Techdirt. Stories filed under "films"

Kenyan Filmmaker Who's Planning To Distribute His Documentary Via 'Pirates' Posts First Hour Of New Film On Youtube

Tim Cushing — Mon, 7 Jan 2013 20:02:00 PST

A couple months back we covered the story of Patrick Mureithi, a Kenyan filmmaker who was raising money for a documentary on post-election violence in his home country. He was asking for $5,000 to cover travel expenses and some related costs and was hoping that Kenya's thriving "piracy industry" would handle the distribution end of the business, spreading his message of hope throughout his homeland.

The good news is Murethi's Indiegogo campaign met its goal and he is back in Kenya setting up viewings of his documentary and shooting more footage to add to it. It's still in its "first draft" stage according to Murethi, but he sent a message our way informing us that he's uploaded the first hour of the still-unfinished documentary to Youtube.

@techdirt Here's the film. Please share it widely: youtube.com/watch?v=Ze6tG5…Peace, p
— Patrick Mureithi (@MureithiPatrick) January 6, 2013

He's also blogging about his experiences returning to Kenya (he currently lives in Missouri), including this "fun" little shakedown at the hands of customs at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport:

Custom's dude @ the airport: Hello? What do you have in those bags?
Me: Some clothes and my camera equipment.
Dude: What are you doing with this equipment?
Me: I'm working on a documentary about healing from trauma after post-election violence.
Dude: Are you a press-man?
Me: No.
Dude: Where is your filming permit?
Me: I don't have one
Dude: Then we have to keep your equipment until you get a permit
Me: I find it hard to leave this equipment here after all the sacrifice it took to get it
Dude: Go talk to that lady (presumably his superior)

- - -

Lady: What are you using this equipment for?
(I explain what I did to dude)
Lady: But this happened five years ago!
Me: Yes, but the trauma has not gone away, and will not go away with time
Lady: How will it go away then?
Me: Through education about trauma and teaching various ways that we can heal
Lady: This is a very controversial film. You need a permit, and you need to leave your equipment with us until you get one.
Me: Please, madam, this is not agreeable with me
Lady: Go see that man in that office

- - -

Man in office: Where is your permit?
(The Dance repeats itself. 45 minutes in total)
Man: We'll let you go with your equipment, but you have to pay 1% of the equipment's cost, non-refundable

I pay, and scurry off to meet my father who has been patiently waiting, sipping coffee through a straw.

Karibu Kenya.

Apparently only non-controversial films are allowed to roam permit-free, unless you're willing to pay a non-refundable "deposit" on equipment you own. A bit of a rough start to be sure, but more recent posts seem a bit more upbeat.

Hopefully, Murethi will keep us posted on any new developments, including the implementation of his scofflaw distribution system once the film is completed.

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George Lucas: Still Planning To Make Films, But They Won't Be Shown In Theaters

Mike Masnick — Mon, 5 Nov 2012 14:56:46 PST

Back in 2006, we wrote about George Lucas claiming that the $200 million feature film was dead and that he was going to focus on making much cheaper videos for TV or online. That's not entirely what's happened in the interim, but it appears that he may be more serious about focusing on such things now that he's handed over Lucasfilm to Disney. In an interview about what he's working on next, he said that he's still going to make films, but he doesn't expect that they'll be for theater viewing:

His last film was this year's "Red Tails," which told the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, a legendary black flight unit formed in 1941 that debunked widely held beliefs that black pilots were incapable of fighting in combat. While he described that film as a labor of love, he said, "I'm going to go further out than that. I barely got 'Red Tails' into the theaters. The ones I'm working on now will never get into the theaters."

That could mean a lot of different things, but it would be cool to see someone like Lucas really embrace the internet...

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Wilt Chamberlain's Family Tries To Block Film About His College Years, Claiming 'Publicity Rights'

Mike Masnick — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 10:22:31 PDT

A filmmaker is trying to make a film about basketball great Wilt Chamberlain's college years at Kansas. However, his estate appears to be threatening the filmmaker if he goes ahead, claiming such things as publicity rights over Chamberlain's image (thanks to Nancy for sending this over).

