

Zach Braff, Amanda Palmer, and the New 90-9-1 Rule - DanLivesHere
http://dlewis.net/blog/2013/04/27/zach-braff-amanda-palmer-and-the-new-90-9-1-rule-the-indifferent-the-haters-and-the-ones-who-love-you/

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makomk
I seem to recall that the Amanda Palmer backlash less to do with her being
popular and more to do with her raising a huge sum of money for an album and
tour, then expecting background musicians to work for free because she was
popular - and that was just the latest in a line of ethically dubious things
she's done.

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tptacek
The story I read said that she invited local musicians who happened to be fans
on stage with her.

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tehwebguy
Correct, which is insanely cool. It's like a design contest - if an
organization crowdsources all of their design work it is tacky and offensive,
but having a rare or occasional contest is a great way to get talented fans
involved.

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veridies
Except it wasn't an amateur contest, or even a contest; they just chose the
best professional musicians they could to back them up.

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decklin
No, she hired and paid a band of professional musicians, who toured with her.
She _also_ invited fans in each city to play with them on stage.

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NotOscarWilde
This happens a lot in the game industry kickstarters. The most money usually
goes to a large studio or a famous game designer appealing to his fans.

Examples: Ragnar Torquist's The Longest Journey sequel, Richard Garriott's
kickstarter, Double Fine Adeventure by Tim Schafer, Project Eternity,
Planescape: Torment spiritual sequel... there's a lot of them.

Ultimately, both sides have a point. It is a tad disingenous for the elite in
a specific genre to ask for money upfront from crowdsourcing, because they
could have gotten that money elsewhere. On the other hand, we shouldn't deny
them the chance of starting the kickstarter -- and once they start it, their
large fanbase can usually be counted on to pitch in enough.

As for you and me, dear reader, we should do as always -- vote with our
wallets and support interesting and sometimes risky projects which wouldn't
get the money any other way.

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rubinelli
People are worried about bigger projects muscling out smaller ones in the same
category, but for now, this isn't what's happening. High-profile campaigns are
instead still creating the market for smaller ones.

Kickstarter has some basic analytics so creators can see where backers are
coming from, and for small campaigns, most backers are like you, people who go
to Kickstarter looking for new and interesting projects. But the blockbusters
brought most people to Kickstarter in the first place, not the long tail.

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notahacker
Here's my own statistically questionable 90-9-1 theory of creativity to
explain why the backlash exists.

\- 90% of wannabe creatives lack the talent, vision or focus to actually see
their idea though \- 9% of wannabe creatives have the talent, vision and focus
but lack money or the ability to connect with traditional financial backers.
They're the people Kickstarter was created for. \- 1% of people have talent,
money and connections in abundance but see Kickstarter as a free way to get
better publicity and collect more of the profit.

You can't really _blame_ a multimillionaire for keeping their cash and equity
in a movie project and offering their fans unspecified extras roles not
guaranteed to make the final cut in return for a few thousand dollars, but it
doesn't mean we have to admire them for doing so.

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subsystem
"The point is that you don’t need a whole lot of people to participate in
order to create something pretty impressive. That’s how Wikipedia became the
behemoth it is today."

I'm not sure that's true. <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia>

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DanLivesHere
Interesting. Wikipedia shows about 50k active editors (5+ edits) for any given
month in 2006 -- I didn't keep the URL, but that's pretty much right. I didn't
realize how much output the "9%" yielded.

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niggler
That's one aspect of Kickstarter that never made sense to me -- why is there
no way to take an "equity" stake? For the sums of money involved relative to
the total kickstarter (oftentimes you see targets at roughly 1% of the target
amount to be raised), I would think that some of the tiers should get some
sort of stake.

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jmduke
The legal mechanisms behind such an operation (essentially you're selling
shares of the company/organization, after all) are prohibitively complex.

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edanm
And apparently, people are willing to pay even without the creators having to
give up equity. So even if that option legally existed today, why would they?

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dclowd9901
It's certainly true that _some_ people are willing to pay. I consider myself a
person who's primed for contributing to a kickstarter, and yet I've never
pulled the trigger on one because it doesn't meet my minimum criteria for
investing, which is a monetary return. I imagine I'm not the only person who
feels this way, and to open up that option to people only brings more money to
projects

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zwily
Do you consider any time you spend money as an "investment"?

