I was browsing through my Amazon recommendations when I saw the Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog DVD. It's being sold for $10.49 and it's No. 21 in Amazon's Movies & TV.
Number 21 out of all the DVDs Amazon sells.
Within the Movies & TV category, it is No. 1 in Musicals & Performing Arts, No. 1 in Action & Adventure/ Superheroes, and No. 1 in SciFi/ Comedy.
As you know, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog started out as a free webisode online. What's whacky is that it is STILL available on the net FOR FREE.
WOW. Go Joss Whedon.
Welcome to the New Economy, where banks give out bailout money as bonuses, houses in Detroit sell for a dollar, and free webisodes sell like hotcakes for $10.49.
So there you have it folks. There's your answer to the billion dollar question of how to monetize your web videos...
1) release your videos on line for free ... 2) then make sure to call yourself Joss Whedon...
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
Interesting article in Time regarding festival online distribution: The Film Festival Comes to Your Living Room.
Speaking of Brits, Robert Pratten of Zen Films has an interesting post on social media marketing for indie films. While you're there, check out his latest animation video, Dairy of the Dead. It hilarious.
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
My consumer dollars previously earmarked for Hollywood have lately gone to the British. BBC has always done a mind-blowing job on their nature documentaries. They make Hollywood’s pathetic attempts at “nature documentaries” (most notably Disney’s and James Cameron’s) look like crayon drawings next to CGI video. But now, I’ve realized that BBC has moved beyond top-notch documentaries and are making highly entertaining thrillers as well. We’ve gobbled up two recently: Jekyll and State of Play (the BBC miniseries, not the Hollywood movie which comes out this year). Jekyll is a horror-thriller and State of Play is a political-thriller. Both are great fun and highly recommended. Sure, there are a few “yeah, right” moments in Jekyll, but if you’re going to watch a thriller, you’ve already accepted that you’ll be suspending your disbelief anyway so just go with it.
An interesting thing about these British shows – they seem to pick their actors based on their acting ability regardless of their looks. Shocking! :-) When you watch Jekyll, you might think, “He can’t be the star, he’s not
My favorite character in State of Play is the reporters’ boss, played by Bill Nighy. He was brilliant. What’s funny is that he also plays Viktor the vampire leader in the Underworld series. I’m not motivated to see the Hollywood version of State of Play coming out in April. For one thing, the BBC miniseries is about 6 hours and there wasn’t much dead space so I seriously doubt it will be an improvement to cram the story into 2 hours. For another, the BBC actors were top notch and the Hollywood actors could, at best, only try to match them.
Check out BBC’s offerings if you haven’t already. And if you have any interest in the natural world, you gotta check out their nature documentaries (Planet Earth series, Blue Planet series, Life in the Undergrowth, etc).
Cheers,
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
Stanford Continuing Ed is offering a class on Running Profitable Internet Ad Campaigns. The teacher is the COO of Media Flint, a company that does website development, Internet optimization and Internet advertising. I looked him up and it turns out that he has a 2:45 class online, available for free on Media Flint's site. It says it has "strategies on running highly profitable Internet ad campaigns." Nice. Thanks, Mr. COO!
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
