Kevin Smith on the economics of making movies (and having a small dick)

by cameron | Jul 30, 2006 | Uncategorized

I love Kevin Smith. The guys makes me laugh. Most of his films, especially the early ones, do too. It made me happy to hear TPN’s Hobo Radio boys giving Clerks 2 a big high five on their latest episode. And this blog post from the big guy, where he bitch-slaps a film critic called Nikki Finke, made me laugh out loud. This guy should be an example to teachers everywhere. Note how we combines education with humour in the following paragraphs:

Film may be one of the only industries where long-term revenue is marginalized (by the press) in favor of short-term earnings. Weekend grosses are hardly a bellwether of a film’s ultimate success (as far as financials are concerned, at least). A ten million opening weekend for “Clerks II” may not make for sexy headlines, but it puts us on target to hit our profitability mark of twenty million. How many films this summer (shit, in any quarter of the fiscal year) have doubled their budget in their opening weekend? How many will hit their profitability mark theatrically, to the point where home video (wherein the real filthy lucre lies) is all gravy? No matter how many times Nikki cries “failure”, the cold hard truth of the matter is that “Clerks II” will earn. Maybe not big (theatrically), but we’ll earn. Numbers never lie. How hard is it to comprehend a business model that’s outside the norm? For many, not very. For Nikki? It’s old dogs and new tricks (and, in truth, this low budget “trick” isn’t even all that new).

Let me put it another way: I was not gifted with a big dick and I grew up fat (and grew to be even fatter). Because of these shortcomings, I learned to eat pussy really well. That way, ultimately, I can provide a satisfying enough sexual experience where whatever chick was feeling charitable enough to get horizontal with me might reason “He did make me cum once, so I’ll give him another shot,” somewhere down the road. I took that logic into filmmaking, too: my stuff isn’t wildly popular in the mainstream, but if I make up for the lack of audience by spending less, ultimately, I can turn someone a profit. Harvey and Bob Weinstein have always respected this, which is why I still have a job after twelve years and no theatrical grosser over $30mil. In essence, Harvey and Bob have only financed five of the seven flicks I’ve made because… well, because I lick their pussies well enough, I guess.

Now, if all teachers could emulate Kevin’s approach to teaching with humour, I think school would be a lot more fun for everyone involved, don’t you?

All G’Day World spots sold

by cameron | Jul 29, 2006 | Uncategorized

The first of our Ebay auctions went better than expected. I really thought this would take at least a few months to really get rolling, but we sold all three available spots on G’Day World. The PSP Show sold one of three. It should really have done better than G’Day World because it has a specific target audience – people who play the PSP. Anyone writing games or applications for the PSP should be advertising on it. Whereas G’Day World’s audience is best described as people who DON’T think I’m an idiot – which is a small and eclectic bunch of people. Anyway – some further education required. The rest of this first batch of auctions have some bids as well but we still have some spots without bids.

I’m kicking myself for not starting these auctions ages ago. Like I’m also kicking myself for not moving to the US a year ago. My 2WebCrew mate Nik Cubrilovic, The Boy From Gong, is kicking ass and taking names over there for his start-up Omnidrive and detailed in this story in the Sydney Morning Herald. Anyone in the US with a spare couch I can sleep on for a couple of months? I don’t eat much. All I need is broadband.

Flickr Pro or Zooomr?

by cameron | Jul 28, 2006 | Uncategorized

My Flickr Pro account expires on Sept 1. Should I pay another US$25 for another year or should I change to another photo service, like, for example, Zooomr? What other online photo services are you kids using? Any recommendations for me?

TPN Auctions going well

by cameron | Jul 27, 2006 | Uncategorized

Only 18 hours to go on the first round of G’Day World auctions and so far we’ve got a couple of live bids. The other shows that we’ve put up also have bids, so it’s going well for a first round! Check out all of the auctions here.

Thumbpress – a better way to get a screengrab

by cameron | Jul 19, 2006 | Uncategorized

Last night, after we finished recording G’Day World, Michael Bailey skyped me and told me he had a new idea he wanted to run past me. What if he built a service that would make it easy to get a screengrab of a website? I said "hell yeah, that’d rock", as I often go through the laborious process of CTRL-PRTSCN, then find an image program to dump it into, export as jpeg, upload to flickr, and FINALLY you have a URL to post into a blog.

Well 12 hours later and Michael has it built. He’s called it THUMBPRESS.

Here’s an example of the TPN website.