headbin

Postcard from Sydney

More of a report actually. Just spent the last three weeks in Emerald City, taking a break from corporate-think, enjoying the "winter" sun (hot enough thanks!) and doing a bit of research into the potential of MOD'ing Down Under.

Staring at the sea is always a good way to reboot the brain and as a result, lots of new gunk has been flooding in. I thought I'd better get some of it down for my own sake.

Transparency, trust and sustainability

Internet business culture is under the spotlight at the moment. Wired is running an interesting section this month on corporate transparency. Not only is the content relevent to online communities but it's annotated with actual comments from the blog where the author drafted it. "We know about the wisdom of crowds but what do you do when the majority is wrong?" writes an old boo co-worker. Maintaining an element of surprise is discussed - something I've been thinking long and hard about with Sanctuary. Should we have let the audience in more by this stage? Would more of the film been finished or less? And of course there is the question of how many hours in the day can you have a two-way communication with your audience? My natural inclination is to write things down and post, post, post but it's pretty hard to be creating and commentating at the same time. It's been good to take a break from blogging and do some film-making.

Remixing vs stealing

I still haven't posted publically about that other remixable Sanctuary project yet (although I see that Google is managing to index my private headbin blog anyhow!). I want to discuss this some more with the team. Part of me feels this is a very good thing ("sanctuary" is going to have a higher page rank with two productions releasing material) and part of me is just plain pissed that they're using the same name.

Attribution is my main sticking point. It will be interesting to see if the Canadian Sanctuary posse ever acknowledge our existance. So many of "collaborative" projects are operating in a vacuum, genuinely unaware of the wider community or pretending they are the only ones out there. Which is why it can be rewarding to see anti-plagiarists putting the boot in. This week Todd Goldman (of the David & Goliath clothing line) lost his reputation and probably his livelihood through being caught ripping off online artists. Being Slashdot'ed isn't always so cool...

MOD Sydney

One of the projects on the drawing board last year was MOD London - a podcast series taking snippets of modern London life that you rarely see covered in traditional media and getting them out there, ideally re-mixable. Things stalled somewhat in London after a few shoots but I took the idea up with my partner Mish, who used to produce a grassroots environmental TV show. She expressed an interest in developing a MOD Sydney concept. We're going to develop the idea further and, without forcing the issue, see what the virtual studio can bring to the party.

Software

I'm in a spring cleaning mood, throwing out stuff, and thinking hard about how we're going to release one terabyte of film assets... soon! Probably a good time to look at what stuff should we keep and what should go? What do we replace? Too many software options....

ourmedia07 conference

Ultimately the trip was all about meeting people and that went pretty well, given the Easter break and all.

I gave a (very) short presentation on film MOD'ing at the ourmedia07 conference. The audience was mostly academics and community radio/television types. It wasn't the most successful talk - going over the heads of most people, unfortunately my video vanished (I think a previous speaker deleted it in a moment of panic!) and only one person in a quick audience poll had ever heard of game MOD'ing so I don't think the concept of MOD'ing film and TV really came across. Nevertheless I did get a few emphatic nods from the folks recording the session for Radio National, it was a good exercise trying to describe the whole thing in 15 minutes, and I did meet a couple of happy remix enthusiasts keen to play, as you always do at these things!

Attending other sessions of the conference, it was clear that there is still a decent divide between the traditional and new media folk. Lots of discussions about the community TV "crisis" (no space allocated on digital to replace analogue community channels). In Australia, digital means LESS choice it seems. YouTube, Current TV and other online community channels were barely touched on. I got the sense that for many of the participants, Internet = "email and stuff for the kids", and many opportunites for reaching audiences were underestimated. I sent a Joost invite to one of the local community TV bigwigs who was poo-pooing "internet stuff " as largely irrelevent.