“Please be advised that on December 21, 2001, the court approved that the Chamberlain Family are entitled to ‘all of the rights, titles and interests into the intellectual property and rights of publicity associated with the international sports celebrity in the name and likeness of Wilton Norman Chamberlain.’

“Kevin, therefore, I request on behalf of my family, and as outlined in our above-mentioned letters, that you do not violate these rights by pursuing the name and likeness of Wilt since you do not have permission from our family.”

We've discussed many times just how frequently publicity rights are being abused to stop basic speech, and this appears like another such case. While publicity rights depend on the specifics of state laws, it is generally not considered a violation in any way to make a film about a public figure. That's why something like The Social Network was allowed, despite Mark Zuckerberg's obviously distaste for a movie highlighting the various legal claims against him and Facebook.

Publicity rights are supposed to be about preventing someone's image from being used to endorse a product -- such as putting their image on a cereal box. According to this document (pdf), Kansas doesn't have a publicity rights law (or didn't back in 2010). So, perhaps they're claiming that some other state's laws might apply. The family appears to live in Las Vegas, and Nevada does have a publicity rights law, which extends 50 years after death -- so perhaps that's what they're relying on. Many other states don't recognize such rights after death.

Either way, this seems silly and not at all a publicity rights issue. No one is going to assume that this movie is necessarily endorsed by Chamberlain or his family, just as they don't naturally assume any sort of biopic was obviously endorsed by those the film is about (or their families). Instead, this just seems like a clear case of someone trying to use the law to censor a filmmaker. Shameful.

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DailyDirt: Put The Fun In Crowdfunding

Michael Ho — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 17:00:00 PDT

More and more crowdfunded projects are popping up all the time. We've mentioned a few recently, like the video game that collected over $3 million from tens of thousands of folks who essentially pre-ordered the game before it was even created. Here are just a few more cool Kickstarter projects that look interesting.

Endangered is a short live action film project which tells a story about the world after it's been taken over by strange and dangerous creatures. At just the $20 level, your face will be included in the film on a "missing person" poster in a post-apocalyptic world. [url]
You could probably buy steel wall hooks from some huge hardware store chain, but they wouldn't look like rabbits and come in a handful of colors. And why wouldn't you want wall hooks named Frank? [url]
Long-form journalism isn't dying, and Matter wants to prove it by producing important and newsworthy stories. A team of reporters will be writing about science and technology stories each week, they'll be aiming to sell each article for 99 cents a piece. [url]
To find more interesting stuff on entrepreneurship, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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ABC Affiliates Blocked From Interviewing Johnny Depp Because He Is Promoting A Film Not Produced By Disney

Zachary Knight — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 03:46:51 PDT

Disney recently released the fourth entry of the Pirates of the Caribbean on DVD. With this, the full force of Disney's marketing muscle is on the loose. This includes enforcement of a clause in Depp's contract that prevents any ABC affiliate from interviewing him if it relates to any non-Disney film.

Otm Shank writes in to let us know that the Austin based KVUE, an ABC affiliate not owned by Disney, attended a premiere of Depp's new movie The Rum Diary but was not allowed to interview him. As pointed out by TVSpy, KVUE reporter Shelton Green said:

We came here expecting to talk with one of the biggest names in Hollywood. But apparently Disney doesn't want Johnny Depp’s new movie, premiering here at the Paramount, to get more exposure than his newest 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movie. So they didn't allow us to interview him, nor did they allow us to get video of him.

Is there really a point to this embargo? I don't think so. By enforcing this embargo on ABC affiliates, Disney is not helping to promote its films, but is rather forcing these local stations to lose value with their viewers. Which do you think most viewers and fans of Johnny Depp want to watch, a report about not being able to interview Johnny Depp or an interview with Johnny Depp? I guess Disney doesn't care about the fans of the actors they work so hard to 'protect'.

