Posts by Jonathan King
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I agree with all of this post about the inevitability and importance of the borderlessness Internet, and I’m frequently cursing myself when something is ‘not available in your country’; Also the shutting out of legitimate use by special needs users is disgraceful.
I would just throw in to the mix, however, that the idea of –
being able to maximise revenue by selling country-specific rights
– isn’t just rich multinationals squeezing every penny out of their assets by doing shabby deals: for New Zealand producers of things like films, TV and books selling country-specific rights isn’t just revenue maximising but absolutely necessary to raise enough money to make the thing at all.
“Why not just do a world-wide deal?” would seem to be an answer to that problem – but what happens when those world-wide vendors don’t want something from piddly little New Zealand – they can’t see its appeal as being wide enough to bother – but individual smaller markets do? Often it’s our cultural cousins – like the UK and Australia – or it’s unexpected places – the Polish publisher that loves your work – that can be the difference between your project getting off the ground or not. It was a pre-sale to one company for NZ/Aus/UK rights that allowed me to make my first film, Black Sheep.
Like Russell says, we’re in the middle of a painful period of transition. Now NZ creators are caught between ‘why would I buy my territory when you’ve already sold Xxx and it will just end up everywhere anyway’ and the few big buyers saying ‘no thanks’ to our limited interest content. What territorial sales we might still be able to make are for much smaller sums than they ever used to be, that aren't adding up to totals to make the thing viable.
Sure, it’s a fact of life – but the territory-by-territory approach was a lifeline in the past to our local creators getting stuff out in the world that our home markets could never pay for, not just a relic of greedy conglomerates wringing extra money out of the outlying areas.
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Messing with political rivals aside, surely this is a pretty big deal:
" Ede drafted official information act requests for Slater to use in other attacks, for instance against Ministry of Foreign Affairs staff who were in conflict with the government (Chapter 3)."
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to B Jones,
Jesus. Chilling.
The whole thing puts the Whaleoil attacks on Tania Billingsley in a different context, doesn’t it?
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"Radio New Zealand is radio-centric ..." Hmm.
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Hard News: What rules are these?, in reply to Russell Brown,
"A lot of those celebrities are super-managed by their agents," says an Auckland photographer. "You don't see the real them. They have picture and copy approval.
And it also bears noting that this is a performer who tweeted un anretouched picture of herself in performance, after the original was photoshopped by a magazine. That's fairly beyond-the-veneer.
A-men. If ever there was a 'celeb' for them to hang their sad arguments on, this is one for whom it just doesn't hold water.
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Speaker: Levelling the Playing Field, in reply to nzlemming,
Take a bow, Mr King
I have to do something with all my spare time ... ;-)
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Speaker: Levelling the Playing Field, in reply to Rob Stowell,
via Gemma Gracewood on twitter: Ted Hope- “I am no longer going to produce films for a living”
I was just coming here to post this same thing. The producer of The Ice Storm, In the Bedroom, 21 Grams, Adventureland, Martha Marcy May Marlene, American Splendour, Happiness, Flirt, Safe, The Brother McMullen, Eat Drink Man Woman, The Wedding Banquet and 60-odd other indie films says he can no longer afford or "can tolerate" what it takes to make indie films.
There will always be Hollywood entertainment. There will always be people -- all over the world working on it ... But indie films (which NZ films are by definition) are fucked.
And, boy, did we miss our chance to talk about that -- and what we could have done about it.
How many sugars did you want in that latte, Mr Cameron?
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Speaker: Levelling the Playing Field, in reply to Campbell Walker,
Further if we use the model i think you’re suggesting, it becomes destructive towards innovation: we are only following trends ...
For a small player like NZ, this is very destructive of our ability to produce content of our own choice. To work in this way involves competing in a game where we lack the clout to win or even survive, even if only because all the bigger players rig the game. I think this is what we are seeing: the crisis of the craven, you could call it, perhaps.
I'm not sure if you understand what it is I'm suggesting (partly cos I haven't necessarily suggested it yet).
But basically I'm in the 'no-one gives a fuck, so we may as well make whatever we like' camp. NOT 'the market loves The Hobbit we should try and make that' camp.
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Speaker: Levelling the Playing Field, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
I believe that the second century of cinema will a long and rich one.
Have you been to one recently? Long most films are indeed and, while I'm not sure about rich, they're certainly expensive. But there's no mistaking the fact that what plays in cinemas now is markedly different from what it was 10 years ago, let alone the 90 years before that.
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Speaker: Levelling the Playing Field, in reply to Campbell Walker,
To determine how to analyse their market is not the same as understanding how best to produce them. This kind of blur effect is one of the main problems with understanding cultural production in a market based system.
Maybe really seeing how these markets have changed might be a good way to understand how to produce them? Right now the 'way to produce things' seems strongly linked to how markets used to work ... And people are just willing it to go back to how it was ... or demanding laws are changed (labour laws, copyright laws) to squeeze things back into the shape they were?