Saturday, November 3, 2007

Filmmaking in Africa - Jeremy Nathan







This presentation was by Jeremy Nathan from DV8 which is a production company trying to deviate from the normal production approach. The most interesting thing about South Africa is that there seems to be the chance to have that area of the world leap ahead embracing new technologies that the already modern world will have a harder time with because of the difficulty of transitioning from an old system. So because their old system really wasn't that established and because success there requires so much hard work anyway, it's not a big leap to build a system of distribution that puts that burden on the production companies rather then third party middle men. The other cool thing about Africa is that audiences seem eager for non-mainstream content and are starting to have more and more access to the internet.

Getting a small taste of how media exists in south Africa has made me think that the democratic playing field is really important to maintain world wide. No point in Africa building a system that isn't compatible with the rest of the world just because they are more nimble and can act faster then we can.

Here is a scenario. A film comes out in Africa and does well there and therefor starts to catch on else where. Bi-lingual fans transcribe the film into hundreds of languages and professional transcribers give it a final edit. It's then release in theaters and burned to DVD on demand stations across the world wherever people would like to see it. The creator of that project now has a budget form the proceeds that went directly to them to turn around and make another film. There would be no delay in payment or waiting for a market to buy the film. It would all be scaled by the audience depending on how it was catching on. So it's the youtube viral video model scaled to an international film industry that allows creators to make money will staying true to the integrity of free culture.

And the amount of time it takes a movie to scale to it's full potential will increasingly become quicker and quicker as social discovery tools improve and eventually it will only take a few days or even one day and maybe eventually half a day. Could you imagine a film posted by a kid in a third world country making it to theaters by that evening?

king it to theaters by that evening?
Formats available: MPEG-4 Video (.m4v)

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