Jun 23
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This morning I woke up to the wonderful and very unexpected news that Southern Vision had won the single Lammy for which it was nominated, the Brainiac Award. This, for me, is huge, as I’m sure you can guess. The even more remarkable thing is that I won only by one vote; behind me were James of Cinema […]
May 10
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It is that time of the year. The awards’ season that for many film bloggers is far more exciting than the Oscars. It’s LAMMY time. What are the LAMMYs? They’re awards gifted by the Large Association of Movie Blogs to blogs that win certain prizes nominated for them by other bloggers. Since I only joined […]
Feb 13
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On this day, one year ago, your humble blogger created this site, which was at that time unnamed. I wrote a couple of posts over the next few days, forgot about it for about a month, then decided to start posting regularly. At that time, ‘regularly’ meant once every two or three days. In May, […]
Jan 26
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Phew! It seems like not that long ago I hit 200 and was thanking everyone who followed my blog for all their kindness. But now we’re at the next hundred, and I find myself doing it again. Thank you, thank you, thank you! It was only a week ago that I hit 100,000 views, and […]
Oct 7
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When I reached 100 posts back in July, I thought it would be November or December when I reached the next hundred milestone. But to my surprise, it was sooner than expected. On today, October 7th, I have reached 200 posts on my humble movie blog known as Southern Vision. Today, I’ve decided to turn […]
Sep 3
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This post is just a quick thank you to IndiePosit, who have been kind enough to make me a Featured Blogger on their site and have warmly welcomed me to their community. Since it has become strangely impossible to insert links into words in posts the usual way on WordPress for me (God knows why!), […]
Hello, and welcome to Southern Vision’s 100th post. While other blogs are around 300, 500 or even 600, this lowly editor is just at numero cento. I’d like to say thanks first to all 69 of my subscribers, and everyone who’s tagged along as this blog has got its start and read, liked and commented on reviews, lists, and pages. Thanks a HELL of a lot to all you guys, you are great. Thanks to WordPress, for making me Freshly Pressed, and thanks a bunch to IMDb for featuring me on the Hit-List. My traffic would be shot to shit without those guys.
We’ve got some ground to cover here, so let’s go over the history of Southern Vison and why I started this darned blog.
Southern Vision was started on February 13 of this year, as a pet project for me to see if I could sustain and write a blog about movies and movie reviews. I wanted to see if I’d enjoy doing it, and if what I had to say made sense on (virtual) paper and if people would actually read it. It wasn’t until March that I got serious and realized I had a goal: to make this at least a remotely successful blog. I had a certain amount of hits I wanted to reach each day, and I made it my goal to make the IMDb Hit List once. I achieved that goal on May 26, when What’s Your Movie Sin? was featured, and I got 10,000 hits on that day alone. I realized I had achieved that goal, and needed to set a new one. I guess I’ve never really decided what that new goal is… all I know is that it feels damn good to be on the Hit List and I’m going to strive for that whenever I can. WordPress were also incredibly nice in making one of my posts Freshly Pressed, which scored a lot of hits, too, and a nice number of subscribers, flooding my email inbox and forcing a rethink into the way I coordinate my blog.
In order to up stats and traffic, I very recently changed the look of my blog, changing the theme and general output. I’ve decided to make reviews more common, too, so if there’s a specific movie you’d like reviewed, let me know and I’ll see what I can do. Overall, I guess, I just want SV to be a more accessible, enjoyable place where there’s always fresh content and people can always come in, have a read, and strike up a conversation. Accomplishing something like that, building it from the ground up, may seem small but it’s still an accomplishment, and I really enjoy it.
So far, the blog has had 25,500 hits, and I thank you all so much for every single one.
Here’s a quick rundown of what’s in store:
The New Rating System:
I never even asked you guys what you thought of the new rating system. It’s nothing too special, or clever. I normally prefer to rate movies out of ten, but then I realized I can do that just by using the normal five stars thing. Here are ten different ratings: 0.5/5, 1/5, 1.5/5, 2/5, 2.5/5, 3/5, 3.5/5, 4/5, 4.5/5 and 5/5. Ten ratings, all without leaving the boundary of five. And instead of using ‘stars,’ I’m using images relevant to the film I’m reviewing, such as the director’s head or an important item within the film.
Another feature to reviews is the Is It Worth Adding to Your Netflix Queue? gauge. People with a Netflix subscription (or a similar DVD rental agency) like to try out new movies, and like to get recommendations from people they trust. But the Netflix Queue gauge makes recommendations easier, because it gauges them based on three main criteria:
You can use the position of the needle in the gauge (whether it’s pointed directly at YES, kind of at YES or just barely at YES) to put it in the right position in your queue! Although, remember, I’m not telling you what films to watch or what film’s you’ll like, it’s simply a recommendation based on the above criteria. It’s all up to you, the reader.
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So, with that, I welcome you to another hundred posts of great stuff, and wave adieu to the hundred that preceded it. Thanks again to all you guys for tagging along. There are a lot of movie geeks with laptops and WordPress accounts, but you’ve helped me realize I can be something different, and in the long run, without you, I’d just be stuck collecting Criterion DVDs wasting the days away. So thanks. For everything.
This small ol’ movie blog is about to be renovated… kind of. I’m going to be introducing new features, some of which get you (the reader) more involved in what happens with the blog. Polls are going to be more frequent, and I ask you please to vote in them if you can. It makes a huge difference. Thanks to all my subscribers, there is hopefully going to be some more accessible content up here; plenty of lists, as there already are; updates to lists and programs; weekly reviews and challenges (please participate if possible), quizzes, games, and movie trivia. Y’know, stuff.
I want to make Southern Vision a movie blog with its own voice, so I’ll be voicing more stronger opinions on films, filmmakers, actors and all the latest pop culture in the film industry. Movie Reviews will be at random (I have over 500 movie reviews that need editing that will keep the reviews’ side of the site busy for a few years), many of them movies I’ve just seen, and many of them cult movies from the mid to late 2oth century. But I like to keep a variety, so odds are, there’ll be something for everyone.
Categorization is going to be more precise, hopefully, so you can just choose a category and get straight to stuff you might like.
And I’m trying to convince my girlfriend Ashley to participate in the site as she too is a movie buff (though perhaps not in the strictest sense of the word), so hopefully her opinions will be a fresh break from my mind-numbing crap.
Posts will be frequent, as usual, and if you have ANY questions or criticisms (related to the blog and within reason) to ask me, I ask you to please leave a comment, or email me at southernvisionblog@gmail.com.
If you’re a follower to Southern Vision, thanks a bunch and prepare yourself for a great year of blogging, and if you’re new, then thanks for tagging along and I hope you enjoy.
