Even though this story is familiar with everyone who has been with us from the beginning, we've recently gotten some exposure at AMNY, or the L.A. Times, so I just wished to create this article, as they say, for the record, on what was my experience with On The Lot, and how KarmaCritic came to be.
Here goes:
I was one of the almost 16 thousand wide-eyed contestants from around the world who saw Spielberg's face on the screen in On The Lot's main page, telling us things would be really cool, and I went for it. I knew it was a reality contest, I knew it was from FOX. But somehow seeing Spielberg casted a "these are not the droids you're looking for" kind of spell on me, and I genuinely believed this would be a wonderful, legit experience.
It was, at first. I was able to get great feedback on my film, I met wonderful people, talented, really bright people. On the road to a reality tv show, FOX had stumbled, it seems by accident, upon the single greatest gathering of indie filmmaking talent EVER seen online.
And then it started hacking at it.
That was about February or so. There was a lot of tension, a lot of speculation about who would get "the call" and when. Its equal parts funny and sad to contemplate how many people stared at their phone those halcyon days, waiting for a voice on the line.. some intern in california who would validate their dreams, who would make all that effort and time worth it, who would validate their selves. Of course, this is one of those cases where the victim deserves part of the blame for placing such high hopes on.... a reality TV show from FOX? I mean... what were we -thinking-? But I digress. The truth, which leaked on the boards many times and was promptly stamped out like emotional whack-a-mole, was that FOX had -already- chosen the semifinalists BEFORE round 1 was even over. We know this now, because so many semifinalists have spoken and said they got their calls and made their round 2 "assignments" in early January. Way before the deadline for round 1 submissions of Feb 16th. Hold on to this thought, because I'll recall it again when I get to the part of the actual OTL episodes following the ill-fated premiere.
Things marched on, and moderation at thelot.com became increasingly draconian. Orwellian is another big word that gets dropped around all the time, odd not to be overused nor cliche in this particular case. If it wasn't such trivial matter (a silly TV show) I might even throw "fascist" to the pile. You see, its one thing to moderate to prevent foul language. Its understandable to moderate for copyright violations too, for example, if someone copies verbatim a news article. But to turn the word "youtube" into "BLEEP" automatically? To ban anyone who even displayed the least suspicion on the show's prospects, to continuously delete threads and blogs that questioned the widsom of Saint Burnett in the tiniest way? The irony is that at the same time, vote abuse and spam abuse on our precious baby films was rampant, and hardly fought at all by the Powers that Were. It wasn't long before the list of banned people read like a virtual Who's Who On The Lot.
We knew each other. After a certain period of coexistence, we learned how to see one another past the BS, and when we stopped trying to impress the world, we discovered a tight network of talented people; many movies got made and many partnerships started -despite- FOX's Big Brother ways.
By April 21st, things had gotten ridiculous. Stewie had been banned yet one more time, and so had another couple friends like Reincarnut, etc (irony note: when the show premiered, thelot.com featured Stewie's blog on their main page even though his account was still banned! Talk about one hand not knowing what the other does). When I asked the moderator what exactly was the official criteria for deleting threads and blogs left and right, she went legal on me, and quoted the Terms of Use that say, basically, that FOX reserves the right to delete anything and anyone for any reason. That did it. I started to code this place, KarmaCritic, right that moment. It was done by the weekend, because I worked like a banshee, sustained only by cheetos and faygo like geeks of lore always have. In our opening day, we had 20 or so of the best people from OTL, exiles most of them, but glad to feel the freedom in this place, and the ability to do anything we could do in thelot.com, plus a little more, minus the Big Brother aspect.
Every talented voice silenced from OTL became their loss and our gain. And that's how karmacritic.com became thelot.com's public enemy number 1. Even to this day, if anybody, no matter how established or respected, posts the words "karmacritic" over there... the words first turn automatically into "BLEEP". Within 5 minutes the post is deleted, within 10 minutes the user's account is banned, and in 15 minutes his whole IP is banned (so he wont make new accounts). Then all the posts that person EVER made, go byebye too. That has been my experience.
Things got surreal when Mr. Jeff King, Vicepresident of FOX's Branded Media got personally involved. Here is how it happened: someone (not me) posted in Wikipedia about karmacritic in the entry for ON THE LOT. At first it was a just a throwaway sentence, but as more people got banned, I guess they started venting a little bit over there, talking about how the "worldwide search" for the 50 semifinalists turned up 21 from Los Angeles, and 48 lived in the US, or how Canada had contributed 30% of the submissions and gotten 4% of the spots, etc etc. And of course, talking about how a bunch of exiles had left for KarmaCritic. Well, one day all of that was just gone. As you know, Wikipedia records the IP address of whoever edits it anonymously, so it was simple for me to track it to 20th Century Fox. I posted about it in my blog, and I guess the person saw it, and the next wikipedia revert was done using an account: "jeffkingla". Of course, if you google that, you'll land in the myspace account of Jeff King, and he says there, he's the VP of FOX's Branded Media. So thats when I knew they really had it for us.
Anyway, KarmaCritic has kept on going. Thanks to connections and friends of friends, we now have Jon Brown, the manager of STEVEN DE SOUZA and Tova Laiter, the producer of DIE HARD 3, EVITA, and others, to be judges for OUR OWN CONTEST.
Our Screenwriting development contest, SUBLIM, is not a typical contest where you just submit and forget about it until they call you. Round 1 is a one-page synopsis, a video pitch, and the first five pages of the script. Round 2 is a treatment, and the first 30 pages. Round 3 is the whole shebang and the prize is to get repped by Jon Brown and hopefully shopped around town by Tova Laiter.
Karmacritic represents a lot of things that are good about filmmaking. It wasn't just standing up to "the Man", as much as it was creating a place, a community of talented people who want to collaborate and just create cool films.
Thank you for reading. It may not solve this Summer's Greatest Mystery, thanks to the LA Times for listing us on it, but its our story. We hope you like what you see and stay for the ride.