cinema

A community-led database of video fingerprints

Introducing a proof-of-concept for a community-run database of rights ownership claims for both Creative Commons and Web Monetizable videos, matched with their ISCC fingerprints.

Not before time, the new year started with some promising news about selling films online. For the first time, the annual decline in DVD and Blu-ray sales in the US has been outstripped by the growth in digital sales, rentals and subscriptions. Home entertainment rose 0.7% in 2013 (PDF source). $6.5bn – over a third of total consumer spending – came from digital rental, retail and subscriptions, with download-to-own rising a hefty 48% on 2012.

The monopoly that created the independents that created the studios

Imagine having to pay a license fee every time you filmed something or screened your work. At the start of the 20th century, the Motion Picture Patent Company (MPPC) in America controlled patents around cameras, film and projectors, and demanded fees for anyone screening or filming anything.

Perhaps no sector has been more involved in shifting the debate around video piracy than the TV industry. It seemingly began in late 2006, nine months after Steve Jobs had sold Pixar to Disney, joined their board and become more involved in their operations. Disney co-chair Anne Sweeney declared at a conference that piracy was not simply a threat, but a competitor – that pirates competed on quality, price and availability.

There are only so many hours in the day. Take a look – if it’s not etched already in your film business memory – at the graph of cinema admissions in the UK following the launch of television. TV's arrival, peaking in the 50s, did not herald an end to people engaging with mass-market moving image – but it dramatically changed the platform and format for where they did that.

This project was motivated by the struggle producers and distributors have to make a return on their work. With online revenues for films still uncertain, exhibition income is more important than ever, as it remains one market where people are happy to pay for content - and the market is healthy and growing. The music industry has weathered many of the challenges of the digital transition thru a resurgence in festivals, touring and concerts, which overtook sales of singles and albums in 2009, as the biggest earner.

In June 2008 Netribution Ltd won feasibility study funding to explore how to enhance the live experience of filmgoing. The project, Living Cinema, was run with Francis Morgan-Giles, Eelyn Lee Productions and Yuva, culminating in test performances at Thomas Tallis School in South London and the Star and Shadow Cinema in Newcastle.

"So the guys who started this business all cheated somebody to get there, and now they're being cheated, perhaps, by all these crazy, geeky people all over the internet. I must say, my anguish level is not great."
Richard Dreyfuss

"although iTunes has 70% of the pay to download music market - only 1 in 40 of all tracks downloaded on the web are ever paid for. That's 2.5%"

"As filmmakers we believe that no film can be too personal. The image speaks. Sound amplifies and comments. Size is irrelevant. Perfection is not an aim. An attitude means a style. A style means an attitude.”
Lorenza Mazzetti, Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reiz, Tony Richardson
- The Free Film Movement, February 1956

After Netribution ran out of money at the start of 2002, founders Tom and Nic parted company and Nic joined ShootingPeople.org, a mailman email discussion list for indie filmmakers, as first employee. The two founders of Shooting People had borrowed £30,000 to make a subscriber version of the email list to fund the cost of daily moderation, online profile directories and expansion of new lists - with a seemingly impossible business model of "users paying to read early the content that other users pay to produce".