Pay-for-view: with a difference
p2pnet.net Feature:- A friend of mine is a bit of a clown. Actually, he’s a professional clown and he earns significantly more than I do : )
I was talking to him the other day about his life as a clown and about the time he spent as a street performer. This is what he told me.
"It was great", he said "So much fun. I’d start off throwing some swords up in the air. That would get people’s attention and a small crowd would start to gather. Then I’d crank up my stereo and move on to the fire sticks, throwing them right up into the air and catching them, all in time with the beat. More people would come over to check out the show."
"Would you get lots of people?" I asked him.
"Some days it would be hard and the performance can be really tiring, especially if I was using the uni-cycle and chainsaw. I really needed a big crowd to make it worth while, maybe a hundred people. Having kids in the area was always great because they’d drag their parents over and often there would be a few more adults tagging along with the family. If I managed to get one person in a group to come over then all their friends would come too."
"And you’d just get people walking up?"
"Yeah, but I’d have to shout out to people walking past, do something to make them curious. Then I’d appeal to the crowd. ‘I can’t start the show unless there are more people here, it’s no fun for anybody. I also need some volunteers for the show so if you don’t want to get picked, remember…there’s safety in numbers! You sir, you look nervous about me throwing flaming torches over your head. Grab that nice couple walking past!’ Then I’d do my main acts, like jumping over people on the uni-cycle or juggling torches on my BMX".
I asked about collecting the money. "So how did you get these people to hand over their cash? What did they give? 5c coins?"
"Oh no, I’d be getting five and ten dollar notes and stacks of gold coins (Australian $1 and $2). I did have to appeal to people, constantly. I’d just say that this is what I do for a living, so if people enjoyed the show they should pay for it. Obviously people paid what they thought it was worth and some people would walk away without paying anything".
"Is that all?" I asked.
"No. I’d only perform at a few places, but I did it regularly so people got to know me. People hang out at the same places on the weekends and after work so I’d get people coming back again and again. That’s the trick, getting people to recognise you and I’d work with it. I’d say that if I didn’t get enough money this time then I would have to go somewhere else. People coughed up and you could see the dirty looks the payers gave to the freeloaders".
"So how much did you consider ‘enough’?"
"$2000 for a weekend was a good pull. That’s doing four twenty minute shows per day for two days though, and I’d be completely exhausted by the end of it".
At this point I decided ask this street-performing veteran of eight years about an idea that was starting to form in my head:
"Using your strategies, if I was to make a film series, put it out on the net one episode at a time and people have to give me money before they can see the next one, do you think it would work?"
"Hell yeah", he answered.
And there we have it: the business plan for a producer who can think outside the square.
Work out how much you need to earn per episode, release the first one and state how the next part of the story will be only be released when the set donation amount has been met. Put this statement where the copyright notice would usually be in the opening credits. The more people who download your show the better – more viewers means more people who can give you money.
Use BitTorrent, ED2K and Gnutella. Send DVD copies to TV stations and let them air the show for everybody. Check out other internet based series: "Red vs. Blue" has been going strong for more than a year now. "The Scene" gets more than X downloads through its own web site and countless more transfers occur over the p2p networks.
This production strategy has kept artists in work for hundreds of years and has only been forgotten by producers in the last few decades. Can it still work?
Hell yeah.
(My clown friend used his personal web site to display videos and pictures of his performances. It landed him a contract with an international circus performer’s agency and he now gets flown around the world to perform at corporate functions and arts festivals. He now earns US$400 per hour.)
Alex H, p2pnet – Sydney, Australia
[Alex is an operations manager for an ATM (automatic teller machine) supplier and he specialises in infrastructure development and maintenance, and logistics. He’s also an[other] active member of the Shareaza community.]
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August 11th, 2005 at 7:16 am
I dunno, it sounds much too logical for the cartel’s to get their heads around.
Then again, that’s probably a good thing.