This is gonna be a very very long post, I warn you.
The first post I made for this blog is a review on "50/50", a comedy starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen. It was written in an evening, back when I was in the last semester of college, in my boarding house. It was not long before I spread the release of my new movie blog to my friends, and since I was writing in Bahasa Indonesia, many of them found that my blog was interesting. And since then, many of them started to ask me about whether they should or shouldn't watch certain movies. They asked me for movie recommendations. Seriously, although it made me proud of myself, I didn't know much about movies.
I was a beginner in this hobby, and still I am a beginner. When I was a child, I was keen to watch movies although I didn't watch a lot. I mean, I wondered that it musts be cool to comment, discuss, and share experiences about movies. When I was a kid, I loved watching movie trailers and remembering the names of the actors. I started watching a lot of movies (considered "a lot" compared to normal people) in 2011. I watched more than 200 movies in a year, but I watched them only on my (new) laptop, not in the cinema. I started writing short opinions about the movies I watched, gave them scores, ranked them, but never published them. I wrote the opinions in a Microsoft Word document, and rated them on IMDb. It was a fantastic experience.
Then an idea came across my mind, why I didn't make a blog about my reviews. So, I made it. It was called "the mOOvie", hosted on free blog platform by WordPress. I never thought of spreading the news of it (because I didn't think that my writings were readable and cool enough), so I just wrote them all silently.
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| Written in Bahasa Indonesia. This blog is still available, 'though. |
But, just like most of my (new) hobbies, it didn't grow up. I lost my focus and excitement. Writing reviews gave me an extra responsibility, instead of just letting myself enjoy the movies all by myself. So, after only a few posts, I quit movie-blogging.
I recall that I was inspired by a movie blog I found when I was browsing. It is called MOVIE FREAK, written by someone named Daniel (the blog is still there, but is not updated anymore). I was like, "Man, this is cool!", and it was easy for me to be hooked to make another new blog about movies. I also visited Vampibots, a movie blog by Fariz Razi (this blog is still updated until now), and I was getting more inspired. So, I made this blog. I chose random name for this blog but finally came up with this cheesy name: "Me On The Movie" (is it grammatically correct?). To be honest, the layout and design of this blog was inspired by those of Vampibots (notice the three columns, the blog list, and the wide image in the beginning of every post), but I chose a brighter color different from the color scheme Vampibots used to use.
And finally, Me On The Movie was born.
I remember the first time I published this new blog, I told myself, "Try to quit your bad habit, try to keep this blog updated as long as you can" because my interest to something doesn't usually last long. Just like what happen to “the mOOvie”. So, maybe, because of that commitment, this blog finally reaches its first anniversary.
Lucky that I was welcomed nicely. I started to exchange links to some fellow bloggers (all of them are listed on the left panel, thank you for your hospitality in welcoming my blog). At first this is purely a blog about hobby. Then, a friend of mine--who is an expert of search engine optimization and internet monetizing--told me about how prospective my blog would be if I put some ads on it. Plus, he suggested to start writing in English because not only that I would get a lot of readers from foreign countries, but also that the ads tariff for English-written blog is higher. Then I said, why not? I fortunately am able to write in English (although I'm not sure if my writings are grammatically correct and conveniently readable), so since then I change my writings from Bahasa Indonesia to English. I left some earlier posts as they are, in Bahasa Indonesia.
But if you ask me, "So, have you collected some dollars from this blog, Bar?" I would (sadly) say no. LOL. But I'm trying to be consistent. I keep writing in English more and more (for this, I learn a lot from "Inspired Ground", another English movie blog made by an Indonesian blogger living in Jakarta). I joined The Large Association of Movie Blogs or The LAMBs and I am very proud to be part of the biggest association of movie bloggers in the world. Because of The LAMBs, for the first time in my life I am followed by non-spamming Twitter account from foreigners. Haha. I had few discussion about movies, got commented, and so on. It is only a few, a very very few of them, actually, but it is just... wow. Even on last January an indie filmmaker emailed me to review his short documentary. He gave me private link to watch his short documentary and I was so much intrigued. I watched it, I wrote the review, and sent him my opinion, for which he responded very warmly. You can check the review for the film, “20 Something”, here.
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| We are all lambs. |
I was so glad.
