jokes aside, I'm talking like, just production work and the work of the cast and crew (afaik he did an interview with shoutfactory about the movie, his brief acting career and the MST3K revival of the movie). obviously its not a very good movie, but its entertaining enough
I just don't think he can separate his experiences with the film and its production and from MST3K lovingly ripping it (I never got that they actually hated it, imo)
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited November 2023
Honestly I think the Gizmoplex doesn't help here either. Regardless of what they say in that FAQ I kinda feel like people DID think it would keep the show funded without needing to ask for more money. I wouldn't be surprised if that rubbed some people the wrong way.
There's also something to be said for the way they're running this thing. Not on Kickstarter with no real well-priced tiers if you just want the episodes. Yeah, I don't really see this happening.
Edit: Also, honestly... right before Holiday shopping season might also not be the best time for people to have a lot of disposable income to spend... I know they've done that in the past (or at least I recall the first Netflix one being over Thanksgiving) but the last campaign was in April.
I also went back to check the wording on the last campaign:
MAKE MORE MST3K episodes with a new, sustainable model, that lets you decide how long we should keep going, and lets us bring new episodes directly to you, without depending on a network to distribute or keep renewing us for new seasons.
While it doesn't explicitly say the Gizmoplex is going to fund the show, it does kinda make it sound that way.
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
To be honest, at this point, I feel like the value proposition just isn't there. As much as I love mst3k, it's shtick is easily replicated with the streamer model. The bots need to offer superior comedy (by a strong margin) versus me just doing a watchalong stream with someone.
It feels like the dying vestiges trading on my nostalgia, not a viable project.
I'm fine with paying some amount every year to get to watch the new stuff. And I get it, it's a niche cult show. But I think the main issues they are currently having are:
1) Moving away from Kickstarter, where their entire fanbase is used to contributing, has probably left a lot of fans in the dark. I am more tuned in to this franchise than most and I had no idea they were running another campaign until I saw it mentioned here.
2) This last season was rough. The riffing was still good but everything else took a noticeable dip in quality. That's going to erode some confidence.
3) They didn't have all their ducks in a row here. The last two campaigns had the cast lined up and committed, while this time they've "invited" the cast back? People want to know what they are paying for ahead of time. I would rather have had a longer wait before the campaign started so they could tell me exactly what this new season would look like.
4) Fan fatigue. It's pretty impressive how much they've managed to accomplish with grassroots financial support. And I wish to hell they had managed to find a streaming network that understood the show wasn't, isn't, and never will be The Next Big Thing, but would be an instant, relatively cheap value add for their service and a guaranteed subscription for a decent amount of folks. Instead they signed up with Netflix, which, if it's not meeting some arbitrarily large metric, theydonwannit. So now, what a lot of people expected to be a one-time cash infusion defibrillating their favorite franchise back to life has become an annual money suck on their end to keep it going.
The move to independence is an admirable idea and it's been a decent experiment in directly involving fans with funding, but I don't think it can keep going in perpetuity. I think Joel probably needs to shop the show around some more. To Hulu, or Peacock, or wherever. I get it, he's been consistently burned by executive meddling and cancellations. But those fundraising numbers are pretty *yikes*.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
To be honest, at this point, I feel like the value proposition just isn't there. As much as I love mst3k, it's shtick is easily replicated with the streamer model. The bots need to offer superior comedy (by a strong margin) versus me just doing a watchalong stream with someone.
It feels like the dying vestiges trading on my nostalgia, not a viable project.
Honestly this isn't even wrong. There's some amount of "exclusivity" in terms of the content being riffed (in that most platforms will take down someone talking over a movie for copywrite purposes) but certainly you can find the same kind of content all over youtube and twitch for other things like games and videos (and even stuff using the "Rifftrax" model of not showing the movie). This was absolutely not the case back when MST3k was originally aired. And modern revivals do rely a lot on nostalgia for sure. It's a shame but true.
gizmoplex was just a disaster and still remains such a headache to navigate, the things I bought are shunted off into some random transaction page and lumped together with all the livestreams and shorts.
