"Could OZ Help Save the Movie Industry ?"

I went down the " Yellow Brick Road " Wednesday night..

We went to see the showing of "Wizard of Oz."

As anyone who either knows me personally, or has read my blog over the last couple of years knows I am a big fan of classic movies. So when when I got the TCM email a couple of months ago, announcing the screening of of OZ, I talked to my wife and she went and prebought the tickets.

It was great. While I was not a huge fan of the movie itself, I did enjoy seeing it.

What really amazed me was the lines... The had 2 showings running at the same time, they had so many, The one I was in was mostly filled up. There were many older folks and yes quite a few kids. When Robert Osborne came on screen it was dead quiet after the applause....

He said his intro talking about the directors and the stars, showing clips as he talked. Even seeing those old black & White clips up on the big screen as amazing. Probably most of the clips he showed had never been blown up that big since they were first shown in theaters 70 years ago. When Mr. Osborne finished there was a applause. Theres was more applause when the movie started. The was no mention of the movie in the lobby, just a line forming, they told us which theater to go into, and the line was huge, they were still coming in to sit when the movie was just starting.. I was proud to see so many people come out to support this classic movie. For generations people have been watching this and other classic movies on a 27" tv, with crappy sound, and now to see it up where it and all classic movies belong was a beautiful thing.

I had read several places where folks were complianing that because it was all digital, it was not the same as the original film print. Who Cares?

When it was over the screen went blank and a windows toolbar came up on the screen bottom, My daughter was surprised, It was on a computer?

You know what she didn't care, it was a great movie, and execellantly restored to its glory,

No matter whether your a die-hard purist, or a tech junkie like me, a great movie transcends any medium, as dose great art of any kind.

There are volumes of material about both the orginial movie, and the rstoration of the movie, I won't try to be a historian about the movie, As, I have bigger fish to fry;;

The bigger point is they did it and people came,,

One perspective of this is; Will help open they eyes of many younger folks to the great movies they're missing and bring attention to film preservation, and restoration in general?

Of course thees a bigger picture. The bigger picture being the movie industry. For many years the movie industry has been complaining about loosing money to piracy There are major lessons to be learned here. That there is a major audience for classic movie in the major theaters. Is it possible that they may have discovered a way to bring folks back to the movie theater? Classic Movies.

I am not for one instant subjesting that they stop making new movies, and inventing new technologys to make the movies with, Far from it. However,, There is a very large untaped market of baby boomer's and even older people who have little or no interst in spending what money they do have on seeing the newest latest greatest movie of the week. On the other hand,, if they were to spend just one weekend a month showing classic movies on one or two screens they would draw them out,, and a whole new market share which has always been there, but been ignored would come out to spend. Of course it would take advertising, and possibility even doing senor specials and discounts. In the long run it would be worth it. Another possiblity, teaming with a national resturant chain to offer package deals with dinner and a classic movie,, I know its crazy,, bit if done right with the right promotion it could very well open up a forgotten market. In southern retirement states, it could go over very well.

Theres also another aspect of the Wizard of Oz that is equally important. Preservation and restoration of classic movies. The general public dose not understand how fragile out movies history is. How little it can take to start a film degrading, actually turning to dust if left in the wrong conditions long enough. Over that last 20-30 years theres have been several projects to preserve and restore our film libraries around the world. Rather then try to explain what happens as films slowly turns to dust I refer you to a film. a documentary actually, called "Keepers of the Frame" This film very clearly tell the tale of the film and why it is so important to preserve and restore our film libraries. Here are three links to material about "Keepers of the frame" ''

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0214844/

http://www.in70mm.com/news/2007/keepers_frame/index.htm

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7851705567600658577#

Please take the time to check out this extorinary film about films.

Hopefully all the attention that OZ is getting this next week with a release of Blue-ray and related material will focus interest on the possible comerical value of re-releasing classic films in theaters on a national and widespread basis with the supporting advertising so folks know that are being put out there again.

Judging from I have seen and read, this is a potionial serious money maker for the movie industry which claims to have been bleeding money for the last decade. This will help on at least 2 fronts, 1. Bringing in more revenue across the board, 2. In some ways more importantly, Giving classic movies a venues they haven't had for decades and exposing them to whole new audiences, which most if given the chance probably would at least check out the movies, Introducing theses movies to new audiences on the big screen will have a far different impact then seeing the same material on a 27' screen, or even on a huge flat screen tv. There is no replacing the experience of seing Bogart or other classic stars in a movies screen the size of a house.

