Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Small Victories and Changes in the Plan


So yeah.... I told you I would be back sooner than my previous 'every-three-months' schedule.

If you are following "It's a Tasha Thing", you already heard about our legal run in with DreamHost, the ISP in California who act as a virtual harbor for Intellectual Property thieves around the world.

Including a Scam Site running at www.the-realdoll.com that is attempting to dupe unsuspecting folks into meeting Polymerisians that don't exist. The scam included the use of photos of our own Tasha James.


If you think the look is fierce, you should have heard the language and seen the gesturing that ensued from her when she found out.

If you clicked over to DreamHost's web site, that term "Virtual Private Server" doesn't really mean 'Private' if you have the cheese to get a lawyer involved. We don't really have the cheese, but we do have a collective backbone and needed to send the message that Maddy G won't be fucked with.

So, we sent the budget for "Episode 105" of Tasha's show to the legal team and we shut down the-realdoll.com for mass Copyright infringement. Of course, the celebration only lasted 3 days, when the site came back online but without photos of Tasha.

It's a small victory, but we'll take it. The message was delivered. 


In a strange twist of irony after my last blog post about Youtube, we've had a change in plans regarding our strategy there.

It turns out, the advertising revenue coming in from Youtube has exceeded the ad revenue from MaddyGTV so we've decided to adjust our course.

MaddyGTV has grown into a pretty popular destination for our friends and fans, which we're all very proud of. We're hovering around 500k viewers a month. The downside of this, is the bandwidth required to serve video to that size of an audience is expensive. Big, fast servers being monitored 24/7 to push almost 10TB of data every month. It's not exactly cheap.

The rub here, is that our programming is a double edged sword. It's weird enough to draw a sizable audience, but too weird to attract the advertisers we need to run it and continue to bring in new programming. We've struggled with finding and keeping sponsors since we launched the site almost 2 years ago now. And in that time, the channel has yet to break even, yet alone turn any kind of profit.

So, there's been some changes over at MaddyGTV. A good portion of the programming has been removed, leaving only our most popular shows. You'll also notice that we're leaning on Youtube more to serve the video files. This is both to reduce the amount of bandwidth being served and also to get our GoogleAds in front of more eye balls.


This thing we do, being in the business of making entertainment, is liquid and always moving. Just a few years ago, it was accepted that entertainment, in the form of movies, television and music, was something that people should pay for. Now it's understood by everyone, that entertainment is (or should be) free, and everyone's forgotten that shows don't make themselves, it requires the work of a dedicated cast, crew and a host of writers, technicians and music artists to bring these things to life. All these people have homes, and kids and bills to pay too.

I'm not bitching, I'm only explaining the facts of it. For us to be able to continue to produce programming and offer it for free, we have to pay attention to where the money is actually coming from. Maddy often says, "Sometimes you have to put on a short skirt and do a little dance for the sponsors."

Consider these changes our "Little Dance".

And speaking of dancing... if you still haven't installed the free Virtua-Girl software, you are missing Katie De Sys doing her little dance on your desktop.


She a long, slow drink of hot chocolate and for $2 she'll spend 30 minutes taking all her clothes off. And it's WORTH it. Again, sexy as hell, but NOT safe for work. 



Enjoy the show. I'll be back with more news soon.

- Mark

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Big Update & Explanations

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So yeah… sorry. It’s been an extremely hectic and often times hand-wringing several few months. I haven’t updated the production blog since March, and it’s now June.

Again… sorry. Every time I drop in here to write a blog, I promise to blog more often, and then I get distracted with the day-to-day stuff that my job involves and I just never quite get to it.

Anyway… as I posted a week or so ago on my Facebook, it’s not that there hasn’t been anything going on, but more like soooo much going on, that I haven’t had time to blog about. I’ll try and remedy that with some ‘catch up’.

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What the F*ck Has Been Going on
with the MaddyGTV Youtube
Channel?

If you’ve noticed some of our shows disappearing, then re-appearing without warning, broken embed links and other annoyances happening around our Youtube Channel, it’s because we’ve been having an on-going struggle with the Intellectual Property Cops at Youtube / Google.

Now, to be clear, we’ve been producing movies and television professionally for the last 12 years. We’ve never stolen anything, including music, special effects, stock footage, etc.  It’s all been properly and legally cleared for our distributors thus far.

But, as far as copyright law goes and what’s required to release a DVD into the market, film makers need to have permission from the artists that contribute music to the movie / tv show. As a company, our music soundtracks are the thing of indie film legend. We take considerable pride in acquiring the very best music, and we’ve even gotten award nominations for our song selections.

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However, a lot of the permission slips we have, are expressed thru e-mail from the bands and artists, giving us expressed permission to use their song in whatever project. This is legally sufficient for releasing DVDs and Blu-Rays.

But when it comes to advertiser supported free broadcasts (like what we offer on Youtube) it’s a different thing. Because now, instead of dealing with just one distributor, we’re dealing with a very long list of multi-national companies and brand names each with a legal team of their own, and so the rules of what’s required to clear the music on a show is much more strict. None of these companies want to be caught promoting a show with stolen music.

So, each show on our Youtube Channel has to have a license explicitly providing “commercial rights” to every song in every show that has an ad running next to it.

After 12 years, this is a more difficult task than it would seem.

Many of the bands we’ve used no longer exist have contact information that long-ago has been changed.

