{"id":404,"date":"2013-02-20T17:17:38","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T22:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=404"},"modified":"2020-12-06T21:29:28","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T02:29:28","slug":"to-free-or-not-to-free-that-is-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=404","title":{"rendered":"To Free or Not to Free? That is the Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m frequently bombarded with ideas and new concepts.\u00a0 I try to incorporate them in my marketing approach for the Dr. Film <\/i>show.\u00a0 Since we\u2019ve not (yet) been successful in selling the show, I study people who are <\/i>successful at marketing to see what they\u2019re doing, and I learn a lot in the process. I thought I\u2019d pass on some of it to you.<\/p>\n

A couple of years ago, I was projecting a film festival, running a bunch of films that were not very interesting.\u00a0 I\u2019m always a sucker for something different and unusual, but I wasn\u2019t finding it on this day, so I had to keep reminding myself that this gig would pay for a big chunk of the month.<\/p>\n

\"SitaPoster\"<\/a>
Official Sita Sings the Blues poster.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The last film I put on was called Sita Sings the Blues<\/a><\/i>.\u00a0 It delighted me.\u00a0 You want something different and unusual?\u00a0 This was it.\u00a0 A beautiful animated film, using Indian-style art, with music by Annette Hanshaw, a long-forgotten singer from the 1920s and 30s.\u00a0 You wouldn\u2019t think the styles would mesh, but they did, and really well.\u00a0 The art was great, the plot engaging.\u00a0 I loved the picture.<\/p>\n

I filed it away in my brain and forgot about it.\u00a0 A while later, I read something that said Sita <\/i>creator Nina Paley had had trouble licensing the rights to the music.\u00a0 The real soul of that movie is in the songs, and without them, it would ring pretty hollow.\u00a0 Some time later, I heard that a deal had been reached.<\/p>\n

I looked on Nina\u2019s website to see what the story was.\u00a0 What I read was quite fascinating.\u00a0 And now, we take a little diversion, but I promise I\u2019ll come back to this.<\/p>\n

The most frequent criticism I get about the Dr. Film <\/i>show is that it should be free on the internet, that it should be a YouTube channel, because only there would it find an audience.<\/p>\n

I always have had a problem with this reasoning. I love old films and I love to share them and to tell their stories.\u00a0 But I can\u2019t go around putting stuff on YouTube for free.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve discussed before, I used to work with a video company, and they released obscure titles on video, films that didn\u2019t survive in pristine form, or films that were a little out of the mainstream.\u00a0 The company did relatively well, well enough that expenses were paid and there was money left at the end of the year.\u00a0 Not much, but some.<\/p>\n

Then a company called Alpha Video ordered one copy of everything in the catalog, making bad DVD masters that they sold for $1 at Wal-Mart, a price that no one could compete with.<\/p>\n

This one move killed the video business, because there\u2019s no room in the market for a middle-of-the-road distributor. It\u2019s either top of the line, pristine prints (Criterion\/Kino), or bargain basement (Alpha Video\/archive.org). Releasing films from my collection cost me money, so I stopped.\u00a0 I still love to share movies and save them, but on a more modest level.\u00a0 I do in-person film shows, and they pay better than video releases ever did, if such a thing can be imagined.<\/p>\n

But I still keep an eye and ear out for new trends in distribution.\u00a0 The world is changing and doing so at a really fast pace.\u00a0 I realize that the market for Dr. Film <\/i>is not a large one, so it demands creative marketing, which ain\u2019t my fort\u00e9.<\/p>\n

This is what fascinated me about what Nina was doing.\u00a0 After she reached a settlement with the people representing Annette Hanshaw, she posted Sita Sings the Blues<\/i>, for free, without commercials.\u00a0 You can, if you choose to, donate money to her to support her new projects.\u00a0 It\u2019s sort of like an online PBS.<\/p>\n

The whole \u201ceverything is free\u201d nature of the internet just seems to quash any way of making money, and making money is critical here.\u00a0 If Nina wants to make a new film, she has to cover costs and keep her lights on.\u00a0 The time she invests in it means time not being spent on something else that might <\/i>keep the lights on, so it\u2019s important.<\/p>\n

This is a key point that I came to in making Dr. Film<\/i>.\u00a0 It took me a solid month to edit the single episode we shot.\u00a0 I was lucky at the time because I had no other work going on.\u00a0 Today, I couldn\u2019t do that.\u00a0 I have other work that would prohibit me taking the focused time it would take to cut an episode.\u00a0 This means I\u2019d have to turn down work in order to make the show.\u00a0 Or I\u2019d have to hire someone to help me… ack!<\/p>\n

Basically, I can\u2019t do the show for free.\u00a0 It simply costs too much.\u00a0 I either need a grant, or a donation stream, or a paying customer.\u00a0 If I put a 90-minute show up on YouTube, once a month, I\u2019d literally go broke.\u00a0 I could cheapen it and use some of the bad production techniques that mar other YouTube productions, or stick to short clip shows, but I don\u2019t want to do that.\u00a0 It would save editing time by eliminating Anamorphia, but that makes it a lot less fun, too.\u00a0 I want to make a good show, not just a cheap show.<\/p>\n

