The Negotiator

Being in the entertainment industry is different than any other industry on the planet. Though it is like other industries in some ways. One of those ways is that negotiation is a vital part of the industry. There are negotiations between actors, directors, and producers. It just doesn’t stop there practically everyone in the entertainment industry is negotiating with someone. That is why learning to be a good negotiator will take you very far in this industry. The best way to learn something is talk to someone that is currently doing it. That is why I interviewed my father, William Weisblat. He invests money into small film projects. He has to negotiate how much money he is going to invest in the project. Most executive producers also have to negotiate parts of the film, though my father said he doesn’t care about any of that whatsoever. He merely cares if he is going to get his money back.

In retrospect interviewing my Father was not the best idea ever. He is a very in your face kind of guy. The only thing he negotiates with is low balling. All he does to negotiate is constantly low ball the person until he gets the price that he wants.

Robocop The Ambassador

Recently there has been some crazy news coming out of Detroit. It is not the decaying state of the state but actually it is about Robocop. A Robocop statue might be built in the state with the worst economy in America. It all started on the Internet where suggestions were asked on how to clean up the city. Twitter user MT came up with the suggestion to erect a Robocop statue. If you don’t know anything about the movie Robocop, I can sum it up for you. Detroit, the future, crime is rampant in the city. The police force builds a robot that has three main objectives; serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law. Well soon after the suggestion was put on the Internet it was taken down. They thought that was the end of it but, apparently it was seen by enough people and they thought it was a good idea so they brought the suggestion to the mayor of Detroit. I completely agree with the Internet users, I feel there should be a Robocop statue in Detroit. It is a major part of their pop culture. In Philadelphia there is a statue of Rocky Balboa in front of the Museum of Art. Mayor Bing foolishly answered back “NO”. Well if the city of Detroit will not make a Robocop statue then the people of Detroit will. The website DetroitNeedsRobocop is currently working with artists and other companies to make this a reality. They estimate that the total cost of the statue will be $50,000. As of right now they have recently just passed the $50,000 mark but are still taking donations.

Head over to detroitneedsrobocop.com to help them out with some donations.

The recent increase in 3D films has upset me over the past few years. As a kid 3D, was always used the same exact way in every movie. There would always be something popping out at you. The best genre 3D was being used for was horror movies. Even still today those types of scares are still widely used are a lot of the things that stand out in 3D cinema. Many people do not seem to care about the obvious fact that 3D takes the audience away from the movie. Walter Murch who is the editor for Apocalypse Now and The English Patient is neither a fan of 3D also.He says the 3D movies are one stop lower than it's 2D counterparts.That means that every part of the movie is darker, sometimes making it nearly impossible to pick out certain details He wrote a letter to Roger Ebert stating his opinion on 3D. He said that the biggest issue with the 3D scene is the focus and convergence issue. The way that 3D movies work is that it only shows you half of the screen at one time. They switch the focus from both sides of the screen one after the other. Your eyes converge in the middle of where you are focusing. When you are watching 3D your eyes have to converge on different points of the screen split seconds after each other. This is the reason why many people get headaches after just watching the movies for a mere twenty minutes. It is something that 60 million years of evolution is unwinding. This is a deep issue that is wrong with 3D. No matter how much the technology improves you can never make full 3D until you make a hologram.

One of the emerging factions in the film making industry are HD DSLR's. The biggest barrier to most emerging film makers is the price of all your gear. The prices could quickly escalate to tens of thousands of dollars. With a DSLR the top of the line camera costs around two thousand dollars, making the choice to switch to DSLR that much better. An interesting part of the DSLR scene is that these cameras are not made to shoot professional video but, if you take a stroll around youtube or vimeo the results will tell you otherwise.

The best part of the community is the community itself. Between the information sharing online and the power of innovation the DSLR scene is one of the best things to happen to filmmaking. One of the major companies that are really pushing their products to the next level of filmmaking is Canon. On vimeo they have a channel that would have film contests embracing filming with a DSLR. All this helps the film makers collaborate on bigger productions. There are also many user created groups on vimeo that are finally being looked at seriously by film makers.

