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Back On Track

Back On Track: Current Issue, Issue 56, Volume 4, for August, 2013. New Issue published every month, and updated throughout the month. Next issue due online September 2013.

Incomplete and missing issues will be completed and referenced on current issues of Frontier Pop, so, until Frontier Pop has all of its issues online, and is caught up, there will be more than one issue published per month. Missing issues will be retroactively published with their assigned issue numbers and "months", so months indicated may not be actual publishing months. Missing issues published this way will have actual publication dates indicated within the issue, and issue date accuracy may not be assumed on any issue portrayed as being published before August 2013.

PAST ISSUE UPDATES

08/20/13/0909: Issue 33 for September, 2011, "Video Game Emulation", was updated to support this issue, as well as finally finished (although this is an arbitrary definition in the broadest sense, and it is not absolute; all issues remain in play, and, being constantly updated with new content, as well as added to, remain, literally, unfinished. This is one of the great advantages that online publications such as Frontier Pop have over print publications! Our past issues are worth returning to, as you never know what new things that you are going to find!). Now more subject-based, it did not make any sense to redundantly write about video game emulation in this issue for August 2013, issue 56, when issue 33 of Frontier Pop for September 2011 was more relevant and appropriate, and the issue also needed to be completed. Also, running into Nolan at the Tampa Bay Comic Con in late 2011 and talking to him, Nolan admitted that he checked out this issue and liked it, which was cool. It deserved to be completed as soon as possible. So, Nolan, if you are reading this, we have more content on there, now. Enjoy! Also, we needed to add instructions for a friend who is checking out some games and emulators, so we put those instructions in this issue today. The past is the future, and, sometimes, time is irrelevant because things in the future are not necessarily better. If this issue were written today, it would be the same, as we got it right back then. We are serious about finishing our incomplete past issues, as well as retroactively writing and publishing our past missing issues, such as issue 50 of Frontier Pop, below, for February 2013.

08/03/13/0830: Missing issue, issue 50, for February, 2013, "The Love Issue", was retroactively published in the issue archives of Frontier Pop. This is our valentines day special, and is about love and relationships. Although this issue was written in February 2013, it was not edited, formatted and published until August 2013, and was published at the same time as the August 2013 issue that you are now reading. There are some things in the February 2013 issue which may be controversial. At any rate, get used to "past" issues being referenced and linked from the top of the pages of current issues of Frontier Pop until we are caught up sometime in late 2014, as we are missing dozens of issues, and many of the ones which are up are either incomplete or not even been started. All past issues will be online as soon as we can finish them, although, since all issues remain in play and are continuously updated, they are never final.

Related Issues on Frontier Pop: Video Game Emulation, Portable video game consoles, Indie film revolution in Tampa Bay, Video game industry is off the wagon

INITIALIZING

ISSUE INTRODUCTION BY EDITOR AND PUBLISHER C. A. PASSINAULT

Welcome to the 56th issue of Frontier Pop, and the second one of Volume 4 (New Volumes are started every July issue), for August 2013.
This issue is about catching up. We have a lot of catching up to do, too.
Although we wanted to publish this issue just before, or on, August 1, 2013, it was delayed a few days (more like 20) because a lot needed to be adjusted on the Frontier Pop web site. The more that we found, the more that we had to do.
Or, to be more specific, the more that I had to do, other web site work be damned.
Some of you may be wondering what in the hell has been going on with this site. After all, there have been few updates and new issues on this site since early 2012, and what has been published has been sporadic, and incomplete, at best. To be honest, I was wondering the same thing. This site is supposed to be my most important, and my main, web site, and is has sadly been neglected. It’s been a rough three years for Frontier Pop, and neither you, nor this site, deserved it.
Well, it’s kind of a long story, and a complicated one. Out of respect for you, my readers, I’m not going to make this as long as it could be. This said, on the flip side, I’m not going to glaze over it and pretend that it never happened, either. Too many people do that these days, and I’m not one of them.
I do, however, owe the readers of Frontier Pop an apology, and an explanation.
In early 2012, we were on top of the world. Most of my web sites dominated the Internet, and it had been, rightfully, that way for many years. In May 2012, however, Google unleashed their Penguin update, and that was the time that I grew to despise Penguins in general.
Many of my web sites were unfairly penalized for being “overly” optimized (Content is king? Not hardly. If they disapprove on how you organize that content, and there is too much on one page, they will penalize you! My main problem was that many of my sites had too MUCH content, and this is what brought down the Tampa Film Blog and my other dedicated domain blogs, most of which dominated for years!). Some of them fell from grace, and because many of them were interlinked, the censure was spreading rapidly from site to site, like the Rage virus in 28 Days Later and in its sequel. I owned roughly 70 top sites, so you can guess that this became one hell of a mess. A huge mess.
Frontier Pop was spared the disaster, however, because I went into the site, disconnected it from the other sites, and “safed” it. I managed to work fast and salvage many of my other top web sites, too, although some of them took hits.
A web site overhaul was needed, and it would not be a quick fix. Frontier Pop and many of my other sites would have to be put on the back burner while I tore down other sites and replaced them. So, while I tried to keep updating Frontier Pop, it was not possible due to the huge amount of work that I needed to do on everything else.
Now, over a year later, I am just getting to the point where the situation has been stabilized. I got rid of a lot of domain names, replaced them with fresh ones (and more relevant ones, as well, which was a huge plus and will, in the long-term, be a huge benefit to having to fix the mess), and rebuilt several web sites, including Tampa Bay Film, which is now located under a new operating domain name, a site which was poisoned by mistakes made by myself and the ill intentions of others long before Penguin waddled onto the scene (The original domain name is now used for branding and marketing purposes, and leads to the new web site and its domain; it will be connected to the new site this month. Then there is the issue of the online film festival, the one successful thing about the original Tampa Bay Film site, which I am about to explain below).
With every setback comes hard work, however, and that hard work leads to breakthroughs.
In the long-term, I will benefit from this disaster, because had it not happened, many exciting, and revolutionary breakthroughs, would not have happened, and the fact is that, in the past year, I have experienced breakthroughs in web site engineering and SEO that will set the standards for my web work in the next two decades.
This is one reason that I axed a few of my other web sites, which were still at the top of search results for their relevant keywords even after Penguin soiled some of my other web sites. Tampa Photography Society and the Tampa Online Film Festival were at the top of search results, and were very successful, but I still dumped those sites for various reasons. You see, I knew that I could restore the top placement of their new web sites, eventually. The Tampa Photography Society was rebranded the Tampa Bay Photography Society, which is a professional photography association, and the Tampa Online Film Festival was dumped only because I was working on a new Tampa Bay Film site, and the online film festival had to be moved and re integrated back into the Tampa Bay Film site. It did not stop cybersquatters from taking both domain names, however, after I abandoned them, with the Tampa Photography Society being attached to a scraper site and subsequently dropping in search rankings. Other domain names, however, were scuttled..... I burned them before getting rid of them, rendering them useless to whomever decided to move in and take them. I did so as a Captain would sabotage and sink a ship before abandoning it so that it could not be taken over and used by the enemy, by trashing the domain names in search rankings before giving them up. I sank those domain names before abandoning them, and burned the unethical cybersquatters who tried to take advantage of them. I also did some other things which no one is aware of, and even if they became aware of them in the future, there isn’t much that they can do about it.
Like I said, it’s a long story, and one which I will probably turn into a book one day. Again, however, I came out ahead, because many revolutionary breakthroughs came about through the mess, and I was able to cut the fat and come out even stronger. Lessons were learned, too, and mistakes that I had made before would not be made again. I also took the time to do research and plan things out so that new mistakes would not be made.
Coming back to Frontier Pop, I am now finally ready to resume publication. I’m quite behind in that schedule, however, and it will take a year to get this site to where it needs to be.
This is issue 56, officially, but not literally, at the time of this writing. It will be next year before the issues become literal ones. If you look at my “thoughts” above, you will see specifics. Let’s just say, without being redundant about what I already posted above, that more than one issue will have to be written each month to catch up. I will be writing and publishing “past” issues under their designated issue numbers and months, and will reference and link to those issues as they are published on the current issue. Those “past” issues, however, will be more topic based, organized and referenced under their main subject, while current issues of Frontier Pop, being written for the present, will have more current events mixed in.
Frontier Pop has done well, despite the problems.
Now that Frontier Pop is back online, and issues will now be regularly written and published, we will catch up in this issue, and will tackle more ambitious topics in the coming months and years. Frontier Pop is extremely important, and, well, it is my main web site, literally. It will also be used to market my Frontier Society web site, which needs to be overhauled this Fall. I have plans for this site, and it is my in-road to other things which will give me an advantage in my careers and in my businesses (It will also be a great way to find and meet interesting people). Sister site Tampa Film Revolution will also resume publication, and our other sister site, Advanced Model, will finally launch this Fall, pulling a “Tampa Bay Film” by using the original domain name for branding and marketing, and launching under a new operating domain name. Frontier Pop and Tampa Film Revolution, however, being already online and operational, were already doing well, however, and will not have to do what Advanced Model will be doing and what Tampa Bay Film has already done (to great success, I might add).
Proceeding with this issue, we catch up with some news which is video game and web site related. Enjoy, and enjoy the rest of this issue of Frontier Pop! We’re back!

Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Good God. This game is awesome.
I’ve been, literally, waiting years for this game to finally be released, and it was more than worth the wait.
I bought the game on June 18, 2013, and two months later of daily play, as of August 18, 2013 (two days ago at the time of this writing), I had 143 hours and 23 minutes of play time on this game. On ONE copy of the game. I know this because the Nintendo 3DS keeps a log of all games played, when they are played, and how long they are played (itself an addictive built-in feature of the console). The second runner-up on my Nintendo 3DS XL console is Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon at 12 hours and 30 minutes (Awesome game. I love it, although you have to have at least 45 minutes available every time you play it to play and complete a level. That’s the only way to save your game), followed by Dark Void Zero at 11 hours and 54 minutes (best $5.00 game on the E-Shop, in my opinion, and a lot of fun! It’s a platform shooter in the form of a “lost” 8 Bit NES-type game which uses two screens, and it plays perfectly!).
For Animal Crossing: New Leaf, this is an average of 2.3 hours of time, per day, over 60 days, that I have spent with this game. That is a lot of time, and it was worth it, IMO; I’ve never spent that much time with ANY video game. With my schedule, being able to spend this much time on one game is insane. It’s not sustainable, either, and I’m going to have to cut back, which isn’t that hard to do since I’ve accomplished a lot in the game. I can now throttle back my game time to between 30 to 45 minutes a day, and I’m fine with that.
That said, just like Animal Crossing: Wild World for the DS, I will be playing this game for years to come. I played the older Animal Crossing for over 7 years before I (mostly) abandoned my towns (I had 5 copies of the game and 5 towns), and this new one is superior in every way, with a lot more to the game!
I will be getting a second copy of the game in order to create a second town and four more characters, as well as a brand new all-black 3DS XL to play the original on (this would be my third 3DS. I noticed that they just came out with it a few days ago and I want it; before, I was going to go with a red XL. I currently have a black original 3DS and a blue 3DS XL. I play on my XL, and use my original as a backup and for a constant source of street passes. Since I keep both on me, everyone that I street pass with gets two tags at once, which they like. When I get the second XL, I will buy a huge HD SD card for it and will do a system transfer from my blue XL to the new black XL, and use the black as my primary. I will then do a system transfer from my original 3DS to my current blue 3DS XL, and then set up a new profile on the original 3DS. It will be a case of lateral migration! The game enhancement device would be used with the blue XL, and the legit games would be played on the new black XL. I would keep all three on me, too, so that everyone gets triple tagged when I street pass with them. Right now, my original 3DS tags with “DJFrontier.Com”, and my blue XL tags with “FrontierPop.Com. People tell me that it is brilliant the way that I use my 3DS’s as marketing transponders, and a few gamers that have seen me do this have started doing the same with their web sites; some of even bought domain names and forwarded them to their social media profiles. I have not yet decided what I will put on the third 3DS. I’ll probably advertise my photography company web site using my TampaLooks.Com marketing domain name, which forwards to my main photography business operating web site, which is under a much longer domain name. Maybe I’ll put out a second FrontierPop.Com message, which is more likely because few gamers would be in my target market for photography. Oh, and I’ll have some mysterious “Phantom” character with a new Mii on the third one, too, or some other really cool character which I will create! Yeah!), soon. Unlike Wild World for the DS, which I bought 5 copies of, I do not plan on buying more than 2 copies of this game for my use, even though this new game is superior in every way. Although I am playing my current copy legitimately, without time traveling or cheating in any way, my second game will be for experimentation, and I will be using a game enhancement device to speed things along. I don’t have time to spend on a second game like I have with this first one. If I can use the game enhancement device to generate millions of Bells, however, in my new experimental town, I can import those counterfeit Bells into my original town, the legitimate town, by linking them together between 3DS XL’s using Wi Fi, and rule the world will unlimited money (and, I may add, without spending all those hours playing the game just to earn Bells)!
Before that, however, I am going to buy my mother a pink 3DS XL, a copy of Animal Crossing: New Leaf, a 3DS XL carrying case like the one that I have (and I’ll tell her how to engineer it like I have done to mine so that she can wear it), and the official game book from Prima on Amazon.Com, and will have it shipped to where she is in Michigan. My mother has M.S., and I introduced her to video games eight years ago in order to help her health when I bought her an original DS and a copy of Animal Crossing” Wild World. It’s working. Not only did she love Animal Crossing: Wild World, but she bought a second DS, a DSi XL, and a Wii with that version of Animal Crossing (I have a Wii, too, but I do not have the Wii Animal Crossing because I simply do not have much time to play home video game consoles anymore. I love my portable consoles, since I always have them on me, and play them whenever I have down-time. I DO have over $500.00 of Virtual Console games that I bought and installed on my Wii, such as games for the Nintendo 64, the Neo Geo, the Super Nintendo, the Sega Genesis, the NES, the TG 16, and others, even though I already own the original games and consoles, and also have emulators. I do NOT collect and play video game emulators to avoid paying for my games; I have them for convenience, as well as to be able to play games that I normally would not be able to obtain). She also bought a bunch of games (My father was interested in racing games, so I bought him an Xbox with Forza and a bunch of other games. My dad played games, before, too, starting when he took us out for Pizza in the 70's with the Tank video game, to Lock N Chase on the Atari 2600 in 1982. Also, as a kid in the early 80's, my parents often took us to arcades so that we could play video games. We had a lot of fun growing up). My mother’s elderly friend also got into DS gaming because of my mother, and now she is addicted to Animal Crossing: Wild World; she plays it 4 hours a day, every day! She has me beat, and I have to admit that the time that she spends playing that game is extremely excessive, even by my standards.
When my mother and her friend get 3DS XL’s and play this new one, it’s going to be insane. This new Animal Crossing is so much better than Wild World ever was.
Without turning this into a full review of the game (I will be writing one for Frontier Pop, and when I get the chance to write it and publish it, I’ll link to it from here. Updates on this issue, which will be moved to the archives, will be referenced on the current issue of Frontier Pop, so don’t worry; you’ll be aware of what has been updated and what has been added to this issue, as well as other older issues. I’m smart like that, and this is how I’ve engineered the site. As a side note, do not bookmark this issue until it is no longer on the front page of Frontier Pop, and has been moved to its permanent archive location, which means after September 2014), I’ll go into the game, as well as some interesting things that I’ve discovered, and some improvements that I would like to see Nintendo make. Hell, I might even create my own Animal Crossing-type game with my video game development company one day soon.

