Category: Film

Russian Filmmaker Sees Piracy as Path to Obscurity

With few exceptions, a short film has almost no market value today.  Certainly, a short can be the occasional prelude to work that might have market value—either as a calling card for the filmmaker or as a “proof-of-concept” draft for a would-be feature.  But in general, most of the best short films are in a category of their own—conceived and executed as purely artistic expressions with small audiences and limited avenues for revenue-based distribution.

So, when a short film is nominated for an Academy Award, it’s a really big deal.  Particularly at a time when the Academy is justifiably being criticized for a lack of diversity among feature-film nominees, the shorts, documentaries, and foreign films are at least three Oscar categories in which recognition is better immunized against the PR machine that influences the bigger movies.  Almost more importantly, the festival circuit matters a lot. It’s where a short can be seen on a big screen by audiences who truly love cinema, including fellow filmmakers with whom the film’s creator wants to network.  All of this activity ultimately produces more great works through various collaborations and exchanges of ideas.

As reported this week, Russian filmmaker Konstantin Bronzit is literally begging fellow Russians not to pirate his Oscar-nominated short We Can’t Live Without Cosmos, after a festival screener was stolen, digitized and uploaded onto Russian social media.   Of course, Bronzit’s plea isn’t about financial loss, but rather that his film can be disqualified from various festivals around the world.  This is because many of the major festivals have fairly strict entry requirements, limiting the types of exhibition a film is allowed to have before being shown at their venues. And on this matter Bronzit’s choice of words as they appear in the Hollywood Reporter are revealing:

Bronzit called on Russian users to stop illegitimate distribution of We Can’t Live Without Cosmos. “Without festival play, the film will just go into obscurity,” the director said. “Save my film and my work of four years.”

Obscurity.  I’ve heard that word somewhere before. It’s that market purgatory from which piracy supposedly rescues all manner of creative works.  We’ve heard the cliché repeated many of times, even by some creators:  “My problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity.”  Yet, here is a filmmaker who offers one very concrete example as to why piracy can damn his film to obscurity, even if lots of people see it online. Counter-intuitive?  Not if you understand the filmmaker’s needs or can at least respect them. Clearly, the standard rationalization for piracy—the rich movie studio trope—doesn’t apply to Bronzit, and since the filmmaker himself is saying he doesn’t want piracy’s “promotional help,” maybe that particular justification for “sharing” his film doesn’t hold water either.

Meanwhile, Adam Leipzig reports for Cultural Weekly, that a new study on the estimated cost of piracy to independent film reveals measurable, economic harm.  Because these smaller films can expect relatively narrow margins–a factor I have cited repeatedly on this blog–the conservative estimates used in the study reflect tangible losses of what Leipzig calls “life and death money for an indie filmmaker.”

Of course, what Konstantin Bronzit’s story throws into sharp relief—and this a basic concept piracy apologists simply cannot seem to grasp—is that what the media pirate and its users do in every single case, regardless of money, is rob the author of his right to choose.  And, if the sanctimonious, faux-progressive, sharing-economy piracy proponents can produce a rationalization for doing that, maybe it’s time they just admit they don’t give a damn about the works or their creators.

Comics Under Copyright

Recently, I’ve spent time on Netflix catching up on nearly all the TV series based on various Marvel and DC Comics properties.  By and large, in their own context, these shows are very good; and in some regards, they’re exceptional. Certainly, the overall quality of these programs is consistent with the general renaissance of the small screen that has taken place over the last decade or so, but I was paying attention to these derivative comic-book series in particular because the characters that belong to Marvel and DC are often cited as the type of intellectual property that should have long since devolved to the public domain.  The feeling among some of those who advance this view is that these classic characters and story elements are so ingrained in our cultural consciousness that they have attained a status akin to oral tradition or mythology and, as such, now belong to the commons.

In part, I suspect this sense of collective ownership is inherent to being an ardent fan of anything that has attained institutional status.  Much like the armchair quarterback “knows best” which play to call on Monday night, the serious comics fan can feel rather personal about narrative choices made with “his” characters. This is interesting in itself because it’s a sentiment that doesn’t really seek collective, or public, ownership so much as it implies an individual, I know better relationship to the works.  And these strongly held feelings may serve to aggravate the complaint that, most especially, corporate conglomerates should not be the owners of these properties.  Interestingly enough, though, while anyone may quarrel with a narrative choice made by any author(s), the overall craftsmanship of the TV series in question may not exist absent major media corporation ownership of these comic-book properties.

