Tuesday, March 27, 2007

The Pittsburgh Film Office Just Doesn't Get It

I just fielded a call from the Pittsburgh Film Office. The exchange went something like this:

Me: "Hello?"

Keith: "Hi, this is Keith from the Pittsburgh Film Office. I'm calling to inquire about the status of your... Something to Be Desired."

Me: "Um... status in what regard?"

Keith: "Is it still filming or is it over?..."

Me: "Um... no, we're still going. New episodes every Monday..."

Keith: "Okay, thanks."

Click.

Something tells me that somewhere in the bowels of the Pittsburgh Film Office there resides a database of all the titles currently listed as "in production" within the Pittsburgh city limits. STBD is one of them. And the PFO's only interest in these projects -- be they feature films, short films, student films, web series or TV shows -- is whether or not they're still in production, so they can tally them up and insert a number into an upcoming press release touting the virility of the local film industry.

Meanwhile, clearly, they have no idea what STBD is, nor do they realize we have a website and a blog, or they would have been able to grasp these answers themselves.

This hearkens back to the days of not so long ago, when I mentioned to people around Pittsburgh that I produced a web series and their first response was, "Oh, so do you, like, want to be on public access someday?"

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1 Comments:

At 11:46 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am so mad at myself that I missed this post because it hits everything on the money when concerning the public's perception of doing any production. They know it's not the BIG boys network (prime time) and the only other option is public access. This is why I have been so supportive of your project because you guys get it. I hope to have my project up soon and can only thank you guys for sticking with it and doing a good job. Hopefully soon the conversation around the water cooler will go more like this, "Did you see the internet tv show when that...".

 

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