How old is The Film Experience?
The Film Experience is so old that when we started Angelina Jolie was more famous for bloody antics (necklace vials, t-shirt scrawls) than for her humanitarian efforts. She had not yet collected or birthed any of those adorable children!
TFE is a dinosaur of the internet, yes, but it's a cute plant-eating one that never did anyone but Hilary Swank any harm! This dinosaur would like to live to see the next stage of human, animal, actress, mutant and movie evolution. You can prevent the meteor of webxtinction by donating just a couple dollars a month. It's like universal health care (TALKING ABOUT MOVIES SAVES LIVES!). If everyone reading pitched in a teensy bit nobody would notice the money and everyone would be healthier and happier and this service they need (heh) would always be available to them.
I promise to shut up about this real soon and thank you if you've already donated. You are the few, the proud, the sexy, the patron saints of The Film Experience community. (Some international readers are having trouble donating and some are not. I'll look into this.)
If you can spare the price of a cup of coffee (or more if things are good for you financially) once a month, please to consider it. If you're not comfortable with a recurring cup of coffee or tub of popcorn, why not a one time donation. It is Nathaniel's birthday after all... (Yes, I'm shameless. It's 2011) and I have boring needs like: computer maintenance. Example: I have to take both my desktop and my laptop in for maintenance / memory boosting next week.
Those spinny wheels on both Macs are just killing me and the Tek Serve people think my hard drive is going wobbly. Slowing me down soooo much.
BUT WHY DOES TFE NEED MONEY? All websites are free.
Nathaniel has been slow to monetize and he accepts full blame for that. He is working on solutions like a site store but he's slow about that because of the writing and the movie watching. TFE does not have corporate backing and Nathaniel does not have a trust fund. He almost had a book deal at one point but it fell apart. Simply put, ad revenues and freelance jobs pay some bills but not enough of them.
Basic expenses in running a site:
- regular costs (hosting, various web services, computer maintenance, dvd services, movie tickets when we aren't invited)
- This is the elephant in the room: TIME. It takes hours and hours to churn this stuff out daily making a regular 40-70 hour a week job an impossibility at our current rate of publishing. If Nathaniel goes back to that -- if they'll even have him (it's tough out there, as you may know) the site will have to vanish or be a weekly thing again like it was 10 years ago.
Professor R*'s psychic powers tell him you are still doubtful about donating. But think of how much more we could do here!Dreams for the site that would require turning a profit:
- Travel -- would love to cover Cannes, Toronto, Sundance, etcetera.
- Web Series -- Nathaniel is speaking to a videographer friend about this -- he's filming a documentary that I'm in right now (not movie related) -- and a few promising ideas are brewing but we'd need some operating budget.
- Better Computer Equipment In General (software programs, classes, etcetera)
- Health Care & 401 K. Okay... let's not get greedy. That's a dream for the scifi future. We'd have to become a huge corporate behemoth site and that's probably not happening any time soon.
Q: Won't you keep blogging even if I don't donate?
A: Probably in some form, yeah. This site has always been a labor of love and, well, an OCD can't-shut-up thing. But frequent blogging -- The Film Experience as it currently exists -- will have to end this year or in 2012 if finances don't turn around this Oscar year. Man cannot live on blogging alone.