A New Leaf.

Animal Crossing has always been a collect-a-thon, a game of collecting things, of doing routine work in your town and on your house, customizing things, and of interacting with your animal friend neighbors and other characters. The game does a great job out of emulating, if not faking, artificial life, and it has a lot of replay value. This new one, New Leaf, is the best version of Animal Crossing to date. Still, although the game is awesome, I wish that they would have taken some things further. I also have a few issues with the game.
To illustrate, and to put some of my wit and humor on my Animal Crossing: New Leaf adventures, I used the in-game camera feature to take pictures constantly as a played. The pictures are now in the thousands, and I imported the files to my laptop and used them to create Animal Crossing: New Leaf images with captions in Photoshop. These captioned images with be featured throughout this issue of Frontier Pop, as well as elsewhere on the site. It’s great stuff, and made all the time that I invested into playing the game well worth it.
At any rate, more about the game itself.
Collecting things is great, but there is way too much emphasis on it, especially when there is not much that you can do with the things that you collect. The items are more for show and to dress things up than things which actually enhance the game play and the actual game. They do not do much, actually.
Animal Crossing is best played by those who have an imagination and are creative. I have both of those attributes in spades, so I get a lot out of the game because I can fill in the gaps within the game. Because I have imagination and am creative, I can put more into the game, and, subsequently, get more out of it than most players can. After seeing what other players have done so far, I have come to the realization that we all can’t be geniuses, nor are we all that skilled with designing things, but that’s fine. There is nothing wrong with expressing yourself however you see fit, or are capable of. If I could not outdo most of these people, however, I would seriously re evaluate my careers. I should be able to outdo others.
That said, the game is not perfect.
The original Animal Crossing for the Gamecube had a NES emulator built into the game, and you could get a virtual NES and classic NES games to play during gameplay. You could then play those games from inside the Animal Crossing game itself, from inside your house.
Why in the Hell can’t, or couldn’t, they do this with New Leaf?
Other items aside, which would benefit more if they could be used to actually enhance the gameplay experience, Nintendo could have EASILY made the arcade or in-game video game consoles to be playable, and use the game itself as a front-end to, at least, play games that you had installed on your 3DS, without actually leaving the Animal Crossing game. They could have also made those games relevant to the Animal Crossing game, such as being able to post high scores, and other features, within the game! That would have been awesome! It would also be awesome if Nintendo would make Gameboy Advance games, super NES games, emulated arcade games, and games for the Sega Genesis, Neo Geo, and other systems available for purchase on the 3DS EShop, but that is a subject for another issues of Frontier Pop, as well as my complaints about them making digital download version of games the same price as full, physical retail versions, as it is beyond the scope of this issue (It is as stupid, and as greedy, as the iTunes BS. which I explored in the “i-IDIOTS” issue of Frontier Pop; issue 18, Volume 1, for the week of November 16, 2010, to November 22, 2010 ; back when Frontier Pop was published weekly instead of monthly. I hate digital downloads and the way that they set up those stores, especially when there are smarter legitimate, and legal, alternatives!).
They could have also made the TV’s in the game show videos saved on your SD card, and the music players, such as stereo systems, play MP3's on your SD card, as well as more in-depth in-game content.
Another thing about the game which annoys me is that it is too scripted. My animal residents are complete idiots. I can make them say all sorts of twisted things (which is funny, and not a bad thing, but it doesn’t make them seem very smart). Sometimes, they will come up to me and ask for me to change what they say for their greeting or catchphrase, as they are “tired” of it. If what they say is something that I want them to say, I will tell them that I will change it, and then will feed the same line back to them instead of changing it. They then get excited about it as if they have never heard it before. It’s idiotic, but I suppose that it does allow you to stay on top of the game and customize it as you see fit.
My residents also occasionally declare that they are going to move out of town soon (why, I don’t know, because my town is awesome. This happened a lot in the Animal Crossing: Wild World game for the Nintendo DS, and since I had many copies of that game and many towns, as well as several DS’s, my residents would leave one of my towns and show up in others of mine which I had linked to with the original town. Regardless, however, when one resident leaves, their house leaves a hole in the landscaping, and new arrivals wreck trees and plant where they decide to “build” their house. It’s best to have your existing residents stay). I then have to talk them out of it, which is easy. They are not very decisive.
The residents can be annoying, too. Twice, I had them unload fake paintings on me by selling them to me (I’m trying to unlock construction in my museum, so I am eager to get a hold of any painting, which are difficult to find in the game). So, the residents, and a Fox named Redd who sometimes sets up a tent in town where you can only buy one painting, scam you. Everyone knows how I feel about scams in real life. Scams in the game are annoying, especially since they are difficult to avoid.
Another annoying thing that the residents are is psychic. They know what I am carrying. I can be carrying valuables that I intend to sell at Re-Tail (DO NOT sell them anywhere else, such as the store run by the Nookling twins. They will rip you off if you sell to them! The Nookling store is the best place to buy things, however), and a resident will see me, come up to me, and try to get something that I am carrying. Even more annoying, they want to rip you off by offering to trade a crappy shirt with me worth 120 Bells with a Beetle worth 10,000 Bells or a fish worth 15,000. Whatever. I would tell them to piss off if the game would allow me to. They are so rude.
It does not matter, though, because I have few uses for accessories and things like shirts. I design my own clothes. My characters all wear uniforms that I have designed for them. Some of my characters can use accessories. My main character uses my Mii face, however, so I do not put glasses, hats, or other fashion accessories on him. It would be cool if the game allowed me to add things to my Mii face.
The new Animal Crossing game should have, and could have, also gone much further with the artificial life aspect. Instead of faking it, they should have used full artificial life to make the game more real. The game is too scripted, and a game with more organic processes would be superior in every way.
Remember the first sandbox games such as Grand Theft Auto III, which came out for the Playstation 2 a decade ago? Part of the appeal of the game was running around and causing chaos, experimenting with the environment to see what would happen. I’m not saying that they should have made this Grand Theft Animal Crossing, although such a game would be awesome, but I am saying that they should have made the game more like a sandbox game, but with the realistic life simulation aspects enabled by the use of true artificial life.
Which reminds me.... The last time that I’ve seen anything close to true artificial life being used in video games would have to be from Sega and Sonic Team. They had Chao’s and the Chao Gardens in Sonic Adventure for the ahead-of-its-time Sega Dreamcast, where you could hatch, raise, and interact with virtual pets, as well as the creatures in the Sega Saturn game “Nights into Dreams”. I have those games, and I need to play them again, soon.
Going back to Animal Crossing: New Leaf, consider this:
Finite resources and environmental consequences.
The game is already brilliant when it comes to teaching kids while entertaining them. Why not teach them more?
Walking through my town, seeing the other residents with their nets, shovels, and fishing rods out, I thought “Oh, great, rivals!”. It’s too bad that they are not really rivals, however, because the other residents can’t really compete with you for resources. That, however, would be a great dynamic for the game, and it could also teach fair play, good sportsmanship, and collaborative competition. How? Well, what if there were a limited amount of resources, such as fish, insects, and fossils, just like in real life, and the other residents were in competition for you to obtain those resources? If the other residents actually DID more instead of implying that they are doing things, which the game sadly does (it fakes a lot), this aspect would be a given, even with infinite resources, as the game only generates a certain amount a day of things such as fossils.
Ok, keep that in mind, as dynamic layer one, and imagine a game with limited resources and competition with rivals for those resources. Now, keep following me.
Now add the artificial life.
First, though, I need to explain what artificial life, TRUE artificial life, is, and I’ll do so by re publishing an excerpt here from my Tampa Film Blog in a post for March 11, 2010 (before Frontier Pop existed), called “All The Time In The World”. Although this was an independent film blog, and publishing it here will mean that I will have to remove it from the content when I republish it on Tampa Bay Film, I posted something about video games in the post. Here is the excerpt, and after this, I’ll continue with adding the artificial life to Animal Crossing (by the way, it took me a while to find this. I have thousands of pages of content to go through).

Artificial Life and Video Games
C. A. Passinault
Excerpt from the Tampa Film Blog post “All The Time In The World”, from March 11, 2010.

