Open Source Cinema - An Open Source Documentary Film about Copyright

Just in transit to AIDC - the Australia International Documentary Conference, held in Perth. Going to meet some other doc makers and give a talk about Open Source CInema. If anyone is going, let me know!
http://www.aidc.com.au/

A transcription of an interview I did with my friend Alec for WIRED's Assignment Zero. They are putting together a "Crowdsourced" article on collaborative filmmaking.

http://zero.newassignment.net/assignment/interview_brett_gaylor_open_sou...

Despite what I thought was a passable understanding of world geography, I still had a hard time with the fact that it was hotter in Montreal than in Rio. And New york almost burnt my sandals.

Pitchfork on our Montreal party with Girl Talk:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/forkcast/44057-girl-talk-live-at-the-...

Boing Boing on said party:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/08/girl_talk_mashupper_.html

I just did an interview with Lance Weiler, who I met in Boston for the Make Media Now conference. Lance has a fantastic project called The WorkBook Project, an Open Source filmmaklng resource. The goal of the site is help filmmakers by providing a pool of resources on all aspects of filmmaking, mixing user generated submissions and war stories and tips from the pros. We talked about Open Source Cinema.

To listen NOW click the play button below.

Bookmark to:

The thunderclouds lifted and i got away.

And straight into 3 solid weeks of madness.

Week one, in Washington DC at the SilverDocs/AFI conference, where I sat on a panel with the ABC/Disney clearance officers (!) to discuss copyright in documentary. Great panel, well attended, and I got to show some Basement Tapes clips in a swanky theatre. While in Washington, I interviewed Mary Beth Peters, the registrar of copyrights for the United States, who had never heard a mashup. We played her some Girl Talk, which prompted her to advise him to get legal advice. Also, Bruce Lehman, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton Administration and author of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Saw some great flics, too.

Next stop: Los Angeles. Met with a wonderful family, the Farbmans. They were the first recipients of the Boy Scouts Respect Copyrights Activity Patch. Good people - managed to get some boogey boarding. Also interview with Cory Doctorow (www.boingboing.net) at Disneyland.

On to San Fransisco, missed some interviews due to delayed flight, rented car and drove to Nevada City, California, home of revolutionary comic book genius Dan O'Neill. Dan was sued by Disney in the 70s for his contribution to the Air Pirates, a collective who drew Mickey Mouse in all kinds of illegal and pornographic situations. Fantastic guy.

Then back to Montreal to meet Gregg (Girl Talk) for his performance at the Jazz Festival - and we had a surpise waiting. After Gregg's performance, he directed the crowd outside, where we had a generator waiting with a wireless receiver. Gregg pumped his laptop to the crazy kart and a 10 minute guerilla party followed. MADNESS!

All in all, I'm exhausted. Preparing for our trip to Brazil August 1st and our meeting with Gilberto Gil, minister of culture.

Girl Talk video below...enjoy! I'll post some pics soon

After the thunderstorms let me land, I arrived in Washington for the SilverDocs film festival. Its going to be great to be at some of these festivals with a FILM next year, but I did my duty as the copyfighter on the "Real 2.0" panel. Getting ready to go see some movies!

Got some interviews lined up here in Washington, then on to L.A. to visit with Cory Doctorow, and San Fransisco to talk to Stewart Brand, Brewster Kahle and Dan O'neill, the cartoonist responsible for the Air Pirates. Then back to Montreal for a Girl Talk performance at the Montreal Jazz Festival.

Couple weeks off, then Brazil!

I was invited down to the Make Media Now conference to give a talk about Open Source Cinema. Fun times! I ran into some friends and did some bowling with Lance Weiler of The WorkBook Project. Now, Lance is an OK bowler (although), but a much better self-distributor. Lance has had a lot of success DIY releasing whis last two feature films, Head Trauma, and The Last Broadcast.

He was able to turn a profit and keep rights on these projects by pioneering some innovate theatrical distribution techniques, and now he is sharing this knowledge at The WorkBookProject, which is an open source filmmakers handbook. Lots of great information in there, and he's opening the book for other contributions. We agreed to do an interview on rights issues for documentary filmmakers, and I'll post it when Lance and my schedules allow it to be done.

I'm going to do a Duck Tour now.

Today I'm at Montreal's Recent Changes Camp. People are here from all over North America and Europe to dish on wikis. Really looking forward to listening and collaborating. I'll post from the camp. Actually, I'm late.

Update: So, it was an interesting experience. I like the open space concept, although it does highlight some of the, uhm, organizational challenges of the open source world. Would have been cool to have a session where people hack things together on the spot.

I think what I took away most was a conversation with Hugh McGuire from Librivox where he explained to me the 1% rule. Basically, participatory websites only have content created from about 1% of their users. He was explaining that about 1200 people are the active creators of WikiPedia. This blew me away as in my web 2.0 excitement I figure the numbers were much higher.

So - this has interesting applications here on Open Source Cinema. Basically, we need about 10 core people to pull this thing off. Are you one of them?

Michael Pick at Master New Media wrote an incredibly detailed review of this site - dude grokks me!

Here's the article:

http://tinyurl.com/2syxwl

He left some room for improvement, as well, particularly with the fact that we don't offer web based editing here on open source cinema. I tellz ya, it's been a big discussion around the office. Part of the reason we don't have it at the moment is there is no way to plug in services like EyeSpot or Jumpcut right into Drupal, and also, frankly, we haven't been so sure if they're ready yet. What do you think? Would we see more remixes around here, like, from you dear reader, if you could edit right in the browser? Comments please!