Over the last two years, I have circled the landscape surrounding the art and business of film in this blog. It was my way of thinking through a transition in the future of a medium I had spent nine years of my life learning, pursuing, loving, hating and finally understanding.

I had moved to Los Angeles like many people, to make films. I was living in New York before that, and like most New Yorkers, hated Los Angeles as a point of pride. I admit I grudgingly saw that everyone who wanted to make it in “the biz” worked extraordinarily hard. Sure, you might not consider buttering up an established producer or director hard work but actually it is, take it from me. Humiliation is hard work.

There was a kind of “dream contract” that everyone signed when they arrived in Los Angeles. And it was indeed beautiful to be part of a world of people who worked hard and had a shot at the dream. Dreaming is after all, what we ALL came to do. Some of us did it with a camera lens, or a pen and paper, and others, with their hands and a can of paint, and many countless people with their bodies and faces.

The dream is seductive, and brave in its true American-ness. Everyone knew someone who suddenly went from waiting tables to starring in a movie. Guys like Jon Hamm, who was still working crappy jobs to pay the bills past his prime, until someone invented a show he was born to lead–were more common in the biz than you would think. Sure, there are many more who never get their Mad Men but that promise is the stuff of dreams. And those of us who dream in Technicolor are seduced, and all desperately want a piece of that promise.

The perfume of that desire was strong in the room of students at a prestigious film school in New York where I spoke some months ago. I felt cruel inserting some truth into their hopeful twenty year old minds, but it had to be done. I started by telling them I graduated from film school in 2004 and asked them what important event marked that year. They scratched their heads for a few minutes, and slightly skeptically came up with the correct answer: Facebook. “That was a very unfortunate year to be launching a film career”, I told them. Why? Because once the currency of content hinged on engagement, however casual/social, and film as we knew it died. A raise of hands in that very room revealed that this next generation spent two-thirds less time engaging with film than they did with other media, particularly of the immersive variety.

This generation – the millenials, are not quite social-digital natives who will inherit a world in which trees and ipads are learned as equal inevitabilities of life, but they themselves describe their younger siblings as precisely those people. Given that, we can assume there is roughly a 10-15 year maturity gap before the entire focus of entertainment will shift to serve their needs. Right now, I told my stunned new young friends, we are operating on the cache stored from another era – all those film dreams are artifacts of a bygone era. And as powerful as the facade may feel to them standing on the outside looking in, it is worth considering that even for institutional legends like Louis B. Mayer (once the highest paid man in the US), once the time comes one can be humbled by changing times.

I know, you’re thinking: blah, blah everyone’s been writing film’s epitaph since television was created and it’s still here. Well, it is, and it isn’t. For the first time this year, we saw box office numbers decline despite the best efforts of studio marketers; I myself saw fewer than 10% of the films on most top 10 lists of the year and the ones I did see were filled with audiences of mostly middle-aged people. That, is what I think of as the nostalgia factor – filmgoing is a tradition we love, and there will hopefully always be a place for that good feeling. But I can no longer see what the “future of film” is. In my mind, it is a dream passed, a brilliant and grand one which, like opera has seen its day.

Without making any grand proclamations of what the future holds, I can say I know after the two years of writing this blog that it has a whole lot less to do with film than I could have imagined. I have been watching the zeitgeist – both anecdotally and statistically – and what I see is a future in which the gorgeous seductive artifice once traditionally the domain of film can be anywhere. My dream to make films was only a heightened extension of the audience experience of dreaming in a dark room. But the dreaming space is no longer in one place, whether we like it or not. Our job as professional dreamers, is to keep dreaming for collective enjoyment and though we are still muddling through the forms, visions will emerge, clear as they were when the magic of film materialized through the flickering light of a projector.

Without knowing where on earth the most fertile visions will take hold, I can only say it will be unexpected, and will not follow the rules we all memorized when entering into the well-established world of film art and business. I myself decided to root in New York because the soil here is full of raw promise and the farmers are eager experimenters in the business of the future. For my part, I have planted my company AINA MEDIA, and founded STORYCODE a nonprofit to support immersive/crossmedia storytellers. Needless to say, 2011 has been a rather busy planting season. I look forward to the crop of goodness that the coming years will bring to storytelling, the future of visual entertainment and most importantly to dreaming. In my mind “Hollywood” remains at its purest, a standard of rare openness, possibility and the vastness of mind it takes to dream.

I will soon launch a new blog related to new endeavors. In the time being, you can follow my real time musings at @ainaabiodun.

