows, Galacticast and A Comicbook Orange. She's celebrating her two-year anniversary creating web shows. Congrats, Casey!
This evening we launched the newly redesigned Smashface company website and new company blog.
Our goals are to keep things simple and professional. In the next few months we have some interesting projects in development, and we felt like a company redesign was pretty long overdue.
Let me know what you think, if there's anything you think should be changed/improved, etc. The projects section will get filled out in the coming weeks with some nifty DHTML scrolls and project thumbnails.
Jay, my partner on Pixelodeon, sent over this link yesterday. It's for YouTube's new Project:Direct contest.
Now, I don't really have any gripes with YouTube holding a contest that helps independent filmmakers. But I do have a rather serious problem with the way they are branding their contest. Just take a look at these two pages by clicking the thumbnails below:
 |  |
This is not cool.
Further, the video intro they are using is very similar to the one that preceeded every screening at Pixelodeon and preceeds a number of videos created at the event for the Pixelodeon website. For comparison, the YouTube video is embedded first, then the Pixelodeon video underneath:
Now, the carnival-like pinwheel image we used for Pixelodeon in the background was from a stock image available on iStockPhoto.com, so it's not exactly rare. But I find it hard to believe that the YouTube designers were not aware of Pixelodeon, since we had a number of prominent YouTubers attend, and in fact we had an entire screening dedicated to YouTube (embedded above).
We created a strong brand, and YouTube appears to be "borrowing" concepts that can potentially create confusion between the two events. The chances are very remote that this is a coincidence. They even have a film projector "flicker" and grain imposed over their pinwheel video clip like the one Ryan Junell created for us for Pixelodeon.
I'll update this post when we figure out what we're going to do about it. Zadi has already reached out to YouTube to try and get some answers.
I gave it a week, but I don't understand how a such a smart, interesting group of people can make such a boring, unprogressive web show like Boing Boing has done with their new Boing Boing TV show.
Boing Boing is a hugely influential blog, for anyone who doesn't know. It's filled every day with wonderous good and weird stuff that the editors find all over the web. It's fantastic.
Clearly though, knowing how to make a great blog does not translate to knowing how to make a great show. I'm also rather surprised that the well-funded production company DECA can't do better than this as their first prominent effort. I don't really see any shred of the innovation and boldness in the show that makes the blog great. Instead it feels completely watered down and uninspired.
Boing Boing's influence has reached all the way to The New York Times. If I sound harsh in this review, it's only because I'm disappointed. I know that shows need time to grow and evolve. That may yet happen with BBTV.
But by playing it so safe, they've robbed all of the lifeblood out of the things that make Boing Boing the kind of brand that excites people who know the nooks and crannies of the Internet.
