EXAGGERATION

We humans are social animals. There are really wonderful things that come out of this, and then there is gossip.

I have been gossiped about, back in the small fishpond days of high school. We all have. Jeff Goldblum was declared dead on Twitter. It took a TV appearance to convince the public he was actually alive.

It's always funny to me, however, when a big company decides to respond to gossip. I am sure they think it will help calm the waters, but cynical as we are, it inevitably does more harm than good.

So, with a wry smile, I read about the major film manufacturer Kodak's press release:

"...Kodak says reports of its impending corporate-death have been exaggerated and it is still making billions of feet of film."

http://if.com.au/2011/10/31/article/Kodak-says-reports-of-its-corporate-death-are-greatly-exaggerated/TDMRCTXDPR

By way of context, the world of filmmaking is changing as digital cameras, with wonderfully complicated image sensors, replace traditional film cameras, using actual film negatives. This is true even for major studio films.

This digital revolution has been coming for some time. In the May 2nd, 1999 edition of the New York Times, the renowned film editor Walter Murch (who won an Oscar for 'Apocalyspe Now' and edited 'The Godfather II') made a prediction about the coming 'digital revolution' in film. (http://filmsound.org/theory/nyt5.htm). Mr Murch said that, as soon as high quality digital cameras become available and cinemas start using digital projectors instead of analogue projectors (i.e.that use film prints), the use of film to make movies will be on it's death bed. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

In the last five years, both high quality digital cameras and digital cinema projection have become a viable reality.

Kodak, being one of, if not THE, largest producer of motion picture film is obviously affected by this changing paradigm. Movie productions using digital cameras equals no demand for film, after all.

Obviously, others have noticed it too. Hence the gossip.

So what do Kodak do? Assure the world that they have things well in hand and are continuing film stock production.

Seems reasonable.

Except...

“Someone, somewhere in the world is now holding the last film camera ever to roll off the line.”

http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/film-fading-to-black

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/13/r_i_p_the_movie_camera_1888_2011/singleton/

As it turns out, the major motion picture film camera makers, ARRI, Panavision and Aaton, have stopped making 35mm motion picture film cameras.

There is even a suggestion that the last motion picture film camera was made as far back as 2009.

Whoops.

Does this mean that film will stop being used immediately?

No, cameras have a good shelf life if maintained well.

But film will become rarer. And harder to get developed. And, therefore, costly.

It will get harder to get parts for and service film cameras. And, therefore, costly.

But maybe Kodak is right. Maybe it is all gossip. Goldblum turned out to be alive, after all.

Or maybe Kodak should have just kept quiet.

- - - - - - - - -

GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL. http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

I almost got scammed.

It always starts innocently enough. A well meaning film producer looking to distribute his (or her) film out to the wider world.

So, I did what any short filmmaker does. I started looking at local and international film festivals.

Now, there are some wonderful film festivals out there, with big audiences, prizes, and qualification for major honours, like the Independent Spirit Awards or the Oscars.

However, like all arenas where there are artists, trying to be heard above the din, there are those who are willing to take advantage of the filmmakers who have become desperate. Thankfully I'm not at this stage...yet.

The biggest hook the would-be scammers use is the promise of "exposure".

Filmmakers reading this will laugh, because that is often the carrot people try and use to make you provide your services for free. "Work on our production, and it will be great for YOUR career. You'll get great exposure!"

Sometimes it's true. More often it's not. But I digress.

I was up to my ears in film festival guides and spreadsheets, planning the festivals I would enter 'The Good Neighbour' into. Do the work, I thought.

In the midst of this organised chaos, I received an email for 'The Cannes Independent Film Festival'.

http://www.cannesfest.org/index.htm

The website looks convincing enough. It even receives film entries through WithoutaBox, which has become a pseudo sign for reliability.

Perhaps I was tired, or vulnerable, or both, but I was ready to enter. Luckily though, something didn't feel right. The main page read:

The mission of the Cannes Independent Film Festival is to provide truly independent films an opportunity to be screened in Cannes during the world's most prestigious film gathering and the biggest International Film Market.

Noble. It goes on to say that:

Being selected as a part of CIFF entitles you to:
- Screen your film at great venues in Cannes
- Sell your film to the world's biggest gathering of film buyers
- Network with and promote new projects to the entire film industry

Sounds great! But then the same page says:

THE CANNES INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL IS AN ORGANISATION TOTALLY INDEPENDENT AND DIFFERENT FROM THE FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DU FILM (AKA THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL) .

SO, you will be screened during the world's biggest film gathering, that they are in no way associated with?

Alarm bells were ringing. I wanted more detail, but the more I searched the less I found. It seemed that all the press around the Cannes Independent Film Festival was coming from...The Cannes Independent Film Festival.

Finally, I found a single blog. It has since been removed, unfortunately. I do wonder what happened to the poor chap who wrote it.

To paraphrase, this blogger stated that the Cannes Independent Film Festival was misleading filmmakers into thinking they were going to get 'exposure' by being in a film festival in Cannes during the prestigious Cannes International Film Festival. According to this filmmaker, who had first hand knowledge, nothing could be further from the truth. Film industry representatives attending the Cannes International Film Festival were, of course, distracted by a small event called Cannes International Film Festival.

What could someone possibly gain by intentionally or unintentionally misleading filmmakers, you ask?

Simple, the 45 Pound ($AU70 approx) entry fee.

45 Pounds multiplied by the number of desperate filmmakers out there (e.g. one of the big 10 film festivals in the US got short film 5000 entries this year) equals a lot of money. Annually.

Personally, I got my final confirmation when I checked their FAQ's.

Q. So, are you guys Slamdancing the Cannes Film Festival?
A. Some participants have made that analogy.

For the uninitiated, The SUNDANCE Film Festival is the biggest independent film festival in the USA, held in Utah every year. As a response to supposed elitism in the Sundance Film Festival, a group of filmmakers started the SLAMDANCE film festival in 1995, running at the same time as Sundance, also in Utah. Slamdance, however, made very clear restrictions on the films they would accept, to ensure they were "truly" independent films. For example. the budget for feature films in Slamdance have to be under $1M, to show they are REALLY an independent film, not a big budget film pretending to be "Indy". The Slamdance Film Festival has been the launching pad of the careers of Steven Soderbergh, Christopher Nolan and many others.

From my perspective, the FAQ question was just another example of the Cannes Independent Film Festival trying to draw a link between themselves and an established, and most importantly trusted, film festival.

And the more I looked, the more I found other festivals that looked suspect. Unsurprisingly, these festivals were all based in cities where there were existing prestigious festivals. Target desperation and look like you are affiliated with established and prestigious festivals; that's the play.

