At San Diego Comic-Con in July 2009, I sat in on a panel in which James Cameron and Peter Jackson shared the stage and chatted about their filmmaking process. At the time, my iPhone 3GS was still new to me so I tested out its voice memo feature by recording some of the panels I was at. The audio from this panel has stayed on my iPhone 3GS ever since. I release it here for your listening pleasure.

The audio is terrible quality; it was recorded from my seat 1,000 feet away from the stage, using sound from Hall H’s speakers. It’s incomplete; it only contains 50 minutes of what I think was a 75 minute-long panel. And one other thing: The moderator for this panel, while he delivered a great intro, was probably the worst moderator for any panel I attended at Comic Con this year.

Thus, I left halfway through. But if you’re into film and you have never heard this conversation yet, it might contain some interesting nuggets for you.

Part 1: Download it now or play in browser:

Part 2: Download it now or play in browser:

If there’s one thing I’ve been blessed with in this life, it’s being surrounded by incredibly interesting, articulate people. Often, I feel the urge to capture the conversations I have with people so that others can listen in and get a sense of their insight and humor. Consequently, I am becoming addicted to using audio blogging services like AudioBoo and Cinch (in fact, I may soon fashion my thoughts into an extensive comparison article between the two services). These services allow you to use your iPhone as a recording device, capture a brief exchange, then upload it to the internet where it can be instantenously and automatically published on services like Twitter, Facebook, etc.

I have tried to reach out to Audioboo before on their forums and on Twitter, but have never gotten a response from them to any of my concerns. Recently, they apologized for not responding to me and asked me what my problem(s) with the service was. Rather than trying to reply to them via Twitter, which is incredibly restrictive with its 140-character limit, I’m going to provide some of my thoughts on the service below.

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So, Audioboo here are my concerns with your service, and why Cinch may soon overtake you as my audio blogging platform of choice:

1) The 5-minute time-limit – This limit is restrictive and while I’m sure the bandwidth to maintain your site is already astronomical, the current time limit simply will not allow you to compete with a site like Cinch, which has no time limit. It’s a hell of a lot easier to record a conversation (which, let’s admit, is already a fairly daunting task) without having to check the timer every 10 seconds.

2) Your community support is nonexistent/terrible – When I created my first Cinchcast, I was inundated with comments and Twitter messages from Cinch’s community manager and the founder of the service (who also created BlogTalkRadio). I created another Cinchcast a few nights later, and the founder of the service took time to comment on that one too. It was incredibly encouraging. I felt like my use of this service was creating content that could be valuable and thought-provoking. That is, after all, part of the way to fulfill the potential of these audio blogging sites, I imagine.

My assumption is that a new startup web service such as Audioboo would want to reach out to its most active users in some way. I have spent many countless hours creating content for AudioBoo, which essentially amounts to tons of free advertising for your site. I consider several of these conversations to be interesting/entertaining, although you may certainly disagree. Either way, the number of messages/comments I’ve gotten from Audiboo employees (other than your Tweet reaching out to me): Zero.

3) The profile options on your website are abysmal – Seriously, this is absolutely embarrassing: A huge part of the reason people use your site is to put their Audioboos on Twitter. But when I go to a person’s profile page, there’s no easy way for me to find a person’s Twitter username. In fact, there are basically no display options for ANY personal information whatsoever! Moreover, there’s no way to contact someone if I like a boo (other than leaving a comment, but that’s usually where the conversation ends by necessity). How can you possibly hope to build a community of users this way if you don’t have even the most basic social features on your site, other than commenting? Or maybe you don’t expect to…but if not, then why the hell not?

4) No easily-accessible counter for hits – Content-creation services like Youtube and Vimeo have an easy way for me to see how many views my videos have received. Presumably, you know how many times an Audioboo has been clicked, but you don’t have any easy way for me to access this information. Thankfully, you provide a Google Analytics option, but is it so hard to have a hit counter? Seeing which boos are more popular than others helps me to refine the content I produce for any site, and I consider it an essential part of my creative process.

There are many things you do better than Cinch, Audioboo, but the purpose of this post is to enumerate the things that could use improvement on your site. So, what say you? Are these concerns valid? Are my expectations unrealistic? Please let me know.