The big problem is that the show needs a cast and needs to stick with it and have someone be the charismatic face of the whole thing. The skits should probably be a bit more like the sci-fi seasons where there is a little story going on. They need real sets again. I don't like the rotating cast thing, I'd prefer to get comfortable with the same crew for a bit and let them connect and jibe. They kind of went in the opposite direction a lot of streaming shows (as in, youtube, podcasts, twitch etc) where the hosts are the most important part of why people tune in each day/week. People don't hop on to watch just anything, they want to watch characters they've built a connection with each week. I guess all these things just come back to money problems because they can't afford to pay a cast consistently, they can't pay for sets, and they can't pay for a crew, so everything has to be done in a very mercenary way.
I contributed, giving $85 for the year subscription and all. But I feel like going away from Kickstarter and doing minimal promotion were the big problems here. I still enjoy MST3K and watch an episode almost every week, so I'm technically the target audience. But the Gizmoplex suffers from a lack of availability as well as the UI. There are plenty of times I have to trawl YouTube or the rest of the Internet for episodes they don't have. Big episodes, like Godzilla and The Final Sacrifice.
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
gizmoplex was just a disaster and still remains such a headache to navigate, the things I bought are shunted off into some random transaction page and lumped together with all the livestreams and shorts.
The big problem is that the show needs a cast and needs to stick with it and have someone be the charismatic face of the whole thing. The skits should probably be a bit more like the sci-fi seasons where there is a little story going on. They need real sets again. I don't like the rotating cast thing, I'd prefer to get comfortable with the same crew for a bit and let them connect and jibe. They kind of went in the opposite direction a lot of streaming shows (as in, youtube, podcasts, twitch etc) where the hosts are the most important part of why people tune in each day/week. People don't hop on to watch just anything, they want to watch characters they've built a connection with each week. I guess all these things just come back to money problems because they can't afford to pay a cast consistently, they can't pay for sets, and they can't pay for a crew, so everything has to be done in a very mercenary way.
I agree with the navigation issues. The site feels semi-amateur, while consistent with the overall vibe of the show, isn't what I expect from a streaming service these days. It should be relatively easy for me to find the movies & streams I've purchased but it's not.
That's the one thing I added to their "things to fix" topic on the official forums.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited November 2023
Huh, speak of the devil - Joel just sent out an update about the campaign obviously not succeeding this time:
Greetings, MSTies!
Thanksgiving is nearly upon us, and I want to get a little serious for a minute.
We’ve done some intense talking and planning over the last few days around here. Despite our collective efforts, it's obvious that the current campaign – at the current goals – is struggling to succeed, and that while there is still demand for more MST3K, it is not currently strong enough to overcome some real challenges:
We spent most of this campaign – the planning and the campaign itself – honoring the WGA and SAG strikes, which made it impossible to involve most of the people our backers would want to hear from: our cast and characters.
For reasons we regret but accept responsibility for, we know that many backers of the former campaign were justifiably upset about the delays and unexpected additional costs of getting rewards from the last campaign.
Our original budget goal reflected our desire to take a specific approach to producing the show. But, as it has become clear to us that enough support isn't there right now, we've had a series of hard conversations and examined where we could cut every possible corner from the budget, while still being able to make a version of the show that you – and we – would find satisfying and entertaining.
We've reached a number of compromises that we’d hoped to avoid, but, if pushed to make a decision, we would rather make than abandon the show's future altogether.
There are two changes, in particular, that I want to outline for you:
First, while I had hoped to produce the entire season where I and the staff at Alternaversal live, in Pennsylvania, one of our producers has calculated that we can save a significant amount by shooting the show in Los Angeles, where most of our cast is based, and where there is a much larger (and more competitive) pool of creative talent to work with. Most assume that shooting in LA would be more expensive…but it turns out, that it’s less.
