The (Ten Year) Overnight Success

This week in the Guardian, the author writes a pretty good article about the idea of mastery and practice vs. natural talent, and cites a really interesting study conducted in the early 90's comparing children who started learning a skill or developing a talent, and tracked their hours of practice.

From the article:

This idea - that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice - surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.

"In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals," writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin, "this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years... No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery...."

In other words, a key part of what it means to be talented is being able to practise for hours and hours - to the point where it is really hard to know where "natural ability" stops and the simple willingness to work hard begins.

It's interesting to me, that the 10 year figure is one we use anectdotaly quite often, in the "overnight success that took 10 years to achieve." We see it very often in the entertainment business, and I would say it's held true in my own experience as well.

Ten years of hard work, yields a degree of mastery that looks suspiciously like "natural talent."

Go figure.

Hollywood's Next Big Thing (will be little)

As we've all watched the studios tighten their belts; and the television prodco's around town bury their heads further in the sand, Peter Bart over at Variety had a noteworthy column about 2 weeks ago on the bean-counters taking over.

Mr. Bart, as one of the few people left in our business who has been through a recession before, as a studio exec, has some unique insights;

I was an executive at Paramount Pictures when times suddenly took a turn for the worse and my company decided to do the unthinkable: The corporate mandate was that Paramount was to become "lean and mean." That was all right with me in theory, since I already was lean and my initial experience at the studio was making me mean.

But then came the specifics. The studio's entire production team would be moving off the Paramount lot to a new headquarters in a suite of offices on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills.

The "new Paramount" would continue to advance its agenda of films -- as many as 15 a year -- but budgets would be tighter and deals leaner. And the delicious little "fringe benefits" of studio life would be no more. When a star in a Paramount movie arrived at LAX, no limo would meet him. Unless he paid for it himself.

And here was the surprise ending: Upon leaving the lot, the quality of our movies promptly improved markedly, and so did the box office results. Instead of the over-budget turkeys that Paramount had been making ("The Molly Maguires," "Catch-22"), the studio suddenly was turning out "Rosemary's Baby," "Love Story," "The Godfather," "Paper Moon" and "The Longest Yard." Even the losers were intriguing -- witness "Harold and Maude."

I personally find the history in context very hopeful. Our industry desperately needs thinning out; perhaps I'll be "thinned out" too; perhaps not. Hopefully I'm good enough at what I do that I'll get to stick around and help be an agent of change.

But more than just a re-alignment (cosmic change, as Mr. Bart puts it); tighter budgets means fewer people involved in the creative process, because there isn't enough money to pay them all. Fewer people involved in the creative process means that projects can move faster, lighter, and most of all, the creative juices stand less chance of being watered down.

It means that leaner times can give rise to better films, and better stories.

Perhaps even give rise to braver voices who aren't scrapping over who has the bigger trailer on the set, or the biggest hotel room on location; whose primary focus and vision is that of creating great story.

Because that star (or EP, or Director) who can't do that, will be left waiting at the airport for a limosine that's not coming.

Personally, I look forward to great storytelling coming from this next decade.

Sony HDR-SR11 & Final Cut Pro - Sequence Settings

To respond to a comment/question on the HDR-SR11 workflow post I wrote a while back, a reader asked me to post info on the sequence settings I use in ingest.

I don't use any "easy setup" files, but here's what I do for the sequence settings in editing:
One other thing to note; in the Preferences pane of the Log and Transfer window, here's the settings there:

Hope this helps, and thanks for reading!

Pings n' Things

Interesting week.

Working desperately to get a new show in the can that had the budget set before the creative was set (it's hard to get a good handle on how much a show costs if you don't have a clear, *really clear* idea of what that show is), and at the same time, fielding pings that are frankly, flattering to be considered for.

This weeks ping came from a reference to large industry player to a headhunter, to me, and it got me thinking again about something I've mentioned a few times here before; meaningful infrastructure.

There was some talk a few years back about reviving the brand of United Artists and all the things it stood for back when it was created as an alternative to what was emerging as a monopolistic studio system that didn't allow artists to grow and flourish.

In the end UA didn't work for various reasons. Partners who saw things differently, yes, but more importantly, the fact that they were an independent studio, and the "major" studios controlled distribution all the way to the screen effectively cut them off from distribution.

