Kung Fury – a comedy funded through Kickstarter [video]
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You don't enjoy retrowave for its writing or storytelling, generally speaking. Treat Kung Fury like an extended music video and it makes way more sense.
Carpenter Brut, Perturbator, M|O|O|N, Miami Nights 1984, Lazerhawk or basically anything from the Hotline Miami soundtracks are all good for anyone wanting more.
That helps a lot actually.
My favourite retrowave right now, and it's so blindingly obviously retrowave you don't even need to know its a thing, is this piece:
Todd Terje - Delorean Dynamite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUOIvT9hzD8
It's a combined tribute to everything great about the 80s DJ scene (and Todd Terry), with a clearly tougue-in-check ironic reference to us here in the future looking back it.
I'm loving it.
Lots of nostalgic 80s TV, movie, and video game sampling.
Here's a play list for those interested:
- There's a reference to Viagra (6:20) but it hadn't been invented yet.
- The "hacking time" sequence around 10:30 contains Java [1] which obviously came from the future.
There are a few others, perhaps intentional. I won't spoil them here :)
[1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/7478u4gkvnmjg6p/Screenshot%202015-...
Boy, I sure hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
He did an iama yesterday and someone pointed this out. Turns out he went to r/programming asking for someone to write him some code that would hack time. someone sent him Java... or Hackerman invented java so he could write once run any Time.
Google killed off collections the other day because it makes the viewing experience "better" or some stupid garbage that nobody will ever be able to explain and will certainly be replaced by a worse answer at some point. But for a couple years I basically had a half-dozen highly-personalized tv stations I could watch.
Here’s something instructive: YouTube: A Dinosaur Story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfdZju4J0Y4 That’s a three-hour movie done by two kids in their loungeroom with toy dinosaurs. Ridiculously low production values, make-it-up-as-we-go-along story by a couple of kids who seem to be about nine or ten. It’s genuine unintermediated young children’s folk culture, on the internet. HOLY CRAP. PUNK ROCK FOR EVERYONE.
The reason this is noteworthy: it’s one of my five-year-old’s favourite films. She’s watched her assorted Disney DVDs about half a time each, she’s watched this movie repeatedly and tells bits of it to her classmates. I boggle, but I cannot deny the observation that they’re doing something right that Disney isn’t, on a budget of zero.
She was also incredibly excited when she saw YouTube videos of kids making Thomas the Tank Engine fan videos using wooden railways just like hers. “They’re making their own stories!” (Example. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg1cUl9rd9g Of course it’s rubbish. That’s not the point.) The powerful drive for a culture of your own starts early.
The recording industry used to try to justify not being taken out and shot by claiming blockbusterism was necessary to music, which was of course just a lie. Bands can (and do) now do albums with a microphone and a laptop. Microphone optional. Record at home, put it up on Bandcamp, the physical barrier to recording and distribution is gone. I remember the eighties, and just how bloody hard it was even to record, let alone distribute the result. Sure, the studio result is better, but that’s optional now. For getting the damn song out of your head and into the world, convenience beats quality every time the two are head-to-head.
Culture is everything humans do to impress each other, and it’s diseased unless it’s owned by all of us. The arrangement where you have creators here and consumers here and never the twain shall meet is a twentieth-century perversion we are well rid of.
I'm still appreciating Kung Fury, though. Just an observation.
Of course you can download it from Youtube using something like youtube-dl, but it's not as straightforward.
IMHO such approach reduces the number of potential backers instead of increasing it. Clear cut DRM-free release on the other hand attracts more supporters.
All campaigns I participated in clearly saw DRM-free release as helpful for attracting more backers (those who reject DRM).
