Bay Blogger Thursday

SFist Jackson
So I guess we should probably just start with introductions. Obviously I'm Jackson here at SFist headquarters, 24th and Potrero in the Mission. And I'd like to introduce Josh Wolf of the Revolution Will be Televised. Also the local Meetup organizer for Current TV and all around local video kingpin. Welcome Josh.

Josh Wolf
Hey, thanks for having me.

SFist Jackson
So I guess I just wanted to talk about...obviously, you've been following Current from back in the INdTV days. If I'm not mistaken you were one of the many people who submitted applications when they were promising to hire fifty or so sort of full time producers for the staff?

Josh Wolf
Right. Well they were hiring positions called the digital correspondent.

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
No one's really quite sure what the digital correspondent was going to be. I was one of a few thousand applicants. We all found out about Decemeber that they had decided to change their format.

SFist Jackson
Basically, the way that they are currently setting up to reimburse the filmmakers is to basically pay them a licensing fee, as long as they sort of get exclusive rights for the three months.

Josh Wolf
If they decided to use it they would have exclusive rights in perpetuity.

SFist Jackson
But if you submit it you also sign an agreement that they have have an exclusive right while they decide whether or not to air?

Josh Wolf
That's correct. Not to a full extent -- you can still submit it to film, offline, real world film festivals.

SFist Jackson
I guess my question as a blogger is like...is the incentive to have your stuff beamed into 19 million homes on cable enough to keep, for you, to give your good stuff to Current? I mean, if you have something that's particularly newsworthy, it would be a lot easier and faster just to throw it up on the web and send the link to BoingBoing or something like that.

Josh Wolf
Well, in fairness to Current, it will end up immediately on the web, or close to immediately, on their own website.

SFist Jackson
Got it.

Josh Wolf
Those of us that already have blogs, like yourself, like me, have this incentive that, do we want to keep our video, our best video in our own court, or do we want to put it over in Current's court where they will soon own it in perpetuity if they wanted to actually use it?

SFist Jackson
Right. Exactly. So I guess the question is, do you think that the incentives that Current are offering are going to be enough to keep, to a) attract the really newsworthy stuff from bloggers, and to b) attract people who are young filmmakers who could make more in a week of being a PA than they, you know, than they could, you know, sending in their sixth clip for Current that they decide to air?

Josh Wolf
Yeah, but being a PA for Current, I mean not a PA for Current, but being a PA, you're making coffee...

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
You're not really doing anything productive. If you make your own video and you send it up to Current, you get credit. You might not make a lot of money off the interchange...

Josh Wolf
But your voice is actually heard. To that there is something respectful going on.

SFist Jackson
Right.

SFist Jackson
Right. And certainly, I mean, there's an element to developing your reel and being able to say "Well I have this reel of pieces that were aired on Current and therefore had a wide audience" that you can pitch, you know, when you're looking for real paying. I mean, I guess my personal with the Current payscale is that I just felt that it's really, really low.

Josh Wolf
Yeah, it starts off really, really low at the $250 end. At $1,000 for a five minute piece, it starts to be a little more attractive, especially for the younger filmmakers, the ones like myself who are currently working retail jobs as their day jobs.

SFist Jackson
Right. Okay, so I mean, do you think, I mean, at what point -- at what point -- is Current offering anything that could actually sustain as a full-time job, or is this entirely something that they're expecting incidental work, moonlighting work, people with day jobs sending stuff in. Or do you think at some point they're going to grab the cream of the crop and give them jobs? Or do they expect the Current exposure to be able to generally kick start people's careers into being full time filmmakers.

Josh Wolf
Well 80% of the content on the network right now, according to the most recent article in Salon, is going to be produced internally by people that they contract out.

SFist Jackson
Got it.

Josh Wolf
Only 80% is going to be viewer created content.

SFist Jackson
Right. So, I mean, when they say 'contract out,' I wasn't clear if they were going to contract that out with established production companies, or if they were going to contract that work out to users who had submitted frequently, good pieces. I mean, what I'm curious is, for all the rhetic -- rhetoric around democritizing media, it actually seems like a very top-down organization.

Josh Wolf
Um, yeah, it's not true democracy. I think that's a huge misnomer. I think what they're promising and what they're creating are two separate things. And they have augmented what they're saying about what the network's going to be in the process. I mena, it's been a very organic contruction process as they go about, and a lot of us are still holding them to what they said before, even though that's no longer true.

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
Um, yeah, I'm not quite sure.