...... Regarding video games, I have some rather unique concepts in new types of video games which have not been done before, at least not in the way that we will be doing them. Rather than focus on the type of 3D crap currently dominating modern video game hardware such as the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360, I’m going to focus on older styles of games, sprite-based 2D games, which are about gameplay, and, well, playing around with the games. Game designer Jeff Minter (Tempest 2000, Defender 2000, Space Giraffe) coined the phrase "Retro Evolved", if I'm not mistaken. A lot of my video games will be retro evolved types of games, arcade games like they used to make in the 1980's, but made with modern technology and new ideas. My games will have stellar gameplay, lots of innovation, will be customizable, and instead of relying on patterns and standard AI subroutines, we will be incorporating things like artificial life and ingenious ways of introducing random elements to the games (with computers, it is presently impossible to generate genuine random numbers because of the nature of computers, not counting some innovations in fuzzy logic. I have figured out ways of introducing true random variables into games. Sure, games like the NES Castlevania are cool, and hold a certain charm, with their predictive patterns, but an even better game experience can be achieved if the game experience was more focused on actual gameplay, and there were no patterns which could be predicted. Also note that I love, and still play, those games).
In artificial intelligence circles, computer science has attempted to solve the myriad problems associated with AI with sheer computational power and scripted subroutines. This has not worked, and science needs to take cues from nature (you'd be surprised by how much watching nature work has taught me about business.... weird, but true. Most animals would starve to death if they didn't work smart routines every day, and be truly independent in most cases). In nature, higher intelligence is built upon by the building blocks of simpler biological processes. From the interactions of these processes arise the unpredictable, and fluid, nature of intelligence.
The key to artificial intelligence is artificial life.
I recall a simple exercise in artificial life that I experimented with using a Commodore 64 in the late 1980's, when I was in school. It was an experiment with variables, statistics, and interactions which were unpredictable because of the way that the variables interacted (also keep in mind that this has nothing to do with my concepts for introducing true random variables, and that this experiment is done with conventional computer subroutines and “random” numbers taken from the system clock upon boot. The interactions of those variables, however, become quite complex, and the results are quite unpredictable).
At any rate, I had read about the exercise in Omni, and replicated it with my computer. It proved to be really interesting, as well as eye opening. In the experiment, a computer program creates a type of “game” which “plays” itself. It is a virtual ecosystem, where you have resources such as land. On the land you have edible vegetation and water, and you start out with some rabbits. You also add foxes. For the population to grow, you have to have two genders, of course, and resources like food and water to sustain life. So, you add four rabbits, two females, and two males. You add three foxes, a male and two females (and pray that the male fox is able to survive long enough to have offspring with the females; I’ve seen instances where the male fox starved to death before he could reproduce, and the foxes died off, allowing the rabbits to overtake the limited environment, eat all of the vegetation, and starve themselves into extinction themselves). To make it interesting, you’d make is so that you could make a map with trees and other terrain features, and the game had simple behavioral rules based on input and output, and and /or subroutines. The game would have a time cycle, of course, with each real-time “turn” representing one day. For example, the rabbits could move two to three spaces per turn, and would have to navigate around obstacles in their way. Certain terrain slowed them down, too. The foxes also had to be able to move, and were limited to one to two spaces per turn. Each “animal” had perceptual abilities, too, like in real life. The rabbits could only see two spaces in front of them and one to the sides. They could hear for two spaces all around, though, and the noise that any animal made depended upon their speed and the terrain that they were moving over. You also had other variables taking into account things such as hunger, food consumption, etc. So, the rabbits roamed around, eating vegetation and drinking water. The foxes hunted the rabbits, which, in turn, were not as fast as the rabbits, but were successful in eating them when more successful tactics, such as ambushes, were stumbled upon. The foxes which ran around and couldn’t catch the rabbits starved, and didn’t pass on their “learned behaviors”. Thus, the game became populated with foxes who snuck around and ambushed the rabbits, rather than chase them around. The rabbits, on the other hand, learned, too. The rabbits when were not constantly looking around for dangers became dinner. The ones which did, survived, and passed those behavior subroutines to their offspring.
You get the concept. I programmed that scenario, with crude graphics representing the land, the animals, and other things, and let it rip. No two scenarios played out the same, and you had a “game” which took on a life of its own. The smallest changes would have significant long-term results. Sometimes, the rabbits outnumbered the foxes, consuming all of the natural resources. The rabbits, in turn, died off... mostly because, once they starved, they were slower and much less alert, becoming easy dinner for the foxes. The rabbit population declined, the fox population grew, and the vegetation recovered. The foxes would then outnumber the rabbits, starve because of a lack of prey, and the rabbits would rebound. Sometimes, things got out of balance, with the foxes eating all of the rabbits, and then dying off as they starved, leading to mass extinction.
I found that the best scenarios spread out the risks, where more animal types and behaviors were introduced. The more variables, the more unpredictable the scenario became. Most of the time, the scenarios would keep going indefinitely, achieving and maintaining a balance.
Most interestingly, when you allowed the computer animals to retain the solutions to behaviors that they stumbled upon, and pass them on to their offspring, the animals were able to achieve that balance on their own over time.
With more complex sets of interacting variables, resulting in subroutines which could learn the best solutions, you begin to have the building blocks of artificial intelligence which does not depend upon scripted scenarios, but is rather fluid and unpredictable.
Video games which use such processes are the future, as are games where the players can customize the games to suit their preferences, and games which allow the players to create their own content (I realized the custom game concept years before games such as Little Big Planet came about, too.) Games should offer total and complete freedom; sure, you can play it as-is, and have fun, but you should also be able to get under the hood and tinker with it as little, or as much, as you wish.
At this point, some of you may be wondering what advanced video game theory has to do with indie film. Well, that depends upon the scenario, now, doesn’t it?
In the video game industry, it has long been the case where video games based upon films generally suck (and vice versa), with a few notable exceptions (The Nintendo 64 game Goldeneye being one of them). This, of course, is because of incompatible differences between the entertainment formats. Video games are interactive entertainment, and they are all "cause and effect". Films are passive entertainment, where the participant can only watch, and is along for the ride. Video games based upon films often make the mistake of trying to shoehorn the established plot and sequence of events into the game, so that the “player” can “experience” what happened in the film themselves. This does not work. What video games should do is to take the premise of the film, and then allow the player to define their own experience through playing the game, allowing the “plot” to unfold within the limitations of the interactive medium of the video game.
Limitations of the interactive medium? What’s that?
Two examples. Yuji Naki and his Sonic Team created “Nights”, a 3D platformer, for the Sega Saturn. Nights was a fast paced game when the character transformed into Nights and flew around, but was a slower paced walk when the character was on the ground. On the ground, you could move in 3D, just about anywhere on the map. Because of the fast pace of the flying portion, though, the game designers decided to limit where they player could go to pre-determined 2D invisible “tracks”, as it was deemed that full 3D flight would make things too complex, and make the flying much less fun. They were right; by limiting where the player could fly, the gameplay was polished to perfection, making a more entertaining, and fun, game than a game where you could fly all over the place (incidentally, Nights also uses artificial life with the creatures that populate the world. The creatures interact with each other using natural cause and effect subroutines, and can even cross-breed to form hybrid creatures and new type of creatures. Such AL features were also included in later Sonic Team games such as the Dreamcast hit Sonic Adventure).
Shiguru Myamoto’s Super Mario 64, for the Nintendo 64, also enhanced the game experience by limiting what the player could do. There are levels where it looks like the player can go anywhere, but where you have to stick to paths in order to proceed in the game. Those limitations, which enhance the focus of the gameplay and the game experience, are implemented so brilliantly, in fact, that the player never realizes that they never have the freedom that the game teases them with.
As my friend Rachel Eaglin used to tell me, structure (limitation) frees you; a saying that she used to describe the limitations of the screenwriting format.
The key with both passive and interactive media is to figure out what they are really optimized to do, and then play up to what they are good for; to play to their strengths.

And that, folks, was well worth tracking down and republishing here on Frontier Pop.
Almost three and a half years later, back to what I was writing about Animal Crossing: New Leaf. I’ve introduced the dynamic layer of rivals and of competition for limited resources. Now, layer two: What if those resources used artificial life.
You end up with a more complex, and far more interesting, video game, because it no longer has to fake a living, breathing world. You would get that complexity from emergent behavior from the interactions of variables, and the building blocks of the game would not have to necessarily be more complex to get this result.

Animal Crossing and Artificial Life
Ok. We have the residents of your Animal Crossing village, who are anthropomorphic animals, now competing with you. The bastards are your rivals. Now we add the additional dynamic layer to the resources that you are competing for, which is artificial life, as described in my excerpt from the Tampa Film Blog above.
In the Animal Crossing game, you catch insects and fish. You can stock your museum with the creatures that you capture, or you can sell them for Bells (the monetary currency of Animal Crossing), which I assume is for food.
There are a lot of different types of insects and fish in the game. Let’s go into insects.
The game has Mosquitos. They are annoying. They bite you. You can catch them and sell them, but they are not worth the effort. The game also has Dragonflies. In the real world, Dragonflies hunt and eat Mosquitos.
Hmmmmmmmm.............
OK. Apply artificial life to those insects. They now behave naturally instead of randomly showing up, spawning from an infinite sequence generator, and mean something. They interact with each other. The virtual Dragonflies in Animal Crossing now hunt down and eat the Mosquitos. They dart down into the rivers and ponds and lay eggs. The eggs hatch into virtual Dragonfly nymphs, which eat small fish and tadpoles in the rivers. They grow into more Dragonflies.
Now, with a finite number of Dragonflies with a population which grows naturally, what happens if you and your resident animal rivals catch too many Dragonflies, which would keep the Mosquitos in check? Well, you’d get bit a lot more because there would be more Mosquitos. Of course, we could also add in the diseases that those little buggers carry, but we don’t want a morbid game where a pandemic could wipe out you and your town residents, now, would we? That would be too morbid.
Of course, the animal residents can get sick in the actual game (Tom, the Cat, who is in my town, had the flu today, and I had to give him medicine), but like everything else that is scripted, it is faked.
Hunting things, such as Dragonflies, to an extent where they could not have enough numbers to reproduce and sustain the population to the point of extinction is possible, but remember that your Animal Crossing Town is connected to a larger world which is not accessible. Even with artifical life in effect, you could not hunt anything to extinction because other specimens would migrate in from out of town. They would just be much scarcer and harder to find, and their diminished numbers would alter the balance of the other things which they interact with.
As Matthew Broderick’s character David Lightman said in the movie “Wargames”, I want to play that game. An Animal Crossing utilizing artificial life would be a much more enhanced game, with more interesting games withing a game emerging from within it. The game would evolve. You could spend your time studying the animals and experimenting with things such as cross breeding and conservation. You could even pull a Pokemon and capture, breed, and fight animals, although I’m sure that parents would be up in arms over this when their kids are playing a game with this in it (then again, Pokemon itself gets away with this). Basically, a game using artificial life and its emergent behaviors/ rules/ environments would be what you make it, both good and bad, depending upon what you do (my God, I just figured out a justification to make legitimate “adult” games which go way beyond what games like Grand Theft Auto do. Imagine... You go to a club, meet a girl, dance with her on the dance floor, and......... Pokemon with girls!). You could make it innocent and “G” rated like Animal Crossing is now, or you could go crazy and burn down your town while beating the shit out of your rivals.... I mean, animal residents.
Oh, and while I am thinking about it, the Pokemon dynamic would have been brilliant in Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon. You could have, upon replaying the levels, discovered and captured different types of ghosts, like in Pokemon, and traded them via street pass and fought them via Wi Fi or the Internet. Despite this, it’s still a great game, however.
For now, however, Animal Crossing, with its scripts and it faking life, is good enough, I suppose. They could have done so much more, though!
My perfect version of Animal Crossing would be one which uses artificial life and emergent behavior, and where anything goes. It would also control better and more accurately, like another 3DS game, Super Mario 3D Land, does. If one of your Animal Crossing resident rivals - I mean, “friends” - tries to unload ANOTHER counterfeit painting on you (this happened to me, twice, and that bastard Redd Fox can’t be trusted, either, since the paintings that he sells also seem to always be fakes. I am trying to unlock more floors to my museum, and I can't do it if the paintings that I submit to unlock that option are fakes!), you could, using gameplay from platformers and fighting games, beat them up and break their little arms and legs. As they crawled along trailing blood through the town, it would send a message to the other residents that you are not to be messed with. You could bring medical attention to your little injured friends and help them out just enough to keep them alive, and then beat them down all over again once they have healed. I’d have a town populated with crippled and bleeding residents who would be terrified of me, and would try to crawl or hobble away as they cried and pleaded for me not to hurt them... anymore.
Like anything good, it would be what you made it.
Oh, and in the real game, I set off sparklers and roman candles in Redd’s face. More than once. Bastard! I hate con artists!

My Animal Crossing Town
Well, now I am going to tell you a little about my Animal Crossing: New Leaf game town.
It’s awesome. It should be, with all of the time and the work that I have put into it.
It’s called Revo (My address for Revo, as of 05/01/14, is now 5200-4040-8234 because I made the mistake of uploading a dream from my second 3DS, and then when I went back to the original 3DS to try to recover the original address by uploading a dream, it gave me yet another. Thus, the address is dynamic, and not static, and it is generated randomly whenever the game detects a new game and system combination which is different from the last upload configuration. I would recommend that once you use one game copy and system combination to establish your dream, that you avoid using any other system to upload dreams, because it will wipe out your address and your visitor stats. You have been warned, and everyone needs to learn from my mistake!), which is short for “Revolution”, and is named after my upcoming DJ dance music program properties.
Everyone reading this is welcome to visit my town. You will need a 3DS or a 3DS XL, a copy of the game, and the Dream Suite unlocked in the game (A store on main street, and after you enable it, it will cost Bells to build). They will also, of course, need an Internet connection using Wi Fi, and their 3DS will need to be able to access their Wi Fi connection.
At the time of this writing, which is August 21, 2013, my town is overrun with flowers (which is intentional), a variety of trees, and shrubs. It also has three stone bridges over my river, a fountain, a wind turbine, a lighthouse, a windmill, a wisteria trellis, and three street lights (I am building as many as a can to light my river front and parts of my town).
I have four player-controlled character residents, and mainly use the three extra characters for storing items.

