from Lance Hammer, courtesy of Ray Pride. Check them out here.
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Day: October 22, 2008
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Marketing 101: Synecdoche
Okay maybe this the long way around, but here’s a great inexpensive way to get the word about your film out. First come up with a title that people don’t understand, ideally a single word. Then, make an incredibly unique and heartfelt film illustrating the full meaning of the word. Finally, approach Dictionary.com to feature the same word as your title. Genius!
If you are late to this post, check out the word of the day for Wed. Oct 22, 2008.
I was on a panel awhile back bemoaning the loss of the NEA back in the 80’s, and how short sighted I thought it was not to have government funding for the arts, particularly film.
John Sloss responded that the government subsided film productions via the local state tax incentives — and that’s true, but not the whole picture. Don’t get me wrong, I love the state tax incentives. They are good for the film businsess and great for the states’ economies. They create jobs and drive a lot of money into the states. They have helped stem the flow of entertainment jobs out of the country. But they don’t create a more diverse culture.
When we had a tiny tiny portion of our tax dollars going to artists to develop new work, we had the possibility of new forms of representation. The local state tax subsidies are for production, not development; they lead to more of the same work. We all benefit when creative voices help us look at the world differently. Without financial support how is anyone supposed to develop for anything other than the existing market?
I always use Julie Taymor as the poster child for government subsidies for the arts. Back in the day she received such funding and was able to develop a truly unique craft. She was later tapped by Disney to bring The Lion King to Broadway and thereby generated tremendous wealth for many. Without the support of her development, we all would have been deprived of such a voice.
All that said, if you have finished that script and are looking to move towards production, those state incentives are pretty sweet. The Incentives Office has a swell state-to-state guide that is free to download. And through friday you can download here with just one push of a button and no need to fill out any forms. Check it out.
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Lessig’s New Copyright Rules
Unfortunately Lawrence Lessig doesn’t make the rules, but we are lucky we have him to fight for us. Last week he published five recommended changes to the copyright law designed to help those who create to continue to create. When the law starts to do the opposite of what it was intended you have to wonder.
Deregulate amateur remix: We need to restore a copyright law that leaves “amateur creativity” free from regulation. Before the 20th century, this culture flourished. The 21st century could see its return. Digital technologies have democratized the ability to create and re-create the culture around us. Where the creativity is an amateur remix, the law should leave it alone. It should deregulate amateur remix.
What happens when others profit from this creativity? Then a line has been crossed, and the remixed artists plainly ought to be paid — at least where payment is feasible. If a parent has remixed photos of his kid with a song by Gilberto Gil (as I have, many times), then when YouTube makes the amateur remix publicly available, some compensation to Mr. Gil is appropriate — just as, for example, when a community playhouse lets neighbors put on a performance consisting of a series of songs sung by neighbors, the public performance of those songs triggers a copyright obligation (usually covered by a blanket license issued to the community playhouse). There are plenty of models within the copyright law for assuring that payment. We need to be as creative as our kids in finding a model that works.
Deregulate “the copy”: Copyright law is triggered every time there is a copy. In the digital age, where every use of a creative work produces a “copy,” that makes as much sense as regulating breathing. The law should also give up its obsession with “the copy,” and focus instead on uses — like public distributions of copyrighted work — that connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster.
Simplify: If copyright regulation were limited to large film studios and record companies, its complexity and inefficiency would be unfortunate, though not terribly significant. But when copyright law purports to regulate everyone with a computer, there is a special obligation to make sure this regulation is clear. It is not clear now. Tax-code complexity regulating income is bad enough; tax-code complexity regulating speech is a First Amendment nightmare.
Restore efficiency: Copyright is the most inefficient property system known to man. Now that technology makes it trivial, we should return to the system of our framers requiring at least that domestic copyright owners maintain their copyright after an automatic, 14-year initial term. It should be clear who owns what, and if it isn’t, the owners should bear the burden of making it clear.
Decriminalize Gen-X: The war on peer-to-peer file-sharing is a failure. After a decade of fighting, the law has neither slowed file sharing, nor compensated artists. We should sue not kids, but for peace, and build upon a host of proposals that would assure that artists get paid for their work, without trying to stop “sharing.”
This was in the Wall St. Journal. It’s gotten a lot of play in the blog world already, but I’ve been a bit swamped lately. Lessig’s got a new book coming out, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive In The Hybrid Economy. Let me know if you’ve read it and what thoughts you have.
It seems ludicrous to head into a festival these days and not have a website or blog for your film in advance. It seems silly not to have that web address built into you film end credits. It doesn’t have to be a final or even a polished site, but there should be something. How else will you tell your audience how they can participate in the experience or even see your film?
Beyond a website or a blog, filmmakers should do the simple outreach chores. Build a Wiki page for your film. Create a MySpace and/or Facebook profile for your film. Make sure all the info is in IMDB.
And don’t forget images. Post some stills. Hell, post some clips up on YouTube. For years, filmmakers have been told to make presskits, but why not do the things that let the audience find them directly? Why wait for the journalists; they have all been fired!
