Hi! This is an essay I wrote a couple of month ago on the internet series "The Scene". It has been translated into english recently for the catalogue of the back up festival in Weimar Germany (www.backup-festival.de) (where the text won a honorary mention). Thanks to the organizers of the plain text competition to let me use this translation.
A lot of nettimers might know this show by now, everybody else should take a look at this highly entertaining and innovative example of internet entertainment. As I recently found out, the company Jun Group that produces this series has been founded by a Bruce Forrester, a colorful character, who apparently makes his money by observing internet movie piracy for the MPAA and other organizations. More about him here: http://www.darknet.com/2005/05/story_the_princ.html This is an excerpt from the book "Darknet. Hollywoods War against the Digital Generation" by J.D. Lascia (Wiley), a book that might also be of interest for nettimers. It is a bit sensationalistic at times, but it gives a good overview over the current conflicts around copyright, filesharing, digital found footage etc. I am currently using it in a class on theoretical approaches towards digital film making, even though it is not an academic work at all. Anyway, enjoy the text... Yours, Tilman -----------------------------SCHNAPP!------------------------ AS THE IMAGES LEARNT TO FLOW By Tilman Baumgaertel We are looking at Brian Sandro's computer screen. The New York student is sitting in front of his machine doing what most computer users do. He writes e-mails, surfs the Internet and chats with his acquaintances. We watch him start programs and click at websites. Screen windows open and close on the Windows XP Desktop, letters scroll across the screen, Sandro types and types and types. In a web cam window we watch him sitting at the computer with a petrified expression, gazing at the monitor. Goggling at the computer screen of somebody's daily routine? That sounds just as exciting as watching wall paint dry. But Brian Sandro is not just another computer-drone. Sandro belongs to a group of hackers, who are distributing 'w4r3z' (pronounce: wares) on the Internet: illegal versions of first-run movies, which are spread all over the world via peer-2-peer networks like Kazaa or BitTorrent. Brian Sandro is the hero of a new series called 'The Scene'. Every one of its up to now ten episodes takes place exclusively on Sandro's and his clique's computer screens. And they are also only watched on a computer screen. Like the movies Sandro's group is pirating, the series circulates exclusively on the fi le swapping and peer-2-peer networks of the Internet. To gain prestige within the file swappers and movie pirates 'Scene', Sandro and his gang upload the latest Hollywood blockbusters onto the web -- best prior to their debut in U.S. cinemas. To always get hold of the most recent films, Sandro nurses his contacts to the employees of DVD-pressing companies and of the fi lm industry. As soon as he obtains a DVD with a new film, he organises the 'ripping' and the publishing on the web. At the same time he coordinates his love life via the Internet-Messenger. His abetters, bearing the pseudonyms Teflon, Trooper and c0da, are pure Internet-acquaintances whom he never met face-to-face. They are not driven by greed of gain. They do not care about making money but about their reputation in the 'Scene'. It is exciting and astonishing to watch individual characters arise from the mere typing of a handful of screen-names and how dramatic conflicts evolve between them. The file swapping services equipped by Sandro & Co. in 'The Scene' are pictured by the music and film industries as the principal reason for their decline in sales during the last years. In lawsuits and press statements the spokesmen of the media industry have created the impression that the mere existence of those file swapping services is a crime itself. This is not only legally arguable. In the first place, it kept the industry from exploring the possibilities of this extraordinarily effective new channel of distribution. A small U.S. web design company called Jun Group is now the first in attempting to offer a service that takes advantage of the potential of P2P by distributing 'The Scene' exclusively on the web. 'We wanted to create the first consecutive video programme which is especially made for file sharers', states screenwriter Mitchell Reichgut. 'And we wanted to do that vigorously and originally.' The series is financed by sponsors whose products and websites are interlaced into the plot - at least that is the theory. Actually, a skateboard company financed the first two episodes, which is why Brian Sandro surfs their website for a while. Allegedly the company's server nearly broke down afterwards caused by the surfers' heavy demand. However, new sponsors could not be acquired since then, and meanwhile, the Jun Group has been producing the series at their own expenses. That does not impoverish them: because of the unorthodox production of 'The Scene' one episode only costs $600. The producers estimate that up to now several hundred thousand users all over the world have downloaded the low budget production - precise figures are hard to obtain because of the file sharing networks' decentralised structure. Regardless it has to be noted that a 20 minute video cheap enough to be paid for by the savings of any film student, has reached an incredibly large international audience - without any coverage or advertising beyond the 'Scene's niche media. 'We regard file sharing as a new mass medium developing at lightning speed', the makers of 'The Scene' post on their website, 'and we believe that it is possible to develop a financing model together with the sponsors that is profitable for everybody. The producers will be paid in advance. The sponsors reach their audience. And the consumers are able to download and spread a program without the risk of incurring a penalty.' The programme is licensed under the 'Creative Commons Copyright Agreement' developed for digital content by the U.S. law professor Lawrence Lessig. That means everybody can copy and share such a piece as long as no profit is being made. Although 'The Scene' has been created with commercial ambitions it is not only very entertaining but also formally radical. It is rather confusing to have a video playing back on one's desktop that shows what is going on on somebody else's desktop. This effect can hardly be reproduced on a cinema screen, and on a TV monitor it is virtually impossible to read the small letters subject of Sandro's chats and emails. Therefore the series truly refers to its own medium. 'We wanted to leave the viewers with the feeling of being able to experience the 'Scene' themselves' says screenwriter Reichgut. 'And we wanted to do something that was altogether tailored to the computer. It became obvious to us that most things on the web were originally intended for a different medium. We wanted to create something entirely made for the Internet.' In this way the creators of 'The Scene' not only succeeded in making a unique desktop-experimental-film. Additionally they have produced one of the most vivid pieces of entertainment dealing with the presently all-dominant new media. 'The Scene' seems like an answer to the 'Matrix' trilogy. With great Hollywood pomp, the 'Matrix' movies put the globalised information society into allegoric images. Its heroes were hackers fighting in the cyberspace. That was a potentially interesting project. Unfortunately, the directing Wachowski brothers lost control after the first episode and the sequels degenerated to an overambitious shoot'em'up orgy fraught with significance. In contrast 'The Scene' displays an unagitated and astoundingly commonplace image of crime and feud in the matrix. In New York a student sits in front of his computer and 'rips' new movies. Within a single night these films spread on the web. Hours later the films are found on the hard disks of file sharers from all over the world. Moreover, movie pirates in China and Malaysia publish them again as DVDs, immediately sold for less than a dollar on Asian black markets. Students and South-East Asian small-time crooks with DSLequipped computers: Those are the figures causing the American Hollywood studios and the software companies to fear for their returns today. 'The Scene' depicts an impressive image of a new world order where a flow of data without restraint undermines the economic status quo. Dr. Tilman Baumgaertel Film Institute College of Mass Communication, Plaridel Hall University of the Philippines, Diliman Quezon City 1101, Philippines office hours: Mo, 12:00 nn - 2:00 pm email: mail at tilmanbaumgaertel dot net www.tilmanbaumgaertel.net # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