However, I still believe there's some merit in the ideas of a studio atmosphere that reigns in some of the "free agent-ry" of today's typical Hollywood creative. There are thousands of creative people in this world and this country who can and will work hard given the proper guidance, tools and leadership (often in the form of a really smart, hard working producer).

What's different today, is that no one controls the distribution; and that fundamentally changes the value of creative meritocracy that isn't necessarily based on the per project/work-for-hire business model.

What today's studios have to offer isn't that they have a racket on whether or not anyone ever sees your work. Instead, what they have to offer the next generation is holistic support, and meaningful infrastructure.

We as executives have to learn to not just recognize new talent but recognize what kind of meaningful support we can give them and make sure they have it. Sometimes that may be assigning them to a great line producer. Sometimes it may be a great DP or even a great stunt coordinator.

Maybe it's time to put some of those "below the line" talents back on an annual salary and give them a framework of support for a new generation of filmmakers who need fertile soil to put roots down in, instead of just the normal "fight for every scrap you can get on your way to the F-U money" that really is the core of our business once you get to a certain point in your career.

These are big departures from business-as-usual in Hollywood, but then again, the idea of filmmakers and storytellers being able to look to the west and say "why in the heck do I need you?" to the studios is a pretty big departure as well.

Hopefully at some point, pings like this weeks turn into real opportunities to try some new things and see if they work. I think given the right leadership, they can work.

HDR-SR11 Videos

To any of those actually tracking, I realized I'd neglected to post test videos from the tiny-but-mighty Sony HDR-SR11 we picked up a couple of months ago.

Unfortunately, YouTube's encoding isn't so great, so I'll work to upload and re-embed with another engine in the near future, but for now, here's a couple of bits.

Some footage of Volcano National Park, and some pitch black, very very long lens shots of the lava eruptions.



Underwater Footage using Sony's "SportPak" housing (good to about 17' deep - snorkeling, but that's about it:)



At any rate, still pretty happy with the little thing.

Like Building Clocks

Sometimes I struggle with ways to describe what it's like to produce a film or television show, but tonight on the way home, I came up with what I think is a good analogy.

When you're the producer who's in charge of putting together a show, and it's attendant budget, and then making it happen, it's like standing in a pile of millions of different sized gears and cogs, and then figuring out which ones to pick up and put together to build a working clock.

I'm currently line producing (read: the lead producer in charge of all physical production and it's associated costs) on a show we're putting up for MTV and we're shooting with two rotating crews in London for 4 weeks, and let me say; there's a LOT of cogs and gears we've gone through to get it ticking.

So there's my thought for the day...in another world, I'd be a watchmaker.

Joss Whedon's New Media Adventures

If you haven't seen this, and apparently I'm a bit behind in jumping on this bandwagon; you must watch, and if you like, buy.


*side note - I can't figure out for the life of me why the creative folks out there don't go into productions that take at least *some* level of professional effort, like Dr. Horrible, and set up some minimal merchandising before release.

In this case, it would have been simple to upload a few "Dr. Horrible" images for t-shirts and coffee mugs from someplace like CafePress and with the show's popularity taking off, it could have been a bonanza.

Anyway, point is, it's just too easy, and too low-cost to *not* make elements like these part of the deliverables for new media shows.

The Gamechanger

I've mentioned this a few times over the last 2 years, the changing landscape of our business, and the major technological advances made in the entertainment industry since my arrival here in 1997.

This article from Wired is about one of my favorite current subjects, the RED camera.

I was fortunate enough to be on the frontend of the digital cinema revolution here in Hollywood, with one of my first producing jobs being the Sundance film fest short, shot by Allen Daviau; where we shot with the then "new" Sony VX1000 MiniDV camera in PAL format for an experimental short film that ended up at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001.

"Sweet" was my second producing job ever, following on the heels of an over-inflated 20 minute short film shot on SUPER35mm film where the filming and post production were both challenging, slow, and about as expensive as you could get working in film. The opportunity to work on "Sweet," as I look back, really did seem like a coming-of-age moment. If I remember right, it was that year that Apple's Final Cut Pro first came out as well.

This was the year I was still working at New Line Cinema in post production where we still would use a sync block and a film splicer to cut film and then tape it back together, and a flatbed to view it on. I was 24. To be fair, this stuff was on the way out, and Avid's were fully in use. The fact remained that we had this gear in the offices and it was used.

