Today I am finishing up a wedding video I shot last month. How appropriate! I did hit a snag a few weeks ago, which is why it took so long. If you’re not into tech stuff, you can skip over the next paragraph.

Unfortunately, when I set up the second (stationary) camera, I decided to try a special feature called ELP mode, which is unique to Canon camcorders operating with “Micro-drive” technology. However, it would not import into my computer, claiming it was sending half-frames. I couldn’t even transfer the footage to another camcorder recording in SP mode. So I had to order another piece of equipment — “Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge”:http://www.omegamultimedia.com/products/dazzle_multimedia/hollywooddv.htm — to output the footage analog and re-digitize it so the computer would accept it. I’m happy with the Dazzle, but it was money I hadn’t planned on spending and set the project back several weeks.

Anyway, this weekend is our Artists’ Essentials shoot with Donna, and we’re all excited. Everything seems to be in order. Donna herself just returned from a workshop in Santa Fe with renewed confidence, after seeing herself onscreen — Melanie recorded her with a hand-held camera so she could check a few things.

Once the shoot is done, the real work begins: the editing and the marketing. We’re hoping to have it finished by May so that Donna can take it to a convention for our first big sales push.

If you haven’t already, do check out the Artists’ Essentials website at: “www.artistsessentials.com”:http://www.artistsessentials.com and join the mailing list to keep up to date on all the latest info!

If you were in college when Napster reigned supreme (like I was), then you’ve been right in the middle of one of the hottest debates in recent history: copyright protection.

I think we’re going to see major changes in US copyright law in the next decade. It started on college campuses, where almost every dorm room comes equipped with high-speed internet acces. Now that DSL and cable internet service is getting cheaper and becoming more prevalent, the debate is spreading to the world.

Our main problem is that the current law has not kept up with the times. Content-creator’s ideas about copyright (record labels and movie studios) don’t gel with current societal attitudes.

I’m not talking about the attitudes that downloading copyrighted music or movies you haven’t paid for is wrong. It is. Plain and simple, and I have yet to hear a convincing argument otherwise. I’m talking about what happens to movies or music AFTER you pay for it.

Movies and music don’t *exist*, per say, like a clock or a book you might buy in the store. They’re basically a form of stored information. When you buy the 12-disc set of Titanic, you’re not buying the rights to that movie. That belongs to James Cameron and his crew. You are buying the right to watch that video as many times as you want in the comfort of your own home. A copy of the movie is included for free to allow you to do that.

At least, that’s the way I see it. But the studios don’t see it that way. Many are claiming that the actual, physical disk is what you are paying for. That means that, if your disc shatters in the DVD player or your kid takes his crayons to the data side, then your only recourse is to buy another disc. They say you shouldn’t be allowed to make a backup of your that disc you own. It’s hard to tell if they really believe fair-use copies should be illegal or if they are just afraid that fair-use copies will get distributed for free (or sold) if they allow you to make them at all.

This is where I disagree. In a perfect world, we would pay $19.99 for a DVD that cost about $1.00 to make. The other $18.99 goes to pay the producers, actors, marketers and distributors, and rightfully so. Then, if your disc goes bad, you can either use your backup copy, or you can pay $2.00 plus shipping to get a fresh copy of the DVD you already bought. I mean, if your DVD gets trashed, who wants to use a silver-blue disc with “Titanic” written on it with magic marker for the rest of their life? Don’t you think this system makes sense?

It’s basically the whole MP3 argument all over again. Should I have to pay for multiple formats? If I want a CD to play in my CD player, a cassette tape for my old car, and an MP3 for my iPod when I’m jogging, should I have to buy the same music *three times* just to get it in different formats? The studios say you should, and they’re taking pains to make it difficult to rip CDs you already paid good money for. Personally, I think it’s unreasonable, especially considering that inexpensive consumer equipment can do it for free.