Yes the" Wizard of Oz" was important in 1939, and it could be more important in 2009, 70 years after it was released. If it helps bring classic movies to the general movie theater on a regular basis, and bring more attention to preservation and restoration of movies, then it has more then payed for itself, both in historical value, and in saving the movie industry .

Ken lawson

More on DRM and Other Issues of Importance

Image this; You sit down with your family in front of your brand new 50+" High definition tv with 7.1 Surround; sound and all the trimmings to watch a Blu-ray movie you borrowed from a friend. You played the movie in your brand new Blu-ray HD DVD player the hooked up to the Internet via your wireless connection which for your wi-fi network for the computers. This give you extra features not on the player itself,,, or so you thought.

A week latter you receive a summons to the Piracy Court in your area, Apparently the movie your borrowed from your friend was a copy and not the original, and the DVD player realized this and played it anyways and then "phoned Home"

The above scenario is make believe right now.However,the hardware is available now to do exactly that or something very similar to it. Once a device is put a network theres no end to what can be done even in the background, if the program is in the rom chip it can run in the background and the owner never know its even there until its too late. By then everything that they've done with that device is no longer their own personal business, it now part of a giant profile either a general profile or a specific profile based directly on them by name, or other qualifying data.
There are other issues here beside just devices spying on us.The ramifications of this are frighting.

Other issues that have come up in the last few years include music, and of course HD and the DRM in General. The music industry has pretty much given up on drming their mp3s. Theres has been a huge backlash against the perceived enemy's, in the form of the RIAA, and the MPAA and other media distribution bodies, . Over the last several years there has been a huge drop in CD sales, this is blamed in large part on music sales though on-line retailers such as I-Tunes ect. along with everyones old scapegoat piracy . yes there is piracy however I don't believe its the only reason the sales have gone down. Maybe most of the music isn't all that great in the first place and people don't want it. All that aside, two artist tried something very different last year, they got shed of their contract with the big studios and independently publish their cd. the big twist is was they didn't price their cd,
RadioHead released their album "IN Rainbows" was released Oct 10, on their site and anyone could down the entire album and pay what they wanted for the album. They also had the option of pre-ordering it and also a special box set with a vinyl version and other items. Although they wouldn't release exact figures, all indications are that they did very well, and the best part is they got all the money not most of it going to middlemen. Here are couple of link to story's about the Radiohead ablum;

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Oct02/0,4670,OntheNet,00.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/opinion/14sun3.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

Earlier this year Nine Inch Nails followed Radiohead by releasing their album free and offering better quality versions for fees. They said that so far they have earned 1.6 million on their free album. See Link;

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23390248-5014239,00.html

While theses two example prove that people will pay even if they don't have to most artist are not in a position to do something like that. But it dose prove the concept of people paying the artist directly without the middle man, AKA the record companies. When people know the artist is getting all the money they're more willing to pay more.


There are other venues that also lend themselves to artist self-producing their works, such as publishing. Do a quick Google search and you will find thousands of places that will publish your book. Some are places that will publish your book for a price, while other are real publishing houses that actively look for talent and will publish your book. The biggest boom is the idea of on-demand publishing, there are many places where they only actually print and bind a copy of the book after it has been sold, the idea being theres no no huge inventory of books sitting around wasting paper and taking up space, they only print exactly what they need.

Which bring us to a another new concept that has been getting widespread attention, Creative Commons licenses.

http://creativecommons.org/

The idea of Creative Commons Licenses is that you can decide what kinds of rights that you want give your work.

Here are several ways in which you can copy write your material,

1. Others can copy my personal videos, edit if they like or even distribute them on their own sites but should not sell the videos.
2. Others can copy photos from my Flickr Gallery, use them on blogs but they are not allowed to edit or manipulate the photos.
3. Other are allowed to take my images and even manipulate them using Photoshop but they should license their new creations under identical terms.
4. Others can take my music albums and distribute them on their own sites but they should neither modify the contents nor make any money out of my music.

This lets you have a say in what ways your work can be used. The Creative Commons Licenses can be used with anything from music to art, to books published online. This is a idea which is catching on all over the world, One look at the Creative Commons website shows that they developed it to work in many languages and countries.


There are a myriad of other issues to be dealt with over the next several years. Among them; the idea of Net Neutrality, the idea of keeping the Internet a even level playing Field for everyone regardless of how get on line or what speeds they're going be 56k or a T1 line, One the we everyone is equal, President Bush as access to the exact sites and information as I have or anyone Else on at the time, I could be shopping at the same on line store as Bill Gates and never even know it, and we're both equal as far as the web is concerned.Except that Bill Gates can spend WAY more then me..
Theres also the recent auctioning off of spectrum by the FCC. One round of Auctions has ended. The 700MHz bandwidth is the bandwidth that analog tv uses to broadcast you tv signal from your local broadcasters to you. With the coming transition to digital in February 2009, that bandwidth is now freed up for other uses. The FCC has had a auction to licences the bandwidth to various providers, who can then use it to either add or upgrade their services to the consumer.Among the winners were big players likeVerizon, and AT&T won most of the licences and blocks .

