BEHIND THE SCENES AT OTL

On The Lot (OTL) (and its official website www.thelot.com) has maintained high secrecy since it started. In fact, one of the major compaints of filmmakers and viewers has been the lack of information as to what is going on. The show has changed direction several times, confusing viewers. The official website never explained, and even had misinformation several times. And there was little information -- make that no information -- available to the 12,000 or so filmmakers that contributed films to the site and hoped to be on the show as to what the selection process schedule would be. Some people were even posting questions as to when contestants would be notified as the show was starting... with no response.

Now the first little bit of light on the internal processes at OTL have been revealed. A blogger on OTL, lizriz, linked to a another blogger, Denis Logan, who was part of a FORD junket to OTL. Here are links to his posts:

http://www.superguncinema.com/blog/?p=172 -- Tidbits from OTL
http://www.superguncinema.com/blog/?page_id=166-- The whole story of the trip.

Among the most interesting revelations is how hard everyone is trying and how much effort is going into the show. That contrasts with the impression on the website that nobody cares, which is a result of the secrecy, and the trivial errors on the site that go uncorrected for long periods of time. (For example, the 40,000 or so films now on the site suddenly went AWOL last week and have not come back.)

Note: It would be great to see stories like this on the OTL site itself.

Note: It would have been great to invite tattoowesley to participate in this junket! I'm a great fan of the show (and a critic only because I want it to succeed).

This Tuesday (Fox, 8:00) is the final episode, when the winner of the grand prize: a $Million dollar development deal at DreamWorks is revealed.