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LA Times' Propaganda Piece Claims Piracy Hurts Filmmakers Without Any Actual Evidence

Mike Masnick — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 09:20:15 PDT

Reader jjmsan was the first of a few of you to send over this silly piece in the LA Times claiming that independent filmmakers are being hurt by unauthorized file sharing, but it's completely devoid of any actual evidence. It kicks off with the story of one indie film director who released a movie and insists that he's been harmed. But what's the evidence? Well, a lot of people have downloaded his film. Ok. So? When other movie makers saw that, they put in place smart business models to encourage people to buy something, and they did quite well because of it. By embracing file sharing and combining it with smart business models, tons of filmmakers who never would have been able to do anything with their film have now been able to build an audience and make a living.

The filmmaker in the story, Greg Carter, doesn't seem to have done any of that. He appears to have just complained about people who wanted to see his movie, rather than giving them something to buy. And while he insists that he's "lost $100,000 in revenue," he never seems to recognize that there was a good chance a lot fewer people would have cared to watch his film in the first place if it weren't for file sharing. The fact is that he failed to put in place a business model that embraced how people wanted to view the film. It's not "piracy" that's to blame, it's Greg Carter not putting in place a smart business model like a bunch of other filmmakers have done.

The article also highlights a filmmaker, Ellen Seidler, who complains about spending hours a day sending emails to file sharing sites, demanding they take down her film. Just think how much better she could be doing if she spent that same time connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy.

What a waste of space by the LA Times, who shouldn't be misleading people like this with bogus articles. It's articles that portray these people as victims, due to their own lack of business initiative, that does real harm to filmmakers. If, instead, the LA Times focused on smart filmmakers who are in the same situation as Carter and Seidler, but instead embraced it and are making real money because of it, they'd be helping. Instead, they're just making more of a mess.

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High Quality Fan Flick Leads To $8 Million Hybrid Fan/Investor Funded Pro Film

Mike Masnick — Tue, 6 Jul 2010 13:26:01 PDT

Four years ago, we wrote about the amazing quality of Star Wreck, a fan-created Star Trek spoof that was created on effectively no budget, for fun, but which had stunningly good special effects (especially for no budget). We pointed this out not to say the future of film was such fan labors of love, but to note that the claims that professional movies needed $200 million budgets to create amazing special effects was a myth. However, we've had a few Hollywood insiders use this particular story time and time again to falsely suggest that we claimed that Star Wreck represented the future of the movie business.

But, what's interesting is what's happened since Star Wreck. As we noted last year the filmmakers behind Star Wreck have been busy at work on their latest project, called Iron Sky, and they were experimenting with a sort of hybrid funding model that included a fair amount of fan support, whereby fans could buy "War Bonds" to crowdfund a portion of the movie.

Wired is now reporting that the film has raised 90% of its $8.5 million budget, and they're close enough that plans are moving forward to get the movie production underway. Again, this particular effort was a hybrid. Part of the money is fan funded and part of it involves traditional movie investors.

But what's most interesting to me is how this story progressed. It went from some fans messing around and creating a rather impressive film visually speaking, to a new $8.5 million production. $8.5M is still a small amount from a movie-making perspective, but it's not nothing. Plenty of excellent indie films have been made for a lot less. And, of course, you never know what happens next, after this film is made as well. And that was really the point. It was never that the model that created Star Wreck was the answer, but that the overall ecosystem is evolving, and its evolving to a world where the fans and the community really area a part of things, rather than looked at as evil people who just want stuff for free. Embracing your community leads to wonderful possibilities.

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Fair Use And Films: Does Running Everything By The Lawyers Really Improve Your Film?

Mike Masnick — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:55:00 PST

After the panel discussion on ACTA, a special "Fair Use Film Screening" (again, as a part of World's Fair Use Day) was held in the same building, in the offices of the law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf, which was quite a lot of fun. It really wasn't so much a "film screening" as it was a panel discussion with a few short film clips shown. The panel consisted of Mark Hosler of the band Negativland as the moderator (who, of course, went through the fair use battles before many of the younger generation was even born, let alone had to consider this stuff), along with Brett Gaylor, discussing his film RIP: A Remix Manifesto and Kembrew McLeod, discussing his film Copyright Criminals.

