I get complaints when I write a blog about the Dr. Film<\/i> show.\u00a0 People like the blogs about classic films better.\u00a0 Someone wrote about the \u201cexistential whining\u201d that he didn\u2019t like.\u00a0 Well, this is going to be another one of those blogs, but it affects what we’re going to do with the show, which means classic films and restorations you won’t see anywhere else.<\/p>\n
A lot of people come up to me, especially at conventions, and ask, \u201cWhen is the Dr. Film<\/i> show coming on?\u201d\u00a0 Some think it\u2019s already on.\u00a0 Some think it should be on, and are surprised it isn\u2019t.\u00a0 Still only know Dr. Film from the blog.\u00a0 This blog has gotten surprisingly popular.<\/p>\n
The Dr. Film facebook page is pretty popular too, and the show isn\u2019t.\u00a0 It\u2019s because no one has seen the show.\u00a0 On the Facebook page, we talk about preservation issues, and there are plugs for new projects and odd copyright problems.\u00a0 It\u2019s a neat forum. In a very strange way, a way I never expected, I\u2019ve created a community around a show that doesn\u2019t really exist, and a fan base and people who come together over something that has never developed.\u00a0 I\u2019m not complaining, but it\u2019s surprising.<\/p>\n
You see, I put up the blog to promote the show, which I figured would get popular and then we\u2019d have more people clamor to see the show.\u00a0 And the Facebook page was put up to promote the blog and the show. \u00a0But we only have the pilot, which was shot in 2008, finished in 2009, and remastered\/recut in 2011.\u00a0 That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve been a loyal follower here, then you know what I mean and how we\u2019ve struggled with this.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been completely and utterly ignored by cable and broadcast. \u00a0Few people will even give us a chance by watching the show.\u00a0 I really don\u2019t think we will ever be on an over-the-air broadcast or cable network<\/em>. \u00a0I want to emphasize this. \u00a0I just don\u2019t think we\u2019re high-profile enough.<\/p>\n There\u2019s been a continuing thing, something that I get asked all the time, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just put Dr. Film<\/em> on YouTube?\u201d\u00a0 I don\u2019t do that because I can\u2019t afford to.\u00a0 YouTube is dominated by teenagers, rich folks, and the chronically unemployed.\u00a0 I don\u2019t qualify for the first two, and hope to avoid being the third.\u00a0 The economics of YouTube are awful.\u00a0 I\u2019ve looked into it, and with the viewership I\u2019m likely to get, it\u2019s impossible for me to make enough money to justify expenses.<\/p>\n And then people tell me, \u201cBut people will see you and you\u2019ll be famous!\u201d\u00a0 Well, I don\u2019t care about that.\u00a0 I want to a) show old movies and b) not go broke doing it.\u00a0 Those are my goals.\u00a0 I really don\u2019t care if no one knows who I am.\u00a0 If I have to be a little more \u201cknown\u201d in order to accomplish my goals, then that\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n One of the things I do to accomplish my goals is to study the marketplace, and I see odd things happening, especially in social media.<\/p>\n I noticed my friend Archie Waugh doing something that I\u2019d never even considered with Facebook.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never met Archie, but I\u2019ve known him for years, even before Facebook, because he is a long-time silent film fan.\u00a0 But Archie is geeky (I consider this a good thing!) in a number of areas, and one of his favorite ways is that he\u2019s a big Godzilla fan… not just Godzilla, but all of the Japanese monster and TV shows.\u00a0 Properly, they\u2019re called Kaiju.<\/p>\n Archie hosts a group that gets together every Saturday night and they all pop in a DVD at the same time and then start talking about it as it runs.\u00a0 They used to use Facebook\u2019s chat function, but they grew into their own chat room that one of the members puts on his own server.\u00a0 And they\u2019re not making fun of the movie (although sometimes they might kid it a bit), but they\u2019re talking to each other and enjoying the film and sharing an experience…<\/p>\n They\u2019re not seeing each other, but are spread literally all over the world.