Lost Articles

I've been asking around to see if anyone knew the name of or had a link to the research article that showed that the personal interview is a poor hiring mechanism (and typically does worse than simply looking at resume, references, and so on). Brian Leiter mentioned it a while back, but neither he nor Frank Arntzenius (who originally pointed it out to me) remember the name or where to find it -- but Prof Leiter did note that it was a psych article.

Given the psych angle, I figured I'd ask Gary, but seeing my limited success I thought maybe better just to throw the question out there in a desperate attempt. Can anyone help?

Also, I'd read a few months ago an article online, probably via some new service, citing a study that said that, on average, 20% of any organization's resources are wasted on ego-projects for the CEO. If anyone else remembers that article and has a link or some help to find it that'd be great. My Google-fu is weak.

Thanksgiving trip reveals why DVD sales are down

The Hollywood Reporter has an article about declining DVD sales this year and my trip last week to visit my folks offers an explanation I think.

Selling a home in Los Angeles and moving pretty much anywhere else (in their case an island near Tacoma, WA) means you move up one income class -- middle class becomes upper middle class.

That means they had a nice hi-def big screen TV to go with their house. Being the Pacific Northwest, we had plenty of excuse to sit inside and watch television. And hi-def does look sweet. I just couldn't bring myself to watch any of the non-hi-def programs on those lesser cable stations while I was there.

We also wanted to rent a few movies -- but they didn't have a hi-def DVD player yet, so we stuck mostly to the hi-def movies-on-demand offered by the cable company. It cost a bit more than a rental, but the panoramic views of mountains and rivers looked sparkling.

They were also just about to purchase Live Free or Die Hard -- because that's the kind of movie you'd like to test your nifty new hi-def TV on.

But here's why DVD sales are down. They'd need to get a new DVD player for that -- and they were more than willing to pay for one -- but which one? I was suggesting HD since it seemed that the big Wal-Mart $99 sale might mark a turning point -- but that's a bit of a gamble. And later, it occured to me that Live Free or Die Hard might not even be on HD (which I think it isn't -- only Blu-ray). That would really suck, buying a hi-def DVD player and having about half the new releases not even be available for it -- then having maybe a 50% chance two years from now of having bet wrong, and there being no new releases for it.

So, unless you want to throw away cash on two high-end DVD players, you don't buy any. And even people who can afford to do so won't simply out of principle.

Then you think of buying the plain old DVD and watching Bruce kick ass. But you've seen the promised land; you're ruined for the old stuff. So you catch a rental of hi-def on-demand when it comes around -

- and don't buy any DVDs at all, since you know you're just going to want the HD version when there's finally a standard. I don't even have an HD TV and I'm not going to buy any more DVDs because I too have seen the promised land.

Thus, DVD rentals doing well, maybe even up, and DVD sales tanking.

And Wal-Mart knows this. They're seeing this vast sum of HD DVD money being left on the table this holiday season because there's no standard -- that's why they're trying to force a standard by selling HD players at cost.

The WGA Strike and Me

The news is erratic about reporting this sort of thing (especially if you're outside of Los Angeles), but if you didn't know, there's a significant Writer's Guild strike going on.

Directly, this doesn't impact me. I'm not yet a member of the WGA and the people I work with aren't part of the struck companies list.

Indirectly the primary impact will be that I'll likely get better deals in the future, should I make it into the WGA at some time. Also--and I think this is a big thing--even those of us not yet working in the big leagues get trickle down sort of benefits. The standards that the WGA establishes are often used as the negotiating basis for my contracts.

As such, while I support the WGA, I also don't want to be "rah-rah, strike forever" since I'm not the one suffering the consequences.

Ideally this gets resolved quickly in a way that'll not only satisfy the WGA membership, but also the Screen Actors Guild membership (who are even more reliant on the strike's key issue, residuals, and thus will also feel forced to go out on strike if a satisfactory result isn't achieved). A quick solution is particularly desirable because, I think unlike most strikes, when the WGA or SAG goes out, they take out a whole bunch of other people's jobs too. Much of that film and TV production has to close down. But, of course, the guilds also can't let the studios hold all these other people hostage as a negotiating point.


Anyway, the little film I wrote on assignment over the summer started production last week and will finish production over the course of next week. I think there will be an official announcement after shooting wraps so I'll wait until then to post more.

Doesn't Share Our Values

It looks like local elections are coming up tomorrow because tonight's TV is riddled with campaign ads.

Specifically, a barrage of campaign ads informing me how foul all the candidates are. Sometimes the ads even inform me how bad the opposing candidate is because of how the opposing candidate uses nasty negative advertising. It's like a Kurt Vonnegut novel.

One of the key ways of blasting an opponent is to say that he doesn't "share our Virginia values." This is contrasted with the shining example of the advertised candidate, who is either a church deacon or a Sunday School teacher.

As an indicator of our primary demographic, all ads spend a great deal of time talking about either doing more for senior citizens, or how the opponent ignores or sells out senior citizens.