This might sound cynical, but that's how people are . There was a documentary that came out last year called I Dream of Wires about analog modular synthesizers, which are going through a renaissance right now thanks to low-cost short-run manufacturing and a much wider audience for electronic music than existed during the previous modular heyday of the 1970s. So they raised lots of money on Kickstarter, and one of the rewards for backers was exclusive access to a 4 hour Blu-Ray copy, with tons of additional footage that would be cut out of the theatrical version, but which you would certainly want to watch if this was your particular nerd obsession. Anyway, the film got made OK, but (as is very typical) the producers vastly overestimated likely interest in the film and discovered the hard way that it was too niche of a subject to appeal to regular documentary distributors. Having gone a bit over budget and spent some personal money to get it finished, they naturally wanted to break even, so after what they thought was a decent interval, they started selling the extended 4-hour Blu-ray edition to the general public on their website.
Bad idea. The people who had bought that thinking they were getting something exclusive were furious, and stalked the filmmakers across every electronic music forum where they popped their heads up, calling them fraudsters and thieves. They weren't any worse, off, as such; they had got their Blu-Rays (although I think they had to wait a long time for them, as with many Kickstarter campaigns that fall way behind schedule), and they included all the promised content delivered to a professional standard. But they thought they had bought a limited edition, and threatened the makers with lawsuits - the result being that the DVD release got pushed way back and the extended 'ahrdcore edition' has had the price jacked up to $199 (which almost nobody will ever spend) in line with the donation requirement for the original reward.
That's not reasonable. They could get more backers if DRM-free release (for everyone) was a simple part of the base goal. I.e. selling DRM-free as a perk only reduces the number of their backers. I only support those projects which have a clear DRM-free release stated in their goals. And I'm not alone.
> People want exclusivity, and those people who have the mp4 are secretly (though not necessarily consciously) feasting on your tears of DRM-frustration because they have something you don't.
This sounds sick. I don't care for exclusivity, I care for art. And actually such kind of attitude in the project would make it feel repealing for me. And of course as with any DRM, it doesn't stop one from copying. That's all besides the fact that Youtube doesn't have DRM. It just makes downloading more manual than it could be.
I have to say, prove it. My theory is that most people don't care about DRM the same way you do, and that more people like owning something than want to make it widely accessible, based on the abundant evidence already available about their willingness to buy exclusive rewards. What do you base your assertion about the potential number of backers upon?
This sounds sick. I don't care for exclusivity, I care for art.
That's nice of you, but it's a fact that we live in a consumer society and one of the most common sales tools is to exploit the law of supply and demand by creating artificial scarcity - even by limiting the numbers of Kickstarter rewards designed to get people to donate before someone else. You can effectively solicit a higher donation level by restricting the availability of the perk, and I find it hard to blame people for exploiting a business strategy that is known to work.
In all seriousness, how much do you care for art? What $ amount would you be prepared to donate or put at risk by investing? I'm not asking this to win an argument, I'm genuinely curious about the economic value you attach to your ideological position. Would you be influenced by some combination, eg for $x you become a patron of the DRM-free copy but you also get a special T-shirt or other item that's not available to others, and if so to what degree?
And actually such kind of attitude in the project would make it feel repealing for me.
You've gotta sell what people want to buy. If you say you're going to be making the top-of-the-line quality product available as widely as possible later, then many people will reasonably ask why they should bother giving you money now. I don't think that people in the aggregate are as generous as you may be as an individual. Now, if you're quite wealthy and in a position make very generous donations that could balance out beautifully, but the basic business model of Kickstarter and similar sites is about raising lots of small donations from a crowd rather than targeting a smallish number of more substantial donors.
That's all besides the fact that Youtube doesn't have DRM.
Yeah but YouTube video quality is shit. Of course it's good by historical standards but then TVs used to be much less capable than today. Many people do not find the quality satisfactory for leisure viewing. If you watch the same video on YouTube and Vimeo (eg many people upload camera tests to both websites) you can see a substantail difference on Vimeo, and mp4 quality would be better again. I don't like watching YouTube on a television, in general. Admittedly this is more of a short-term problem, and it will all be 'good enough' soon enough, just as Netflix streaming was mediocre in quality for the first year or two but now looks fine most of the time (at least on a HDTV).
It's a common practice for many crowdfunded projects to pitch for more backers by stating that release is DRM-free. You can see people commenting about it, if it's not stated (and projects clarifying this point).
