Here’s part four of my interview with musician Amanda Palmer. There’s a lot of me talking in this one and I honestly wanted to take it out but Amanda suggested I keep it in…so I did.

To James Cameron,

I’m addressing this letter to you because you and your films
have been such an inspiration to so many who either watch or work in the movies.
I’m asking for your help in addressing a problem that few in your audience have
probably ever given a thought to — the unfair treatment and working conditions
of visual effects artists around the world.

Visual effects films were dominant commercial forces in
2009. Films like Avatar,  District 9 and Star Trek all
succeeded because they brought together visual effects with great writing,
acting, directing and other cinematic elements. There are other films for which
the visual effects seem to be the primary audience motivator. Without any
slight, the reality is that people did not go to see recent commercially
successful films like G.I. Joe or the Transformers movies for the
script, music or the acting. They went in droves to see the spectacular visual
effects – the “thrill ride”.

For all of these films that rely heavily on visual effects, the
studios and theater owners made hundreds of millions of dollars. The writers, composers
and actors all will receive well-deserved residual payments for decades to
come. But the visual effects artists don’t receive royalties and residuals. And as
one visual effects artist told me, “even in the credits, we’re listed
after craft services.”

Like most people who work in the film, television and video
game industries, visual effects artists love their jobs. They enjoy both the
work itself and the ability to work on a daily basis with so many smart, creative
and talented people. However, visual effects houses can be the best, most fun
and high-tech sweatshops on earth. Visual effects artists typically work with
no contract, no paid vacation, no benefits, and often no paid overtime. And
because of the nature of the work health problems such as obesity, tendinitis
and carpal tunnel syndrome are common.

The thing needed is recognition of the problem and the value
of these artists. When I say “value”, I’m not using that term
abstractly -I mean the bottom line, practical dollars and cents value of visual
effects to the film, television and video game industries. Just take a look at
a list of the world’s top
grossing films of all time – of the top 30 films, every single one of them
is a visual effects driven or animated film.  Visual effects have meant
multi-billion dollar business for the studios.

Unlike every other craft in the film industry, there is no
union for visual effects artists. This seems to be a matter of timing as much
as anything. Modern visual effects techniques are only a few decades old, and
the digital side of the visual effects arts really only has about 20 years of
history as a popular filmmaking tool. The other filmmaking disciplines such as
acting, directing and music composition date back to the very beginnings of the
film industry.

This newness has left digital visual effects artists with
absolutely no collective bargaining power whatsoever. In this age of weakened
unions, many of these artists are understandably leery of the idea of unionization.
Additionally, visual effects artist currently work under constant threat from
producers of having their work sent off to India or China. (The irony of
sending creative work to a country like China that routinely censors
communications — including
the announcement of this year’s Oscar® nominations — doesn’t seem to
bother these bottom-line seeking producers.)

Perhaps some sort of “Union 2.0” structure is needed; a
more flexible, modern institution that takes the realities of today’s
production environment into account , while still giving these artists some of
the same basic protections and benefits that other crafts currently receive.
But whatever the solution, it’s important people become aware of the problem.

Mr. Cameron, you are in a unique position this Academy Awards®
season. Your film Avatar has been nominated for nine Oscars®. Odds are high
that at some point, you’ll be up on stage accepting a well desrved award. Just
as you took time recently to speak
out on behalf of NASA, I’m asking you to consider taking a moment to speak
out on behalf of visual effects artists and how they are being treated unfairly.

Even a small statement by you will cause industry and press attention
to focus on this issue. The Visual Effects Society is awarding you a
well-deserved lifetime achievement award later this month. There’s no question
that your groundbreaking films such as Titanic, Terminator 2, and
now Avatar have all fused visual effects and storytelling into movies
that have succeeded both commercially and artistically.

For the sake of all the artists who have both worked for you
and been inspired by your work, please allow whatever victories you have on Oscar®
night to be beginning of meaningful discussion in Hollywood about fairness for the
thousands of artists who create visual effects.

I’ve been thinking a lot about pricing lately because of my How Much Should I Charge? course – here’s a really great (free) eBook that discusses the subject.

Fixed to Flexible – The Ebook

I’ve been talking about Dragon NaturallySpeaking a lot lately, so I made this demo video. No editing, warts and all.