Courtesy of WITNESS.org

When I saw the title of The February 2nd New Yorker blog post Does Egypt Need Twitter? , I looked to see if Hosni Mubarak wrote the post. After all, it was a case of dogma superceding the truth, and that was a signature Mubarak move during the 17 days that preceded his resignation. But in fact is wasn’t the famed dictator who was suspected of having been living in an alternate universe each time he came on Egyptian state TV to reaffirm his position; it was Malcolm Gladwell reaffirming his position on the role (or lack thereof) of social media in political movement, with an ever so slight pivot that well, reminded me of the now departed despot. I responded to his first New Yorker piece here last year.

Shall I belabor the despot point? Maybe not. Since the people of Egypt did it loud and clear for the world, I need not. But you get my drift. But I will quickly raise my placard in protest of social critics who, at great pains to remain right do the world a disfavor. It is an insult to the intelligence, collective power and passion of the revolutionaries of the world that Gladwell on his cushy New Yorker pedestal pontificates on what revolution is or is not. He says:

…the least interesting fact (….) is that some of the protesters may (or may not) have at one point or another employed some of the tools of the new media to communicate with one another. Please. People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented….People with a grievance will always find ways to communicate with each other. How they choose to do it is less interesting, in the end, than why they were driven to do it in the first place.

Ahem…interesting to whom? To Gladwell, and his feeble-minded supporters, none of whom has ever endured the repression and brutal conditions of a dictatorship? As someone who grew up without free speech or the freedoms Mr. Gladwell enjoyed in this country, I say “Please” right back to Gladwell. Please don’t belittle the apparatus that enabled a generation of young people to lead a revolution to topple a 30-year long dictatorship. Please stick to subjects that don’t involve truth and human pain and suffering as you are patently unqualified to tackle those subjects. Please enjoy yourself in the faculty dining room pontificating among those who allow ideas to trump truth. But, please, instead of decreeing what’s “interesting”, you might want to consider what matters. To me, and certainly to the Egyptians, that would be the truth.

Stainboy is an anti-superhero superhero, whose only talent is his uncontrollable production and smearing of greasy stains everywhere he goes. In the series, he works for the Burbank police, and at the start of each episode he is ordered to investigate and bring in social outcasts. Many of the outcasts are characters from Burton’s The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy where the Stainboy character made its first appearance in two short poems.

Beginning today, November 22nd until December 6th, anyone can submit lines on Twitter for the next episode of the Stainboy story, hashtagged #BurtonStory. In what Burton himself describes as an “Exquisite Corpse” experiment, the story will be created 140 characters or less at a time, to yield an episode likely less than five minutes, which is how long the previous animated episodes ran.

Here you can see the 6th installment of the popular flash animation series launched in 2000. In this final episode, we flashback to Stainboy’s beginnings in the weird kids orphanage in Burbank.

STAIN BOY

Of all the super heroes,
the strangest one by far,
doesn’t have a special power,
or drive a fancy car.

next to Superman and batman, I guess he must seem tame.
But to me he is quite special,
and Stain Boy is his name.

He can’t fly around tall buildings,
or outrun a speeding train,
the only talent he seems to have
is to leave a nasty stain.

Sometimes I know it bothers him,
that he can’t run or swim or fly,
and because of this one ability,
his dry cleaning bill is sky-high.

It seems one such incarnation of Internet Evil made its way to the Toronto Film Festival, in the shape of Trust, directed by the actor David Schwimmer. I only viewed the trailer as I am not at Toronto but from what I can surmise, it’s a Facebook predator story with a good cast, but less-than-promising B-movie premise which simply replaces the neighborhood predator with online predator – which cleverly and tastelessly allows the victim to be older and more sexually appealing to an audience. (See first trailer below)

Then my keyboard travels took me to the controversial and potentially less tacky Catfish, the Sundance sensation of last year which is a documentary that the distributor Universal calls “A reality thriller that is a shocking product of our times…a riveting story of love, deception and grace within a labyrinth of online intrigue.” Again, I haven’t seen it either, and it sure sounds like the “shocking product” of our times they are pitching is basically the old adage “if it seems too good to be true, then it is”… with the added extension: “on the internet”. Ever get those offers for free money in your email that sound too good to be true? This isn’t much different, in my opinion. It’s an elaborate blind date that probably turns out to be as disappointing as blind dates tend to be, on or offline. (See second trailer below)