You all know how involved I like to be in the small details of costumes, props, etc, so I hope you understand that this is a significant compromise in how I'd hoped to make the show. I will still work with all of those teams remotely, but it will be a different experience than if we were able to do a lot of this work locally, as we did during the last 3 seasons.
But – I trust that our production designers are so good, and we'll find such good vendors to work with on the west coast, that I'm confident we can handle this approach.
Second, while our team at Alternaversal / Gizmonic Arts has benefited enormously from the chance to have a physical office space and workshop, and to be able to work together in person over the last few seasons, we recognize that if production is happening on the west coast, we can save a significant additional amount by giving up our offices and workshop, and having our entire team work remotely.
If we make these two changes, along with a few smaller ones, we are able to trim almost $800,000 from the budget, bringing the total cost of 6 episodes down to $4 million – a goal that might still be a challenge difficult to reach, but is far closer than $4.8m.
I want to emphasize that we are still committed to better compensating everyone involved, as described with a five percent pay increase to accommodate the cost of living for our vendors, and writers, and performers.
I also want to confirm that we remain committed to moving back to “in camera” physical sets for the host segments. (As you know, we used greenscreens for the backgrounds in Season 13 on account of COVID, and uncertainty of where we would be able to shoot the show.)
I imagine that some of you will wonder, if we're able to make these cuts and compromises now, why we didn't make them during our original discussions before launching this crowdfunding campaign. It's a fair question, and the answer is: we really hoped that these kinds of compromises wouldn't be necessary. Now that it's clear that they are, we've discussed them, and are prepared to make them for the good of the show.
I know this is a lot of news to digest, and I hope this adjustment can help us get to our goal.
Honestly I am less pissed with Joel and team than with Netflix management pissing away a reliable cost effective workhorse chasing Stranger Things level engagement.
There are plenty of solid episodes and memorable(BANG!)riffs and those stupid fuckers threw it away.
For the record I am also salty about tossing The Dark Crystal, it's like you did the hard work investing in the physical assets it's.only.going to be more profitable going fo-[prozd media CEO.youtube.movie.comslashgov].
[spoiler
BANG!
[/spoiler]
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
Season 13 was extremely underwhelming and the Gizmoplex is a dumpster fire, total waste. They aren't getting my money again.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
Apparently I wasn't the only one that felt that way as the campaign ended about $1.3 million short. I wonder if they will take another swing at it, or if MST3K is truly done and dusted?
It had a good run up until that last season. I think the concept is still strong, but I lost faith in the talent behind it.
The narrative conceit of MST3K is just so much fluff, but it does make the tone of the project meaningfully different then something like Rifftrax.
The host and the bots didn’t choose this; they are being made to, and the jokes are them making the best of it. This softens the thing a bit, even in Mike Nelson’s meaner-spirited moments. It makes jokes that are just punching down feel less like they’re just punching down. (This is also why I tend not to skip the host segments, even when they themselves… aren’t great: they reaffirm the premise in a way that primes me for the good stuff.)
More than the different in delivery format, this is—for me—what meaningfully separates MST3K from its successors.
I backed Season 13; I have never seen it. I was never able to get the Gizmoplex to work; my attempts to contact support, by email and forum, went unanswered. I pretty much flushed my money down the toilet, which is—of course—the risk one takes.
The narrative conceit of MST3K is just so much fluff, but it does make the tone of the project meaningfully different then something like Rifftrax.
The host and the bots didn’t choose this; they are being made to, and the jokes are them making the best of it. This softens the thing a bit, even in Mike Nelson’s meaner-spirited moments. It makes jokes that are just punching down feel less like they’re just punching down. (This is also why I tend not to skip the host segments, even when they themselves… aren’t great: they reaffirm the premise in a way that primes me for the good stuff.)
More than the different in delivery format, this is—for me—what meaningfully separates MST3K from its successors.
I backed Season 13; I have never seen it. I was never able to get the Gizmoplex to work; my attempts to contact support, by email and forum, went unanswered. I pretty much flushed my money down the toilet, which is—of course—the risk one takes.
