Drinking and sunlight are never a good combination. Especially with fair skin. Having had lunch on NBC today, I ended up sitting in the sun for an hour, burning my head and arms in such a fashion that allows me to be a heat source for a small room.
Luckily, making the correct choices tonight led me to meeting some really great writers and actors that I admire greatly. What makes people who have succeeded tick is an interesting thing to study, especially when everyone’s drunk.
It’s a short one tonight, gotta catch some sleep before I run the LA TV Writer’s Meetup tomorrow. If you’re interested, follow my twitter. @DerekHousman.
I just turned 28. I live in Los Angeles, i’ve worked on feature films, television shows, and a bunch of other small projects. I still haven’t accomplished much, but i’m working at it. Birthday’s are a great time to take stock of your life, to see what you’ve done on your time on this planet, and to set some goals for yourself for the future. I have a simple goal. WRITE MORE. If i’m to call myself a writer, i’ve really got to step up my game. The best way to do this is to blog, every day, for as long as I can. So i’ll start today, my birthday. From the start, the day has been off. Working at 5am on your birthday, at a job that pays the bills, just so you can write, even when you don’t, is just that more depressing. Luckily it was followed by a three hour drive with someone I didn’t expect to have as interesting a conversation with. Followed up by an inpromptu birthday party/dinner, and then a movie by myself (something that I really do enjoy). It’s a good birthday, filled with enough birthday messages to drain my phone battery and leave me in a bar bathroom trying to coax it to give up the address of my hotel. I’ll finish up here, it’s a good start. P.S. Mojito’s + 5 hour energy drink = A great time
I just turned 28. I live in Los Angeles, i’ve worked on feature films, television shows, and a bunch of other small projects. I still haven’t accomplished much, but i’m working at it.
Birthday’s are a great time to take stock of your life, to see what you’ve done on your time on this planet, and to set some goals for yourself for the future. I have a simple goal.
WRITE MORE.
If i’m to call myself a writer, i’ve really got to step up my game. The best way to do this is to blog, every day, for as long as I can. So i’ll start today, my birthday.
From the start, the day has been off. Working at 5am on your birthday, at a job that pays the bills, just so you can write, even when you don’t, is just that more depressing. Luckily it was followed by a three hour drive with someone I didn’t expect to have as interesting a conversation with. Followed up by an inpromptu birthday party/dinner, and then a movie by myself (something that I really do enjoy).
It’s a good birthday, filled with enough birthday messages to drain my phone battery and leave me in a bar bathroom trying to coax it to give up the address of my hotel.
I’ll finish up here, it’s a good start.
P.S. Mojito’s + 5 hour energy drink = A great time.
I had a thought while driving home tonight, the only reason I shouldn’t procreate with a female commedian is I wouldn’t want my kid to turn out like Ben Stiller.
The IAWTV is electing 6 new board members this year and i’m running. After working on the yet to be launched redesign and speaking with various committee heads, I found that the best way to serve the Academy is to take a leadership position. I look forward to advancing the goals of the Academy and working to get more benefits for it’s members.
I will be at the IAWTV Social Meet-up at the Cat & the Fiddle (6530 w Sunset) at 7pm to answer any questions you have for me in person, or feel free to email me.
Below is my original candidate statement.
I’m running for the IAWTV Board of Directors because I believe in this organization and the role we have in the web television community. My goals are to build relationships with existing companies that will benefit our organization and our members and help members make the best quality content by creating and promoting the peer groups we already have (i.e. The IAWTV Writer’s Group).
I believe my experience in this community is what makes me a great candidate for the board; I started with a small new media company, in 2008 as the Marketing Director, building a brand and an audience for our slate of shows, and from there I moved on to working at ThisWeekIn as their Director of Production, producing 26 live streaming web shows, a great deal of experience that I hope to bring to our awards show and how we manage the size of our organization. My enthusiasm for this community can be seen in my attendance at new media events and academy meetings. I have worked to bring about change in the community and the academy itself. I wrote a “Letter to the Web TV Community,” arguing that an award show does not shape this academy and that we must move forward with our goals. I also wrote a blog post called “Building the Future,” wherein I called for a IAWTV board that is more representative of the academy. Over the last few months I’ve been working as the Academy’s Technology Committee Chairman, creating an upgraded IAWTV website that will launch in 2011, and working with a design company to build the infrastructure needed to manage our growth over the next couple of years.
I look forward to working with everyone in the coming year to build and grow this academy. I’m eager to spend time working on the important matters the form the basis for our community. I appreciate your vote, and more importantly, your time. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions you have.
Dear Web TV Community,
It seems like only a short time ago we were here talking about how we needed to move on from the problems of yesterday and move onto tomorrow. It seems like tomorrow has come for many of us.
Today, the team of people behind the Streamy Awards have published their website Rebuild the Trust. Their desire is to gain support for two important changes in the IAWTV and the partnership between the Academy and the awards show.
I believe both of these issues have merit, but are not truly fleshed out by the manifesto.
First, the Academy is in need of a lot of work, both in their structure and how it’s perceived by non-board members and the community in general. Since the organization only was legally created in December of last year, the current board will continue to guide the IAWTV until next December.
The makeup of the board is not a great representation of the Academy. There are few to one creators, mostly executives, and all are people who DO make a living in the New Media world. And as such, they’re very busy with their own jobs, unable to pour the necessary resources into a growing organization such as the IAWTV. Additionally, the membership has doubled since the board was elected and will continue to grow this year.
So I do agree, the board needs to open up elections, and they should be held shortly as there is much work to do.
