Hey everyone, check out this article on VentureBeat.
For those of us on MySpace, it’s a terrific example of how social networks are influencing the way multimedia is consumed. Why leave the computer to watch the Simpsons? Well, that’s old news, actually. Better yet, why close your MySpace page to watch that episode when you can get it on the same screen? And through viral effects, your friends will quickly see what you like to watch.
Want to see what we watch? The Scripped MySpace page is at http://www.myspace.com/scripped. Come on, be our friend. Can you think of any cool applications for screenplays on Scripped?
Interesting article here about Microsoft Office versus Google Docs. When we go around talking to people about Scripped, we inevitably get the question, “What about Final Draft and Movie Magic? How do you guys compare?”
Of course we can’t compete with the installed software on every feature. It’s not our intent and we don’t want to have to charge you guys for writing services. In fact, we want to give writers every reason to come on board and join the Scripped crew. The fact that Google gets over 4 million people a month to write online means there is hope for a many 10s of thousands of people to write screenplays on Scripped.
But the other point of this article is that the old installed guys will innovate, and that’s why we were happy to announce a partnership with the other big software product in the biz, Movie Magic Screenwriter. It’s a match made in Hollywood, and one that I wouldn’t expect from Google and Microsoft any time soon.
Did we not call this? The evidence of a tidal shift in monetization of online video keeps building. YouTube is selling keywords, much the same way its regular search cousin, Google, does. Interestingly, YouTube alone gets more search volume than all of Yahoo’s properties.
So what does this mean? We’ve been harping on this internally for some time now. When YouTube makes money, it’s just the first step in a series of events that ultimately helps the screenwriter. The story goes something like this.
YouTube sells ads for chess sets next to your video about chess-playing aliens. Let’s say YouTube makes $40/year on all clicking going on around the clip you uploaded. You get a (optimistically) 50% cut of that and think, wow, for an annuity of $20, I just have to put up a catchy video? Awesome! Net present value of an annuity at a 6% discount rate is a cool $333.
So how do you beat the odds that your video is well-watched? You make sure it’s scripted, of course! YouTube is flooded with ad hoc improv. Scripted videos will rule the day. And where do you get that script? At Scripped.com, obviously, and you pay some fraction of your NPV for it. That’s how YouTube making money puts money in writers’ pockets.
Oh, and with companies like Auditude making headlines by associating you as the owner, no matter where the video is streamed, that $333 is just the baseline. It’s all up from here.
In a final push in what must be the most posts ever put up on the Scripped blog in a single day, I offer this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-handel/hollywood-under-siege_b_143373.html. Don’t let the “Huffington Post” URL fool you. This is probably the most thorough and insightful piece on the evolution of Hollywood and the Internet that I’ve come across.
I’m writing about the Kennedy School not because it’s relevant at all to screenwriting, but because it’s kinda fun to write about. It is Harvard after all.
In the early mornings in the Harvard Kennedy School forum the tables are filled with mid-career students. They study Dutch labor markets, development in Niger, and leadership failures. They come from around the world: one mid-career I met recently holds office in Nairobi, another is a woman from Pakistan had a staff of 1,400 when her office suffered a suicide bombing.
Before I enrolled here I knew that people like this existed. I knew somewhere in the world there were those who risked their lives to eliminate corruption and have to convince their employees to come back to work after a 17-year-old boy detonated himself in the lobby. It’s the stuff of movies, but it’s also real life.
My favorite mid-career student is someone I sat behind on a small bus on a field trip to West Point. She is a photographer named Laura Rauch and her work is beautiful. Each picture she showed told a story. She knew the subjects and gave the context that led her to that particular village or hospital. She was embedded with troops in Iraq and followed Hillary Clinton and John Kerry around during the election. She also took some great pictures of Las Vegas. I’d guess she’s in her 40s. A real-life steely action hero journalist. Again, the stuff of movies. So maybe there’s a tie-in after all.
I was on the phone yesterday with Steve Schwartz of Chockstone Pictures. He searches for stories that have real meaning, perhaps the kind of film that would fly under the coverage radar. Participant Media, the company that brought us Syriana, Thank You For Smoking, and Good Night and Good Luck might be the closest big firm to Steve’s vision.
In seeking his projects, Steve looks for scripts that are unique and based off of real experiences by real people. I can’t help but think he should survey my older classmates. Or better yet, I’ll get them to write their stories on Scripped and tell him to search for loglines (when we get that function up… soon!)
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