Others, including Interpol, have caught on. The most written about of these alleged Film Festival scams are: The San Francisco Short Film Festival (as opposed to the prestigious San Francisco International Film Festival); the New York Film and Video Festival (as opposed to the famous Tribeca Film Festival, New York) and the Alaska International Film Festival (as opposed to the prestigious Anchorage Film Festival in Alaska), to name just a few.

There are too many film festivals in the world today. Filmmakers need to be really sure about why they are entering a particular festival, and do their homework before they outlay the entry fee.

As for the festivals I named and shamed above, have I been too harsh? Are these simply new festivals trying to edge their way into the crowded festival circuit and make a dent in the established players?

It's not impossible.

But I'm not convinced.
________________________

EXTRA READING:

New York Film and Video Festival

http://nyc.metblogs.com/2006/07/13/new-york-film-video-festival-is-a-scam/

Fake festivals warning by interpol

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117889181?refCatId=1061

Group of Scam Festivals using names similar to established festivals

http://maddogmovies.com/2007/02/15/scam_fest_alert_annual_program_without_f/

Scam Alaskan Festival

http://www.filmmaking.net/blog/show_article.asp?id=94

- - - - - - - - -
GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL. http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

OAFILMS NEWS - 'THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR' IN THE SANDFLY FILM FESTIVAL!

Good news: The Good Neighbour has been selected for the Sandfly Film Festival in Jervis Bay!

http://www.sandflyfilmfestival.com

The festival is on next Saturday night, and I will be there if anyone would like to come along. Among some excellent industry judges will be none other than esteemed Australian musician/actor Ben Lee.

http://www.sandflyfilmfestival.com/judges

I will post some thoughts on our screening on our Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Good-Neighbour/131722040230896) and on this newsletter/blog.

Hopefully we can continue this run with our entries in the US and Europe!

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

I have officially departed my home town of Penrith, and so my timetable on the newsletters will officially go back to normal. When I was born, there was no internet, now I can't live without it. Humorous, really.

While I was in Penrith, however, I had the opportunity to dispel a well used myth about the younger generation - the so called 'Gen i'.

A friend of mine teaches year 7 English, at a school in Fairfield, west of Sydney. 'English' has changed since my school days, because they actually completed a unit on film: specifically, animation. When I was in year 7, we had to do Shakespeare - 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' to be exact:

For aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth.

Or something like that.

But before this turns into an 'in my day' diatribe, I should clarify that this is a positive story. Keep that in mind.

So, my friend asked me to speak about introductory film and animation to the year 7 kids at his school. The idea was to present to all of the year 7 English classes in two sessions. Two sessions consisting of eighty restless 13 year-olds each.

Piece of cake.

As I sipped a tea and thought about it, it seemed easy enough. After all, they had only really heard of Pixar and didn't need to know about anything complicated like Flash or Maya animation.

I got to work putting together a presentation with loads of video, from some personal favourites like Tim Burton's 'Vincent', to crowd pleasers like the 'Happy Feet' trailer. Macbook in tow, I turned up in the morning, ready to present.

I was prepared, even excited. And then, on the way in to the classroom, a teacher warned me that I had a particular class within the group that were made up of 'difficult' kids.

Naively, I asked: "What do you mean by 'difficult'?"

She frowned at my ignorance: "They have learning difficulties. So just be sure you keep them under control."

Eh...piece of cake.

So there I was, standing in front of eighty expectant faces. I got the ball rolling by asking them about what their favourite animation films were. Seemed like a good ice breaker.

Then I started to play 'Vincent', Tim Burton's 1982 short stop motion animation (using clay) about a boy who wants to be Vincent Price. It goes for roughly 6 minutes.

According to conventional wisdom, If I was going to lose the attention of a bunch of 13 year olds, this would be the moment.

http://www.usatoday.com/educate/college/healthscience/articles/20040411.htm

And......silence.

They watched the whole thing from start to finish. Not a peep.

And, over the course of an hour, they listened, answered my questions, laughed occasionally and watched whatever media I put up on the screen.

Now I know that I was not presenting a boring subject, like maths, but I really believe the reports of the next generation being listless and easily distracted are grossly overstated.

We live in an information and media rich world today. The new generations are simply trying to navigate this new world.

For example, in his book 'Information Anxiety (1989)', Richard Wurman claims "that the weekday edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person in 17th-century England was likely to come across in a lifetime."

That was in 1989.

And I don't know how Mr Wurman asked people from 17th-century England about how much information they received in a lifetime, but it is an interesting idea.

So much has changed. How different will the world look for the next generation?

I don't know.

But I saw a roomful of kids get excited about dancing penguins, giant blue 'Avatars', and a little boy who wanted to be Vincent Price.

Many things have changed, but they're still just kids.

- - - - - - - - -
GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL. http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

TIDBITS

For people born in distant towns or the suburbs, homecomings are a trip. Novel for a while, but slowly more irritating as the reasons you left become abundantly clear.

I grew up in Penrith, a suburban bogan Eutopia in Sydney's west. There is nothing extraordinarily wrong with the place, it is just miles away from everything and anything. The silence is deafening, punctuated by the occasional screeching tyre or siren.

Hence why you either leave for good, or anchor yourself here for life.

I got out, but every so often family business calls me back. And so here I am, no internet (until I finally managed to borrow a USB modem today), terrible public transport and random sightings of people heavy drinking at 9 in the morning. On a weekday. Yikes.

With that in mind, I have gathered some tidbits this week. Scattered pieces to match my scattered mind. The outcome of living in someone else's space for a prolonged period of time.....

___________

1) MY PREDICTION - AN UPDATE

I have mentioned the growing war on piracy as shifting to a 'war of convenience' - offer easy to use online alternatives for film/TV consumption and make it inconvenient to illegally download - in a couple of previous newsletters:

http://openingactfilms.blogspot.com/2011/07/pirate-stole-my-livelihood.html

http://openingactfilms.blogspot.com/2011/10/prediction.html

And then I saw this story the other day. The move for Hollywood studios to push Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to hold illegal downloaders accountable is expanding at pace in Europe:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chris-dodd-targets-piracy-at-206226

The highlights are:

Dodd singled out France's controversial three-strikes rule, which cuts off Internet access for users who repeatedly download material illegally, for particular praise.

But the senator cited similar tactics across Europe, including new anti-piracy legislation in Spain pending laws in Italy and the recent German-led raid earlier this month that shut down notorious piracy site kino.to.

the Motion Picture Assn. took British Telecom to court to force it to block access to an alleged film piracy site

It's growing. FAST.

