The holidays are fast approaching and I made a promise last year that our Ruffus The Dog’s Christmas Carol would be finished and released by then. Here’s how you can help make it so.
When we started the project we attempted, through Indie Go-Go, to raise the full $8,500 we expected we could scrape by on to make the whole thing work and release it to the world. We only managed to achieve $2,090 but that generosity from our supporters convinced us to carry on and go ahead with the shoot. I’ve blogged about that before – here and here and here – and here’s our original Indie Go-Go pitch.
Well now, after almost a year of gradually, inexorably (if not continually) working on the post production of the show we are coming down to the wire. The many favours and dedicated sweat equity contributed, in addition to the much needed cash, have carried us almost to completion but once again we find ourselves in need of real money to ensure the project gets finished at the level of quality it deserves and to enable us to release it to the world on time for the holiday season.
The show will be released online for free streaming and downloading with the option to buy DVD copies, songs, posters, calendars, t-shirts and (hopefully) a graphic photo-novella. But it’s gotta all be done and ready for release before December 15th.
Our clock is ticking.
If you can contribute that would be freaking awesome. If you can’t you can still help us with word-of-mouth, just telling people about the project.
Full Disclosure: When I refer to “we” on this project I am mostly referring to “me”, since I’m the guy who has always chosen to wear too many hats. Hey – I got a fat head – might as well use it, right? But I always say “we” because I am not a one-man-band; I rely upon and have benefited from the extraordinary generosity of my friends and family – all of them colleagues and collaborators in this work with me. I couldn’t do a thing without them.
Thanks in advance for your generosity. If you have any comments or suggestions or if you have any questions please feel free to post them here or via email.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back in the basement and keep working on the show.
Today marks the 100th birthday of Marshall McLuhan and whilst the world goes to hell in a handbasket of unrelenting greed and destructive paranoid mania let us remember that this good fellow had the wisdom to stand up and say: “Here comes the shit storm, suckers. Good luck!”
Well – okay – he didn’t exactly use those words; but the words he did use continue to inform us of who we were, who we are and who we might be. If we’re also wise enough to use this knowledge.
Happy Birthday, Dr. McLuhan.
NOTE: If you’re having trouble hearing the sound – choose the 240p version from the video menubar. Why? I have no idea.
Cheers.
UPDATE: Actually,this video by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is probably a better evocation of the current media seas within which we all swim. Gonna make this one my ringtone. Yeah.
Cory Doctorow posted on BoingBoing about how Jack Christie (a 12th grade student at Donald A. Wilson Secondary School in Whitby, Ontario) has been suspended indefinitely for posting his animated videos on YouTube. Christie was originally given a one day suspension and ordered by the Principal, Warren Palmer to immediately remove the videos. Jack Christie refused and was then given the indefinite suspension. When Gavin Russell (prime minister of the student council) and others took up a petition to get Christie back in school they were told to stop and threatened with punishment.
Way to go, Mr. Palmer.
That’s a really unique way of teaching the fundamentals of democratic rights and freedoms to the youth of our country. But, of course, that’s not really what you were doing, was it? And, of course, they don’t really need to be taught these things, do they? No.
As amply demonstrated in Jack Christie’s rebuttal to the school board, it is the staff of Donald A. Wilson Secondary School (in particular Mr. Palmer) and the Durham District School Board that need to be taught the basics of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Take it away, Jack:
To be fair – not all school administrators are as thick as Mr. Wilson. However, the pinheads who do exist in positions of authority within our school system need to remember they are running (not ruling) institutions of learning – not prisons. Students are citizens. If a person in such a position of power is incapable of seeing the inappropriateness of their response to a situation and then wield their power further in a blind insistence of their authority – it becomes obvious that such a person is not worthy of maintaining that position.
The principal of Donald A. Wilson Secondary School – and the Durham District School Board – owe Jack Christie a very humble and public apology.
Shame on you, Mr. Palmer.
Jack Christie – you fucking rock.
Never apologize. Never retract. Never back down.
Cheers.