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onemorepassword
I get the feeling that these backlashes are mostly about no longer having
"control" over the creative minority via money and media-exploitation.

Especially in the case of Amanda Palmer none of these people bitching about
her had ever heard of her before and don't care about her work.

People just don't seem to like the idea that those "artsy types" can now get
money to do their thing without having to whore themselves out to the
entertainment industry and the media, and to the larger public by way of the
latter.

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te_chris
No, the palmer backlash stems more from the naive hubris she exhibits in
everything, from her ted talk to her refusing to pay professional musicians on
her tour and the dodgy accounting for the money she made on kickstarter.

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ringmaster
What is of interest to me in this crowdfunding of celebrity projects is that
it gives the impression that crowdfunding could be a way to "solve" the
general issue of content only coming from a select few media outlets without
it actually doing so. Without the popularity - gained by being part of those
initial big-media enterprises - of some of the stars that are able to draw in
that funding, there's no similarly easy way for a good grassroots project to
get the level of funding they would need for a competitive project.

I equate popular people/companies using Kickstarter to promote and fund their
next project to retailers selling products directly on eBay. Yeah, it's
viable, has long since drowned out the small guy with something useful to
sell, which seemed like the whole point of eBay to me.

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InclinedPlane
One of the major problems with specifically web-based television and movies is
that they just aren't delivering the revenue that conventional media can, by a
huge margin. One of the reasons why such projects are possible at all today is
that the creators call in a lot of favors from their friends (actors, editors,
techs, etc.) and get them to work at minimal rates. But that's not a very
sustainable model.

Perhaps with crowd funding projects that then release in more conventional
ways (e.g. DVD, netflix, etc.) it'll be possible to solve both ends of this
problem. It'll be interesting to see how everything works out.

Anyway, I've been surprised at the absence of anyone trying to either coopt
the popularity of web video and such-like or to try to make money on it as a
business partner. For example, why isn't there a production studio which
concentrates on crowd funded movies? It took Zach Braff seeing the popularity
of the Veronica Mars kickstarter to have the idea to do the same thing,
imagine if there was a group out there catering to artists with projects they
want to fund. Apply a little bit of polish, experience with how to formulate a
good kickstarter campaign, select reward levels appropriately, help with
fulfillment, help with legal issues, help with distribution, take a cut of the
profits.

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mechanical_fish
_why isn't there a production studio which concentrates on crowd funded
movies?_

What you're describing is a movie producer, and as these appear in the
Kickstarter space - as they are apparently doing now - I'd expect them to be
essentially the same people that have been producing movies for the previous
century.

The "conventional media", which is to say "the media", have the cameras and
the lights. They have the theater-chain contracts and the distribution
contracts. They have the agents' phone numbers and the union contracts and the
favorite-son politicians and the sound stages within driving distance of your
favorite actor's home. They know how to advertise and they have the lawyers
and accountants.

And today's movie producers have connections to all of these things. Acquiring
these connections is the hard part. Learning to put up a Kickstarter campaign
is easy by comparison.

Kickstarter can change the shape of the "development" phase of movies, by
giving producers (and writers or actors who want to self-produce) an
alternative source of seed money and a way to cheaply drum up and demonstrate
fan enthusiasm in advance of the product. But it will swiftly be incorporated
into the existing media infrastructure, just as, say, the San Diego Comicon
was.

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gamblor956
This article was written by someone who has no understanding of basic
accounting, let alone movie industry or television industry accounting.

For example: _There’s a HUGE amount of upside here. That’s why Garden State
grossed $35 million at the box office. Or, put another way: if 350,000 people
see this movie in theaters, at $10 a ticket, that’s $3.5 million — 10% of what
Garden State made. If Braff gets $2 per ticket, that’s $700,000 right to him.
Wow! ↩_

There is no way that Braff got $2 a ticket. At $10/ticket, that represents 20%
of the top-line grosses (i.e., before expenses and the theater's take), and
would represent almost 50% or more of the _studio's_ receipts on the film at
today's prices. (When Garden State came out, ticket prices were $2-$3 less, so
the alleged $2/ticket amount would be even more obscene. ) Theaters typically
receive 1/2 of the ticket amount in the first week or two, and an increasing
amount each week thereafter to incentivize theatrical longevity.