2) RELIEF v SUCCESS

After pontificating about being relieved that we finally got a film festival selection for our film 'The Good Neighbour', it ended up winning Best Drama at the festival (http://openingactfilms.blogspot.com/2011/10/good-neighbour-wins-at-blue-mountains.html). I do feel slightly bad now for even slightly coming off as whingeing when I was talking about relief vs success, but a very good friend of mine had a first festival selection for his short film and the first thing he felt was......? That's right, relief. Anyone who has had a different experience is welcome to write in and prove me wrong.

3) THE SLOW PROTRACTED DEATH OF BROADCAST TELEVISION

The future (i.e. online distribution with massive increases in consumer power) is barreling down on traditional television content distribution models, and Shrek is behind the wheel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/business/media/netflix-secures-streaming-deal-with-dreamworks.html?_r=1

In what was considered a major shock in the cable TV Market in the USA, Dreamworks pictures, the makers of Shrek and Kung Fu Panda, passed on a traditional distribution deal with major cable broadcaster HBO and instead signed a deal with online streaming provider Netflix. This appears to be the first time first time a major Hollywood content supplier has chosen Web streaming over pay television. The longer it takes for television providers to start adapting to new technology, the more they guarantee they will be left behind.
__________

They say change is the only constant, but the rate of change evidenced in the industry above is quite dramatic. We are in an exciting, terrifying, transformative time. The storytellers will rise and the fame hungry will fall. Mark my words.

Change is the only constant. Except when you come home. Years pass in your home town, but nothing seems to change.

Except you.

- - - - - - - - -
GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL.http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

OAFILMS NEWS - The GOOD NEIGHBOUR wins at The Blue Mountains Film Festival!

Great news!

After being selected as a finalist for the Blue Mountains Film Festival, patroned by film critic god David Stratton, The Good Neighbour won Best Drama!

This was a wonderful surprise, given this was the film's first festival selection.

At the awards ceremony on 15 October, The Good Neighbour was nominated along side The Telegram Man (a short film with Gary Sweet, Jack Thompson and Sigrid Thornton) in the Best Drama and the Festival Grand Prize categories. The Good Neighbour was awarded the trophy for Best Drama, and I proudly accepted the award from actor Josef Ber (from TV's "Rush") and MC Kitty Flanagan.

The best part of the festival was actually the audience response to the film's screening on the 14th October. Really special. Overall the festival was a wonderful experience for the film.

The award was nice too.

THE BEST ONE LINE SUMMARY OF 'STORY' I HAVE EVER READ

I am getting an early start on this Newsletter because, as well as being an AWFUL Sydney day outside, I read something I had to share straight away.

Our species are, inherently, storytellers.

Anyone who has ever told a story, at a dinner table, at a pub, on stage or on the screen, knows there is something amazing that happens when people connect with the story and you nail the ending. They laugh, they cry, they smile. Drinks are bought for you and, in the weeks that come, a thousand feeble attempts at retelling the story are made, that usually end with the statement: "Well, I guess you had to be there."

I have told many stories in many pubs. Some go really well, but others end in tumbleweeds. When the awkward silence ensues, I am often left wondering, what was missing from this one?

In a professional arena like film or TV, the risks of not getting this right are huge, given a film falling flat can literally bankrupt a studio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven) for proof).

The end result is an entire industry of story experts (known as "script doctors") has grown, who specialise in selling their brand of story structure advice to the world. For example, on Amazon there are 1,545 individual paperback tomes on 'screenwriting' alone. Some are great, many are not.

With that in mind, I was reading an interview from one of these script doctors, sipping my tea and looking at the black clouds outside, and he actually produced the best one line summary of a 'good story' that I have ever seen:

Story is the perfect union of character and plot.
- John Truby

He qualified this with slightly more detail: "Most writers think plot and story are identical. They aren’t...fundamentally a good story is, once again, plot coming from character and character coming from plot."

This may seem overly simplistic, but to me it sums it up perfectly. A detailed character, in an interesting story, where the two are inextricably inked.

I can think back to all the stories I have told and heard in pubs and say that, without a doubt, Truby's summation is the reason why I have been either left laughing or being laughed at.

Worth sharing, methinks.

- - - - - - - - -
GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL. http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

LESSONS LEARNT

The blessing and simultaneous curse of the digital era is that we have all turned into digital "packrats".

My Grandmother understands. She can't (or won't) use a computer, but she is a hoarder. Part of being an Irish-Catholic depression era baby, I guess. I have numerous memories of watching her sort through piles of "stuff". My favourite is the enormous bottom drawer full of random newspaper pages - articles she felt were worth keeping.

Occasionally, she finds a gem. The functional Super8 camera with three rolls of film, for example. Brilliant.

For every terrific retro camera, however, there are 40,000 'commemorative' teatowels.

With my genetics in mind, I thought I would share something I found buried in some old papers of mine. I was spring cleaning, and found an old production report from a short I produced in film school:

On 'Tarzan the Deaf', I learnt three things very quickly.

One. There is more than one way to skin a cat. In this sense, there is more than one way to be a producer. There are those that focus purely on logistics. There are those that focus purely on story, and become a pseudo script editor. There are those that want the power. There are others who wish they had never signed up in the first place. There are no end of people telling you how to be a producer and how they would have done it better. But, as I learned, no-one is actually “wrong” in having a different approach. Producers need to work on outcomes, not methodologies. As long as the film gets delivered in the best, safest, and most cost effective way possible, you can produce any way you like.

Two. If your first impression is that someone is lazy and likes to make excuses for why they are lazy, it will probably turn out to be true. This is a killer, especially when these people are in key roles. A lazy person who is simply absent is actually far easier to deal with than someone who tries to cover their laziness by claiming it is everyone else’s fault. The second option makes for a toxic situation, as the crew gets increasingly frustrated with the lack of results and lack of taking responsibility. On a professional set, I would give them a window of improvement and then extricate them quickly if they don’t change.

Three. Put your crew in a situation where they feel trusted, empowered and responsible, and 99% of the time they will deliver amazing results. I can say this having seen some colleagues ruling their production with an iron fist, and then wondering why the crew are on edge. Pressure is necessary, as is pushing people to produce their best work, but micromanage and patronize people at your peril. They will give you the bare minimum of effort, at best. Empowering your crew will inevitably mean that things happen, while they are in charge, that you wouldn’t have wanted to happen (e.g. too many takes and burning through footage a little too quickly), but the benefits of giving them creative freedom far outweigh the negatives and most certainly show on screen.

Like I said, sometimes you find things worth keeping.

In that sense, being a packrat isn't all bad, I guess.

Assuming you like teatowels, of course.

- - - - - - - - -

GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL. http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

AN OVERWHELMING SENSE OF.........

I got some great news this week!

The last film I produced, The Good Neighbour, finally got selected for a film festival. The Blue Mountains Film Festival to be exact.

