Make It So – Page 6 – Steven Savage

Make It So: Honey I Shrunk The Con (and Kraken Con review)

October 9, 2013 by Steven Savage

Last weekend I went to Kraken Con in the Bay Area, doing one of my creative gameshows. Kraken Con (this year’s motto “New Squids on The Block”) is an attempt to do a small, one-day convention done twice a year.

They succeeded in my book. Massively.

It was a tight, focused, event. No wasted room, no wasted time – and no hurried pacing or inability to choose what to do. There was one (shockingly huge) dealer’s room, organized events, a nice relaxation spot/cafe, and a tightly run ship. No fluff, no mess, and no overload.

In turn, everyone I talked to was pleased and having fun. From artists telling me how it was even bigger than they expected to attendees mentioning how they enjoyed it, people seemed to really like this. Frankly it felt like a second or third year convention – and this was the first time it had run.

Make It So: A Skunkworks For Films

September 25, 2013 by Steven Savage

Last “Make It So” we had a roundup of how the MuseHack gang would try and change how theaters would run and how movies worked: a return to serials, more events, theaters as destinations, and heavy social engagement. It would mean less theaters in some cases, but more connected ones less dependent on tentpoles.

However there’s a flipside to this that Serdar and I had been discussing that’s our next make it so. We’re still trying to save the movie industry here at MuseHack, but in this case we’re focusing on the way films are made. Which, as you may guess, kind of sucks.

Make It So: Redo The Movies

September 18, 2013 by Steven Savage

Over at NerdCaliber, I occasionally posted “Make It So” – where I’d proposed things I wanted to see or have done. I realize I can also do that here because we MuseHackers have a lot of ideas about what needs to be published, developed, programmed, cooked, etc. Hell, in a lot of cases we want you to take these ideas and run with them because we’re too damn busy, not qualified, or now and then just lazy (hey, as noted we get busy).

So when we had one of our usual get-togethers, the subject of movies came up. It’s a big subject with us since we’re, well, geeks, most of us write, most of us work in technology, and we’ve been watching the movie industry implode on itself. Now I can’t say we don’t take a little bit of glee in watching the film industry get its comeuppance for a lot of risk-phobic stupidity, but that implosion is going to screw a lot of people and miss a lot of opportunities. A film industry collapse is going to take out the good with the bad and the panic that sets in many mean good ideas don’t get missed.

When we began talking, what came up quickly is this: the movie industry as it exists now is simply not viable. You can’t have giant insane tentpoles with all their risks and pandering without hollowing out the system. Worse, people are kind of sick of it and are catching on, to judge by recent poorly performing films. There’s films people don’t want and peple are kind of sick of it and don’t want to pay a lot of money to be underwhelmed and eat crappy theater food.

Then we realized that you ned to rethink how movies work. The old models are gone, the current models are heading for collapse, television and streaming is changing everything, and the pizza still sucks.