Take a look at fiasco with Veronica Mars crowdfunded film which was released with DRM. Backers of the film said all they thought about this failure. Interest in DRM-free releases was expressed very clearly there. If anything, crowdfunding is a major driver in putting an end to approach of the sick-minded publishers obsessed with DRM.
> In all seriousness, how much do you care for art?
As much as I'm interested in something. If I see a project that's interesting to me, I consider supporting it on condition that it doesn't plan to use such unethical garbage as DRM in result. How much would I invest in it? That depends on the project. I don't do it out of having unlimited funds. Not at all - my funds are pretty limited. I do it because I care for those projects and without my support they are less likely to be created. I don't see how exclusivity fits into this. It doesn't mean I'm against perks - if someone wants to invest more, it's OK if they get more rewards. But DRM is not something that should be added as a distinguishing factor to anything. Because it shouldn't exist to begin with. Would you support the project which says that if you pay more, they'll give ecological wrap for you, but for the rest they'll ship the product in poisonous package?
Another reason to support some projects is to demonstrate demand. For instance, I would support games which are released for Linux (if I'm interested in them too), but won't support those which don't plan a Linux release.
For instance, Underworld Ascendant added Linux support to the base goal after getting feedback about it. As you can see, this also reduces exclusivity - it's inclusive, because more users are reached when release is cross platform. DRM-free release is similar in this sense.
If Alice will pay $10 for a streaming copy (with DRM), Bob will pay $30 for a DRM-free copy, but Carol will pay $50 for an exclusive DRM-free copy, the rational approach is to sell to Alice and Carol for a total of $60. Bob says that other people would be willing to buy the DRM-free copy later, but from the producer's standpoint the only thing that matters is who's willing to pay money up front because a) there are a lot of costs that have to be paid up front* and b) backend revenue is uncertain.
* Of course you can defray those up-front costs by asking people to work for free or deferred pay, which has been a very popular trend over the last decade. But it's awful to work that way and none of the projects I've ever done that for ever turned a profit.
Unfortunately Kickstarter doesn't provide a way to play the two off against each other, eg setting up 2 projects for DRM advocates vs owners and going with whichever one outraises the others.
Take a look at fiasco with Veronica Mars crowdfunded film which was released with DRM.
I did. I think it was a storm in a teacup, because the intersection between fans of a TV show and people who care passionately about DRM is just not that big. The primary issue seemed to be that people did not care for getting their digital download through Flixster and would rather have redeemed through iTunes or Amazon. As best I can see from the project page, ~22k people were willing to pay a $10 premium over the next reward to get a digital download in addition to a T-shirt, but not another $15 to get a DVD. About 10% of the comments post-release consisted of grumbling about the Flixster download (primarily that it was slow and/or buggy and unreliable; I'm not sure what percentage of them cared about the underlying principle), so it looks like maybe 2500 people who spent about $25,000 were pissed off, or ~4% of the backers contributing 0.5% of the budget.
The basic problem for producers is this: you can estimate the number of people interested in purchasing a restricted version of the film by looking at other projects which offer that and seeing how many of those reward offerings actually sold. I believe you that there are people sitting on the sidelines instead of donating/purchasing because they care about a DRM-free release, but how do I quantify what that demographic is worth?
If I see a project that's interesting to me, I consider supporting it on condition that it doesn't plan to use such unethical garbage as DRM in result. How much would I invest in it? That depends on the project. I don't do it out of having unlimited funds. Not at all - my funds are pretty limited. I do it because I care for those projects and without my support they are less likely to be created.
OK, but your lack of support has to be set against the number of people who are willing to pay for some exclusive right. In the case of Kung Fury that was about $90,000 - ~6000 people were willing to pay $20 for a 1080p download with exclusive content, vs $5 for the DRM-hobbled streaming version you paid for. So what I'm asking is: if you see a film you think you would like, what extra amount are you willing to pay to ensure it is made available DRM-free? It doesn't matter if you'd make a big donation of $1000 once a year to advance the cause, or you'd rather donate and extra $20 to 50 different projects, or even just 5.
