Category Archives: Film

Kickstarter

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For those of you who know what Kickstarter is you’ll probably agree that it is a wonderful service. For those that don’t know, Kickstarter is a service that lets anyone post their idea for a project, invention, charity, whatever on the page and then people can donate money to see the project completed, usually with prizes for donating.

Kickstarter has been great for independent filmmakers as it allows common people to overcome the biggest obstacle in making films, money. This has lead to numerous mini-series on youtube and even a few feature length productions.

Recently Zach Braff posted to Kickstarter that he wan’t money to make another film which will probably be similar to Garden State. There is controversy however because Zach Braff has money. The Argument is that people would have to pay to get the film produced and then pay more to see it. Sound’s ridiculous right?

This got me thinking about ownership to the films creative rights should it get made. Normally producers provide the money for films to get made and they are then able to make a profit off of the film because copyright law grants them a certain percentage of the ticket sales depending on how much money they provided for the film. On Kickstarter though people are providing the same function a producer would except that unlike the producer they don’t get paid from the ticket sales and probably wouldn’t get credited in the film. So even though Kickstarter has fulfilled the producer role the “Producers” aren’t getting the reward they should from performing their function in the production of the film.

 

Today’s Class – Using Songs vs. Product Placement (Shark Tank)

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In the discussion in today’s class, somebody brought up the topic of song sampling vs product placement, particularly in movies and in television. Some people argued that if companies pay directors and producers to have products featured in movies and shows, artists should do the same thing for the exposure they are getting. I didn’t get to speak on the issue, but my argument has to do with the purpose of such actions. When a song is included in a show or movie, it is usually intended to impart some sort of mod in the particular scene where it is seen. In a sense, the song ends up becoming a part of the show or movie as an art form, and several movies are known for the music featured in them. Product placement doesn’t do any of this, as is seen in the example video below with one of my favorite shows, Shark Tank. The T-Mobile product placement here is not only utterly ridiculous, it adds nothing to the show in terms of value or artistic merit. If there was no licensing deal made here, there is no reason that the producers of the show would include this in there at all. Essentially, even though having a song featured in a movie or show gives exposure to the artist, it is because the directors and producers want to use the songs to ad to their work that differentiates this from product placement.

Documentary Filmmakers and Fair Use

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Today’s brownbag brought up some really interesting points.  One point that Professor Sikand mentioned was that many times documentary filmmakers become discouraged by the price of licensing copyrighted works.  This is a shame because most filmmakers do not have the budget of a Hollywood feature film and upon realizing how much the licensing of a song for their movie can be, they often decide against producing or finishing their work.  This prevents many important stories from being told.  Professor Sikand did mention that their is a light at the end of the tunnel.  She mentioned that there are websites that feature music that can be used freely in movies as long as the artist is credited. While reflecting on the short clip we watched where filmmakers were discussing copyrighted works in relation to their films, I decided to look a little bit more into this issue.  While searching the web I cam across this website which highlights documentary filmmakers’ statement of best practices in fair use.

Lab Assignment: Alphabet Introduction

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I was most impressed by the introduction to this video.  It begins by showing an average city and zooms in on all their signs and posters.  Then an old man appears in a park talking about how letters are used in daily life.  After being partially enticed by the thought of the numerous uses of letters, at 1:02 he states, “Our lives are ruled by words” and then his name appears.  That moment was more climactic and shocking than i thought a 1970s video about the alphabet could ever be.  he then states “words made up by those 26 symbols, which are the letters of our alphabet” to demonstrate how all of the uses of words in daily life he just stated are all symbolized through only 26 letters.

 

The Making of a Renaissance Book

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After Professor Phillips mentioned the 20 minute documentary during our printing demonstration on friday I decided to take a look. Assuming you can look past the sometimes maddening soundtrack, I found it very interesting that only half of the 20 minutes were on what we did in class thursday. The first half of the documentary was about the craftsmen who physically make the letters that are assembled by the printer. A process that is seemingly more meticulous and time consuming than the demonstration we had (if you can believe it). Its hard to even imagine the amount of work and time that goes into printing just one letter, let alone an entire book. Before the advent of modern technology, printing must have been an incredibly long and time consuming process, more so than I could have imagined even after the printing demonstration. This documentary really makes you appreciate the rare books we have seen, the effort it must have taken to make just one of those books is astounding.

