He does live in L.A. fulltime.

t shudder

What happened to Cape Cod?

His wife's family is from Cape Cod. I think they go there for vacations.

Also, I like living in L.A. And I like visiting the studios with PAs zipping everywhere on little bicycles while people in odd costumes smoke outside warehouse doors.

Hm. There's an essay in there.

I've been to L.A.

I can t shudder if I wanna.

... while people in odd costumes smoke outside warehouse doors...

You've been to England. No, wait, You were talking about L.A. My bad.

The point I was trying to make is that without the studio system that is currently in place, we would be left with what is produced locally as that is all that would be accessible.

I understand. I just had to defend my livelihood. It's required.

If you lived in Columbus you would not be able to ever expereince Joss' brilliance.

True, but you can experience Richard Hess' brilliance once in a while.

He does live in L.A. fulltime.

And also chose to shoot Serenity here, which is rare these days.

Gus. I agree with you that the system we have is broken. I don't agree with people who say it is primarily a matter of taste. I'm not going to make the argumenent - too tired to defend it. I'll say I don't believe it and defend it another time - probably in an essay somewhere other than this board. (But I will link.)

But the thing is part of criticizing the current system is to specify a better one. And you are dead right to say you can't do without mediators.I don't even think you can do without distributors (which is a different thing than mediators.) But I think one could come up with a much better medieation and distribution system. Ipod by the way is a step towards that. You have a single place where much mainstream commercial music is available, most of the small labels, plus anything else the rightholder chooses to upload. Ipod as far as I know is not a mediator. (It does not do a whole lot to affect what music you download.) It is a distributor though. So think about what you would like to be changed about ipod as distributions system. Right now our mediation system is the studios, plus various media, plus informal networks of friends. If you don't like that (and I don't) decide what kind of mediation system you would like that would actually deal with the volume produced. Cause informal networks of friends and search engines are not going cut it. Somewhere you need somebody to do some filtering for you to find the stuff you like in that ocean of information.

Gus, I just can't buy that the dilutions actually offend your sense of economy, or you wouldn't be in the process of selling your book to a publisher, via an agent, and working with an editor to reshape it into something more marketable.

Instead, you would have gotten a free LiveJournal, spread the news yourself that you were writing and what you were writing about, and then told people if they wanted to read your book, they could pay you directly. Once they'd paid you, you would have put those people on the filter (a free feature from LiveJournal) that let them read your writing.

You'd have let readers whose editorial acumen was aligned with your own pay you for the work, and you would have cut out all the intermediaries. Or maybe you would have had friends serve as Beta readers, but if you started getting a dollar a chapter from every reader, when you went to write the second book, your Beta readers would want a part of the action. And once LiveJournal found out you were making money off their free service, they'd find a way to require you to give them a piece of the action.

Honestly (and I am trying to say this with kindness) I don't think the discussion you've presented is serious enough for the Buffistas. It reads like ragtime. You have a bee in your bonnet because there wasn't more Firefly. So do a lot of people (not me, particularly). There would not have been any Firefly or Serenity at all, if it hadn't been for the studio, because Joss wants to tell stories, not solicit patrons. My comments may have deserved the 'too serious for Buffistas' sneer, but Tamara's don't, nor do Typo Boy's.

As flawed as the studio system may be, because of it the storyteller only has to spend whatever time/energy/money necessary to solicit one patron to fund his project, rather than two million patrons.

If Joss had a free/affordable, efficient way to solicit the requisite number of consumer-patrons (let's say a free or affordable website), you can bet that bee infested bonnet that [whoever owned website, or his ISP or someone with rights to that communication stream] would suddenly adapt their terms of service, as to get a percentage of the funds Joss was able to raise while using it.

The system is broken because the cogs are broken. The cogs are broken by the same thing that broke them at the fall of man--greed. It's inherent to the race, and any distribution system is going to be corrupted by it. That doesn't mean there is no better way, but it does mean there is no perfect way.

Dang, that Cindy can sling the lingo.

First: I think I sneered. Shame on me. I am passionate on this issue, and these passions lead to excesses of language.

Further: If I said anything to disparage editorial acumen, it was inadvertent. Everyone beta's. It (beta-ing) works really well when you have some idea that the beta-ers have some well-informed basis for their opinions.

My experience as a wiki host has not led me to the conclusion that crowds are wise.

Now, back to the model that Cindy offers up. There are creators offering pay-by-the-chapter on the web. It is even working, sorta-kinda. Not to the level of funding needed to film a movie. Still, it is a seed of of what is needed.

the storyteller only has to spend whatever time/energy/money necessary to solicit one patron to fund his project, rather than two million patrons.

This is the core of the thing. Patronage by the crowd. There needs to be some way for people to put $5 on Whedon's (or Gus') future output.

Gus there are all sorts of ways to do that. You can have pay per download on your own website. You can do it on ipod or Amazon.

What would be needed to make that work are two other things. Some sort of trusted filter to help people select what to download. Take books. VW actually created a buffisita cook book via Cafe Press. If you value VW's time at anything it was probably a non-profit enterprise, but then again profit was not the point. But if you want it (Or some other author-to-audience technique ) to become default method you have offer the following

1)Some way the reader (or listener or viewer) can select out of the hundreds of thousand produced what to consider. Note I'm not even saying some way for the downloader to choose - just how the downloader narrows the universive of choices down to the the poin where she or he can choose from among them.

2)Editing - maybe one writer in 200 can edit their own writing completely. The rest of us need editors - who also will need to be paid. And editor does not equal beta reader.

3) Don't forget typography. After you have the exact final wording chosen, there is still font choice page layout and all that good stuff. Not to mention graphics, cover art....

And this is just for books! If you go to music you can multiply this a hell of lot. And by the time you get completely collaberative works such as movies and TV seiries....

Think outside the box. But there is a hell of a lot of stuff in that box creative workers need if they are going to ge paid for their labor. So outside the box you are going to need some other container. Or maybe a rack, or a stand or a shelf - something so that when the box is taken away the intellectual worker is not left suddenly have to learn to juggle.

But it is true that our system is broken. One hint of this: We have longer and more powerful copyrights, larger corporations own publishers, studios and such. And artists for the most part are paid less. In real dollars, writers earn less per hour of work than they did in 1976. Before you blame it on lack of literacy so do musicians. Were a whole lot of computer gamers around in 1976 - but I would save game software developers don't earn more than a decade ago. Neither do other types of software developers.

OK not an argument: but at least a hint that something is wrong besides eating that damn pomegranite. (Apple is a mistranslation no?)

And editor does not equal beta reader.

t coughs

That totally depends on who you get to beta it.

But carry on. I don't have a dog in this fight.