There is a great deal of empty discussion in terms of what a social media strategy is in the indie film world. There’s even a great deal more when it comes to brands. WhatTheFuckIsMySocialMediaStrategy.com does a pretty good job of capturing, albeit with a welcome dose of humor. Just keep restoring the site, and you will get another “pearl” of wisdom with each click.
Hat tip to John Paul Rice and Jon Reiss for driving me towards this epic epicness.
Today’s guest post is by John S. Johnson. The Harmony Institute, a research group that John runs, is offering a free new guide to help combat the Telecom’s tales in their efforts to end net neutrality. Here he explains a bit of the why and wherefore you need to download it (for free!) and read it NOW.
In 2010 it’s easy to forget how profoundly the Internet has revolutionized the way we communicate, interact and access information. When you logged on this morning to check your email, bank statement, or local news you may not have noticed that there are very few limits placed on the sites and services you have access to. While some people must crash the couch of their best friend to catch the latest HBO release, since he’s subscribed to all premium cable channels while they’re still stuck with rabbit ears on their TV, no one has an edge over anyone else when it comes to what we can access on the Internet.
Yet this principle of net neutrality that allows all sites, services and applications on the Internet to have equal access to consumers, and vice versa, is being fundamentally threatened. Today the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is looking to revise rules that have kept Internet Service Providers (ISPs) at bay for decades. These companies, like AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon, would love to become the gatekeepers of the Internet, reserving preferential bandwidth for those sites and services that make them the most money.
And I can guarantee you HopeForFilm is not one of those sites. read more…
Today’s guest post is from attorney Steven Beer. Steven not only has posted for us before, but also delivered a great call to arms in Indiewire with proclamation of the Era Of Filmmaker Empowerment. Today’s touches upon some of the issues that I raised recently regarding how film incentives need to help low budget production.
Independent filmmakers and producers from New York are accustomed to change and challenges, and as of this week, they will have yet another hurdle to jump. As of July 11, 2010, the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, the MOFTB, has begun charging filmmakers a $300 fee for film permits. Historically, New York City has not charged anything for film permits. New York City has joined the ranks of other cities, such as Chicago, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, and Seattle, all of which charge fees for film permits. When the proposed rule was announced in April, it generated mostly negative reactions; concerned filmmakers signed petitions against the rule, believing that the fee would diminish New York City’s claim to being the capital of the independent film world. Some scoffed at the fee, unable to see how an extra $300 charge could affect a film budget. While opinions may vary, the fee is certainly changing the climate for independent filmmakers, no matter how large their budgets might be.
NY Magazine has run a clear analysis on why the attempt to establish Film Future markets failed. Our business is so far from transparent, it is laughable to outsiders. The article articulates how we have no clear & unbiased info on how well films perform and all reporting is done by the studios themselves. To run a commodities market, the public would need something more transparent (like other countries have) and without it court cases would abound.
Such chaos would almost inevitably lead to a call for mandated government-agency oversight of Hollywood accounting, and that, to studio thinking, would be Armageddon—albeit an Armageddon that would be celebrated by everyone who has ever been promised a net-profits check that didn’t arrive. In the space of just a couple of days this month, a jury demanded Disney pay $270 million in damages for wrongfully withholding profits on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, another found that actor Don Johnson was owed $23 million by the producers of Nash Bridges, and Nikki Finke’s Deadline website posted a leaked balance sheet in which Warner Bros. appeared to demonstrate that the movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which grossed $938 million worldwide, is somehow $167 million in the red. Given that statistic, perhaps stockholders should inquire whether any studio movies ever realize a net profit, and if not, why the people who run those studios are still employed.
If we are ever going to have a sustainable investor base for our industry, we need to bring the reporting and accounting practices up to the standards of other industries. It’s time that we develop a list of best practices of what needs to be done to reach this goal. I will add it to my To Do List in the meantime.
The NY Times Sunday Magazine has a thought provoking article by Jeffrey Rosen entitled “The Web Means The End Of Forgetting”. It’s filled with lots of good points quite relevant to the film biz in this time of audience aggregation and automized taste curation.
Rosen points out:
The truth is we can’t possibly control what others say or know or think about us in a world of Facebook and Google, nor can we realistically demand that others give us the deference and respect to which we think we’re entitled. On the Internet, it turns out, we’re not entitled to demand any particular respect at all, and if others don’t have the empathy necessary to forgive our missteps, or the attention spans necessary to judge us in context, there’s nothing we can do about it.
The NY Times has an intriguing article on the owners of the copyright of “Kiss Of The Spider Woman” who have packaged the film, it’s rights, and various other support materials, and have hopes netting a windfall.
I have always wondered why more filmmakers don’t go the Matthew Barney route and focus first on selling to “collections” as opposed to audiences. The Spider Woman’s team’s approach of going at long after the initial run and sales cycle is another route altogether. As library values decline faster and faster, perhaps all that will be left in the way of hope for some pension-esque fund will be those wealthy patrons and their butterfly collections.
U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton’s decision against Viacom and in favor of Google and YouTube placed the onus on copyright holders to identify specific instances of infringement and then inform websites to remove the pirated content. If the sites do so promptly, they are shielded from liability.
This site could not have been built without the help and insight of Michael Morgenstern. My thanks go out to him.
Help save indie film and give this guy a job in web design or film!