Frontier
This is me, and he has a face from my 3DS Mii, which was developed from, well, me. That’s why Frontier looks like me.
Frontier, who is named after my DJ Frontier name, is the Mayor of Revo. He wears a red and black cybersuit, designed like the real-world ones that I am developing now.
Yes, I designed all of the clothing that my characters wear, with the exception of Death, who uses in-game attire assembled by me.

Seapony
A fashion model and a freak, Seapony spreads love and joy throughout the town. She’s a smart and trendy girl, however, so she does not have to suffer from the consequences of her free loving and carefree lifestyle. Seapony is currently dating every guy in town, at once.
My Animal Crossing town residents seem to enjoy Seapony and what she has to offer a lot.
Seapony is named after my character Seapony, who is Washout’s love interest in my Waveform beach themed programs (She will be a character in the Waveform independent film, as well as in my upcoming DJ releases Waveform 4, Waveform RMX, and in Sand Bar). I also have her as a character in my Waverace 64 games.

ONE
ONE is my Borg drone, and I am rather proud of how he turned out. I am especially happy with my design for his cybersuit, which is a much better, and more refined, look than the cybernetic Borgs from Start Trek have.
One was an experiment in nanotechnology and cybernetics which took on a life of its own in my Animal Crossing town. He now seeks to assimilate the other residents. I warn them all to resist him, and to avoid being touched by him. ONE posts on the town board that he is the Borg, that resistance is futile, and that the other residents will be assimilated all of the time. The others are terrified of him.
Half of the clothes in my town shop are of ONE’s gray cybersuit, so if residents start wearing that look, they have been assimilated into one of ONE’s Borg drones, and I usually run away from them if they look like that.
One of my residents, a creepy Hamster named Soleil, was assimilated by ONE, and is now wandering the town wearing a gray Borg cybersuit. I tried to change her greeting to “ASSIMILATE U!”, and the game would not allow me to change it to that. Apparently, it thought that I was trying to make her say “ass”. Stupid game and its censor scripting! Of course, being a writer, I’ve been able to get my residents to say all sorts of demented (and funny) things, as evidenced by the screen shots from in-game play shown here on Frontier Pop, which I am sure that the visitors to my town are loving. Well, my town DOES seem to be popular with the guests exploring it through their Internet “dreams”.
Hopefully, ONE will not be able to assimilate other residents in my town. Two Borg are enough (Update 08/21/13: I noticed today while playing the game, to my horror, that my Bunny friend O'Hare had also been assimilated, and was now a Borg drone. Now I have three Borg drones in my town. I hope that they do not overrun my town!).

Death
Death is, well, a serial killer. Since you can’t actually kill anyone in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, however, Death wanders around late at night, usually carrying an axe, and leaves disturbing, twisted, horrible messages on the town message board. He tells the residents that he will see them soon, and that some of them may not wake up. Sometimes, he will post that someone in the town is going to die that night. Since he is restricted to menacing the others, I suppose Death could accurately be described as a serial menacer.
Death has happily found his place in society, I suppose.
You could imagine the terror that my Animal Crossing residents live in.
Death was inspired by the character “Death” in the arcade video game “Gauntlet”. He is also inspired by the legends of the Angle of Death, as well as my Angel of Death vigilante “hero” character which I am developing for a project.
Like Seapony, Death was a player character in some of my towns in the DS game Animal Crossing: Wild World. I did have five copies, and five towns, of that game, if you recall.

I’m sure that I will have a lot more to write about Animal Crossing in the future. Or, in the past.

Video Game Emulation Update
Top games to try and instructions for a friend

Since this issue is already too large, and I have an unfinished issue of Frontier Pop about video game emulation, I have decided to finish that issue as part of the work on this one. I do not want to be redundant and add content to this issue which would be better off on an issue specifically about this topic, or write it twice. I also added instructions for my friend. For more information about video game emulators, emulation, getting them to work, and my picks of top games to try, check out issue 33 of Frontier Pop: Video Game Emulation. The issue was originally published in September 2011, and now serves as the topical issue for this subject. Like all older issues of Frontier Pop, all issues remain in play, and are updated as-needed; they are never finalized and retired in the archives.
You are certainly welcome.

The Frontier Society: Reloaded
The Frontier Society is my ancient underground subculture, which my friends and I founded in 1993. It is a technologically advanced subculture centering around art, entertainment, and the cyber lifestyle.
The Frontier Society web site, currently, is a mess, although many of the revolutionary concepts developed for this site were used to create Frontier Pop, which is a publication of the Frontier Society.
The domain name has a good back story, too. I originally owned the proper domain name for Frontier Society back in 2003, but messed up a transfer of the domain and lost it to cybersquatters. The person who took it tried to sell it back to me for $1,600.00, and I passed on that rip off. So, I bought Frontier-Society.Com, thinking that the high price that they wanted for my original domain name would protect it from being used. Well, it would have, had someone not decided to use it. That asshole bought up every incarnation of Frontier Society across multiple types of domain names, and then connected those domains to a lame invention site.
Although Frontier-Society.Com is a good operating domain, it is not a good marketing domain name, especially with all of those other domain names being used (the person doing this is banking on the fact that people will end up on his site instead of mine). I fixed this problem when I created Frontier Pop, which will be used to market the Frontier Society web site, and will link to it from the front page starting in September 2013. As a result, the asshole cybersquatter now has a ton of worthless domain names that he had hoped to use to capitalize on my brand (I DO own the trademark to Frontier Society, and the organization and branding are mine!). Frontier Pop is easier to remember and is better to market with than Frontier Society is, anyway.
I outsmarted the idiot. Good. He deserves it.
Which brings me to this: Now that I have an effective way to market the Frontier Society web site, where my target market cannot mistype the domain name and end up on the site of an asshole, I now need to overhaul the Frontier Society web site.
The Frontier Society web site will be re launched using a state of the art Pioneer Class web site, just like the one used by Frontier Pop, but more refined and advanced. Because the sites will share designs, they will have great continuity, further enhancing the ability of Frontier Pop to market the Frontier Society web site.
I hope to have the new Frontier Society web site up before the end of 2013.
The Frontier Society. Society has evolved. (Both the name and the slogan are trademarked, and protected properties, just like Frontier Pop and its “Know Things” slogan are.)

Official DJ Frontier and DJ Wiz Kid web sites coming

These are two other web sites which are way overdue to have real web sites, and not just a page of information online.
I am also known as DJ Frontier, as I made a career out of DJ’ing long before I made a career as a professional photographer. In the 1990's, I produced a long line of popular underground program releases on cassette tape, starting out as DJ Wiz Kid in 1990, as I was a kid and looked really young, and then changing my DJ name to DJ Frontier in 1993. My third generation of cassette program releases, produced from 1993 to 1998, were under my DJ Frontier name, and my first events were also produced under my DJ Frontier name. My DJ Frontier name will continue to be used as my DJ brand for the rest of my life, and a lot of very cool projects and events are coming in the future, which include a new generation of DJ releases, which will be released as MP3 programs.
Both the Frontier Society, and, later, Frontier Pop itself, were named after my DJ Frontier name and brand.
Both the DJ Frontier and the DJ Wiz Kid web sites will use new Celebrity Class web sites.
The DJ Wiz Kid web site will celebrate where I came from, and will have an online museum celebrating my early career as a popular underground DJ.
The DJ Frontier web site will be my main DJ web site, and it will also contain a blog, which will include my old Tampa DJ Blog.
Both DJ Wiz Kid and DJ Frontier are trademarked, and protected. I also own both DJFrontier.Com and DJWizKid.Com, so anyone trying to use my names as their DJ names will, essentially, be doing free marketing and promotion for me, because when people go online to look them up, they will find me. People are idiots, especially when they do not do their research.
I may even end up taking legal action against an idiotic kid calling himself “DJ Frontier”. Do you hear me?
Regardless, I have big plans for my DJ Frontier brand. I will be doing a ton of events and programs under that name, and no one else will be able to out market it. I’ll be everywhere. Some might say that I already am everywhere.
After all, eyes of Gannon are everywhere. Ha!

Going on with this issue, we also explore the future and my schedule. Filmmaker Marcus Kempton asked me, on Facebook, a few days ago about my upcoming film festivals, and it got me to thinking about my schedule. So, here it is; I understand that there is a lot here, and that it is not easy reading (Nor interesting to most people, although this will be of great interest to anyone attempting to compete with me, and it is a warning that I am not to be underestimated), but it needs to be reported on. So, I shuffled it from the beginning to the end, and moved the other content up top.
Regardless, enjoy!

Tentative schedule for 2013 to 2018
This is a tentative schedule for 2013 to 2018, and covers the next five years of what needs to be done. Besides the time table, which, again, is tentative, all of this needs to be done in this order for everything else to be done, as some things need to be in place to support others. This also reveals, well, what I can reveal (many details, and some projects, are classified, and are considered to be trade secrets), the scope of what I will be working on and tackling. I certainly feel sorry for anyone who is trying to compete with any of these projects and businesses, as those who try to compete will fail.
I have them all outgunned in all aspects.

2013

1. Get Aurora PhotoArts photography business up to speed.
The cash flow from this is important to get needed equipment and to get the event planning and stage production companies online. Essentially, everything depends upon profits from Aurora PhotoArts, which is the source of all.
The irony is that Aurora PhotoArts began life in 1994 as support for my DJ career and my event planning business. In 2014, it will breath life back into my event planning business, and things will come full circle.
Aurora PhotoArts has done well since it began booking in 2001, but a full rollout, and full operational capability, is scheduled for 2014. With this at full speed by the end of 2013, things will finally start getting done.
This rollout, which is now being done, has been in development hell for over three years, stalling progress on everything, because I’ve been trying to go through pictures to build new support portfolio and web sites. The Mosaic Class web sites will begin deployment in September 2013, which means that we can finally get other things done.
Aurora PhotoArts will transition to a full operational capability in the Fall of 2013.

2. Start Beacon and Phantom Shootout events.
By late Fall 2013, Tampa Shootouts will begin operations, with the Beacon Shootout events and the secret Phantom Shootout events.
These events will pave the way to the full operational rollout of the Tampa Shootouts and workshops by 2014 (and, that’s right models, a source of paying modeling jobs!).
Through Phantom, Aurora PhotoArts will develop a portfolio for a second photography company, as well as a portfolio to support consumer markets, such as wedding photography.
See TampaShootouts.Com for more. I will also have more about the Phantom Shootouts in the next issue of Frontier Pop, for September 2013.

3. Invest in new equipment, cameras, computers, and software.
Obviously, we are short on equipment. It all needs to be replaced, and new gear invested into.
Aurora PhotoArts will invest in new cameras later in 2013, replacing the Canon cameras and accessories it has been using since 2004 with Nikon equipment, lenses, and accessories. Aurora PhotoArts will invest in lighting for location, support equipment, and studio equipment. This new equipment will be tested and mastered during the Phantom Shootout events, and then rolled out into main Aurora PhotoArts operations. As a stop-gap, other, older used Canon DSLRs may be acquired to bridge the old and the new equipment. The next main camera will be a Nixon D800e, and a D4 is on order for 2014, at which point the D800 will become a secondary camera. The D4 can be used for independent filmmaking, as well, although the first independent films by sister company Matchhead Films, which succeeds Dream Nine Studios, will be done with a Canon FS200, which we already have. The FS200 will demonstrate to new independent filmmakers that they can start inexpensively, and work their way up. These short independent films done by the FS200 and other low cost equipment will be documented and covered on Tampa Film Revolution, which is a sister site to Frontier Pop and Advanced Model. The FS200 will be replaced by more capable independent filmmaking cameras by 2014, but I do want to, and am going to, create a few short films with the FS200 to prove to aspiring filmmakers that it can be done. After that, however, I will not limit myself to basic equipment for anything.
The equipment, computer, and software overhaul should be completed by 2014.

