Beware of ‘The Screenplay Agency’

I should start off by saying I’ve never used or sent anything to ‘The Screenplay Agency’ before. I’m putting out this alert, because after I saw their Google ads appear on my website, I did a little research on the company. According to numerous blog articles (like this one from the screenwriting life) and forum posts (like this one from without a box), they are not a legitimate agency and indiscriminately will “accept” any piece of writing sent to them. After your initial correspondance they aparently try to pitch you on paying them to create a treatment of your screenplay.

Please don’t take my word for it, read the links above. The blog post by Danny Broderick from the screenwriting life is especially enjoyable to read. He sent them a nonsense script and documented the correspondence he had with their company. I highly suggest you read it and stay away from the screenplay agency.

[tags]screenplay,the screenplay agency,bad script agents,movies,literary agents, screenwriting scams[/tags]

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E-mail Conversations with Film Fans from Around the World

Since Boy Who Never Slept has been released I’ve been receiving e-mails from film fans around the world and have engaged in some interesting e-mail correspondences. For now the conversations mostly concern BWNS and independent filmmaking. I’d love to share some of these with you, so I e-mailed the authors and asked permission to post them on this site, I also added a “May I publish your comments on this website?” question to the contact form and encourage everyone who sends me feedback via the regular web form to give me permission to post them here for everyone to read..

Every e-mail I receive inspires me to create more films. One particularity interesting message had a word count close to 900 words!!!

[tags]boy who never slept,film fans,films,movies,movie,solomon rothman[/tags]

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This Blog’s Getting Personal

Catching Up – new script – blog updates – new website.

It’s been longer then usual since my last post. I like to post as much as possible, but the last month and half has been really crazy and I’ve been swamped with work. I just launched SoloInnovations.com, it’s devoted to the professional web design services I offer along with services from other select designers and writers. It has a wordpress blog and I’ll be posting all my web design, SEO, graphic design, and writing articles there. Basically all my writing that has to do with my current profession will now be posted there first and afterwards syndicated here. I want to devote this blog to a more personal nature and use it to share my filmmaking endeavors, writing on other subjects, my rants, raves, responses to the many e-mails I receive and anything else I feel like posting.

Trying to balance my professional services and my other passions on the same website was becoming un-manageable and definitely far from ideal. Now I have more freedom than ever to bore you all to death with I’m working on!!!

[tags]blog,solomon rothman,boy who never slept[/tags]

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Response to EXTREMELY Harsh Moral Criticism of Boy Who Never Slept

Update July 13: My response has been officially posted on freesoftwaremagazine.com and Terry Hancock responded politley.

I just read an extremely negative critique of Boy Who Never Slept by Terry Hancock published in http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com. Due to the very indie nature of the film and the controversial subject matter I expected this film to generate a fair amount of criticism, but I never thought a review would mention my movie in the same paragraph as Birth of a Nation (a racist movie where the heros are the KKK) and condemn it as a “an apology for statutory rape”.

Wow, what an insult. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I respect that, but it’s hard for me to comprehend how he could have misinterpreted my work to that degree.

Below are a few of his quotes, I invite you to view his full review here. Below I respond and talk about the morality in Boy Who Never Slept and discuss some of the movie’s themes. I posted the following exact response in the comments section of free software magazine, but it’s currently awaiting comment moderation. Hopefully they’ll publish it.
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Why Most Video Blogs Suck - Problems with Video Blogs and Video Bloggers

By now everyone knows about blogs. The crazy online journals complete with spelling mistakes and gorilla news . I still remember the special on the Katrina blogger who broke the “in the water” stories and was interviewed live on CNN. Currently most blogs consist of text and pictures with the occasional audio clip, but with the popularity of broad band and increased storage capacities, video blogs are the new rage, and why not? Who wants to scan through pages and pages of small text if you don’t have to right? Unfortunately there are some serious problems with most video blogs making them almost unwatchable.

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What do the search engines consider relevant about you? Analysis of a name search.

