Spike Lee: Tech is a double-edge sword in filmmaking

Acclaimed film director Spike Lee grabbed the tech spotlight last week by launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for his next feature film. He has until August 21 to meet his goal of raising $1.25 million.

He's getting there, slowly, with help from some incentive giveaways at the higher donation levels. So far, 1,700 donors have pledged $311,000. At the $10,000 donor level, he's offering dinner and one of his courtside Knicks seats. He revealed that one of the $10,000 donors (there are 14 so far) is fellow filmmaker Steven Soderbergh.

CNET got to chat with Lee about his campaign and how technology-driven tools -- like Kickstarter, YouTube, and CGI -- can both help and interfere with the story-telling process that is film.

Here's an edited transcript of an interview he did with CNET Friday:

Q: How is the Kickstarter campaign going?
Lee: It's going pretty well. We're in day 5 of a total of 30 days. We're reaching our daily goal. Yesterday, we had our biggest day which was $68,000, and we have to reach $1.25 million to get the money because on Kickstarter, if you don't reach your goal, you don't get anything. I'm not complaining, but I'm doing everything I can to ensure we get the support.

It's about keeping the momentum going with these things...
Lee: I've been told by people who have done it, and also the co-founders of Kickstarter, that there's a great initial push, then you have a lull in the middle, then it picks up again as you're trying to reach that finish line.

Is it harder than you thought?
Lee: Well, really, I didn't have any expectations. This is new territory for me. I just knew that it wasn't going to be easy because what is easy. I've been really grateful for the help -- people have come out of the woodwork to steer me in the right direction and have given me guidance and wisdom because, like I said before, I've never done this before.

Given your prior film history, it's not unusual for you to go seeking out funding, but it's just new for you to do this way? 
Lee: This method is new. This whole idea of crowd funding is totally new to me. You're appealing directly to the people who have supported your work, in my case, for a long, long time. I've been making films for three decades.

Famed filmmaker Spike Lee turns to Kickstarter to raise money for his next project.

(Credit: Kickstarter/Screenshot by CNET)

Were you wary at first? 
Lee: No, I was convinced by the success Mr. [Rob] Thomas had doing the "Veronica Mars" movie -- that show had been canceled seven years ago -- it got $5.5 million from Kickstarter. Mr. Zach Braff, who was on the TV show "Scrubs" for many years, he got $3.5 million. So those two examples made me believe this was something I should try.

You've watched technology evolve over the years, with digital cameras, Web distribution and advances in computer graphics. Has technology been good or bad for indie filmmakers?
Lee: Technology has really made it possible for me to do my independent films, which I've shot on digital, not film. "Red Hook Summer," which I self-financed, was shot on digital and this will be too. (Lee also shot "Baboozled" mostly on digital.) My concerns are when technology rules the art, instead of the artist ruling and commanding the technology. I will say this: technology has really opened up the floodgates and now anybody can make a film and put it up on YouTube. I'm not saying that all that stuff is good, but still, it gives people the chance to express themselves.

But when I have money, I still want to shoot film which definitely is dying out.

How has the advent of computer graphics changed the way Hollywood looks at filmmaking.
Lee: Well, CGI has definitely changed the game, and I think the trick is how do you use these CGI images to tell a story and to make it original. Now, in my opinion, all these movies look the same. It's like the same effects house is doing everything. They all look the same.

What's driving that?
Lee: That's market-driven. In many cases, the marketing department has a large say in what gets made and what doesn't. That's why the majority of [studio] films today have special effects and 3D and this type of stuff.

It's not just me. Most recently, one of the most successful directors in Hollywood today, Steven Soderbergh, said he's not going to work in feature films in the studio system. He's just going to work in cable TV, where you could argue a lot of the most interesting stuff is being done now.

Technology is a double-edged sword, which I understand.

If you get this next film funded, how will you handle distribution?
Lee: That's down the road. We gotta get this money first or there will be no distribution because there won't be a film.

Where do you advise your students to go to distribute their films?
Lee: Film festivals are still the best way to do it. And it's harder, especially getting into Sundance. Look at how many submissions they get. You got to make a ton of DVDs of your film and put it in the right hands, and hopefully someone will see it.