Whether I’m writing about movies or talking about them, I readily admit that I tend to state things that most other people find blindingly obvious. Nonetheless, I enjoy dwelling on these points, even if other people have already grasped them and have moved on long ago, because I think that messages in movies have the potential to change the way we think about life.

Tonight, I turn my attention, briefly, to Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men. Children of Men imagines a future where every single woman on the planet has lost her fertility, and mankind’s last generation is on the verge of snuffing itself out. The film masterfully depicts a chaotic, anarchic, post-apocalyptic world where the British government has virtually reverted to fascism, and the general populace has been imbued with some combination of mass hysteria and suicidal depression.

The film doesn’t do any hand-holding. There’s no extensive chronologically-appropriate newsreel footage to guide you through the events of the previous decade (see Surrogates). As the viewer, you’re dropped into the situation with a bang (literally) and the pacing never really lets up. The film offers brief, tantalizing glimpses of the future that you’ve never known, and you’re forced to put all the pieces together. All of this is to the film’s credit.

In fact, it took me awhile to actually grasp precisely what exactly it is about infertility that would lead to a global apocalypse. My simplistic mind thought at the time, “I know plenty of people/couples who aren’t having kids, and they’re not bombing coffee shops or leading rebellions against the government.” But recently, due to events in my life, it’s become ever more clear to me what visceral emotions are at work in the picture of humanity that we see in the film.

When you take away the idea that man will continue to exist, you remove the ever-fleeting idea that his actions have consequence. You remove the hope that he will leave something that will outlast him. You destroy his desire to achieve, his need to create, and ultimately, his will to live. I recently had the opportunity to re-read this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

A world without a future humanity is a world in which these measures of success aren’t even possible. When a person realizes that their future is gone, they become like a captured animal, flailing about in some kind of primal rage, full of the horrible understanding that the end is near and simultaneously desperately seeking escape.

In other words, hope is what we need to keep going and get through the day. And when you take that away from someone, that person will cling to anything, and do whatever they have to in order to survive. Alternatively, they just might accept the peaceful surrender of death rather than continue a version of existence that can only be described as barely living.

Yesterday, I had the privilege to speak with Michael Stephenson, who’s on the tail end of a whirlwind tour of film festivals all around the world. Stephenson was the child star of Troll 2, which is regarded by many as one of the worst films ever made (literally). Here’s a montage of some of the film’s best moments:

Decades later, Stephenson returned to the role that made him infamous and made a heartfelt documentary about the Troll 2 cult phenomenon. You can read my review of Best Worst Movie and you can check out the trailer for the film below:

I recorded a couple of audio blogs while we had coffee and tea at Algiers in Harvard Square. What began as some pretty banally worded questions actually ended up producing, in my opinion, some pretty profound responses.

Learn more about Best Worst Movie by visiting their website.

Today in my Harvard class on Media, I presented a talk on Batman: Arkham Asylum, the excellent videogame by Rocksteady Studios. I talked about the context for the game’s creation, demonstrated some gameplay, and then discussed the implications that violent videogames have for teachers and students. A couple of notes:

• My presentation was given a hard limit of 20 minutes. The laughter at the beginning of the audio is the class’s reaction to me syncing up my iPhone stopwatch with the Teaching Fellow’s stopwatch. Apparently no one else was neurotic enough to do this.
• About halfway through the presentation, I knocked the iPhone (which I used to record the presentation) off the table. You will hear this on the recording.
• Part of the purpose of the presentation was to relate the game to readings and teachings from class. The readings referenced at the end of the presentation are taken from the course syllabus.

You can download the file or listen to it here in your browser:

And here’s the Powerpoint presentation I gave, so you can follow along:

Batman

Yesterday was a disappointing day for me.

You see, yesterday, CHUD.com ran an advertorial about the SAW franchise (pictured above). But that’s not what bothers me. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not inherently opposed to the idea of advertorials; in essence, I think any form of experimentation with monetization is not only healthy for our industry, but necessary given the economic climate we live in, although the execution of paid elements like advertorials is key.

[In this case, CHUD clearly marked that it was an advertorial in the title. When /Film ran an advertorial, we clearly marked that it was an advertorial at the beginning of the article, although not in the title. It appears that film critic and CHUD editor-in-chief Devin thinks the distinction of having an advertorial marked in the headline makes a difference between ethical and unethical behavior. To those that agree with him, I urge you to ask everyday readers if they see it the same way. I would bet all the money in my pockets that they do not.]