It has been a long journey.

We shot the film almost a year ago now.

We completed all of the post production by January this year, and finally we had a finished film.

Then we started distribution; sending our pride and joy out to film festivals around the world, in order to get our work seen by as many people as possible.

Since then, it has been many long months with many rejections.

While the feedback for the film has been positive, our two sticking points kept undermining our film festival selection chances.

'Length' and 'Subject Matter'.

The Good Neighbour is 15 minutes long, well over the optimum 7 to 10 minutes festivals want. The Good Neighbour also thematically covers the physical abuse of a child. Hard to program in a festival, apparently.

And so the months passed.

Every so often, I would hear something oddly inspirational that kept my motivation up. Like a random Facebook post from a friend:

"Met crazy man out the front of a court building this morning. He babbled something vaguely psychotic. I backed away. As I walked off I wished him luck. He called out: "remember, there's no winners and losers. Just winners and learners." quite profound. Even for man who smelt of wee..."

Nine months passed. I got so sick of the inside of the post office, mailing DVDs to the corners of the globe to be judged.

The rejections kept coming. They were polite. The one from Korea was the funniest.

And finally, this small breakthrough.

I thought I would jump 5 feet in the air if we finally got a breakthrough.

Instead, faced with a small piece of long awaited good tidings, I was filled with an overwhelming sense of...............relief.

Yes, relief. Such a strange reaction, but true.

Success, small or big is highly mythologised.

In truth, from personal experience and also from talking to people who have enjoyed far greater successes than I, the cliche actually happens to be true.

The journey really is the most rewarding thing. By the time any sort of reward or recognition comes around, you are more likely to be overwhelmed by relief that the hard work paid off, than obscene levels of joy.

That's why the first thing an athlete, public figure or oscar winner does when they win is stop and take a deep breath.

Relief.

Then, after some form of alcoholic drink, happiness.

- - - - - - - - -
GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL. http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

A PREDICTION

Though my formal training is in interpretive dance, not prognostication, I am going to make a prediction.

There have been many secret meetings, in secret back rooms, between secretive people, recently.

First, the U.S.A. makes a deal, after heavy lobbying by the movie studios and music labels, where 'pirates' (i.e. regular illegal downloaders of copyrighted movies and songs) will be penalised. The deal, struck between the studios, labels and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), will see the offenders warned and have their internet speed slowed down to an irritating crawl if they continue to offend.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/technology/to-slow-piracy-internet-providers-ready-penalties.html?_r=3&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha25

Then, New Zealand actually passes a law that enacts a similar system to the USA, but it will not be voluntary for the ISPs to participate.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/4885041/Controversial-internet-file-sharing-law-passed

In Australia, meanwhile, we have truly awful anti-piracy adds inflicted upon us. It's ironic really, given they are produced by a consortium of movie studios, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT).

Recently, however, AFACT has ramped up their campaign against piracy in Australia. They took iiNET, the Australian ISP, to court, claiming iiNET was responsible for allowing their users to download pirated content. iiNET won with the ruling clearly stating that "an Australian Internet provider is not responsible for illegal movie downloads by its customers.".

AFACT, however, have appealed.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/movie-studios-appeal-against--iinet-piracy-ruling-20100225-p4vx.html

And finally, last week, new data comes out of the The Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (IPAF) that states, (*sarcasm alert* - shock and horror) that in Australia, "almost three-quarters of consumers would stop illegally downloading files if they received a notice from their internet service provider (ISP)."

http://if.com.au/2011/09/09/article/IPAF-begins-new-anti-piracy-campaign-releases-consumer-research/YDAKVHMFKT

How very convenient!

Looking into my crystal ball, although it could be a cataract, I predict that a very similar law will be coming to Australia in the nearish future.

The case is being built, and lobbying will almost certainly be happening behind the scenes.

Mark my words.

- - - - - - - - -

GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL.
http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Secrets are well hidden and the truth is subjective.

In short, never believe what you read.......unless you wrote it.

I was planning on giving you an update on a prediction I gave you some time ago, but something odd happened along the way.

I was in the Opening Act Cave, slaving over a hot keyboard for your amusement and information. An article came across my desk about the Film Piracy attitudes of regular Australians, citing "new research".

I read the press release from the Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (IPAF) and jumped onto their bandwagon, with my flaming torch and pitchfork ready.

As I typed my fingers down to the bone, I thought, "Wonderful! What masterful prose! Just the topic they would be interested in!"

And then, as my third fingernail popped off, due to my ferocious typing, a tiny light bulb flickered in the back of my head.

I hadn't read the actual report, just the press release.

So I started looking for the actual "new research" they were trumpeting.

I clicked on the link provided by the press release. It simply took me back to the IPAF home page.

Odd.

So I looked into the research company. It was conducted by the mysterious Sycamore Research and Marketing (Sycamore R&M).

I Googled them.

Strangely, the only mentions of Sycamore R&M are by news articles quoting the press release or from blogs associated with IPAF.

Manufacturing their own press? Even more curious.

Two names do appear, the mysterious "Mrs and Mrs X" - Linked in Profiles for the Owner, Sycamore R&M and Director, Sycamore R&M.

Dead end there.

And what about the company?

Well, they have a website listed in an obscure motivational e-book, where the Director, Sycamore R&M, is quoted giving her insight into starting out in business. The website for Sycamore R&M is listed as www.sycamore.com.au

I typed in the website address and hit enter. When you go there, however, it simply says "sycamore.com.au is a parked domain". No website.

I was starting to feel like Julia Roberts in 'The Pelican Brief'.

"So what!? You say, they are probably a new company and haven't had time to set up a website!"

EXCEPT, I found a Screen Australia submission that states that Sycamore R&M was commissioned by IPAF in August 2008 to conduct research on Australian Consumer Attitudes to piracy.

It seems EXTRAORDINARILY strange to me, that a Research and Marketing firm, in existence for at least 3 years, does not even have the basics of marketing, i.e. a website.

It is also interesting, given that their research is commissioned by an anti-piracy agency, that Sycamore's research is VERY strongly in favour of similar anti-piracy laws that were enacted in the U.S.A. I even talked about these new laws, involving Internet Service Provider (ISP's) "warning" downloaders, in a previous newsletter: http://openingactfilms.blogspot.com/2011/07/pirate-stole-my-livelihood.html

Is there a perfectly normal explanation to all of this?

Probably. I did eventually find the research.

But it was strange.

And I wonder, how many people writing stories and commenting, read more than the press release.

Everyone has an agenda.

