I hope this post isn't too premature, but fairly soon, Maggie & I are going to release our first official video and Part I of II in our new series on the Bill of Rights, through our new company; CitizenA Multimedia Production.
This video has been made possible through the generosity of the folks at the Moving Picture Institute, of which I'd like to especially thank Thor Halvorssen and Rob Pfaltzgraf for helping me embark on this new phase of my career. They've both been an immense help to me and I'm very grateful for that.
Because of the MPI backing, we will be posting the full video online and distributing through as many venues as will have us - but it will also be available for sale on our website (or no a distribution site such as iTunes once we decide for sure which route to take) for $2.00, so I honestly hope everyone who watches and likes what we're doing will help contribute to the creation of more of this kind of media. That's about half the cost of a latte, so... Not so bad, right?
I should stress that we will need the support though.
We're setting out on this brand new venture well prepared. Maggie and I are an incredibly complementary team and of course we are committed to making this work, but like any business, we need an income to keep it going. I know this may seem like kind of an obvious point - but unfortunately, so much of online media goes unsupported and the future is far from certain in terms of how new media production is going to be funded. No one has come up with a truly excellent model for supporting online media, but by offering a low-cost, high quality product, we hope that we can entice you to keep us going by actually buying each new release.
Now... Our company is primarily geared towards producing educational multimedia, specifically for young teens & high school aged students being educated at home. If you're a parent or a student outside the government-run school system, we are here to serve you.
Historically, home schoolers have not had nearly enough resources and learning aids in part because no one has been supplying that market effectively and also because those who do create this kind of media content tend to go after the big government money in public schools. So we feel that this is a market that needs to be explored, not only because the quality of most educational media is currently so poor, but also because the specific topics that we want to offer first - like US history, philosophy, civics & economics - are all in dire need in most school settings right now. We believe we can help parents, teachers & tutors by producing entertaining, top-quality media that invites young students to embark on their own studies of these ideas by making the subjects exciting and interesting.
Eventually we will be able to expand in other ways and into covering more and more subject areas, but this is where we're going to start.
As always, I welcome comments and suggestions, and I'd love to hear other people's ideas on videos they'd like to see created. Of course I'm still working freelance as a composer & media producer, and I will continue to blog and write articles. Maybe I'll even get a few more of them published, who knows! So until this venture gets as big as Maggie & I really hope it's going to be, I'll always be available for hire to score your film or produce media for your organization... Definitely keep me posted on those projects!
That said... I hope you come back to check out the full Bill of Rights video and I really hope you like it enough to send us a couple bucks and help fund the next one... And the next one... And the next one...
The power of the internet is amazing, and getting videos like this made just 10 years ago or so would have been extremely difficult, and finding distribution would have been impossible... However, all this amazing technology is a double-edged sword. Mass distribution means that page hits and video views are absolutely crucial to this material being supported - so please, send our work to your friends as it comes out, introduce us to everyone you know and encourage them to actually buy our videos as well so that we can keep making media that makes a difference in young lives.
So... Go check out our new site (which is still in the early stages of development), register and post in our forum and stay tuned for the full Bill of Rights video, discussing the philosophy & history of the document, and then get ready for it's sister; Part II, which will introduce students the purpose of each of the 10 amendments.
Thanks everyone, and I hope you like what you see!
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