IDW: The First Decade Chapter 4

10yearbook-CONTINUED.qxd:Layout 1

C

O

4/2/09

N

T

3:28 PM

I

Page 4

N

U

I

N

G

THE FIRST DECADE

C

H

A

P

T

E

R

4

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1

3/19/09

9:23 AM

Page 46

BAR TALK C

H

A

P

T

E

R

4

In December 2000, IDW shot the pilot for Bar Talk,

a TV show the founders hoped to get on the air. IDW

founders Ted Adams and Robbie Robbins discuss the show with the project’s producer, Dave Vindiola.

TA: Let’s start at the beginning–do either of you remember who came up with the idea for Bar Talk?

TA: OK, I guess it was my idea. I think the “high concept” was that it was going to be Taxicab Confessions meets Blind Date, which is what we ultimately used in the promotional material.

DV: You did.

RR: You came up with it because we were looking to create a reality TV show–this was when reality TV was just starting to take off.

DV: Yeah, it was your idea and then I walked into your office one day at lunch and said, “Ted, what have you been thinking about Bar Talk? I know we haven’t talked about it in a while.” And you said, 47

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1

3/19/09

9:23 AM

Page 46

BAR TALK C

H

A

P

T

E

R

4

In December 2000, IDW shot the pilot for Bar Talk,

a TV show the founders hoped to get on the air. IDW

founders Ted Adams and Robbie Robbins discuss the show with the project’s producer, Dave Vindiola.

TA: Let’s start at the beginning–do either of you remember who came up with the idea for Bar Talk?

TA: OK, I guess it was my idea. I think the “high concept” was that it was going to be Taxicab Confessions meets Blind Date, which is what we ultimately used in the promotional material.

DV: You did.

RR: You came up with it because we were looking to create a reality TV show–this was when reality TV was just starting to take off.

DV: Yeah, it was your idea and then I walked into your office one day at lunch and said, “Ted, what have you been thinking about Bar Talk? I know we haven’t talked about it in a while.” And you said, 47

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1

3/19/09

9:23 AM

Page 48

“Funny you should mention it,” because it was up on the white board–the IDW project board. You said, “I’d like us to take a shot at it.”

logistically and because they were very open to having us do the project there.

TA: So, you came aboard as the producer.

DV: Essentially. You said, “Why don’t you see what it’s going to take? Here’s the budget we have.”

TA: This was the early days of IDW and because we were making money with our creative service business, the four founders decided we were going to set aside a certain amount of money every year to start a new business. So, we did Bar Talk in 2000 and IDW Publishing in 2001 and that was the end of that. We’ve continued to try new things, most recently with Worthwhile Books, but these days it’s always part of IDW Publishing.

What was our budget? Dave, do you remember?

DV: $10,000.

TA: I thought it might have been $25,000 but $10,000 sounds more likely.

DV: Yeah. We spent $7,000 on the production and another $2,000 at the bar.

TA: I guess we came in under budget–that sounds like IDW. Let’s talk about the bar. We used Margarita Rocks, a bar in the Pacific Beach community in San Diego. I guess they’re still open?

RR: They’re still open but I think they changed their name.

DV: It’s Bar West now. I don’t know if the original guy still owns it. We went and looked at a few bars and some were receptive and some logistically looked good but the owners weren’t receptive.

Margarita Rocks gave us the best option both 48

TA: So you secured the location and whatever permits we needed?

DV: We ended up with a one-day insurance policy and we didn’t necessarily need a permit because we were going to be “off-street” and the San Diego Film Commission only requires a permit if you’re on public property. We talked to them and they said, “Don’t worry, you’re fine. If you get bothered, here’s the phone number to call.” It wasn’t a problem because we were on private property.

TA: OK, you got the location, you found out about the permit, handled the insurance… next was finding a film crew. How did you find them?

DV: They were recommended by a friend of mine who had been in video production. These guys were out of Orange County and had a full production facility in Orange County and they had done remote work.

TA: The film crew came in and set up the microphones and they did the actual video shoot.

RR: Before that we went into Margarita Rocks and talked about where we should shoot and what different camera angles to use. We talked about having a roaming camera in addition to the stationary cameras. We also tried to figure out what microphones were going to pick up what people and then we drew it up and used that to talk to the film crew.