And then the giant spaceship landed–the REALLY BIG KAHUNA, evil so pleasantly benign that it comes in the form of the baby-faced Jesse Eisenberg, playing the “real life” story of Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. I will admit a certain glee at the prospect of watching this one (which again, I have yet to set my eyes on) simply because the story contains a certain level of intrigue that defines the way the internet and its attendant “evils” truly manifest themselves in these times. Is it a big Boogeyman? No. But depending on how you view this kind of social network and other products of the closed web age, the potential evil is exponentially more terrifying than an online predator. And watching the ruthlessness of its beginnings is dramatic, even if the danger seems less horrific, or thrilling to the viewer. As I am a futurist, it remains my duty to remind: Lest we forget, many great and devastating world events began with a person, usually persuasive, highly intelligent and supremely capable of a kind of logic that seems measured in their time. Incidentally, that’s how great stories also begin.

TRUST

CATFISH

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Your attention is required at 4:00 for the Ninja cameos, and then again, at the dramatic turn of events at 4:27.

I would comment but I’m speechless, helpless and now slave to the charm, tunes and brilliant dramatics of Ismail YK, German-born Turkish pop star with a serious love of Facebook.

The powerful web-based platform that has emerged as the model to watch is Kickstarter, describes itself as “a new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors” hosts projects by “artists, filmmakers, musicians, designers, writers, athletes, adventurers, illustrators, explorers, curators, promoters, performers”

I love the idea, and the fact that as an artist, you have to justify why you should be funded, and exactly what the money will be used for. AND, your patrons only get charged if your project is fully funded within the set time frame. It’s brilliant. And I think it works for everything from those really crazy estoteric ideas to those creative social change ideas – because communities gather enthusiastically around the entire range. Here are two projects that are fully funded and worth taking a look at:

Stories for Changemakers, a documentary series showing organizations and individuals doing remarkable work all over the world. It is even more remarkable that the footage is also handed over to these “Changemakers” to use for their organizations’ media outreach.

A truly out-of-the-box story based board game called The Gentlemen of the South Sandwiche Islands

But, I still issue this disclaimer: feel free to break the rules – so long as you have passion, vision and the drive to create.

1. SUCK IT UP AND LEARN SOCIAL MEDIA

If I hear one more of my film school colleagues who emerged from the last decade of digital trauma (!) say “social media is about popularity not art”, I will personally show up with a baseball bat and knock the sense out of them (for a small fee, I can do that for you as well). Social media is here to stay, and it is your friend, not your foe. Master it, and it will make you relevant. And if you have to ask me why, then you are in more dire need of this advice than I thought.

2. YOUR BRILLIANT IDEA MAY NOT BE A FILM

Deal with the fact that with the vast possibilities in media, the grand vision of your idea of a film MAY NOT be the smartest. And I’m not denying that certain ideas are far more brilliant on the big screen. However, as we move to the era of ubiquitous smaller screens, consider seriously if/how your idea might play on an iphone (yes) or a computer screen, or if an interactive element might serve your film better. Just sayin’. Let go of the visions of grandeur and worry about how to get your vision to the public. Film is cool but don’t get hung up on it.

3. PROFITABILITY WILL HELP YOUR CAREER

Ok, kids: the era of raising silly money from from your Wall Street buddies or the dentist who wants to go to a movie premiere IS officially over. And even if you do, you better know how you’re going to recoup that plus at least 10-15 % . Yeah, Madoff screwed it up for you. Everyone is suspicious of any investment opportunity that promises upwards of 110% return so if you can deliver that, you WILL have a career. Even if you have to sell 40,000 t-shirts to make it back, it will make you a less risky investment for your next project.

4. UNDERSTAND THAT YOU ARE A BRAND

This is not me selling you out to the world of advertising. This is me telling you that Your Identity, Your Persona, Your Creative Work form the CORE of what makes you appealing to audiences. Think seriously about what makes you unique and that is what will make you stand out in a sea of many other media-makers, some of whom may have similar ideas to yours. We live in an era where you simply cannot afford to hide behind your work or assume that someone else – a publicist, studio or production company will define who you are – step up and figure out how you need to position yourself to get the job done.