This was also the year The Orphanage first began testing their "film look" process as a service that eventually made it's way to a plug-in for software. Their major contribution to the film is reflected in their "presenting" credit to this day on "Sweet."

While what we achieved with that film was just a sliver of what RED now represents, it's encouraging to finally see our industry really embrace this type of change. I hope someday soon the productivity and cost/benefit gains that this camera represents will extend into the actual physical production processes that happen at the organizational level of making films & television. We're still struggling with antiquated, crummy software that doesn't allow for quick, easy, cross platform sharing of the information we use to schedule and budget projects. Those budgets and schedules are often the things that make a project work, or fail, and well... we're still failing there. (side note: There are a few options for this, but they are expensive, and kludgy; this is, of course, something I've been working on for some time, and there's good stuff happening behind-the-scenes:)

It's interesting to see RED finally hit the mainstream (if WIRED is mainstream? I like to think so...), and it will be a gamechanger for Panavision and Sony. Thankfully, Kodak saw the writing on that wall a couple of years ago and began realigning it's businesses appropriately. (though I never will forget one of the preeminent film labs in town taking Allen and I out to a Lakers game with some sweet box tickets and treating us to an awesome dinner (thanks John!) and talking about how Allen liked to call up Kodak and ask for specific emulsions on his film stock to experiment with...).

Only 4 months ago, I was approached by two new-to-Hollywood young filmmakers contemplating their first short film project who were looking for an "old hand" to guide them through their production. Their first undertaking? They had gotten on the waiting list and bought their own first full RED package, lenses, support gear, and all. No more begging for free or discounted gear from Panavision or Arriflex (Otto Nemenz) they were out to produce their own cinema quality films, on their own terms. I hope, and believe we'll only see more of this.

Personally, I can't wait to buy my first RED package one of these days (though by that time, it'll likely be 6k, or 8k...).

Panavision Camera? $25,000/month to rent
Red Camera? $17,500 to own

A new generation of storytellers with the tools to tell their own stories in grand cinematic vision?

Priceless.

Latest

Couple weeks ago, got an interesting call to put together something for MyDamnChannel, and below is the result.



I have to say, I'm pretty happy with the result, if not perfect. Terrell, J and Paul were all a pleasure to work with, and they made it easy, and 13,000+ views in 2 days online? That's not bad either!

It's also a cool format idea to have celebs sit down and have a conversation with each other and see what they say and we had fun making it:)

UPDATE: 9-15-08
WOW! In a little over a month, this first of two episodes has racked up over 200,000 views. That's pretty rockin'!

Seek First to Understand

A game creator recently took the brave step of directly asking people who pirate his games, why they do so, and to open a dialogue with them about it. (as an exercise, anywhere you see the word "game" replace it with movie or television show and chew on that a while).

A few days ago I posted a simple question on my blog. "Why do people pirate my games?". It was an honest attempt to get real answers to an important question... This is what I found:

Introduction

Firstly it's worth pointing out that there were LOTs of responses (and they are still coming in now), hundreds of comments on the sites listed, a ton of comments on the blog (despite it crumbling under the strain) and hundreds of emails made it through to me. I read every one of them.... Here is what they said:

The semi-political ones

I got a few people churning out long arguments about whether or not intellectual property is valid, and claiming that it was censorship, or fascism and other variations on this theme...

Money

A lot of anger was directed at the retail $60 games, and console games. My games were $19-23, but for a lot of people, it was claimed this was far too high. People talked a lot about impulse buying games if they were much cheaper.

Game Quality

This was a big complaint too. And this also surprised me. Not a single person said they had felt ripped off by a game due to substandard visuals or lack of content. The consensus was that games got boring too quickly, were too derivative, and had gameplay issues. Almost everyone had a tale of a game that was bought based on hype which turned out to be disappointing.

DRM

People don't like DRM, we knew that, but the extent to which DRM is turning away people who have no other complaints is possibly misunderstood. If you wanted to change ONE thing to get more pirates to buy games, scrapping DRM is it. These gamers are the low hanging fruit of this whole debate.

There's more on his site, go read it.

Today, he posted his conclusions, and they are an excellent window into the things the market that we create and sell film, television and music for.

It's worth reading the summary of responses, and what he's going to do about it.

There's a good lesson to be learned here.