SFist Jackson
Laughs. Right. So I mean, do you think that, that, since the television station hasn't actually aired, since, you know, there's certainly no content right now, save for what's on the website to judge it critically by, or, you know, by the kickoff party kind of thing. Shoudl people be giving them the benefit of the doubt until they actually start to put content on the air and we have a real sense of, you know, what, what their mission is?

Josh Wolf
I don't know. If you're like me and basically have thrown your television out, and feel that television is useless...

SFist Jackson
Yeah.

Josh Wolf
They're not going to be that television station that made it worth watching TV again.

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
That was what a lot of us were hoping to see, and I don't think we're going to get that. But if you like what's already on TV, you like, you know, five minute segments on the travel channel or the Daily Show or whatever, you like this format of five minute segments, we're going to see more interesting five minute segments on Current. But I don't think we're really going to see anything revolutionary short of a way aspiring filmmakers have a new avenue into becoming professionals.

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
That's really what's revolutionary, is it's a new way to make it in the industry. Nothing more.

SFist Jackson
Got it. Well, I mean that's good perspective. And, you know, obviously, especially in markets outside of Los Angeles and New York, you know, you've got filmmakers aren't getting enough work even getting coffee as PAs. Obviously, here in San Francisco, the Mayor and the Film Commission Board, Stephanie Coyote have certainly gotten more days of actually filming done in The City, but it's not like the levels it was back in the 90s. I mean, in terms of working in the Bay Area as a filmmaker, so to get away from Current, but just generally as a local San Franciscan who's interested in filmmaking, how do you feel the opportunity is to do that as a full-time job. I mean, considering, you know, establishing yourself and stuff like, I mean, is it even possible?

Josh Wolf
I haven't found it possible thus far.

SFist Jackson
Laughs.

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
I've not made...I've made -- I've had two paying gigs with video. Or three, now, over the two years I've done this.

Josh Wolf
That is less than $1,000 over three years.

SFist Jackson
And so, and I think that certainly what Current does offer is it offers people in smaller markets an opportunity to make stuff where they have creative control to a certain extent and, you know, some form of renumeration.

Josh Wolf
Well, we don't really know quite how the creative control thing is going to work. We don't know whether they're going to be repackaging people's pods or whether they'll be using the pods in their entirety.

SFist Jackson
To put a hypothetical situation together, you know, say they took the piece you recently shot on the G8 protests in San Francisco a few days ago, or over the weekend, just hacked it apart or, even, you know, changed the message from the way that you put it together in some way -- miscontextualize video, stuff like I mean. In terms of them having, once they air it, would they still have the rights in perpetuity to that material, even though it might skew the point of view you were actually trying to get across in the piece.

Josh Wolf
Well, I have very limited legal understanding...

SFist Jackson
Laughs.

Josh Wolf
...but in reading the contract, they have allowed themselves the right to do that. They've indicated that they wouldn't do that, but they clearly, definitely provided themselves, from my understanding, a legal avenue that they can do that.

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
Um, what they do is, I'll wait 'til August 1st too find out.

SFist Jackson
Right, so...

Josh Wolf
But that's exactly...

SFist Jackson
Oh, go ahead, go ahead.

Josh Wolf
But that's exactly the reason I didn't sell that footage. Actually, ABC asked for a copy, as well as KRON, and I decided to sell what I was interested in selling to KRON, because I knew that they weren't going to just take it and cut it and burn it and do who knows what with it.

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
And having built that relationship with some of the people at KRON I felt comfortable doing that. But I think, [inaudible] and sell the footage of the protest to all the major...major stations just hoping they do something worthwhile with it. Because experience has proven that we do have a biased corporate media in the same way we have a biased independent media.

SFist Jackson
True. True. Um, so that's interesting, cause, I mean, I noticed that you did post that video in full in its entirety on IndyBay, and...

Josh Wolf
Right.

SFist Jackson
And certainly, I don't know if you followed it, but there was sort of an explosion because Brian Shield over at the KRON blog used some of the pictures as he was liveblogging the events at home that had been shot at home that had been shot and posted to IndyBay and reposted them on his blog and sort of got taken to task by that, by IndyBay, or by the Independent Media Center, or even just by the users. I mean, it's not particularly clear, you never really know who you're talking to. Uh, and so, so in that instance, I mean, do you think that KRON could have republished that video and been within their rights because the IndyBay -- I guess they're commercial rebroadcasting -- but still, my question is, is like, for whom are you willing to lose control over the content with, so for instance by putting it on IndyBay, other people who aren't publishing commercially could repost your video, but at the same time, I mean, you would much rather have people like, folks, people at KRON or ABC who you can actually sell that footage to. Where do you draw the line between, between who you sell to and who you give to. Excuse me if that...

