MINT EXPLORED
Without financing, movies could not be made. Then, there have to be ways to keep track of all those finances to make that movie, and if they cannot be tracked then there is no movie. Big Film Studios have accountants and people specifically trained to handle budgets, but what about indie filmmakers? Well, their financial management woes are over because Mint.com has arrived.
Without budgets, filmmakers could not get their films even greenlit. There is a certain amount of money allocated for pre production, production, and postproduction. If you use the budget from one for another, then the film will not be completed, period. Therefore, the importance of keeping a tight budget is detrimental to a film’s completion.
Financial money management software has been around for a while, but the main problem is that a lot of it soaks up too much time to put everything thing in manually. You also have to synchronize it with your bank accounts manually, and even then, like the creator of Mint.com attests to, it still may not work exactly the way you would like it to.
Mint’s inception began around Thanksgiving time in 2005. Aaron started to use Quicken to get his finances straight, but he knew it would take him all day to manually input his finances together. Even then, he was not able to get a simple graph of his spending habits, and that is when he decided he would take matters into his own hands and create his own money management software. So in March 2006 he quit his job and started working on Mint.com, a free online money management software. It went into public Beta in September of 2007.
The first thing you notice about Mint’s website is the Web 2.0-ness. It has the bubbly buttons and gradients, and the pleasing soft colors. When you log in, you get a good overview of all your accounts. It has a financial health bar, which compares your assets vs. your debts. It has an overview of all your budgets too, so that you make sure you keep within the limits you set. You can set up your notifications to get a summary of your accounts, low balances, credit card due dates, and available credit by email and or text. You can also see your ways to save.
This a great way to keep all the accounts under surveillance and a good overview to make sure you stay within budget. Being notified from Mint of coming close to running over budget gives you enough time to react and decide if something, like that one extra shot, is actually worth doing.
Under transactions, it gives you all of the transactions for the last 30 to 90 days for all of your available accounts. You can search your transactions, categorize them, and add notes and labels to them. Another nifty trick is that you can “split” your transactions into several smaller transactions, instead of one huge transaction. This is a really good way to organize all the categories that go into spending for film. There can be one category for film stock, one for equipment rental, and one for food. It’s great!
The most helpful visual aide Mint provides is the spending trend pie chart. The pie is clickable, and is able to break down into even smaller pie charts for specific categories.
There’s also spend space, where you can compare spending ratios from your categories, for example shopping, to other parts of the country. This part is mainly good for personal management and not necessarily for film budgeting reasons, but it’s still pretty cool to look at.
As for security, Mint takes into account several factors that make it one of the safest websites online. First, you don’t have to give your name, just an email address to register. They don’t store any of your accounting information or passwords. Even if someone was able to get into your Mint account, they can’t do anything with the accounts, they can’t transfer money or anything. Your actual account information is stored with Yodlee, an online service company that is like the Fort Knox of online banking. The way Mint works is that it communicates with Yodlee using 128-bit SSL encryption, which is the financial industry standard for data protection. They are the company that provides online banking to other companies like ING direct, Capital One, Wachovia, and a lot of other trading institutions. Plus Mint is Hacker Safe and it’s tested daily.
Mint.com is an automated, fast and easy way to manage your finances, whether it’d be for personal or business use. You can keep track of all of your accounts, and stay within budget.
PENTAD: MINT.COM
PENTAD: MINT.COM
WHO: Aaron Patzer is the founder and CEO of Mint.com in March of 2006. He is a graduate of Princeton and Duke University, and former engineer at IBM.
WHAT: Mint.com is a free online money management software that regulated and budgets your finances all in one place. It also recommends offers that will benefit you and it sends warnings by email or text whether you running low on money or if a credit card payment is due soon.
WHERE: Mountain View, California
WHY: The anecdote goes that one day Aaron was using Quicken to do his finances but he couldn’t figure out a way to get the stats showing. All he wanted was a pie chart of his spending, but he couldn’t do it. So he decided to create Mint.
