Darkwater

I've said before that when he addresses people who "know this business" it's based on mis-quote he made about me years ago and still addresses me that way to this day. He often refers to things that I never said in the first place. He'll never say it outright, everything he says is in a code of metaphors. The thing I thought funny about that quote is... I am in that same arena more or less (the business side of the entertainment industry). I'll criticize them as a fan for not producing anything, and I'll criticize them as professional for horribly amateurish behavior.

If you may recall, I mentioned that Kevin puts his responses on his blogs in a passive-aggressive format. Today, he posted this on his blog; Translation: "You're all a bunch of haters and I'm actually working in the medium that you hate on so much. You guys have never worked in this business so your opinion doesn't count, and even if we don't meet our goals, we at least are working in this business and tried"

From what I've heard (and I could be wrong on this one), they were never in the "negotiations" stage, possibly just at the "pitch" stage.

July 17th, 2002

By using their own logic, by the truckload Back in the development of Shadow Chronicles, it was announced as a series in 2004. Then, it was a movie in 2005. The reason? QUALITY. They were going to pack an entire series worth of quality animation and storytelling into one movie. Then it got delayed to 2006. The reason? To make it a better movie, of course! THEN it got delayed until 2007, the reason being that no distributor could recognize its quality (ie, Harmony Gold wanted more money than what they were being offered). On my old blog, I did calculation of the fans expectations of Shadow Chronicles. The movie about 1/3 of the length of what you'd get from a 13 episode series, thus you're expecting it be 3 times better. Multiply that by twice as long as it took to come out as promised, and that's a movie SIX TIMES better than the series that was expected. And, it's happening all over again. Tommy says the "new animated project" is going to be out in 2011 (in July), then fans were told "oh, we meant the animation is going to be finished by 2011," buying them another six months, THEN, we're told early 2012, buying them at least until March (depending on your definition of early), buying another three months. The reason? QUALITY. I'm serious. They said it was so that they could "make it better" Of course, you're going to want to wait for a big announcement at Comic-Con / Anime Expo, so it'll be held back another few months. They do this song and dance, 90% of the customers end up being someone who watched Robotech as a kid, saw it at Best Buy, and have never been on Robotech.com or at attended a con panel. Then they tout how big the franchise is (while pointing out only three people work on it at HG). If it's so big, then why aren't they pumping out series after series after series? The official RT.com explanation is that they need a network to pick it up, which you don't. Clone Wars was all self-produced, then sold to a network, as was Wolverine and the X-Men (coincidentally produced by Jason Netter, who produced RSC). For a franchise SO big, of such high QUALITY, it really makes you wonder...

What you don't get is that every delay means QUALITY. Every delay means that they're only working HARDER on the product. That's why Shadow Chronicles, delayed by three years, was an EPIC MASTERPIECE with unparalleled hybrid 2d/3d animation. I didn't see any 3d animation in Flashback. That's because they didn't have "computers" back then with a top Korean in-between animation studio behind the helm. And Shadow Chronicles had an EPIC story that packed so much punch that it was worth not getting an entire series because it was just so MIND BLOWING. Shadow Rising has been in development for FIVE YEARS!!!! With at least another two years before it gets released, that's SEVEN YEARS worth of epic-ness that will likely KILL people who watch it while and fry your DVD players where they stand. I just hope your XBox is still under warranty and your health insurance is up to date. And then I'll have my new SHADOW MASTERPIECE that everyone will think is a repaint of an old masterpiece... until I point out that it has a NEW GUN CANNON on the top!

Don't you worry, son. Answers to all of your questions will be found in passive-aggressive posts on: robotechnews.blogspot.com and bankofkev.blogspot.com Remember, you don't mess with people who "know this business" and get away with it without having posts on blogs directed directly at you. Nevermind that they are so ambiguous that not even the people who they're directed at are able to understand what's being talked about..

I'm sorry to tell you guys, but you all got PWNED by Kevin! On the "unofficial" Robotech news blog that he runs, first he posted this: YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT UPDATE FOR THE WEEK So now you'll see how right he is about the toys being stuck in China. Actually, he only posts the article with NO context, so you're all PWNED anyway!!! Then he posted on how great Anime Expo's attendance was: ANIME EXPO ATTENDANCE REACHES 47,000 See??? Conventions DO work as successful marketing tools. I mean, I went to the Power Rangers panel, which easily has three times the attendance of the Robotech panel, and I can tell you those actors from 15 years ago are making MILLIONS from the autographs they sold at their booth this weekend. And then he disses all y'all when top of the page says this: Then he links to this article which starts off by saying: See?? It's a full series according to an article hand-selected by an official Robotech employee on an unofficial Robotech blog. YOU'RE ALL PWNED!!!!!

