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AIDC 2013 Articles for Screen Hub

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March 2013

I attended this year’s Australian International Documentary Conference, and wrote a bunch of articles for Screen Hub. The bold line is the name of the session title. The paragraph that follows is the article I wrote for it.

Riding the Freedom Streams

AIDC 2013: alternative finance and distribution for documentaries. Do you want to be an enterprise ship or an independent scrappy kayaker? Screen Hub’s Andrew Einspruch donned a lifejacket and waded into a watery metaphor of business models.

Future Rights Model

AIDC 2013: from out of the wreckage, a Future Rights Model. If you can control your film’s distribution, you can control its revenues. Distrify is a distribution platform aiming to let filmmakers do just that, reports Screen Hub’s Andrew Einspruch.

Screenrights Lab/Ancillary Rights and How to Start a Franchise

AIDC 2013: ancillary rights, the devil is in the lawyer. So your show has just become a hit, and everyone wants to help you “exploit the opportunity”. That’s where the ancillary rights come in. If you signed a crummy deal, then someone else is going to get that money, reports Screen Hub’s Andrew Einspruch.

Documentary Distribution in a Digitised World

AIDC 2013: Digital Distribution, a Complex Way to Make Money. Digital distribution is the great hope for many filmmakers – a way to get material out into the world, either as a sole strategy, or as part of a hybrid or traditional distribution model. It`s just a hell of a lot more complicated than it looks.

Who Do We Think We Are?

AIDC 2013: Ruth Harley Lauds Australian Documentary. If a documentary represents a kind of picture of the world at a particular time and place, then CEO of Screen Australia, Dr. Ruth Harley, took the opportunity in one of the first sessions at this year’s AIDC to have a look at what kind of snapshots her organisation helped create in 2012.

Screenrights Lab: Keep the Pirates at Bay

AIDC 2013: Keeping the Pirates at Bay. The piracy horse has bolted. The only question that remains is what is to be done about it. The figures are compelling, but finding a solution still seems to be an elusive goal.

Screenrights Lab / Education Rights – Ensuring Profitability and Sustainability

AIDC 2013: Making Money Under the Education Kanopy. When you think profitability, do you think education sales? Kanopy provides the “Netflix of education”, and it’s a damned site more profitable than Quickflix.

Is Your Documentary a Format?

AIDC 2013: Ye Olde Complete Guide to Formats. Formats are a strong theme at this year`s AIDC. And if you have a format, and you want to strike a deal for it, what do you need to keep in mind?

The Australian Television Content Variety Hour With Your Host: The Ghost of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo

AIDC 2013: Australian stories on Australian screens. The screen sector is up in arms about the dilution of Australian content on our TV screens. The title of an AIDC session was the whimsical Welcome to the Australian Television Content Variety Hour With Your Host the Ghost of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. But the content of the session was serious business.

The Never Ending Tail

AIDC 2013: long tail, teaching old docs new tricks. Sustainability can take more than one form in the documentary business. For smaller players, the long tail of distribution is your friend. Sue Maslin gives some useful examples of how you can make money from old catalogue.

Walk Off the Land After the Harvest

AIDC 2013: Walk Off the Land After the Harvest. A discussion of ethics in documentary making is a bi-annual tradition at the Australian International Documentary Conference. Screen Hub’s Andrew Einspruch reports on the session chaired by Screen Hub Editor, David Tiley.

Captain Ahab`s Motorcycle Club

AIDC 2013: Captain Ahab`s Motorcycle Club. Making a film about the embalming and display of American President Abraham Lincoln is a little eccentric. Doubling Estonia for Chicago might come across as just plain nuts.

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The Sapphires and Indigenous Employment Announcement

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25 August 2012

My latest article for Screen Hub is Film and Parliament: The Sapphires Help Sing in Indigenous Media Employment Initiative.

The Sapphires screened successfully to politicians in Parliament House Canberra on Wednesday night. Good news for both the industry and the Indigenous Media Employment Initiative announced at the same time.

The Sapphires, which has already crossed $6M in box office since its cinema release on August 9, was represented in Canberra by two of its lead actresses, Deborah Mailman and Jessica Mauboy, as well as director Wayne Blair, writers Tony Briggs and Keith Thompson and producer Rosemary Blight.