Anything else you want to tell a our tech-oriented readership?
Lee: For as little as $5 you can join us, get this film made, help us reach our [Kickstarter] goal. I know we've got some high-rollers there [in the Bay Area] who are basketball fans and "Wouldn't you love to sit with me courtside to see your team, the Golden State Warriors playing at Madison Square Garden?" Now they only come once, so somebody I know should hop on it and make that $10,000 pledge. I'll take you out to dinner and we'll sit courtside and we'll see if your team, the Warriors can beat my beloved Knicks. It will be a lot of fun. Your great coach Mark Jackson is from Brooklyn, N.Y., went to St. John's [University] and is doing a great job. And the Warriors are one of the up and coming teams.

Finally, an obligatory question: (This one sent to Lee after-the-fact via text.) What's your favorite personal technology? What cell phone do you carry? Are you a Twitter addict?
Lee via text: iPod, iPhone, BlackBerry. I'm on Twitter but I'm not an addict.

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Black Milk's digital divide

Before we arrive, his manager, Hex Murda, warns us that the producer's setup is "minimal." It's hard to say, precisely what that means in these days of bedroom superstars, but we've done our best to tamp down expectations in the wake of our visit to the sprawling analog forests of John Vanderslice's Tiny Telephone studios. Black Milk moved to Dallas from his native Detroit roughly eight months before, to a relatively quiet street 10 minutes from downtown. In spite of having lived in the space for the better part of a year, the apartment has that just-moved-in feel. There aren't many places to sit, unless you're willing to set up camp on top of one of the stacked boxes of Synth or Soul 12-inches he and his girlfriend are packing up ahead of the upcoming Record Store Day. Not exactly the sort of studio environment one anticipates when visiting one of alternative hip-hop's leading producers / MCs with a resume that includes the likes of Slum Village, Guilty Simpson and Jack White.

"I'm thinking of extending the studio out there," he tells us. At the moment, there's not a lot in the common area, save for a couch and a TV he says he never really watches. It would be ideal for some additional recording equipment and the drum set he left back in Michigan, assuming the neighbors don't mind, that is. For the time being, however, it's ground zero for Black Milk mail order -- buy something through blackmilk.biz, and there's a pretty good chance it'll be boxed up and shipped out by one of the apartment's two residents.

The studio's on the other side of the apartment -- it's more of a den, really, a workspace with a large flat-screen iMac serving as its centerpiece. Sitting directly in front of the iMac, sandwiched between the monitor and keyboard is Black Milk's baby, the MPC3000, Akai's beast of a drum machine / sampler whose pads have clearly been well-loved. "I prefer that more analog, more hands-on physical approach," he says, motioning to the circa '94 board in front of him. I want to actually feel the buttons and the pads. I even like how this machine looks. Like it makes me want to work. Not just because it's an MPC3000 ... coming in a room and seeing this is like, to me, I feel like this is a piece of art."

To its right is a Technics turntable, sporting a cream-colored vinyl copy of his Record Store Day offering, most likely pulled out for the benefit of our cameras, much like the two analog synths in the left corner of the room, a Korg and a wood-paneled Minimoog Voyager. To his right is a record cabinet, a schizophrenic collection of LPs, from Vangelis to Sesame St. Live, the latter of which he's used to sample applause. There are a few mixers scattered throughout, and a rack of knobs he admits he fiddles with obsessively during the mixing process. Hex wasn't lying. It's a simple setup for one of the most sought-after indie hip-hop producers around, but it does the trick. "I had to strip it back down because I had a lot of stuff going on in my studio back in Detroit and I'm getting a lot of that stuff shipped here, little by little, piece by piece," Black Milk explains. "I have my rack, my drum machine, my records and I'm good to go."

He produced Black and Brown here, a collaborative EP with fellow Detroit native Danny Brown and laid down the tracks for his own forthcoming solo record, using a mic that's currently stashed in the closet. But while the iMac is occupying some premium desk real estate, he insists that computer production like Pro Tools is more of a second line of defense. "I don't mind the digital aspect of making music, but I like to feel everything," says Black Milk. "I'm so hands-on with everything I do. I want to turn the actual knobs, versus EQing on a computer screen. I still do a lot of my editing in Pro Tools, but yeah, by the time it reaches it, the track is already pretty much sounding good."