4. Start portfolio for second photography company.
A second photography company will spin off from Aurora PhotoArts and will begin operations in 2014. This company will focus on high-risk photography markets such as glamour, boudoir, lingerie, bikini modeling, and artistic nudes, all markets which would be a conflict for Aurora PhotoArts (I have always wanted to go after the markets of high-risk photographers so that we could provide a safer, ethical, professional alternative to what is out there, and now we can). The new company will also focus on fashion photography and modeling photography.
The brand of the second photography company, which is currently classified, will also be used for a fashion line and a modeling team, as well as a company which will be an offshoot of the Passinault stage production company (under its non-profit status) to produce modeling runway fashion shows. The runway events will be an important source of paying jobs for professional models (I am an advocate for models and will be working to provide them with paying jobs, so the few models out there who choose to bitch me out about the business and about my issues with agencies need to chill out, because if they do not, I will add their names to a list and they will not book any work in my projects, EVER!).
Obviously, you need a portfolio to market a new photography company, and Aurora PhotoArts will use its Phantom Shootout events to develop it. This portfolio should be ready by the Summer of 2014.

5. Get Frontier Pop back on track. Work on lost and incomplete issues.
That is what we are doing, now, starting with the August 2013 issue of Frontier Pop, which you are reading now. From now on, there will be an issue a month, especially since the web site problems from May 2012 (with dozens of my other web sites, and NOT with Frontier Pop. Frontier Pop was sidelined while I put out the fires) have finally been resolved. Half of the work on Frontier Pop will be spent working on the support sections and the writing and publishing the missing past issues, as well as completing past incomplete issues. With a regular publishing schedule, this will take over a year to get this site to 100%. Right now, the site is at 30%, and just barely, at that!
Oh, and the Frontier Pop Horizons Podcast series will debut in 2014, as a direct result of the work on the support of my DJ career and my event planning company. Some of the equipment to be invested in includes a Yeti microphone and a laptop with Ableton Live to use to create and support the podcasts. I will produce two other Podcast series beginning in 2014, as well; Advanced Model, which is about the modeling and modeling photography industries, and an independent film podcast for Tampa Bay Film and Tampa Film Revolution. Ha ha!
For those who think that I won’t have what it takes to produce good podcast programs, think again. Just because you have never heard me in an audio program does not mean that I do not have experience. Remember, I started out as a popular underground DJ 23 years ago, and I have extensive experience, as well as professional experience, in audio programming, editing, foley, interview, and voice-over work. My podcasts will be lethal, and will be very difficult to compete against. If you want to compete with me, good luck. You will need it.

6. Get talent resource sites on track and keep them updated.
My modeling and talent resource sites will be on track by this Fall, and some of them will be overhauled. Half of my web site work will be on these sites. Since Tampa Bay Film is one of those sites, half of the work for the talent resource sites will be on Tampa Bay Film, which is extremely important for what is coming.

7. Get Tampa Bay Film up to speed.
Tampa Bay Film is extremely important. Half of the work allocated for the maintenance and support of the talent resource sites will be spent on Tampa Bay Film, which is 25% of the total web site work that I will be doing.
I’ve made a lot of progress on Tampa Bay Film this year, and have launched a new operating site for Tampa Bay Film, since the original domain name and web site was poisoned, and was one of the hits that we took back in May 2012 when the web site mess happened. The original Tampa Bay Film domain name will now be used as a marketing domain name, and, as of this weekend, will lead to the new web site under the new operating domain name. Advanced Model, the sister site for Frontier Pop, has similar search engine issue, and will also be used as a marketing/ branding domain name to lead to a new web site under a new operating domain name to be acquired, and launched, this Fall (Advanced Model, which will use a Pioneer Class web site like the one which Frontier Pop currently uses, but one which is more refined, was never actually launched, and only had placeholder content. The dormant web site has not fared well with the search engines).
I have not been able to do as much as I would have liked with Tampa Bay Film this year, but the new web site, a Revolution Class web site, is doing even better than planned. I may be able to re launch the online film festival next weekend. New site rules state that every film added to the new online film festival has to have a review in the review section, so film additions will be slower than they were in the past. The end result, however, will certainly be worth it. We will get there.
Although successful, the old online film festival was shut down earlier this year in preparation for the new one on the new site. Repeating that success, and expanding on it, will not be a problem.
Many other old Tampa Bay Film sites have been taken offline and abandoned, mostly for rebranding reasons. I kept TampaFilmReview.Com and CoffeehouseFilmReview.Com, however. Paul Guzzo must be pleased. I also changed the name of the annual flagship film festival, the Frontier Film Festival, to the Revolution Film Festival.
Marketing of Tampa Bay Film will resume this Fall.

8. Invest in shirts, business cards, and marketing tools.
This is mostly for Aurora PhotoArts, which should have official embroidered shirts by the end of the year. I also have silkscreened shirts in the works for Aurora PhotoArts, as well as more than three types of business cards.
Tampa Bay Film will have business cards and silkscreened shirts by this Fall.
Tampa Bay Modeling will have silkscreened shirts and business cards later this year, and so will Frontier Pop. Yes, Frontier Pop will be heavily marketed, too!

9. Launch Advanced Model. New modeling industry mail bag on that site, as well as on a Tampa Bay Modeling web site publication.
Advanced Model, a sister site to Frontier Pop, will finally launch this Fall, and will be published monthly thereafter. It will use a Pioneer Class web site like Frontier Pop and Tampa Film Revolution do, too. Its version of the Pioneer Class, however, much like the one used my Tampa Film Revolution web site, will be more advanced (pun intended), especially since the Frontier Pop Pioneer Class web site was the prototype, and all of the growing pains and development problems were worked out with the original site (Pioneer Class web sites were also built and deployed for Tampa Shootouts and its affiliated web sites. All were successful. Tampa Shootouts will soon utilize an advanced derivative of the Pioneer Class site, the Vanguard Class, as I want to expand the header area and add some more features).
Because I have been sitting on Advanced Model for many years, the placeholder web site is not doing well in some search engines. This will be fixed when the AdvancedModel.Com domain name is rebooted as a marketing and branding domain name which will lead to a new operating domain name, which will house the new site. The new site will be built before the new operating domain name is acquired, and will launch “hot” as a fully operational web site the moment that the new operating domain name is registered. This strategy was used successfully with Tampa Bay Film, with incredible results (When I make predictions, I am confident that they will turn out accurately because, simply, I have done it before, consistently. I know what I am doing).
Advanced Model will be formatted like Frontier Pop and Tampa Film Revolution, as well, since both sites have already been proven to be extremely successful.
Model Monica Stevens (a pseudonym), who started working our monthly mail bags on Independent Modeling ten years ago, will be back. She will be the Editor of the main monthly mail bag on Advanced Model, as well as a related geographically marketed mail bag on a Tampa Bay Modeling online publication (the web site branding and domain name is a secret at the time of this writing). The mail bag on the new Tampa Bay Modeling online publication, which is a new, separate web site, will resume from where it left off when it was cancelled several years ago on Tampa Bay Modeling, but the new mail bag has been formatted and improved to be sustainable this time. I am looking forward to reading more emails from French Fry, a shady photographer from Clearwater/ Saint Petersburg who has written some of the most entertaining emails that I have ever.

10. Get DJ Frontier and DJ Wiz Kid web sites up. Get the Frontier Society web site up.
This is one that I have been wanting to do for a long time.
With my DJ career resuming in 2014, and with some idiots out there trying to call themselves “DJ Frontier” as well (which backfires because I own the DJFrontier.Com domain name, as well as the trademark, and they end up promoting me; when people look up “DJ Frontier” in search engines, they find me. Ha ha!).
Both of these sites will use new Celebrity Class web sites. DJ Frontier, which will contain the archives from my old Tampa DJ Blog, will be my main DJ web site, and DJ Wiz Kid will be more of an online museum celebrating my old DJ days as DJ Wiz Kid.
The Frontier Society web site for my Frontier Society subculture, which was established in 1993, needs to be overhauled, too, and updated. I will relaunch that as a Pioneer Class web site to make it completely compatible with Frontier Pop for continuity purposes, although a new Vanguard Class web site would be interesting, too. The Frontier Society web site will serve as a back-end support site for this web site, Frontier Pop. Frontier Pop itself also is used to directly market that web site. Frontier Pop is the monthly online publication of the Frontier Society, and the main resource web site of the Frontier Society, as it should be.
These sites have to be up and fully operational to support what is coming in 2014.
Of course, both Frontier Pop and my Frontier Society underground subculture are named after my DJ Frontier name. Ha ha, again!
Frontier Society. Society has evolved.
Indeed!

11. Brand event planning and stage production companies.
This is critical, because my core businesses will be my event planning and stage production companies, especially with all of my event properties in development.
Aurora PhotoArts, of course, will only expand, because it will be needed to get the event planning and the stage production companies online, but once they are online and fully operational, Aurora PhotoArts will be just as important, as it will be one of my main businesses and will support the events and the production projects, just like they will also support Aurora PhotoArts. It’s just that the event and stage companies will be the core Passinault companies, once again.
As my oldest company, which was split into two different companies years ago for legal and licensing reasons, I have always had a problem with branding with these companies.
Back when it was one company, and my first company, it was Party Systems Incorporated, or PSI. This was on October 6, 1990. That was also the time that I started my DJ career as DJ Wiz Kid, with a series of popular underground audio releases (If anyone thinks that they can compete with me in podcasts, as explained above, think again. Again, I’m very good at audio productions, and I’ve been doing it way longer and better).
In 1993, it was rebranded Advanced Entertainment Systems, or AES. That was the same year that I transitioned from DJ Wiz Kid to DJ Frontier, and the year that some friends and I started the Frontier Society, mother of my first web site in 2008, Colony Alpha, which became Frontier Pop over time (this makes Frontier Pop the oldest pop culture web site in the Tampa Bay area, predating Nolan’s by two years. Yes, I am retro applying an old web site to this new one, because it is relevant, and I can. Take that, Nolan and Tez! Ha ha!). On February 25, 1993, I became DJ Frontier. On October 26, 1993, my friends and I formed the Frontier Society underground subculture.
In 1994, I resumed my underground DJ career as DJ Frontier with production of new 3rd generation audio programs. Aurora PhotoArts was founded on June 10, 1994, to support my new DJ programs, as I needed photographs for them. Six years later, Aurora PhotoArts would become my main business, and 14 years after that, it would breath life back into the business that it was originally created to support. Full circle.
In 1997, Advanced Entertainment Systems became Horizons Entertainment.
By 2001, however, with the Internet enabling easy and quick research, Horizons Entertainment was renamed Dimension Stageforms because of a trademark issue, and from that point, the branding was all screwed up.
The most recent name was Frontier Event Planning and Frontier Stage Productions. Obviously, those will have to go, too.
Despite the branding issues, the embers of my first company were kept alive over the years as I worked mainly as a photographer, and became mostly known as a photographer. I kept the development of my event and stage companies going, however, and DJ’ed events from time to time, as well as did some event planning.
In late 2008, after meeting with my senior DJ, Marlon Brown, I was inspired, and development of the future of my DJ career and my event planning and stage production companies went into high gear. This work was covered extensively on my Tampa DJ Blog; since the blog was recently shut down, the existing content will be expanded upon and will soon be added to my upcoming DJ Frontier web site.
With the event planning and the stage production companies, which have evolved a lot since they began in 1990, I will be finalizing the branding for the companies this Fall, once and for all. Although both will share the branding, both companies will be different. You are about to see why the original company split in two.
The event planning company will be a business offering services in parties, events, theme events, and weddings for clients. It will also produce for-profit events and stage productions as a business. Aurora PhotoArts will offer photography services as part of package deals with this company.
The stage production company will be a non profit 501 (C) (3) company. It will have a tax exempt status. This company will produce film festivals, charity events, and stage productions such as stage plays and other stage productions. The business DBA for fashion runway shows that will share branding with my second photography company will be produced under this company with an affiliated DBA.
Aurora PhotoArts will support the second company, as well as sponsor its events.
Complicated, isn’t it?
I have eight domain names sites in the works for the event planning and stage production companies.
Two domains will be used for branding and marketing, and will lead to the two main sites.
Two of them will be main web sites.
The other four will be annex marketing sites.

12. Convert old DJ releases to MP3 programs and prepare to make new ones.
This is needed for the promotion of my DJ Frontier name brand and my event planning and stage production companies. I will be converting my old cassette program releases produced in the 90's under DJ Wiz Kid and DJ Frontier to MP3 releases. All of them will receive digital covers and support content.
I will also prepare a new generation of DJ programs, which include podcasts, using new GEN 5 digital production technology.
The classic releases should be ready by the end of the year, as there are roughly 30 of them.

