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Upstream: Magnetic Baby the “Video Podcast Docu-Series”

Published on August 14, 2007

“Watch Semi Precious Weapons, NYC’s garage glam heroes on their rise to the top. With the record industry turned on its head, it’s a tough time to be a rock band—no matter how flawless you look.”

No, it’s not the latest season of MTV’s The Real World. This is a different breed of “reality television”—something that filmmakers David Becker and Pamela Romanowsky are calling a “video podcast docu-series”—and it’s made to play on a much smaller screen.

Magnetic Baby is following the footsteps of early innovators like Rocketboom and Four-Eyed Monsters into the world of podcasting, or to be more specific, “vodcasting.” A vodcast is a subscription-based distribution model. Like a newspaper or an email listserv, it is something that is automatically delivered to the user. Except instead of the The New York Times on your doorstep or a message from MoveOn.org in your inbox, you get a video clip downloaded onto your computer, usually via iTunes.

Magnetic Baby is a documentary series being distributed as a podcast.

Unlike the experience on YouTube or MySpace or the myriad other websites that stream video online, vodcasting provides audiences with something that they can keep on their computer and watch whenever they want. Or, if the mood strikes (and they have the cash for one), they can transfer it onto their iPod or similar transportable media player.

Vodcasting, like podcasting and on-demand television, is the latest in a trend of instant gratification delivery methods that enable audiences to decide what they want to watch and when. And in the case of Magnetic Baby, vodcasting provides instant gratification for the filmmakers as well, or as close as you can come to it in the world of documentary filmmaking, where a feature-length film can easily be three years in the making from the beginning of production to the first time it is watched by an audience.

“The second they started their first song, Pam and I looked at each other and just said, we have to film these guys.” That’s how David Becker describes the first time they saw the band Semi Precious Weapons perform live. The group was formed by friends at Berkeley College of Music and rocks an invigorating mix of glam and punk. As much spectacle as musical showcase, the act is fronted by bleach blonde Justin Tranter, who belts out his emotions in elaborate costumes designed especially for him.

Inspired by the band’s energy and charisma, Romanowsky and Becker decided to follow the band on stage and behind-the-scenes as they tour the country and attempt to land a record deal with a major label. With the support of veteran cinema vérité documentarian Barbara Kopple, who came on board as the project’s Executive Producer, they have been shooting hundreds of hours of footage of rehearsals, recording sessions, costume production and the various antics of the band members, with a focus on Justin, who oozes confidence in his gender-bending persona. “Part of the big appeal of Semi Precious Weapons is that each of the members is so unique and has such a strong personality that I think people aren’t so afraid to fly their ‘freak flag’ around them,” explains Romanowsky. “People are inspired to loosen up and lose their inhibitions, and I think particularly Justin’s confidence and positive outlook on the world and on himself really affects people.”

Whereas most documentary filmmakers would continue shooting, complete post-production and then start distribution via the film festival circuit, Becker and Romanowsky didn’t want to wait. “We knew that we had all this great footage, and that we were dealing with something that maybe didn’t have a built-in audience,” explains Becker. “So instead of just sitting on the material and looking towards doing a film festival a year or two from when we started, we thought, ‘well let’s just start cutting together material and see how people react to it.’”

The pair screened early cuts to folks at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music and film festival, where they were shooting the band, and were encouraged by the positive responses. That’s when they decided to start getting the project out to audiences via podcasting. “Podcasting is just a very very cool, very accessible medium right now. It’s free for the viewer, and it couldn’t be easier to download and watch,” says Becker.

Filmmaker Pamela Romanowsky shoots Semi Precious Weapons band member, Aaron Lee Tasjan. Photo by BP Fallon

And so Magnetic Baby was born. So far the filmmakers have released two episodes and are working on the third. Tightly edited with a running time under fifteen minutes, each episode is jam-packed with music and drama and ends with a cliffhanger, something that the filmmakers learned from other successful podcasts. “We learned a lot from Four-Eyed Monsters, which was really one of the groundbreaking podcasts,” explains Becker. “Every time you saw one of those, you were desperate to see the next one. That was one of the things we thought was really successful about their model, so we wanted to see if we could do that, too.”