Watching several of these shows all at once inspires a variation on a thematic question I’ve asked many times about the idealism of the public domain, which is this:  These properties should be in the public domain so that “the public” may do what with them?  If ten years ago, Hulk, Captain America, Batman, Flash, et al had entered the public domain, what would the public get, either culturally or economically out of the transaction?  Because one thing it would not get are high-production-value TV shows like Gotham or Agents of Shield.  These programs are simply too expensive to be produced by any entity other than a fairly large organization that would never invest absent the underlying intellectual property rights.  And as I’ve pointed out in this post, even if one hates these shows, the larger economic benefits of major TV productions should not be dismissed.

Certainly, if Marvel and DC properties were in the public domain, then individual authors or comics artists could publish their own variations, and indie filmmakers could perhaps make works on a scale much smaller than even a single episode of a show like Gotham. But it seems to me we could also dilute both the commercial and cultural value of these properties rather quickly.  While these characters have been “rebooted” many times, I believe that part of what makes the reboot work (i.e. the ability to recycle characters without depleting their value) is centralized creative control over the universe of interrelated characters and plot lines for a period of time.

In this regard, fans of the Avengers films can follow the exploits of the Agents of Shield, which is set in a period shortly after the events depicted in the last Avengers feature film The Age of Ultron. Presumably, if any of the main characters from Agents appear in the next Avengers film, the stories will align, and this is only possible with centralized control over the Marvel universe. Plus, it seems to me that this is entirely consistent with the tradition of comics, whereby the fan can follow a variety of intersecting stories for a period time to some conclusion, leaving the stage bare for the next reboot.

One can argue that this doesn’t matter, that it would be better to have dozens of authors “free” to digitally publish a wider range of narratives derived from these properties, but I believe that’s a very hard case to make based on market realities and the way we relate (or not) to these types of characters and stories. For instance, how many consumers of the Marvel films and TV shows are serious “fans” rather than semi-ambivalent viewers like me?  I’ll go to these movies or watch these shows and enjoy them for what they are, but I’m not so devoted to, say, the Hulk that I’m going to seek out every variation on this character that I can find. And even among such enthusiasts, I doubt many would actually want 20 different storylines running concurrently—that it is more likely these Hulk fans would be drawn to one or two of their favorite derivative works in this regard. After all, having multiple, simultaneous storylines sort of betrays the serial nature that drew readers to comics in the first place.  Conversely, I do recognize that much of the criticism regarding corporate ownership of these comics properties comes from fan fiction writers and supporters of fan fiction; and this market is not to be dismissed, but neither should it be presumed to replace or supersede the mechanisms that produce highly marketable, job-supporting enterprises like TV shows.  Meanwhile, I will not be surprised if many conflicts viewed by fanfic creators can be resolved in creative ways that balance all interests.

So, in such a free-for-all market, either Hulk fans diffuse and head off in various directions, which interestingly enough, can betray the original argument that the character is part of a “common modern mythology,” or Hulk fans coalesce around a new derivative they like best, thus giving that derivative work a singular market value.  At this point, the creators of said derivative start talking about movies and TV shows and other ways to commercialize this derivative, which brings us right back to the need for intellectual property as the foundation for these substantial investments.

As I’ve said, had the Marvel and DC characters entered the public domain ten years ago, these TV series we have now, would not exist; and this has both economic and cultural implications.  The show Gotham, created by Bruno Heller, tells a narrative of the city beginning in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents.  Hence, the show mines imaginative possibilities that are ideally suited to the tradition of the “spin-off” by asking the question, What happens during all those years while Bruce Wayne is still a kid?  While it’s true that, if Batman were in the public domain or copyright didn’t protect derivative works, many writers out there, including potentially very talented ones, may ask the same question and write their own versions. But why is this culturally or economically desirable?

As a consumer, I have time in my life for, at most, one show like Gotham at a time—one version of The Penguin’s backstory, one version of what 12-year-old Bruce Wayne is up to, one version of Jim Gordon’s crusade to clean up his city. And I suspect the majority of consumers feel about the same and have no more time than I to indulge in more than the version of the moment. Of course, if Gotham were not engaging on several levels, then I would have time for zero shows exploring these narratives; and in this regard, the production design of this show alone represents the kind of work that can only begin with a foundation of serious investment in the underlying property.