Black Milk's love of the tactile dates back to his earliest interests in hip-hop, a passion that began back in Detroit, as his older cousins and their friends started MCing. "I took to it and started rhyming," he says, with a hint of nostalgia. "My older cousins making music on their little cheap equipment they, you know, had at the time. And I just kind of got drawn to that part of it more so than standing on the MC side of it. It seemed like I was paying more attention and putting more energy into the production side of it."

His collection began in earnest, amassing old equipment purchased from his relatives. "It was like, 'Yo, I'll buy that from you; you use it every now and again, but I want to get on this beat s***,'" he says. "I researched what machines [I needed] and [bought] little drum machines and other samplers here and there. I come from like this school of hip-hop production like the Pete Rocks, the Premos, the J Dillas, so a lot of my stuff is sample-heavy so I was really into digging for records. You know, just being at the record store around the neighborhood and just digging and digging, and bringing it back and sampling. "

His record wall stands as a testament to his passion for crate digging, forever a cornerstone of hip-hop production. It's a process that, for Black Milk, begins with acknowledgment of the lost art of the record sleeve. "It definitely starts with the art design on the cover," he says. "

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Crank it up: Russell Simmons, Universal Music launch label -- on YouTube

Russell Simmons, one of the founders of hip-hop behind such acts as LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys, is getting back into the music business after more than a decade "sitting on the sidelines." And he's getting back in a big way to take advantage of what's arguably become the most powerful showcase for music on the planet -- YouTube.

Simmons's latest venture, a YouTubemultichannel network called All Def Digital -- which he and business partner Brian Robbinsannounced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January but which has yet to officially launch -- has teamed up with Universal Music Group to create a new label, All Def Music. When it rolls out later this summer, All Def Music will become the first label created to discover and develop artists on YouTube that's tied to one of the majors, a move that Universal's CEO is betting will go down as a key moment for his company.

"Finding new artists in different ways and in different places has to be the common denominator of what we do," said Lucian Grainge, the chairman and chief executive officer of Universal Music Group. "It's our cardiac function, what keeps the blood pumping. ...We believe that we can add a new dimension and bring something new in the same way that the talent contests did a decade ago."

Turning a YouTube music destination into something on the scale of "American Idol" sounds like tall talk. But after a decade mired in the post-Napster doldrums, as CD sales plummeted and music labels contracted, the recorded music business is at long last infused with optimism -- even if the major labels still suffer an image hangover from such tactics as suing college kids for downloading pirated songs.

Universal Music CEO Lucian Grainge with Katy Perry

All the three major labels (down from six in the 1990s) are embracing new digital opportunities, and Grainge is positioning Universal to lead the pack. That YouTube has become the outlet with the biggest potential comes with a nice narrative twist, considering that the labels once viewed it as nothing short of the Antichrist -- a freewheeling venue that emboldened people the world over to upload licensed music. Shortly after YouTube emerged in 2005, Universal Music's then CEO, Doug Morris, who now heads Sony Music Group,threatened to sue YouTube for copyright infringement.

We know how that standoff ended. Today, Google-owned YouTube boasts more than 1 billion monthly viewers, and music videos are consistently among the most popular content. Most importantly, YouTube has become the go-to place for young people to find, listen to and share music -- not just from the majors but from aspiring artists hoping to break through all the noise. Which, in short, is why Simmons and his team knew they needed to be there.

In Simmons's view, the world he knows best -- urban, hip-hop -- is crying out for some professional help. Future stars lurk across YouTube in all genres but are usually ignored until they become Internet phenoms, such as happened with Psy and Justin Beiber, both of whom, incidentally, are now Universal artists.

"When I looked at this, I saw a big, giant white space," said Simmons, who, at 55, speaks with the enthusiasm of a man who's just getting started. "There's a lot happening online that's not being managed properly. These artists are in separate worlds, and not everything bubbles up to the top. That's my job."

To take this on, Simmons has brought in another icon of urban music: Steve Rifkind, who is responsible for breaking some of hip-hop's biggest acts, such as Wu-Tang Clan, is now president and CEO of All Def Music and ADD Artist Management. And Robbins, who Simmons refers to as "my boss," is a veteran Hollywood producer and the founder of AwesomenessTV, a YouTube network that Dreamworks paid $33 million for in May -- less than a year after it launched. If you don't know AwesomnessTV, don't fret: It just means you're beyond your teen years.