I Have Seen the Future of Storytelling

This post on TechCrunch shows video from a new 3d engine that does all it's rendering in "the cloud" and provides for photoreal environments ostensibly to be used for gaming.

What I see in this demo video? I see shooting a scene on a deserted stretch of Pacific Coast Highway (as shown in the video) without the cost of police, shutting down the highway, all my lighting crew and camera crew and bringing in talent to do voices that are blithely happy they don't have to sit through make up, sit through lighting changes, etc in order to act their roles.

With tools like this it won't matter how much money you do or don't have, it will matter how well you create characters, and write, and set up your shots to convey the emotions you want in your story.

This is my prognostication - OTOY, and cloud rendering that makes any photoreal environment available anytime for the purpose of telling story, will radically change our art.

Shell Vacations - Hawaii

I usually don't use my soapbox (blog) to complain, but once in a while there's something I think people should know about, and avoid.

We recently took a trip to Hawaii, and stayed in Kailua Kona. While walking the boardwalks down by the beach, you'll notice LOTS of "discounted stuff to do" vendors, who will sign you up for a timeshare presentation in exchange for discounted things like snorkel cruises, helicopter flights, etc.

One of those, is Shell Vacations Club. When we signed up for the presentation, we thought, "Hey, we'll take an hour and a half and listen to what they say and at least think about it a bit." Especially in light of the fact that right on the contract it says "If you decide not to attend, you'll pay the difference between the discounted price and the full price of your chosen activities."

So we figured we could take a slight hit if we couldn't make it.

It also says in HUGE letters right in the office, TIMESHARE NOT REQUIRED.

Well, we ran out of time, and ended up going on one lame activity (the rest of our trip was much more satisfying self-guided stuff), and when we told them we couldn't make the timeshare presentation, they proceeded to to charge us full price for the activity we did go on.

This was a doubling of the price from what the contract clearly stated. When I tried to raise the point in person, then further over the phone to get them to honor their agreement, they refused.

When I wrote to their corporate office about what happened, they've refused to respond.

So, case in point, for anyone considering going to Hawaii, either avoid these guys altogether, or at least be just fine with paying full price for your activities if you choose not to go to the presentation. Shell Vacations Club will not honor the agreement you sign with them, and it can cost you.

Sony HDR-SR11 Workflow in Final Cut Pro Studio

Now that I'm working with the HDR-SR11 camera ingesting footage for editing and display on our home theater system, I figured I'd take a minute to outline workflow using this camera and FCP Studio for Blu-Ray compatible playback files.

A few things worth noting.

1. I record all files on the camera at (FH) or AVC HD 16M (which is 16mb/s). This is the highest picture quality this camera records, at 1920x1080i, and with their AVC encoding still results in over 300 minutes of record time for the onboard 60gb hard drive.
2. I'm using Final Cut Pro 6.0.4 and Compressor 3.0.3 running on a Macbook Pro 2.4ghz C2D with 4gb RAM.
   

OK, now for getting footage off the camera. Here's the single biggest design drawback of the HDR-SR11 and that is the fact that the only transfer option if you're using the onboard hard drive, is via USB cable.

FCP Logging
Once hooked up to your system, and USB connect enabled on camera menu, you can open Final Cut, and use File>Log & Tranfer to access the hard drive and select in/out points and do your logging here.

With the USB speeds, I found that the computer would consistently choke and crash if you are attempting to ingest footage from one clip while scrolling through other clips on the camera hard drive for logging.

The camera desperately needs a faster interface for getting stuff off the internal hard drive. Firewire 800 would be great, but I can see where the 9-pin connector of FW800 would be a problem to incorporate into the tiny camera body, so I'm not sure if there's a good solution.

Unfortunately, it seems that even if you record to Memory Stick, the Express34 card readers all run at USB2.0 speeds as well.

FCP Transfer

Now, once you've set your in and out points and are ready to drag media in the transfer queue, it's time to go grab a cup of coffee, or maybe the whole pot, because you're going to wait a while.

When ingesting into FCP, the automatic ingest settings (that I've not found a way to change) are to transcode all the 16mb/s AVCHD encoded footage into Quicktime files using Apple ProRes422.

The good news about this, is the resulting files look spectacular.

The bad news about this, is that it almost doubles the data rate from the originals.

