Hello everyone -
Matt's parents were in town this week, so I didn't have time to write the post last Sunday, but I'm BACK today with a few more Parisian updates.
After several months of rev-ving the job search engine like an old car on a winter morning, it seems like it's coughed to life a little bit and I'm starting to take more meetings and even work a little bit - At the same time, I feel like I'm trying to start about 6 different businesses at once. My general look-for-work philosophy has been to knock on every door and try every angle, and then see what ultimately works out, but that often results in a middle period -like right now- where you are kind of going down several different paths and not sure what will ultimately happen.
For my own sanity, I will try to outline for all of you all the different things that are happening - this might help me keep them straight, actually. Then we can do an AMERICAN IDOL type voting and you can tell me which things you think sound the best:
1. BOLOGNA BOOK FAIR - Most immediately, I'm doing some consulting for a few US companies at the Bologna Book Fair later this month. This is the annual book fair for Children's and YA titles in Bologna, Italy, where Harry Potter first appeared on the international scene, etc. Two film companies hired me to cover the fair as a consultant, looking for new children's books that could be adapted into films. It's my first time at this Fair and in Bologna so I really hope I can find something great - Additionally, I hear Bologna is a great city for food, so I plan to do some serious eating while I'm there as well - sort of a side project, you know.
2. AGENTING - It really made me happy to be able to get some consulting work, even as a one off event. A more long term plan involves finding American material and projects to represent and sell to European companies. Right now I'm reading a ton of books, screenplays, and plays from US agents and producers, and trying to decide which ones seem like the most viable for European market. At thethe same time, I'm trying to meet with as many producers and studios here as possible - its like a crash course in the French film industry, which, like everything in France, is just as complicated as the equivalent thing in America, but totally different.
I'll be going to the London Book Fair in mid-April to sit down with some book agents and see about repping some specific titles for the European market exclusively. I don't think this has been tried in this way before, but I think this is a good time to get into it as the European market is very strong for smaller movies (think OF GODS AND MEN, or even the rom com LE NOM DES GEN that I talked about a couple of weeks ago - both very solid films made for under 15 million euros); while the American market is increasingly unfriendly to financing these sorts of films. What I'm thinking could work is to combine some American material in the form of screenplays or books with French directors/producers - in possible English language productions, but we'll see.
3. FOREIGN SALES AND ACQUISITIONS- This involves me possibly consulting for an French or American film studio or distributor, either by keeping a French company up to date on viable projects in the US that are looking for financing or foreign distribution, or by helping a US company gain a foothold in the European market, so they could either find projects to take on here and sell in diff territories, or find projects to acquire a partial stake in, possibly with another European company. Anyway, this is what I'm most interested in doing, but it's just a matter of convincing people they need to take me on.
4. EMERGING MEDIA - At the same time, there's an opportunity that's come up to work with a new emerging-media company on figuring out what the next stage of digital distribution will be. We all know that gradually we'll go to the web more and more for our content, not just in the form of streaming, on demand videos of TV shows and movies, but also for original content - lots of companies are trying to figure out a business model that will take into account these changing revenue streams, but right now its sort of a horse-race to see who will win this distribution war.
Basically, if I had to explain the essence of what's going on: a few months ago, Matt wanted to watch FUNNY PEOPLE, the Judd Apatow movie (in retrospect not a great plan as the movie is NOT GOOD), but we couldn't find in online anywhere. This drove Matt nuts, and he kept saying "There MUST be a way for us to see this now!" Well, dear readers, there wasn't - it was out of theaters, hadn't yet hit the window for online video streaming, and I don't think we could have found a video store in our neighborhood if we tried.
Since people's DESIRE is to have everything available on all platforms all the time (and not wait for a movie to come out on DVD, or a book to be available on Kindle), this will be the TREND of the business over the next 5 years - and by the end of this decade (prob much sooner) you will be able to see all content on all platforms simultaneously - or, I imagine you will, but for a price. This completely changes the business models of most media groups, who are used to doing platforms in windows (ie, we will open the movie in theaters on X date, then X months later we'll have the DVD/foreign opening/screening on network television, etc) - They had models for this that allowed them to predict revenue streams, which allows them to estimate how much the movies budget can be, and so on and so forth.
But essentially all these models are up for grabs right now, in both film and publishing (the music industry has had a little more time to adjust to the digital revolution, so they were already crushed and are starting to sort out the new future systems) - so I would work with a company to try to build an entity that would harness content and distribution for film and for publishing - anyway, its all new for me but might be very interesting ....
WOW this email got all technical and shit. Are you guys still awake? Let me see if I can rustle up a funny story or something ... OH OKAY. I haven't told you guys about my PHONETICS lab.
This is part of my language course, where every other week I go every day to an hour of French phonetics training. If you guys took language in college, you prob know what this is - you put on the headphones and record yourself saying things in French and then compare what you said with the teachers pronunciation.
I never took a language in college (because I was so AWESOME I placed out ... ah the hubris of that now) - so this is all new for me and basically is like an hour-long class in very frustrating tongue twisters. When I tried to explain this to my teacher she looked at me blankly and then said that these sentences weren't tongue twisters (or vire-langue, en Francais) and proceeded to tell me a French tongue twister about hunting.
But that is not the point. The point is that, though they may be simple sentences for the FRENCH they are nearly impossible for me.
Here, I will list some below, and you can see how well you do:
Ils observent une forte augmentation. (eels opsayrve oon forte oh gmawn ta syon - sort of)
They noticed a strong growth.
Elle est experte en horlogerie. (el et x pairt ohn orrrlah-jree)
She is an expert at making clocks.
Je rentre car j'ai trop froid dehors. (zjeuh rohntreuh car zjay trroh frrwah duhohrr)
I came home because I was too cold outside.
Son orgueil lui a fait du tort. (Sawn orgoyuh lwee ah fay doo tohrrr)
His pride made him make mistakes.
For me, "she is an expert at making clocks" is the hardest. Hopefully I'll never actually have to say that. Or no, actually, now that I've practiced it SO MUCH I will go around saying it all the time. Get ready, female clockmakers!
Matt and I will be in Venice next weekend but will hopefully have time to drop a line - Hope all is going well with everyone, and have a great week.
xo CTL
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