I will say I was mildly surprised by the apparent hypocrisy in Devin Faraci railing repeatedly against such forms of advertising when we at /Film did something almost identical a few months back, only to find himself part of a site that does the same thing. Devin has said that he was not responsible for the advertorial, and basically offered a lot of explanations/excuses that he would have found unacceptable if they were coming out of my mouth.

That doesn’t really bother me too much either, though, because I know that even though Devin is the editor-in-chief of CHUD and probably produces about 60-80% of their content, he doesn’t own the site. For him to rail publicly against his employer would be unprofessional and very much biting the hand that feeds him. It does raise the question, however, of whether he should try to enforce his opinion via public fiat on how online film journalism should be done, when his own house isn’t in the condition he would like it to be in.

[I contacted Devin for comment about this whole matter, and his response was as follows: “A well marked advertorial is no different than the ‘special advertising supplements’ in magazines or newspapers that reproduce the style of the publication.” I leave it to you to determine whether or not there is a difference, and whether or not it matters.]

But no, what was really disappointing was the complete and utter silence on the part of online film critics about this matter. Specifically, Scott Weinberg and Drew McWeeny, who said some pretty ugly things about us back when /Film ran an advertorial, were completely silent about this issue on Twitter (which is the primary instrument they used to bludgeon us into figurative submission back then). Drew even implicitly defended Devin and joked with him about the people who were getting pissed off about the whole thing.

[Update (10/22/09, 2:00 AM): It has been brought to my attention that my characterization of Drew/Scott’s words as “pretty ugly” may not be fair or precise. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to the exact tweets from that day (Twitter no longer caches their Tweets as they did in the past), so I can’t substantiate any specifics. I can say that the following is true: Neither Drew nor Scott, nor most people in the online film community, called us names, nor did they behave in any particularly unprofessional way. But they definitely did make accusations that advertorials had compromised our journalistic integrity and/or that we at /Film had significantly hurt the credibility of the online film journalism community as a whole. That much is irrefutable.

Also, Drew has responded in the comments below.]

There are a number of reasons that I can think of why people wouldn’t care about CHUD’s advertorial, yet would flay /Film for its practices. But the fact remains: either a principle (e.g. “Don’t run advertorials, it perverts the editorial process.”) is good for all movie websites, or it’s good for none of them. Either websites engaging in this practice hurt the industry or they don’t. Either they are worthy of our scorn, or not.

As I recently pointed out on Twitter, major tech blogs such as Mashable and Daring Fireball have frequently done sponsored advertorials, and have been doing so for quite some time. And while their readers occasionally bristle, I think they prefer that the tech blogs stay functional. It’s also interesting to note that if you combined the audience for /Film, Aint It Cool News, CHUD, and Cinematical, only then would you begin to equal the audience for Mashable (i.e. they are dealing with far larger numbers than us, and their industry seem to have gotten over the backlash to this type of thing awhile ago).

In any case, yesterday was a disappointing day for me. I lost a lot of respect for those who I considered peers in the industry. At least back when they were publicly calling us out, I could see that they had principles (no matter how valid or how misguided) that they genuinely stood for. Through the war of words, I could see that there was some journalistic paradigm they were fighting on behalf of. Now, I don’t even believe that anymore.

[As a side note: People who know my work know that I’ve been doing a movie podcast for about two years, and that I’ve been writing for /Film quasi-regularly for about a year or so. You can judge me by my work as to whether I’m a thoughtful person about this industry. But in the past year I’ve seen my respect for a myriad of online personalities virtually destroyed by witnessing their constant infighting over forums such as Twitter (something that doesn’t plague other industries such as, for example, the gaming online journalism industry to nearly the same degree). As a general observation, it is not a welcoming community, and this recent inconsistent application of the rules serves to make it less welcoming for people like me. One thing I wonder is: Do people in the online film journalism community really want this industry to be inhospitable and alienating to newcomers such as myself? If so, mission accomplished.]