Data mining for stars
The team at All Def Music will marry years of old-school experience with new technology, watching every decision along the way with analytic tools developed by both AwesomenessTV and Universal. UMG has been investing in such tech for the past five years, and while the company won't share details of how it all works, people there say little goes unnoticed.

"There isn't anything we can't monitor or can't track," said Rob Wells, who heads digital for Universal Music. "That may sound Orwellian, but that's just what the digital environment empowers us to do."

That means ADD might spot an artist, on YouTube or even in a brick-and-mortar club, then make a video and decide where to go from there. It all depends on what the fans and the data tell them. "We can move so much quicker," said Rifkind, who in the 1990s pioneered the street team concept of building buzz. "We have too much at our fingertips. We like something, we put up a few videos, get the feedback from the community, then go in and make changes. I really feel this is a slam dunk."And Simmons, whose track record for picking stars is unparalleled, knows full well that the Internet might prove his gut wrong. "All Def is a combination of instincts and the people's will," he said. "The Internet will surprise you. All the things we're starting to put up, you just don't know what's going to pop."

Buying into YouTube

Simmons hadn't expected his next big venture to be on YouTube. In fact, a couple of years ago he was set to buy a cable network on which to build out new acts. Then he met Robert Kyncl, who heads of global content for YouTube. Kyncl helped convince him that YouTube was the place to be.

Simmons began exploring the idea. He turned to Robbins, who was building out AwesomnessTV, for advice. The two had been friends since Robbins directed a hip-hop documentary in 1995 called "The Show," which featured Simmons. They ended up creating All Def Digital, which now carries the tagline, "If you don't have ADD, you're not paying attention." And last Fall, ADD became one of dozens of online channels receiving Google investments to create original content.

Brian Robbins of AwesomenessTV and All Def Digital

The success of AwesomnessTV has, in the vernacular of the day, been nothing short of awesome. And that's what ADD wants to replicate, albeit for a different audience. The parallel is this: Robbins took an underserved market -- the millions of teens and tweens on YouTube -- and brought together YouTubers and created original programming, shows like "IMO" and "Truth or Dare," that it posts daily.

AwesomenessTV's programs have spread the usual way, by kids sharing them across the Web, and the results would make any old-media exec drool: The main channel, which launched just over a year ago, has 700,000 subscribers; and the multichannel network, which went live in December, has 21 million subscribers, who together have logged 1.2 billion views to date. An Awesomeness show then jumped to old-fashioned TV, and when it premiered early this month on Nickelodeon, it drew 1.7 million viewers.

"We feel we can do the same with ADD, to create an urban destination," said Robbins. "There is a giant hole in the marketplace."

Since announcing the creation of ADD in January, Simmons has been snapping up acts, and shooting videos for the launch, which he keeps pushing back -- "I want to know I have a smash," he said -- even as his partners are eager to get started. There will be All Def Comedy, All Def Lifestyle, All Def Poetry, and now All Def Music -- all on a single destination, or multichannel network, the likes of which have been proliferating at a rapid clip. Networks such as Tastemade, for instance, is going after for food lovers; Maker Studios is also aggregating YouTube pop entertainers.

"I couldn't do All Def Digital without playing in the space I know best," said Simmons, whose career includes producing such hits as the HBO series, "Def Comedy Jam."

"All Def Music had to happen," he said.

So Simmons approached Grainge at Universal. It was a logical choice. Simmons's biggest success was his first effort, Def Jam Recordings, which he launched with producer Rick Rubin in the early 1980s and which became the pioneering rap label. Through a series of mergers, Def Jam ended up as part of Universal Music, which is a division of the Paris-based conglomerate Vivendi. Simmons left Def Jam in 1999.

If the venture plays out as planned, All Def Music will become a thriving feeding ground for Universal, which can then try to supercharge artists' careers across all outlets globally -- through various music services, radio, video outlets or promotional deals.

"Our farm team is for them," said Simmons. "What we develop further is for Lucian. What Lucian has, we can develop, too."