DV: Right–Robbie handled the creative components.

He worked with the film crew to figure out how to pick up the best content and then the owner came

out and went through a walk-through with us before we came out for the final shoot.

there that were trying to drum up conversation, right?

TA: And then, from a RR/DV: Right. promotional standpoint, we wanted to get as TA: So, we had our _______________________ many people as we could ringers, we had our film crew, we had This ad ran in San Diego’s into the bar. We made the sound–we had everything going. I remember Beach and Bay Press. flyers for the bar to hand when the shoot was happening that it was hard to out. We also had banners outside of the bar, and tell if it was working or not. The music was loud, the inside the bar, promoting it for a couple of weeks ambient noise in the bar was loud. We were before the shoot actually happened. concerned about the audio before the shoot, during the shoot, and then, as it turned out, once we RR: We also ran an ad in The Beach and Bay Press. reviewed the material, the sound was our big downfall as far as the project went. We just didn’t TA: We definitely tried to promote it and on the get good sound quality out of it. We caught some night of the shoot the crowd was substantial. interesting conversations but you really couldn’t hear them.

RR: Yeah, there was a pretty decent-sized crowd.

RR: When we were doing the editing, we had to TA: We didn’t pay for the booze, or did we? pick something that looked interesting but that also had good sound with it. There were some things that RR: It was an open bar. The people that came in had we just couldn’t do because you could barely hear to sign a waiver that they the conversation. It might have been interesting, but could be on TV at a it wasn’t worth putting it on tape. certain time and that they were being filmed.

TA: We shot probably three or four hours DV: The open bar, if I that night? remember correctly, was for our talent. We DV: Yeah, and we had had an open account four or five cameras there and our talent going. had an account but we weren’t serving TA: There were a couple the general public as of stationary cameras and an open bar. They at least one roaming, were still paying right? regular prices.

RR: Yeah, I was running a TA: That’s right– stationary camera on the ____________________ we had some people in the crowd. I’d outside patio.

The bar layout showing forgotten about that. We had people we knew in location of cameras.

49

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1

3/19/09

9:23 AM

Page 48

“Funny you should mention it,” because it was up on the white board–the IDW project board. You said, “I’d like us to take a shot at it.”

logistically and because they were very open to having us do the project there.

TA: So, you came aboard as the producer.

DV: Essentially. You said, “Why don’t you see what it’s going to take? Here’s the budget we have.”

TA: This was the early days of IDW and because we were making money with our creative service business, the four founders decided we were going to set aside a certain amount of money every year to start a new business. So, we did Bar Talk in 2000 and IDW Publishing in 2001 and that was the end of that. We’ve continued to try new things, most recently with Worthwhile Books, but these days it’s always part of IDW Publishing.

What was our budget? Dave, do you remember?

DV: $10,000.

TA: I thought it might have been $25,000 but $10,000 sounds more likely.

DV: Yeah. We spent $7,000 on the production and another $2,000 at the bar.

TA: I guess we came in under budget–that sounds like IDW. Let’s talk about the bar. We used Margarita Rocks, a bar in the Pacific Beach community in San Diego. I guess they’re still open?

RR: They’re still open but I think they changed their name.

DV: It’s Bar West now. I don’t know if the original guy still owns it. We went and looked at a few bars and some were receptive and some logistically looked good but the owners weren’t receptive.

Margarita Rocks gave us the best option both 48

TA: So you secured the location and whatever permits we needed?

DV: We ended up with a one-day insurance policy and we didn’t necessarily need a permit because we were going to be “off-street” and the San Diego Film Commission only requires a permit if you’re on public property. We talked to them and they said, “Don’t worry, you’re fine. If you get bothered, here’s the phone number to call.” It wasn’t a problem because we were on private property.

TA: OK, you got the location, you found out about the permit, handled the insurance… next was finding a film crew. How did you find them?

DV: They were recommended by a friend of mine who had been in video production. These guys were out of Orange County and had a full production facility in Orange County and they had done remote work.

TA: The film crew came in and set up the microphones and they did the actual video shoot.

