Tag 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 Presentation – Professor Sikand

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It was truly eye-opening today to hear Professor Sikand’s talk about copyright in the world of film, especially with the issue of the high costs associate with licensing music. What I found a bit saddening was the fact that these costs often dissuade filmmakers from making certain works. In a way, copyright in this case holding back the progression and evolution of film. Granted, we should protect artists and ensure that they do not lose out on revenue from their works. However, perhaps some efforts should be made to ease up on the rules regarding the usage of songs. After all, who knows what potentially great films the world could be missing out on because of all the restrictions in place?

Film Brown Bag part 2

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In regard to the part of the documentary we got to see about David, it was very heartfelt, humbling, and touching to say the least. Your heart really went out to David in the scene in which it showed him dancing to Ke$ha’s song “We R Who We R.” There he was just a little ten year old boy having fun, as if everything was okay, despite his looming death. It was truly inspiring. But the fact that Ke$ha and her “crew” needed to profit off of this scene of the documentary almost makes me sick. The fact that this scene was almost deleted from the documentary to avoid charges, is terrible, as it definitely is crucial in showing David’s character and strength. There should be some exceptions to copyright, and in my opinion, this definitely should be one of them.

This scene about David reminded me a lot of Katy Perry’s music video for her song “Firework.” It is interesting how one artist can seemingly be so sensitive to the world problems that kids suffer from, while another artist can take away (maybe by accident) so much from that world.

Film Brownbag part 1

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I never really thought about all of the small technicalities in putting together a film. All I ever thought of was the script and the actors memorizing the lines correctly. But when professor Sikand mentioned the example of shooting an important scene and it “getting ruined” by a car driving by playing an Adele song, I realized just how easily things could get complicated. The scene that the filmmakers were shooting now probably costs them double the amount of money, just from the brief background of a popular song. And because of this large amount of money being owed to Adele and her “crew,” a lot of smaller film makers will shy away from using their crucial footage, just because they can’t afford to pay for the few seconds of Adele in the backgroud. It is sad that a lot of important films are being thrown by the way side because of these types of monetary problems. This example reminds me of a quote from the epilogue of Vaidhyanathan’s book, Copyrights & Copywrongs, “Isn’t copyright supposed to encourage art?…Instead, more and more, excessive and almost perpetual copyright protection seems to be squelching beauty, impeding exposure, stifling creativity” ( Vaidhyanathan 185).

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.