Media

Star Wars blooper reel

Written by

This has been making the rounds over the past few days. I must confess, I felt a little sadness when I saw Sir Alec Guinness. Note that the first few clips have no sound. Do not adjust your sets.

The importance of a local paper

Written by

Om Malik on the importance of keeping the local newspaper around. John Henry bought the Boston Globe. Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. Will the risk associated with billionaires owning a prominent local voice be balanced by the value of keeping those voices around?

Lost Return of the Jedi footage discovered

Written by

This was demo footage created to show off the EditDroid editing system. Watch it while you can. I suspect this footage won’t be up there very long.

Ebay’s Omidyar follows Bezos in reinventing journalism

Written by

The news industry is going through some tough times. Newspaper after newspaper is folding or being subsumed by a goliath. Independent news bureaus are shutting down, forcing the news to flow through the keyboards of untrained citizen journalists. People are getting their news from the net, and that news is not being vetted in any formal way.

Amidst all this chaos comes opportunity. Jeff Bezos stepped in and bought the Washington Post. eBay founder Pierre Omidyar was also approached by the Washington Post. Though he declined the purchase, Omidyar is committing a good portion of his fortune to reinventing journalism from the ground up.

His first step was to build a partnership with Glenn Greenwald, from The Guardian.

When they finally were able to talk, Omidyar learned that Greenwald, his collaborator Laura Poitras, and The Nation magazine’s Jeremy Scahill had been planning to form their own journalism venture. Their ideas and Omidyar’s ideas tracked so well with each other that on October 5 they decided to “join forces” (his term.) This is the news that leaked yesterday. But there is more.

Omidyar believes that if independent, ferocious, investigative journalism isn’t brought to the attention of general audiences it can never have the effect that actually creates a check on power. Therefore the new entity — they have a name but they’re not releasing it, so I will just call it NewCo — will have to serve the interest of all kinds of news consumers. It cannot be a niche product. It will have to cover sports, business, entertainment, technology: everything that users demand.

At the core of Newco will be a different plan for how to build a large news organization. It resembles what I called in an earlier post “the personal franchise model” in news. You start with individual journalists who have their own reputations, deep subject matter expertise, clear points of view, an independent and outsider spirit, a dedicated online following, and their own way of working. The idea is to attract these people to NewCo, or find young journalists capable of working in this way, and then support them well.

I have high hopes for these folks. This is important work.

The soup to nuts of iOS photo sharing

Written by

This article covers a lot and does it well. If you like to share photos and are not already an expert at the process, take a read.

LIST: The 25 most suspenseful films ever made

Written by

I love lists. Love stepping through them, one at a time, especially with friends, arguing and discussing what’s been left out, what doesn’t belong, and what is in the wrong place.

As is usually the case, this list is not mine. In fact, I definitely don’t agree with a number of these choices. That is what makes this so much fun for me. C’mon, Jaws at #17? That’s insane. I think Jaws should be right up there in the top 3 at least.

One thing I love about lists like this is the new movies I encountered here. My Netflix queue has some terrific new entries. What’s your choice for the most suspenseful film ever made?

Some of the most powerful photographs ever taken

Written by

You’ve likely seen some of these, but most of these were new to me. Carve out a few minutes to dig through this page. Incredible collection of powerful, moving images.

NFL considers Netflix for Thursday Night Football package

Written by

Interesting speculation that the NFL is considering bringing in a streaming partner such as Netflix or Google Play for a Thursday Night Football package. That would be a huge move, with lots of obstacles to overcome.

One point to note is that DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket agreement expires at the end of the 2014-2015 season, so now would be the time to reshuffle the deck. I would love to see an online component to the NFL. I wonder if anyone at Apple is pursuing a relationship with the NFL.

To me, this is another sign of the slow transition from the network television broadcasting model to the inevitable internet based model. Very interesting.

Epic bus ad from Denmark

Written by

I’m a real sucker for a good commercial, and this is better than most. I challenge you to come up with a better ad campaign for public transport.

Calvin and Hobbes documentary

Written by

Dear Mr. Watterson is a documentary about one of my favorite comic strips of all time, Calvin & Hobbes. In theaters and available On Demand on November 15, 2013. Can’t wait.

Making awesome movies

Written by

In my house, we make a lot of movies. We are always on the lookout for clever techniques we can incorporate into our own projects. Here are two videos I just love and wanted to share.