RR: Before that we went into Margarita Rocks and talked about where we should shoot and what different camera angles to use. We talked about having a roaming camera in addition to the stationary cameras. We also tried to figure out what microphones were going to pick up what people and then we drew it up and used that to talk to the film crew.

DV: Right–Robbie handled the creative components.

He worked with the film crew to figure out how to pick up the best content and then the owner came

out and went through a walk-through with us before we came out for the final shoot.

there that were trying to drum up conversation, right?

TA: And then, from a RR/DV: Right. promotional standpoint, we wanted to get as TA: So, we had our _______________________ many people as we could ringers, we had our film crew, we had This ad ran in San Diego’s into the bar. We made the sound–we had everything going. I remember Beach and Bay Press. flyers for the bar to hand when the shoot was happening that it was hard to out. We also had banners outside of the bar, and tell if it was working or not. The music was loud, the inside the bar, promoting it for a couple of weeks ambient noise in the bar was loud. We were before the shoot actually happened. concerned about the audio before the shoot, during the shoot, and then, as it turned out, once we RR: We also ran an ad in The Beach and Bay Press. reviewed the material, the sound was our big downfall as far as the project went. We just didn’t TA: We definitely tried to promote it and on the get good sound quality out of it. We caught some night of the shoot the crowd was substantial. interesting conversations but you really couldn’t hear them.

RR: Yeah, there was a pretty decent-sized crowd.

RR: When we were doing the editing, we had to TA: We didn’t pay for the booze, or did we? pick something that looked interesting but that also had good sound with it. There were some things that RR: It was an open bar. The people that came in had we just couldn’t do because you could barely hear to sign a waiver that they the conversation. It might have been interesting, but could be on TV at a it wasn’t worth putting it on tape. certain time and that they were being filmed.

TA: We shot probably three or four hours DV: The open bar, if I that night? remember correctly, was for our talent. We DV: Yeah, and we had had an open account four or five cameras there and our talent going. had an account but we weren’t serving TA: There were a couple the general public as of stationary cameras and an open bar. They at least one roaming, were still paying right? regular prices.

RR: Yeah, I was running a TA: That’s right– stationary camera on the ____________________ we had some people in the crowd. I’d outside patio.

The bar layout showing forgotten about that. We had people we knew in location of cameras.

49

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1

3/19/09

9:23 AM

Page 50

DV: We had two lipstick cameras at the bar and two handheld cameras that were roving.

production process. We were trying to chop it down and cut it into a 15-to-20 minute pilot which would include the intro sequence and a theme song. The three of us went up to an LA postproduction house and we were there a full day.

TA: We did all that, we got the material and then the film crew produced video tapes for us. I remember, Dave, you and I went through them–it seemed like hundreds of hours of videotape.

DV: It was about 28 hours.

RR: Yeah, we were there from when they opened until late in the afternoon.

TA: I remember going through the tapes and I think we were trying to put a good face on the material but it was pretty obvious that it was pretty poor quality at least from a sound standpoint.

DV: Right. We ended up with about a dozen separate vignettes. All of them looked like decent content because the cameras were following our two or three ringers and during the production we started miking some of the general public because they were doing things that seemed of interest. We ended up with about a dozen stories that had various levels of quality to them as far as the audio and the video went.

TA: I remember that part of the process just being unbelievably tedious, going through those tapes. We were sitting at my house and it just seemed like night after night after night for a long time. We reviewed the material, we identified the pieces that we thought were right and then the next step was the post50

TA: They took our rough material and chopped it down for us. We’d already had the logo because we used that for the marketing material and then they did the title treatment with the…

RR: A neon flashing light type thing.

TA: We used a Violent Femmes song for the theme and we added subtitles to some of the segments where we thought the material was good but the audio was bad. We ended up with, what was it, maybe 15 to 20 minutes?

RR/DV: Yes. TA: I think we all felt pretty good at the end of that process.

RR: It was exciting at the beginning, when we were working on it, laughing at everything. But then, once you see that same clip like 30 times–rewinding it,

getting it perfect–it wasn’t funny. But I think at the end, we felt great and I think we went to a local Hollywood bar right afterwards.