One point that stood out from both McLeod and Gaylor was the difficulties and legal hurdles each had to go through to even complete these movies. Since they dealt with so many examples of mashups and samples, all of the legal questions that applied to the mashups and samples themselves in some ways applied to the movies as well. In both cases, they spent an awful lot of time with lawyers -- even when it came to artistic editing decisions, in order to do their best to keep the films "legal." Many in the audience were surprised when both said that, in some ways, the lawyers' demands actually helped them make better films -- but Nina Paley (who I finally met) chimed in from the audience to point out that it makes sense that copyright lawyers would help in making a better film about copyright law -- but that was probably one of a very small number of situations where movie makers would benefit from the editing suggestions of a bunch of lawyers.

The other thing that came out in the discussion was that both filmmakers are still a bit unsure about the legality of their films. They both have pretty strong backing from people who insist their films are above the law, but it's a bit of an open question. Kembrew's film, in particular, may run into some big questions fairly soon. His film will be airing on PBS next week (check your local listings) and while he was careful to try to license much of the music in the film, it was quite an impossible task. He noted how silly it was that if you want to use a hiphop song that uses 20 samples, you need to get licenses for both the recording and the songwriting (publishing) for the song itself and for each of the 20 songs sampled -- and even if you agreed to a $10,000 license per sample for the first 19 rights holders, if the 20th came along and demanded $30,000, you then had to go back and pay all the others $30,000 as well.

So his film contains many unlicensed clips -- including one of a George Clinton track, that Bridgeport claims ownership on. You may recall Bridgeport -- they're the company that claims to hold the rights to a ton of George Clinton music (though Clinton claims his signature was forged by Bridgeport) and has sued hundreds of hiphop artists who have sampled Clinton's works (Clinton tends to like the fact that hiphop artists sample his music). Kembrew tried to clear the right with Bridgeport, and received an amusing (if troubling) call from someone there after many, many attempts to contact them. After picking up the phone and being told that someone from Bridgeport was getting on the line, suddenly a voice on the other end yelled "DENIED!" After trying to respond to that, the guy against just said "DENIED! No reason given!" and hung up.

However, the PBS version is going forward with that clip included -- though, PBS is lucky in that it (alone) has a compulsory rate that it can pay for publishing (not recording) rights on music. Yet, the DVD copy of Kembrew's movie had to remove that scene and insert a different scene instead.

Both Gaylor and Kembrew detailed the insane lengths they had to go through to try to get Errors and Omissions (E&O) insurance, which many places require before showing a film. Kembrew actually was able to secure E&O insurance, though it was quite a hassle. Gaylor tried to, but eventually gave up, as it was just too troubling. He did, however, show a spreadsheet that he had to put together during the process of trying to get it, which went through every clip in the film, detailing where the content had come from, noting the exact length of the content, what it was used for and an explanation of why it was either licensed or fair use. The document was incredible, and Nina asked him to share it with the world so people could understand the level of ridiculousness that filmmakers had to go through. While Gaylor said he would do so, a lawyer in the audience advised him against it, suggesting it might open him up to a lawsuit.

While all of this may have sounded frustrating, the overall tone of the panel was quite optimistic. As in the post we had yesterday about the copyright bubble, the general consensus was that the younger generation today has learned to disregard copyright law. Hosler talked about how he used to have to explain the ins-and-outs of copyright law the high school and college kids when he did presentations on fair use, and now they already get it and already understand how ridiculous the laws are. It's that generation -- the ones who are growing up listening to Girl Talk and who see things like Kutiman as brilliant -- who are now understanding quite deeply what an obsolete concept traditional copyright really is in these situations. As they get older, the panel agreed, the laws would eventually catch up to reality. It might not be pretty, and there were plenty in the older generation who would lash out, misunderstand and react badly -- but the end result is inevitable.