For those of you interested in viewing the documentary it can be found on our moodle page under Authorship and Book History.

Faulkner

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I stumbled across an article the other day that discussed William Faulkner’s famous quote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past” and the fact that this line was said in the movie “Midnight in Paris”. Apparently, this is a huge deal, as the company that owns the right to many of Faulkner’s works is suing because of this statement. Now, we all know that the main purpose of copyright it to protect the work and rights of the author. However, I think it is safe to say that the reason the company is suing in this case is for personal gain, not to protect the rights of the author (as not only is the author dead, but character in the movie who states this line mentions right after that it was Faulkner who stated it). I think that this is a prime example of how many companies who own the rights of a deceased author’s work  may abuse this power and copyright as a whole, using it mainly to make money. I really don’t think that the company suing in this case is worried that Faulkner’s work is being stolen.

Here is the article:faulkner-estate-sues-over-midnight-in-paris-quote.html

Television and copyright Laws

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Over winter break I interned at Lou Reda productions (located in Easton) they’re the mind behind cable documentaries focusing on Vietnam and WWII. The part of the job that pertains to this class was their film archive, they have an archive of thousands of hours of footage most of which is copyrighted. A large portion of their business comes from selling the rights to fair use footage they own. what I gained from this job was what could and could not be sold to other production companies for them to use. Anything shot by the US government was fair game to be sold, this meant any footage shot of USO shows, combat footage and propaganda films could be sold off to other companies. the majority of my job was going through their large archive fulfilling film requests so I  quickly learned how to tell what was shot by the Government and what had already been edited by someone else (say the History channel) and therefore couldn’t be sold.

what struck me in particular was that they seemed to have a large amount of footage that couldn’t be used due to copyright laws. When I asked one of my coworkers about this he explained that they saved the footage for when the copyrights ran out it would then be usable and therefore worth it to hold on to.

So I just thought I would share with you my hands on experience with copyright laws and hopefully it will help someone with their paper.

Zero draft

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Copyright Laws exist to protect authorship and avoid unauthorized versions and variations of said work. Should copyright laws then also protect work from its own author?  In film particularly this has become a growing problem as technology improves and the digitization of film stock becomes more cost effective. More and More we see old films shot  on 35mm film being re-released in HD digital format, this in itself would not pose a problem and would facilitate consumership by a more modern audience than that at the time of the film’s original release. However, Filmmakers who retain the rights to their films such as George Lucas have taken this as an opportunity to change details in their films by re-editing them. This can change the entire meaning of certain scenes and the way characters are viewed by audiences. A prime example is the infamous Cantina scene in Star Wars: A New Hope. In the original cut of the scene at the time it is released Harrison Ford’s character murders an Alien attempting to capture Ford’s Character Han Solo. In this original version in Han Solo shoots through a table and kills the Alien before he has a chance to react. Lucas then re-released the film in an updated version boasting of better technology and an “Improved” film. Audiences were horrified when they noticed that the Cantina scene had been re-edited to a version in which the Alien shoots first and Han Solo reacts in self defense. This changes Han’s character from an edgy space cowboy to a righteous yet gritty adventurer.

 

This is but one example of how changing a minor detail can in turn change the motives of a central character and therefore the entire emotional aspect of the film. Do Authors have the right to go back on their fans and change details of the work that Audiences have come to know and love or does this work now that it has been consumed by the general public belong to the general public. Modern Copyright laws have repeatedly shown us that lawmakers feel that the work belongs to its author and that the author may do as they please with said work, including re-releasing and changing details.

Zero Draft Portfolio 1

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Just a few things I am thinking about for my first essay.

In our contemporary world and modern day society, copyright functions as a control in different markets.  From music to publishing, copyright acts as a way for artists and creators to decide under what conditions, if any, others may use their work.  If we no longer had the protection of copyright, then we could essentially take control of these different markets, adapting the creations within each to our own personal perceptions.  How could this be beneficial to the public? How would the elimination of copyright impact artists? If printing houses hadn’t differentiated themselves from one another, would copyright exist today?