Leave the flaming torch and pitchforks. Do the homework instead.
_____________________

For those who are interested, the piracy attitudes research:

http://www.ipawareness.com.au/images/stories/pdf/IPAF_2011_Research_Summary.pdf

http://www.ipawareness.com.au/images/stories/pdf/2011_09_11_MediaRelease.pdf

http://www.ipawareness.com.au/index.php/the-facts

- - - - - - - - -

GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL.
http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

RELIABILITY

Why do you wear old pyjama pants even though new, shinier and less tattered varieties are available?

One word: reliability.

Reliability is an underrated commodity.

Reliability makes millionaires, creates household names and builds empires. Lack of reliability destroys brands, companies and careers.

Woody Allen coined it best: "90% of success is just showing up."

In speaking to producers, I have often heard them say variations of the same theme: they would hire someone who is competent and reliable over someone who is freakishly talented yet completely flaky. 9 out of 10 times.

If you are reliable, people want to help you in return. Similarly, if you let people down badly, they tend to have elephant-like memories.

For example, a small crew and I were shooting a key interview for a short documentary last Sunday. Our cinematographer had booked and confirmed a set of lights we needed for the interview.

Nothing too exciting so far.

Sunday rolls along. It's a beautiful day, our interview subject is recovered from an unpleasant looking facial infection (true story), the location in Bondi is ready to go and we are enjoying a wake-up coffee.

Seems harmless.

Then the cinematographer arrives. Apparently, the guy with the lights had lent them to someone else at the last minute. No problem, we just had to pick them up from the person who had them.

This person, however, was either either hung-over, still drunk, in a coma or dead. Perhaps a combination of a few of these.

"So what?", you say. "It's just lights! Don't be so over dramatic!"

Wrong.

No lights means we can't shoot our footage, unless we want the interview subject to look like he is in witness protection and having his identity protected (i.e. a completely black silouhette).

Reliability issues, no matter how trivial, are not victimless crimes.

In order to fix the problem and track down new lights, we lost 3 hours. That 3 hours cost us proper breaks for the crew; made the interview much tougher on the interview subject; and eventually meant that we could not cover all the information we needed in the interview. This now means we will now need another shoot day to complete the interview.

One small poor decision had a drastic flow on effect. That's why reliability is a commodity. That's why unreliability is a major risk to any Producer trying to build a business.

I don't pretend to know why some people are unreliable. It could be something locked deep within their genetic code, or it could be a choice.

I do know, however, that I will not give those people an opportunity again, if I have a choice.

- - - - - - - - -

GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL.

http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

THE FINE LINE BETWEEN CRITIQUE AND BULLYING

In a previous newsletter, I told the story of Ray Park, the guy who would be famous if he didn't keep getting cast as a character with no head.

http://openingactfilms.blogspot.com/2011/08/many-hidden-faces-of-ray-park.html

Ray's story is relevant, because, in the world with so many artists and so much content, he shows you can be successful without being famous.

Ironically the idea of being successful without becoming a household name seems offensive to some people I meet but, as Ricky Gervais said, if you want to become famous...murder a prostitute.

In any case, as it turns out, the opposite is also true, you can be famous without being a success. Just ask Rebecca Black.

Ms Black became an internet sensation for the utterly horrible song "Friday" with poetic lyrics such as:

Yesterday was Thursday Thursday
Today it is Friday Friday
We we we so excited
We so excited
We gonna have a ball today
Tomorrow is Saturday
And Sunday comes afterwards
I don't want this weekend to end

Shakespeare is turning in his grave.

But the world has changed. Cynicism (or good judgement?) is making a comeback. In today's film/TV/music world, you have to be good. The public are savvy enough to spot a manufactured music/film/TV star a mile away.

Unfortunately for Rebecca Black, the old rules don't apply any more. Sales numbers aren't the only way for the public to tell you they dislike your work.

They get to speak to you.

Directly.

Worse still, they get to tell you, everyone they know, and anyone else that will listen. That's the socially connected world we live in.

It's part of the reason why films are releasing worldwide, at the same time, more frequently. Online word of mouth in America can make or break a film's chances in the rest of the world, literally overnight. Google "The Green Lantern Movie" for proof.

As for Ms Black, her music has been universally panned, she has become the subject of ridicule online, and now she has had to withdraw from school because of constant taunts and bullying.

Let me be clear: I am not saying Rebecca Black deserves to be bullied.

I am saying that more time spent rehearsing and songwriting, perfecting the craft, would have given her a better chance of success.

With success, fame, the kind based on respect and admiration, can follow. This fame lasts.

But Rebecca wanted fame before success.

Be careful what you wish for.

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/celebrity/friday-singer-rebecca-black-bullied-out-of-school-20110811-1io6l.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BI0szjpxJs = if you really MUST watch the song.

- - - - - - - - -

GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL.
http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

R.I.P. BROADCAST TELEVISION

Dear friends, we are gathered here today to farewell a friend we have all known and loved for some time. Some of you knew this friend from birth, others have only been lucky enough to be friends in recent years. This friend has been there, through relationships, break ups, births, deaths, good times and bad.

Some us haven't always agreed with the choices this friend has made, but in the end our relationship has always endured.

And so my friends, it is with great sadness that we commemorate the passing of our cherished companion, broadcast television.

You will be missed.

(cue Frank Sinatra's "My Way" and the laying of roses)

Morbid imagery I know.

But this is a glimpse into the future.

One of the reasons this newsletter is late this week, is that I was struggling with how to explain the lessons I learned at an Industry seminar on Tuesday. The seminar was "SPAA Masterclass 3: Digital - Where's the money?". It was supposed to be about how to make money (known as "monetising") from digital/online media.

It ended up being about how traditional media companies, especially broadcasters, were attempting to catchup to the revolution (and I use this word deliberately - it is a revolution!) that is happening in the Film, TV and Media Industry. I won't bore you with details, although feel free to email me if you would like to know more, but there were a few key sentiments that came out of it. They are:

1) The explosion of the internet has changed the world, forever.
2) The next era we are entering is the era of consumer power (i.e. the revolution). This is already true in key consumer areas like shopping (ebay), news (Google), and music (Napster/File sharing).
3) The existing major companies in these areas suffer the most from the revolution, see the major papers closing and major music labels crumbling for evidence.
4) Film, TV and media is next, as broadband speeds get faster.
5) We either evolve or starve.

Being in the room with representatives of the big media companies was a strange experience for me. It was like I had mistakenly stepped into a meeting of the rich and powerful. Like Michael Moore at a gathering of BP, Shell and ExonMobil. The film, TV and Media Establishment live in person.

And me, wondering how they kept missing the point so badly.

Do you want to know what the film, TV and Media establishment talk about?

How to stop evolution.

The film, TV and media establishment talk about how to keep up with the revolution and, as much as possible, keep things the same. For their own survival.