Not too long ago, film journalist (and one of the people whom I respect the most in our industry) Anne Thompson wrote up a blog post entitled “Full Disclosure: Bloggers Break Rules.” In the post, Thompson strongly criticizes many elements of online film journalism in its current incarnation. Here’s an excerpt from the post:

Old media daily reporter: get wind of story, land assignment, report, confirm, write, file, put copy through system of copy editors and editors, close, ship, print. This process can take hours if not days.

New media daily reporter: get wind of story, post what you’ve heard, report and make calls, repost with tweaks and updates, repeat. No editor, no copy editor, no deadline. Early bird gets the traffic. No reward for waiting to make sure you have accurate information—except for maintaining integrity as a journalist.

Old media critic: Graduate from college a star writer. Work way up through papers as critic. Get paid by media outlet to attend screenings, write up reviews at length—thoughtful, long, serious reviews—file on deadline, put through system of copyeditors and editors, get paid. Some critics never went to junkets, never met the people they wrote about. Most outlets outside of L.A. and N.Y. did accept them in order to gain access to feature interviews with directors and stars. Object: build readers, sell papers.

New media critic: get paid small sums by the story—or live off share of ads on your blog or site. Report on set visits (paid by studio). Post early photos, poster art, clips and trailers (supplied by studio). Attend junkets for access to filmmakers and stars (paid by studio). Attend film festivals for access (sometimes paid by junketing studio or festival).

“You do the math,” Thompson concludes. “Will the bigger sites adopt old journalism rules about conflict of interest and junkets? Not bloody likely.”

I found the post unfair for a variety of reasons, but it was a comment by my colleague C. Robert Cargill from over at Aint It Cool News that I thought presented a rebuttal with wit and humor:

You forgot a few, Anne.

Old media critic: Respect embargo unless the studio has cleared your positive review, which they’ve of course approved. This usually is conjoined with studio provided interviews which, if the film is big enough, gets you a name in a photo on the cover of your magazine.

New media critic: Respect embargo if you have to. Ignore it if you don’t. Laugh when they try to embargo an un-embargoed film after reading your negative review. Note that no one ever complains when you break embargo with a positive review.

Old media critic: Write on a typewriter and know how to spell. Complain about kids these days.

New media critic: use one of them new-fangled contraptions with spell check that allows weak writers to look like good ones. Damned kids.

Old media critic: Occasionally have to sacrifice your opinion and values for the sake of the editorial slant of your Editor/readership/media conglomerate.

New media critic: Write what you think. Only sacrifice your values or credibility if you have little to begin with.

Old media critic: Comment repeatedly about how four years of college 20 years ago is more valuable than actual on-the-job experience.

New media critic: Get actual on-the-job experience. Don’t have to kiss ass, shake hands or stab backs to move up and get coveted reporter/reviewer/junket gigs. You only need to be talented, smart, media savvy or a little of all three.

Old media critic: become a new media critic when work dries up in the old outdated media.

New media critic: roll your eyes at all the old media critics jumping ship who then insult you and your friends in blogs. Pine for the golden days when the new media was new and wasn’t choked and overflowing with quick-to-snipe old media types.

Since I’d been planning on doing an impromptu podcast with Mr. Cargill for quite some time, I called him up on Skype last night to discuss this very issue. But I also wanted to invite Devin Faraci from CHUD to join in the fun as well, knowing that his opinions on this matter were strong. So, we got everyone on Skype, I broadcasted it over at my uStream page, and then recorded the entire exchange.

What was supposed to be a 20-minute discussion ballooned into a 2.5 hour long conversation. People from tons of online film websites joined in the chat room, including those from Cinematical, CHUD, Aint It Cool News, Geeks of Doom, Cinemablend, Film.com, and of course, /Film; hell, filmmaker Rian Johnson even tuned in. What they heard was a rambling, meandering discussion that ranged a wide variety of topics, including copyright law, the differences (if any) between old media vs. new media, the ethical issues of set visits & junkets, and whether or not it’s reasonable to expect to make a living off of online film criticism.

You can download the entire audio of our conversation by clicking here (Right-click and save as) or you can listen in your browser below

A big thanks to everyone who joined in the conversation that evening. My hope is that something like this will at least be quasi-periodical. Although my colleagues here may be much more articulate than me, I think it’s always good to have a civil, spirited debate about the business and ethical issues that are affecting us all.

As a listener, I’m sure you will agree or disagree with many of the things that are said. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments/questions/frustrations in the comments below.