The 16mb/s of AVCHD turns into roughly 25mb/s in ProRes 422. This means you'll need about 1.5GB of storage per minute of footage you'd like to bring into the system. Needless to say, plan ahead for how much space you're going to need.

Editing in FCP

Now, for some more good news. Once ingested in this manner, your files will NOT need rendering once placed in the timeline. FCP 6.0.4 works flawlessly with dropping ProRes clips into the timeline, and even plays back simple transitions and reversed frames without rendering.

Edit as usual:)

Compressor Output for Blu-Ray compatible playback

Our home theater setup is built around a Sony Playstation 3, connected via component cables to a Panasonic TH-50PHD7UY.

While Compressor only comes with settings for HD-DVD compatible file output, as noted in the threads over at Apple's FCP boards, there's a simple check box in the Inspector that will change the file suffix from .m2v, to .m2t, which is all that is needed to create an MPG2 file format with HD playback rates on the PS3.

Here are a couple of screen grabs of the settings I use in Compressor.

Since most of the stuff I'm editing in tests is fairly short, I'm using really high bit rates to get the most out of it.

These will be the .M2T files I'll post later in the week that you can download and test for playback on your PS3 (or other compatible device) and for checking out the image quality from the HDR-SR11.

Under the "Extras" tab is where you'll find the option for "Multiplexed MPEG-1/Layer 2 Audio"; checking this box will change the file type from .m2v, to .m2t - Voila!










I have not yet figured out if there's a way to encode Dolby Digital 5.1 in this file type, though that's something I hope to experiment with soon.

At any rate, there's the way to do it, check it out, and if you have anything I got wrong, or a better way to get through it, feel free to drop me a line!

Update on the Timed Power strips

Well, as per an earlier posting, we installed CFL's and timed power strips to completely shut off components of our home theater that were supposed power-suckers in "standby mode" and I don't think we'll really get an accurate picture for a while.

We just got the power bill from the last month of using these, and compared to the prior month, our bill was actually more - due to higher AC usage. Sooo it's pretty tough to figure out if they're saving us any electricity or not.

Ah well - tis a good effort.

Sony HDR-SR11 - almost obliterating the consumer/professional line

Well, I didn't think I'd be dumping my trusty Panasonic DVX100B camera that has served honorably and well in Standard Definition, shooting things that have ended up on Broadcast television in more than one place.

I especially didn't think I'd be dumping a semi-pro-sumer camera for a *gasp* consumer-grade camera.

But I did.

Just after going on vacation, we found a deal we couldn't beat at Costco (in Hawaii, where everything is supposed to cost more, but didn't - even gas was a full 20-30 cents/gallon cheaper than in Los Angeles...) on a Sony HDR-SR11 HD camcorder.

It had a great zoom (that only got better), and so that I could maintain some semblance of pro-gear interface, it has a line mic input that I can hook up to a Beachtek DXA-6VU and add two balanced XLR inputs with level meters.

In the next few weeks, I'll post some video from the camera for folks to download and check out. For a vacation, I did manage to put the camera through it's paces in some challenging lighting conditions including underwater shooting (using the Sony SPK-HCD, which worked reasonably well; also look for more on this later), capturing lava eruptions from a long distance in total darkness, shooting fireworks, and using it's HD nightshot as well.

Upon returning from the trip, it was with some small bit of sadness, but lots of enthusiasm as well that I ditched the DVX kit on Craigslist after looking at the footage coming off the HDR-SR11.

I can say I haven't seen footage look this good off a consumer grade camera... well, ever. At any rate, if you're in the market, these cameras can be had for under $1k, and they're worth checking out.

Proof forthcoming in other posts.

Energy Conservation in real life...

So, we're all trying to do our part to reduce our energy usage at home right?

Er... well... uh... not really. Our energy use in our home has roughly doubled in the last year as we added new gadgets and electronics, which of course means a [more than] doubling of the electricity bill as use and rates rise.

As I started researching the biggest "power suckers" in our home, a few of the devices it turned out drew nearly as much electricity while in standby as if they were on 24/7.

The problem comes in that a lot of these interdependent devices have settings that are lost if you completely cut off the power to them. But a number also retain their settings. With that in mind, I went searching for some kind of digitally timed powerstrips to plug stuff into and set power timings on them.

Imagine my surprise to find that what's out there for timed power strips are... well... kludgy at best. There's nothing out there at all that you can plug into your computer and set timings, or create "whole house" energy timing policies with.