If you buy Dragon NaturallySpeaking from Amazon through this link, Amazon gives me a little bit of money and it doesn’t cost you a penny extra. Just saying.

One of my favorite Neil Young songs and a fairly rare one. So beautiful.

I’ve seen love make a fool of a man,
He tried to maker a loser win,
But I’ve got nothing to lose I can’t get back again…

We talk about Courtney Love, Amanda’s musical history in the 1990s and more.

I had the distinct honor of being one of about 60 people who was part of the hoopla for Seth Godin’s new book Linchpin. The whole rollout was coordinated to happen the morning of the book’s release, which meant organizing dozens and dozens of people, scheduling interviews, getting links correct, and a whole lot more.

The woman who organized the entire thing is Ishita Gupta, whose official title was “head of hoopla” for Seth Godin. After the big day was over, I marveled at the accomplishment and realized that even though Ishita and I had exchanged e-mails a couple of times, I really didn’t know her as well as I should. After our interview, we ended up talking for another half hour or so, and I’m really glad to be able to get to know her better and work with her. You’ll be glad to get to know her, too.

In our conversation, Ishita and I talk about the hoopla, about being part of Seth’s Alternative MBA Program, her upcoming online magazine fear.less stories, the late Howard Zinn and the iPad.

Here’s a short clip from my interview with author & thinker Seth Godin talking about the his books as audio books.

There are two other writers who I think are also ‘must listens’ in terms of hearing their voice when you read their books.

Here’s Alan Watts

Here’s Jack Kerouac on the Steve Allen Show.

Yesterday on Twitter, I noticed someone posting about a film they’d seen on Hulu called Lemonade. I follow around 11,000 people on Twitter, so I see a lot of stuff flit by — but for some reason I clicked and ended up watching the whole film.

And now I’m here to tell you that you should make the time to watch Lemonade – it’s interesting, well made and really important. It’s true stories about people who lost their jobs and found their lives.

I had the real pleasure of talking to two of the filmmakers – creator Erik Proulx and director Marc Collucci. The interviews are both excellent and inspirational. But if you haven’t seen Lemonade yet, I’ve included both the trailer and the complete film below. You might want to watch those first, then come back and listen to the interviews.

Erik Proulx is Lemonade’s creator and he’s also featured in the film. As he says, he was laid off and found his life’s work. He started a blog called Please Feed The Animals for recently unemployed ad people, became active on sites like Facebook and Twitter and then started work on Lemonade.

We discuss some of that history in our interview, plus how building a treehouse can land you a job, the pivotal role Twitter paid in the project and some behind the scenes details of how he put the film together.

Marc Colucci is the director of Lemonade. If you’re interested in filmmaking, you’ll want to check out the interview with Marc; we discuss some technical stuff like the different cameras used on the film and Marc’s philosophy on getting interviews from people in a documentary. We get pretty geeky for a bit but even if you aren’t a film nerd, there’s a lot of great material in here…

Here’s the trailer…

And here’s the entire 37 minute film that you can watch free through Hulu…

I have had the unique privilege of being able to interview a number of really amazing people in the past few weeks; from artists like Amanda Palmer to bloggers like Chris Gilllebeau to entertainment industry executives like Chris de Faria. One unifying theme in all these interviews is the idea that we are at a point where being a creative individual, not a commodity, isn’t just a nice idea — it’s becoming an absolute economic necessity.

Best-selling author Seth Godin today released his full fledged treatise on that very subject, his new book Linchpin.  Godin begins the book by telling you that you are a genius and spends the rest of the book making the case why it’s important you believe him.

I had a 40 minute discussion with Seth Godin a couple of weeks ago and in the next few days I invite you back to hear the entire thing, which I’ll be posting as an MP3 a few more segments on YouTube. If you’re Seth Godin fan, I think you will really enjoy the entire interview because I was able to get Godin to discuss a little bit about his process, and his relationship with his readers.

In the meantime, please enjoy these segments and while you’re here, I invite you to look around and please consider signing up for my mailing list.

If you’re interested in more Seth Godin hoopla, you’ll definitely want to check out the Squidoo page Seth has put together that links to a number of other articles and blog posts about the book. (And please vote up this post!)

This video is also part of my article on The Huffington Post “We All Live In Detroit”.

And here’s Seth talking about education…

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