But right now I have no idea how much you and other people who care about DRM are holding back. I looked at several different Kickstarter projects that offer DRM-free downloads (including Game Loading - Rise of the Indies, which raised over $60k AUD) doing a similar analysis (trying to ID how much people were willing to contribute for the digital download only, rather than the next reward with additional swag) and the numbers seem to be in the low thousands. Even if I scale budgets the numbers are a good bit lower, eg about $45,000 in DRM-free download purchases if I imagine that other projects had brought in the same overall revenue as Kung Fury and allocate the appropriate amount to download rewards.
This suggests that there's only half as much money on offer up front for DRM-free downloads as for exclusive offerings, and so that it's more rational to use a market segmentation strategy than to offer the same thing at the same price to everyone. From a producer standpoint, cash is the only thing that people are willing to accept as payment for work, and real cash now is much more persuasive than hypothetical cash later.
I mean, maybe you and other anti-DRM people should set up a fund and disburse grants or something, but only to people who commit to DRM-free movie and game releasing. That's how other people promote their causes. Money talks, as they say.
There is research which shows that DRM always reduces potential for sales. So crowdfunding isn't any different in this aspect. Remember, they profit from sales post release too, and not only from crowdfunding investors.
> I mean, maybe you and other anti-DRM people should set up a fund and disburse grants or something, but only to people who commit to DRM-free movie and game releasing. That's how other people promote their causes. Money talks, as they say.
In my experience, most crowdfunded projects shun DRM (at least all that actually caught my attention), which is an indication for me that voting with your money works. They clearly see that DRM-free releases gives them more backers.
You can get the 1080p version with "youtube-dl --write-sub https://youtu.be/bS5P_LAqiVg". Yes, you want the subs for the funny music descriptions.
youtube-dl -f 248+251 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg'
This film is pure concentrated 80's cheekiness and really takes you back. If you were do destroy bad 80's popular culture and keep only 30 minutes of it for reference, this would be it. Of course it does not work alone for many, because everything in it is reference back to the 80's.
It's very well done. I got 80's flashback from just those tracking errors in the beginning of the tape alone (funny how associative memory works).
deeper analysis:
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/37mw8y/kung_fury_ha...
which are also social criticism themselves ... a social criticism of a social criticism ? now everything looks like post-modernism lol... Seriously, there is no social criticism here, just tropes of 80's movies.
Except that this is satirizing a style where obvious jokes were regularly used.
Just watch the first 60 seconds of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrLcHfwppu0
tl;dr the homage to the 80s is not just the visual style but also extends to the story telling.
What might work instead is to perform a dual-parody, of both 80's tropes and the modern trope of giving away the plot in the preview(s). In this format, instead of 30 min of formless memes, they would publish 2-4 "previews" of the movie, and that's it. Same content, just published as previews.
I question your definition of "genius". It's a fun parody for sure. But don't make it look bigger than it really it.
Even the meaningless swearing to try to look "cool" was spot on.
So yes. Maybe not "genius" but it so precisely hits the spot that it's undeniably good.
Specially the arcade-style fighting scene. Pure fucking genius!
The style and attitude of this movie (and that of the Danger 5 TV series) are incredibly well suited for parodying things we feel nostalgic about. Unlike the disappointing way in which Iron Sky tried to take itself seriously.
(full disclosure, I thought it hit the nostalgic feelings I have from that time almost perfectly)
Not that that's a bad thing, but "true 80s" flicks are a bit different IMO (ie: Breakfast Club, Back to the Future and the like).
What's the referent for this movie, if it's "80s action comedy"? I can't think of anything like it, it's more like Duke Nukem frankly.
References here are obviously Knight Rider and the like.
I was a backer, but also grew up in the late 70s/80s and this film skewers my childhood movie memories to near perfection.
[1] https://www.google.ch/search?q=battleship+potemkin&espv=2&bi...
Conversely, I am struck by how much really unpleasant violence there is today.
HACKERMAN'S HACKING TUTORIALS - How To Hack Time