And still others, have gone on to become pretty successful recording artists and are now represented by Music Publishing houses like RumbleFish who we now have to deal with. This only seems like an easy solution, but again… after 12 years, we have dozens and dozens of songs in shows like “Inside Marie’s Play Place” and “Regarding Jenny” and the simple truth is we can’t afford to go back and buy licenses for every song.

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If a show can’t be verified by Youtube, that video gets pulled down from our Channel. This isn’t done by Youtube, but by us, out of courtesy to the advertisers who are promoting the shows on other channels.

We do have some proper licenses and we’ve been able to get in touch with some of the artists and get the proper paperwork from them. (Thanks Phil Dutra!)

In these cases, once the paper work is verified at Youtube, advertising on the video is re-approved, and the show goes back ‘live’ and all your links and embeds work again.

Our Youtube Channel is an easy way to share our shows with your friends, and for us to link them on our social networks, etc. But the shows are always available at MaddyGTV.com 24/7 on demand.

Where the F*ck Is The New Episode of
It’s A Tasha Thing”? And how’s Jenny doin’?

Episodes 103 and 104 are more or less shot. I say ‘more or less’, because I’ve learned in my own 12 years of making movies and tv shows, that a project is never fully ‘done’ until it’s rolling out onto the public. But they are both shot.

In 3D, no less and that’s honestly been the biggest hold up. The post production process for 3D is time consuming, and we also have the recently added issues of Music Licensing. Some of the songs already selected have had to be substituted with other music to get cleared by the sponsors, and that’s required some re-editing of sequences, etc. We’re all anxiously waiting to see it too, believe me.

It’s in the strange but capable hands of Director Paul Gorman, who directed both 103 and 104. Gorman’s last film was “Blood of Ohma 3D” that’s been tearing up the 3D World this year. The 3D Spectacle alone is going to be worth the wait.

Bust out your ‘Green / Magenta’ 3D Glasses and take a look. If you don’t have any of the Maddy G 3D DVD’s, the same glasses are found in most Hollywood 3D DVD’s too. If you still don’t have a pair, go on Ebay or Amazon and buy a pair. It’s going to be worth it when the episodes come out.

Plus, the episodes are hilarious.

tasha-3d-01Grandma returns to give Tasha another bit of advice.

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Tasha has a ‘Coyote Ugly’ moment.

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Tasha and Scott having a “Wrong Place / Wrong Time” moment.

And of course, if you are among those who skip right to the “Uncensored Version”, you won’t be disappointed either.

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The ‘Green / Magenta’ glasses give you a ‘reach out and touch ‘em’ sense, but if you have a 3DTV, Tasha’s tits will be in your living room. No kidding.

Lots of stuff going on over at the “It’s A Tasha Thing” web site including new photo sets, and she’s been blogging her ‘ghetto booty’ off lately too.

And… how’s Jenny doin’?

These days, it’s best to direct these questions to Jenny. Not that there’s anything wrong with her… she’s fine. There’s been a bit of drama recently surrounding her web site and her show. She’s dealing with that, mostly with obscene gestures and words you’ve never heard come out of a chick her size before.

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On top of that, her show has been plagued with the same Music Licensing issues as the others, which has caused us to lose some of the shows sponsors. But… we’re moving forward, albeit slower than any of us hoped. Jenny just tends to be more vocal about it than the rest of us. In the meantime, she’s kept herself busy with her roll on “It’s A Tasha Thing” and a couple other small projects she’s got going on.

In Other News…

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve launched GMD Backlot Auctions. GMD Films of course, is the ‘Production’ part of Maddy G Productions. These E-bay auctions are featuring some of the authentic screen worn costumes and props from our past projects.

Items currently for auction are the Life Size ‘Bigfoot’ Costume from “Blood of Ohma” and Angelina Leigh’s bra and panties from the same movie. Plus, the dress Helena Bonham Carter wore in Tim Burton’s “Big Fish” and there’s a ton more stuff coming up.

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Marie Madison fans probably recognize that dress. Maddy wore it in the now infamous “Smoke Junkies” series as well as when she played hooker “Victoria” in “House of Bedlam”. It’s in line for auction as well as her Business Suit from “Virgin Pockets”.

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And speaking of Marie Madison… very soon we’ll be making the announcement about her next feature film, which begins shooting this summer. Without giving away too much, I can tell you it’s a blood and guts thriller written by Adam Moore, who wrote “Blood of Ohma” and it will co-star Marie Madison returning along side Larry Laverty.

And Last, but NOT Least…

Say hello to Lea Tyrone. She’s one of the dozens of hot dancing ladies being delivered to my desktop every 10 minutes courtesy of our newest MaddyGTV Sponsor Virtua-Girl.

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Download the free Application and you’re desktop will be graced with sexy strippers all doing a little dance in turn. It’s free, so there’s no nudity, but it’s still not safe for most work places. But damn… it’s entertaining. And if you want to buy a ‘private dance’ with any of these ladies that appear, it costs around $1 for 30 minutes. Try getting THAT in a strip club.

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MaddyGTV delivers the very best, I’m tellin’ ya.

I’m going to stop here, but there will be more to come. I promise this time. No, really.

Seriously.

We should have some film festival news, more news on the upcoming ‘summer movie’, a few more auctions and maybe even a couple of new things altogether. I wasn’t joking when I said we have a lot going on here these days.

- Mark