WHEN: Aaron thought of making Mint around November 2005, and created it in March of 2006, and it went into public beta in September of 2007.
FILMMAKERS AND THE INTERNENT: A SYMBIOTIC SYSTEM
FILMMAKERS AND THE INTERNET: A SYMBIOTIC SYSTEM
The internet is the new filmmaker’s frontier. It is the new unknown, and it is exciting. Those who dare to engage the internet reap rewards or waste their time because nothing is guaranteed.
About 100 years ago, the first frontier was cinema, then television, and now the Internet. With this new technological medium, there are the luddites who reject it and then there are those who have open arms.
About 60 years ago, television was seen as a threat to Hollywood. More and more people were staying home to watch television instead of going out to a movie theater. Now, almost every studio owns a television network division, and television makes a bulk of the money for studios. [1] With the advent of the internet, Hollwyood again fears this new technology. They have reason to concern because of the grown piracy and downloading of movies.
But there are those who have been able to harness its ever-expanding audience and focus the power of viewer-dom for their benefit. A few have been able to catapult themselves in the limelight for Hollywood to take notice.
In 2006, David Lehre released “Myspace: The Movie” a short film about several interactions involving the culture of Myspace.com. Segments include relationships, and meeting strangers and having parties. The video went viral and has reached over 30 millions views. The video was mentioned in the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle and New York Times, with an Interview with the Washington Post here. The Hollywood doors have opened for him, and he was courted by Fox studios to produce a pilot. What puts Lehre apart from other young filmmakers is that he strategically decided to use the Internet to enhance his chances of becoming noticed. This is what he had to say in his interview:
He succeeded in his goal, and was rewarded handsomely. However, it has been over two years, and David Lehre is not exactly a household name. Sustaining success through the internet takes time. Lighting struck once, but it has been hard for Lehre to repeat his success. He recently released a short online series titled Turbo Girls, a campy series about spy girls ala Charlie’s Angels. The videos are viewable here. It has garnered relative views, but nothing near the success of “Myspace: The Movie.”
He has finished directing the pilot for Fox, which seems to be a variety/sketch comedy show that will soon be released June 2008. He has posted six behind-the-scenes shorts showing the process. You can watch them here. However, they were all released one year ago. Currently, he is producing a music video, a series of commercials, and several online contest commercial entries, and a new film.
LisaNova, real name Lisa Donovan, is one of the premier creators on Youtube, being the 9th most subscribed director. Why not talk about the first director? Well, that title belongs to Smosh, which we will get to shortly. The other top seven creators are: five video blogs, Universal Music group, and the last belongs to Lonelygirl15, which we will also talk about later.
Lisa Donovan currently resides in Venice, CA and works in a field related to the Industry (not sure, she never stays or writes it anywhere). She came to Los Angeles five years ago to become an actor, but as she soon realized, it was hard to break in. She also auditioned for a role on “Mad TV” but they turned her down. However, two years ago, she discovered Youtube and decided to post videos as LisaNova. She rose to fame by mocking the PuffDaddy (P-diddy?) video he made promoting Burger King. Her video is viewable here.
She started to grow her fanbase, so much so, that one of the people who watched her videos passed it on to Nicole Garcia, casting director for “Mad TV.”
They then called Lisa in to audition again, and she got a featured role on the show last year. However, they did not sign her up for another season. But that’s okay, LisaNova is far from over. She has over 92 thousand subscribers, with me being one of them. Her videos get over 100,000 views easy; her lowest viewed movie is around 58,000 and her highest is over 3 million.
Currently, she is sharing revenue with YouTube as one of the few paid content creators, or “partners,” on there, and she has just started her own video blog where she just talks as herself, and not as any of her characters.