The Game Has Changed

CES, the Consumer Electronics Show is always the place to be if you want to see the newest technologies coming out in the next few years. Who thought that the crown jewel of the convention would be film distribution. Sony is coming out with a new type of media called ultraviolet. In essence it is a cloud based system. They are saying that when you buy a DVD it will be able to watch it on almost any TV, computer, or game console from many manufacturer's regardless of where you bought it. Once this comes out you will not have to buy Abbey Road seventeen times anymore. Included in ultraviolet, besides just buying the DVD you will also receive the digital rights to the movie you bought and will be stored in a cloud type account. That means that once you buy the DVD (physical or digital copy) you never need them again as long as you have a running internet connection. As of right now Apple and Walt Disney are the only two major companies that have came out and said they will not be a part of ultraviolet. Practically every other company is siding with ultraviolet including Microsoft, Hewlett- Packard, and Panasonic to name a few. How this will work can possibly change the entire way that we watch TV and movies. Starting this summer companies will let you buy a movie with the ultraviolet logo on it. You take that DVD and you register it with ultraviolet. Once that is done you can stream that movie directly to your Xbox or your Blu ray player. This will even work when you go on vacation and you want to watch the first season of Glee in your hotel room.

The Horrific double standard

Horror, the red headed stepchild of the movie industry. Almost all horror movies contain a gargantuan killer wielding a sword/machete/hatchet/etc. slicing teens down the middle, though that is completely untrue. Don't let the Hollywood critics fool you, Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours in which an explorer literally gets stuck between a rock and a hard place is not an adventure or a drama, it is a straight up horror flick. Another recent film that has garnered much attention is Black Swan. The film follows the unraveling of a sweet and innocent dancer into a reckless world that threatens to destroy her. If that doesn’t sound like a horror film, then I don’t know what does. When a drama is good it is handed a plethora of awards, but when a horror movie is good it is a complete surprise. Compare the two previous films to a recent horror film, Let Me In. It follows an 8-year-old vampire that moves to a new town and befriends the boy next door. This was a generally fantastic movie but due to the fact that it had a vampire in it (thank you Twilight for ruining my childhood) it was given a pat on the head and sent to video rental hell. It is obvious that the film industry and community does not give the horror genre the respect it deserves.

Lets examine most horror movies. If there is not a monster or a maniac in a haunted house or a spaceship in is not a horror movie. That is why 127 Hours and Black Swan are such unique entries. A great horror film sets out to unnerve and upset it’s audience both of which succeed easily. James Franco has to sacrifice a part of his body in order to save the life that he never fully appreciated. Do you know what other movie has that same exact plot…Saw! Why is one treated as a drama and the other as torture porn (not saying that saw is a good movie) it is just plain ridiculous.

Nice guys finish first, sometimes....All the time.

In life many people say that nice guys finish last, but this time the nice guy finished first. Two weeks ago was Bear Creek music festival. It is a funk/blues/reggae music festival. It takes place every year at the Suwannee national park. It is one of the best venues for a music festival. The best part was that I got a job working the festival. It turns out that one of the kids in my under graduate knows the guy that does the filming for multiple music festivals like this one. The craziest part was that all the people working were from my old class. Talk about a small world. It was great to work with all my old friends on this project. The only problem with the entire weekend was that there was one kid we were working with that I never cared for. In my old degree program this kid was kind of an asshole. Anytime you had to work with him, it was his way or the high way. Due to this he earned a rotten reputation in our class. While working at the festival the boss that we were working for fell in love with most of us working. He really liked that we all we busting our asses so we could get every band on tape. There was only one person that our boss would never have work for him again. Could you guess who it is? That’s right my boss hated that same kid. After all the music stopped on the last night. My boss invited me and a couple of others to an after party that only staff and artists could get into. On our way to the after party it was just me and the boss in a golf cart, we were going to meet the rest of our crew at the party. On our way to the party my boss was telling me that he liked working with everyone except for one kid. I immediately said the kid that no one liked, and yes it turned out my boss was talking about him. This just reconfirms that I might be in the right industry.