Bunny Blog

The numbers are in, and the Wall Street Journal put together a graph of consumer movie spending in 2009, compared to 2008.

This echoes a lot of Hollywood whining about slumping DVD sales, but as usual I find it hard to have much sympathy for their plight.  In every other category (including DVD rental!) sales are up versus the year before.  Growth in theatrical spending, in fact, nearly compensates for the loss in DVD sales alone.  So I would like to offer the world’s tiniest violin as a concession to those who thought DVD was going to be a cash cow forever.  Maybe I should offer a history book as well.

(image blatantly stolen)

Online transactions are still a tiny slice of the pie, but nearly doubled over the past year.  If that trend continues then digital delivery will be a viable mechanism within a couple of years, which bodes particularly well for indie filmmakers with direct access to the means of distribution.  Despite a lot of big talk, it didn’t happen last year.  Will 2010 be the year when someone steps up with a substantial platform for online film?

If you follow sports at all, you can’t have missed the news recently about pitcher Mark Buehrle’s perfect game for the White Sox – a remarkable feat that’s only been done 18 times in all of big league baseball’s 170,000-plus games).  But while Buehrle and the Sox didn’t miss a beat in their 5-0 victory over Tampa Bay, Major League Baseball has been missing all of the most critical beats when it comes to building and maintaining their brand online, in an age when many people already find baseball irrelevant.

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I’ve recently completed Scott Kirsner’s Fans, Friends, & Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age, and if ever there was a book worthy of discussion for young media creators, this is it.  Kirsner’s fairly well known as a panel speaker and the creator of the excellent blog CinemaTech.  His new book is a mecca of advice for any creative trying to self-start their career in an increasingly fragmented world.

This is no easy guidebook, though.  There are no 1,2,3 steps for success, and Kirsner never presents it as such. He acknowledges that everyone is still looking for the “magic bullet” that will make it obvious how to build a profitable career as a creator.  So instead he takes the show on the road, and this book is largely a compilation of interviews from people who have tried something new and created.  Advice and real stories from the trenches are here from people like Jonathan Coulton, Ze Frank, Mark Day, Michael Buckley, the Homestar Runner boys, and many more.  Each is a case study in how to build a brand, whether you’re a filmmaker, a fine artist, a writer, a comedian, a musician, or even a magician.  The interviews are presented not exactly as advice, but as “here’s what worked for me”, with the understanding that your mileage may vary.

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After months of planning and effort, we are pleased to announce that we have just launched LEAD BALLOON, our new original content banner. Our first two projects to launch under Lead Balloon will be the indie feature film “The Echo Game” and comedy web series “Coma, Period.” Along with feature films, web series, and TV, we’ll also be developing games, mobile, and interactive projects.

The much-maligned actual lead balloon really can float (we saw it on Mythbusters!) and we take our inspiration from that hearty little guy, flying high against all odds. Lead Balloon is all about ideas that are risky, exciting, and (though improbable) truly soar.

Stills from some of our upcoming projects after the jump: (more…)

I’m sure some other people thought of this too, but a while back I realized that I was typing the same blocks of text in a lot of different emails that I was sending. For example, directions to our office, or where to park near our office, or our FTP information. God, what was the password again?

Then I realized that email programs already had something built for memorizing blocks of text. EMAIL SIGNATURES.

This picture totally explains what I'm talking about here.

_

So yeah, pop in this stuff and use it whenever. Who knows how much time you could save! Billions and billions of seconds will no longer slip through your fingertips!

hurrah.

These protesters (credit for the photo to LA Times) were the first thing I ran into on my way into E3’s truimphant return to the LA Convention center this year. They were as all small groups of crackpots are, i.e. poorly-organized, ineffective in their yammering , and mostly a big nuisance on the way to wherever it was people were going.

This is blowing up all over the wires, but yeah, it was totally a fake protest.

My general lethargy towards anyone mischaracterizing games aside, what a terrible waste of money on EA’s part. Taking ten minutes out of my day, here’s why, and because we’re not just dudes who criticize, following that is a list of viral campaigns that would have used the same resources in a far more effective fashion: (more…)

I was reminded recently of how important it is to pay attention to the subtle details when you’re pitching to a prospective client.  

My fiancee and I met with a number of potential caterers for our wedding, and I was blown away by the differences among them.  None of the decision making we did came down to taste of the actual food, but instead it was the broader picture that we ended up basing our decisions on.

