David Ball & The Fourth Wall

Speaking of SXSW, Glenn Otis Brown posted about the panel he hosted there on Creative Commons and filmmaking, especially showcasing some of the efforts of David Ball (a first time filmmaker) and his Fourthwall Films, who's decided to use CC rather than traditional distribution and why he hopes people will remix his film. Ball wants to "seed a movement" where the filmmaker and the audience are more closely linked.

Which is, of course, exactly the right idea: the Internet is a community, and distribution is a side-effect of that. Ball writes:

I want to seed a movement, one where filmmakers and the filmgoing community are more directly linked, where people can make up their own minds, and where a diversity of voices can be heard-not just the voices a few hundred decision makers decide are "marketable." So many times I heard from people that my movie was good, but not marketable. When I heard that, I realized something was wrong with the market. Here's to making our own market. I hope Honey is a start.

Sarah Jacobson is probably smiling and thinking "kick ass!" That's the spirit of D.I.Y. and it applies as much to any technology you might want to set your work to: making your own market.

I'm interested to see how David Ball goes about distributing all this source material: the expense of providing access to that kind of material is what's been hampering us from letting more people remix "Nothing So Strange". I keep coming to the conclusion that for low-demand video content like that, releasing CC-licensed DVDs are the only real way to go.

posted to Independence on March 23, 2004