What problems were you having? I generally got it to work on Firefox at least. Watching them on the PS4 was less reliable, but I sometimes got it to work.
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
What problems were you having? I generally got it to work on Firefox at least. Watching them on the PS4 was less reliable, but I sometimes got it to work.
Was never even able to redeem the BackerKit codes. So I guess it’d be more accurate to say that the Gizmoplex might’ve worked fine, but I’ll never know.
I still haven't watched season 13. I don't know what happened between the Kickstarter campaign in 2021 and when the episodes started coming out in 2022, but I totally lost interest in jumping back in. I really liked the Netflix seasons and was gung-ho for both the 2015 KS campaign as well as the 2021 campaign. I did watch their post-Manos screening Q&A, that was kind of neat. But in the end I just haven't been in the mood to engage with MST3K, whether it be a lack of free time or prioritizing other things or not feeling properly enticed. Maybe the pandemic entering its third year dampened my appetite for that kind of entertainment. I don't really know. Ultimately I didn't donate this time because I can't afford to spend money on something that I'm not actively engaged with.
My gut reaction to this is that attempting to regularly put on multi-million dollar crowdfunding campaigns is a difficult sell at best, especially if enthusiasm and goodwill in the fanbase hasn't had time to recharge. And it's a comedy series that I have oodles of fond memories of, but I don't know if I have it in me to help fight for its survival every two or so years.
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Bloods EndBlade of TyshallePunch dimensionRegistered Userregular
edited November 2023
Considering how many times mst3k has died and come back I have highly doubt this is the end, but maybe a rest and reset wouldn't be the worst thing. Almost 5 million dollars is a lot to ask for at best a fringe property
Bloods End on
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Bloods EndBlade of TyshallePunch dimensionRegistered Userregular
Also the marathon this year was delightful
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I think they just tried to do too much. Three host, shorts, specials, etc.
I'll be honest, never in my entire history of being an MST3K viewer have I ever had the slightest interest in the shorts. They were only a way to pad out a time block when they had to deal with commercials, ditching them completely would not even register as an issue for me. And the three hosts just split stuff too much; pick one host and stick with them.
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I just don't think he can separate his experiences with the film and its production and from MST3K lovingly ripping it (I never got that they actually hated it, imo)
oof
I really have the question the wisdom of trying to run the fundraiser at a time when the entire cast can't even promote it
There's also something to be said for the way they're running this thing. Not on Kickstarter with no real well-priced tiers if you just want the episodes. Yeah, I don't really see this happening.
Edit: Also, honestly... right before Holiday shopping season might also not be the best time for people to have a lot of disposable income to spend... I know they've done that in the past (or at least I recall the first Netflix one being over Thanksgiving) but the last campaign was in April.
I also went back to check the wording on the last campaign:
While it doesn't explicitly say the Gizmoplex is going to fund the show, it does kinda make it sound that way.
It feels like the dying vestiges trading on my nostalgia, not a viable project.
1) Moving away from Kickstarter, where their entire fanbase is used to contributing, has probably left a lot of fans in the dark. I am more tuned in to this franchise than most and I had no idea they were running another campaign until I saw it mentioned here.
2) This last season was rough. The riffing was still good but everything else took a noticeable dip in quality. That's going to erode some confidence.
3) They didn't have all their ducks in a row here. The last two campaigns had the cast lined up and committed, while this time they've "invited" the cast back? People want to know what they are paying for ahead of time. I would rather have had a longer wait before the campaign started so they could tell me exactly what this new season would look like.
4) Fan fatigue. It's pretty impressive how much they've managed to accomplish with grassroots financial support. And I wish to hell they had managed to find a streaming network that understood the show wasn't, isn't, and never will be The Next Big Thing, but would be an instant, relatively cheap value add for their service and a guaranteed subscription for a decent amount of folks. Instead they signed up with Netflix, which, if it's not meeting some arbitrarily large metric, theydonwannit. So now, what a lot of people expected to be a one-time cash infusion defibrillating their favorite franchise back to life has become an annual money suck on their end to keep it going.
