In today’s New York Times, Brian Stelter talks to muckraking filmmaker Robert Greenwald about his latest project, Rethink Afghanistan, which Greenwald calls “a real-time documentary.” Greenwald has posted the first two of five parts of the documentary on the Rethink website and is currently in Afghanistan shooting more; eventually, the video blogs will be “stitched together” into a full-length film for potential festival play, DVD release, and even theatrical distribution.
Greenwald says speed is his primary motivator for releasing his works in progress to the web in this way; with President Obama somewhat quietly escalating the war in Afghanistan, Greenwald (who titled the first chapter of Rethink “More Troops + Afghanistan = Catastrophe”) is hoping his film will impact policy. On the Rethink website, he’s already obtained over 36,000 signatures to a petition demanding congressional oversight hearings on Afghanistan spending, in the name of creating “a national conversation to address the many questions surrounding this war.” The YouTube comments on the first chapter would suggest that the film is already making it possible for that conversation to take place amongst the rabble, and at a surprisingly high level of discourse for the video sharing site.
One issue that Stelter and Greenwald don’t address is the fact that Greenwald is at liberty to work this way only because he has a massive grassroots base already built, and its members are already online, and he doesn’t need film festival accolades to raise his profile, and theatrical release for his films is an afterthought. Does the collapsing of distinction between online video and feature filmmaking become less significant when it’s simply a question of finding your audience where they live? Is this a model that any other name brand documentarian would be willing to play with at this point?
I’ve embedded the first part of Rethink Afghanistan after the jump; Greenwald is also Twittering from Afghanistan, natch.
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Kent Nichols is the creator of Ask a Ninja, a web series produced independently by a crew of three that has become so popular that you can buy a DVD of its first 30 episodes at Urban Outfitters. Nichols is not in the WGA or any other guild, so he’ll be able to continue to work regardless of what happens with a strike. He’s written an interesting post about this at Metroblogging Los Angeles:
The current studio system is based on work for hire — which is fine since it gives predictable income in exchange for ownership of your work. But you end up losing out if you create a hit. Talk to Mike Judge about Beavis and Butthead.
I’ve successfully crafted a show that lives in it’s own channel that I create with a small team (my writing/producing partner and a freelance editor) that is not only popular on the net, but is also financially successful.
I did this by applying principles of Indie Film financing and creating a show that was easy and fun to produce with only two people.
Sure, my site AskANinja.com, doesn’t pull in the sweet dough of Pirates of the Caribbean, but I’ll probably make as much cash over its lifetime as the writers and director on that film did.
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