Let’s go one step further: If I don’t have the equipment to rip my Britney Spears CD, couldn’t I just download those same songs from someone else who owns the CD? I already paid for the music. It’s the same information, just in a different format. The original MP3.COM website had a unique answer to this. They had a program that asked you to insert a CD you already owned. Once they verified that you did, indeed, own a store-bought copy of Britney Spears, they made all the music from that album available to you for free from their website. So, instead of having to cart your CDs around everywhere, you could listen to your music from your computer at work, the internet cafe, school, or home.

You might be interested in this “website”:http://www.lokitorrent.com. “Bittorent”:http://bittorrent.com/ is the new Napster, with a twist. Without getting into too many technical details, LokiTorrent and other websites (like Suprnova.com, also now dead) had basically been providing links to movies you could download from other computers in peer-to-peer (P2P) fashion. After the MPAA shut them down, they put up this ominous piece of propaganda which sums up their opinion in a nutshell. Check it out.

And, to be honest, it tells the truth. I really believe most people who are sharing movies and music files on P2P systems have not paid for them. They should be stopped. But it raises the interesting question: Where do you legally draw the line with a technology that has many *legitimate* uses as well?

Don’t forget these same companies championed against the VCR decades ago and lost. Now, it’s introduced a whole new revenue stream. Movie studios now count on the money they make in rentals and sales to make up for poor theatrical performance. “iTunes”:http://www.itunes.com is showing that real money can be made from legal music downloads. As the laws evolve to reflect reality, the movie industry must learn to embrace this technology the same way they eventually embraced VCRs. The challenge is to find a business model that both brings in the dollars and gives the consumers what they are obviously crying for. Then they’ll be one step closer to that truly perfect world.

Of course, in a truly perfect world, all DVDs would be $4.99 apiece…

Dakota and I are collaborating on a script, tentatively titled “Amelia’s Ring,” for a short anthology progect we are collaborating with “Matt Eppright”:http://www.mankindpictures.com on. Although Dakota and I are good friends, we’ve been separated by distance for these last few years.

Usually, the way it works is: One of us has an idea for a script. We send it back and forth, adding and critiquing here and there, along with a few long phone conversations. It has worked out well for us in the past.

Now, we’re trying a new tool. It’s a piece of software called “Movie Magic Screenwriter”:http://www.screenplay.com/products/mmscreenwriter/index.html which is basically a word processing program specifically made for scriptwriters. It has a lot of powerful features, but the one we’ve been testing is iPartner. The program comes with a license for three computers, so we installed it on his and mine. After we connect, we can work on the script in real-time, watching each other type into it and chatting. There’s also a voice-over-IP function with a mic and speakers, but we haven’t delved into that yet.

Right now, it’s turning out to be a great way to collaborate. We can talk to each other without tying up the phone line, and we can instantly share and critique our writing in our bathrobes. It’s almost like being in the same room. It has a couple minor bugs — we stopped doing the “live typing” thing since the script flashes on and off annoyingly as you do it — but it’s definitely a step up from what we’d previously been doing.

Incidentally, the internet has turned out to be a great way to collaborate with musicians. All of our scores have been composed from afar. We post video clips with timecode and email detailed suggestions about the score to the musician, along with a script for reference. He will write the music and record it digitally. For Dumping Jenny, “John Thomas Griffith”:http://www.johnthomasgriffith.net sent us CDRs. For Rock Paper Scissors, “Adam Zygmunt”:http://mustec.bgsu.edu/~azygmun/ really went all out. He added the music to the video and posted the clips for us to check out, along with MP3s and WAV files of each bit of score. That way, we could see instant results without having to line it up to the movie ourselves. Right now, Todd Painter (formerly of “The Urge”:http://www.mtv.com/bands/az/urge/artist.jhtml ) is working on the score for Breakups With Guns, all through the internet as well.

It’s not an ideal way to collaborate, but if your resources are limited like ours, it’s a great solution that works well for us. We never could’ve done anything like this a decade ago.