The move to independence is an admirable idea and it's been a decent experiment in directly involving fans with funding, but I don't think it can keep going in perpetuity. I think Joel probably needs to shop the show around some more. To Hulu, or Peacock, or wherever. I get it, he's been consistently burned by executive meddling and cancellations. But those fundraising numbers are pretty *yikes*.
Honestly this isn't even wrong. There's some amount of "exclusivity" in terms of the content being riffed (in that most platforms will take down someone talking over a movie for copywrite purposes) but certainly you can find the same kind of content all over youtube and twitch for other things like games and videos (and even stuff using the "Rifftrax" model of not showing the movie). This was absolutely not the case back when MST3k was originally aired. And modern revivals do rely a lot on nostalgia for sure. It's a shame but true.
The big problem is that the show needs a cast and needs to stick with it and have someone be the charismatic face of the whole thing. The skits should probably be a bit more like the sci-fi seasons where there is a little story going on. They need real sets again. I don't like the rotating cast thing, I'd prefer to get comfortable with the same crew for a bit and let them connect and jibe. They kind of went in the opposite direction a lot of streaming shows (as in, youtube, podcasts, twitch etc) where the hosts are the most important part of why people tune in each day/week. People don't hop on to watch just anything, they want to watch characters they've built a connection with each week. I guess all these things just come back to money problems because they can't afford to pay a cast consistently, they can't pay for sets, and they can't pay for a crew, so everything has to be done in a very mercenary way.
I agree with the navigation issues. The site feels semi-amateur, while consistent with the overall vibe of the show, isn't what I expect from a streaming service these days. It should be relatively easy for me to find the movies & streams I've purchased but it's not.
That's the one thing I added to their "things to fix" topic on the official forums.
My rifftrax friends sub is what $5/m and I get significantly more out of that and that has an app that works well.
There are plenty of solid episodes and memorable(BANG!)riffs and those stupid fuckers threw it away.
For the record I am also salty about tossing The Dark Crystal, it's like you did the hard work investing in the physical assets it's.only.going to be more profitable going fo-[prozd media CEO.youtube.movie.comslashgov].
It had a good run up until that last season. I think the concept is still strong, but I lost faith in the talent behind it.
The host and the bots didn’t choose this; they are being made to, and the jokes are them making the best of it. This softens the thing a bit, even in Mike Nelson’s meaner-spirited moments. It makes jokes that are just punching down feel less like they’re just punching down. (This is also why I tend not to skip the host segments, even when they themselves… aren’t great: they reaffirm the premise in a way that primes me for the good stuff.)
More than the different in delivery format, this is—for me—what meaningfully separates MST3K from its successors.
I backed Season 13; I have never seen it. I was never able to get the Gizmoplex to work; my attempts to contact support, by email and forum, went unanswered. I pretty much flushed my money down the toilet, which is—of course—the risk one takes.
What problems were you having? I generally got it to work on Firefox at least. Watching them on the PS4 was less reliable, but I sometimes got it to work.
Was never even able to redeem the BackerKit codes. So I guess it’d be more accurate to say that the Gizmoplex might’ve worked fine, but I’ll never know.
My gut reaction to this is that attempting to regularly put on multi-million dollar crowdfunding campaigns is a difficult sell at best, especially if enthusiasm and goodwill in the fanbase hasn't had time to recharge. And it's a comedy series that I have oodles of fond memories of, but I don't know if I have it in me to help fight for its survival every two or so years.
I'll be honest, never in my entire history of being an MST3K viewer have I ever had the slightest interest in the shorts. They were only a way to pad out a time block when they had to deal with commercials, ditching them completely would not even register as an issue for me. And the three hosts just split stuff too much; pick one host and stick with them.
Rifftrax has some good ones too. You got Norman(uhggghg) and the question of the ages: Is Corn Grass?
This is peak comedy