Jim Munroe

Syncing Selling and Sincerity

 Features, Ghosts With Shit Jobs, Movies, Writing  2 Responses »
May 142012
 

I’m not crazy about Blu-ray, so I started to think of alternative ways to deliver the 1080p version of the movie and came across these usb bracelets. When I started to think about what else you could put on it, I realized there was a connection to one of the ideas in the movie: that in 2025 the Cloud was repossessed. I like the idea that people can also use it to store their own locally owned data, as insurance against that day. Or even if nothing happens, for a time when you make the choice to get off the Cloud (or the grid) and find out that something you clicked I Agree to years ago limits that choice.

You can pick it up for 4 more days on Kickstarter. (Did I mention it got a rave review in the Guardian?) More thoughts below. Continue reading »

Micro Budget Sci-Fi Filmmaking Discussion

 Appearances, Ghosts With Shit Jobs
Apr 302012
 

Hey, I’m taking part in this youth initiative that looks pretty good! More deets here.

BFI Future Film and SCI-FI-LONDON Present… Micro Budget Sci- Fi Filmmaking – May 5th, 12:45
Join us for a Q+A with Directors Jim Munroe (Ghosts with Sh*t Jobs), G B Hajim (Strange Love) and Sloan U’Ren (Dimensions) as we discuss the future of sci-fi on film, and making sci-fi movies on a micro budget. Our panel will also be giving feedback on sci-fi shorts made by young filmmakers that will be screened as part of this event.

Kickstarted!

 Features, Ghosts With Shit Jobs, Movies  No Responses »
Apr 242012
 

Fantastically, we reached our goal of $5000 in three days, and it’s still climbing. Thanks to everyone who pledged or told their friends. Thanks also to the Kickstarter folks who made us a staff pick on their blog.

Now we get to decide where we go!

If you have any interest in seeing us bring Ghosts With Shit Jobs to your town, please drop a line. We’re looking for people who’re willing to spread the word in their community and in teaming up with like-minded organizations or collectives (or mythical constructs) to make it happen.

Some interesting stats: approximately 25% of the money funded came from Kickstarter inbound links. The platform more than earned its 5% cut.

I recognized about 25% of the names of the donors, and the rest were lovely, generous, strangers to me — but probably many of them were familiar to our large cast and crew.

For those who haven’t pledged yet, you have until May 18th to get a DRM-free copy of the movie direct from us for ten bucks.

Ghosts in London, Berlin and Toronto

 Features, Ghosts With Shit Jobs, Movies  No Responses »
Apr 182012
 

My new lo-fi sci-fi feature, Ghosts With Shit Jobs, will be screening in a few cities in May. We’re running a one month Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds to screen it in more cities, and if you support us for $10 or more you can get a special advance copy of the entire feature in June. Please check out our video and rewards!

Our world premiere is happening May 7th at 7:45pm in London, England, as a part of the excellent Sci-Fi-London festival. It’s then screening at Moviemento, Germany’s oldest cinema, in Berlin, Germany on May 10th at 10:15pm. Then we’re back home for our Toronto debut at the Royal on May 30th at 7pm (you can buy tickets here!). I’m going to be present at all the screenings, doing my best to represent for our incredible cast and crew.

If you’re not sure if it’s for you check out the trailer (over 125,000 views!) and the first 20 minutes of the movie — we’ve just posted the introduction to Serina, Human Spam.

Weekday Warrior

 Videogames  No Responses »
Feb 162012
 


I got to work with one of my favourite gamemakers, Paolo from Molleindustria. He had an idea for a game depicting the day in the life of a drone pilot.

Now you get to play the newest kind of soldier: one who remotely drops bombs on foreign soil during the day, and at night goes home to his family in the suburbs. In Unmanned, the conflict is internal — the only blood you’ll shed is from shaving cuts. But is there collateral damage in this new way of waging war?

I did the writing for it. We went out to Sundance for its debut, and now you can play it online here.

“Unmanned‘s a sharp satire that highlights how video games can circumvent traditional modes of political discourse.” — Kotaku

The Karrrrrento Brothers!

 Features, Ghosts With Shit Jobs, Movies, Roofed  No Responses »
Jan 112012
 

Check out the introduction of Anton and Toph Karrento, the Silk Gatherers, the latest clip from my lo-fi sci-fi feature Ghosts With Shit Jobs.

This is actually the segment I directed, and although I did it reluctantly (I figure my real skill sets are producing/writing), it was a joy to work with these two super-talented guys. Fantastic at improv, they totally internalized the 2040 world in a way that just floored me. And I felt they nailed the dysfunctional brothers dynamic. After we wrapped I made a text adventure game starring them that you can play here, just so I could spend some more time hanging out in my head with them. Is that weird, bro?

Digital Janitor

 Features, Ghosts With Shit Jobs  No Responses »
Oct 252011
 

 

This month we’re releasing the first 5 minutes of the new lo-fi sci-fi movie, which introduces the digital janitor. In each of the coming three months we will be introducing a new character from our mockumentary. Check it out here.

It’s also a part of the Celtx Seeds program, where we’ve additionally posted a little quick-and-dirty interview with a couple of us. We focused on a tips/how-to approach rather than, y’know, our motivations and artistic aesthetic. Not that that’s irrelevant, but since Celtx is a scriptwriting app we figured most of the people watching would be fellow filmmakers.

