Todd Brown

Twitch Film

Todd Brown of Twitch

Tell us about your blog.

Twitch is devoted to covering unusual films from around the globe. We're not anti-Hollywood per se but we bore easily and don't see much point in covering the same five or ten films that every other film site is already covering.

How would you describe your readers? Do you have much contact with the people who read you?

Our readers tend to be college age and up, a fairly civil bunch. We get a LOT of buyers from different film companies reading, too, because we do a lot of their legwork for them. Our comment threads are usually pretty quiet because we're talking about films people don't know that much about but, yes, I have good contact with a lot of the regular readers.

Tell us how – and why – you started your blog?

I was writing for someone else and our tastes were obviously diverging. It seemed better to chart our own paths while we were still on friendly terms rather than fighting for control.

Describe your blog day – do you work at home? Go to a café? Sit in an office?

It varies. My laptop is my office and I've been traveling a lot lately so cafes, airport lounges, hotel rooms. Or, quite often, on my couch in the living room.

How do you find things to blog about and how do you decide that an entry is worth being in your blog?

Finding things? Well, readers send a lot of stuff in, I attend a handful of major festivals and all the major film markets, I've gotten to know a lot of film makers who send me stuff, I've collected contributing writers from all around the world, and I've got a few hundred trailer sites, news blogs, sales agents and other news sources bookmarked to check on a regular basis. I write only about the things that catch my eye and legitimately excite me, I never write about things because I feel like I should.

What is your favorite blog entry?

I've written about three thousand … no way to pick one out of all that.

What was your most popular/controversial blog entry?

Ah, that'd be the Isabella Rossellini bug-porn one. That's still up close to the top of our traffic charts every day.

Twitch

Is blogging the new path to fame and fortune?

Ah, that's funny. You're a funny man. I've been doing this for four years now and have easily the most popular site in my particular niche and I'm still working a day job. If there's some business model for this that will let you get rich doing it, then it's obviously eluded me.

What separates journalism from blogging?

Depends on the blogger, really, and how well they want to write. Blogging's more personal, basically, but I think the writer's personality should come through in “serious” journalism as well.

Who are the bloggers that you read religiously?

Grady Hendrix at Kaiju Shakedown. He's a friend and hysterically funny. And there's a British comedy writer named James Henry who I read every day.

How has your life changed because of your blog? Has it gone in any new directions because of your newfound prominence?

Yeah, it has. I'm not living off the blog but it has led to me programming for a handful of film festivals, doing some consulting work, etc. Plus I was an associate producer on a Spanish film last year and am again on a little US indie that's shooting right now. Blogging ain’t ever likely to pay my bills but it has put me in a position where film very likely will in the near future.