Josh Wolf
I created an entire piece which was put up online.

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
Using the -- if ABC wanted to use my entire piece in its entirety, they can -- I'd probably even give that to them for free. You can certainly pay me to air my entire five minute video.

SFist Jackson
Laughs.

Josh Wolf
But you know that ABC News has no interest in airing the entire video, they're only going to air probably fifteen to twenty seconds, and use it as cutaway footage between V.O., or a stand-up.

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
So unless I can choose what fifteen seconds they're using there...

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
You get the issue of contention.

SFist Jackson
Yeah. So, I mean, I think we're just delving into issues where both in terms of the commercial media which is, you know, interviewing you from a perspective where, you know, maybe they ask leading questions, or they're using your footage and their recontextualizing it very heavily by putting it under voice overs and such. So, do you think that that same threat is present at Current and might, to a certain extant, keep people from putting the most controversial, the most newsworthy stuff with them? So far a lot of what I've seen from them have been sort of, you know, talking head pieces. You know, I haven't really seen, you know, the war in Sudan, or you know, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, or anything like that. We're not seeing the sort of shocking, edgy stuff that we don't necessarily see every day on TV. I'm just curious as to how Current is going to be different from regular TV, and, why somebody would, who are trying to get out of, or trying to do the end-around that industry would want to participate with them as opposed to just going off on their own.

Josh Wolf
Well, right now when you go off on your own, there's maybe three different avenues for distribution: There's public access, there's creating your own blog like I've done, and then there's shopping it around with a negative option to buy. Unless you have connections in the industry, I don't know where one would begin to try to sell something with a negative option to buy. Blogging is a great tool, anyone can create a video blog, it's free with the Internet Archive, freeblog.org is an awesome website to help you set up a blog. But once you've created one that doesn't necessarily mean that people will come and see what you have.

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
There is no really decentralized tool to bring the media to the viewers yet in a dynamic way. There's a few people working on things, but that's not really built-in yet. So Current is one possible avenue in addition to those.

SFist Jackson
Got it.

Josh Wolf
I was much more optimistic about Current under their previous submission, non-exclusive submission guidelines. Now that it's an exclusive rights, since I've been told of the citizen journalism type stuff, that they're working on something new, they've got a [inaudible] schematic that will be more comfortable for people like myself and possibly you as well, but, like any network, you don't find anything out until it's actually read to be packaged and released.

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
So I know they're working on other stuff, we still have to wait and find out how amenable that really is. But another thing to think about with Current is that, while they are a news network, the charter is for a news station, one really shouldn't be thinking of Current as a news station or an information junction, so much as also a magazine network. If you look at the videos that are currently on their website, so much of it is much more of the magazine content than news.

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
Base jumping is cool as hell, but it's certainly not newsworthy. People have been jumping out of planes since the second world war, and now that they're jumping off rocks, you know, it's not a news story.

SFist Jackson
Laughs. So, speaking on the citizen journalism question, I mean, in the wake of the London bombings and in the wake of Hurricane Dennis, I for one have noticed that all the news stations are now, especially MSNBC was running a spot every five or ten minutes, you know, "If you see breaking news, send your pictures in, call 555-PICS" or whatever --you know, they gave an email address so you could send them stuff directly from your Treo if you wanted to. Now, could Current's market be co-opted in that regard by the other competitors in the mainstream media before they even get a chance to launch? Since, you know, blogs and citizens journalism and people's media and all that are big current buzzwords, and to a certain extent the technologies there for even people who haven't studied film like you or me.

Josh Wolf

Josh Wolf
Well, Robin made an interesting point on the Current blog today [typing].

SFist Jackson
Yeah.

Josh Wolf
NBC news I believe it is, I'll have it up on my website in a second...CBS Evening News recently announced that they're going to an online newsroom where they'll have 24 hour broadband news available, and they'll have a blogger maintaining the website, which is all cool and interesting but the really interesting part about Robin's post is that the median age for evening news -- the median age of network news viewers is sixty. Sixty years old.

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
So that means half the people are over sixty years old.

SFist Jackson
Laughs.

Josh Wolf
Current is aiming for the 18-34 year old market, so it's hard to co-opt Current, which is aiming for people half the age of the major news networks. So I think they're pretty safe in that regard.

SFist Jackson
So do you think that to a certain extent, by having a model by which they're trying to exploit a particular demographic of youth that they're going to have to stay edgy to continue appealling to that demographic?

Josh Wolf
Oh, I'm just saying that citizen journalism can't have -- Current can't have the rug pulled under it by network news...

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
...because the people watching the network news are the people who are going to be watching Current.

