Posted on 30 October at 16:35

Richard Burns shooting Glen Tilbrook of the English band Squeeze

Who would’ve guessed that one day, you’d be able to email a congressman from your iPhone to tell him what you think about the amount of money your government is spending? Well, thanks to people like Richard Burns, the world of technology and iPhone apps is more fun and shall we say… edifying! A filmmaker, animator, producer, and editor based in New York, Richard Burns is the man behind numerous projects, including films, television shows, and web series. You might know him from Culture Catch, a smart culture podcasting and webcasting website co-founded by Burns, featuring video interviews with people like Ron Howard, Tilda Swinton, and Ed Zwick. Or perhaps you’ve watched the award-winning PBS documentary “Wildwood Days,” which Burns directed.

When you talk to Burns, you immediately realize that he is one of those people who has a million different skills on his fingertips and is always one step ahead of the game. Nowadays, you can see his most recent work on http://www.deficitaid.com and perhaps run into him at the Soho Apple Store or Macworld Expo in San Francisco, where he is a regular speaker. Burns and I talked about his career, latest projects, and the future of online distribution.


F.A. You have a pretty multifaceted career in production that goes all the way back to the early 90’s. You did animation, directing, editing, and producing. Can you tell me how it all started?

R.B. It must have been 1985. I was taking a summer class at the European Institute of Technology on computer graphics. The software at that time was like the grandfather of Photoshop, Illustrator, and Final Cut. I started doing special effects and graphics for film and television as well as corporate communications. Then I started doing some PA work on sets and also worked in editing. So after having all this experience, I started producing my own content.

F.A. You worked in both Film and TV. Which one did you enjoy more and which one do you want to focus on now?

R.B. Actually I’m really enjoying the Internet TV business right now, because it gives me total freedom. Film and television industries are filled with layers of people who have years of experience. So they all have an opinion on what makes good programming. Making these projects happen is more of a community effort, and there’s so much money involved in every project. With Internet film, there isn’t enough money to support a community. Therefore you’re pretty much on your own, and what you’re doing becomes your vision and your project.

F.A. So it becomes more personal in a sense…

R.B. Yes, it does. When you’re creating content for the Internet, you’re not necessarily looking for a wide audience. So you don’t care about the million people that aren’t going to like your project. You’re just interested in finding the million people that will like it.

F.A. Right. And you’re working on a new online cartoon project called Political Porn. What’s that about?

R.B. Over the summer, I got involved in a project to build an iPhone application with the United States Deficit Counter. We thought it would be fun to do an iPhone app and start a debate about the amount of money the Obama administration says they need to spend over the next 8 years. We felt that there’s not enough debate going on this issue and thought it would be interesting to use social networking to get the buzz out there. So we’ve been building iPhone apps and releasing cartoons on http://www.deficitaid.com.

F.A. What is the iPhone application called and what does it do?

R.B. It’s called The U.S. Deficit Counter. It tallies the debt and gives you the ability to e-mail your congressmen from your iPhone to get their opinion on it. You can get it on iTunes.


F.A. You’ve also been working on a documentary in Iraq. How did this project come about?

R.B. I had a corporate client a long time ago and he ended up working for the government in Iraq to help them develop a private sector. Iraq has mostly been a state centralized government, and in 2005 they were in the process of switching to a system where the private sector would run all the companies. And they needed assistance in figuring out how to do that. So Ambassador Tom Foley asked me to create a film about this transitional period to make other countries invest in Iraq. It was a fascinating experience to see a centralized government get transformed into a private sector government. It was a great opportunity for us. But you know the film never really got released because the topic just got too hot.

F.A. Did you have conversations with any of the Iraqi people when you were shooting the film?

R.B. Yes. I’ll never forget the two girls I met at the airport. They were around 24 years old, and they asked me if a 24 year-old girl in New York would have shame if she weren’t married yet.

F.A. And what did you say?

R.B. I told them no, not at all. At 24, not many women are getting married.

F.A. Can this film be distributed online?

R.B. I think I might be able to use parts of it. But I put it on the shelf for now with the idea that it’s only going to get better with time. 10 years down the road, when we look back at what was going on in Iraq, I’d like to have some very valuable footage that adds to the story.

F.A. So how are you currently using the Internet at the moment to promote your films?

R.B. After recording the events we hold for Culture Catch—for example, we hosted the New Orleans jazz piano player Henry Butler recently—we distribute that content out to the web. With Deficit Aid, we are selling the iPhone App and will be utilizing other distribution networks like Film Annex to help generate some ad revenue. I also did another project called the Naked Review and tested it on Film Annex’s network to see if I could in fact make some money. I used a pretty provocative subject in order to generate some traffic and get a lot of eyeballs. That worked pretty well over the summer, and I plan to do a bunch more of those pretty soon.

F.A. Since you’ve been in this industry for a long time, when you look at how things were like back in the 90’s and how things are now, what do you think the future holds for the world of film distribution?

R.B. There are definitely new outlets that are competing with the old outlets. We’re still not certain whether the new outlets can support an artist, but on the flip side of that the cost of producing a minute of high quality content is at a fraction of what it cost twenty years ago. Therefore, your overhead is next to nothing. On the marketing side of it, with the Internet and all the social media networks, you can market your product for no money. It’s really revolutionary to be an artist who is a filmmaker, a sales rep, and a marketer all at the same time. So there is a way in which you can reach a market for your project. Though what the jury is still out on is whether or not you can get the audiences to pay to watch those projects… Or whether you can make enough money from an ad supported model like on Film Annex to where you’d be able to quit your day job.

So our options now are much better than what we had in the 90’s when a production was pretty much controlled by a handful of people in Hollywood. We’re only at the tip of the iceberg now, and I’m hoping that people will slowly be more interested in a know-how basis. If the film only costs you $25,000 to make and if you could get 100,000 people to pay 99 cents to watch the film, then that’d probably be a big business model for a lot of filmmakers.

For more information on Richard Burns, visit his Film Annex profile at http://www.filmannex.com/richardburns.

To go to his Web TV, visit http://www.PoliticalPornTV.com