So, now it’s clear that the big purpose of this blog is to share my opinions about certain movies I watch. Since then, I tried to movie-going and now I spent like every week going to cinema to watch newly-released movies. I am trying to shift the purpose of just sharing opinions to recommending good movies and, finally, persuading people to watch movies in cinema (instead of, say, downloading it from the internet), but I think that is just too much. I never know if people really want to watch certain movie after reading my opinions about it, so yeah... For now, it is only about sharing opinion. For now, I think this blog is more to be a beginner blog instead of a professional blog which is always up-to-date to current movies. No, for now, “Me On The Movie” is not like that. I mean, blogging is supposed to be enjoyed, right? Enjoying blogging is the main purpose, having people find benefit from the blog is a bonus.
At first, I was a kind of “stat-based” blogger. The number of visitors and pageviews is important for me. So in the first half of the year I was kind of mad publishing my blog everywhere, mostly on Reddit from which I got like thousands of pageviews in just few days. But then, I thought that it was nothing. It’s like you have a shop, many people pass by your shop, some enter and look around, but no one buys anything from your shop. I barely get commented, so I quit too much publishing and keep writing. I only publish my newest blog posts on Twitter (and from the help of @LambThe, get retweeted) and sometimes on my Facebook account. I am looking for a real reader, a human reader, not just someone come from Google Image Search or spam.
I am looking for you, who continue reading this very long post until this line :D
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| No giveaway or special present for this 1st anniversary, sorry. |
So, now that “Me On The Movie” reaches its first anniversary, I won’t do some free giveaways or presents to my readers because I know that I haven’t build such readers community for my blog. Instead, is it okay if you give me the present?
I request this: I would love if you comment on this post, giving some suggestions to improve this blog better. Honest impressions are so much welcomed (I mean, I had a lot of comment from many readers saying that they were impressed by both my writings and blog as a whole, but sometimes I question myself why there are not any comments that give suggestions and critics to the blog so I always don’t know where to start improving).
Thank you for your support.
Akbar Saputra
Happy Birthday Me On The Movie !!!
ReplyDeleteBtw, boleh tukeran link bro http://manusia-unta.blogspot.com/
Makasih :)
DeleteBoleh banget, sudah dicantumkan di blogroll yaa
Woow happy birthday to your blog! And I'm extremely honored that, in a way, I had inspired you to make your own movie blog :) Yours is also one of the blogs which I read the most :D When I had my 1st anniversary, my blog was really really lame compared to yours, it's really an amazing achievement. Hope you will continue blogging for a long time. I don't really have any "advice" to you except to watch and review even more films. More genres and more foreign films. An advise which I also keep telling to myself. By doing so, our knowledge of films will be even more broad :) Again, congrats on your 1st year anniversary, hope there will be more and more anniversaries in the future.
ReplyDeleteCheers!
Thank you so much :D
DeleteYep, my mood was up and down, there were times that I didn't feel like watching movies, but I always keep watching a lot of movies.
Hope you will continue blogging for a long time, too :D
Congrats :) Thanks for the mention. Feels nice to inspire other bloggers to review in English and be proud with it. Cheers! and welcome to the second year!
ReplyDeleteThank you! Keep on blogging ya, I'll always subscribe to Inspired Ground :D
DeleteWow, happy birthday bro, sebagai salah satu movie blog yg sering gw kunjungi juga, tak terasa yah, terus menulis dan terus tambah koleksi filmnya ajalah, hehe, congrats :D
ReplyDeleteMakasiiih :D
DeleteSiip, semoga bisa terus menulis kedepannya :D
selamat ulang tahun ke-1 buat blognya agan Akbar, semoga sehat sentosa selalu ya gan blognya, teruslah mereview film yang banyak~~~
ReplyDeleteThank you tim!
DeleteSama, terus ngereview buat KFB yaa :D
Selamat ulang tahun Akbar! Layoutnya semakin bagus aja nih. Semoga jangan pernah berhenti nulis review film ya, tulisan lo enak dibaca soalnya, hehehe.
ReplyDelete* Selamat ulang tahun blognya Akbar! Hehehe
DeleteMakasiih Luthfi!
DeleteHaha, keep on blogging juga yaa :D
Congrats and happy blog birthday!
ReplyDeleteHi. Sorry I'm SO late on this but thanks for the shout-out! I never expected my blog would inspire someone! I actually stumbled upon your blog through Fariz (a.k.a Vampibots that inspired me as well to start writing like a couple of years ago) and I was like "wow this is one cool blogger!" and it turns out you've been reading my articles since like a year ago? Idk. Haha! Just keep up with your good work, happy belated anniversary, and welcome to the circle! xD
ReplyDeleteWell thank you! You do have a cool blog which inspires me to create the same, so keep on blogging!
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