Here are two links;

This is the FCC site with the Auction Summary;

http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/default.htm?job=auction_summary&id=73

Here is another story on the results,;

http://mobilitytoday.com/news/008421/verizon_att_wireless_spectrum

For more reading do a search on 700MHZ auction Results. The eventually outcome of this and the future auctions for other bandwidths will not be known for quite some time, However, consumers should be aware and keep informed of whats happening in the wireless space as well as in cyberspace.
Its very important for consumers to not take what their fed by the mass advertising and other media outlets at face value . They need to question and do research and find out exactly what going on behind the sences and try to understand how it will affect their rights asa consumer and as a citizen. To to this end I offer the following links to places and peaple who are trying to protect our freedoms as we know them now;

Public Knowledge.org
http://www.publicknowledge.org/


Below are a listing of all the links at the bottom of the Public Knowledge.org front page. Please take your time and go through them, I think you'll find some interesting reading.

• CDT: Policy Beta
• Susan Crawford blog
• Cybertelecom
• EFF: DeepLinks
• Electronic Retailer Blog (ERA)
• IPac Blog
• KEI Policy Blogs: WIPO Casting Treaty
• Lawrence Lessig
• On the Commons.org
• Open Access News
• SIVACRACY.NET
• Jon Taplin’s Blog
• The Technology Liberation Front
• Tim Wu: What’s New

Organizations

• Alliance for Taxpayer Access
• Center for Democracy & Technology
• Center for Digital Democracy
• Creative Commons
• Digital Freedom Campaign
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Fair Use Network
• Free Press
• Free Software Foundation
• FreeCulture.org
• Future of Music Coalition
• Internet Archive
• IPac
• Knowledge Ecology International
• Media Access Project
• National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture
• Save the Internet
• Software Freedom Law Center

Syndicated Feeds

• Blogs, Events & Releases
• Policy Blog
• Events
• Press Releases
• In the Know Podcast
• Enhanced Audio and Video
• Copyright Office Filings
• FCC Filings
• Letters to Policy Makers
• Policy Analysis
• Testimony

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Today's Media and The Future..

Early Adapters, pay through the nose... That said.....all the formats we have now, Mp3. wave, Apple's AAC, ect, Dvd, HD, & Blu-ray will eventually be superseded by whatever new technology is developed over the next years, However, as the film/movie preservationists have pointed out many times, as we move forward much is lost,, I am thinking both of lost films themselves and the the people who actually were there, and, almost as importantly , the equipment to play edit and do anything with the old media. This premise can be extended to many other things such as old computer hardware, there are millions of computer reels of data siting that no one can access because the machines to play the magnetic memory data tapes are not around any more. Soon there will be millions of VHS tapes laying all over the world with no vcrs to play them on, like the fate of 78rpm records, eventually cd and optical disc will suffer a similar fate... Although it will probably take longer.. All this is not counting what is eventually done with DRM and what effect it has on the hardware. All this is is to say, there is something ,to be said, for the printed page. One can still read a 100+ year old book and one may be able to read the same material digitally 1 year or even a week later after it was digitalized..

DRM is Digital Rights management, What it Essentially boils down to is the copyrights holder, be it the studio, author or production co, whoever, controlling what we can do with the content, whether we can record a show/movie to a pvr, or record something to a dvd burner like I have the big deal in all of this is that its digital, which means every copy is as good as the original, and theres no degradation over the copies like we had on the old analog tapes, What they don't want is perfect digital copies getting out in the world uncontrolled so they can't make any money off them The music industry tried DRM in their MP3s they sold and soon found it was a losing battle, People were still decoding the mp3 or most of them just ripped the music off their legal cds and put them up on file swapping sites anyways. So finely they are giving in and stripping all DRM off the MP3s they sell, Heres a link that will give you a general idea of what were talking about with the music. http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/01/amazon-adds-son.html As for movies Broadcasters can put in flags that tell receivers what they can and can't do with certain material, most of this is getting into the HD realm, Essentially, dumbing down and crippling sat and cable receivers, and making content harder to enjoy. However, the Saga is not dead, for proof, I refer you to the following link, http://wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2008/01/sony_music
The new battle cry will be watermarking so copyright holders can track a piece of material back to the original buyer and hold them responsible for letting the material getting into the wild.. Of course, privacy experts are having their say about the idea. The whole DRM/privacy issue will continue to boil over for many years to come, and probably will never be completly settled one way or the other, There will alway be a contingent of the population the change the status quo and fight for the rights of the average person, in this case, the right of the average person to play his own media as he see fits on what he sees fit.