Penny O'Donnell, the journalist hosting my conference session handed me a print-out of this interesting essay, Escaping the Control Loops. I think she got it. The paper dissects the notion of 'control' in and around social communities, talks about whether activists should take a more "amoral" approach to media and generally gives non-profit community media luddites a good kick up the bum. She said afterwards that the virtual studio idea was really thought-provoking but thought the hardest bit would be getting everything web-based. I'm not convinced but then again I am a geek. I still think the hardest bit is getting people to be less precious about their material and share it.

Australian Broadcasting Commission

One of the folks I met at the conference was Monique Potts, Community Development Producer at the ABC (think BBC minus the license fee!). She invited me to come and repeat my talk at the ABC a few days later. The organisation had recently moved all its new media departments into a new division called Innovation (and chucked out their Documentum content management system after 2 years of development, will the Beeb follow?). There doesn't seem to be an awful lot going on at the ABC (a lot of Monique's own talk at ourmedia revolved around BBC projects like the Creative Archive) but they did have one TV show/online service in development with some synergy with MOD. It's called "A Place To Think" and is planned to evolve into a repository for all show-related assets like scripts and user-generated content.

Monique mentioned that the ABC community sites are looking to move from pre-moderating all content to a system where perhaps the first five posts by a user are pre-moderated and then afterwards everything is post-moderated. Something similar is what I've been thinking about for modfilms.net - once we get it right and there is traffic, important not to get stuck with expensive moderator hosts if we can help it.

I also found out that the ABC Archives is busy selecting material for more open release (similar to the BBC Creative Archive project). This is a big step from 2005 when I was haggling with them for bushfire footage freebies. It might be worth going back and requesting material for Sanctuary - there is some gorgeous bushfire footage in their collection which would spice up some shots.

Monique and her Irish film-maker/VJ/activist partner, Enda Murray, also run a local production company Virus Media which has done some interesting community projects with ethnic groups including a Virtual Palestine project (since pulled) which caused a bit of controversy in the early days of online web communities by encouraging virtual rocks to be "thrown". Enda used to work on Undercurrents, the UK video activist network. Monique and Enda are moving to Ireland for a couple of years to do some related research funded by the Australia Council.

Live gigs

Stuart Ridley, a local DJ, old friend and veteran of the local new media scene, thought there was a burgeoning market for re-mixable film disks sold after live performances. "I wanna do what she's doing!" He wants to prove it via some re-mixable gigs with me next year, and is already doing regular gigs around Australia.

Final Cut Pro Server

Sydney may be at the end of the earth as far as London is concerned but there's clearly stuff going on. In one pub I met an actor/video programmer who told me about how friends of his had recently sold their small local business to Apple. He was talking about Proximity which makes the asset management server-side product about to be released as Final Cut Pro Server.

Local production

I also met Jarrod Linton, a VFX supervisor and long-time real-time 3D artist, who is going to sign up to the virtual team. Jarrod is currently helping Post Modern, a local VFX commercials house, do the finishing touches on their first feature (Death Defying Acts) starring Catherine Zeta Jones.

He's also done a stack of pre-viz work on recent Hollywood flicks (Troy, Harry Potter, Sunshine etc...) with a background in product design. His take on MOD was that Sanctuary is a noose (around MY neck) until finished - no argument there - and agreed it has to be finished. He thought the information architectural approach made a lot of sense for future film productions but warned against trying to convince post people of this without a complete example. Jarrod was the web3D guru at dotcom Razorfish so has a good internet background. He has also been keep tabs on VR previz technology being developed in-house for Avatar , the latest James Cameron blockbuster being developed at Weta - home of Peter Jackson and the dream client for all this virtual studio nonsense.

After the worst year for local film production on record, there was definitely some excitement around. The Oscar success of Happy Feet (2006) by local VFX company Animal Logic after four years of development seems to have given local shops a real morale boost. Bruce Carter, the Creative Director there, was very generous lending us equipment for the Sanctuary shoot and is someone I would love to demo the studio service to.