\u00a0 They\u2019re a community, and more to the point, they\u2019re an audience.\u00a0 They love to do this!\u00a0 I\u2019ve polled them about it.\u00a0 It runs counter to my way of thinking, because I go to a movie so that I don\u2019t talk to other people, so I can immerse myself in the experience.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like <\/i>to share that with others.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not all about me.<\/p>\n This is a new kind of audience.\u00a0 It\u2019s a different kind of audience.\u00a0 I can see why some people utterly fail to accept this.\u00a0 The texters hate the immersion people and the immersion people hate the texters.\u00a0 And I hope there\u2019s room for both in the world, because there are just too few people who are interested in some things to make an immersive audience pay off.\u00a0 If there are 10 people in each big city, then you may get 1000 people in a virtual audience, but go broke doing a movie roadshow.<\/p>\n I hate that.\u00a0 I love the movies, but I have to face reality.\u00a0 I hope that some of the texters can become members of the immersive audience and vice versa, but neither is going away.<\/p>\n And that brings me back to Dr. Film<\/em>.\u00a0 If YouTube doesn\u2019t work out economically, then what about some sort of internet streaming?\u00a0 Netflix was not interested.\u00a0 Well, I\u2019m not sure whether they were interested or not.\u00a0 I never heard back from them.<\/p>\n I thought, well, OK, we can stream the Dr. Film<\/em> show on a private YouTube channel and do an Archie-style chat along with it.\u00a0 I even spoke to Archie about it.\u00a0 I almost did it, looked like everything was coming in place, but…<\/p>\n People yelled at me.\u00a0 Some people had seen the pilot that we shot, and a few hated it.\u00a0 The complaint was not that the idea was bad, but some people hated the feature I\u2019d picked, and a few hated the video transfer I\u2019d gotten.\u00a0 The statement was that it was like one of the Star Trek <\/i>pilots… they were good enough to incorporate into the run of the show, but you wouldn\u2019t want to show one for your first episode.\u00a0 The complaints were loud, and I listened.<\/p>\n Now remember, by this time, years have gone by.\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking we just trash the show.\u00a0 It was fun, it was a good idea, but it didn\u2019t work. That\u00a0<\/em>idea didn’t set well with people either!\u00a0 Meanwhile, the blog readership expanded, the Facebook memberships went up, and we still had no show.<\/p>\n I thought, well, OK, we can try to make some more shows.\u00a0 By now HD has taken over, so we need more equipment and more expensive film transfers.\u00a0 That\u2019s OK, I can work that out…\u00a0 I applied for grants, and, gee, I got none of them. \u00a0People don’t really understand what I do. \u00a0It’s not “art” to them.<\/p>\n I kept thinking that I needed my own internet TV station, and I was looking into that.\u00a0 I knew that it was possible to make a private station with a dedicated server.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen a lot of them, and I know that many are on Roku.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s this other problem: most of the TV stations on the internet are BAD.\u00a0 The classic movie stations rely almost exclusively on material that\u2019s been cobbed from archive.org.\u00a0 I\u2019ve lived through this before: it was like when Goodtimes video came out and flooded the marked with awful-looking public domain movies.\u00a0 They were cheap, but they gave headaches to those of us to tried to be a little more up-market. \u00a0I can’t always be Kino or Criterion; there simply are some things that look bad in the surviving prints, but I’d like to show them anyway. \u00a0I just don’t want to be painted with the same brush as Alpha or Goodtimes, who seem to go out of their way to get bad material.<\/p>\n So I thought about offering Dr. Film <\/i>as a streaming service ala Netflix.\u00a0 I did a survey there, too.\u00a0 People told me that they wanted free, please free, we have no money.\u00a0 Well, that means commercials, which I can do.\u00a0 But an equal number of people said, NO, please have a monthly subscription.\u00a0 It was evenly split down the middle.<\/p>\n Ben Model is at least somewhat successful with his Accidentally Preserved<\/i> DVD sets.