.... to yesterday's post.
I should have waited another day before posting about the Veronica Mars movie/Kickstarter campaign. In today's paper, Robert Lloyd -- the LA Time's most thoughtful television critic -- wrote a very interesting analysis of this newest media phenomenon, in which crowd-source funding has now raised more than three and a half million dollars for the proposed movie.
It's a good read, well worth your time.
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Work gloves at the end of the 2006/2007 television season (photo by Richard Blair)
Blood, Sweat, and Tedium: Confessions of a Hollywood Juicer by Michael Taylor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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Work gloves at the end of the 2006/2007 television season (photo by Richard Blair)
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- Michael Taylor
- Born and raised in a rural pocket of the San Francisco Bay Area, I graduated from UC Santa Cruz clutching a degree in Aesthetic Studies. Armed with this paper sword, boundless ignorance, and a vision of Hollywood heavily influenced by the movie “Shampoo” (and seriously, what guy didn’t want to be Warren Beatty back then?), I proceeded to march on Hollywood in the spirit of a young man seeking adventure, a living -- and if Lady Luck deigned to smile upon me, perhaps a small fortune. Adventure, I found. A living, I made, but although Lady Luck has thus far kept me safe from harm on the road-raging freeways and bullet-riddled streets of Los Angeles, that elusive fortune remains but a shiny mirage on the road ahead. I'm now playing out the string on a thirty year career in set lighting, trying to hang on until the bitter end.
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Blood, Sweat, and Tedium: Confessions of a Hollywood Juicer by Michael Taylor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
2 comments:
I read both the Vulture's take and this one on the VM Kickstarter project, and found both to be interesting. I am actually a fan of the show, and at my age, was quite surprised to find myself taken with it. Although it was ostensibly aimed at a younger demographic, what it also did was depict the class warfare that exists in this country -- which is something that few other TV shows take up. It didn't do this via any diatribe, or by preaching from a soapbox, but it was the underlying subtext to most of the stories throughout the three seasons. Oh, and it was also entertaining and engaging. We are presently experiencing a golden age of television, and I thought even so Veronica Mars stood out as something different and unique. So when I read about the Kickstarter project, I went over and looked over the presentation, and decided that yes, the possibility of one more chapter was worth a small investment from my wallet. As a fan of TV shows, where you have little sway over what the networks present to you, especially if you're tastes are contrary to popular tastes, this seemed like a way to "vote" with my money and let the Show Biz Powers That Be that there is indeed an audience for a "failed" network show. IF money talks then here's a way I can make my money talk, too.
On the other hand, I also have concerns that people may somehow not understand the nature of this deal. Giving to the Kickstarter project, and having it come to fruition, doesn't mean you may end up liking the final product. Nor does it make the show "yours" so that you can dictate creative choices. I recently visited that very successful Kickstarter project for that e-ink watch Pebble. The watch is undergoing production delays, something that is not entirely unpredictable if you know anything about the vagaries of trying to create a new product from scratch. The whining and kvetching about that is pretty illustrative of how entitled some backers feel. The fact is that this project, or any Kickstarter project, still has a chance of failure or a potential to disappoint is quite lost on people. Personally, I think this is implicit in any Kickstarter deal, but does everyone "get" that?
Wolfe --
Interesting. Seems to me any show that's entertaining, engaging, and deals with real societal/cultural issues in a serious, organic, and non-didactic manner would be worth watching, regardless of the subject matter or demographic target. That would explain the fervent fan base willing to open their wallets for the privilege of seeing more.
More power to them -- I think that's great.
But I also think your concerns re: people not really understanding the Kickstarter deal are justified -- and indeed, the sense of entitlement on the part of so many these days is astonishing.
Nice to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in...
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