Life Without Wires

A couple of friends of mine shared this movie with me:
Sita Sings the Blues

Its lovely. This is how it should be done. Its Creative Commons, which means its free to share. I love when people go this way with their work. Of course, you need lots of talent. The director (Nina Paley) describes her approach really well:

People have been making money in Free Software for years; it’s time for Free Culture to follow

I can’t wait to download the whole thing and watch it. Maybe I’ll organise a screening…hmmm….

Lisa Salem writes here about how Bob Dylan deliberately built a new audience at a time he needed a change, which he explains in his autobiography Chronicles. The line between music and video is very blurry these days. The tools of the trades are now very similar, and nowadays I’m just as likely to be able to bring a projector and my movie and ‘play a gig’ at a venue as a musician.  I filled in for a musician at Piedescalso Cafe on Saturday by playing Dublin:The Movie, which we projected onto the wall. Everyone there enjoyed it- they didn’t care that it wasn’t music (which they’d usually see). I think its deadly that video art is getting more like music. Its liberating. The tools we use to make and distribute music are converging with the same (or similar) tools for video. Its all art. Those musicians always know what’s best- I’m going to keep following the music. What’s also cool is that video artists (filmmakers) can now ‘practice in public’, like Bob Dylan. Which is nice.

I thought I’d take a moment.

The 4 day movie starts at 12.01 am tonight (technically tomorrow).

Everyone is very excited and the artists involved are looking like they’re up to making something beautiful. I have great hopes for what will come out of this. We’re blogging the whole thing on the 4 day movie blog.

I just looked at the original mindmap i did for the movie. Its a method i was trying out using Novamind to organise my thoughts. Its funny how things have turned out, most of what was there has been very important so far: distribution, legalities of an ‘open source’ collectively made movie, technical guidelines and specifications, who we get to do it in the first place, how to make it beautiful…

So, here are a few links and resources I’ve been using to solve those problems. I’m just throwing them down here for now, i have a feature film to produce, so you’ll understand if i’m brief!

- Creative Commons: this is generally what we’re using as a template for our agreement with filmmakers and artists involved in the project. Unfortunately, we discovered that Creative Commons doesn’t apply in Ireland as it hasn’t been worked out here yet. So we’re doing our best to do something along the lines of the licenses available here.

- Music: we’ve found out a lot about music distribution rights and how to source open or free music for movies. Also how licensing of music works for movies and how to make an agreement with independent artists. Here are the main resources we’re using:

• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC license
• http://ccmixter.org/
• 8 Bit Peoples
• Moby!
• Penny Distribution: Nick Fitzsimons from Penny Distribution has been amazingly helpful in this area and has a lot of great artists on the site.

The gist of music in movies is that its not complicated if you play fair, give credit where its due and work with artists to find solutions. Which is the way it should be in all things to do with this movie, so it makes me very happy.

- Movie making: our tech guidelines are available here.

- People: here’s the list of confirmed artists taking part.

- the narrative flow: the story of this movie is how its made as much as what’s produced. So the blog, the updates, the myspace, the basecamp headquarters, the facebook group- all are as important as the movie itself. I aim to publish everything i can and document as much as i can over the following four days.

Digital movie making makes it easier than ever to produce movies. Its affecting the film industry in fundamental ways. There is a lot of discussion around how to produce movies in a sustainable way, get them seen, and maybe even profit from them. Its fun for an artist to figure this stuff out. Its driving the movie industry nuts. At a recent seminar I attended around digital distribution, David Collins of Samson Films, who produced Once, suggested that the film board and other financiers of movies might consider a new funding model. This would allow a film’s producers to spend half of their funding on marketing. Marketing a movie does not enter discussion in typical funding applications. Like anywhere else, most people get a gut reaction to puke and run when they think about marketing. This is a natural reaction, so don’t hold back.

But what Once showed was that with good marketing a good movie gets seen by more people. And this can’t be a bad thing for a movie. “Once” was lucky in a way that it was able to tie into a huge music fanbase, who actively marketed the movie online and spread the word. The producers could watch this happen and figure out ways to push it along- for example, they stuck the stars (Glen Hansard of The Frames and Marketa Irglova) on a bus and took them on tour around the cinemas to generate more interest in the film.

So the benefits of marketing a movie well are obvious. But what’s new?

What’s new is that there’s something in there that is unique to our time. Its a new approach to filmmaking: 50% production/50% distribution.

Don’t take my word for it. Arin Crumley and Susan Buice are preaching this approach and they should know, following the successful and groundbreaking distribution of their feature “foureyedmonsters”. If you have 15 minutes to spare, you can find out how movies are going to be made and distributed in the future in their presentation on new forms of distribution:

Four Eyed Monsters DIY Distribution Case Study

Arin is now one of the founding members of a new movie distribution festival, which aims to promote filmmakers and this kind of approach to a new future in movies: FROM HERE TO AWESOME

What does 50% production/50% distribution mean?

It means that whatever you do on producing your masterpiece, do an equal amount of work on distributing that masterpiece. In the olden days of yore, your workflow for a movie or documentary would be preproduction (scripts, storyboards, funding etc.), production (shooting), postproduction (editing etc.) and finally distribution. Nowadays in the age of hovercrafts, laser beams and meal pills, we do it digital, like. So, you do everything in production- shoot,edit, record, script, everything, all at once. Typically for a filmmaker who’s used to doing it the old way, they do this all the way to the end of their energy or money reserves. And then they spend very little energy on distribution, maybe posting on youtube, sending to a couple of festivals or whatever. So roughly that means they’re doing 80-90% production, 10-20% distribution.

A smart filmmaker these days does 50/50. This is because the distribution side can be just as creative as the production side. It also takes into account that there are way too many people out there producing, but not enough people looking at distribution.This creates a glut of stuff to see, so your movie ends up in a huge pile of digital stuff. So as well relying on your movie being great making you stand out, your superior distribution methods will mean more people see your movie.

Distribution of movies can be done any way you can think of: myspace, microcinema, projecting from cars in a lot, youtube, social networks, sending to friends by mail, festivals, anything you can come up with.

You can also involve the people producing in distribution. Make connections during production with people who are going to see your movie.

I attended a seminar organised by Screen Training Ireland today that focused on Digital Distribution in Ireland for movies. The departure point for the discussion was: “Imminent changes in the delivery of film for cinema exhibition are likely to change not only the structure and economy of film distribution but also the experience of going to the cinema. ”

There was a lot covered in the two panel discussions, which I need to think about a bit before posting any conclusions. It was good to see all the major players in the Irish film industry in a room scratching their heads trying to work this stuff. 10 years ago the approach was a little more ‘ignore it and it might go away.’ In Ireland at least, there is a hint of a tipping point towards digital formats, new production methods and entirely new distribution and business models on the horizon. A filmmaker could really do well if they could get their head around an end to end way of making and distributing a movie, involving producers and distributors but trying to develop a new way of doing things. The question is being asked- creative people are needed to at least offer some possibilities. Until then it will be business as usual until the pressure becomes too much to withstand and we look elsewhere for answers. It was strange to see the traditional film producers and distributors discussing digital rights, web distribution, social media, content promotion tie ins and other geekworld stuff as part of the package in a movie production. It wasn’t always this way, and it really doesn’t look like its been worked out fully yet. This is an opportunity.