I wondered whether this approach is working for Nina.\u00a0 (Whether it works for Dr. Film <\/i>is a a different question.) <\/i>She claims that the approach is working.\u00a0 I emailed her a bit about it, and she seems preoccupied with other work (which is great!), but the bottom line seems promising.\u00a0 It\u2019s covering costs, and that means she\u2019s still working, which is really what we want from an artist, right?<\/p>\n

Nina\u2019s page also points to a great site called QuestionCopyright.org<\/a>. This site is wonderful food for thought… they are advocating for a rethinking of copyright law, which is a great idea.\u00a0 Many are talking about abolishing it, saying that content should be free and that containers (books, CDs, etc) cost money.\u00a0 It\u2019s an interesting thought.\u00a0 Do I wholly endorse it?<\/p>\n

No, not entirely.\u00a0 I love the idea, but I remain to be convinced that it\u2019s viable.\u00a0 I live in a world where I\u2019m struggling to keep the lights on and the heat bill paid.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had people copy and freely distribute my work, and I got no credit or money for it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m constantly having to fight against <\/i>the perception that my work is worthless, so I\u2019m pretty hesitant to set<\/i> its worth at zero.\u00a0 Sita Sings the Blues<\/i> is fundamentally different from Dr. Film <\/i>anyway, because Nina gets to promote her work by showing it at film festivals and such, whereas there\u2019s no real path for me to promote Dr. Film<\/i>.\u00a0 I honestly think that a free Dr. Film <\/i>would both get ripped off (the rare films inside it would be redistributed), and it would get almost no viewings because no one knows what it is.\u00a0 A double whammy.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m still crazy.\u00a0 I love old movies.\u00a0 I still save them.\u00a0 I still share them on a more intimate basis. I\u2019m going to go on doing it.\u00a0 You can credit Glory-June Greiff (my long-time co-conspirator and the actress who plays Anamorphia) for keeping the Dr. Film <\/i>project on the table.\u00a0 She\u2019s adamant that it deserves an audience.\u00a0 I\u2019ve advocated giving up on it for years and she won\u2019t hear of it.<\/p>\n

Will Dr. Film<\/i> be out there for free?\u00a0 You show me a way that I can make them and stay solvent, and I would love to do it.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got a new distributor talking about the show (can\u2019t discuss it yet), and a potential for a distribution deal over local TV if that doesn\u2019t pan out,\u00a0 and a further possibility of some grant money that would allow me to shoot more episodes.\u00a0 The other criticism of the show is that people don\u2019t like the films chosen in the pilot episode. Maybe having a variety of episodes in a package could help sell the idea.<\/p>\n

On a different but similar topic.. Penny Dreadful\u2019s Shilling Shockers<\/a> is more like Dr. Film<\/i>, and I\u2019ve been studying its distribution system.\u00a0 It\u2019s more of a classic \u201chosted horror movie\u201d show, without the educational component or the variety of Dr. Film<\/i>.\u00a0 I really like it.\u00a0 It\u2019s got a lot of heart despite the fact it\u2019s cheap.\u00a0 The only thing I don\u2019t like about it is that they intercut their segments with awful garbage downloaded from archive.org.\u00a0 I\u2019ve come to realize that the main advantage I have with Dr. Film <\/i>is that I have actual film and a knowledge of what is or isn\u2019t public domain.\u00a0 Penny is getting sponsors and selling DVDs of her shows.\u00a0 It\u2019s not on YouTube, but on local terrestrial TV, a new small-station phenomenon that is growing, along with occasional live streaming episodes. (I would have put some Penny artwork here but there were no pictures on her site that didn’t come with nasty rights warnings, so that has an impact on the kind of plugola I can give her.)<\/p>\n

Going forward, I intend to post a 10 Questions With… highlighting one of the people at QuestionCopyright.org.\u00a0 I\u2019d love to get more of their ideas out there.\u00a0 It\u2019s a cool concept, and, again, I advocate copyright reform with every fiber in my being.\u00a0 I may not go as far as they do, but that\u2019s OK.<\/p>\n

Will any of this affect Dr. Film<\/i>?\u00a0 I have no idea.\u00a0 Dr. Film <\/i>is the show that\u2019s lying on the lab table with an erratic pulse, not quite dead, and not quite alive.\u00a0 These are just some random ideas on trying to jump-start it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m frequently bombarded with ideas and new concepts.\u00a0 I try to incorporate them in my marketing approach for the Dr. Film show.\u00a0 Since we\u2019ve not (yet) been successful in selling the show, I study people who are successful at marketing to see what they\u2019re doing, and I learn a lot in the process. I thought … Continue reading “To Free or Not to Free? That is the Question”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,207],"tags":[25,141,142,140],"class_list":["post-404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background-on-the-blog","category-film","tag-dr-film","tag-penny-dreadful","tag-questioncopyright-org","tag-sita-sings-the-blues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1916,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions\/1916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}