Originally Posted by
Redrapper
was gonna write an article on it, but this seems a little more conducive so here goes...
Last year I did a documentary called a new kind of Blues. It was something I absolutely didn't want to do. He'd hired me before and I'd unfortunately arrived at the interview space late(for which I was taken off the project). But I re-took the job mainly because John had hired me to shoot his tournament with a two camera setup in June for about 1100 dollars.
Flashback a little earlier than that: when I was filming "Run It Back", it felt like I was being punched continuously in the face by this man every time I released an episode, because he was chastising the fact that I chose to focus on the anatomy of the fighting game scene more than him. He didn't answer questions directly and it took literally 22 minutes for us to get him to give a question a straight answer-- not to mention the flood of shit talk I knew the others in TL were talking about me because I didn't make it "John Nelson: the Series."
But fuck it, I need the 1100. So I decided to edit a New Kind of Blues. Originally, Nelson had another editor-- but differences between him and Nelson prevented that from ever going down, and now Nelson put it on me. In order to get the June job, I agree to do the doco on the condition that it is MY way. I'm not going to make a piece giving them a metaphorical blow-job because that's retarded. I want to make a piece surrounding sponsorship and whether or not the influx of money was good or bad for the community. An advertisement is different and I'm not interested in doing something that's labeled a documentary if it's an advertisement.
I stood outside talking to him at the proud bird for like-- 30 minutes literally telling him "tell me now if you want a tournament legacy advertisement, because i'm not going to shoot a doco on you guys. Which one?" and for the 30 minutes(in which he got angry for repeating myself) he consistently said he wanted a piece on the community without blatant branding. I said, "fine."
My thought was, if the doc was good-- he gets his branding just because he was cool enough to produce the thing-- and I can at the same time make a piece that helps the community as opposed to harms it. For this, I agreed to be paid 120 for my directing fee which is equivalent to being punched in the dick with a sledgehammer when your base price to film an event this size or a documentary of that stature varies from 500-1000 on other projects. But fuck it, I want the contract in June.
So I edit the documentary piece by piece. I break out my DOF adapter as well(Even though it's a pain in the ass to lug around) and shoot some shots there as well, I edit and cut together whatever I have and can do. The documentary is late(I will admit to that), but It' not going to justify what's coming. I finish and show it to two people. My friend Dillon(who is always brutally honest with whatever I throw out) and over to his team.
I call in the morning and the first thing I hear is "Well, it's what I expected-- you pretty much just ignored us all the way through and promoted a bunch of other people in the scene rather than us, so... I'll pay you and I think it's good what you did for the community but you pretty much screwed us."
I was really fucking angry. I said "Dude, you told me you didn't want an advertisement" and then he went around claiming that "You took the Team HORI sponsorship AWAY FROM ME! I Was able to attain that sponsorship, no one's been able to get in touch with Hori and do that for 7 years"(which is bullshit because he drove them into the fucking ground like the piece of shit assfuck cunt-stain he his. but more on that later) and then accuses me of giving all the credit to Valle. The entire time of the partnership, Nelson had this ridiculous conspiracy theory on Valle as if Valle was USING him for shit and badmouthing him and only wanted to milk the community for money-- when it was the other way around. Nelson used Valle, and caused so much unnecessary shit for those guys with his shady fucking business practices it was ridiculous. Secondly-- I had to fucking call him in order to get the message that he didn't like the film. After listening to him piss and moan about how i'd "Betrayed" him, I was forced to make changes I vowed I'd NEVER do in another venue. Which included:
a) Cutting the beginning of Andy's comments on the Hori sponsorship. He mentions how Valle gave him a call to talk about it, and how afterwards they met up with Nelson.
b) Needlessly mentioning Tournament legacy more than 3 extra times throughout the film.
c) Changed various interviews and added more shots of Revelations related things.
I felt like a fucking whore. I show it to Nelson, and he approves. I make SURE he approves, he assures me he does. He approves with his patented fucking "smily in front of absolute shady assholishness". I should clarify now, that even though there are changes in the film, the message is the same: That Sponsorship's will NOT kill the community because what is inherently grassroots about us with evolve with it into something new. Not a machevellian business model... and it got worse: The next day I got a call from Valle and John was claiming that Aksys games(specifically) James Xie was SUPER mad at me for the whole thing-- because I didn't use enough of their interview. I didn't-- while their interview was great it didn't fit with the theme. So now I had to create an ENTIRELY NEW video about Aksys games. So when I figure it out, I call Nelson. I tell him the outline for the interview.
