A couple of years ago a young man with impeccable political principles boasted to me, quite innocently, that he had managed to download all my films for free on the internet. On close questioning it became evident that he had not thought through the implications of this for me and all the others who had worked with me (many of whom, on some of the films, had been paid very little or, like me, had deferred their fees and were therefore dependent on ticket and DVD sales to get paid for their labours). From his perspective it seemed that to have made the films I must, by definition, be rich and privileged, whereas he and his student friends were somehow the deserving poor.
This young man was a self-proclaimed Marxist, idealistic and thoughtful, deeply concerned with economic inequalities as the basis for all ills. But he had grown up in an era of conspicuous consumption. The ‘right’ to have, to own, unconsciously dominating all other considerations. He was also ignorant about the economic realities of film production.
He was not alone. In the same month I went into a bookshop where I heard one of my own soundtracks playing. I looked around for the CD, but then the bookshop owner told me, with an innocent smile, that a friend of hers had downloaded the music free and given it to her to play in the shop. She looked baffled when I gently suggested she might not be so pleased if I proudly told her I wasn’t going to buy one of her books today as I had just downloaded it free from the internet.
The film industry, of course, is opaque and misleading. Glittering premieres, celebrity gossip, inflated star earnings, yachts, mansions and private jets belonging to the visible few at the top-earning end of the industry do not lead to sighs of sympathy when piracy triumphs over commercial sales. Instead there are whoops of glee; the pirates become the romantic heroes in the fight against profiteering exploiters and captains of industry. On the surface of it, seen from this point of view, the little guy seems to win out over the corporate monsters.
A while back I answered a questioner in detail, in another post in this blog, about how it is that even a ‘low-budget’ film like RAGE can possibly cost “only” one million dollars.
The release strategy for RAGE was made in the light of many of these considerations. The decision to ‘give away’ the film for free on people’s mobile phones and on the internet was, we hoped, (in addition to being refreshingly forward thinking and in the spirit of the story), also a way of being one step ahead of the pirates. Instead of needing to steal it by illegally downloading it, people could experience it - above board - as a gift from the filmmakers. Those who could not afford to buy a cinema ticket or DVD would not miss out on the experience if they wanted to have it.
The missing part of this equation is that there has to be some form of circulation of money for it to be possible to make more films that in turn can be given away free. This means cinema tickets or DVD sales. Research in other areas suggests that free downloads do not necessarily stop people going out to the movies or buying DVDs. (or CDs in the case of the music industry). The desire to own a DVD or CD as an object (with the extras and so on as a bonus) can be provoked by a free taster. But it is early days in the unknown and inevitable evolution of the digital age.
However, to state the obvious, it is human beings who make music and films: these people need to eat, pay rent or mortgages and be able to devote themselves fulltime to their work if it is to be worth watching or listening to. It takes time and effort to get good at the job. And the money has to come from somewhere. In a culture less and less inclined to subsidise the arts – and cinema in particular – there has to be an engagement with the realities of finance, the global equations of expenditure and income.
I have spent the last weeks fronting up this way of thinking about RAGE. I have argued for new and fresh ways of thinking about this; less emphasis on prosecuting pirates and more on being inventive and flexible. But yesterday I discovered that – despite the free access to RAGE on mobile phones and the internet – (albeit encrytped in such a way that it can be viewed but not copied) the film has already been copied from the DVD and is available as a pirated download. This is depressing!
The pirates are not romantic heroes. They are Very Bad Indeed. If a low-budget film can be stolen in this way – even when its makers have not yet been paid at all (I promise you this is true) and even when they have offered it as a gift to those who cannot afford it - then the future of filmmaking itself is threatened at its core. It is a question of logic and common sense: if everything is free and the right of the consumer is all, then there will eventually be nothing left to consume. We are all responsible members of a chain of consumption and production and have to find new and just ways of serving each others’ material and emotional needs.
Cinema serves needs that are sometimes hard to define. ‘Entertainment’ touches us in ways we do not always understand. But a society without the arts – music , books, movies etc - would be a dead one, lacking in imagination and food for the soul (whatever we understand this non- material aspect of the self to be).
And just as food for the body costs money to grow and distribute, so do films. A DVD can cost much less than a night out in the pub, another new Tshirt, or many of the other so-called essentials that people do not think twice about laying out their hard-earned cash for.
COMMENTS HERE
Comments
marisa zanotti
Jem Cohen has written a really interesting Manifesto you can read it in Vertigo Vol 4 no 2 Spring 2009
"Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that the relationship between those who make creative work and those who receive it should be one of mutual support".
Sally: I enjoyed watching your film RAGE I think it is in the right direction but not necessary in the right track. No offence really but being a filmaker from a third world country I don't believe 1 million dollars is a low budget film. In Latin America that is what the big guys get in order to make the "big production". (Last year I help in a free feature and the budget was 3 thousand dollars and everyone helped with the catering). ok I just wanted to get that out of my chest I know even so it is low budget.
The first reason why I watched your film was because it was intended to be free so when I saw all those big actors and actresses I was a Little shock ok maybe they are your friends and worked for free good. The big names can automatically generate some audience but also makes the become part of a certain group which pirates don't have much respect for.