2014

1. Get event planning and stage production companies online.
Obviously, this will not happen until late Spring or Summer, especially with the branding undecided right now.
It is a high priority for 2014 however, especially with events coming and full operations rolling out in 2015.
Are you ready, Marlon Brown?

2. Launch second photography company and affiliated brand companies by Summer 2014.
Obviously, the preparations later in 2013 will lead to something.
These companies will make glamour photographers, fashion show producers, and others in the Tampa Bay area cry. Hard.
It will force them to either change, or go out of business. Regardless, they will not be able to compete, and will have to settle for a distant second, at best, because what I have going on will set new professional standards and maintain benchmarks in the market.

3. Start Athena Shootouts, working up to workshops and paid jobs by Fall 2014.
Although the shootout events of Tampa Shootouts will begin in late 2013, the Athena Shootout events, which are used as working auditions for future jobs, are monthly public, invitation-only shootout events which are the backbone of the shootout events. They will pave the way for workshops and paid modeling and talent jobs by Fall 2014.
The Athena Shootouts should debut in Spring 2014, and a six month lead time will be needed before paid jobs in other shootouts and workshop events can be booked.

4. Resume DJ career and new productions by Spring 2014.
Those new GEN 5 MP3 DJ programs are already in the works, and will begin full production in 2014. The podcasts for Frontier Pop, Advanced Model, and Tampa Bay Film will also begin production.

5. Start independent film production in Spring 2014.
Production of short independent films by Matchhead Films will begin (Matchhead Films, which used to be known as Dream Nine Studios until earlier this year, is my independent film production company, and I need to get the Matchhead Films web site site up by the end of 2013). I currently have six screenplays in the works, and have Rachel Eaglin working on some right now, as well (we had a meeting about this earlier this Summer). Both Rachel and I are good writers, so the scripts will be strong, which will go a long way toward making these films good and worth doing; Rachel and I will be writing scripts with low budgets in mind, per my instructions, which means under $1,000.00 per film, and, in my case, under $500.00 (I plan on paying our actors in headshots, and since I am one of the best headshot photographers in Florida, if not the best, and have been for over eleven years, now, that is worth something. Both money and results talk, but don't take my word for it, nor the opinion of my clients, but take a look and judge for yourself. Oh, and actors, you have to be CAST in one of my films to get free headshot photography. I will not give that away in my business, especially if you are in need of headshots. Either way, it's worth it, and my headshot photography and headshots are worth real money). These films will be done on micro budgets with minimal equipment, and the production process and the resources used will be covered on Tampa Film Revolution and on Tampa Bay Film, showing a new generation of filmmakers how to get started in independent filmmaking. These films will be very cost-effective and very slick, and will be better than most independent films done in the Tampa Bay area up 2014 (even the feature independent films with budgets over $30,000.00). These films will be the best value in independent films ever done in the Tampa Bay area, with a balance of low cost and high quality. Both Rachel and I have premises for independent film stories and concepts which have NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE, not even in Hollywood, and they are great, creative, original premises which will capture an audience and a fan base. I am hoping that these short independent films will convince so-called "filmmakers", and this is my opinion, such as Joe Davison, John Miller, and Terence Nuzum, that they are no-talent idiots who should just give up and become waiters or something.

6. Start underground film festivals with the debut of the Sunburn Film Festival.
The Sunburn Film Festival will begin with peer group reviews of local independent films at private residences and venues. These underground film festivals will be covered just like the large film festivals on Tampa Bay Film, on affiliated web sites, and in other media.
The Sunburn Film Festival is a private, invitation-only underground film festival which can be quickly mobilized and executed, in mere days if required, where a group of invited guests get together, watch, and review independent films. These invited guests include talent, actors, industry guests, professional film reviewers, and other people which comprise both the target market and the industry of independent films. Although each underground film festival event is put together and held in secret, it is covered in photography, video, and in publications just like the large conventional film festivals, so the end result is a small, scrappy film festival which is more cost-effective and, ultimately, far more effective than even the largest film festivals. To the outside world, it will look like a really great, larger film festival event.
Because many independent films are not that great, many filmmakers are not going to like it when a group of their peers, as well as people in their target market, review their films, and the reviews are published on Tampa Bay Film, as well as on affiliated web sites and media.
Peer group reviews of independent films from the Sunburn Film Festival underground film festival events will be cross referenced with published reviews of the same films on Tampa Bay Film and on Florida Independent Film (FIF), and it will be clear that the opinion of the majority will weigh in on these films, and that it will not just be the opinion of one reviewer. Hopefully, this will inspire independent filmmakers to make better films.
The Sunburn Film Festival. Turning up the heat on independent film.
There will be other underground film festival properties and series, too, although the Sunburn Film Festival will be our main one; the flagship underground film festival, and the backbone.
Some may say that my Tampa Bay Film Showcase monthly film festival and professional networking event series, a large monthly, public film festival and networking event series due to debut in 2016, will be superior, in every way, to the Tampa Film Review and the Coffeehouse Film Review monthly films festivals. These monthly film festivals, by Paul and Pete Guzzo, ran in Ybor city from 2004 to 2009. While that may end up being true, the really interesting thing is that the small, private, Sunburn Film Festival underground film festival may very well prove to be the film festival which is better than those film festivals. Wouldn’t that be something?
It just may be. Paul and Pete are going to have a fit. The Sunburn Film Festival underground film festival series, done inexpensively and more efficiently than the TFR and the CFR ever were, may very well deliver on the promises made by these earlier film festivals, and deliver much more. Sunburn may very well make the Tampa Film Review and the Coffeehouse Film Review film festivals look like the amateur, inefficient, ineffective film festivals that, in my opinion, they always were.
It is my opinion that the Sunburn Film Festival will be the film festival to be more cost-effective, as well as better, than the Guzzo film festivals, and that is going to be embarrassing for them.

7. First video games by Passinault video game company.
Production of the first video games by Passinault will begin. The games will be flash and PC games, and will utilize artificial life and full customization features. Many of the games will be retro-evolved arcade games, which would be games like classic arcade games created with modern technology.

8. Tampa Bay Photography Society professional photography association operational.
Our professional photography association, the Tampa Bay Photography Society, will be fully operational by the Summer of 2014. The organization has already been developed, with all details worked out, and merely has to be executed.

9. DJ Frontier cybersuit prototype in testing.
This is classified wearable technology, but it will revolutionize my careers. The cybersuit uses BEAM technology and artificial life technology. It also has full production support capabilities.

10. Online television series begins production.
This used to be known as Frontier Vision, but will be renamed. It will be very unique. It will tie into two other online television series projects in the works, which include a rebooted Futura (which may not be the final name).

2015

1. Start modeling events in the Tampa Bay area, including runway fashion shows.
These events and fashion runway shows will be the most advanced, effective, and creative in the Tampa Bay market. They will be a source of paying work for models, as well as promote the models and allowing industry professionals to network. They will also be used as marketing platforms.
These events will force the competition to start paying their models. If they don’t, they will not be able to compete, especially when they lose their models, as well as their support.
The modeling events will be produced through our non profit stage production company.

2. Start fashion line and modeling team.
This ties in, brand-wise, as well as in other ways, with the second photography company, as well as with the modeling events and fashion runway shows.

3. First public film festival, Reverence, debuts in the Tampa Bay area in the Fall of 2015.
Reverence, an annual horror theme film festival, is scheduled to kick off the entire interconnected line and series of film festivals and independent film support events in the Fall of 2015. This first Reverence film festival will also contain a keynote address by me, and will lead into the debut of the Tampa Bay Film Showcase monthly film festival and professional networking event series, which is scheduled to debut months later, in January 2016.
The Reverence horror theme festival is a horror and exploitation film festival and a theme event hybrid, and contains technology from my interactive theme events. It will be the most unique, and interesting, horror film festival in the country. After it debuts, there will be a Reverence horror theme film festival every Fall.
Reverence is engineered to evolve, in time, and may eventually incorporate full interactive theme event components and technology. The Reverence of the future, say, 2020, would be much more advanced than earlier events, with more features and a more comprehensive format.
Reverence will be different than my other film festival and independent film event properties. Theme event features and cross promotion aside, it will be less about the business of independent film and more about the fun (although the first one, which will have to promote the debut of the Tampa Bay Film Showcase, has a keynote presentation, so it will be more business than subsequent Reverence Film Festival events). It will be a blast!

4. Dance events begin.
Parties and theme events by DJ Frontier (me), and my event production company will begin. These will be for-profit events. They will also be used as marketing platforms.

5. Aurora PhotoArts fully engaged in the consumer photography market in Tampa Bay.
This will be a nightmare for wedding photographers. Aurora PhotoArts, while still specializing in the professional modeling and talent photography market, will be servicing the consumer photography market, which includes weddings as a large percentage of this work.

6. Event planning company fully engaged in wedding market.
Working with Aurora PhotoArts, my event planning company will be doing package deals with weddings. Marlon will be happy, as he loves DJ’ing wedding receptions.

7. Music label online.
I’ve been working on a music label for years. It will finally launch, and will work with my DJ and event planning career, as well as my stage production company.
My commercial DJ releases will be used as marketing platforms for new bands and performers.
Music will be needed for independent films, stage productions, programs, video games, and other production support, so the music label is important.

2016

1. Tampa Bay Film Showcase debuts in January 2016. Film festival and networking event begins monthly events.
This is the backbone of the Tampa Bay Film film festivals, and interconnects with and promotes everything else as well. It will be used for screening films, for promoting talent, for professional networking, and as a marketing platform.
After it debuts (as currently scheduled) in January 2016, there will be a Tampa Film Showcase film festival and professional networking event EVERY MONTH, even in months where there is another film festival or independent film event by Tampa Bay Film. In months where there are events other than the Tampa Bay Film Showcase, the dates will be separated by at least two weeks. After all, we would not want one of our events conflicting and competing with another, would we?
Guzzo and friends shall weep, as this is what the Tampa Film Review, which ended 7 years earlier, should have always been. Coffeehouse Films, if it still exists by 2016, will not be able to compete.
Tampa Bay Film and Frontier Pop will both sponsor.

2. Second Reverence film festival in Fall 2016.
The Reverence horror theme film festival will finally hit its stride with its second outing in the Tampa Bay area, and will be up to full speed and power.

3. Event planning company at full potential.
The event planning company will once again be the core Passinault.Com company, with massive sales, and will tie everything else together. This is especially true with the stage production company producing all of the film festivals and assorted events, with the event planning company producing the for-profit events.

4. First stage productions by stage production company.
Mostly, this means stage plays, but other stage productions will also be done. I’ve been working on new theatre technologies, and new forms of stage plays and productions, for the past 20 years. It is time to unleash them upon the world. Ironically, interactive theme event technology, which began development in 1991 and was fully developed by 1995, was derived from stage play technology and techniques. This mature interactive theme event technology will feed back into the stage productions, creating new, very advanced, and exciting stage plays and stage productions.
Notice that I have not stated that either the event planning company or the stage production company will debut any interactive theme events by 2016. We did a prototype on January 31, 1998 in north Tampa, which was very successful, but demonstrated that the overhead was high for such events, and that the cost-effectiveness was low. 2016 would be too early to make the interactive theme events commercially viable, although elements of this technology will have already been used in our other events and in the Reverence horror theme film festivals (none of which are full interactive theme events. There is a big difference between a theme event and an interactive theme event, and a proper interactive theme event will take substantial resources to pull off; much more than will be available in 2016 and still be able to be profitable. True, full interactive theme events will still be years off at this point, as my event planning and stage production companies would have to be huge businesses in order to pull them off in a cost-effective, and worthwhile, manner. As far as clients booking an interactive theme event, the costs would be well beyond what most could pay. They would have to be large public events produced and marketed by my companies, where guests would pay for admission. Interactive theme events would be one of the most difficult of my projects, and it is going to take a lot of time, although the technology developed can be used to enhance and improve my other projects. You never know, though. I could come up with something which could bring these online much sooner, but you can bank on my stageplays debuting and being produced first. ALL of my event lines would have to be up and running, as well as successful, before I could attempt these, and, yes, I DO have at least two completed scripts for these types of events, Seabreeze and Club Zero, which I finished in 1998; these scripts are classified, and extremely confidential. The scripts specify the format and the sequence nodes, and they are blueprints for the most advanced events in the world; a reason why I have them under lock and key. Still, the interactive theme events will be the ultimate events once they are up and running, and they will be something worth working toward. You’ll see!).