Studios then divy up the remainder, taking their share and expenses first out
of such earnings. (Actors and directors are generally paid their salaries at
the onset of the project and would normally be treated as an expense for the
studio to recoup).

Some actors are able to negotiate a portion of the net proceeds, and receive
those in the unlikely and rare event that the movie company with which they
contracted shows a profit. More preferable, but infinitely more unlikely, is
for a star to negotiate a portion of the _gross_ proceeds (i.e., before the
Hollywood accounting kicks in). Zach Braff has never been a big enough star to
get that sort of arrangement--that's the sort of deal that even Tom Cruise and
Will Smith would be hard-pressed to achieve without serious salary concessions
--most actors only ever achieve a portion of the gross if they _forgo_ their
salary and participate in principal financing.

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DanLivesHere
Braff owns all rights to _this_ movie. He _is_ the studio.

I never said he got $2/ticket from Garden State.

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InclinedPlane
It seems like much of the "backlash" comes down to speculation based on bad
information and a generally negative attitude about "the rich".

If you use google it'll tell you that Zach Braff is worth over $20 million.
Where does that come from? No clue, it might just be speculation, but it's out
there. A lie with its pants on, to paraphrase Mark Twain. In his reddit AMA he
specifically refuted the notion that he was worth anywhere near that amount.
According to wikipedia, most of the time Scrubs was merely a top 100 show, it
seems safe to say that Braff never had the opportunity to negotiate upwards on
his contract and overall lifetime royalties from the show are not as
impressive as some folks imagine.

More importantly, I think the assumption is that the kickstarter is the only
funding for the project, though Braff has also stated publicly that he is
kicking in a lot of his own personal funds.

There have been many times where I've seen widespread accusations of a
"massive cash grab", either related to kickstarter campaigns or elsewhere, and
most of the time it's so hilariously wrong it's just sad.

I'm not sure whether this stems from a poor understanding of business
fundamentals, meaningless hatred of people who are successful, or something
else.

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ebbv
The $20 million figure is not based on nothing there's a lot of public
information about how much Braff made from scrubs (e.g. $350k per episode in
the 2007-2008 season.)

The fact is he doesn't need this Kickstarter to make this movie, he COULD do
it himself. But he doesn't want to risk ONLY his own money. So he's taking
advantage of the public.

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InclinedPlane
Right, the season that was 11 episodes? At best that accounts for about $2
million after taxes, assuming his agent takes nothing and without taking into
account any expenses. Where's the rest?

Scrubs may be a popular show among a certain cohort, it may be highly
acclaimed, and it may be quite popular in syndication, but people tend to
forget that while it was running it had mediocre ratings and it was
effectively cancelled twice.

You have no clue how much money he has, your accusation that he's "taking
advantage of the public" is just baseless libel.

~~~
ebbv
That's $2.5 million before taxes, agents, etc. _for one season out of 9_ and
not including syndication money or the fact that his previous movie made $35
million box office plus DVD sales, etc.

Give me a break with this horseshit. The dude obviously has many, many
millions of dollars.

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mikegioia
Off topic, but I would love a tool that corrects awkward sentences / mistakes
that authors, who don't read their articles, make.

 _A small fraction of them (1% of the 1%) will be fund the creation of the
content,[...]_

I'm not even talking about grammar or word order preferences. I just mean the
errors you could catch if you read through what you wrote for 5 minutes before
posting.

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DanLivesHere
Corrected. Thanks.

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mikegioia
Thanks, Dan. That came off more angry than I intended upon re-reading what I
said.

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DanLivesHere
Hah, no worries.

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stevewillows
Financial matters aside, the 'free' press that comes from being a celebrity
running a kickstarter campaign is quite valuable. Even if it's false indie
cred, people will actively talk about this project before it's created and
also as it progresses to the target and begins shooting.

For campaigns like this I don't think the founder's financial status is even a
question we should be asking.

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DanLivesHere
Sure, but that's only because this is new.

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Dewie
On one forum, I've noticed that the amount of posts in a thread is usually
about 10 times less than the amount of views it gets.