P. S. I especially liked the part with: “Look at the fucking puppety puppet!” – but maybe that’s just me.
P. P. S. You can read further coverage by the Globe & Mail here – where the comments are priceless. And there’s a report over at ParentCentral with a great photo from one of Christie’s videos where he suggests Sen. Joe Leiberman has sexual relations with goats.
When I finally opened the Ruffus The Dog web site to the public I knew it wasn’t really finished – nothing ever is.
There are always changes, tweaks and inevitable corrections to be made as any site grows and gets road-tested by those who arrive first at the gates. There were some issues with bandwidth and file size for the videos – they tended to choke, stutter and endlessly buffer, thus degrading the viewing experience. I’ve made a few changes in that regard so it’s a smaller file size that plays on the web while still providing a broadcast quality version for download.
I suspect I may have to do some re-encoding to get the data rate just right so it all plays to my satisfaction.
There are also download links now for the episodes (in a variety of formats) so the shows can be viewed freely on other devices. I wish that functionality was built right into the player but since it’s not I need to provide it for each post on the site. Fair enough.
Eventually there will be more outlets for the full episodes – YouTube, Vimeo etc. – and I’ll likely use a service like TubeMogul to make placement of the files easier. Right now I’m content to do everything by hand so I can get a better grip on the formats, file sizes and general layout before attempting to automate the process. One step at a time.
There are also new badges which link to the Twitter and Facebook pages for Ruffus.
Overall I’m not completely satisfied with the graphic layout of the site – I want to keep playing with some ideas – but it was important to finally get it out there for everyone else to see, otherwise I’d be fiddling with it for an eternity. First thing is to make sure all the basic bells and whistles work with a minimum of fuss and bther – then I can do more work on making it pretty.
Tomorrow I’ll be posting two more episodes: Ruffus & Hyde and our own version of The Frog Prince. After that it will be one new show each week – usually on a Tuesday.
Once I get into a comfortable routine of posting episodes I can concentrate on more Behind-The-Scenes material and the writing of the Storybooks.
Cheers.
P. S. I won’t be offering many caveats for the shows themselves – there’s a lot of good shit in Ruffus The Dog – but I feel obliged to mention that the late Karen Ohland, one of our key puppet builders, absolutely despised the Little Jane puppet and kept asking if we could re-shoot the entire episode just so we could change that character.
I present this as an example of the power of the mash-up to comment, contrast, parody, satirize and otherwise take the piss out of anyone or anything which affects us all.
Removing the power of the people to speak back through culture only serves to give power to assholes like this funky jerk with a great set of pipes. Support fair copyright reform, like Net Neutrality it is a vital component of Free Speech.
Here’s a clever PSA from the folks at Rocketboom that shows exactly how to post your video works that are protected under Fair Use and prevent them from being arbitrarily removed from YouTube by ignorant dickhead ill-informed legal counsel of Big Media.
The Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies explains how YouTube makes it easy to dispute a wrongful copyright claim.
For more information on the YouTube takedown process, visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation at http://meme.ly/DisputeYoutube
As reported earlier by the Open Video Alliance, the German film company Constantin Films AG has mis-used the DMCA provision of Notice & Takedown and YouTube’s ContentID system to have YouTube remove a huge number of parody videos that made use of a scene from the film Der Untergang(Downfall) featuring Hitler ranting in his bunker. The official website for the film is here.
The parodies all made use of sub-titles to put words in Hitler’s mouth allowing him to vent on everything from LOLCats to Michael Jackson and anything else imaginable. It was always great fun whenever a new one would crop up and some of them were piss your pants hilarious. It was perfect use of digital media to craft parody and satire. Be sure to read Alex Leavitt’s post on the whole Hitler Video Meme – it’s fascinating stuff.
Unfortunately Constantin Films used YouTube’s ContentID system which commits wholesale removal of materials identitified by the copyright holder without properly checking to see if copyright has indeed been violated. Under the dumbass rules of the DMCA, if a violation of copyright had been committed, YouTube would be obliged to act and remove the videos in question – unless, of course, they were clearly examples of Fair Use. While it is true Constantin Films controls the rights to the original film there are provisions in the DMCA that are supposed to protect Fair Use (also known as Fair Dealing here in Canada and India) which allows for the creation of works of parody and satire – but that rarely happens as large media companies continue to throw their weight around and just fuck everything up.