With all due respect if you don't want the pirates to distribute your film for free making it available in a torrent, then you become their friends and take advantage of the network in witch they work put the film in the torrent system as well as youtube and any other network.
Now the difficult question that everyone is asking is how to make a profit out of it.
Well when someone figures that out the independent film industry will change for ever.
The other alternative:
Do a humble free film, make it Creative Commons, get the pirate bay to support you and start distributing torrents. Make it clear that you did the film without getting paid and post a donate bottom on the web page for the people who support this kind of actions and enjoy getting a hi quality DVD.
One example of this is the Swedish film I saw recently, Nasty Old People.
This was posted on their facebook account:
" Nasty Old people now received a total amount of 14.000 SEK (1 400 EUR, 2.082 USD) Once again, THANK YOU so much to all of you!! Also keep in mind that no one who donated “had” to do it; everybody can see the film anyway! That´s part of the reason this is so amazing!"
BTW thanks for being 2.0
cheers
In my humble opinion, that post completely misses the point.
Once a film is released on DVD it can easily be ripped and put on various websites for anyone to download without loss of quality. Had You tube been the chosen medium, it would not have stopped "RAGE" from appearing on such sites.
When people download films illegally , they hurt the company trying to make a profit from that particular film but the choice of "who" to hurt is with the downloader; will it be a multi-million (billion?)dollar corporation or an independent film company at the cutting edge of film making?
I do agree with a couple of points made in that post though: It was beaten into the ground and it was dull !
Actually, in my humble opinion, the mobile phone idea was the wrong idea.
YouTube would have been the right move. Here's why: First of all, you can upload to YouTube in a way that cannot be downloaded. If you try to record what's on your screen using a program, it comes out scrambled. Then, the only way becomes to point a video camera at your screen and upload the content... but if the INTERNET is the method utilized for piracy, then the ONLY way to beat the pirates is to make it easily accessible to the internet under a controlled method. YouTube. I was recently watching the MARVEL COMICS channel. They were posting the latest and newest episodes of the new X-men cartoon. Why? Because on Saturday Morning when it airs, I'm usually at work or with my sons. Guess what? I can see it for free! But guess what else? I see a 30 second commercial advertisement at the beginning of the video that I cannot skip through. I see another one half-way through the episode. Advertisers are paying YouTube for their advertisement to be shown. Some of that money goes back to Marvel so that they can continue to post free content.
So why would I want to go through the burden of downloading something from a torrent in camcorder quality, when I can get onto YouTube, watch it in either High Def or 480 progressive, or even 800x600 higher quality any time I want? It's easier to click on a youtube link than it is to go through the 3 minute ordeal to get into a bit-torrent program, download it, which takes forever since it's all about connection speed, then actually make sure I have harddrive space and so forth... It streams for free, without waiting, any time I wish from You Tube.
I know I pounded that into the dirt; just the same, people have a lazy side to them. They'd rather go to a website and stream it on the spot then sit down and wait for a pirated download. Trust me. They'd ALSO rather watch it on their 19 inch LCD, or run a cable from their video card to their television and watch it on a big screen. Watching a movie on a 3 inch LCD (and that's big for some phones) is annoying. Then you've got to pop in earbuds, which are annoying. Then its a drain on your battery - you aren't as likely to watch it on your phone unless you're bored; you sure aren't going to do it on your sofa... you'd do it in clips and parts during coffee breaks at work... the experience becomes less fulfilling. People play games on their cellphone because they're either too bored at work to do anything else, or because they don't have access to a home console with real games. Cell Phone extra functions that go above and beyond making calls and texts ...yeah... that's great for curing boredom. Okay. I know, I beat my point into the ground until it's dull; I didn't mean to be so verbose.
Again, to reiterate - if a 20 minute cartoon takes 20 minutes to download from the internet... plus it takes up space on my hard drive... why would I do it when I can just stream that cartoon in real time; it buffers during the first commercial and I can sit there and watch it in the time it WOULD have taken me to download the thing. Now I'm ready for the next episode and I still have plenty of space on my hard drive. You Tube! After you've had the movie up for a few weeks, you pull it back down. Now, if they want to have a copy, they'll go to Redbox and pay a BUCK to watch it. If Redbox is out, they'll pay FIVE dollars at Blockbuster. The night is saved. You make some money and straight men, the world over, scratch their head wondering WHY Jude Law is so attractive as Minx. It's a conundrum!
Hope you read this Sally Potter... thankyou for your RAGE I love this
..I have just bought your dvd so I hope you can continue on making films and that you will be solvent . it is both funny and moving and tragic and Merlin reminds me of the jaguar in Creature Comforts.
on PIRACY I am in education ( art /animation /digital media) and I always wish there was a way we could use material to show students for teaching purposes which was free, we all use youtube now for clips because we usually just want very short examples of say : good use of this or that ..and it would be impossible to buy all the clips we need and also would take a year to sort through all the dvd material to find the right bit. but the quality is often poor. so I would put in a vote for a dispensation ( as we say here in catholic ireland ) anyway lots and lots of best wishes for your future , tamtam