Out of work and newly wise to the state of content being distributed online, a group of professional writers is looking to start their own production and distribution company. Aaron Mendelsohn, writer of the Disney film Air Bud and an active WGA member, is captaining the efforts, and says he has gotten a group of “A-list” film and TV writers on the team. He’s also partnering with online community experts from Silicon Valley and raising “north of $30 million” in venture capital, with the idea of launching a company called Virtual Artists later this year.
Mendelsohn has his elevator pitch down cold: “We are a coalition of top film and television writers and top tech innovators who are dedicated to creating and delivering professionally made content directly to the end user, and who believe in the model of freedom and inclusiveness over the model of control that has been employed by the big media conglomerates for the past 100 years,” he told NewTeeVee this week.
The strike, Mendelsohn said, has been crucial to the project’s inspiration in more ways than one: “Otherwise we’re all just too damn busy rowing the boat.”
Virtual Artists will offer professional writers deals to develop and produce films, TV shows and shorts for a reduced fee but a larger ownership stake. It will also look to acquire content. Mendelsohn said he was primarily targeting the 12,000 members of the WGA, “But if there’s a great movie that’s created by some kid in Iowa or Beirut who has a real gift for storytelling, we’re definitely going to be looking for the gems out there.”
On the technology side, the company is looking to foster communities around its content and include viewers in the development process. Henri Poole of CivicActions and Brian Behlendorf of the Apache Project and CollabNet are serving as advisers.
As for the large amount of money he’s looking to raise, “Entertainment has not traditionally been a good investment,” Mendelsohn admitted. “You could burn $150 million on one Golden Compass and lose your shirt.” But this is going to be “lower budget” fare, he said, along the lines of Juno, Napoleon Dynamite, Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office. “You don’t need to pour a sh–load of money into entertainment to find an audience,” he said.
Virtual Artists will not be alone in this space; there’s also 60Frames (our coverage), Blowtorch Entertainment (our coverage), and more; see this Los Angeles Times piece, which mentions another venture from striking writers called Hollywood Disrupted.
[...] group of disaffected WGA members, led by Aaron Mendelsohn, are now pushing for an independent, writer-owned venture, called “Virtual Artists,” to be launched s…. The NewTeeVee blog reports that the new coalition is currently seek startup capital of $30+ [...]
[...] Worst Nightmare: Obsolescence Striking Writers to Launch Online Video Co., Seeking $30M+ Out of work and newly wise to the state of content being distributed online, a group of [...]
Good luck! It’s abou time!!
[...] the efforts, and says he has gotten a group of “A-list” film and TV writers on the team. Continue Reading @ NewTeeVee Share/Send Sphere Print Previous [...]
[...] of movie writer Aaron Mendelsohn and some fellow striking writers to put together a mini-studio to produce Web content. They’re looking for VCs to put up $30-million or so to launch their studio, Virtual Artists [...]
“Air Bud” + “Top Film and TV writers” = cognitive dissonance.
[...] It was inevitable that a group of writer’s with an entrepreneurial bent would bed up with Vent…. Poor bastards those writers. bad to worse . [...]
Yeah, the guy who is famous for the Air Bud franchise is spearheading this? Yeah the investors will just line up. Was he gainfully employed before the strike? Or is he just using it to feather his own nest.
I won’t watch his work on TV or in a theater, what makes him think anyone will watch his work online.
Studios know that they are going to be toast on the Internet
I think that the big studios in all categories of media know that their days of controlling media are counted. With such disruptive platforms as Youtube, BitTorrent, DivX, $200 HD camcorders, Miro, Video-blogging, it’s just a matter of time before the cool writers and composers get directly together with the cool performers and producers and decide to release the shows directly to the viewers without any need of big media moguls interfeering and taking the largest part of the revenue and destroying a lot of the creativity in the process.
$100 video-on-demand set-top-boxes, cheap, open and unrestricted portable media players (700mhz, WiFi, WiMax and HSDPA) and other open on-demand Internet access hardware will make it completely user-friendly for everyone to get those independant shows delivered instantly over the Internet from the show creators themselves.
In France once the parliamentarians suggested to pay the artists through taxes, such a thing as a $5 tax on average per citizen was suggested, which could fund much more than what all artists combined are paid today. Thus providing a system for many more talents to express themselves and create even higher quality content with complete creative freedom.
The quality and popularity of the shows being measured very precisely through the Internet connected on-demand system and through social networking tools and some popularity and quality measurement tools provided by the state which also neutrally redistributes the culture tax money directly to all the artists who deserve it.
Anyways, it’s not I guess useful to think about this right now, cause all those shows have to stay on media giant tv channel networks for now, but I would guess everyone should prepare themselves for this probable media revolution coming up. Especially a new administration such as when Al Gore “invented the Internet”, probably could set the reform agenda on the table which would take away the control on the media from the established studios (that is, unless all the candidates are corrupt or media conservatives).
Internet television is getting warm. Warmer. Hot!
http://www.RSSLiveTV.com