Here’s a list of some of the comparisons:

• With Caterer 1, we had to wait twenty minutes for them to arrive at their own venue and finish setting up.  With Caterer 2, they were ready for us when we were early.  Which would we rather have running our party?
• With Caterer 1, they had no pictures or samples of their previous events.  With Caterer 2, they had a video showing numerous previous parties they had catered and decorated.
• With Caterer 1, they only had tastings twice a month, and only during business hours (meaning my fiancee and I both had to take off work to go for the tasting (don’t tell the bosses!)).  With Caterer 2, they accommodated our schedule completely.
• With Caterer 1, they had multiple parties tasting at the same time.  It felt like we were being pitched a time-share.  With Caterer 2, we had a tasting all to ourselves.
• With Caterer 1, they didn’t have enough samples for the number of people in our party.  I had to split samples with my fiancee.  With Caterer 2, they had multiple samples for each person, so you could go back and compare flavors, and how they all went together.
• With Caterer 1, they didn’t have samples specific for our party…even though other parties had samples specific for their events.  With Caterer 2, they had our exact menu that we wanted to have for our event for us to sample.

The list goes on from there.  

Oh, AND…

• Caterer 1 was more expensive than Caterer 2.

Obviously we’re going with Caterer 1.  

Obviously.

Just kidding.

At the end of the day, the food was comparable between the two caterers.  But Caterer 2 had it together on so many more levels than Caterer 1, it was downright laughable.

So remember: it’s not just the project you’re pitching, it’s the whole package.

We were looking for an intern.  We weren’t prepared for what we would get.

If there’s one thing we appreciate here at Psychic Bunny, it’s pushing new technologies to their creative limits.  If there’s another thing we appreciate, it’s how hard it is to actually raise money for an independent project, especially in today’s climate.

The upcoming feature Searching For Sonny has managed to bring these together, garnering a ton of attention for being the first feature to be shot entirely with a DSLR (specifically the Canon 5dM2).  They’ve got a trailer up shot by our friend and oftentimes DP, Jeffrey Waldron, and it looks gorgeous.

[update: the trailer has since been made private, sorry!]

They have also, quite cleverly, convinced an investor (or two, I can’t be sure) to give them $10 for every person who pledges to see the film (signing up for their mailing list in the process) at their website.  It’s extremely clever, and the movie looks good enough that I sure pledged to go see it.  Plus I get to support independent filmmakers without using any of my actual money (yet).  Very well done, everyone involved.

I’ve been harassed lately by several ads that show up in the ticker on my Gmail account.  And by “harassed” I mean the ads are terribly convenient.  Because, you know, they’re targeted.

I’ve sent maybe one or two emails with “Doctor Who” mentioned somewhere within the contents of the email, so of course I get ads for Doctor Who on DVD. Well, apparently there are a few sites that sell all four seasons of the relaunch for a measly $79.   Considering each season individually goes for that much, I’m DYING to order the complete set.   The problem is, most of those sites are shady as hell, and I’m sure that my identity and/or credit card information has been stolen just by looking at them.

So, for all you web-sales entrepreneurs out there, here’s where these guys are going wrong:

Let me start by saying that these companies might be completely reputable.   Unfortunately, none appear as such, which is why, against my better judgement (or in conjunction with it, now that I think about it), I will never order from any of these sites.

Most appear to be internationally based, which is fine.  Most of the best board games are only available internationally these days, and I’ve ordered safely internationally in the past.  I won’t hold this against any of these sites.

They offer free shipping to the U.S., which is part of the appeal (because who ever wants to pay for shipping - especially internationally?).

One of the sites appears to have launched in November, another in September, which, again, I can deal with.  You have to start your business sometime, right?

The fact they’re advertising on Google is a check mark in the “legit” column.  If you’re not a legit business, you’re not going to advertise.  Or is a fake business creating a mirage of legit business through advertising?  It’s easy to get paranoid when your identity is on the line.

Here’s where things get shady.  The one site has a contact email that is Gmail-based, and not the company’s domain.  If you’re going to go to the trouble of creating a fake website to lure people in to buy your fake goods, at least take the half-step more of using an email address with the same domain name.

The fonts are nearly illegible, which is also shady.  Maybe I’ve been spoiled by Amazon, but I like the sites I order from to at least look presentable.  My Geocities page looked more well designed, and that was over a decade ago.

When you click the “Locator” link on the one site, it says “We are located on the web at [their URL].”  Really?  Do you think?  At least make up a fake physical address, instead of just looking lazy.

Both sites have typos galore.  Again, shady.

The one site actually says they get their DVDs from China “releases.”  Considering that I can’t find a legit site that carries the supposed “Complete Season 1-4 DVD Boxset,” I’m guessing that these are bootlegs.  The fact they are Region 0 doesn’t help the case at all.

I guess what pisses me off the most is that I’m wasting my time trying to prove these sites aren’t legit, but whoever is running these “businesses” aren’t even trying to pretend to be legit in the first place. At least try to look professional.  That’s all I’m asking.  I want to give you my credit card and my identity in exchange for a cheap DVD boxset.  You just have to work to get it.