Craigslist is just about the most useful tool an honest, hardworking producer of video shorts could have.  To make a project move, you have to surround yourself with other energetic talents, and craigslist is a wonderful way to write a few paragraphs about what you’re doing, and have some really cool (and some really freaky) individuals reply that they want to create together.

Obnoxious part?  Getting “flagged & removed.”  This is a worth-while process that craigs has in place, allowing the community to strike down ads if they are inappropriate or violate policy.  However, if you put a listing up in the “gigs” section that doesn’t pay, people tend to strike it down.  My ads are always well within the rules–in fact, you must click a radio button indicating that a job is unpaid, so users can search by that option, eliminating unpaid gigs if they desire–but there are craigs readers who have taken it upon themselves to create a culture of paid gigs.  Reading the discussion forum about this problem, one hears the various voices of wisdom shrug and say there’s not much to be done, that a few people just don’t want unpaid gigs to survive.

Of course I understand that I’m asking people with marketable skills to come work on my projects, and that in a way it’s insulting that there shouldn’t be money involved.  But I’m not being greedy; I absolutely cannot pay people.  I don’t know how to write an ad that says, “There are a lot of people out there who might exploit you or ask you to work on a project that sucks.  But I’m one of the good guys, honest.”  (Because that’s what the bad guys say, too, of course.)  Meanwhile, there are plenty, plenty, plenty of people who are happy to gain experience and build their portfolios by working unpaid projects.  The self-appointed craigslist police keep those people from meeting us good guys.

Anyone know any other good places I can recruit crew?  Ones with LESS than a 50% chance of my ad getting banned in the first 24 hours?

J.K. Rowling created seven copies of a hand-written, hand-illustrated collection of five original fairy tales. The leather-bound , silver-ornamented books were sold at Sotheby’s to raise money for charity.

It would be quite the extravagance, of course, but how cool would it be to own one of the seven copies of that book?

An interesting graph posted at United Hollywood:

I finally just saw the movie Once. Critics and bloggers I trusted wrote that it is one of the best films to come along in a years. They weren’t lying.

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Much is made in the television industry lately about the changing face of advertising, and how in our progressively time-shifted world, companies don’t feel comfortable buying television commercials in the ways they once did. After all, <ba-doop badoop badOOP!> and those commercial breaks are over in seconds.

I recall reading about a study showing that consumers remember just as much about commercials when they fast-forward as they do when they watch them at regular speed, but studies don’t often influence the priorities of industry decision makers. For example, the Oberholzer-Gee study of 2004 suggests that file sharing has had little or more likely zero bearing on CD sales, but that certainly hasn’t stopped the music industry, then the movie industry, from raising a ruckus about piracy being the ultimate threat to their existences.

But advertisers are the ones spending the cash, so they get to call the shots. More and more that means product integration into content. For blatant examples, consider the side wall ads in soccer or racing video games. For less blatant but more unignorable examples, consider where the team from The Office holds the Dundees… (Did you say Chili’s? Because they’re banking on the fact that you did…) It’s no coincidence that Michael took a client there before the night he first hooked up with Jan. Meanwhile, who is Dunder-Mifflin’s primary competitor, and where did Dwight go to work when he quit? Ever notice the logo on Stanley’s computer? Or remember what Michael brought to the Christmas white elephant?

For the most part, these placements don’t get in the way of the story or the character, or in fact can even lend a certain authenticity. But this week NBC featured placement in Friday Night Lights that seemed to cross the line between clever producing and crass hucksterism.

(MINOR SPOILER ALERT.)

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If ever there was a sign that today’s youth is in danger of cultural brain rot, the trend in “comedy” that has included Date Movie, Epic Movie, and now Meet the Spartans is it. Fortunately, critics everywhere are jumping at the opportunity to get creative in trashing this film, and that’s got to do at least something to squash its chances. At the moment, there are 15 reviews posted at Rotten Tomatoes, giving MtS a cumulative score of 0%. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that every single critic gave no right to exist.

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