Screen Australia showcased the film for parliamentarians (something that it does six or so times a year). If the enthusiastic reception the film received at Parliament House is any guide, there is still plenty of box office still to come for this year’s break-out Australian film. With the movie picked up by the Weinstein Company, screened out of competition at Cannes, and headed to the Toronto Film Festival, it’s prospects for overseas success are also very strong.

Arts Minister Simon Crean and Indigenous Employment and Economic Development Minister Julie Collins used the occasion to launch the Media RING Indigenous Employment Strategy. This two-year endeavour will spend $1.1M to create 40 new jobs and another 40 training opportunities, targeting newspapers, film, TV and new media. The program addresses concerns raised by the 2010 Review of Australian Government Investment in the Indigenous Broadcasting and Media Sector, which was release by the Government last year.

Follow the link to read the rest.

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Nixon far worse than we thought

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Richard Nixon

Woodward and Bernstein have their first join byline in decades, revisiting Watergate in 40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought in the WaPo. The title pretty well covers what they think.

Today, much more than when we first covered this story as young Washington Post reporters, an abundant record provides unambiguous answers and evidence about Watergate and its meaning. This record has expanded continuously over the decades with the transcription of hundreds of hours of Nixon’s secret tapes, adding detail and context to the hearings in the Senate and House of Representatives; the trials and guilty pleas of some 40 Nixon aides and associates who went to jail; and the memoirs of Nixon and his deputies. Such documentation makes it possible to trace the president’s personal dominance over a massive campaign of political espionage, sabotage and other illegal activities against his real or perceived opponents.

In the course of his five-and-a-half-year presidency, beginning in 1969, Nixon launched and managed five successive and overlapping wars — against the anti-Vietnam War movement, the news media, the Democrats, the justice system and, finally, against history itself. All reflected a mind-set and a pattern of behavior that were uniquely and pervasively Nixon’s: a willingness to disregard the law for political advantage, and a quest for dirt and secrets about his opponents as an organizing principle of his presidency.

I can still remember being at my friend Kent’s house watching the TV as Nixon resigned. I think a lot of the undermining of the American political system dates to his presidency.

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New Article: SPAA ACT: A Chapter is born

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My latest article for Screen Hub is SPAA ACT: A Chapter is born.  From the article:

In the shadow of Emile Sherman’s gold statue for “The King’s Speech”, the ACT chapter of SPAA held its inaugural meeting, followed by a reception at Parliament House. The organisation of a chapter of the producer’s association reflects the growing feeling of local screen content creators that the ACT region is finding it difficult to get the national-level attention that it deserves.

“We have a thriving screen sector,” said Georgina Jenkins, SPAA ACT Chapter Head. “A recent survey showed us that there are more industry people employed here than in Tasmania and the Northern Territory put together. So it is frustrating that people think of the ACT region as a screen production desert, or as some sort of subset of NSW.”

Read the rest here.

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Basic Copyright Law – A Friendly Introduction

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Copyright

As a filmmaker, copyright is a big and important topic.  At last year’s Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC), Shaun Miller formerly of Mashall and Dent Lawyers and now on his own, led an excellent session called Copyright Law – A User Friendly Guide for Documentary Makers.  I covered the session for Screen Hub, and the result was an easily understood primer on copyright that applies beyond the confines of documentary.  From the article’s intro:

Conferences like this year’s AIDC are sometimes filled with the newest of the new – Web 3.0, cutting edge trends, up-to-the-moment commissioning needs – that sort of thing.
But sometimes what you need more are the basics. Things like understanding what copyright is… In a world where pirating is becoming the norm and the RIAA has filed more lawsuits than you’ve had breakfasts, having a solid grasp of copyright is nothing, if not useful.

In the article, I covered:

  • What copyright is
  • What can be copyrighted (and what can’t be)
  • How copyright is created
  • Underlying rights
  • Term of copyright
  • What happens when a work goes out of copyright
  • Exceptions to copyright (like fair use, or what’s called in Australia fair dealings, as well as parody and satire).

Screen Hub is a most excellent industry publication, and articles are normally behind a paywall.  However, you can get to the full copyright article using that link.

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