Open Source Screenings
The Project
Basement Tapes: The Making Of A Pirate Movie follows the sample based pop-star and biomedical engineer Gregg Gillis, a.k.a GirlTalk, as he mashes his way to fame and infamy, and takes the pulse of the digital revolution along the way. From the baile funk of Rio de Janeiro to the clubs of London, Basement Tapes tracks a musical world in transition and those who are changing it: culture jammers Negativland, mashup pioneer DJ Food, Baile funk DJ Sany Pitbull and the best musicians of 2007 at the SXSW music festival, including Iggy Pop, Peaches, Spank Rock and Peter Bjorn and John.
The music of Girltalk questions everything we know about intellectual property - and Basement Tapes explores this issue by its very creation. A mash-up of its own, the film pushes the boundaries of fair-use by looking at cultural appropriation throughout history, from Muddy Waters, to the Rolling Stones, to the king of the remix, Walt Disney. And with legal advice from Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, director Brett Gaylor tries to stay out of jail and create a wild ride through this generation's most engaging social issue, posing the question: if creativity is a field, is copyright a fence?
Basement Tapes is the world's first Open Source Documentary - all of the footage for the film is released under a Creative Commons license and can be re-mixed at www.opensourcecinema.org . With post-production ending in February 2008, the film will then tour select festivals around the world to solicit audience input and shape a truly global film that harnesses the power of social media and collaboration.
Tour summary
We plan to tour the film and website to select festivals in order to present the process and invite online collaboration. The duration of the tour schedule is approximately 6 months, and by that time we will have a “version 1.0” to picture lock, launch and release. The film will then be locked (our “final” version), but the on-line version/website will continue to mutate and evolve.
The OpenSourceCinema.org presentation:
We will set up an installation of sequences of the film-in-progress using various computer terminals that showed remixable scenes, allowed editing, comments, and uploading of footage. These installations would be up for the duration of the festival.
Director Brett Gaylor would give a approx 1 hour multimedia presentation outlining the issues surrounding the film: copyright, peer-to-peer, music rights, on-line collaboration. This presentation would be more issue-based and centered on the idea of Open Source Cinema, rather than a presentation of the documentary itself. The presentation would show clips from the film, (some shot by us, some by third-parties and some remixed by the online community), raise legal issues created in production, and highlight the successes of an open approach to filmmaking. If possible, we’d have some of the collaborators in on the panel discussion: Lawrence Lessig, Girltalk, Gilberto Gil, Etc.
Since there is narration in the film, this would be done live and would cater to each particular screening. Since the film also uses a lot of music, we would attempt to have some of this performed live, and in secret, so that the crowd will suddenly be treated to a performance by GirlTalk, in effect coming out of the screen and into the crowd.
We would also use mobile technology to make the screenings themselves a decision making process. We would create a text-message call in number that users could select which will serve several purposes – rate each scene out of 5, mark for comment (if a user marks a scene it is put into a cue, and then at the end of the screening they give their critique – this scene would also be cued up for them on the terminals and on the website for them to actually re-work at a later time), and in some settings to actually choose the next scene.
The following clips give a feel for the current rough cut, as of December 14th. Two months remain in editing. These scenes also give an idea of areas where audiences can contribute to the film and remix it.
Gregg Gillis - Bio Medical Engineer
Gregg Gillis, aka GirlTalk, leads a double life: by day he's a bio-medical engineer in Pittsburgh. By night, he flies around the world to rock sold out-shows. His sampled-based party music always culminates in the entire audience meeting Gregg on stage, blurring the line between him and then, audience and fan, creator and listener.
Girl Talk fan video
This video is an example of the remix activity that is happening at www.opensourcecinema.org. Using footage we placed online, a member remixed this video together. Impressive, but where it gets really interesting is when it was remixed again - by an entire University class! The 60 students each choose 5 frames of the video to hand-paint individually, creating a video that rivals that quality of Waking Life.
Girltalk - Rotoscoped!
South By South West
At South By SouthWest the transition of the music industry was on full display. The digital revolution had clearly removed the hegenomy of the major labels, and Girl Talk was riding this wave of change. We took the pulse of the 1500 bands that packed Austin Texas for the week, and followed Gregg as he became one of the major acts of 2007 - the cover of WIRED magazine, a shoot in Playgirl magazine, and a headline at the Coachella music festival where 15,000 fans packed the stage. And the heart of this sucess was his fans - who recorded it all THEMSELVES and uploaded to open source cinema for use in the film.
Sued Families
To regain this control, the record industry has launched thousands of lawsuits - threatening massive legal action to those who don't settle immediately to the anonymous letters that arrive in their homes. From a baptist minister, to a woman with multiple sclerosis, the industry has cast a wide net. And for the first time this year, one of the cases went to court - Jammie Thomas of Brainerd, Minnesota, lost her case, and was fined $200,000 in damages.
Disney - Corporate Culture takes control of our brains
No other corporation is as responsible for the current copyright madness as the Walt Disney Corporation. After building on the works of others - from Snow White to the Brothers Grimm to Pinnochio, Disney lobbied Congress in 1998 to extend copyright - the same year Mickey Mouse was about to fall into the public domain. No one is as aware of this as cartoonist Dan O'Neill, who was sued for a million dollars and lost 9-0 in the Supreme Court for drawing Mickey Mouse - as a drug dealer.
Gilberto Gil & Tropicalia
Brazil has existed as a parallel to the United States in it's copyright regime. With Gilberto Gil as their minister of Culture, the country has become a strong supporter of Creative Commons and "Copyleft". Tracing this back to Gilberto Gil's Tropicalismo movement of the 1960s, which re-mixed Rock and Roll with traditional Brazillian music, we drop into the heart of Gil's 1000 points of culture program. Through the eyes and cameras of the children of Rio's favelas, we see how art can transform a community, and how an openness to copyright breeds a vibrant culture.
The Team
Basement Tapes is a co-production of the National Film Board of Canada and EyeSteelFilm. EyeSteelFilm is a Montreal-based production company that specializes in feature-length documentaries and socially-engaged new media.
EyeSteelFilm's 3 latest releases:
-Up The Yangtze, Sundance 2008, IDFA Jorus Ivens Finalist, Toronto International Film Festival's top 10 Canadian Films, Vancouver International Film Festival: Best Canadian Doc, broadcast: CBC Newsworld, POV, National Geographic International, ZDF arte and Radio-Canada
-The Colony: In competition, Toronto International Film Festival, Best short: ImagiNative Film Festival, Best short: Whistler Film Festival, In competition, Clermont-Ferrand. Broadcast: APTN and CBC
-Chairman George, Special Jury Prize, SilverDocs, Guangzhou GZDOC 2007 Innovation Award Rencontre International do Documentaire closing film, broadcast: BBC Storyville, CTV, TV2 Denmark