I admit it, I search for my name a lot. Firstname Lastname, click, send, wait, smile! It’s exciting to see what the search engines find most relevant about me. If you haven’t tried it yet, you should. Everybody likes to feel important or at the very least less obscure and more accessible online to friends, loved ones, fans, viewers, colleagues you name it.

What’s interesting is the distinctly different types of websites and information that the top 3 (Google, MSN, and Yahoo) return in response to a firstname lastname search. Now a lot of these differences are not specific to a name search and would fit in the categories of convtionial SEO, but the reasons why I think it’s important to talk about this specific search separately from regular SEO are:

1. This search is one of the most important to an individual emotionally. Your first and last name appears on everything you create. It can represent your reputation, your family heritage, your professional image, your expertise, and your experience, all at the same time. Give me another two search words that cover all of that.

2. People use their first and last name in documents and websites in similar ways that differ extensively from other words Most of us, for example, don’t have social networking accounts, blogs, press releases, work history, personal comments and video files all attached to a string of keywords like “buy movies now”. Read more

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Thoughts on Minimalism in Film and Movies

When you search on google for "minimalism in film", "minimalist film", and "minimalist " it’s surprising how few relevant entries I found. In fact I don’t even see those words being used much online.

The definition of minimalism from Wikipedia is:

Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. Read more

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My Most Popular Article "What you should know before joining the army"

This one surprised me, it’s not about SEO, or web design, or film, or a rant about any of my regular topics, but the most popular and well received article I’ve ever written for the internet was about the ARMY.

orginal article on associated content titled - What you should know before joining the army

For those of you who don’t know I served 2 years in the US ARMY (1999-2001). Two years was my full enlistment and I went to college afterwards at the U of O on the Army College fund. hmm.. maybe I’ll post a picture in the future. Anyways, I wrote an article on what you should know before joining the army and every time I give people the url to my article list, it’s always the first one they read and the one they comment on.

It’s rough, I didn’t even do a lot of editing to it, it was something I just wrote in one sitting and then sent in. I’m thinking about writing an updated article and spending more time on the structure and form. What do you think?

[tags]army,united states millitary,us army,us millitary,before signing up,recrouting,army recrouter[/tags]

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Intrigued by Rocket Boom - Independent No Budget Broadcasting Vlog

While doing my daily dose of research I cam across this very interesting article in Wikipedia on a daily produced video blog called “rocket boom”. I downloaded the show and it’s not much to look at and I don’t see myself becoming a regular view, but what’s so fascinating about this show, is that number of subscribers they were able to build on an almost negliable budget.

Each video is downloaded 250,000 to 1 million times. Isn’t that crazy? And it’s produced with a regular home video camera. It’s hard to image that, 250,000 downloads EVERY DAY.The broadcasting revolution is well underway. Maybe I should produce a show. “Solomon’s take at 11:00.” Just kidding I’ll stick to filmmaking, writing, and web design, but who knows. I will say I would attribute a lot of their success to an amazing consistency. The show is released EVERYDAY at 9:00am and has been for years. That’s a lot of consistency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketboom

[tags]rocket boom,vlog,video blog,Independent No Budget Broadcasting,independent broadcasting,broadcasting revolution[/tags]

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5 New Articles Submitted for Publication at Associated Content

I just wrote and submitted some new articles for exclusive rights to associated content on the following topics:

1. Problems with Video Blogs and Video Bloggers
   Why Most Video Blogs Suck
2. Blog SEO: Tips to Make Your Blog More Search Engine Friendly
   Blog Search Engine Optimization Tips
3. Blog Search Engines Are a Better Way to Sort Through the Blogosphere
   Are You Still Using a Regular Search Engine to Look for Blogs?
4. Free Places to Distribute Your Video Online
   Submit Your Free User Video

I had the most fun writing the first article “why most video blogs suck.” Sometimes It’s really fun to go off about something and I introduced some humor. I wonder how it will do. Read more

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