I’m certain you appreciate order, common sense, a happy neighbourhood and good neighbour. But in 2012, you should resolve to break the law.

But not just any law, rather Parkinson’s Law. That is the one that states that any work swells in significance and requirements to meet the amount of time allotted to it. In other words, if there is a job that should take a day to complete, but you have four, you’ll bulk up the job to take four days instead of the one. It’s a weird phenomenon, but it’s true. Parkinson wrote his law to be funny in an article for The Economist back in 1955. Funny or not, his words just got more and more correct in the information age.

So how will you break the law? With a razor.

To be precise, Occam’s Razor, so named for William of Ockham, sometime around 1310. This principle states that the simplest solution is usually the best. But it’s hard to see the simple solution today – the price of being constantly connected with limitless options. It’s hard to wield the razor when we’re being eaten up…by information.
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I have finished up my 15 part series on media production in Canada, and the comparison to the U.S. industry. The series draws a parallel between the early days of Hollywood and the online video revolution, by looking at many of the factors involved from the political to the personal. It was a lot of fun to write, and even more fun to present at the FITC Screens conference, and in conversations at the OMDC New Finance think tank. It’s time to move on to the next subject, but for those interested, here’s a compilation of links for the whole series.
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Following all the research for the fifteen blog posts of this series, I had the opportunity to present some of my findings at the FITC “Screens” event November 15, and also get some really great personal perspectives during the OMDC sponsored “Alternative Financing Think Tank” that I participated in.

FITC Screens

The Screens event is what has replaced the “mobile developer’s conference” of previous years, updated to reflect the multi-screen nature of content today. It’s a better description than “mobile” as our content finds digital ways of being distributed from theaters to web-enabled televisions.

So where were the film and television guys?

As I often find, the event was fantastic but polarized. I encountered all manner of interactive content producers and developers, but not a single person from traditional. Anecdotally, in conversation at the Oddly booth with my friend Kathleen Webb (a media consultant) I’m not the only one who has noticed this. The interactive and traditional people are still not mixing. At the start of my presentation, a show of hands confirmed a mix of agency people, freelance developers, and interactive consultants – but no television producers or anyone from film or print publishing.
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Now here we are, some 14 blog articles in and we’ve come full circle looking at the early start of the media industry in New York, the shift to L.A. and what caused it. We’ve compared the Hollywood model to the Canadian way of making media. And we’ve looked at new technology and distribution method enabling some folks I’ve called “New Hollywood”.

No doubt there are things I’ve overlooked or just don’t know about media creation here and abroad. I am, after all, just a studio owner who set out on a journey to understand the lay of the land in the field I work in.

Even so, I have to put some ideas up worth thinking about. It seems like Canada missed the boat 100 years ago when Hollywood first began to boom. Are we smarter now? Or are we missing the next thing also?

Canada has some Youtube action going on. By far the most popular is Epic Mealtime, which typically draws 2 million views per upload. In every episode host Harley Morenstein, a former substitute teacher, creates and consumes a heart-stopping combination of Jack Daniels, bacon strips, and some kind of meat product. Alternates include candy.
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In the last article, we took a look at the small independent producers doing big things in online distribution by writing, directing, shooting, and staring in their own productions. They have complete creative control, much like the creative freedom sought by D.W. Griffiths when he headed west to L.A.

I don’t know if you noticed with the previous article, but fully ALL of the featured producers at one point relocated to L.A. Coincidence? You might think so, but for one thread that brings them all together.  That thread is Facerocker (once called Overcrank Media), more commonly known as Freddie Wong and Brandon Laatsch, two alumni of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.

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