The options I did find, were literally impossible to find locally, and I ended up ordering a few of these powerstrips from Intermatic with digital timers on them. While not as elegant a solution, these actually worked out pretty well. We now have about 500w of standy appliances and electronics that power all the way down each night during non-use hours.

We'll be interested to see how these help reduce energy usage (or not) over the next couple of power bills - I'll post results here when the data comes in.

Cato on Copyright

Great article today over on Cato about copyright being stretched until it's broken. In many comments around the web, the sensible reaction is "well, let's abolish copyright."

I don't necessarily disagree, even as a content creator.

I thought this bit in the article was really important:

Adding more “content” will strictly speaking produce no value — whether culturally or economically. What’s valuable is supplying a context where people can come together to create meaning out of abundance. The digital world poses questions whose answers can’t remain within the digital sphere. A key challenge is to relate the digital to that which is not digital: time, space, human relationships, and so forth.

The digital world poses questions whose answers can’t remain within the digital sphere. A key challenge is to relate the digital to that which is not digital: time, space, human relationships, and so forth. Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, has recently captured it well: When copies are superabundant, they become worthless, while things which can’t be copied become scarce and valuable. What counts in the end are “uncopyable values,” qualities which are “better than free.”

This "frame of reference" in the first paragraph, and the "uncopyable" values in the second, I really think are the key to the next for-profit generation of entertainment.

It's important to note that "for-profit" segment, as the not-for-profit content creation market will continue to explode, and erode the ability of a large segment of people in the entertainment industry to make a living. This is simply the way the world changes.

So how are you going to evolve your style?

Storytelling Evolution

Over the last 100 years, the motion picture has changed our world, and our storytelling frameworks from what had preceded it for thousands of years. Stories used be told either verbally by local story tellers or by the presentation of plays.

The more I watch the films we produce any more, the more convinced I become that in another 100 years, or perhaps sooner, we'll look back at passive films as a quaint storytelling medium.

I don't think that all storytelling become active gameplaying experiences, but I do think there will be a medium of exploration and of shared discovery that will lead us to create new forms of storytelling. These new forms will grow from the mediums that become possible.

As the last 100 years we've been restricted to the visual storytelling of those that had access to celluloid. Then to television, and now to digital cameras. A progression of the art, to be sure - and there is more progression to come.

What will it be?

It's up to any and all of us who dream of telling great stories, to stretch our imaginations beyond the story arcs, beyond the character development, beyond the visual styles we use to communicate our ideas and themes and our innermost hopes and fears of the human experience, and find news ways of weaving these into the mediums now evolving.

And for those of the new generation that understand the possibilities now blooming before us, and the opportunities to create things utterly new - there's a new wild wild west of storytelling laid before us.

Got yer spurs?

Goodbye Plaxo

After years of having Plaxo screw up my address book updates, they've finally graduated to aggregating enough data about what I'm doing around the net, to make me nervous.

To have that coupled with the fact that Comcast bought them, which adds another level of discomfort, I've decided to delete my Plaxo profile.

To all of you have my contact info from having directly worked with me, please don't take it as a slight to any of you, and please feel free to stay in touch (y'all know how:).

I'm still (for the time being) on Linkedin (only approving those people I have had actual; real-world work and contact with, thanks).

Sometimes, making your world a bit smaller, makes it a bit more manageable in the big picture.

Flashbacks & Flashforwards

A good friend of ours has scheduled a series of 80's movies screenings at his home throughout the summer, and we love going.

The classic films we grew up with are always great to revisit. From Raiders of the Lost Ark, to the Goonies, and more - a lot of Spielberg and a lot of Lucas. It's Flashback city.

As we continue to evolve what entertainment is, and the more I get into new media, the more quaint the storytelling structure of a traditional narrative film seems.

I'm coming to firmly believe that the film business is really missing the boat in just taking our old, tired, 2 hour passive story structures and the only thing "cutting edge" about them is either the visual effects, or in some cases, online sales or streaming of the same old format.

The storytellers of Hollywood really haven't even begun to explore what new story structures we can create in the brave new world at our doorstep. But story format isn't static; and there will be a new generation of storytellers who step forward in the years ahead to present formats that will be totally new, engaging, and groundbreaking.

I'm excited about the possibilities.