Andrew (bookseller era)
That is the one thing big corporate backing is good for, after all, distribution. Discoverability.
The Exegency was originally distributed via Amazon, Amazon bought The Vast of Night at sundance.
Netflix and Amazon snap up most of the independent documentaries, Amazon buys a scant few independent films, and that's ... it? As far as I can tell the rest of this stuff just disappears.
Terry Hancock
We can produce a TINY amount of work, based on amateur/charity/pro-bono work, using guerrilla film-making tactics.
But to actually produce a significant amount of free-culture media, the artists who make it have to have some way to support themselves on it.
Also, note how derivative "fan-funded" crowd-financed productions are. These are parasitic on commercial/proprietary marketing. People want more Trek, so Trek fan films are fundable.
But invent a NEW franchise? That's HARD.
Terry Hancock
E.g., my "Lunatics!" project is VERY low-budget. But even so, I've spent an estimated $25,000 cash and 10 years of full-time work on it (very privileged to be able to do that!), and I'm still not done with the 17-minute PILOT episode.
Now that's the actual cash cost, you understand. The labor is at least an order-of-magnitude higher cost (probably higher).
And that's just MY contribution. There are over 30 people in my credits.
Andrew (bookseller era)
@TerryHancock I did not mean to imply that it was simple, and I fully understand why independent filmmakers get caught in this trap.
But it is ultimately a trap.
Terry Hancock
Oh, absolutely. TRAP.
But it also has really great BAIT π°.
Film-making, even on an extremely low budget, is EXPENSIVE.
Investment is often the only practical way to support it. And investors want that ROI, which in our economy, is coupled tightly with IP rights.
Crowd-funding is NOT the whole answer, I can attest from direct experience.
[Damn, I have so much to write here...]
Andrew (bookseller era)
I have one answer today, and that is Creative Commons.
If you want your thing to be seen, license it so people can share it, include information about how to pay you, and where to find you, in the file itself, and let it out in to the world.
But most film makers, even the ones operating entirely independently, still harbor this idea that they'll somehow manage to Make It, and no studio is going to buy a CC film, right?
That's conventional wisdom at least.
Terry Hancock
This is not quite that simple. Few films are made by one person and self-funded.
So that means that getting the RIGHT to release the film under CC license is hard.
Investors balk (or I think so -- I've never had conventional investors, but I do know that "exclusive IP/rights" is a pretty standard idea in investment.
Contributors balk, too, sometimes. Particularly peripheral/passive contributors like music artists on the soundtrack.
Andrew (bookseller era)
I go to local(ish) screenings of independent productions as often as I can.
I've seen dozens of films that, if you weren't one of the 40 or 50 people in the room at one of the three or four screenings the thing got, might as well not exist.
A few of them, I quote on a regular basis, even if no one else will ever know what I'm talking about.
(This one, Disney Shot Kennedy, stands out in that crowd as one I'd love to see get a wider release. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngKZuxICMhY)
Andrew (bookseller era)
So you go, and you see them, and some of them win awards, and then ... what? They disappear mostly.
That makes me sad.
I don't have any answers today.
I mean... okay, hold on.
Andrew (bookseller era)
Oh! and if you watch a movie that was made outside the strictures of hollywood, tell me about it.
If you find an independent webTV show that isn't centrist or right wing pandering bullshit, tell me about that too.
I'll blog about it, if nothing else.
Andrew (bookseller era)
Crowd funding could help immensely here. Short format narratives (you know, TV episodes) would also help ease production burdens and costs, and make releasing under an open license more possible and palatable, I think.
Ultimately, though, there isn't actually an answer beyond "Find Funding" and "Fix Distribution" and "kill the profit motive."
Andrew (bookseller era)
Anyway, that's enough for tonight.
I have TV to make, and job activities to sunset, and so much to do.
mathew β
@ajroach42 Primer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(film)
Made on a budget of $7k, which is just insane.
Pi, budget of $60k crowdsourced
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_(film)
Imagine a world where we had 100 movies like Pi or Primer instead of one of the next half dozen Spider Man movies.
born 329ppm on NgΔi Tahu land
@calcifer @ajroach42 this is called a Rights Option. and it's very common, especially for books and screenplay adaptions.
calcifer
@ajroach42 I've always wondered if it would be possible to have some kind of "poison pill" become standard in rights agreements with big publishers. Essentially a clause that says "I'll sell you the rights to this, but you have to actually do something with it within a reasonable time or I get them back"
CC is fantastic, of course, but I also understand why artists are nervous about it scaring off studios β some kind of "poison pill Creative Commons" would be cool, if that's even possible
Of course the ideal thing would be to reform our insane copyright terms and supporting system, but I'm not holding my breath on thatβ¦
Terry Hancock
You mean "first publication rights" with a sunset clause that gives them a fixed time in which to publish, before the rights revert? I think that is a clause in some contracts.
Also, I think this is what it means to "option" film rights to a story. You have a certain period to deliver, then you lose it.
I really wish I had insisted on a three year sunset when I signed an NDA on a concept art job. I had intended to use it for my portfolio.
Andrew (bookseller era)
@TerryHancock oh unquestionably.
It used to be that funding and distribution were equally hard problems, and sometimes with a unified solution.
Now funding is significantly harder, and distribution is "solved" except that it isn't really at all, so now Funding and Distribution are equally hard problems with barely any solution.
I hope to help do something about this, but it's going to take time, and it simply will not be enough.
Terry Hancock
To be clear, we're still on good terms, but she's not animating anymore, and I do NOT blame her at all.
She WAS happy about the computer I built for her when I found out she was animating on her boyfriend's computer because she couldn't afford one. Damn.
Meanwhile, I am left sucking at character animation, and trying to somehow stumble through it on my own, anyway.
Skipping over the part where I put my self in the hospital from burnout.
This CAN NOT BE THE WAY WE MAKE FILMS.
Terry Hancock
I see memes a long the lines of "If you can't pay $15/hr, you can't afford to be in business".
And I'm like, I paid nothing even close to that to the person who did most of the character animation in Ep 1 (I did some of it, but to be clear, I SUCK at character animation).
What I paid was a pittance of an advance to give her an excuse to keep working on it pro bono.
I feel BAD about that. And she's gone. I can't just HIRE someone to replace her on those terms. That's HARD work.
Terry Hancock
"Rights clearance" for a free/open production is almost as much of a challenge as for a proprietary Hollywood venture.
The difference is that, for me, the question is "how is it licensed?", whereas Hollywood is structured around "who owns the rights?"
My goal is to ensure everything that goes into my film is compatible, one way or another, with "CC By-SA 4.0", the release license.
Hollywoods is to make sure they "own" everything they need for a given release.
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