TA: Yeah, I remember that, too. We all felt like we had a pretty good pitch piece and we were pretty excited to go out and start the sales process to try and get somebody to pick up the show or at least to get somebody to invest some bigger money into it to develop it further with us. Let’s talk about that–the next step was to try to go sell this thing to a network or to a TV producer. This was in the days before IDW had done any entertainment deals so we didn’t have an agent, we didn’t have a Hollywood attorney. It was just basically me and Dave going out and trying to figure out a way to get our video in front of people.

DV: Somewhat concurrent to post-production we went to Vegas, to the NATPE convention. And we got the big-ass directory and we just started coldcalling people–agents, production companies, producers–anyone that we thought could help us move it forward. Also, at that time, Robbie was putting together the material for the submissions.

RR: We were hand-making the material–printing them out, cutting them down, gluing it down– making a brochure that was included with the videotape.

TA: And we did other marketing collateral that we sent people–Bar Talk coasters, hats, t-shirts, stickers, ballpoint pens. We did all kinds of marketing stuff and we took all that and put it with the videotape and then sent out hundreds of them. It was definitely the IDW approach to business–trying to put together

as good a package as we could to market it, trying to make it as interesting as we could for the person receiving it. But, ultimately, we were just flat-out cold-calling people. We had no reputation at the time. Nobody knew us–IDW didn’t have a public reputation, period, let alone have any entertainment deals set up. It was probably a little naïve to think we were going to get anybody to take us seriously.

DV: But there was a recognition on our part that we were going against the model that Hollywood had in place. To some extent, it was naïve, but at the same time we recognized the decision we were making and knew it was going to be harder than normal. You had some friends of IDW that tried to penetrate certain places and people who gave us some leads but, in essence, we were an unknown quantity.

TA: I don’t think we got one single person interested, did we?

DV: We had some agents show a little interest and we got on the phone with them–that’s where we had the majority of the interest. It was probably less than half a dozen. We also had one or two production houses respond. If you remember, there was one that indicated they had a similar concept that they had never shot.

TA: I don’t remember that. Where did all that net out then? How come none of those ever came to anything?

DV: Well, the production company, because of the similar concept, I think we both mutually backed away. I think at that point in time, the concept of Bar Talk was a little edgy for the general market. It’s proven out in later years that it’s acceptable. We had 51

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1

3/19/09

9:23 AM

Page 50

DV: We had two lipstick cameras at the bar and two handheld cameras that were roving.

production process. We were trying to chop it down and cut it into a 15-to-20 minute pilot which would include the intro sequence and a theme song. The three of us went up to an LA postproduction house and we were there a full day.

TA: We did all that, we got the material and then the film crew produced video tapes for us. I remember, Dave, you and I went through them–it seemed like hundreds of hours of videotape.

DV: It was about 28 hours.

RR: Yeah, we were there from when they opened until late in the afternoon.

TA: I remember going through the tapes and I think we were trying to put a good face on the material but it was pretty obvious that it was pretty poor quality at least from a sound standpoint.

DV: Right. We ended up with about a dozen separate vignettes. All of them looked like decent content because the cameras were following our two or three ringers and during the production we started miking some of the general public because they were doing things that seemed of interest. We ended up with about a dozen stories that had various levels of quality to them as far as the audio and the video went.

TA: I remember that part of the process just being unbelievably tedious, going through those tapes. We were sitting at my house and it just seemed like night after night after night for a long time. We reviewed the material, we identified the pieces that we thought were right and then the next step was the post50

TA: They took our rough material and chopped it down for us. We’d already had the logo because we used that for the marketing material and then they did the title treatment with the…

RR: A neon flashing light type thing.

TA: We used a Violent Femmes song for the theme and we added subtitles to some of the segments where we thought the material was good but the audio was bad. We ended up with, what was it, maybe 15 to 20 minutes?

RR/DV: Yes. TA: I think we all felt pretty good at the end of that process.

RR: It was exciting at the beginning, when we were working on it, laughing at everything. But then, once you see that same clip like 30 times–rewinding it,

getting it perfect–it wasn’t funny. But I think at the end, we felt great and I think we went to a local Hollywood bar right afterwards.

