Filmmakers’ Tropo choice: insecurity or obscurity
Artists' desperate fight for recognition results in blood, sweat and tears going unrewarded -- and unpaid. Just ask filmmakers who enter the Tropfest short film competition every year.
Film & TV
Feb 22, 2013
In 2002, web evangelist Tim O’Reilly wrote an article provocatively entitled “Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution“. “Let me start with book publishing,” he began …
“More than 100,000 books are published each year, with several million books in print, yet fewer than 10,000 of those new books have any significant sales, and only a hundred thousand or so of all the books in print are carried in even the largest stores. Most books have a few months on the shelves of the major chains, and then wait in the darkness of warehouses from which they will move only to the recycling bin. Authors think that getting a publisher will be the realization of their dreams, but for so many, it’s just the start of a long disappointment.”
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analogy: a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based
Ben, what you are describing is known as “psychic income” (the non-monetary rewards or benefits associated with a particular activity). It applies to many industries – not just filmmaking or even the arts. But there has been a lot of work done on the importance of psychic income in the film industry: http://www.mediawave.tv/site/item.cfm?item=D7853B42C29F442E68DB91B16F545F36
What would be useful is if someone were to follow up with Tropfest finalists – to see if their “exposure” actually amounted to something (i.e. offset the deferred income that the filmmakers would have earned if they had worked in a different industry instead).
I just spent five minutes googling Lucas Thyer and Cubicle. I can’t find anything to watch. So much for exposure.
Ben crikey have stuffed up by the looks of it if you would have googled Lucas Thyer and tropfest you would have found this http://tropfest.com/au/2013/02/05/time/
“The vast over-supply of creative labour…”
Here’s the real issue.