Much has already been written about the phenomenon that became Lonelygirl15 last year, so I’ll briefly go over it. It started as a video blog on YouTube about a little 16-year-old girl who had very religious and restrictive parents. However, fans became suspicious and they soon discovered that it was all a methodically thought-out fictional series created by a group of young men. This paragraph comes from the New York Times articles that sums up an introduction:
The goal for them was to capture the attention of Hollywood and they succeeded by being signed up by CAA, one of the biggest agencies in Hollywood. Also, Jessica Lee Rose went on a promoting spree to several talk shows, garnering more attention and exposure than any young actress would get at her age.
Without the advent of the internet, specifically video sharing sites like YouTube, none of this would have happened, and these guys would probably not be signed up with CAA right now.
Currently, the guys over at LG15 Studios have created the spin-off show KateModern, that takes place in the same universe as the original Lonelygirl15. It’s about a young girl who has a secret that the audience needs to solve (watch). Nevertheless, what is unique about it is the product placement marketing and the interaction the show has with its audience, creating alternate reality games to coincide with the show.
Finally, we have Smosh, created by Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox, two young men from Northern California. They came to YouTube fame when they uploaded their viral hit Pokemon, where they lip-sync to the famous kiddie song. Before the video was pulled by a copyright claim by Shogakukan, the video received over 24 million views. They’re basically the number 1 at everything on YouTube, no.1 director, no.1 subscribed, and no.1 partner.
However, their main goal is unclear. Is their goal to attract tons of views? Is it to get people to go to their website (Which is just an extension of their channel)? Is it to make lots of money? If their main goal is to succeed at many goals, then they’ve succeeded. Yet, I am surprised we haven’t heard of studio execs courting the Smosh bros. for any pilot or ideas.
Currently, their Crybaby video has over 700k views in just two days, and the video before that Smosh Sued for $20 million (their April Fool’s video) has garnered over 2 million views in two weeks.
Conway is a graduate of Masters program for the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Last year, he entered the as one of the 50 semi-finalist for the “On The Lot” competition as one of the contestants that appeared on the show. Unfortunately, he did not make it into the finalists; however, he was interviewed extensively by the Filmnut here. He was competing for a chance to win a million dollar development deal with Dreamworks, but that honor went to Will Bigham.
Currently he’s finishing the final touches of his thesis film, TURBO, futuristic sci-punk video game influenced short film shot on the RED ONE. One interesting fact is that David Lehre is one of the main characters playing the villain in the short.
Adrian Picardi is a young man from Pasadena who graduated from the LA film school in 2006. He entered his thesis short film into the Film2Music contest in late 2006 and it won the Grand Prize, and a trip to Sundance in 2007. The short is viewable here. A couple of months later, he won the Grand Prize for the PSAID contest. He then entered several more contests that year, the largest ones were True to John Woo and the Assassin’s Creed Contest. In both, he made it to the top ten finalists, but alas, in both someone else became the Grand Prize winner.
Because he has won several contests, the LA time writer Alana Semeuls contacted him and mentioned him in the article she wrote on how the companies that sponsor the video contests win every time because the contestants go to great lengths to acquire views and votes:
Even though he may not win every contest, he gets a lot of exposure by get close to winning them, and of course, when he does win, then it is a boost in the recognition. Several independent production houses have contact him in order to sign him up to director several indie pictures, but Picardi has declined because their story quality is not exactly what he’s going for, meaning a lot of the script he gets suck.
Currently, Picardi is on the cusp of something big: The first ever known action online web series titled The Resistance. It’s a action-packed, story driven series that will run for eight episodes and see where it goes from there. Right now, there are four teaser trailers posted on the YouTube site, but production on episodes is already underway. They have already finished shooting one episode, and it has a planned release of May/June.
To all three fellow filmmakers, Picardi, Lehre, Conway, I sent out a small questionnaire about the internet and filmmakers. Unfortunately, Lehre and Conway haven’t responded to me yet. I almost didn’t get Picardi to respond, I had to call him and he said because he was super busy and stressed out, he didn’t much time for full responses which is very understandable because “The Resistance” is a super low budget production, with most of the resources coming from friends and family and favors.
