Even at a unique place like the South by Southwest Film Festival, where independent artistry works alongside entrepreneurship, not everything is what it seems. I was convinced it was an act when Four Eyed Monsters co-creator Arin Crumley spoke up from the back of a room on Satuday in Austin's Convention Center, interrupting the panel in progress to make sure nobody minded if he recorded it.
Titled "Digital Cinema for Indies," the panel focused on ways for filmmakers to understand and prepare for the proliferation of digital cinemas, but the conversation took several tangents to address related issues like online self-distribution. Crumley's abrupt interruption struck me as a planned bit to remind attendees about the constant rights issues involved whenever a camera is running, but it turns out the festival simply doesn't want people recording these events since it posts them online. In short, the incident was, as one acquaintance later put it, "just Arin being Arin."
But my initial interpretation could have worked just as well, because the panel, one of the many frenzied industry conversations taking place here in Texas this week, represented the varying perspectives on new media's relationship to the film community at large. Anticipating "a movement where it doesn't matter where the space is," DIY filmmaker Lance Weiler cautioned that "there are trappings" to standard theatrical distribution models for many filmmakers." (This apparently didn't sit well with the Landmark Theater head sitting to his left).
When moderator Scott Kirsner (whose thoughts on the conversation can be found here ) asked how many filmmakers in the audience preferred a theatrical release to home video, the response was muted. "Modify the question," someone shouted out, proclaiming that a theatrical release for a first feature was important, but reaching any kind of audience trumped the model for later projects. At one point, somebody complained that the panelists were getting off topic, and the conversation returned to less immediately divisive issues like Hollywood studios' Digital Cinema Initiative (and Emerging Pictures' i-Cinema Standard), but a greater conversation lurked in the background.
It continued that evening, when Weiler hosted a roundtable discussion at the downtown offices of community-based online film focus group B-Side to initiate his promotion of the From Here to Awesome project. At least two dozen varied members of the industry crammed into a conference room for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on issues like piracy, self-distribution, open source content and Internet fanbases (for this last one, Kirsner, again, has a good recap here ).
Early on, filmmaker Fritz Donnelly suggested that "we should think about the tools of how to make film and distribute it as both interactive processes." To illustrate his point, Donnelly asked everyone in the room to stand up and touch the person sitting across from them, saying that, in this way, a community-based project is created. Directed Brett Gaylor elaborated on that idea by discussing his Open Source Cinema production, a documentary about piracy that contains user-generated content submitted by visitors to his site.
The conversation turned to rights issues when Gaylor said that the documentary uses unlicensed footage of Disney products for satiric effect. Obviously, Disney wouldn't give permission for this use, but Gaylor said that his original content was secured by a Creative Commons license, which rectified the problem of unlicensed content. "It's not precluding me from distribution deals," he said.
From across the room, David Garber, the CEO of the film licensing firm Lantern Lane Entertainment, spoke up. "Yes, it is," he said. If you don't have clearance for your film, you can't release it commercially. I think that what you're talking about sounds really fascinating, but you should rethink the footage that you don't have licensing for."
Gaylor stood by his assertion. "I can't say that I made Mickey, but I might have the right to use him," he explained.
On a related topic, some people considered piracy to be a good thing for independent filmmakers solely interested in getting their work seen. Producer Tommy Pallotta talked about the benefits of piracy for films in limited release, using his experience with A Scanner Darkly as a prime example. "The audience for these smaller art films is really boundless. As a producer, I haven't seen any revenue streams from these movies. Ninety percent of an audience in Korea had already seen the movie. So I'm like, 'Rip 'em. Post 'em." Another participant talked about the importance of using specific devices to market individual work for the sake of the individual, rather than his bank account.
"If you think about it as x dollars a month, then it is a commodity," he said. "Nobody thinks, 'Wow, the glass of water that came out of the sink was really special today.'"
--Eric Kohn
Check back here tomorrow for more SXSW news.