Survival! Not growth, SURVIVAL!

They are "experimenting" with online video under duress. They believe that whatever happens online should direct people back to the "primary platform", which is Television.

The idea of online media consumption becoming the new normal, and telling great stories that engage an audience, was only mentioned by one of the speakers. His name is Ricky, the Head of Video Media at Fairfax Digital. How ironic that a guy from a newspaper/magazine company is leading the way in online video?

I chatted to him after his presentation, and found out that he worked in music, when they were hit by the revolution. Then he worked in Newspapers, when they were hit by the revolution. Now he is in video media, when the revolution is coming. Poor guy.

But Ricky gets it. He is monetising videos on-line already, with a profit sharing arrangement with Producers. He is trying to get a head start on what's coming. He's seen it too. Currently it takes 8-24 hours to download the average pirated movie online. With the broadband speeds proposed in the next 3-5 years, the average time to download a pirated movie will reduce to just 11 minutes. At that point, the film, TV and media industry becomes the music and newspaper industry. Unless we evolve.

In the very-near future, consumers will NOT ACCEPT television channels telling them what to watch. They will watch the shows they want, when they want, online. Hell, they are already doing it with entire TV show seasons on DVD and single episodes online.

And when the audience's TV is web-enabled, so they don't have to use their computer, with high speed broadband plugged into it, the TV broadcasters better have ALL their shows online, on demand.

The consumer is KING again. Don't give us what we want, and we go online and get it somewhere else, possibly for free.

No more channel surfing to find something worth investing my precious time in watching. The broadcast TV Channels will be responsible for 3 things: Commissioning new content (i.e. pay creatives to make shows); curating their catalogue of programs (e.g. channel 7 will become the home of reality television, channel 10 the home of cooking and dancing shows); and uploading their shows online. In a world of infinite choice, they had also better make sure the shows are good, or the audience will go somewhere else.

From what I saw, sipping my free coffee and listening to them speak, the traditional media establishment don't get this. Not completely, anyway.

It's actually the start of a FANTASTIC time for creatives who want to tell good stories (you will be in demand!), and terrible for big established media companies.

Broadcast TV is already dead, it just doesn't know it yet.

The revolution is coming.

You have all been warned. Start creating.

- - - - - - - - -

GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL!!
http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

THE MANY HIDDEN FACES OF RAY PARK

Heard of Ray Park?

Some people have. Most haven't.

He's a martial artist from Glasgow, Scotland. This makes him unintelligible in conversation, but handy in a bar fight.

Still not ringing bells?

What if I told you he was a featured supporting actor in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

Nope?

What if I added that he was in the first X-Men movie in 2000?

Your trivia is terrible.

Last clue, he was one of the main characters in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, starring opposite Johnny Depp.

A mental blank. Terrible.

Funnily enough, Ray Park has been a major player in 4 films which have grossed a total of $1,730,165,371 worldwide.

You don't know who he is because he plays characters that have heavy make-up, obscured faces or, in one case, no head. (In order they are: Darth Maul from Star Wars EP1; Toad in XMen; Snake Eyes in GI Joe and The Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow).

To add a pinch salt to the wound, when his character did finally have a head in 'Sleepy Hollow', they substituted him.....for Christopher Walken.

Ask him, and I doubt he'll complain though. He is living the Hollywood dream.

But it's worth noting: success doesn't always equal fame.

RAY PARK - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0661917/

- - - - - - - - -

GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL!!
http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

SHARING MY CONFUSION

One main reason that Film so appeals to me, more than the other storytelling mediums, is that you can walk out of a cinema and talk about it. It's communal. Its something we have over Music, which is far more niche and internalised.

Call me nostaligic, but some of my best memories are walking out of the "movies" with my family or friends still talking about what we just saw. It's my post-modern version of the "good old days".

When I was a kid, my Dad took my older brother Matt and I to one of the Sydney premiere screenings of Independence Day at midnight in Penrith. The old cinema was packed with people and the whole place cheered when the Opera House appeared with the crashed alien spaceship in the background. There was almost a live theatre atmosphere. True story.

I hope you are lucky enough to have a similar memory.

Great filmmakers make you feel something. Their film sticks with you for days, months, even years. That's why there are some movies we love, even though there is some part of them that are equal parts confusing and frustrating. We love them, but we hate them, like fast food.

One of these films, which I love, is 'No Country for Old Men' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477348/)

You don't have to take my word about it being good, a little golden man named Oscar agrees with me (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/no_country_for_old_men/)

The frustrating thing about No Country for Old Men film is the ending. It has spurred no end of debate. One online forum alone, mentioned in the NY Times, has over 400 individual opinion comments about the ending (http://meetinthelobby.com/debate-no-country-for-old-men-ending.html).

I won't spoil the ending for you, save to share one monologue from Tommy Lee Jones's character, about this father:

I had two dreams about him after he died. I don’t remember the first one all that well but it was about meetin’ him in town somewheres and he give me some money and I think I lost it.

But the second one it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin’. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin’ fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and that he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.

I have mulled this over for so long.

He is contemplating mortality, I know that much. That his father is waiting for him.

After months, I thought I had it: life is precious. That's why there are so many people in the world today, because we nurture life so much more. But the more people there are, the more expendable life is and the less it means to kill because we become almost like cattle. In a sense then, the modern world, with more people and with life more expendable than ever, is no country for old men, who remember the way life was when people knew each other and killing someone meant killing someone you knew.

Now, I could be wrong.

But that's not the point.

I felt something.

That's what we filmmakers should aspire to. Producing something so good that people want to share the experience with friends and family. Releasing a film that makes people want to tell you about the time they saw it with their Dad and Brother 15 years ago. Giving people a film that makes them think about it months and years later.

Forget marketing and money. For Christ's sake, make me feel something.

- - - - - - - - -

GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL!!
http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

24 HOURS TO LIVE

You can lead the horse to water, but you can't keep your foot on it's submerged head for more than 30 seconds. It's dangerous.

Put more simply, I am all about family and friends. Fortunately, or unfortunately for some people, I am like herpes - once you have me, I'm a friend for life.

Friends and family have the ability to encourage and also frustrate you more than anyone else. If they would just listen to me, everything would be ok!

The hardest thing about life is realising that we have control over very little. That fact can be empowering if you embrace it by learning to adapt. Adaptation is actually a great skill to have and essential for filmmakers in the changing landscape.

Its troubling, though, in the context of loved ones.

My younger brother Jack is a Type 1 diabetic. Though he is frustratingly stubborn for a 19 year old, he is his own character, and I love him dearly.