\u00a0 I helped him work on those, so it\u2019s possible that we could just produce Dr. Film <\/i>shows and put them on DVD.\u00a0 But I think that\u2019s silly.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have the kind of following to make that work.\u00a0 Ben\u2019s DVDs sell because people know Ben and people know that they\u2019re getting rare films on the DVDs.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think Dr. Film <\/i>would sell because not enough people know what it is… at least, not yet.<\/p>\n And then I see that Netflix is dropping a chunk of its older movies because no one cares, and no one watches them.\u00a0 It makes me ill.\u00a0 I know there is an audience, maybe a small one, for classic films.\u00a0 And there\u2019s a lot more out there than what gets shown on TCM.<\/p>\n Part of that audience is on the Dr. Film Facebook page.\u00a0 Another part of it reads this blog.<\/p>\n I have a number of ideas that I\u2019m mulling over.\u00a0 I need your input on these.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got technical skills but not a lot of cash.\u00a0 Please let me know what you\u2019d like to see.\u00a0 If I initiated a Kickstarter program, I\u2019d also need to know that you or your friends would donate to help cover startup costs.<\/p>\n MY FIRST IDEA: A 24-hour streaming TV channel, all movies made before Star Wars.\u00a0 <\/i>We\u2019d have serials, cartoons, shorts, and features, but also shows that were made exclusively for the channel that are about <\/i>older films. \u00a0Everything from film, nothing from archive.org!!! \u00a0Movies would be from my collection and from other collections. \u00a0 Everyone who contributes films will be paid, no matter what! \u00a0(It’s important!)\u00a0\u00a0Dr. Film <\/i>would be a part of this network, and it would air probably once a week.<\/p>\n I could work something out so that we could have a subscription version and a free version of the same network. \u00a0The subscription people would see the shows uninterrupted and then have a cartoon at the end of the show, all real content, no ads.<\/p>\n As cool as I think this might be, it is a marketing nightmare. \u00a0The problem is that there\u2019s already so much dreck out there that we\u2019d have to find a way to differentiate this network from all the other cheesy networks. \u00a0Do you have ideas on how we could promote it? \u00a0Please tell me! \u00a0It would be a lot of work for me to set this up and maintain it, so we’d have to have some viewership to make it worthwhile.<\/p>\n ALTERNATIVELY:\u00a0 \u00a0We just admit that the whole idea is limited, but we have a following with the Dr. Film sites. \u00a0And then we have a site that would ONLY be Dr. Film<\/em>, nothing else, but shows could be streamed on demand with or without commercials. \u00a0This one is less work for me, and I suspect less cool for you. \u00a0But I don’t know. \u00a0You tell me.<\/p>\n I sometimes will just have the TV on in the background and come in and out on it when something caught my interest. \u00a0People tell me that this JUST ISN’T DONE anymore. \u00a0It’s all streaming on demand, all the time. \u00a0You tell me!<\/p>\n In either case, I\u2019d probably expand the Facebook presence a little bit and put in a chat function on the Dr. Film page so that people could discuss the shows as they are watching.<\/p>\n What do you think?\u00a0 What would you like to see? \u00a0Feel free to post here, on the Dr. Film page, or email me and give me ideas.\u00a0 If this really is a community, let\u2019s let it function like one!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I get complaints when I write a blog about the Dr. Film show.\u00a0 People like the blogs about classic films better.\u00a0 Someone wrote about the \u201cexistential whining\u201d that he didn\u2019t like.\u00a0 Well, this is going to be another one of those blogs, but it affects what we’re going to do with the show, which means … Continue reading “Islands in the Stream”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,207],"tags":[25,155,154,18],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background-on-the-blog","category-film","tag-dr-film","tag-internet","tag-streaming","tag-tcm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":509,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions\/509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}