Today, my video, “The Internet is Unstoppable“, was posted to my program’s official blog by my professor, Kathy Gill. She seemed to like it enough to want to show it to her undergraduate students in another class even. Well, I shared this news on Facebook, where an independent filmmaker friend of mine commented that the idea was great, but that “free” hurts the little guys. I don’t know to what extent piracy endangers content producers on the slim side of the media scale, but I responded with this:
Hey, I don’t condone piracy or content theft of any variety – I’m just discussing what’s already happening. Copyright is a broken concept. You see, as long as the cost of reproducing content is basically zero, then you look pretty foolhardy trying to protect your right to sell an individual media item when it doesn’t cost you anything to create that individual SKU beyond its initial production. And for the little guys who have very limited production costs, they look even more foolish trying to sell digital product for net gain! Why on Earth would you expect people to gullibly contribute to your net profits when they KNOW, right or wrong, how to reproduce it and that it doesn’t cost a dime to do so?
So, by now you’re asking: Well, how do I recapture my production costs, in the least? My answer is that you can only expect to make money off of performances (movie tickets, concerts) and fixed media (CDs, DVDs, etc – if people are somehow interested in your fancy packaging enough to buy your product in that increasingly outmoded way) and licensing of any tangible related goods. But, yeah, you have to realize that anything beyond that becomes a question of greed, even for the little guy. But, because of online and the way people behave, you can’t expect to make much money from fixed media anymore. If you want to make money in the digital age, you have to find an alternative means of generating revenue and recapturing your investment. Independent producers should stop whining about what they lose to piracy and should start thinking about giving their content away for free and generating interest in ancillary product (say, asking for donations at a meet-and-greet screening, or raising capital for future productions with people you can package your content with, or contracting with larger production companies who can otherwise fund you). What it comes down to is YOU HAVE TO MAKE GOOD CONTENT. All of these things are sacrifices you’ll have to make if you want to compete. Besides, think of the exposure you get for embracing “free”! It’s very forward-thinking of any independent content producer. Just don’t quit your day job!
The more I think about it, piracy, or any other unauthorized reproduction, just serves as quality control for your product. If you’ve made a brilliant independent feature, then you should hope to generate enough buzz to get discovered and to find yourself being courted by a larger distribution entity who wants to pick up your film and subsequently monetize it through indirect channels (because you were smart and posted it on-line for free, so lots of people could see it and share it and talk about it). If you’re movie is terrible, then the crowd will filter it out and you’ll just have to deal with rejection. As far as I’m concerned, all small and undiscovered films should be posted on-line for free, shared via the bittorrent protocol or in some other manner, and otherwise freely distributed. The same kind of thing is working in the music world and should be applicable in the games industry, too.
And, generally speaking, fans of independent films still enjoy the cinema-going experience and will pay for tickets once your feature platforms to their town. My program director Hanson Hosein has made his independent films available for free through services like Hulu and SnagFilms while still finding ways to sell tickets at screenings and select copies on DVD for those who want them.
So, I think the little guy has a lot to gain from piracy. Why make just a little bit of money off of a small group of people who pay to see your film at it’s first screening or two, who just subsequently turn around and tell the world if they should or should not see it? If your movie is bad, then you’ve just greedily capitalized on that tiny window of control, and that’s about it. You have far more money to gain by making good product and sharing it for free on the offset then by simply churning out features for the heck of it. That old media model doesn’t work anymore. Piracy forces everyone to step-up their game.
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Tags: cinema, film, independent film, innovation, movies, piracy, quality control, sharing