Unlike shows like The Flash or Arrow, which are set in fictitious but contemporary cities, production design for Gotham poses a whole set of challenges regarding time and place that I think have been very smartly addressed by designer Doug Kraner and director Danny Cannon. The premise of the show is of course a prequel, exploring a narrative before the history we already know; but what this particular past looks and feels like is conveyed through a variety of carefully chosen and maintained design, prop, and textural details.  The City of Gotham is meant to evoke New York but not be New York. Hence, the overall look is achieved with a cross-section of non-concurrent, American design and prop elements. We see interiors and furnishings from 1930s to contemporary; vehicles from the late 1970s to early 80s; VCRs and tube televisions from the mid 1980s; and cellphones from the pre smartphone era that are definitely not contemporaries of the vehicles.  These choices help to set the City of Gotham in a past that is somewhat familiar but also distinct from any particular past as we know it. As Kraner explains in this article for The Guardian, time as conveyed through design becomes a strong narrative element throughout the series.  He describes the police station Bullpen as “…a dark, chaotic, corrupt old world that is very hard for him [Jim Gordon] to fight. It’s established. It’s been there forever. How is this one man going to change it all?”

New York City exteriors are carefully composed and digitally altered to sublimate one of the most recognizable places in the world into a city that isn’t quite recognizable, even to many New Yorkers.  Initially designing and then maintaining this illusion of the City of Gotham, making the city itself a character, is just one component of this show that represents more work than anyone would ever fund absent the rights to the underlying material.  All in, Gotham is a damn good show that fulfills both the creative and economic rationales for retaining derivative works rights in copyright.  And given the demand that today’s small-screen production values must be on par with feature films, the investment in this particular program is made that much more likely by Warner Brothers’ stewardship the DC Comics universe.

ADDENDUM:  Thanks to comments from a regular reader, it seems I should clarify that I do not mean to suggest that great works are not made from sources in the public domain.  Clearly, this is not the case.  It is the nature of comics characters in particular that inspired this essay. As stated in a couple of places, it seems there is an advantage to having one narrative at a time as exemplified in a spin-off work like Agents of Shield, which fills in gaps between one feature film and another.  These rationales certainly do not apply to all works.

Netflix Is Not An Internet Business

With the release this month of Netflix’s first official feature film Beasts of No Nation, the rental-turned-streaming service continues to prove itself a fierce competitor in the filmed entertainment industry—not only as a producer of award-winning projects, but as the preeminent, game-changing distributor having a dramatic influence on both traditional distribution models and viewer habits. This is particularly true with works we would normally call television programming, but it should be no surprise to see Netflix, Amazon, and other streaming services jump into the production of feature-length motion pictures. Still, even as Netflix reshapes the producer/distributor landscape, it would be a mistake to call it an “Internet business.”  It’s not. It’s a filmed-entertainment company—one that has followed almost the exact same business model as most cable networks, which built revenues on syndication (very similar to rentals) until they had the resources to begin producing original programming. Hence AMC makes Mad Men.

Naturally, the most profound change in TV viewing effected by streaming technology is the ability to “binge watch,” which is itself a neologism with an unnecessarily negative connotation. Speaking as a guy who abandoned “by appointment” television more than 25 years ago, I have to say that I now do watch TV shows again because of the opportunity to view an episode or two in sporadic moments of free time, though I wouldn’t really describe this as “binging” per se.  It’s really just a more dynamic and more convenient version of time-shifting (first made possible by the VCR), hence it’s easy to see the business logic in releasing whole seasons on a single day rather than one episode per week.  In a subscription model using on-demand technology, time no longer matters to the distributor as a point of access in order to retain revenue from viewers, but this is really the only distinction between a Netflix and an HBO as producer/distributors. And assuming HBO replicates the same model in the near future, this will not make it suddenly an Internet business.

But what is an Internet business anyway?  It may seem obvious, but not if we pay attention to both the colloquial, and even some of the formal ways in which we talk about the Internet. For as long as I can remember, friends and colleagues have been referring to the Internet when it isn’t quite what we mean at all. And I am sure I have been guilty of this lapse in clarity more than once on this blog, though I do try to use the expression Internet industry when writing about behaviors, motives, or agendas of a specific group of major corporations as subjects distinct from the technology itself.