5. Project Dragonfly operational.
I announced this years ago on the Tampa Film Blog.
I can’t talk about it, yet. It will revolutionize at least two industries, however, and, yes, it has something to do with independent film.

6. Independent film projects at full potential.
A lot of independent films, mostly shorts and experimental films, will be produced by Matchhead Films by this time. The portfolio of independent films needed to market for the production of ambitious independent feature films will be almost complete.

7. Independent film workshops online.
Although the Tampa Film Revolution web site and Tampa Bay Film will cover the production of independent films and teach new filmmakers all that they need to know online, that is not what this means.
Our independent film workshops will be operational, and they will be offered FREE OF CHARGE. They will also be superior to all other independent film workshops and film schools in Florida.
Sorry, Dan!

2017

1. Second year of the monthly Tampa Bay Film Showcase.
With 12 Tampa Bay Film Showcase film festivals and professional networking events in 2016, 2017 will see more of these events every month.
The Tampa Bay Film Showcase will promote and lead into all of the other Tampa Bay Film film festivals and independent film industry events, too, as well as the underground film festivals of Tampa Bay Film, such as the Sunburn Film Festival. The main film festival property that the Tampa Bay Film Showcase will lead up to, however, would be the large, annual Revolution Film Festival, which will debut in February 2017, as currently scheduled.

2. Revolution Film Festival to debut in February 2017.
The Revolution Film Festival is a large, annual film festival by Tampa Bay Film, and it is the flagship film festival for Tampa Bay Film and my stage production company (which produces the other film festivals and independent film events, too).
This flagship film festival is completely different from the flagship underground film festival of Tampa Bay Film, the Sunburn Film Festival, which the Revolution Film Festival should not be confused with. Both film festivals are very different, and are literally on opposite ends of the spectrum; a large, annual film festival marketed to the public and to potential distributors of independent films is not the same thing as a tiny, private underground film festival where a small peer group of usually less than 20 people watches and reviews independent films (and, it should also be noted that underground film festivals, as specified here, are entirely my concept). This said, the irony is that they would both look like large film festivals once covered by our affiliated media, as the small, scrappy Sunburn Film Festival is that cost-effective, and it can compete with any other film festival and make them look like overpriced, less effective monstrosities (all of my film festivals are designed to make larger, and especially more conventional, film festivals look less appealing to investors and participants. My smaller film festivals, which include underground film festivals such as the Sunburn Film Festival, as well as the Tampa Bay Film Showcase, will probably wreak havoc with the ability of large, conventional film festivals such as the Gasparilla Internation Film Festival, the Sunscreen Film Festival, and others, to secure sponsors, as it will make them look inefficient and will make them less appealing as an investment. With the Tampa Bay Film Showcase alone outgunning those large film festivals, in my opinion, I wonder if they will be around in 2017 to compete with the Revolution Film Festival, as I do not think that they will be able to compete with the Tampa Bay Film Showcase, let alone any of my other film festivals. Time will tell).
As far as bang-for-the-buck, and overall effectiveness, nothing beats the Sunburn Film Festival, although it being a private film festival means that it will not be a direct threat to other film festivals as far as competition for sponsors go. Because of the nature of the Sunburn Film Festival, and to avoid any potential for conflicts of interest and allegations of bias, sponsorship of Sunburn, or any of the other underground film festivals, are discouraged. They don’t need sponsors, anyway, because they are that cost-effective, which brings us back to my assertion of the Sunburn Film Festival being the ultimate bang-for-the-buck.
I can easily fund all of the Sunburn Film Festivals out of pocket, which includes buying the independent film DVD’s since I’m sure that a lot of filmmakers will not want to submit films to Sunburn. It’s awesome, and makes Sunburn a truly “independent” independent film festival. It’s not like that for the my larger, more conventional film festivals, such as the Tampa Bay Film Showcase, the Reverence Film Festival, and the Revolution Film Festival, which are all marketed to the public, and all have substantial overhead in the form of expenses. They would require sponsors, and lots of them.
The monthly Tampa Bay Film Showcase directly leads into the Revolution Film Festival, and on a film festival level they are directly interconnected; the backbone leads to the brain. They also heavily promote each other, as well as other Tampa Bay Film independent film events and properties.

3. Tampa Bay Film Conference to debut in Spring 2017.
This is important, and it will be critical for independent filmmakers in Tampa Bay. Although the Tampa Bay area is currently flooded with film festivals (why, I have no idea. I think that film festivals are seen as easy events to do, with prestige, and an excuse to have some sort of event where people can make money. At least one film festival series, in my opinion, is used for propaganda purposes supporting alternative lifestyles, and it is both tacky and crass, which is why we I do not acknowledge or promote them on Tampa Bay Film, and yes, they have tried to send Tampa Bay Film press releases in the past, which were ignored. I even discovered another film festival domain which was bought by an attorney, which makes little sense!) in the Tampa Bay area, there are no independent film industry events at the time of this writing. If there are events of this type when the Tampa Bay Film Conference debuts, we were still first, especially since I was the one who came up with this concept, and anyone trying something similar will be following my lead. It is my idea, and mine alone.
Of course, you would need a large group of independent filmmakers to make something like this work, and the current film schools and workshops, which teach the Hollywood way of making films, and try to get filmmakers to emulate Hollywood, discourage aspiring filmmakers from getting started because it is more expensive and complicated than it has to be. This is why there are not many filmmmakers, and why competition to the film conference would be unlikely before we debut it. Well, that, and after I make it easier, and cheaper, for aspiring filmmakers to get started, which is one reason why we will have FREE collaborative workshops. I will also demonstrate that you can make good films and get started at little cost and with minimal equipment, which will undermine the film schools and the filmmaking workshops while opening up the market to a whole new generation of filmmakers, who will then make something like the conference sustainable and worthwhile. Hollywood filmmaking techniques have little bearing on independent filmmaking techniques, and are not relevant for aspiring filmmakers, so while the idiots in the market continue to push the Hollywood way, they lock themselves out of competing with my film conference. I hope that they continue to make this mistake (It is my opinion that the organizers of the Sunscreen Film Festival, and to a lesser extent, the Gasparilla International Film Festival, are idiots with their pretentious Hollywood B.S. and their film school workshops which push the “Hollywood” way of filmmaking. Who in the hell can afford to get started this way? I couldn’t. They have celebrities come in to “teach”, and to give their workshops credibility; this, of course, raises their overhead and raises the costs of attending, which I like as far as competition goes. Who the hell cares about celebrities? I don’t. How are they relevant to independent filmmaking in this market, especially when people are first starting out? It is my opinion that they try to cash in on people who want to make films, rather than truly support independent film. This is a mistake which I will use to compete with them, and to put them in their place. I will undermine and cripple any attempt that they make to make money with filmmaking workshops and film schools by offering independent filmmaking workshops which are superior, and more relevant to independent filmmaking, FREE OF CHARGE, and I will make it possible because I truly care, and want to help others become filmmakers. How can something like this be sustainable? Well, without revealing an critical details which may help the competition, I will keep overhead low while making it a worthwhile investment. I have a plan, a detailed plan, a plan which I have spent years on, and it makes good business sense). Sure, eventually, filmmakers will have to do films like Hollywood does, to an extent, but not when they are just getting started. They have to work their way up to that. You cannot start a fire without kindling. You will have to crawl before you can walk, and then run.
The Tampa Bay Film Conference is an independent film industry event specifically for the Tampa Bay independent film market where filmmakers can do presentations on their latest projects and exchange ideas. Filmmakers can show their latest films and rough drafts of their projects, as well as new concepts. I do realize that the indie film scene in Tampa Bay has been plagued by unethical, and unprofessional, so-called “filmmakers” who steal from others and who try to sabotage anyone who they see as a potential competitor, and this is one reason that there is not much of an independent film scene here, nor a true community, and it is my opinion that this is a big reason that we are not yet on the map, nor respected. The Tampa Bay Film Conference will change all of that, and will enable a thriving, innovate independent film industry here in Tampa Bay where independent filmmakers can make good, and even revolutionary, independent films.
It will help to finally put us on the map.
The catch, however, is that most of these filmmakers will be a new generation of independent filmmakers, talented people who are not filmmakers at the time of this writing. It is my opinion that most of the current filmmakers in Tampa Bay do not deserve to benefit from this, as they have proven themselves to be liars, cheats, and fakes with questionable talent and shady agendas. We do not need this, and we do not want this. The current cancer in independent film will not be tolerated in the new era of independent film in Tampa Bay.
It’s time to flush the toilet.
It is my opinion that current filmmakers such as Paul Guzzo, Pete Guzzo, Joe Davison, and others have had their chance. It is my opinion that they have failed, even after years of trying. I don’t want them in the independent film scene, and I intend to discourage them from working in this market in the future. I won’t have to do it alone, either. The next generation of independent filmmakers will help me put them in their place, and keep them on the outside looking in. People are going to find out what these people tried to do to me, as well as to other filmmakers. In my opinion, their tactics of slander and discrimination, as well as self-serving politics, are going to backfire. In my opinion, it already is, and it already has.
The Tampa Bay Film Conference is the key to making this work. The conference, which is an annual event which will be held every Spring, will be an independent film think tank, and no one, including the Guzzos or Davison, will be able to compete with that.
Some may wonder what is to prevent participants from stealing ideas from other filmmakers by participating in the conference. Well, I’ve engineered the event format to discourage that, as I realize that such unethical and unprofessional conduct would defeat the purpose of the conference, as well as undermine any independent film community in Tampa Bay (this is exactly, in my opinion, what the main problem in the Tampa Bay indie film scene has been in the past 20 years. It is the reason that there is no community, that there is no real industry, and why we are not on the map. It is also the reason that I began fighting these people in 2008, and why I have systematical crippled and dismantled their network and the careers of their clique since, and quite effectively, I might add. They are much weaker today, five years later, and there is no disputing that. Many of them have left the market, and we are better off for it; I will post more about this in the next post on Tampa Film Revolution). I can assure anyone that, if they do anything unethical, that they will cut their own throats. Everyone will know what you have done, and you will be banned from future conferences, as well as all other Tampa Bay Film events. Don’t try it, as you will not only regret it, but you will fail. If you are unethical and unprofessional, I would suggest staying away and staying out of our business. I’m sick of unethical people, and so are others. Liars, cheats, and thieves will not be tolerated, and neither will fakes.
Trust will be earned, and one of the purposes of the Tampa Bay Film Conference is to facilitate, and grow, trust among the participants so that we can support a true, professional independent film community in Tampa Bay. We will all be supportive of each other, and although, in filmmaking, we are all technically competitors, we will practice fair business practices, and collaborative competition, for the greater good of the indie film community and the independent film industry in Tampa Bay as a whole. With a supportive, strong community and industry, we will ALL benefit, and this is one of the advantages of collaborative competition.
It is in our best interests to collaborate, to cooperate, and to support each other. By helping others, we will also be helping ourselves.
Components of the Tampa Bay Film Conference will be an ongoing part of the Tampa Bay Film Showcase, which has professional networking features which will be integrated with the Tampa Bay Film Conference. The Tampa Bay Film Showcase will also be a regular monthly meeting for filmmakers, and will support the growing independent film scene, as well as, eventually, the first independent film community for Tampa Bay. The best filmmakers who get involved with the Tampa Bay Film Showcase networking events, who are filmmakers, will be invited to participate with the annual conference. Likewise, all underground film festivals, film festivals, and independent film events like the Tampa Bay Film Conference will promote each other, as well as interlink to form a massive event and support network.
Nothing will be able to compete with this. It will be as it should be, as it will truly support independent film in Tampa Bay, and it is exactly what this market needs, and will, eventually, deserve.
Some may be wondering why I am more secretive with my photography career, and why I will not be using these collaborative competition and industry-building tactics with photography. Well, I will be using the same tactics there, too, but it will be different.
There is a difference, and I’ll take a moment to explain.
Independent Filmmaking is more complex than photography and requires more of a team. This is why independent filmmakers often use proper DBA’s and fictitious names for their independent film production companies instead of more personal names such as “Joe Davison Films”. Joe Davison’s company is called “Pop Gun Pictures” (no relation to Frontier Pop), and it is seen in the public as more of a production company than a guy making movies, which may or may not necessarily be accurate, in my opinion. Basically, most filmmakers want to be seen as a production team, so that mentality extends to their branding; they want to be seen as large as possible, even if it is larger than they actually are. For securing investors, well, they need to be seen as a production team instead of a small sole proprietor.
Because filmmaking is more difficult, and often has more overhead, there are fewer filmmakers. The business model is different, too, with profits being less frequent, and overhead much higher. This means that the independent film scene is smaller, and more stable, than photography is.
It used to be that way for photography, back before digital cameras (and, to a lesser extent, filmmaking, before digital filmmaking). Back when I first became a professional photographer, in 2000, film and development costs created a barrier to entry for anyone wanting to start a career as a photographer, so there were not that many of us, and of those of us who were photographers, it was much easier to find professionals among us, because you knew that we were serious if we spent all of that money on film and development to become photographers.
It’s different, now.
Digital cameras are now cheap, and everyone wants to be in business as a photographer. Other than the initial outlay for the cameras and other equipment, there is a much lower barrier to entry than in most other businesses.
There are tons of “photographers” in the market now, more than I can keep track of, and most of them are amateurs. Although they do not pose a threat to my business, nor can they compete with me, most of these amateurs are insecure and unethical because they do not really know what they are doing, and never paid their dues. As a result, they will rip off professional photographers if they can.
Do you think that I want to help amateurs become professionals and compete with me, especially when their ethics are questionable and their motives unprofessional? Not hardly!
Photography is more of a service business than independent film is, anyway, with independent filmmaking being more of a long term investment with higher risks, a lot more work which is far less cost-effective, and potentially higher pay outs for those who are actually good.
Photographers are more sole proprietors, and less of a team player. It’s more personal. How many photographers name their companies after themselves, since they want to be seen as some bad-ass photographer who works with all of the models? It’s pathetic, really.
Like I said, there are differences, and major differences, and although I will be using the same tactics for photography as I will be for independent film, with the shootout events, the workshops, and the professional photography association, it will not be nearly at the same scale as for independent film.
As a result, the independent film industry will be more collaborative, as it needs to be, and the photography industry will be more competitive, as it is a different, and more cut-throat, business with a lot more noise to it than indie film.
To make my point, consider this: How many photographers can you find in the Tampa Bay area? How many filmmakers can you find? Point made. Photographers, by far, outnumber filmmakers, 100, or more, to 1.