The Difference Engine Initiative

 Videogames  2 Responses »
Jul 202011
 

Last year I was speaking at the Game Developers Conference and saw Robin Hunicke‘s excellent microtalk (see it here at minute 24) about the continuing gender disparity in the games industry. Many talks of this type are documenting the ongoing systemic oppression of women, which is important and valid work. But Robin’s talk channelled Rosie the Riveter. It had a “this is broken, let’s fix it” attitude that was totally inspiring.

Mare Sheppard and I decided to start the Difference Engine Initiative.

As part of the OMDC-supported TIFF Nexus, the Hand Eye Society will be running two gamemaking incubators for women in Toronto, one in August-September, and one in October-November. By introducing new gamemakers from under-represented groups into our community, the Difference Engine Initiative aims to diversify what kind of videogames are made. Our first focus is women…

Find out about next week’s info session and how to apply for this free program over here.

David Malki ! and Ryan North Interview

 Inspiring Creators  No Responses »
Jul 012011
 

I’ve recently been inspired by the amazing long-form interview WTF podcast to revive the Inspiring Creators Series here on No Media Kings. The thing I love about Mark Maron’s style is that he is the opposite of the objective reporter — he’s a confessional, personal, self-obsessed egomaniac, and you end up loving him for it. I think when ever I was doing these interviews in the past I felt like the noble thing to do was to make it all about the person I was interviewing, when really I was most interested in having a open discussion with my peers and fellow cultural workers.

But anyway: Machine of Death. A smart and funny crowdsourced science fiction anthology self-published by a bunch of webcomic creators becomes a #1 best seller on Amazon, is publicly denounced by right wing pundit Glenn Beck and generally flies in the face of every scrap of received wisdom about publishing. Rethinking publishing is something I know a thing or two about, and what’s even better is I know these guys, so I thought it’d be a good way to try out this whole conversational approach. David was in town for TCAF and he and Ryan nicely made their way out to my place overlooking the railway in the Junction. We chatted for about an hour and a half and I cut thirty minutes out.

Machine of Death is available as a free e-book and in a print edition, and if you like it you should consider submitting a story (July 15th deadline!).

No Flash? Download the MP3 here or here.

If you dig this, you might want to subscribe to the Inspiring Creators podcast (RSS2 or itunes) or check out my other (older, more stilted) interviews with videogame maker Jon Mak, comics artist Carla Speed McNeil, or Wholphin DVD editor Brent Hoff.

E-Book FAQ

 Comics, Novels  2 Responses »
Jun 212011
 
The view from my reading nook.

How much do you charge for digital products? For a decade my answer to that was “nothing!” It was freeing to be able to give away stuff, unhampered by material costs of production. I’ve been giving away e-books since 2000, and I’ve benefited from this in a number of ways.

However — in case you missed it — things have changed in the last decade. The print book market has been becoming less viable, and the digital becoming more so. Also the e-book reading experience is becoming more and more comparable to the print one. At a personal level, I’m reading as much on my phone as I am on the page.

So: I’ve decided to charge something for them now. But how much?

That’s up to you. Whatever you think is fair and whatever you’re happy to pay. If you’re looking for examples, read on.

Continue reading »

A Graphic Division of Labour

 Comics, post-Rapture, Publishing, Sword of My Mouth  14 Responses »
Aug 192010
 

A lot of people find quantifying the creative process to be distasteful somehow, but I dig hour logging — I keep track of how much time I’m spending on most of my projects. It gives me a way to predict timelines for similar projects in the future, and there’s something geekily satisfying about all that addition at the end of a day. It didn’t really work well with the movie project I’m working on, too many people and too many working styles, but it worked well with Shannon and I on the Sword of My Mouth graphic novel.

[Shannon, by the way, is currently on tour on the west coast -- she's doing a book launch at Lucky's on Aug. 24th in case you live in Vancouver!]

So here’s a breakdown of how much time we each spent working on the book.
Continue reading »

Build Your Own Indie Arcade Cabinet

 Do-It-Yourself, Videogames  2 Responses »
Jul 292010
 

Last year I organized a project where we gutted an ’80s era arcade cabinet and filled it full of indie games. Jph Wacheski, the chief retrofitter, wrote the article below for people wanting to do the same in the most recent Broken Pencil.

Lots of people are making their own games these days — point-and-click tools like Scratch and GameMaker are making it more accessible for non-programmers, and it’s easy to get your game out there via the internet. But wouldn’t it be even cooler to get you and your friends’ games out there on an old-school arcade cabinet?

The old cabinets are generally made to play one specific game, but you can re-fit it with a PC and a display and wire up the existing controls to make playing new games possible. Many people have been doing this to run emulators of the classic games – MAME cabinets can run hundreds of old games on a single cabinet. The Hand Eye Society, Toronto’s videogame culture collective, wanted to do a similar thing, but with locally made games. They debuted the Torontron, which plays six hand-crafted games by Toronto indies, at the last Canzine. Jph, who did the retrofitting, takes us through the steps he took.

Continue reading »

Roundsdoctors and Hexslingers

 Inspiring Creators, Novels  No Responses »
Jul 172010
 

Two recent book trades that I felt I got the better deal of — A Dream on Two Wheels and A Book of Tongues.

Wheels is a smart and whimsical cyclist alternate reality written by Sarah A. Chrisman, who not only handmakes her books but also a selection of hats you can wear while reading them. Lovely!

Tongues is a baroque masterpiece. The worldbuilding is as dense and rich as China Miéville’s, and the cowboy sex smells of Jean Genet’s forbidden machismo. The fact that this outlaw confabulation has come from a debut novelist from Toronto and a Toronto publisher of excellent weird spec-fiction just makes me extra-excited.

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