RE: On Set With HardFork-Series Star Christopher James Baker
I'm really glad you've come over to Steemit @bakerchristopher. I hadn't watched Ozark before but just watched most of the first series and there's a really great part in one of the episodes where the Teacher is trying to get Skylar Gaertner's character to sign a document denouncing drugs, and his speech about how it's not that simple and about the 2008 Bank Collapse only being saved from being catastrophic by the money created from the drug trade is pretty amazing. I don't support the drug trade but that scene was great. I unfortunately made the mistake of reading a review (spoiler) so know I know that the "Uncles" get shot I'm so I'm sad to watch further.
Steemit can completely revolutionise the film industry. I just wrote a proposal on how Steemit could be utilised to give the power to decide what Films get made back to the film-makers so that the Paradigm governing the Green-Lighting of Films can be shifted away from the Distributors and back to the Film-Makers.
I don't want to be rude and link bomb your article. If you have the interest and find it (it's on my profile) I'm sure you will find it interesting. It's a model that proposes turning the film funding paradigm completely on it's head creating instead a system where Production itself is Distribution. So just by virtue of the Film-Makers committing to a Film on the public Blockchain the Film then auto-creates itself as a BlockChain funded entity that then allows a community to openly trade it's Frames in an Ebay style open auction to create the funds necessary to make the movie. The concept could be summed up as the Film becoming it's own ICO and the Frames of the Film being the individual Coin.
Wow, great idea. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. I'll check out your paper. Thanks man.
No worries Christopher. I'm an Aussie too. It's just such a shame that all our opportunities in Australia only come from US Major Theatrical distribution or from domestic TV sitcoms because it's eradicating our Indigenous Industry. If you are an Actor or Director you have to go to the US to work. It's a huge Talent drain.
Then what ends up remaining is the Government putting billions of dollars into studios like MovieWorld on the Gold Coast that literally are too expensive for local Film-makers and are therefore only used by Hollywood - who also then fly in most of their Key Crew. So what we get left with is a tax payer funded model that has almost no meaningful benefit or interaction for homegrown production companies.
The plan I'm proposing cuts out the Distributor in the sense that all money only comes from them. It doesn't cut them out in terms of doing what they should do which is Distribute the Movie - if you so choose.
So at the end if you want to go with a Distributor you can but there will also be hundreds of other ways to distribute your Movie, including (if you were successful enough with your funding) just hiring your own Cinemas and Venues to give it distribution. Wouldn't it be nice to not just give a film one or two opening weekends to recoup? The Rocky Horror Picture show used to run in Cinemas all around Australia every Friday and Saturday night for years, and in the West End in London if a play is successful it can literally have a fifteen year run (think Cats).
There was an interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald a couple of years ago talking about our lack of passion in film-making and about Australian film-makers losing the will to take a chance in Australia.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Opinion/The-passion-lacking-in-the-filmindustry/2004/11/24/1101219615000.html
Australia is desperately overdue a resurgence. Where are our new masterpieces like The Year My Voice Broke, Lantana, The Castle, Rabbit Proof Fence, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Wolf Creek, Razorback, Mad Max (Original)?
We've got the locations, the skills, the brains, the talent, the artists, composers, writers, directors, producers, crew etc. We have all of it and we should be making a couple of hundred great Independent films every year, but we are entirely controlled by the US Majors Distribution model which is holding all the purse strings to funding. If you can break that, you can have lots of different strong Industries popping up everywhere.
My proposal probably has a ton of holes, but its a start. It's also completely open plan. I don't care about ownership of it in any way. It's just a proposal for one possible model. Because the only way I can see the whole thing being changed back in the favour of Indigenous Film Industries; is if you change the control that US Majors Distribution has over all projects everywhere.
If there is any part of this proposed model that makes sense, please feel free to use it or adapt any of these ideas in any way you want. Steemit is already a bidding marketplace for content (7 day bidding cycles) and it's already a social media network.
https://steemit.com/film/@angusg/a-new-way-to-fund-feature-films-based-on-the-steemit-blockchain