TA: Yeah, I remember that, too. We all felt like we had a pretty good pitch piece and we were pretty excited to go out and start the sales process to try and get somebody to pick up the show or at least to get somebody to invest some bigger money into it to develop it further with us. Let’s talk about that–the next step was to try to go sell this thing to a network or to a TV producer. This was in the days before IDW had done any entertainment deals so we didn’t have an agent, we didn’t have a Hollywood attorney. It was just basically me and Dave going out and trying to figure out a way to get our video in front of people.

DV: Somewhat concurrent to post-production we went to Vegas, to the NATPE convention. And we got the big-ass directory and we just started coldcalling people–agents, production companies, producers–anyone that we thought could help us move it forward. Also, at that time, Robbie was putting together the material for the submissions.

RR: We were hand-making the material–printing them out, cutting them down, gluing it down– making a brochure that was included with the videotape.

TA: And we did other marketing collateral that we sent people–Bar Talk coasters, hats, t-shirts, stickers, ballpoint pens. We did all kinds of marketing stuff and we took all that and put it with the videotape and then sent out hundreds of them. It was definitely the IDW approach to business–trying to put together

as good a package as we could to market it, trying to make it as interesting as we could for the person receiving it. But, ultimately, we were just flat-out cold-calling people. We had no reputation at the time. Nobody knew us–IDW didn’t have a public reputation, period, let alone have any entertainment deals set up. It was probably a little naïve to think we were going to get anybody to take us seriously.

DV: But there was a recognition on our part that we were going against the model that Hollywood had in place. To some extent, it was naïve, but at the same time we recognized the decision we were making and knew it was going to be harder than normal. You had some friends of IDW that tried to penetrate certain places and people who gave us some leads but, in essence, we were an unknown quantity.

TA: I don’t think we got one single person interested, did we?

DV: We had some agents show a little interest and we got on the phone with them–that’s where we had the majority of the interest. It was probably less than half a dozen. We also had one or two production houses respond. If you remember, there was one that indicated they had a similar concept that they had never shot.

TA: I don’t remember that. Where did all that net out then? How come none of those ever came to anything?

DV: Well, the production company, because of the similar concept, I think we both mutually backed away. I think at that point in time, the concept of Bar Talk was a little edgy for the general market. It’s proven out in later years that it’s acceptable. We had 51

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1

3/19/09

9:23 AM

Page 52

a number of passes we made on our side with the agents we were talking to.

TA: I guess ultimately it just fizzled out. It’s funny to think that when we shot this, in 2000, this kind of idea was just getting started and today this type of content is being created all over the place. This is the kind of thing that, had YouTube existed back then, we could have focused our energies on trying to market this thing there and do those kinds of things.

I know we tried that recently–to try to bring it to the YouTube audience and relaunch it that way.

RR: I think it goes back to the sound quality. It’s just hard to get across what we’re trying to do.

TA: Here we are almost 10 years later, IDW is wellestablished in the world of entertainment. We do TV and movie deals all the time–we’re represented by CAA, the biggest and best entertainment agency in the world, we have a great management team in Hollywood and even with all those great people in place we can’t get it set up. Every time we do anything with a new agent or a new manager, I always send them a copy of Bar Talk and the silence is just deafening. I always explain it wasn’t executed as well as we’d hoped it would be–there are sound problems–but if you can get past the sound, I think the core concept is solid. But, I send the tape off and it’s just silence. You can tell people don’t even want to talk about it–they don’t want to hurt my feelings.

I get the same kind of things sent to me all the time.

People give us blind submissions every day and a lot of times they come through friends or family. The hardest thing is when you get something that you know you don’t like but it comes through your uncle or your mom and it’s hard to tell this person gracefully that I don’t want to touch their idea.

I think that’s what’s happened over the years with Bar Talk.

DV: And yet it appears that others have experienced the same technical difficulties. When you guys were talking about YouTube, some of the stuff I’ve seen, 52

which is extremely similar in concept, had the same problems–where it had to be subtitled, you couldn’t understand what was going on, the lighting was bad or the shots just weren’t there.

