Sarfraz Manzoor

It is another sweltering summers day in Los Angeles and while the beaches are filled with bare-footed bathers in an editing suite in Culver City twenty six year old Dallas Dunne is researching John McCain’s political flip-flops. Dunne is an associate producer at Brave New Films, an online production company specialising in creating fast turnaround politically progressive videos. She is slim, dark haired and sporting a tattoo which quotes Kurt Vonnegut and reads ‘Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.’ ‘I started out in reality television and then worked on music tours’ she tells me ‘and what I love about this job is that finally I am doing something with a purpose: I am educating myself and others.’ The last video that Dunne worked on was entitled ‘The Real McCain 2’ and it documented John McCain’s policy flip-flops on Iraq, the US economy, Hurricane Katrina and other issues. The video was viewed over half a million times within the first 24 hours of being released onto YouTube and that number has since reached almost three million. The video also played a significant role in under-cutting McCain’s reputation as a political maverick and has received coverage in the American mainstream press.
The success and impact of ‘The Real McCain 2’ is only the latest in a number of successes that Brave New Films have scored and it represents a vindication for the founder of the company. Robert Greenwald began his career in television before moving into directing feature films including the Olivia Newton John kitsch classic Xanadu before the death of his father and the attacks of September 11th convinced him to move towards work that was more socially worthwhile. He began making feature length documentaries tackling such targets as Fox News- in 2004’s Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism- and Wal-Mart in Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. The films were critically praised and reached a large audience but Greenwald decided to abandon feature length documentary and move into producing fast turnaround online videos. ‘It’s been an interesting transition’ says sixty two year old Greenwald ‘a few months ago I was in an editing room and it was the same room where ten years ago I had been editing a six hour mini series. Back then I was trying to lose twenty minutes from an edit- now the finished film I am making may only be four minutes long and the job is to lose twenty seconds.’ So why give up on long form film-making? ‘The decision to move to these short pieces was made because I wanted to make content that was quicker, shorter and more immediate in the news cycle’ he told me ‘you could spend 12 months making a documentary and releasing it and having your moment in the sun about something that may no longer be in the news cycle anymore. Or you can spend 24 hours to put together a short viral video which can actually make a difference.’ Brave New Films has an email database of around 450 thousand people who have in the past purchased DVDs or signed up for updates; each new video is emailed to this core constituency who are then urged to send it on. The company have also developed contacts with key bloggers and social networking sites to ensure that they don’t just preach to the converted. The films that Brave New Films have produced have not only been watched, they have also affected the campaigning of both Presidential candidates. Greenwald cites the example of a recent video series which highlighted the huge increase in the wages of corporate executives. Within a month of the videos being released Barack Obama had incorporated the theme of executive pay into this speeches. While much of the mainstream media was assailing Obama’s relationship with his preacher Jeremiah Wright Brave New Films highlighted incendiary statements made by the Reverend Rod Parsley, a spiritual advisor to John McCain. In one video footage of Parsley railing against Islam saying ‘America was founded in part with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed’ was combined with clips of McCain praising Parsley as ‘one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide.’ When the mainstream began running with the story McCain was forced to eventually distance himself from his former preacher.
The offices of Brave New Films are in a former motel that, I am told, was once used by film executives to entertain their mistresses. I am shown around by Eddie Kurtz, one of the company’s thirty five employees and, like most of the others, still in his twenties. ‘This isn’t some bedroom operation’ he tells me as we walk past rooms filled with humming hard drives and flickering monitors ‘everyone here is a professional- whether its cameramen, editors or producers.’ One room is devoted to rapid response- trying to combat stories that may have arisen in that morning’s press while in another a team are working on more longer term projects. Meanwhile in an adjoining building the final touches are being put on building a studio that will mark Brave New Films venturing into the next stage of their evolution- into online broadcasting. ‘The plan is to have live studio web-casts’ says Kurtz ‘anything up to twenty programmes everything from ‘Meet the Bloggers’ to uninterrupted election coverage to progressive cooking shows and it will be completely interactive.’ I ask how the company is funded. ‘Some of the money comes from charitable foundations’ he says ‘then there’s around eight thousand subscribers who give us monthly donations say ten dollars a month and we have a few high income individuals who donate larger sums.’ These high income donors are often, he says, people who have made money in entertainment with work that was ‘not necessarily socially redeeming’ and who want to try and do and help towards something more meaningful.
The success of Brave New Films in attracting a large audience and in prompting the mainstream media to follow up their stories is not only a tribute to the increasing potency of the internet it is also arguably an indictment of the traditional media. ‘There are different roles for the media’ Kurtz says ’ we have a point of view and we are openly opinionated: we fill a space that has been vacated by the mainstream media that hasn’t been sufficiently critical- the mainstream media hasn’t been doing its job and there was need for others to come in’. ‘When we put out a video and it literally goes to the top of YouTube’ adds Robert Greenwald ‘and you see that right above us in the list is a woman falling in a shower and behind us is a cat singing and right smack in the middle is a film about corporate greed or John McCain- that’s an audience you used to have to spend millions trying to reach and yet we are getting them and getting them in significant numbers.’ As I prepare to leave and brave the LA heat I ask Robert Greenwald if he misses the glamour that came with feature film making. ‘Its nice to have a premiere with a red carpet and all that’ he says ‘and seeing your name in lights but I tell you the satisfaction of having people watch these videos, then pass them on and then sign petitions and make phone calls. Everything else just pales in comparison: this is the real deal.’