So far, the first signings to ADD Management include John A. Baker Jr., known as "Spoken Reasons," a poet, comedian and musician, who has almost 1.4 million YouTube subscribers. ADD is also developing an unscripted music-themed show with rapper Asher Roth titled "Lemonade." Roth has garnered more than 20 million views on YouTube.

From ADD's offices on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, Simmons and his small team are always on the lookout. One of their latest finds is New Orleans rapper 3D Na'Tee, who's had some success but isn't backed by a label. To get a sense of what All Def Music is all about, check out this video of Simmons watching Na'Tee:

"You can't tell me she can't rap," Simmons almost shouted into the phone. "But do you know how expensive it is to make Na'Tee a star? You need to dress her, and, oh, she needs to get her hair done. She needs somebody like to me to pay attention to her at the early stage. Because if she's running around in sweatsuits, she's going to be just another girl, even though she's fantastic. Nobody wants to sign her. Nobody wants to give a break. I want to give her a break. But she needs to be styled and she needs the best producer on the planet."

All of which Simmons and All Def Music can provide -- unless, of course, the fans and data tell him he's betting on the wrong rapper.

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With 'The Sandman: Overture,' the book that launched a business returns

SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- It's hard to overstate the importance of Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" to the comics.

In creating a comic that attracted droves of noncomics readers, especially women, at a time when comics were on the pop culture radars of very few people, Gaiman also inadvertently made graphic novels into a business. "The Sandman" was a book that lent itself to having its story arcs collected into book format, and those graphic novels sold so well and to such a wide audience that other comics soon followed suit.

Today, it's harder to find monthly comics that don't eventually get reprinted into graphic novels than the other way around. On the occasion of the book's 25th anniversary, with not only graphic novels but also digital comics now established as another comics reading format, Gaiman has teamed up with renowned comics artist J.H. Williams III to tell one more Sandman story.

Neil Gaiman at the San Diego Comic-Con 2013.

From a hotel room overlooking San Diego Harbor, Gaiman, in town for Comic-Con, recounted the experience of returning to characters he hasn't written about in more than a decade.

"There was definitely a worry with the characters that they would've gone away," said Gaiman, a New York Times best-selling author known not only for his writing of long-form fiction but also for his early adoption of Twitter (where he became one of the first people to crack 1 million followers). "The last time I wrote the Sandman characters was for 'Endless Nights' in 2002. There's been several novels, there's been the discovery of Twitter, meeting my wife, getting married."

"So the idea of these characters are there. The first five pages I wasn't sure if they were right, and then I got to page six. There was Death and there was Destiny, and they sounded like themselves. It was wonderful," he said with a smile.

As the cosplaying masses of Comic-Con swarmed the streets of San Diego's Gaslamp District below the hotel room where we talked, both Gaiman and Williams were nattily dressed in suits.

Williams, known for his intricate and creative layouts, said that he doesn't start with the intention of drawing his comics with an atypical layout. "I don't consciously say that every page has to be a double-page spread, but I like anything that can make the reader slow down and live with it for a little bit."

"I've had some complaints," he said, from people who read the comics digitally, but his original worries about how his art would translate to the digital format have been assuaged.Digital comics are a relatively new way of reading comics and Williams' art doesn't always translate well to the screen.

"I was concerned that [the publishers] would want me to change what I do," he said. Following feedback from them and his print-reading fans, he decided not to change anything.

"The technology needs to catch up to me," he said, laughing.

The pair had never collaborated on a comic before "The Sandman: Overture," which tells the story immediately preceding the first issue of "The Sandman," collected in a book titled, "Preludes and Nocturnes." The title character, Morpheus, is captured by dark magic and imprisoned for 70 years. The prequel overture, Gaiman said, will tell the story of how Morpheus, the personification of dreams, became weakened enough to get captured in the first place.

Writing his protagonist, Gaiman said, is tricky. "There's the one who escapes in Sandman 1, and then there was the one before Sandman 1. He's much prissier, much more hidebound," he said.

"In many ways, the entirety of Sandman is a meditation on how his years of imprisonment actually changed him. So," the author concluded, "Morpheus himself is kind of weird."

At the time that the original comic concluded, "The Sandman" was outselling major superhero titles like "Batman" and "Superman." Though it's possible that on some alternate Earth, Gaiman's prequel will be a flop, there's nothing weird about people expecting this to be the best-selling comic of the year.

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