They banned me for posting drunk LOL. Actually, they were pissed after Tom left HG, I posted "Good luck, Tom! I hope your new employers aren't petty (not that your last employers were)." But me posting drunk was the excuse. They banned Jason after Tom was let go, and they blamed it on a statement he said (if I remember correctly) where he complained about the DVD art and said "Who designs that stuff, anyway?" They took that as personal because a) Tommy designed it and B) Jason was supposed to know that, so therefore - Jason made a direct attack on Tommy. And then afterwards a bunch of people that Tom, Jason and I hang out with who were mods had their mod privileges quietly taken away. At what point does moderating the forum about your product become more important that actually producing new product? Back in the day, it was Steve who laid down all of the bannings, because he was "web guy," but I heard in reality it was Tommy more or less acting as Steve the whole time, and that Steve really did not give one poop about who said what. Is that true? I don't know. Believable? Yes. That would explain the 5 year development of a 90 minute animated movie that was mediocre at best.

I actually remember hearing Tommy talk on one of Chris Meadows's old podcasts about how comics do need to follow suit with the rest of print and find a way into the digital age. So, he is aware of the concept. Who knows if the idea's been pitched to HG? If it has, perhaps they don't want to pay for it (Tommy can only give away so many MPC's for free fan work).

Actually if it were more than one, then it would seem more likely that both productions used the same SFX package. It would be a lot of work to obtain a split track audio master of Ghostbusters to steal only two sound effects.

Sound effects are usually sold in a collection of audio files/CD/tapes that are either licensed or sold on a one time buyout basis, and they're usually sold to multiple production companies. When they don't have the time/money to have someone go out and create these effects from scratch, they usually just get it from a library. Chances are Gunbuster and Ghostbusters just used the same effect from the same library.

I've always wondered - is it pride that's keeping the three companies from doing so? Thinking about the logic behind it: Option A) All or any of the parties come to a compromise, they make money, just not as much as they want. Option B) All or any of the parties hold out to get a better share, they make no money either way. Why would you settle for option B when the end price is zero??? If you're "waiting" for a bigger payout, the product will get diluted in the market and be worth less by the time it the payout would (theoretically) happen.

That makes sense. Had it been a fully-running franchise, it would have been neat to have comics, games, etc. continue the saga with original characters while the movies focus on their own thing. That's kind of what the new Star Trek movie spin-off comics did. They were more or less fanboy porn while working around the movie, which was made for a broader audience.

After hearing about this poo for years, here's what I took away from it. -If it's something that takes place within the Macross Saga (Battlecry, various Wildstorm comics, etc), it's considered a "spin-off" and they could use the original Macross designs. -It it's something that takes place AFTER the Macross Saga (Sentinels, Shadow Chronicles), they couldn't use the designs, thus the alteration. I had also heard that much of what HG could and couldn't do was open to interpretation, but HG legal would err on the side of caution. Thus, no mention of any proper name that appeared in Macross (like Zenradi) or any proper name that sounded like one of the ones in Macross. Lisa=Misa, Minmei = Minmay, Max = Maximillion, so they're all a no-go. I once was at a small meetup of fans at a comic shop with Tommy in 2003 an he mentioned they weren't going to be allowed to use Macross designs in the "new upcoming series." I was like "what about Rick Hunter?" and he responded "It won't look like Rick Hunter." Tommy has since taken all of that back in public statements, saying that they have the license to use all of the characters, and anything you hear differently in fanboy speculation.

Yeah, they'd probably never go to court, but they probably have enough lawyers on staff to send letters to YouTube, Vimeo, and anywhere else you could post it. If you hosted it yourself, they'd probably send a letter to your server host. If you had your own server, they'd probably be SOL.

The truth of the matter is that as the copyright holders, they CAN pick and choose which derivative works they can go after. There would be no legal claim to say "you shut down my fan project, but not theirs!" It might make them look like asses, but hey, that's their legal right.

Under the law, if you can prove its sold as a parody which provides a commentary on an existing subject, that's fine. The key is "commentary," which falls under Fair Use. Just recently, there have been a slew of porn movies with titles like "Batman XXX: A Porn Parody" and "This Ain't Star Trek XXX" which cover their ass pretty well (no pun intended) in the titles alone. Most fan fictions don't fall under the category of parody, rather they fall under "derivative," which doesn't provide any commentary, and which HG legally as the ability to put a stop to. So basically, what I'm saying is- if you want to make a fan film, make it a porno And yes, I "know this business"

