Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Expo 4

Just a note that my sci-fi/action script, Recursive, made it to the quarter finals in the Expo 4 contest -- these contests always make me nervous, especially given my predilection for what used to be called B movies (but are now given lots of money and called Hollywood movies, but still not the sort of thing that advances in contests). For my geeky over-educated friends, this one might actually be something you'd appreciate -- unlike the vast majority of what I write.

Anyway, this one could use some contest help because it's just a little out of the budget range of my usual "we're paying everyone in night elf porn DVDs" contacts.*

Velvet Steamroller called me saying that they will renew the option on The Sound (yay Bill!), which means that after November I'll no longer be eligible for many of these contests (Expo 5 for instance will be out of the picture). So it's nice that I made it part of the way so far in this one.

TV on iTunes
The download went fairly quickly, all things considered -- I went for a walk while it happened but no more than a couple hours I figure. File size is roughly 200 MB.

Video quality is not so hot -- but not awful. A bit pixellated and occasionally jumpy. It is not in widescreen (unlike the beatific DVD version, where I could just watch the menu page for hours). My impatience could make this a habit -- but my distaste for having the initial experience be less than ideal could help me resist.

My feeling -- this will be good for watching on Playstation Portable and catching up on your shows via satellite internet while you're protecting antelopes in Tibet. But in a country that'll pay $3.50 for slightly better coffee in a nice looking cup, we'll be waiting for the iVideo quality to match the DVD version before we see this explode. However, when that does happen, the explosion will be downright nukular.

I do recommend giving it a try for $2. Then, while you're in iTunes, download Leo Sayer's "Long Tall Glasses".



* I await the massive Enzite-like upswing in my hit rate for this sentence.

5 comments:

ScriptWeaver said...

Congrats on the Expo contest! I entered one of mine and - unfortunately - didn't make the cut.

And of course kudos on your renewed option. Can't enter contests, eh? I guess that's just one less competitor I have to worry about!

Bastard.

Steve Peterson said...

Thanx, Richard. I entered two and just one of them made it. I figure it's worthwhile to maximize the number of chances you get with these sorts of things.

Them renewing the option is kind of a mixed thing. The initial option for the first year gets taken out of the purchase price if they exercise the option -- however, the renewal fee isnot applied against any possible purchase price. So if the company buys the film later on this year they pay the full cost and the rent is just extra money in my pocket. If they're rational decision makers, this implies that they're not that confident they'll actually make the movie -- since if they were certain enough it was going to happen they'd just exercise the option and save themselves the renewal fee. There might be weird financing reasons they prefer to renew instead of exercise -- but that's my take on it.

BTW -- my one bit of actually useful knowledge: do make sure if you're signing an option on one of your specs, that the option renewal does NOT count against the purchase price. Otherwise the company has every incentive to simply drag out these option periods.

Grubber said...

Congrats on both, especially your forthcoming ineligibility. That could mean a party.

For forthcoming ineligibility parties, is it traditional paper or diamond gifts? ;-)

dan said...

good stuff, although the ex-analytic philosopher in wants to nit-pick about the definition of quarterfinal (aren't there supposed to be 8 quarter finalists?)

regaring the option: i guess the other way to look at it is if they were confident they weren't going to make the movie they wouldn't renew - so I suppose they just don't know what the hell they are doing

Steve Peterson said...

Grub:
At my last ineligibility party I think it was alcohol...

Dan:
I think Arithmetic is a little more flexible in Hollywood.

Re: the option -- Yah, but I like the idea of, in the future, being able to use myself as an example of the sunk cost fallacy.