The filmmakers consider the podcasting approach an experiment, and they are, in fact, not limiting themselves to one format. While their feed via iTunes enables them to deliver higher production value video to viewers, they are also streaming lower resolution episodes on the Magnetic Baby website and on their MySpace page, where they’ve got over thirteen hundred “friends.” “I’d say that most decisions have been based on what we thought would be a good balance between quality and access,” Romanowsky explains.

The pair has nothing but good things to say about the iTunes experience so far. They have found it easy to register and set up their feed and recommend the software program Feeder to any aspiring vodcasters. Like any self-respecting rockumentary, Magnetic Baby features profanity and quite a bit of scantily-clad gyrating, but none of this material was in any way censored by iTunes, although the filmmakers did have to slap a parental advisory on the series before the feed could go live.

So far they have “over five thousand subscribers,” according to Becker, who says that they get all their download stats, not from iTunes, but directly from the web service that hosts the episodes on its server. And they probably will put Magnetic Baby on YouTube as well, “maybe in an edited form or as selected scenes. Then we’ll encourage people to go to the website or to iTunes to see the whole thing.”

They attribute a lot of their traffic and subscribers to early buzz generated on the blogs FreeIndie.com, AgnesVarnum.com and Real POP, which is associated with The Hollywood Reporter. They’ve also been doing offline outreach, distributing promotional postcards at festivals and staging happenings like a recent full-costume performance by Justin in the middle of Times Square. “He’ll pass out fliers and he always attracts a big crowd,” explains Becker. “It provides a good opportunity for a shoot and it’s good promotion at the same time.”
The experiment seems to be going well so far with new subscribers every day and emails from people of all walks of life about how much they like the episodes, especially teenagers. “A lot of these young people, whether they’re queer or straight, or living in New York or in the south, they kind of see themselves in Justin, and they can’t help but feel more confident in themselves just from watching Justin do his thing. That’s really what it’s all about for him, and I think for the fans of the band, it really has become their story, too,” says Becker.

“I think the way that technology stands now is really empowering to the average person and puts filmmaking in the hands of anyone who wants to do it,” Romanowsky contends. “It’s really been a great opportunity as filmmakers to put our own vision out there and to have an audience for it. We’ve actually been a little late on our third episode and all these people are writing every day asking us, ‘Where’s episode three?’”

Semi Precious Weapons’ front man Justin Tranter inspires audiences to raise their “freak flags” with pride.

Of course the filmmakers have other concerns than getting the third episode out to eager fans, namely money. They are offering Magnetic Baby for free, both in streaming and download form, so they have to think of creative ways to finance the project. Their current goal is to find a sponsor for the podcast, someone who will give them cash in exchange for branding on the website and in the video episodes. “I think it’s important that this project doesn’t alienate anyone,” Romanowsky explains. “Its message is important whether you’re a gay hipster in New York or a midwestern mom, and so we want to find a sponsor that’s fairly neutral.”

Becker says that they have approached some companies and “gotten close,” but haven’t secured a sponsor yet. “They’re a little nervous about it because it’s something where no one knows exactly where it’s going. It’s really a medium with unlimited potential, but it’s just barely in its infancy, so it’s going to take some forward-thinking sponsors to get involved in this thing.”

In the meantime, Becker and Romanowsky are continuing to shoot the band and are making a music video for one of their songs. They’re hoping the podcast will help Semi Precious Weapons stand out in the highly-competitive music industry and help them get their big break. “One of the overarching themes of Magnetic Baby as a whole, is the changes in the record industry,” explains Becker. “The record business is reeling from changes in technology and losing profits because of online downloads. To be a successful band these days, you need to be more than just talented. You need to come to a record label with a whole package, and the podcast is now part of that. It helps them with exposure and audience-building, which we all hope will help take them to the next level.”

Will Semi Precious Weapons get signed by a major label? Will Pamela Romanowsky and David Becker secure a podcast sponsor? Is podcasting the future of documentary filmmaking? Stay tuned for the next episode of Magnetic Baby to find out.

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