But why listen to me kvetch? Let Hitler explain it all for you.
Since YouTube has turned off embedding it’s no longer viewable through them except by going to their own pages here. But, since YouTube might take it down entirely – and since I see this as being a true case of Fair Use I fixed it so you can just watch it here:
Hitler Reacts To The Hitler Parodies Being Removed From YouTube
Constantin Films AG should really watch this one before they pull this or any others offline. And if you are interested in seeing the original film you can buy it here – and you do that you might also want to send Constantin Films an email telling them you did just that.
Cheers.
P.S. These video responses to Constantin Films on YouTube are also good:
UPDATE: Doctorow posted on BoingBoing on hw Google has responded to the outrage over the ContentID instant takedowns by highlighting the Fair Use button. Click the button and your video goes back up and the folks who submitted the takedown then have to take you to court to get the video off.
This will likely be the most beautiful thing you will see and hear all day. Please share it with your friends.
I’m a sucker for choral music and when I found this over on Kevin Kelly‘s blog The Technium I just had to share it with you. It’s a virtual choir assembled by Eric Whitacre, comprised of 185 voices from 12 countries.
Here’s what Kelly had to say:
Many critics of web technology complain that there is nothing special enabled by social media which you could not do with traditional media. Yes, you could make a choir of 200, but it would probably not sing like this. Take a look at this virtual choir. It brings 185 voices, all recorded independently at home, and then combined into a virtual choir. Each voice (available on the side of the video) is expert, each face unique; combined they are heavenly. Could you do a choir of 1,000? Yes!
The visual presentation at first blush may appear to be a tad corny but this deserves to be watched full screen in HD – go here to do just that. All those rapt faces, singing alone and together at the same time – if ever there was an expression of the larger gifts the web is bringing to us, this is it.
Neil Patrick Harris did a great job as host of last night’s Emmy Awards broadcast but the highlight was clearly the appearance of Dr. Horrible.
Update: The folks at YouTube pulled the original posting of the video so I’m providing my own copy here – which is a legitimate fair use of the material since it’s being presented as a cultural critique of the event. That’s my fancy way of saying that any brown-nosing legal interns should just fuck off and leave this alone unless you want to get counter-sued for abusing the DMCA.
There were a number of cracks made about the death of broadcast television and while the whole event was obviously a cheer leading session in defence of a dying industry – including this clip mocking the net – it was clear that what was happening to television had to be acknowledged.
Television has followed the course proscribed by McLuhan when he said old media would become the content of new media. The best television programs now are comprised of film content which no longer gets made for theatrical release – cinema, true cinema, is now the content of television. Television itself is being subsumed within the growing influence of the net. The broadcast industry (which includes the caretakers of the pipes – the telco & cable industries) are actively seeking to control and restrain the net to become merely another form of television but that denies the obvious. The internet is not television – but television can, and will, be contained within the internet.
The internet, as a medium, far surpasses the limited abilities of broadcast television.
As for reality television, which had it’s own full category last night, I made the comment on Twitter that reality tv used to be called “The News”. This explains why the nation has such a tenuous and slender grasp on reality itself.
Enjoy how the story of our disrupted culture unfolds. If it’s too much to bear – hide in the basement, sofa monkeys, and make a freeze ray.
Cheers.
P. S. If the audience numbers for last night’s show are any indication – only 12 million viewers, the lowest ever for an Emmy broadcast – the industry is indeed undergoing a significant seachange. Even taking into account Tivo or other time-shifting measures we’ll soon see the day when a simple clip like this garners a larger number of views than the entire audience for broadcast itself. Thanks for watching.
I'm going to be slowly making some changes to the website both in format and content - and I'm pretty sure even the URL will change.
It's going to be more of a personal news aggregator with a featured video blog from yours truly. We'll see how long that lasts. So bear with me - thanks.
It's going to be more of a personal news aggregator with a featured video blog from yours truly. We'll see how long that lasts. So bear with me - thanks.