Nelson begins to tell me again how I betrayed him and how(now that the Video isn't advertising Valle)-- all it does is advertise EVO, and Justin Wong, and Hori, and not Tournament Legacy. I've had it. I spend 30 minutes with this guy, and he is literally the shittiest business man I've ever met.
Let me give you MORE background. I've worked with Capcom, Rooster Teeth, Sega, and a few other production companies on submissions and content. John Nelson believes in
a) NO contracts which is fucking stupid.
b) That you shouldn't CALL someone and TELL THEM when a product isn't up to satisfaction when you're the FUCKING CLIENT(Which is probably the most retarded thing I've ever heard.) Just passive aggressiveness mindfuck the people you hire to death with needless bullshit.
c) That having a report with the community on the SRK forums(Which I suggested he'd do) isn't worth it because he's scared of "computers" and "confrontation."
d) the fact that having 3 kids and bad finances gives you a reason to milk the shit out of a community and fight EVO.
e) the idea that EVERYONE IS OUT TO GET HIM! THEY WANT HIM DEAD! CRUCIFIED ON A PIKE! A PIKE RESHAPED TO LOOK LIKE A CROSS! AND THEN SHIT ON! THEY ALL WANT TO SHIT ON HIS NECK! IT'S MADNESS!
Oh and Jeff is right about Gootecks. Except John claimed to me he banned him, after an hour long tirade on how Valle didn't want to continue WNF's because the "money wasn't in it"(yeah, because SHGL's garage was lining Valle's pockets amirite?) John also claims Gootecks stole a shitload of monitors and systems from Active Gamers. He claims there's security camera footage of it-- but that's pretty much bullshit too.
Anyway, I do the Aksys games thing, and he gets the other editor(the one who he talked a load of shit on) to throw in HD footage of blazblue into it, and we're square. I don't get paid for that one, that's fine. But my pay for new kind of blues? 60 bucks. The other 60 promised to me, and never delivered. That's fine, because i get the job right?
I call him a few weeks after. Haven't heard a word from him or received the 60 bucks.
"Hey John, I was wondering, I got the second camera man to for the shoot and wanted to know if we could go over the schedule for Revelations?"
"Oh, well there were these people we contracted from this Coca Cola event to do the shoot, but you're welcome to like show them around..."
"So... I don't have the job."
"we kind of contracted them... after the documentary I realized I cant trust you so I got them."
I cut the phone. FUCK THIS GUY. You cant hire one person and not tell him you're hiring someone else two weeks before the event is going down after you pressure him to GET all of the equipment ready. I've lost money, my camera man has lost time at his other job, and now I'm in shit because this fucking asshole fired me for what? Not literally taking his dick and stroking it for all 25 minutes of the runtime?
I even went to talk with him at WNF's afterwards, to which I said politely "Look, I did what you asked me to do. I'm sorry that you misunderstood, but I did my job." to which he replied "great! I have more jobs for you. All I wanted to hear from you was an apology to me. That meant a lot." To which I banged my head against a door till I was unconscious. He's like the Joker but backwards: He causes chaos not because he's really intelligent but because he's so inept and shitty at everything he does it just withers and dies. I'm sure if he had to take care of a flower he'd yell at it because the flower wasn't growing into a visage of him personally, and then eventually he'd by another flower who would eventually go through the same shit.
TO this day, I still don't have the 60 dollars he promised to send me in text message after text message, and I gave up on it so I just troll the shit out of his answering machine. I never said any of this because Tatsu, Andy and Dustin were contracted to him-- but the problem was he mismanaged the team so fucking poorly that those three got shafted on EVERYTHING. Jeff detailed most of it. From what I heard from Andy, nelson constantly harassed Tatsu trying to mold him into this giant product which Tatsu wanted nothing of. Why do you think the guy started being absent from more and more events? How about how Tournament legacy sponsorship(it's not Hori as Hori wasn't running it and had no idea of this till time came) cost THEM money? Andy, Dustin and Tatsu had to PAY to get into WNF's every week, and at the same time weren't reimbursed for a number of majors. Or how when Nelson was called about covering their revelations tab, how he YELLED at Andy for extorting HIM and putting stress on HIM because he had a tournament to put together-- and how Andy and all weren't promoting the brand enough.
Straight up? Fuck that guy. I hope he gets raped by a polar bear, and then they drink coca cola, and then they do a commercial about it that plays at the super bowl. I'm just upset Jeff beat me to it and phrased it so nicely.
So yeah, fuck you John Nelson. +1 ban vote.
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