This first one seems impossible and real. But it can’t be real, can it?

This second video shows you some tricks you can use to make movies like the first one (be sure to follow the headline link for a bit more background). Watching this second one inspires me, makes me think I could make the first one with some clever editing. Great stuff!

3 Tricks For Your Impossibly Small Film Crew from Vimeo Video School on Vimeo.

Rob Schneider and Roger Ebert

Written by

Movie fan? Roger Ebert fan? Definitely read this great story from Chaz (Roger’s wife) Ebert’s blog.

Roger Ebert wrote a book called “Your Movie Sucks”. From the book’s Amazon page:

From Roger’s review of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (0 stars): “The movie created a spot of controversy in February 2005. According to a story by Larry Carroll of MTV News, Rob Schneider took offense when Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times listed this year’s Best Picture nominees and wrote that they were ‘ignored, unloved, and turned down flat by most of the same studios that . . . bankroll hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic.’

“Schneider retaliated by attacking Goldstein in full-page ads in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. In an open letter to Goldstein, Schneider wrote: ‘Well, Mr. Goldstein, I decided to do some research to find out what awards you have won. I went online and found that you have won nothing. Absolutely nothing. No journalistic awards of any kind. . . . Maybe you didn’t win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven’t invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who’s Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers. . . .’

The story I linked to starts with the flame war turned book, but evolves into something surprising. I enjoyed it.

Spanish language remake of Breaking Bad

Written by

Direct remake. In Colombia. Wild.

The explosive success of Breaking Bad was bound to generate some copycats shows, but Spanish language media company Univision took it a step further, decided to cut out all those pesky middlemen (I think they’re called “writers”), and do a direct Spanish language remake. The Univision version will be set in Colombia and called Metástasis, the term for the spread of cancer- I assume “breaking bad” doesn’t really translate. The project seems intent on keeping every iconographic piece of the show they can, down to “Walter Blanco” (yes, really) in his famous white briefs. They even named his wife “Cielo Blanco”- “Cielo” being Spanish for “sky.”

Bryan Cranston’s advice for aspiring actors

Written by

OK, maybe I just am not ready to let go of Breaking Bad yet, but this is great advice and goes for any craft that is judged by others, like writing or building an app. Just focus on your craft and do what you can do.

GoPro marketing video

Written by

This is just great marketing. If nothing else, skip to 3:51 to see the awesome lions. Wow.

Chart showing costs of different cable channels

Written by

NPR:

Here’s how the cable business works: Cable companies pay monthly fees to media companies for every channel they carry as part of basic cable. And then, of course, they pass those fees onto you, the subscriber. As the chart below shows, those fees vary widely — from $5.54 per month per subscriber for ESPN, all the way down to $.05 per month per subscriber for CMT Pure Country. In other words, if you have cable, you’re paying at least $5.54 per month for ESPN — even if you never watch it.

Quantifying Breaking Bad’s greatness

Written by

This series of scatterplots shows the relative IMDB scores for shows like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and The Wire. Well done, though I would argue that the charts show how much people love a show, as opposed to any measure of quality. But no matter. Still interesting.

Elvis Costello and Saturday Night Live

Written by

There’s a famous story about Elvis Costello appearing on Saturday Night Live, back in 1977, when the show was still pretty brand new. Because SNL is live, timing is critical. Costello was supposed to sing Less Than Zero and the show’s timing was based on that fact. But in the middle of the song, he suddenly stopped and switched into the song he originally wanted to play, Radio Radio. Pissed Lorne Michaels off and he was banned from the show. This is an old, well known story. If you are interested, follow the link above and you can watch the video.

Here’s the part of the story I did not know. In 1989, Lorne and Elvis made up and Elvis was invited back on the show as a surprise guest. Here’s how that went.

The Popinator

Written by

Sometimes a product comes along with awesomeness that defies logic. Great piece of marketing. Yeah, I know, this was from a year ago, but new to me.

Fake “waterproof iPhone” ad wreaking havoc

Written by

No. Your iPhone is not waterproof.

“Update to iOS 7 and become waterproof” claims the ad (see below) explaining that “In an emergency, a smart-switch will shut off the phone’s power supply and corresponding components to prevent any damage to your iPhone’s delicate circuitry.”

C’mon, people. Use your noggin.