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
Now if MTV were to do citizen journalism, who knows what might happen.

SFist Jackson
Laughs. Don't give 'em any ideas!

Josh Wolf
But CBS News, CBS News doesn't have the talent to do that.

SFist Jackson
Right, right. Is there anything in particular that you wanted to pitch or talk about?

Josh Wolf
Well, one of the things that's interesting about Current is that they are a for-profit company. So what ends up on the network is going to be dictated, at least to some extent, by what the advertisers and the investors feel that needs to be on the programming to support both the advertisements and future profits. And I think that we're going to see a whole lot of new online mediums, similar to what Current's trying to do coming from a non-profit perspective. We've got FireANT right now which is an online video aggregator, Broadcast Machine which is another cool online technology, and something that I'm working on is called the Rise Up Network, and it's going to be utilizing something kind of similar to this whole online news medium except obviously we won't have our own TV station. And instead of having all the videos located at home, we're trying to figure out a way to aggregate different blog feeds and allow dynamic tagging, like you see with Flickr. So that if you watch a video about Berlin you can click over and say "That video is about Berlin."

SFist Jackson
Yeah.

Josh Wolf
And if you watch a video about this, you can type that tag in. And then, additionally, we're hoping to incorporate a dynamic rating system. So, for example, you go to Amazon.com and it tells you what books you're going to like. And it knows that by saying "You rated these books this, other people rated books similarly, so you're probably going to like the same stuff." And I think that same model can be applied to online video, so you rate everything on a one to five rating system. And then the things that you rated five, we take a look at what other videos other video rated similarly and feed you up the video content that you're going to like. Then we're hoping to incorporate a splash donation screen, build the whole thing from a donation perspective, where a good portion of the proceeds go directly to the contributor...

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
As opposed to Current -- yes they're trying to democritize television, but they're not democritizing the payment system. We still have a system in place based on capitalism where the people who are building it, the investors, are making so much more of the money and the contributors are being given the amount of money necessary to encourage them to create more content, but not necessarily their fair share of the proceeds that the company might make.

SFist Jackson
So now, following up with that, would you envision your project as like a standalone project, or would you want to, through, sort of an open system like RSS feeds, feed the Google video search, feed the Yahoo video search, maybe talk to Comcast about, about allowing pieces to be set up as free on-demand. I mean, one of the things that I like about the blogosphere and about things like Flickr and Del.icio.us is that, is that the information begins to become interchangeable between all the sites, so that you can find things through many different avenues as opposed, you know, going straight to one place. I mean, for instance, the Technorati search, you go ahead and put the tag in, not only to you get all the blog posts with that tag, you get a line of all the images with that tag.

Josh Wolf
Yeah, it's definitely an open-source project. Not necessarily the software, not necessarily the backend coding will be open-source...

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
I have nothing to with the coding so that's just, we'll have to wait until we find the people and see whether we can manage to get open-source out of that. But we're hoping to intergrate the tagging directly into del.icio.us...

SFist Jackson
Right.

Josh Wolf
So that when you tag a video, there's actually a link to that person's website, that person's permalink on their blog.

SFist Jackson
Sure.

Josh Wolf
Which would be put into del.icio.us, so that it works seamlessly with del.icio.us, seamlessly with Our Media, so your put your video up on Our Media, then goes to your blog, so the whole thing is going to be built to utilize all the different architecture, as opposed to what Current's doing which is trying to build the entire thing themselves so that it's built to be it's own device. Whereas this is definitely an appliance within the existing blogging, video-blogging, internet community.

SFist Jackson
Well that sounds pretty cool.

Josh Wolf
Thanks! Yeah, I think we just need to get some more support for it, so if that sounds interesting to you, send me an email, I'm sure you can find it on the link, and help us make this happen.

SFist Jackson
Cause we want to pretend we're professionals, so what's the URL where people can check for updates on that project?

Josh Wolf
The URL where that's going to be is the riseupnetwork.com -- right now it's just a video blog with a few members on it. We also have a mailing list and some active stuff. But it's still very much needing a kickstart to get off the ground. All the ideas are there, we've had a lot of discussions. But it just needs that kickstart to actually come to fruition.

SFist Jackson
Cool. Well I hope people are listening, and I hope people take notice. And thanks so much for talking to us Josh. Great work!

Josh Wolf
Yeah, thank you, thanks for having me.

SFist Jackson
I hope we can talk again, and I hope next time the technology's better.

Josh Wolf
Yeah, maybe next time we'll go with the standard online text interview. This is a little different.

SFist Jackson
Yeah, well, we're trying to change the world of media here.

Josh Wolf
Every little foot at a time.