Bogart....Who........?

I was talking to a young lady of about 14, She was a very pleasant and polite young lady.
At one point I mentioned that one of My cats is named Bogart. At which point I got kind of a blank look, I asked her if the name sounded familiar, after a minute of thinking she finely said yes. She didn't remember the first name. I said the cat was named after Humphrey Bogart . She seemed to kind of know the name. I then proceed to to give a very general sketch of who he was and the movies he'd done, mentioning Casablanca, and the African Queen. Mentioning that he was born in 1899, and if Boggie was still alive, he'd be over 100 years old now. I also mentioned Lauren Bacall and their movies together. By this time, things were moving along and folks to go so, the history lesson was over.

The point of that little story which happens too many times everyday is that young people today have no sense of history . They have no concept that there was another world before MTV ,computers, Internet and 200 TV channels and Mp3s and all the technologies we enjoy today.
What do they think all they things I mentioned a line above were built on?
Granted the story about a teenager not knowing who Boggie was, is trivial in the grand scheme of things, however, insert a another world leader of Major importance in the name blank , and is it so silly? Take a poll and see how many kids know who Kennedy or Eisenhower , or Truman was, the list is far to long, but you get the idea.

As I've gotten older, I seem to developed more of a sense of the importance of history and keeping it alive, and preserving as much oral history as possible and making itassessable , to everyone and making it in formats that they understand. But, the meat of the material along with as much background detail about what is presented is very important to give the viewer a better sense of what it was like to be in the moment when they person is relating is stories, weather it be about the depression of the 30's or WWII, or Korea, or being around when Kennedy was around or when Man first walked on the moon.

A prime example is the Korean War, largely forgotten, in fact its been said the in many was it would have forgotten, except for a tv show called M*A*S*H . There are whole generations of kids who wouldn't know there had been a Korean war if they hadn't seen repeats of MASH, and were intrigued enough to do the research. But that's only a very rare example of the power of tv and a visual media in general.
Most of the time it offers mind numbing noise that is generally called music, propped up by scantly clad woman, whose only propose is to get every male in the sight of the picture, thinking about everything but what they should be thinking about at the time.
The tools are now available to record theses important memories and preserve them. There are volumes of history that not in the books sitting in VA hospitals and nursing homes across the world . Every day huge number of people die who if given the chance probably would have loved to sit down and tell their lives stories about growing up and living in a world very different then ours.
as far general dates and places, granted memory changes over time, however many can remember 1930 like it was yesterday, and can't remember what they had for breakfast that morning. Obviously some folks for various mental or physical reason aren't good candidates for and should be screened for suitability for doing such a interview. There is also the good it may do the All of those interviews should be edited for clearly and researched for at least the basic ground of the times they are regaling us with for acutes patients to have someone interest in their lives.
As this material is collect and cataloged it should be cross-referenced and indexed so anyone wanting a oral history of, say the depression, can put in a search and find interviews that tell about living in the depression, and have supporting information regarding that time and location where the interviewee is talking about so one can get a more complete picture of what they are talking about, that would mean that items that the mention in the interview such as cars, building and historical places should be cross referenced to give information relating to that item.
This database should be made available to every school and institutions of learning in the world. and need to be continually updated.
Lately I have become a big fan of TCM, or Turner Classic Movies, in fact ,I've always like the station as a whole and lately have become to see it as what it could possibly become a treasure trove of historical film and in many respects a window into our history. The history of motion pictures is from what little I can see is largely lost on the youth of today, Many kids don't know anyone older then say, 1980 or so, and have know idea that theres is a rich history of movies both silent and precode movies. While I am not a huge fan of silent movies personally, I do feel that they should be exposed to as many folks as possible, granted many probably won't get into it too much,they should at least know that they and many other movies are out there, there will be a few who will embrace it and help preserve it along with miles of reels of film. The push to High Definition has probably helped with the preservation of old films as they are upconverted to HD or as close as the negatives will allow.
I new class should be added to grade school, some to tie history and movie appreciation something to let teachers show young students a history of movies and tie it together with history or something else that they're doing in class, then students wouldn't be put off by the idea of watching a black & white movie, if its relevant to what they're doing today in life or at least class. Hopefully it would eventually foster a interest for older movies among at least a few students,,,