5. FIND THREE GREAT COLLABORATORS INSTEAD OF AN AGENT

Let’s just get some facts out of the way: Hollywood is a machine that does certain things well: mass distribution, financing, profiteering. There are other things it doesn’t do so well: nurturing new talent, grass-roots audience building, niche brand-building. If your hope is that you will get “discovered” by Hollywood, don’t worry, they will find you once you have done all the work. They can make you bigger, offer you a better paycheck, fame and a ticket to the Oscars. But not before you’ve worked your tail off. You need to accept the fact that they cannot do for you what 3 great peers (or 1/2 multi-talented ones) can do for you. A dedicated team with the following skills will get you wherever you want to go: A) Creative Supporter/Critic; B) Audience Building Strategist; C) Clever Business Brain/Monetization Strategist.

I laughed my way through the episode – their bender night followed by waking up in Hank’s convertible on the beach with some freshly tatted backsides. Aah, yes. I know these guys. They are my friends and I miss them. Ok, I know what you’re thinking – is this fictional or real? Honestly, it doesn’t matter because on my tweed couch with the wool throw in December in New York, it was a nice fuzzy feeling. So imagine my excitement when I browse my Twitter feed and see that @Gennefer is talking to @RealHankMoody. I jump in and check out his feed. It’s crazy and unmistakeable how Hank Moody-esque this guy sounds. Tweets like:

Is there anything better than waking up after a night with a great woman, having a hot shower, and then hopping back into bed?

I’m hooked. I make a mention of him to someone else on Twitter and his ears much have started burning or something because all of sudden I get this tweet:

@filmfuturist well hello don’t think u can just mention my name without introducing yourself. U have pretty lips BTW. What’s ur story?

I swear I almost fall off the couch. At first I don’t know what to say because I know Hank is a player and I don’t want to fall for his sweet talk. So I decide to keep it neutral and ask him for some dating advice:

ME: @RealHankMoody I’m nerdy Hank. What does a girl need to do to find a smart dude?

HANK: @filmfuturist don’t *do* anything other than be yourself. You’re smarter than that. Plus, your a jewel – they will find you.

I’m not sure what to do next, so, I wimp out and hit “Follow” and become a Hank Moody follower so I can watch from the sidelines as he seduces women and talks of his conquests.

I finally work up the nerve to ask him if he’ll answer some questions for my blog and he’s charming, and gracious and utterly HANK MOODY. So here they are for your enjoyment.

How does it feel to be Hank Moody?

It feels fucking great at times.  But being a single dad is hard work.  I don’t think I do as admirable a job as I’d like, although Becca, my daughter,  does get fed and shelter is provided.  I do live a hard life, but I surround myself with women that care about me.  At least for a few hours at a time.  My strategy is to string them all together to form a 24/7 support structure.

Where did you learn your game?

My game? Are you referring to my writing? I wrote short stories and poems throughout school and really hit my stride in college. I read a lot too. Books and lately blogs, such as yours.  It keeps my mind active, my vocabulary current and my wit sharp.

I’m dying to know what the teenage Hank Moody was like – were you a stud then too?

Not really. I mean I was shy, but I always said what I thought, didn’t hold back, told it like it was.  I think that brutal honestly was seen by girls as something different to what they were experiencing at the time.  And different is attractive in many ways.

Seems like the only person who really scares you is Sue Collini. Is she ballsier than you?

Firstly, I’m not convinced that Sue is a woman.  So until the results of any tests come back to conclusively determine her sex, I’d like to not comment on the record about her balls.   In reality she’s a pussycat.  One of those that hisses a lot.

I swear I saw you once at a party in Bel Air – in the poolhouse, making it with a girl AND a guy – was that you?

I’m not ruling the possibility that is wasn’t me out. I’d like to think not. But a lot of crazy shit went down in Bel Air that I’m not too proud of.  Let’s just say that if I can’t remember and there is no photographic evidence, then it didn’t happen.

Most guys who play girls like you are called douchebags – why do you think that title doesn’t apply to you?

I’m very fond of women.  I care about them.  I genuinely desire not to hurt them.  I love their attention and desire their touch.  Their kiss awakens me.  I think about them, their hopes and dreams.  I talk to them.  All of them need attention.  All of them need to feel good.  All of them make me feel good.  Douchbags deliver a win/lose proposition to women.  My girls are treated well and respected. Win/Win.

I worry about your writing – when will you write again?

Yes. I’m in the middle of writing a new novel now.  A lot of my research is being done online via twitter (@RealHankMoody).  Its been a very tough road to overcome writers block.  Especially when I’m preoccupied trying to be the best father figure to Becca.  But I hope to have it completed by summer.

I despise your rap but I’m totally seduced by you – mind if I come over?

As long as you cook me breakfast in the morning.