PICARDI (SHORT) INTERVIEW
What’s your ultimate goal as a filmmaker?
To Make entertaining movies
Has the internet shaped the way you make films?
Not really.
There are several benefits to putting your films online but have you encountered any negatives to putting your films online?
Not really.
Do you believe filmmakers can acquire wealth from the internet alone?
No. It’ll just open up more opportunities and more doors.
Do you think one day the internet will come to bypass and replace studios? Meaning, there will be no need for studios in the future for making films and distributing them.
No, definitely not.
Overall, Picardi, through the great exposure he receives from winning these online video contests, gets closer to knocking on Hollywood’s door, and hopefully The Resistance becomes an internet success. Conway was given a great opportunity at winning a development deal but maybe it wasn’t time just yet. Smosh, even though their goal does not seem to be geared towards Hollywood just yet, they may one day choose to collaborate with the industry because their viewership on YouTube has entitled them to some form of recognition. Lonelygirl15 was the perfect internet success story that made winners of all those involved. It gave Jessica Rose early fame and it guaranteed work for the three filmmakers in the industry they wanted to break into. Lisanova also tasted fame for that moment she was on television, but it seems as though the internet beckons her more, and she it, because she cannot creatively control anything on television yet, whereas she is the master of her channel on YouTube. David Lehre strategically enhanced his exposure by creating the Myspace movie, but time will tell if he can sustain the internet success he was first baptized with. Without the internet, none of these creators/filmmakers mentioned here could have arrived to where they are now, and yet, the internet would not, could not be what it is today without creators and filmmakers like these, and that is why it is a symbiotic system.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] Flint, Joe. “On The Air”. Entertainment Weekly. Posted Nov 18, 1998. Published in issue #458. <http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,285736,00.html>
[2] Goo, Sara Kehaulani. “Filmmaker David Lehre Interview.” Washington Post. Posted Monday, May 1, 2006; 12:00 AM
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/28/AR2006042800682.html?sub=AR>
[3] Wallenstein, Andrew. “How YouTube Helped LisaNova’s Start Her Career.” The New York Times. Published: April 29, 2007.
[4] Heffernan, Virginia; Zeller, Tom. “”Lonely Girl’ (and Friends) Just Wanted a Movie Deal.” The New York Times. Published: September 12, 2006
[5] Semeuls, Alana. “Sponsors are Winners In Online Contests.” Los Angeles Times. August 25th, 2007
<http://www.commercialalert.org/news/archive/2007/08/sponsors-are-winners-in-online-contests>
NOTE: Link to the source LA Times article has been lost or broken.
LIVE@EDU FILM CONTEST! WATCH IT!
MINT.COM!
I have found one of the best start ups anywhere on the internets. It’s called mint.com and they’re awesome because they do all of your financial homework and statistics for you. I’ve never used Microsoft Money or other money management software for you because 1) they cost money and 2) take forever to set up. Please note, the following is a non-paid endorsement to mint.com because they blew me away with their website and tech.
Off the top of my head, this is what mint.com offers:
1. You can get a detailed over of all your accounts, I’m talking pretty charts and graphs galore, all relevant data stuff.
2. You can set up alert systems, and it will even give you text message alerts to your phone when you’re running low on them greenbacks.
3. You can set up budgets and it will keep track of all that stuff for you.
4. It organizes and categorizes all of your transactions for you, plus you can add your own notes and labels gmail style.
5. It generates this really cool piechart that shows how much you spend related to everything else. It’s uber awesome.
6. You can compare your spending with other cities or states.
7. It recommends ways to save by suggesting savings accounts with other banks and credit interest rates at other places.
8. It’s all Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
As for security, you can check out their policy here. But for the most part, they’ve been verified from several security companies, and for the most part, I don’t have much money to spend nor a credit line of a druglord for people to steal my info and abuse. So, I decided what the heck, why not try it? Boy, was I glad I did! (Cheesy, I know 
