There's no such thing as wasted effort

Here I sit, doing programming for a Roku channel that no one ever watches, working on a web page that no one ever views, and writing a blog that no one ever reads.  Why do I do it?  In the forlorn hope that some day, someone will come along and see what I am doing is worthwhile.  Well, in actuality, just one person wouldn't cut it: I'm hoping for a big audience... some day.

But worrying about whether I'll ever get an audience is a trivial matter.  There's work to be done: I need to come up with new and reasonably original material.  I'll worry about an audience when people start to show up.  And in the meantime, when they do show up, they'll have plenty to look at.

As for getting original content on my Roku channel-  the whole process of putting something together is interesting.  One thing I have found in doing videos is that any music you pick to go with a video is going to be the right music.  People will make a mental connection with the music they hear and what is on the screen.

If you have a scene with a gun fight, for instance, you can use fast, erratic music, and people will say that it fits.  You can use peaceful, quiet classical music, and people will make the connection that you are making an ironic commentary on what is happening onscreen.  Try it yourself: pick any scene from any movie at random.  Play that scene with the sound off.  Then pick any piece of music you find and play it.  It will fit, because the human mind likes to make connections, to make sense out of the world before it.

I've also found that sometimes a film will write itself.  What I mean by that is this: in my film "Why Are They Here, And What Do They Want?," I used footage from the Gemini space program for a lot of my special effects.  I felt I had to justify that, so I had a line to the effect that "This was a secret off-budget mission, so we had to use old equipment."  But I realized I also had a line in the film, "We had enough parts for several rockets..."  In other words, the part about secrecy was not relevant-- they had several Gemini rocket parts, so they went with that design.

I remember telling a friend of mine about my idea for a film that was 100% stock footage/public domain footage.  "You need to have actors, no matter what," she said.  Not if you use the low budget filmmaker's best friend: a narrator.  I did have two other roles in the film: a teacher who was "totally wasted," and some aliens.  Both roles were done by me, using voice altering software.

On the subject of public domain films, a lot of people don't realized that everything filmed by the government is public domain; none of it is copyrighted.This ncludes all of the footage NASA ever shot, as well as all the cvlassroom films they did.  This fact came upp rather amusingly a few years ago.

Someone had claimed to have film of an alien autopsy.  The footage was, of course, s00per sekrit footage by the army. The people that had acquired the footage were selling the rights to air it.

Fox news knew about how government films are not copyrighted.  They showed the film.  They had contracted the people who 'released' i, saying, in effect, If your film is actually a government film of an alien autopsy, it is in the public domain, as it has never been copyrighted,  We are free to useit as we see fir.  If, however, it is your film and you copyrighted it, you can make a claim against us  But you will have to admit that the film is your product, and not a genuine classified film.

What could the people who faked up that film do?  Absolutely nothing.  They'd painted themselves into a corner.

This is a brief post to get this blog started.

I started the Science Fiction and Beer Channel precisely because no one was addressing my interests on the many Roku channels out there.  Sure, there were channels with science fiction movies, ans well as channels about science fiction fandom.  But no channels addressed home brewing or beer in general.  And it's a sure bet that no channels covered the symbiotic relationship between science fiction fandom and beer.

Go to any science fiction, and go to the hospitality suite, or to any room party.  You will find bath tubs full of canned beer.  Some of the better fan parties have home brew, served by the glass, or on tap.  Beer is the fuel on which science fiction fandom is powered.

Sure, you will also see lots of snacks, soda and junk food at conventions, but the thing that keeps things going is beer.  Ir doesn't matter that the beer is canned beer, and is usually the cheapest beer available.  It's yellow, it's fizzy, it's wet, and it's got alcohol.  That's all that matters.

As a home brewer, I'd like to see better quality beer at conventions.  But one thing that has always been true about science fiction fans: we're all notorious penny pinchers when we want to be.  Our clothing, our vehicles, our food, and our beer is bought on a tight budget.

When we spend money, it's on the important things: merchandise from the dealer's room.  Fans who buy $5 pants at thrift stores think nothing about paying ten times that for an old SF pulp magazine or costume parts.  We have our priorities.

When enough fans realize that brewing your own beer is much cheaper than buying the stuff, they will flock to that hobby.  And the Science Fiction and Beer Channel will be there to address their needs.

I started the Science Fiction and Beer Channel as a free Roku channel: 10 videos, and that's that.  When I got the whole instant tv channel thing figured out, I decided to pay the princely sum of $5 a month.  I can add as many videos as I want.  When there is enough interest, I will go to the next tier: commecialization.  Yes, the channel will eventually have commercials.  This will mean revenue, and revenue means bemore original programming.

For now, this is a one man show.  I pull all nighters working on the channel for several days straight, before crshing and waking up at 3 PM-- to start work on the channel again.

But who knows?  When the channel becomes commercialized, I might have enough extra to hire a few people, and actually get a good night's sleep.  The thing is, I'm so used to being tired all the time that I don't think I'd know what having enough sleep felt like.

You can find out more about my channel by going to http://scifibeer.com .