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Star Wreck Filmmakers Experiment With Iron Sky

Michael Ho — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:42:00 PST

BullJustin points out to us that the guys behind Star Wreck (which we wrote about back in 2006) are trying a few interesting things to promote their follow-up movie project Iron Sky -- a story about Nazis who fled to the moon in 1945 with plans to return to Earth in 2018. To connect with fans, the Iron Sky project released some Creative Commons material for a movie teaser remix and is selling "War Bonds" to crowdfund part of the movie production. To be clear, the "War Bonds" aren't actually bonds -- just a limited-edition package (only 2,000) of keepsakes that includes:

a 16-page book with very pretty pictures
a DVD with the teaser trailer and two documentaries
a signed certificate of support
official dogtags
undying gratitude

There are about 1,760 war bonds still available at 50€ a piece. Though, you can get some of the items separately from the Iron Sky online store (undying gratitude is presumably included in all purchases).

With only 240 war bonds sold since August 2008, the Iron Sky movie isn't going to be completely funded by fans. But it looks like the British Stealth Media Group has chipped in up to 1 million euros for worldwide distribution rights -- and the movie's total budget has grown to be at least 5 million euros. On top of that, the Star Wreck folks seem to have even bigger plans -- with a separate Iron Sky game project called Iron Sky: Operation Highjump that is looking for contributions/suggestions from fans to create a single-player video game based on the movie's background story. All of which is based on the WreckAMovie community that encourages more films to be bootstrapped and crowdsourced from a collection of both amateur and professional filmmakers.

So for much less than $200 million, the Star Wreck crew is developing creative ways to interact with their fans (and other filmmakers) to get their projects accomplished more cost effectively. They've given away free promotional materials for fan remixing. They've set up a process for fans to donate ideas and money to the project. They're creating movie accessories that get an audience excited about a movie that hasn't even been made yet. Shouldn't this be the way more movies are produced?

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More Independent Film Makers Embrace News Of Their Film Being Pirated

Mike Masnick — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:36:00 PST

Alan Gerow was the first of a few folks to send in the news that some independent filmmakers not only discovered that their film, Ink, had ended up being widely available via Bittorrent, but that they were quite happy about the exposure. Alan sends over the email that the filmmakers sent out:

Dear Fans and Friends,

Over the weekend something pretty extraordinary happened. Ink got ripped off. Someone bit torrented the movie (we knew this would happen) and they posted it on every pirate site out there. What we didn't expect was that within 24 hours Ink would blow up. Ink became the number 1 most downloaded movie on several sites having been downloaded somewhere between 150,000 to 200,000 times as far as we can tell. Knowing there's absolutely nothing we can do about it, we've embraced the piracy and are just happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure.

As a result, Ink is now ranked #16 on IMDb's movie meter and is currently one of the top 20 most popular movies in the world.

This all started as a result of the completely underground buzz that you've each helped us create. We've had no distributor, no real advertising and yet the word of mouth that you've generated has made the film blow up as soon as it became available worldwide. So many of you came to see the movie multiple times, bringing friends and family and many of you have bought the DVD and Blu-ray from us. All of this built up and built up and suddenly it exploded.

We don't know exactly where this will all lead, but the exposure is unquestionably a positive thing.

Ink hits Netflix, Blockbuster, iTunes and many more tomorrow! Remember to get your signed copies, t-shirts and posters at the Ink Store.

Thank you so much for the constant love and support.

Jamin and Kiowa
Double Edge Films"

Again, we've seen this with other films as well, but it's always nice to see filmmakers who realize it doesn't make sense to freak out, but to look for ways to take advantage of this as a promotional opportunity.

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File Sharing Sites Team Up To Help Promote Indie Films

Mike Masnick — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:00:00 PDT

While some continue to insist that there's nothing good or legal that comes from file sharing sites, many content creators who have embraced those sites have found them to be wonderful tools for distribution and promotion. Now, it looks like a bunch of them are teaming up to do even more. Mininova, The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, Miro, Vuze and Frostwire have all agreed to work with a new project called Vodo, which will help promote indie films. Filmmakers can offer their films through Vodo and get promoted on the various file sharing sites -- and the system is designed to let people easily donate. While I'm not a huge fan of a pure "donation" business model, it should be interesting to see how Vodo evolves over time. Certainly, it could be a valuable tool to indie filmmakers who recognize that obscurity is a much bigger threat to their efforts than piracy.

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