He was diagnosed over a year ago with diabetes and, given he is 19 and thinks he is invincible, he has not been managing his condition properly. But mismanaging a permanent chronic illness is like playing Russian roulette. You can get away with it for a while, but eventually....

On Saturday, he had his first major diabetic crash since he was diagnosed.

We had pleaded with him to check his blood sugars. We demanded he monitor his insulin levels.

He didn't.

On Monday, the doctor told us Jack was 24 hours of non-treatment from death. He said that once a person goes into a diabetic coma, they are only a 50-50 chance of coming back.

Jack was lucky.

Loving someone makes you vulnerable, be they a friend, a partner, or even a brother. It would be worse, however, to feel nothing at all.

I'm just glad he's alive.

- - - - - - - - -

GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL!!
http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

FIGJAM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIGJAM_(disambiguation)

Maybe I am having a bad run, but lately I end up in less and less conversations where people want to really converse. Not in the biblical sense, but the old-fashioned sharing of ideas, arguing perspectives and eventually agreeing to disagree (but that we are both better off having had the discussion).

What people most want to discuss....it seems.....is themselves.

Self promotion is a genetic trait. Developed in the womb and deployed when the user is fully formed. You can spot these people by the unnecessary self-adulating detail they add to a simple story.

For example, as well as making films, I am also the chairman of the Alumni Board at the Sydney Film School (SFS). Emile Sherman, the Oscar-Winning producer of the King's Speech is on the Governance Board of SFS, by the way. So, in my role as chairman, I organised a free panel discussion on film distribution basics, including distribution experts from Flickerfest, Hopscotch, AFTRS and SFS. The event was really well attended and a big success and I met the Chairman of SBS, by the way. In the midst of really productive and informative discussion, one particular person on the panel repeatedly talked about all of their wonderful achievements and how it meant they were on their way to stardom. It was the closest thing I have ever seen to showbusiness induced asbergers syndrome. Despite that, the event was a big success and I made loads of great contacts and received lots of praise from important people, demonstrating how great I am and what a big success I am going to be, by the way.

Insufferable, isn't it?

The worst part is that the above kind of interaction with people normally leaves you feeling kind of.....used. A good shower and a stiff drink are usually needed afterwards, meaning they have probably caused more damage than good with their foray into self-promotion.

Everyone else strategises to make self-promotion work.

With the advent of technology, Facebook, Twitter and the rest, self promotion is easier to distribute than ever. In fact, there is so much self-promotion now, that the only way to be visible in a crowded marketplace is....more self-promotion. That's what the experts say, anyway.

I'm not convinced.

I think you do need to have a way for people to find you, if they're looking. A conduit to communicate with you.

If all I will find when I discover this conduit, however, is a person who seems to be trying VERY hard to convince me how great your achievements are and how much better you are than most people.....I'm not interested.

It's the difference between "self-promotion" and "self-adulation".

In this day and age, what people want...no.....demand, from you is that you must have something to say. If you jump into the bullpen with all the other filmmakers and artists vying for attention, then you had better be organic, you had better be unique and, most importantly, you had better be writing the updates yourself. 50 Cent and Britney Spears found that out years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/technology/internet/27twitter.html?_r=2&hp

If you approach self-promotion as a way to "sell" people on the image of yourself that you have crafted, it can go very badly.......

Jeff Skilling was an intelligent, but reportedly arrogant, young man from Pennsylvania, U.S.A. When applying for Harvard Business School, he was asked the question "Are you smart?" by the admissions board.

He replied: "I'm fucking smart".

When Enron collapsed in 2001, Jeff Skilling became the face of the biggest corporate fraud in history. When interviewed in prison in 2010, serving his 24 year prison sentence, Skilling suggested one of his main failings was not "going on the PR (Public Relations) offensive" when all the trouble started.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/14/news/newsmakers/jeffrey_skilling_prison_interview.fortune/index.htm

I will leave it to you to read, but there are six pages of angry comments that suggest all the PR in the world wouldn't help.

On the other hand, when Amy Winehouse died, the overwhelming response was that we had tragically lost an artist who had a unique talent and a unique voice that made her visible in the crowd of wannabees. Amy had something to say. She let her work do the promotion. She connected with the humanity in her audience.

Then she was gone.

We live in a golden age if you actually want to connect with people; with your audience. The catch, and there always is one, is that you have to be in it for the long haul. You have to be committed to a lifestyle of connecting with people whatever way you can, not just to promote your latest film, perfume, song, sex toy (google "Kevin Smith Fleshlight"), etc etc etc

"The reason that self-promotion works and self-adulation doesn't is because self-promotion is the art of spreading ideas, concepts and a greater vision. Self-adulation is just the promotion of accomplishments, deeds that have already been done."
- Nathan Hangen ( http://www.copyblogger.com/shameless-self-promotion/)

- - - - - - - - -

GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL!!
http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

WWSMD?

I finally bowed to public opinion.

Overwhelmingly I was told I needed to get healthy. To exercise. To lose some weight.

So I joined a basketball team.

Two months later and I felt a slight difference, even though my pants told me that very little had changed. It turns out, you need to eat better too.

And then, last Sunday, I sprained my ankle during a game. Badly.

Now, I can't even take the stairs.

The worst part is that the injury happened against the worst team in the competition, who acted at times like they believed they were the best team in the competition. These days, anyone with a basketball and enough spare time can convince themselves they are good at the sport.

It is the benefit and curse of the post-modern age: the 'democratisation' of dreams.

It started many many years ago with sports, the most democratic of all. All you needed was a ball and the right playing area and you could dream that you were on the way to being Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, etc etc etc......

Now, with the pace of technology, even the 'unreachable' dreams have become democratic: film and music.

There is an abundance of cheap cameras that shoot cinema quality films (google "Tiny Furniture", shot on DSLRs), cheap editing set-ups and software (thanks to Apple), crew and actors willing to work for free to get a break, and even direct to consumer video-on-demand services popping up (making it ever easier to reach an audience directly).

The result?

A sea of content. A media tidal wave that leaves the modern time-poor consumers bamboozled by options. Some of this wave of films is very good. Others very very.......very.......bad. Anyone for a screening of 'The Human Centipede'?

But that's the point. There are no gatekeepers anymore. The new wave couldn't find a way in, so they forced their way past the gates instead.

Is this necessarily a bad thing?

A friend and I chatted about what this glut of films means for our future as filmmakers. The answer, for me, is a simple one. I wish I had come up with it myself, but the credit very deservedly belongs to actor/comedian Steve Martin:

"Be so good they can't ignore you."

(He says it, 52:10 into this interview http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/8831)

So many people worry about what it means to have the tools of filmmaking democratised and their number of competitors dramatically increased. I keep reading this theme in blog posts and comments on indie film news articles. The truth is, though, that for years anyone could pick up a basketball and start playing. Despite this, there is still a world famous professional league and only a handful of players who have become household names, in spite of the millions who try.

