And another perspective on product placement. I worship David Lynch. But I think there's room for some variations on the approach here. Because while product placement can do things like seriously undermine the integrity of a film, it may also be a necessary part of low-budget filmmaking in an online world. And hey, I seem to spend too much time clearing products that I want to appear in my film anyway, or removing them altogether. Why not just find a product with values you appreciate, and which company equally appreciates the artistic intentions of your movie. The key may just be the freedom of the artist to choose which products to partner with. If I have a breakfast scene and they're eating cereal, rather than getting my art director to make a fake cereal box, why not find a natural whole-foods company that likes the idea behind my film and is willing to kick in a thousand bucks to have my healthy, gorgeous actors eating it? Food for thought. At least until we're all independently wealthy enough to finance our own films without anybody else's money.

Two days after I blogged about the Mac's WTF videos (see below), YouTube continues to take them down at an alarming rate. Apparently a gay gardener who grows tulips that eject orange slushy drink when lightly petted is obscene. And apparently so is a little girl who grinds plastic toy unicorns into the same slushy drink. Maybe Mac's has relented to the pressure and taken the shorts down themselves, but this is exactly what the online world is NOT supposed to be about: censorship. Artistic freedom is paramount to the digital revolution. If YouTube can't handle the truth, then I can only hope other outlets will allow for the free expression of writers and filmmakers from around the world. Yes, even a "TV commercial" warrants freedom of expression protection (because these Mac's shorts are a form of advertisement as much as I think they're masterful little works of art). Anyhow, search the Net and you'll find the WTF videos posted elsewhere; sometimes even re-posted by a growing WTF fan-base elsewhere on YouTube, as in here or here. I love these shorts for their subversive approach, and wonderfully creative wackiness. Keep 'em coming.

"WTF is that? A short-film or a commercial?"

I've discussed the power of online distribution and the imperative for artists to start thinking about embedding ads and product placement within their films in order to finance their projects. And I've mentioned how product placement doesn't have to detract from an artist's work or the entertainment value to the audience. In the end, product placement (in all its forms) is probably the only way to take advantage of inevitable piracy, i.e., more and more people will be downloading media content for free, and there will come a time soon where you'll want people to steal your movie. Because the more people who watch it for free, means there are that many more people seeing the "embedded" advertisement.

Some might argue there's a danger that the "movie" will eventually become indistinguishable from the "advertisement"--that a feature-length flick filled with product placement and embedded ads supplants the filmed entertainment itself. I'm pretty convinced, however, that the marketplace can smell a rat, and where the entertainment value is so diluted that the flick is just an excuse to show "ads" then people will stop watching. The same can be said already of highly derivative Hollywood movies that simply emulate previous successes to cash in on a fad: the audience knows it's a "fake" and usually turns away. But we also know that commercials can, in and of themselves, be absolutely entertaining and highly creative. There are festivals that celebrate the creative brilliance and entertainment value of the best ads in the world. The line between entertainment and advertisement gets blurred. Which is a long lead-up to my introduction of this most curious and captivating new organism that has just arrived on the Nitwitnet.

The chain of Canadian convenience stores, Mac's, has commissioned a whole bunch of bizarre but undeniably entertaining short comedy films from Toronto's Bos Ad Agency to market its orange slush-drink, which apparently comes in size WTF, OMGWTF and AUNTSMGWTF (I don't get the last one yet either). There's a whole bunch of these shorts online, and they're threatening to go viral. And I think these ads are also an example of how filmmakers can use advertisers to make their movies, just as easily as advertisers can use filmmakers to make their ads. The conflation of the two worlds has already taken place in mainstream media (e.g., it ain't a coincidence that all of Michael Bay's Transformers were GM vehicles--kaching!). And I firmly believe the next logical step is for independent artists to take advantage of the same product placement techniques, probably by approaching micro-businesses as much as the mega-companies. Hey, you might not be able to convince Coke give you a million bucks for some prominent product placement in your online videos, but if you've demonstrated that your little movies can get an audience (and soon your "large" movies too as bandwidth and screens grow), then there's no reason that smaller local businesses shouldn't want to take advantage of the audience you do get. Hey, the world will now know the Mac's brand, thanks to these WTF videos. Because that goofy Canadian convenience store is about to become a star on the world-stage. You'll have to check out the full line-up of Mac's WTF videos over here.

EDIT: In the course of an hour, I notice YouTube has already taken at least one WTF video down for being too racy. Oh come on! The lesbians in Mr. Tree were fully clothed!! Sigh. But you can still view Mr. Tree over at Milk and Cookies instead. Fuck you too YouTube. YouTube's reaction seems a bit homophobic, or at least a bit harmless-soft-porn-o-phobic to me.

"BUILT IN OBSOLESCENCE"

As stated by Wikipedia, it's the decision on the part of a manufacturer to produce a consumer product that will become obsolete and/or non-functional in a defined time frame. As a digital filmmaker, this blog entry could easily be referring to the cameras and computers that become nearly obsolete within six months of purchase--something that can be both frustrating and exciting, because the next best thing promises to hand even more power to the DIY media artist. But in fact, I wanted to write about the built-in obsolescence in people in the film business. And that is NOT something I find exciting at all.

I've noted for years how a hot new director or writer often fades into the background within a few years of making it big in Hollywood. There are the rare exceptions--people with careers that span decades. And then there are the guys who never hit it huge, but work steadily but unnoticed through longer career trajectories. But there has always been something profoundly disheartening about the guy who directs some fresh, captivating movie one year and then spends the next decades tending his sprawling, entirely-paid-for garden in Santa Monica.

Orson Welles died a has-been. Despite his tremendous success, literally transforming the craft of movie-making, he hardly worked after the age of 50. D.W. Griffith is studied in every film history book as a founding father of modern cinema--he too died broke. And then there's the long list of contemporary where-are-they-now talents; women and men who did something profoundly special only to be passed over for the next "hot, new thing" a few years later. Hey, Eduardo Sanchez, one of the directors of 1999's "Blair Witch Project"--the most profitable independent film of all time, no less--didn't get the greenlight for another movie until 2006's blink-or-you-miss-it "Altered."

Point is, it depresses me. I don't do what I do, hoping to make it big only to fade into obscurity. I do what I do because I'm driven to do it, and I will not wait seven years for someone to tell me I can make a movie. Up until now, we didn't have much choice. Movies were too expensive. We needed big fat cheques and teams of specialists with rare equipment to practice our craft. Thankfully, I feel I can now do what I do regardless of the blessing of a studio exec. If I want to garden, I'll become a gardener. I became a filmmaker to make films. And now I'm going to make them whether anybody wants me to or not. Anyone who doesn't think they can do it without Hollywood's approval should listen to Stephen Soderbergh who says of the $17,500 Red Camera, "This is the camera I've been waiting for my whole career: jaw-dropping imagery recorded onboard a camera light enough to hold with one hand. RED is going to change everything." I just have to believe that Orson Welles would have made a lot more films if he could have got his hands on a Red Camera and a Mac.