Another frequent campaign tactic is to accuse one's opponent of being soft on immigration. These are all rural Virginia positions and so their policies only impact rural Virginia -- which must have some hidden cache of illegal immigrants. Maybe someone can point me toward these mystery Mexicans so I can get some decent enchiladas. Even the local Taco Bell (50% of Lexington's Mexican cuisine) tones down its Enchirito sauce from mild to special-honkey-ultra-mild.

Virginia's Upside

About 17 miles west up the kind of curvy, pastoral road that you normally only see in car commercials, the highway runs up against the Maury River then tracks it for several more miles through Goshen Pass. Up top, that's the river cutting cliffs through the Allegheny Mountains.

Near the end of the pass you turn right down a narrow gravel road and come to a hanging footbridge of the sort that wouldn't make for a very good movie scene. The suspension "ropes" aren't fraying and aren't even ropes -- but instead thick metal cables. And none of the boards were rotting through!

The afternoon sun gave us some nice lighting -- like the above cliff face. We probably got there about one week too late to get the really nice colors. I suspect it gets colder up in the hills so the trees turn a little earlier.

Many more photos at our gallery.

Research for Screenwriting is More Fun Than Research for Philosophy

While researching training different sorts of animals I came across the following quote, commenting on why one normally trains hens instead of roosters to play tic-tac-toe:

"Roosters have only one thing on their mind," he explains, "and it's not playing tic-tac-toe." -- Bunky Boger

EXT. SINGLE LOCATION - NIGHT

When working on a micro-budget film all sorts of things that you probably wouldn't think about suddenly become issues.

For instance, the director is having fits looking at his lighting budget -- so we're only going to have one night exterior shot.

Minimizing the number of locations is the other magic component. And I think it really is magic. My 1-3 location screenplays have all done really well. Moreover, I look at theatrical releases and notice how even larger budget ones often have a single location (Saw, 1408, Vacancy, The Messengers).

One thing that has happened for me is that someone will look at one of my scripts, realize that they could make it for a very small budget (like 500k) or a larger budget, and then they pick it up. They figure they can always try to get it made at the higher end, and if that doesn't pan out they'll still have a filmable movie at the lower end. And this is how you get sort of "back into" these higher budgets -- your script now has the connections to get read at richer places and those places figure a couple million is a safe bet on this little feature, so it gets the bump up. Whereas your other scripts that could only be made at 2 million or more so they don't get that start.


One other bit to make the recent graduates applying for those tenure track jobs that also have 100 other recent grads applying for them feel better. The casting director says that they've already got 4000 submissions for our tiny movie!

My Sister the Star

Vanessa gets coverage on the local news in L.A. -- she's the CSI dusting the door for fingerprints about halfway through the clip -- unfortunately, not Youtube so I can't embed the video.

CSI: Fullerton Strikes Again

Scanned

I went through all my old photos and digitized them over the weekend. This way I now have digital copies on hard drive and uploaded to the internet via the very convenient Picasa.

This also makes it easy for friends to go and download any copies of photos that interest them. I've got lots of photos from around 1999 --


The above and others are at my Rutgers 99 Album.


And I have a smaller collection of photos of my Los Angeles friends. Hate to say it folks, but Glendale High School was a hell of a lot more diverse than Rutgers Philosophy.

Most of the photos are made public, so if you want to look at any of the other galleries, feel free.

Wizards Who Specialize in Philosophy of Mind Conjure...

My guess is that strangething already knows about this, but the rest of the D&D folk might like to check out this bag of tricks of Stupid D&D Monsters (via ENWorld). I particularly liked the Room of Death further down the page.

See also the rabbit-duck.

Simpsons Movie Collateral Benefits

The hope I held out in my earlier post about The Simpsons Movie has come true -- our local CW affiliate is now running syndicated Simpsons episodes at 10 on weeknights. Not quite the 2 hours of Simpsons we used to get in New Jersey, but better than 30 minutes a week.


The director told me that November 3 will be the start date for shooting on our little G-rated D2DVD picture. I'll visit L.A. for a couple days while they're shooting, to meet the various people involved and see what's up.

This one looks pretty locked in, unlike the continuing death throes of The Sound. Marvista, the company financing the film, would like shooting to start immediately, but the director wants to spend a little extra time getting things set up right since extra planning really helps when you're working with a lower budget. Marvista's already talking to him about turning right around and doing a thriller -- so this might work out to be a busy year.

When we get closer or when I'm told it's okay, I'll try to share more info about what kind of story it is, maybe who some of the actors are (anyone remotely famous is in it as a sole result of the director having a lot of friends!), and so on.

Evolution Out of Control

Craggy Air tagged me with a meme -- but he neglected to include the rules of the meme! Memes must have rules upon which natural selection can operate, otherwise the following might occur:


1) I have two eyes.
2) Tom Baker is Craggy Air's favorite Doctor Who.
3) Craggy Air spells favorite "favourite", but I translated so that my American friends would understand.
4)
5) Fnord.
6) If you trace all the way back to the original source of the meme you discover that you are supposed to list seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.