Anyone can buy a camera and call themselves the second coming of Kubrick. Then there are the ones who work harder, sweat the little details and make tougher sacrifices to be considered the best at what they do. They race to the top instead of diving for the bottom.

Those are the kind of filmmakers that get noticed, that build an audience. Those are the kind of filmmakers we gravitate towards.

Except me. I'm at home. Icing my ankle.

- - - - - - - - -

GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL!!
http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html

A PIRATE STOLE MY LIVELIHOOD

You may have noticed a delay in sending out this latest newsletter, but in my defence, it took a little extra time to research. Research, you say? That's right, I am not just another whiny guy with a keyboard. I am a whiny guy with a keyboard who reads.

And so, my friends, we come to that ever divisive topic of piracy.

The arguments for and against, practical and emotional, optimistic and defeatist, are widespread.

Starting with my own bias, I must admit I am against piracy. While I understand the emotions that drive it, stealing is stealing. Perhaps it is my Irish Catholic upbringing, or perhaps I have something against Icelandic computer experts. We'll never really know.

Interestingly enough, the arguments against doing anything about piracy seem to be spurred by resignation, while the arguments for piracy seem to be based on a pseudo-punk-rock idealism: "screw the world; they earn millions; nobody says anything nice about Iceland, so we'll show them.....", etc etc etc.

The pirates come at you from all sides: emotional, economic and Somalia.

In a single, albeit long sentence, they will say something to the effect of: "If the movie industry would make it easier and quicker to get the movies I would pay (EMOTIONAL), but they don't because they are all millionaires and why do they even deserve to get paid so much for what they do when teachers get paid so little (ETHICAL), and I shouldn't have to pay $22 to see a crap movie (ECONOMIC), and if I wasn't doing it someone else would so what I do doesn't have an impact anyway (ECONOMIC)."

DEEP BREATH.

It is very easy to respond to all of these arguments in one go: "If you don't like film professionals being paid for what they do, vote with your feet, that is, do not consume the content they produce. No demand means less money for the content providers and more for teachers. End of story."

Don't get involved in arguments about waiting times, or economic arguments, because the only statement they make that is rational is the above ethical argument. Which you have just answered in one sentence.

You don't believe their economic or patience arguments are irrational? If you walk into McDonalds and there is a wait for your burger, can you go behind the counter and take it for free? And if you eat the whole burger can you go back and say you don't feel you should pay for it? And if 30% of McDonald's U.S.A. customers were stealing like this, will it have an impact on their business?

In America, just two years ago, peer to peer (P2P) file sharing accounted for approximately 30% of America's Broadband Internet usage. Think about that number - 30% How long would any business stay solvent when a huge percentage of their product, accounting for an approximated $16Billion in U.S.A alone, is being stolen?

So, you know the problem. You are on your yacht on the Somali Coast, and the boatload of wayfaring gentlemen heading your way look a tad on the unfriendly side. Do you open the caviar and get the Brie to room temperature, or grab the nearest spork and prepare to make your last stand?

Perhaps a bit of both.

What if, instead of the current polar debates on piracy (e.g. they're all criminals!!!! VS don't bother policing it, we should tolerate it and try and make money off of piracy!) we had a middle ground, a blend of both perspectives?

The battle to win the hearts and minds (such a wonderful American platitude) of the world regarding piracy will be fought over CONVENIENCE. These days, the population of developed world is not necessarily financially poor when it comes to spending $20 on a movie. They are, however, TIME POOR. Allow the public to easily and conveniently consume the content when and where THEY want, and watch them come to you like Lepers at Lourdes.

How do I know? Because it is already happening.

In America, the over 30% P2P broadband usage pre 2009 has been significantly reduced (with some reporting as low as 8% of Broadband now being P2P), and the majority of what is left in P2P is believed to be music. What changed?

Netflix.

I will not spend a huge amount of time on this, but Netflix for the uninitiated is a subscription film and television content provision service in the U.S.A. They provide TV shows and films via DVD mailing and, in their booming business, "instant internet streaming".

Netflix, and especially their internet streaming, has given internet-savvy Americans a simple, convenient and relatively cheap way to get movies online. They pay one subscription fee ($7.99 a month) and can access over 75,000 movies. Americans have responded in droves with Netflix going from 10 Million subscribers in 2009 to 23.6 Million subscribers in 2011, and over $3Billion in revenue in 2011.

Instead of fighting the pirates' way of doing things, Netflix instead did it better, and charged a reasonable price. They now have 3 billion reasons to suggest they are right.

The "they are all criminals" side of things are innovating too. In the last week, a new approach has been created: INCONVENIENCE the pirates into compliance via a deal between the Internet Service Providers (ISP's), the music industry, and the film industry. This new deal, ironically inspired by the cooperation with ISPs on the war on child pornography (far be it from music and film professionals to miss a good opportunity), means that ISPs will WARN their users who are regularly downloading pirate content. If the user ignores the warnings and continues to download pirated content, their internet speed will be slowed down to a crawl. Can you imagine the frustration of an Icelander trying to watch pornography on super-slow dial-up internet? This new accord will replace the previous media/entertainment industry policy of direct, harsh prosecution of pirates.

Can you see the sense yet of blending the approaches?

Make a web service that makes it RIDICULOUSLY EASY to pay for your content, ironically pretty much using the same model and ease of usage of the old pirate websites (e.g. Napster if you remember it before Metallica brought the wrath of god on them).

Then, make it so INCONVENIENT to download pirate content that paying becomes the easiest option.

Ignore the 2% who will keep fighting on their skewed pseudo-punk principles. They will be fighting their ethical battle on internet speeds slower than you had in the 1990s.

Get everyone else hooked on the convenience.

Wave goodbye to the smiling Brie and caviar smeared faces of the Somalian Pirates and sail your yacht to the land of the sustainable film industry.

Live happily ever after.
_______________________

P.S. Just so you don't have to take my word for it, a sample of my background info.....

ISPs placing penalties on pirates:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/technology/to-slow-piracy-internet-providers-ready-penalties.html?_r=3&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha25

Netflix growth startling many
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/why-content-isn-8217-t-king/8551/

Netflix Broadband usage growing
http://www.dailytech.com/Report+Netflix+Will+Clobber+US+Internet+Bandwidth/article20075.htm

Netflix reducing P2P?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/is-netflix-reducing-illicit-file-sharing-depends-on-which-stats-you-believe.ars

- - - - - - - - -

GET THIS WHIMSICALLY OPTIMISTIC NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL!!
http://www.openingactfilms.com/subscribecontact-us.html