Listicles, where-are-they-nows, and Disney Princesses re-imagined as Black and Decker appliances are just some examples of the types of movie and pop culture articles flooding the web these days. And internet users eat them up, sometimes on the bus, sometimes while zoning out of a sub-par Netflix movie, and even sometimes on extended bathroom breaks at work (but don’t tell my boss that).
Before I moved down here to Portland from Juneau, Alaska I was essentially in-between jobs waiting for the new chapter of my life to start. I wanted to be doing something in the journalism field while packing my life up. I wanted something newer than the radio pieces I’d published back in undergrad, for my portfolio, but nothing that would be too high stakes either, so I could focus on moving. I looked into how to write for a movie and pop-culture news site I’d enjoyed called Movie Pilot.
If you don’t know what Movie Pilot is, it’s the website probably most famous for first publishing the Pixar Theory, the theory that all the Pixar movies are interconnected and exist in the same extended universe. The post went viral and was picked up by publications all over the world and Disney has since confirmed it’s validity. Movie Pilot frequently comes up with movie theories, but they also write movie news, ‘mock-ademic’ pieces (e.g. ‘The Future is Now: Nasa Working on Real Warp Drive”), insane trivia, trailer breakdowns, fan art, and much more. The only criteria, really, is that the the articles have to be in some way connected to pop culture or movies.
I discovered that it’s quite easy and completely free to take the courses necessary to become a certified creator for Movie Pilot. And you can even make money, $1 for every thousand hits of your article. But if an article of yours gets picked up by Movie Pilot, it introduces you to a much wider audience than would be likely possible on a private blog.
It requires creating a free account and completing 10 assignments through Creators Academy. Those assignments are not only extremely informative and can apply to journalism principles far outside the realm of Movie Pilot, but the assignments themselves are submitted using an extremely user friendly multimedia blogging platform called Creators Co and you can create slick pieces that look decent in a portfolio, that others can see, with little effort.
Some of the things I’ve learned at the Creators Academy that I continue to apply to journalism broadly are things like web-optimization in the writing of articles (i.e. using the most important search terms within the first 100 words of an article), useful tips for mining trend data of other websites for inspiration of writing your own articles (i.e. The Question Method), integrating social media posts into articles, and using Google image search’s advanced settings to search for non-copyright restricted images.
You can use Google to search for non-copyright restricted images.
I have yet to complete all of the assignments to become a certified creator for Movie Pilot, but that’s ok because the courses are also self-paced and can be completed at any time on the user’s schedule. In the meantime, I’ve generated something on my portfolio that I can show others to say, “hey, I’ve been active. I’ve been creating something.”
They may not be Pulitzer prize worthy articles or anything, but maybe some people who read them will spend just a little bit longer on the toilet, on their company’s dime, thanks to me.
Sign up for Creator’s Academy to write for Movie Pilot here:
See below to read some of my Creators Co Articles:
10 Facts About ‘No Country for Old Men’ And ‘There Will be Blood’ That Will Give You Chills
Artist Creates ‘Native Wonder Woman’
-Danny Peterson
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