Some film industry tax breaks may be pending to further support the local industry. Good news for producers but unforunately Aussies have never been very supportive of home-grown titles.

Films (re-mix fodder)

I took the opportunity to watch a bunch of new, and older films, most of which have had minimal exposure overseas. Lots of beautifully made material lying around.

Footy Legends (2006) was very much in the Calendar Girls/Full Monty mould. Feel-good tale of battlers winning against the odds. It wasn't a brilliant film but it was funny and charming with good acting (and HEAPS of sport in this sports-mad country). Despite all this, audiences appear to have stayed away in droves. Part of me suspects that deep-down Australia is still too racist a society to warm to local films where the action stays in the suburbs and none of the main characters are white. Anh Do (the Vietnamese Australian star) was incidentally the guy I initially cast as Mark in Sanctuary. He was the only member of the original cast to pull out during the delays caused by the MEAA dispute.

Jindabyne (2007) did pretty well at the box office and Ray Lawrence, the director, has a bit of a following. Pretty grim movie though, revolving around the discovery of a dead Aboriginal woman floating in a beautiful river. I guess the more films that explore the rotten bits of Australian culture the better but it's not pretty.

Australian Rules (2002) was the one of the best Aussie films I've ever seen. Again, the subject matter was probably the cause of its lack of popular success, more black and white conflicts, this time in a small country town but an excellent drama. Most of the young cast have gone on to be fixtures of local stage and screen.

Yolngu Boy (2001) is an interesting one. Shot in Arnham Land, and part financed by the mob behind the band Yothy Yindi (one of the few Aboriginal Australian acts to get airplay overseas), it's a boys-own adventure clearly intended for a local audience (with stern warnings against the dangers of stealing and petrol sniffing). Despite being a little long and almost an educational video at time, it's stuck with me, mainly because some of the shots are absolutely unique. My favourite was of one of the teenager stars hunting, resorting to traditional ways in order to survive on the run from the cops, standing in the midst of burning grassland throwing spears at a goanna (big lizard!).

The Tracker (2002) is a period film set in the Outback of 1920s. This was David Gulpilil's first starring role but he's pretty recognisable as perhaps Australia's most prolific Aboriginal actor. Director Rolf de Heer commissioned a series of paintings by Peter Coad which were done on location and used to distance the viewer from graphic violence in the story. A classic example of film assets that should be preserved.

.Nice Coloured Girls (1987) was an early short film by acclaimed Aboriginal artist Tracey Moffatt (based in NY). The subtitles and historical references juxtaposing First Fleet (1700's) and 80's Sydney red light scenes would really suit re-mixing. It would be worth finding out more about how the artist clears her work. A few years ago she made one of the best film mash-ups I've ever seen, Love, playing in a gallery (and selling for £250!)

Last but not least, I have to plug The Host (2001). A South Korean monster movie with fantastic visuals, family drama, shocking moments and lots of laughs. Another one of those CG feasts where you don't really notice the VFX. Script and soul from Seoul, monster modelling in Wellington (Weta again!), and the rest of the CG done in LA (The Orphanage). It would be good to see find out how assets were shifted around on this one. A class act that shows what you can do with a US$10Million budget.

TV

I didn't make too much effort to research local TV. The highlights still seemed to be overseas imports (BBC shows on ABC, US ones on the commercial stations), interspersed with cheap local gameshows, some not even hosted by old school ties. Australian comedians have produced some real gems but the only show people mentioned, the supposedly satirical The Chaser, seemed to be coasting badly. The guys behind this did a short-lived series called CNNN which actually was funny.

You really notice how WHITE everything is on Australian TV. That said Australia does have a dedicated "multicultural and multilingual" channel - SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) - which until recently didn't have commercial advertisements. No more.

All in all...

It's not going to be easy relocating to Sydney at the end of the year but no doubt it will be exciting to have new people and projects in the mix. The view from there is pretty fine.

.M.

Posted by .M. at April 26, 2007 04:02 PM