The Production Revolution Isn’t For All: Time

Self-publishing.  Webcomics.  Game design tools.  Art programs.

Give yourself an hour and you can find the tools to let most anyone with some skill be a media creator.  You can make books, games, etc. that you could never dream of years ago, and get them to a waiting audience.

Now of course you know I've been a bit cynical that this explosion of tools will also mean a creative renaissance, a kind of "Production Revolution" of media.  My own research, my own experience, has been very informative, so let me put it straight:

All these tools may mean that there's a chance for more people to get out their dream comic/video/game/book/movie and so on.  But there are still many barriers to their chances to do this.  These are not barriers of distribution or technology (which are changing).  These are personal barriers.

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Free Stuff And Our Legacy

Lots of free stuff out there, isn't there?

Free books, free games, free video.  Games that are free unless you want premium content.  It seems that a lot of our media – at least that we can get electronically – has an awful lot of free stuff.

It's also good free stuff.  I've been continually impressed with what I can find for free online or via DLC.

Being who I am I like to speculate on why we got so much free stuff available because . . . well this is me, culture, economics, and geekiness.  It's sort of what I do.  It's my thing.  Plus I'm curious.

The reason we have so much free stuff?  It's a legacy of previous work.

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Media Size and The Changing Media Environment

(Last week I posted to a link on an article about rejected SF and Fantasy novels, and one of our regulars noted that Dune had been rejected for length at one point – and then noted how some series and books seem to be overlong.  That got me thinking and this column is the result).

What is the ideal length of a book?  A series?  A TV episode?  A movie?  A movie series?

You have an idea in mind.  Publishers, TV executives, authors, and everyone has an idea in mind.  I daresay you could, with little prompting start quite a conversation – or argument – about the ideal length/duration of any form of media.  We all have ideas about such things, some held quite passionately.

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