It is a fine line. It's like, legally, the copyright holders do have every right to stop fan fiction, yet some, like Star Trek and Star Wars, actually encourage it. I think its because in the cases of those two franchises, it's pretty clear what's official and what is not. I think HG is a little edgy about fan fiction, because they honestly fear people mistaking it for their product. Case in point: I made a Shadow Chronicles trailer directly after recording some animatics at a convention back in 2005. I got a lot of compliments on it, and it started a bunch of "Look what Darkwater can do but HG can't!" posts on Robotech.com Tommy sent me a pretty condescending email, and after reading it 15 times I was able to understand what he was saying (he can't give a direct answer even when he wants, apparently). He basically said my trailer could get confused for something official, and "don't overestimate the intelligence of some people on the internet." even though there was a disclaimer at the beginning and end of it. He also got mad at me when I posted a fan poster for Shadow Chronicles in RDF-HQ's Fan Works forum, saying it was a "very bad thing" for them. So, basically, in HG's case, they're worried that you, as a fan, won't be able to tell the difference between something that's a fan work and something that's real. They're keeping YOUR best interests at mind.

I'm actually acquainted with the producer of the UN PSA and talked to her about. She's basically a supporter of the peace-keeping efforts behind the UN and wanted to support that end, yet it didn't help that at the time the UN wasn't wasn't supporting the war in Iraq, so it became political. She worked in sales at HG at the time and basically said "Can I produce this?" and HG was like "sure!" When all of the politics erupted, she was all like "wtf???" (I'm paraphrasing here) because she didn't mean for it be political in that sense. I might have gotten that thing on TV, I worked for Fox at the time got it on a satellite feed to the local affiliate stations in each individual city. Whether or not they decided to air it, I have no clue. But if it did, then I'm responsible for getting Robotech on the US Airwaves And actually, it wasn't on the DVD or Blu-Ray, and since I was sent a DVD screener from HG, I've got one of the few "official" DVD copies of that things BOOO-YAAAAHHH But yeah, that's what happened. And it acted as a "teaser" to RSC, albeit an odd form of a teaser. I think Tommy loved it, because it was something he could actually show at the cons. Now click on the image and get hypnotized.

He actually has, on a number of occasions, compared the success of of RSC with the "failure" of Superman Returns (ironically, a WB property). If anyone remembers, it had a huge marketing blitz and more or less broke even in the box office. (while ignoring the profits from television, merchandising, international b.o. and home video rights). Often time he refers to being more successful than their "competitors" in 2006, and while it goes over the heads of 99% of the people who read it, that's what he's referring to. So yes, Kevin is comparing Harmony Gold to Warner Bros. The funniest part is, I've heard that on nearly every occasion from "persons in the biz." All three of the occasions.

If you guys care, another interesting look into the mind of McKeever. I apologize for the assload of quotes, but I found this too interesting. On his last blog post: http://bankofkev.blogspot.com/2011/04/box-office-down-20-so-far-this-year.html A 20% loss in revenue and we are already 3 months into the year. This 20% loss in revenue is despite numerous large marketing campaigns by several studios for movies that have fizzled. If this keeps up it will cause a severe crimp in revenue (theatrical runs are 15% of a films total business) for the studios. Now would be a good time for the people who "know this business" to explain how a 20% loss in revenue and losing 18 million subscribers is somehow a good thing. Remember when I said a few weeks ago something to the effect of "you attack Robotech's marketing, you're attacking Kevin personally?" Looks at his first comment: Interesting note, the article had no mention that marketing was the reason why box offices were down 20%. None, at all. Nor did it mention that studios were spending a ton of money this marketing. Let's look at the next comment: Now, remember when I said that him referring to people who "know this business," he's referring to me? I would love to take the flamebait and actually oblige him, but the article he's linked to has already explained it for me. So to paraphrase, it's too early to tell as we're only 25% into the year. And what does Kevin mean by losing "18 Million subscribers?" I can't tell you, because again, there no reference to that (or even what they're a subscriber to) anywhere. Subscribers to cell phones? Netflix? Cable? I don't know. But this all goes back to what I was talking about earlier, he wants to justify his method of marketing, which I guess is to convey the message that NO marketing is the BEST marketing. Now, I love watching people make weird rationalizations and then break them down (hence the entertainment factor I get from Bendo), but I'm fully aware of my own problems. ps mods - this is actually Darkwater, even though I recently posted as Darkwater1. I actually forgot one password, but remembered the other.

They??? I WISH I had a staff on this one. It's all me, bro. And the reason I do that's a recurring theme is because A) it's funny (somtimes), B) there's not a lot of news right now C) it makes for a better read if people think HG would actually shut someone down, even though they probably won't.

381034[/snapback] More like a slow news month. I can only pull so many contradictory HG quotes for a while until it gets old.

But you'll always be "someone" to me.