Consider the expression Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet, a cliché that predates our digital times, but one that seemed to take on a new connotation during the dot com days when those bubbly, revenue-free business ventures were grist for a justifiable mill of cynicism.  Of course, neither then nor today would it make sense to dispute the veracity of information that comes through any particular set of wires. If a 20-year news veteran writes a story, it certainly does not matter if her work is published in print, online, or both. In this sense, there is no the Internet, there is only the journalist, her integrity, and her talent.  But that doesn’t stop us, it seems, from occasionally thinking of the Internet as a subjective noun, which can entertain, produce, deliver, swindle, amuse, enlighten, or lie; rather than as something more akin to a prepositional phrase, which creates an association between the individual and one form or another of human enterprise, action, or even folly and predation.  Still, we often say in casual conversation, I got this off the Internet, Look it up on the Internet, or Buy it from the Internet, and so on, entirely dissociating the information, content, or product from the extraordinarily complex, capital and labor-intensive processes behind the ephemeral page.

We talk about connections and awareness in the digital age, but real awareness is often not a byproduct of the consumer-convenience and ad-driven design of Web 2.0. Consider the reductive nature just in the act of buying a smart phone online.  A single click represents mining five metals in at least four countries as well as eight rare earths found mostly in China; international trade agreements; human labor working in conditions of varying degrees of quality; global shipping protected by multiple state navies; and a legal framework of mind-boggling proportion. In the same way many schools and parents have in recent years found it worthwhile to teach children that food doesn’t come from the supermarket, it is perhaps even more necessary to teach them that absolutely nothing comes from the Internet.

With entertainment media, it clearly does not matter whether HBO’s True Blood transmits to a viewer’s TV via one type of signal while Netflix’s Orange is the New Black uses a different transmission technology. This has absolutely nothing to do with the viewer enjoying either program and even less to do with the process of producing these hit shows. And this is perhaps an oversimple, yet relevant, example as to why I think it’s about time we stop reporting the story of the copyright debate as one of Internet businesses vs legacy media producers, or Hollywood vs The Digital Age, or most especially as Creators vs Technology.  As with the smart phone example, copyright is just one component of a legal framework that enables the production of Orange is the New Black and, by the way, the Google search algorithm that makes it convenient to look up information about author Piper Kerman.

It should be abundantly clear that for all the shiny newness of the “Netflix effect” on the industry overall, none of these developments imply any clear mandate for substantive change with regard to a producer’s copyright interests in the works—or with their interest in mitigating the influence of illegal distribution networks (piracy). To the contrary, the fresh diversity of programming and flexibility of viewing options advanced by these new producer/distributors may be even more dependent upon protecting their distribution, derivative, and merchandising rights than with so-called traditional media business models.  Whether the cable plugging into your TV is coaxial or ethernet, the legal foundation that enables production of the shows and films you watch remains fundamentally unchanged—to say nothing of the fact that the technologies themselves are dependent on many of the same legal frameworks.

Nevertheless, the ideological battle rages on, attracting “Internet activists” toward a broad anti-copyright, anti-IP agenda, perpetuating the myth that there is a central conflict between technological or creative innovation and the purpose of protecting intellectual property. The rhetoric of these squabbles distracts from the more subtle—easily misunderstood—points of actual conflict among leading entities. Meanwhile, technological similarities among major players seem to cloud some very important distinctions in business strategies and practices.

Netflix built its business entirely within the regime of licensing existing works, providing a better rental service, staying ahead of consumer demand as high-quality streaming became technologically feasible, and then migrating into original programming.  That’s called being competitive and innovative. And with its production of excellent works in just the past few years, the company has grown its number of paying subscribers to nearly 60 million; it now has a market value just behind that of CBS; and it is rapidly expanding into multiple markets around the world.

The bottom line is that neither individual creators nor major media producers have any quarrel with technology, the Internet, or the future. To say otherwise is just silly. Filmed entertainment in particular is a medium driven from its inception by a robust cycle of technological innovation. Moreover, the major players in the changing market are simultaneously symbiotic and competitive.  Hence nothing about the IP interests of a Disney should be misrepresented as a generic rebuke every line of business in which Google has an interest, let alone as a rejection of technology in general.  It ain’t the tools, it’s how you use them.