4. Matchhead Films first feature film projects.
After building a portfolio of many short independent films needed to show investors, in a wide variety of different genres which demonstrate the range of films that we can do and the stories that we can tell, Matchhead Films will finally begin making ambitious feature length independent films with the intention to sell the films. With investment money from investors, high-end, high definition cameras and filmmaking equipment will be procured, making high quality, and revolutionary, independent films possible.
My independent film production company will finally start making money for both ourselves, and our investors.

5. Third Reverence Film Festival in the Fall.
The third annual Reverence horror theme film festival will debut.

6. First video game festival debuts.
This is something that I’ve been wanting to do for years. Currently, there are no video game events in the Tampa Bay area, and the video game tournaments are Mega Con do not count, as it is not a dedicated video game convention or festival.
This will have new video game expositions, classic gaming features and sales, independent games, tournaments, classic coin ops set up for free play and sales, and more. I even have a video game tournament section which I call “The Chamber”, which will be spectacular.
My stage production company, the non profit, will produce the best video game festival in the Tampa Bay area, and it may very well become the PAX of the south east. Florida needs this, too.
Frontier Pop will sponsor this, and will be the main sponsor, with coverage of the video game festival exclusively on this site.
You did not think that I would set up these event and stage production companies and just limit the events to independent film, film festivals, modeling, fashion runway, and photography events, did you?

2018

1. Third year of the monthly Tampa Bay Film Showcase.
After 24 successful events for the monthly film festival and networking event series, another 12 will be on order to 2018.

2. Second Revolution Film Festival in February.
The second annual flagship film festival for Tampa Bay Film, with a 12 month lead-in from the monthly Tampa Bay Film Showcase, will happen. The Revolution Film Festival will become the best, and the premier, large film festival in the Tampa Bay area, and will well be on its way to dominating the Florida film festival scene.

3. Second Tampa Bay Film Conference in Spring.
The second Tampa Bay Film Conference will happen, and it will be better, as it will now be beyond its shake down.

4. Fourth Reverence Film Festival in Fall.
The Reverence Film Festival will now be a well-anticipated staple for horror fans, and will continue to be one of the most unique film festivals ever produced.

INITIALIZED AND SET
ISSUE CONCLUSION BY EDITOR AND PUBLISHER C. A. PASSINAULT

This concludes this issue of Frontier Pop for August 2013, and it wrapped near the end of the month. This has got to be the largest issue of Frontier Pop to date, and serves as a brilliant, and worthy, swan song for the original format.
Swan song?
Yes. Starting with the September issue, the format will be adjusted.
Of course, this does not mean that everything on the site needs to be redone. The new format is entirely compatible with the old format of the site, and it is actually an extension of the original format, which was attempted when the site launched in July, 2010. This original format led to the current format, which is why the new format is also compatible. We have improved upon the original format, however.
Issues of Frontier Pop will now be published immediately in the issue directory, which, before, was where current issues were rotated at the end of the month, and when new issues were published. The reason that we will do this is because we need the front page to be stable, and to serve as an introduction and update page. We will also be cutting up articles and other content to be indexed and filed in their relevant directories, with links back to their main sponsoring issue as well as issues which share them. In order for this multiple page format to work, the issue page needs to be at its permanent location in the issue directory immediately upon publication.
Issues will contain the traditional thoughts section, an editorial (which is in the “initialization” introduction and header section), a body with links to the articles and other content which make up the issue, and a footer section where the reader reaction and support content for the issue will be (all articles and issue content led back to the sponsoring issue, dominantly, so it, essentially, one issue, but an issue which will require clicking links to read in its entirety). The issue page itself will be much more lighter on content, with the body content dispersed throughout the web site, but linked together for easy navigation, as well as links back to the home “sponsor” issue. This will enable content to be organized in relevant directories, where it can be referenced by subject. Issues are also referenced by subject, as well as by the original publication date.
Once published, each issue is referenced by subject, and continues to be in play, with new content added and edited as needed. No issues of Frontier Pop are ever final. Issues which are updated are immediately referenced from not only the current issue of Frontier Pop and the updates section of the site, but from the new front page, as well, becoming a part of, and an extension of, current content. This means that no one will ever miss new additions to the site, and older issues will constantly be referenced and indexed from the front of the site and the current monthly issue.
Old issues of Frontier Pop will be converted to the new format as content is added. Unfinished issues of Frontier Pop, if they are under 50%, will be converted to the new format. Updated issues will be upgraded to the new format once sufficient content has been added (root content will remain, but new content will be added in relevant sections and then linked to and from the issue which “sponsors” it. Older issues will have new content added when needed, and will grow, but using the new format). Of course, all new issues, from September 2013 and onward, will be completely published in the new format, as well as missing “old” issues which were either not started, or barely started (That i-Idiots issue is awesome already on premise alone, and it was barely started. I need to work on that in September).
Although Frontier Pop is back on track, it is far from where we want it to be, and where it needs to be. We have so many incomplete and missing back issues, that we will have to publish and work on several each month to catch up. Currently, as of 08/28/13, Frontier Pop is at 30% of where it needs to be. It will take over a year for the site to be completely caught up when it comes to back issue work that needs to be done. Support sections of this site also need to be worked on, especially with over half of the site support sections changing with the new format.
Regardless, do not ever expect any issue to be as large as this one is in the month of its publication (and, regardless, with the new issue format, to be as large as this in the main body of the issue, PERIOD), especially with back issue work which needs to be done well into 2014. This issue, a labor of love, was much larger than is sustainable in the normal publication of Frontier Pop. It’s a special issue.
New content, and features, of Frontier Pop will include, but will not be limited to, movie reviews (which can be compared to my independent film reviews, as well as cross referenced. You will see that I am just as hard on mainstream movies), video game reviews (Frontier Pop will have a lot of video game related content, so deal with it), articles, DIY Do It Yourself tutorials, fiction (Yes, I need to get back to writing fiction. Expect some cool stories from me about the space program, military technology, black projects, science fiction, and the adventures of innovators and genuinely cool characters; I will also be writing and publishing stories which supplement, and enhance, my novel, screenplay, and stage play properties, including a spin off of Frontier 4 which will tie in with the first novel, and which will be set in the alternate reality of 2020 as depicted in the first novel, a world that could have been had history in the last 30 years unfolded differently. This world includes flying cars and widespread clean energy), and other features described in my thoughts section at the top of this issue.
The site itself will be overhauled, too. While Frontier Pop will continue to use the same design, and the site will continue to use a Pioneer Class web site design (the overhaul will not change anything enough to be described as a “Pioneer 2"), there will be changes. We will be dropping some of the social media buttons for sites which are no longer popular or used, such as Myspace, and will be adding a search engine field for content searches (which is redundant, really, considering the enhanced organization that the new site format will have).
And with that, we shall meet on the other side, in the next issue of Frontier Pop for September 2013! Enjoy the rest of your Summer, readers, and feel free to participate in our Reader Reaction section!

This issue of Frontier Pop achieved initial publication capacity as the issue was concluded, which means that it was officially published and promoted at that time.
This, however, is not the end. It is merely the beginning.
No issues are final. They can be edited and added to with no warning.
Since this is an online publication, this issue remains in play, with new content added as-needed and existing content edited as-needed. This is a dynamic, interactive publication. After the month of publication which is specified, this issue remains active as a reference, as well as for its primary subject covered, and most new content would add to the primary subject matter of the issue, as this issue would be referenced by subject.
Features such as the Readers Reaction remain active, and can be posted to at any time.
Any additions to this issue will be immediately referenced, via links, from the current issue of Frontier Pop, as well as the front main page. To bump this issue for reference from new sections of Frontier Pop, simply post to the Readers Reaction section.

---

READER REACTION

Posted Opinions and Debate by the Frontier Pop Readers

The Frontier Pop Reader Reactor

CONTROVERSY SCALE: 1 (Warm) to 10 (Critical Mass)

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10

Reader reaction section is organized from top to bottom. Latest posts are at the bottom. See Disclaimer.

Agree? Disagree? Have a comment or opinion to share? POST NOW! Updated Daily.

Join the Frontier Pop Readers and post your opinion, today. It's free!

Tez - Posted 08/03/13: 1002
He’s back!

 

Evil Nolan - Posted 09/21/10: 0852
Don’t worry, my Boy! Passinault has never been able to sustain Frontier Pop with good issues. There are a lot of gaps on the site. He’ll never catch up. He’s no threat to us!

 

Museboy - Posted 09/21/10: 0852
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey boys!
Passinault is still around with the Frontier Pop B.S.? It’s nothing buy a hate site against us! Don’t worry! I can always destroy him with my fantastical muse site! He’s a shit head!
Don’t worry, boyfriends! I have your backs, and yes, in that way, too, if you know what I mean! Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaah!
Ooooooooooooooh!

Joeba The Butt - Posted 11/24/11: 1320
I have been watching Passinault all this year, guys! Passinault is up to something! He has been working on a lot of different things. Have you see the new Tampa Bay Film? HAVE YOU? Have you seen Tampa Film Revolution?
He has already destroyed the independent film scene in Tampa with his trashy talk web sites which slam us. He is trying to destroy us, still, after all of these years! He is trying to destroy ME!

Tez - Posted 08/03/13: 1002
I have not had a chance to do much with our site. Sorry, Nolan. I have bills to pay and have to work all day cleaning up dog crap at the kennel. My girlfriend takes a lot of maintenance, too. What time do I have to deal with this? If Passinault brings it this time, there will be nothing that we can do about it! He WILL destroy our illustrious, historical pop culture site!

Museboy - Posted 09/21/10: 0852
Hi Tez. I like doggies. Do you?
You know what I am talking about.

 

Joeba The Butt - Posted 11/24/11: 1320
Damn it, Museboy, you look like a freaking pickle. I’m hungry, now! Prepare to be consumed by my frog mouth!

 

Museboy - Posted 09/21/10: 0852
Ooooooooooh, please! Keep trying, big boy!
Is that drool that you have there?!?!?!?
Yeeeeeeeas!

Evil Nolan - Posted 09/21/10: 0852
Don’t worry, Tez. I know how hard you have been working. You can always rely on your team of writers! I’d help, but I have to use a cane, now! I mean, I can sit my fat ass in front of a computer and be one of your typing monkeys, like always, but it is hard for me to get around. It’s hard for me to go to events and walk around, now. I hope that you understand.

The Love Issue - Back On Track - Game On

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