The second issue is how the Streamy’s/IAWTV partnership should be handled. I don’t have all the information to make an informed decision on how much or who controls what, but I can say this: The IAWTV does not have the manpower to effectively run an award show by themselves. We can barely inform our members how to vote correctly, or how any of our processes work. An agreement of sorts is needed. The board should be reorganized, and they should be empowered to make these decisions.
However, to tie the two together is unwise. Too many issues are on the table and they need to be carefully analyzed. It works to the Streamy producers advantage to have the board reorganized as they gain a significant partnership with the Academy and more recognition for the Streamy;s. Agreeing to one is agreeing to both and not having the full understanding of how the Streamy’s are currently run could cause future repercussions. I agree with elements of the proposal, but not the language used within. Barrett Garese makes several good, but speculative, points about what might have led to this decision.
I ask the board to hold elections in the near future and for the community to speak out about your concerns, not just about the transparency needed within the academy, but how we can grow and show the world what great content we make. The future doesn’t belong to the Academy, but to the community that fuels it.
Sincerely,
Derek Housman
IAWTV Academy Member
Dear Web TV Community,
Growing pains, that’s what the Streamys and the community experienced last night as they attempted to put on a show to rival its big sister awards, the Oscars. With coverage in Time and Vanity Fair, we felt as if our moment had arrived. However, due to a number of problems including poor content choices, we are reduced to remembering a show filled with crass humor and seemingly unplanned interruptions. Live television is tough, and it’s compounded by the basic principal of Murphy’s Law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Thankfully our host, Paul Scheer, stuck with us through the night and shepherded the crowd to the end.
There were some great moments to take away from last night. Before we hit that curve in the road we had a great monologue, some impressive entertainment pieces, and most importantly, we recognized some truly wonderful talent in the digital space. Acceptance speeches ranged from the thoughtful to heartfelt, and for a time you could feel the energy in the room grow. The technical issues would have been forgiven had the show not derailed as far as it did.
The problems that arose came from inexperience, poor planning, and a general disregard for the audience. I saw parents walk out, leading their children to the exits as fast as they could, members of the academy shifting in their seats as the tone shifted from light and cheerful to dark and somber. We knew that the night was a loss, even as some presenters and winners tried to salvage the night with impassioned speeches to rally the crowd, but it was too late, the damage was done.
I sat there, sharing glances with my fellow academy members, we were ashamed. This was our night and it had derailed into farce. And it was put on for the whole world to see. That was yesterday.
Today is a new day, we’ll pick up the pieces and start anew. It’s up to us as members of the community to rebuild from here. We’ll move forward and continue to put out good work, work that will be the lasting impression we leave on our community, instead of one awards show. We’ll continue to seek out major brands and companies to partner with to build this growing medium, one that cannot be shut down by a single event. In a year’s time, we won’t have forgotten what happened last night, but we’ll have learned our lesson.
I humbly ask the viewers, the community, the sponsors, and the rest of the academy to forgive. We are young and inexperienced, perhaps naive that we could pull off something of the magnitude that was planned. Let’s look forward to the future of the industry together, help us grow and learn from our mistakes and make the next year a better and brighter year.
We’ve only just begun our work.
Sincerely,
Derek Housman
IAWTV Academy Member
Well, the hard part is over, you’ve finished your series, campaigned to get recognized, and now all you have to do is sit back and wait for your name to be called. But how did we get here? How did over a thousand submission come down to just five. Here’s what i’m going to do, i’m going to outline the process it took to get to the short list so you can understand why, or why not, your show did not make it into the final list. Why am I doing this? Because it was very clear this year that many many people will be disappointed. I am one of the lucky few that doesn’t have a show in contention this year. I have worked on several web series, one of which won the first Streamy ever, several of which are nominated for awards this year, but they’re not mine.
Up until a month ago, the Academy consisted of about 100 individuals from various parts of the Web TV community, some are major players (production company executives, agents, stars, previous winners), others are not. These 100 people decided last years Streamy’s. This year, as membership opened up, the Academy grew and now we’re a much bigger group of assholes who will not vote for your show.
Members were asked to volunteer to help cull the thousands of submissions down to a manageable sum. This process weeded out anything that was in the wrong category, ineligible, or submissions that did not merit being considered (i.e. terrible). These were then tallied up and the Academy as a whole was presented a “long list” of potential nominees. We were given a week to watch 20 series, across multiple categories. Some members, as part of a peer group system, were responsible for the technical and creative awards short lists. I can’t speak for everyone, but I believe most of us made the effort to watch every series that was nominated. This could mean as little as one episode, or the whole series.
This morning, we will all find out what shows are on the short list. Most likely, if your show was not filmed well; was billed as a comedy and was not funny; or just plain sucked; then you will not be a nominee.
As i’ve said before, and will doubtlessly have to say again, writing will always be the key. A lot of web series are started by actors who feel they’re not getting the roles that they think they deserve. These are not writers, but then again, everyone has one great story to tell. That’s why some shows that are done this way are very successful. But most of the time, they’re not.
Most writer’s who are really good already have jobs doing what they love, for actual money. That leaves newer writers, bad writers, and my favorite, people who think they’re writers to create web series. Then again, you could have written a great script, had no money, and therefore you’re masterpiece looks like shit. Or, you could have had money, a great script, but decided to make it with your friends, leaving us to watch your friends break character or look at the camera. But maybe you have all the necessary parts, it’s a great script, good solid cast, you’ve got all the equipment you need, but you forgot one thing. You’re show has to be online for us to watch it, not behind some curtain, or on iTunes.
So, when you don’t see your name on that list, figure out which one of these is the reason you didn’t get nominated, then fix it, and try again next year. We’re not going anywhere.
P.S. If you did get nominated, congratulations, keep making great content and i’ll see you on the other side.
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” — William Churchill