TA: I think if I could get somebody interested, there’s still a chance we could get it going. I remember when we did a deal on the movie side with the guy who produced The Bachelor TV show. I met him right at the height of that show being successful and we got into business with him on a movie project that ended up not going anywhere. But, I thought, “All right, this is the guy–finally! I’ve got a guy who makes reality TV shows, I’m going to convince him that this is a good idea.” And, it was the same thing, I talked to him about it, I sold him on the idea and then I sent him the videotape and that was that. It was just the same dead-end. Maybe the answer here is that we should stop sending the videotape and just sell the idea.

RR: Good thing we weren’t living off that project.

TA: Well, I guess that’s kind of a bummer way to end it but not everything works out, right?

RR: And we learned a lot. We had a good time. We did a TV project. I thought it was a cool thing to do since I studied film in school. I had a good time running a camera again. We lost our money but at least it was fun.

DV: And I think there are some components you carried forward into your post-Bar Talk Hollywood deals. We proved that cold-calling alone wouldn’t work–we knew that agency representation was key, and now you have one of the best in the industry and that’s been key to your ongoing success in that area. Without Bar Talk, it would have taken you guys a little bit longer to get up the learning curve there.

TA: True–every cloud has a silver lining. And, if there’s a TV show runner out there who wants to talk to me about Bar Talk, I’m easy to find. IDW 53

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1

3/19/09

9:23 AM

Page 52

a number of passes we made on our side with the agents we were talking to.

TA: I guess ultimately it just fizzled out. It’s funny to think that when we shot this, in 2000, this kind of idea was just getting started and today this type of content is being created all over the place. This is the kind of thing that, had YouTube existed back then, we could have focused our energies on trying to market this thing there and do those kinds of things.

I know we tried that recently–to try to bring it to the YouTube audience and relaunch it that way.

RR: I think it goes back to the sound quality. It’s just hard to get across what we’re trying to do.

TA: Here we are almost 10 years later, IDW is wellestablished in the world of entertainment. We do TV and movie deals all the time–we’re represented by CAA, the biggest and best entertainment agency in the world, we have a great management team in Hollywood and even with all those great people in place we can’t get it set up. Every time we do anything with a new agent or a new manager, I always send them a copy of Bar Talk and the silence is just deafening. I always explain it wasn’t executed as well as we’d hoped it would be–there are sound problems–but if you can get past the sound, I think the core concept is solid. But, I send the tape off and it’s just silence. You can tell people don’t even want to talk about it–they don’t want to hurt my feelings.

I get the same kind of things sent to me all the time.

People give us blind submissions every day and a lot of times they come through friends or family. The hardest thing is when you get something that you know you don’t like but it comes through your uncle or your mom and it’s hard to tell this person gracefully that I don’t want to touch their idea.

I think that’s what’s happened over the years with Bar Talk.

DV: And yet it appears that others have experienced the same technical difficulties. When you guys were talking about YouTube, some of the stuff I’ve seen, 52

which is extremely similar in concept, had the same problems–where it had to be subtitled, you couldn’t understand what was going on, the lighting was bad or the shots just weren’t there.

TA: I think if I could get somebody interested, there’s still a chance we could get it going. I remember when we did a deal on the movie side with the guy who produced The Bachelor TV show. I met him right at the height of that show being successful and we got into business with him on a movie project that ended up not going anywhere. But, I thought, “All right, this is the guy–finally! I’ve got a guy who makes reality TV shows, I’m going to convince him that this is a good idea.” And, it was the same thing, I talked to him about it, I sold him on the idea and then I sent him the videotape and that was that. It was just the same dead-end. Maybe the answer here is that we should stop sending the videotape and just sell the idea.

RR: Good thing we weren’t living off that project.

TA: Well, I guess that’s kind of a bummer way to end it but not everything works out, right?

RR: And we learned a lot. We had a good time. We did a TV project. I thought it was a cool thing to do since I studied film in school. I had a good time running a camera again. We lost our money but at least it was fun.

DV: And I think there are some components you carried forward into your post-Bar Talk Hollywood deals. We proved that cold-calling alone wouldn’t work–we knew that agency representation was key, and now you have one of the best in the industry and that’s been key to your ongoing success in that area. Without Bar Talk, it would have taken you guys a little bit longer to get up the learning curve there.

TA: True–every cloud has a silver lining. And, if there’s a TV show runner out there who wants to talk to me about Bar Talk, I’m easy to find. IDW 53