12.08.2006
An Open Letter to Professors in Attendance of my Senior Seminar Project Presentation: VillageFilm
Doctors and Professors,
I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate all of your questions and feedback regarding my VillageFilm project. Your questions were insightful, and your collective comments have already resulted in a brainstorming session with some of the VillageFilmmakers, discussing some ways we can continue to improve the project.
The amount and flavor of our lively discussion yesterday is indicative of just the kind of participation the VillageFilm project can generate. One of the reasons that I wanted to pursue this project is because it meant taking a risk. There is no "blazed trail" to follow when it comes to internet-community-driven filmmaking. There is a part of this project that is trying to avoid ending up like the other projects listed here, and another part that we're kind of having to develop as we go along. Discussions like the one you participated in are vital to our team as we continue to develop our vision and method.
I will say that I believe our conversation suffered somewhat from my own involvement in it. I am so close to and caught up in this project that I sometimes neglect to appropriately communicate my assumptions and explain my positions. Though I do not believe that this ruined our discussion in any way, I do believe that my inability to effectively communicate the VillageFilm's goals caused our session to blow certain elements of the project a little out of proportion.
I am referring to the indication that some of you got the impression that the VillageFilm is meant to be a "completely new way" of making a film, or to "democratize" the filmmaking process. Let me assert here that this is in no way what we are trying to do. "Open-sourcing" a project does not mean that it ends up being built any differently than it normally would. It just means that the process is open to discussion, criticism, and even development from people that would normally not be allowed to work on it.
Let us take, for example, the Mozilla Project. Firefox is an open-source browser. This means that anyone can see the source code at any time, compile it, change it, edit it, make suggestions, even build their own version with it (see Flock for an example of a Firefox-based browser). This does NOT mean, however, that Mozilla accepts *all* source code submissions, or accepts *every* applicant that wants to be a programmer with them. In fact, they have a team of programmers just like any other browser project, and that team is responsible for culling the user feedback and submissions and creating the best possible browser based on those inputs.
Don't think Mozilla is doing this purely out of the "goodness of their heart", either. They are a business, and they make boodles of money giving away their browser. How? The built-in "Google" search bar, for one thing. Every time you search directly from the Firefox browser, Mozilla gets paid real money. And they don't give it back to those thousands of users who have made suggestions, submitted code, written extensions...at least, they don't give it back in the form of cold, hard cash. The money goes into their salaries as they continue to develop a project that is revolutionizing the way people use the internet.
I hope this gives some context that I neglected to provide yesterday. The VillageFilm, I believe, is very similar in many ways to the Firefox project. The source-code (script) is freely accessible, any user can make suggestions at any time, or even take the whole script and write their own version, users can submit their own "extensions" (storyboards, audition videos, etc.), and the end result is made freely available to anyone with an internet connection.
In that sense, then, we are not "revolutionizing" the way films are made, at least not anymore than Mozilla "revolutionizes" the way Interenet Explorer is made, or blogs "revolutionize" the way writing is performed; not even anymore than Adobe Illustrator "revolutionizes" how you do art--in the end, it always comes down to a small team or even one artist who has a dream and the dedication to see it realized. All the rest is nothing more than a tool or a distribution scheme.
This is all that is different about the VillageFilm. As far as is physically possible, our "tools" are not restricted to an operating system, they are available, multi-platform, on the internet. Our "team" is not limited to a geographic location, they are widely dispersed. Our "distribution scheme" does not involve huge amounts of money put into advertising and physical DVD production, it is a simple "Upload to YouTube" link.
I fully believe that these elements make the VillageFilm unique among filmmaking projects. I also believe that the end result will be far better than any one of us could have made on our own.
And that is a good feeling indeed.
Sincerely,
Nic Pfost
I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate all of your questions and feedback regarding my VillageFilm project. Your questions were insightful, and your collective comments have already resulted in a brainstorming session with some of the VillageFilmmakers, discussing some ways we can continue to improve the project.
The amount and flavor of our lively discussion yesterday is indicative of just the kind of participation the VillageFilm project can generate. One of the reasons that I wanted to pursue this project is because it meant taking a risk. There is no "blazed trail" to follow when it comes to internet-community-driven filmmaking. There is a part of this project that is trying to avoid ending up like the other projects listed here, and another part that we're kind of having to develop as we go along. Discussions like the one you participated in are vital to our team as we continue to develop our vision and method.
I will say that I believe our conversation suffered somewhat from my own involvement in it. I am so close to and caught up in this project that I sometimes neglect to appropriately communicate my assumptions and explain my positions. Though I do not believe that this ruined our discussion in any way, I do believe that my inability to effectively communicate the VillageFilm's goals caused our session to blow certain elements of the project a little out of proportion.
I am referring to the indication that some of you got the impression that the VillageFilm is meant to be a "completely new way" of making a film, or to "democratize" the filmmaking process. Let me assert here that this is in no way what we are trying to do. "Open-sourcing" a project does not mean that it ends up being built any differently than it normally would. It just means that the process is open to discussion, criticism, and even development from people that would normally not be allowed to work on it.
Let us take, for example, the Mozilla Project. Firefox is an open-source browser. This means that anyone can see the source code at any time, compile it, change it, edit it, make suggestions, even build their own version with it (see Flock for an example of a Firefox-based browser). This does NOT mean, however, that Mozilla accepts *all* source code submissions, or accepts *every* applicant that wants to be a programmer with them. In fact, they have a team of programmers just like any other browser project, and that team is responsible for culling the user feedback and submissions and creating the best possible browser based on those inputs.
Don't think Mozilla is doing this purely out of the "goodness of their heart", either. They are a business, and they make boodles of money giving away their browser. How? The built-in "Google" search bar, for one thing. Every time you search directly from the Firefox browser, Mozilla gets paid real money. And they don't give it back to those thousands of users who have made suggestions, submitted code, written extensions...at least, they don't give it back in the form of cold, hard cash. The money goes into their salaries as they continue to develop a project that is revolutionizing the way people use the internet.
I hope this gives some context that I neglected to provide yesterday. The VillageFilm, I believe, is very similar in many ways to the Firefox project. The source-code (script) is freely accessible, any user can make suggestions at any time, or even take the whole script and write their own version, users can submit their own "extensions" (storyboards, audition videos, etc.), and the end result is made freely available to anyone with an internet connection.
In that sense, then, we are not "revolutionizing" the way films are made, at least not anymore than Mozilla "revolutionizes" the way Interenet Explorer is made, or blogs "revolutionize" the way writing is performed; not even anymore than Adobe Illustrator "revolutionizes" how you do art--in the end, it always comes down to a small team or even one artist who has a dream and the dedication to see it realized. All the rest is nothing more than a tool or a distribution scheme.
This is all that is different about the VillageFilm. As far as is physically possible, our "tools" are not restricted to an operating system, they are available, multi-platform, on the internet. Our "team" is not limited to a geographic location, they are widely dispersed. Our "distribution scheme" does not involve huge amounts of money put into advertising and physical DVD production, it is a simple "Upload to YouTube" link.
I fully believe that these elements make the VillageFilm unique among filmmaking projects. I also believe that the end result will be far better than any one of us could have made on our own.
And that is a good feeling indeed.
Sincerely,
Nic Pfost
