5 ms·

> These committees decide, in a transparent process of deliberation, which productions from the ones submitted, they believe, are the most promising artisticall

> These committees decide, in a transparent process of deliberation, which productions from the ones submitted, they believe, are the most promising artistically and are most feasible. Having built websites and various products under the direction of business committees, I don't trust a committee to simply choose a tasteful color and style for a "submit" button on a contact form, let alone choosing between between different film ideas. It's probably even worse if the committee is made up of "industry experts" and "academia". > And when you visit a European Fest, especially one of the big five it just blows your mind that in fact, literally thousands of amazing films are made, but they’re simply locked out of mainstream distribution. To me this is a really great and key point. The culture exists. There's probably hundreds or thousands of unknown good films released every year in just about every country. You don't need official committees of academia or industry experts to decide which film production should be prioritized. Dedicated artists find a way to produce what they want to. The bigger issue is distribution. There's Netflix, Hulu, and a few other places where people generally watch movies. These corporations are essentially deciding what a vast majority of the culture most people will get exposed to. Is there a better way for people to simply find out what culture they're missing out on?

scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
Im not so sure you get my point. Every single one of these fantastic European films at festivals does go through this process with the experts and relies on institutional funding at some point. This fantasy about dedicated artists finding a way at great sacrifice is simply naive and in my humble opinion typically American in it’s “pull-up by your own bootstraps” way. I’m sure your experiences with a committee in your job were awful, but in general it all depends who is on it, how honest they are and whether they can be trusted when it comes to merit. Companies that build products aren’t a good parallel to institutions which are built to protect culture. So, the film institute I described above runs a process in which the committees are split up into sub-committees. And the producer petitioning for financing gets to choose which particular set of people they want to be evaluated by. So if you’re making a documentary you might want to direct your proposal towards a committee of documentary filmmakers you know and respect. It’s designed to prevent this kind of “decision by committee” effect we know so well. And then there come additional layers of complexity. Most of the time producers first apply for “development” funding, usually small sums directed towards fleshing an idea out, paying a screenwriter, paying for scouting trips, pre-roll footage. At the point at which you’re applying for the big bucks, you’ve already developed the concept well enough that it has some appeal. This is usually necessary to convince an investor to risk actual money to begin with. And then even then there is even more complexity layered in because often incentives are designed to encourage international co-production efforts. We would never have Yorgos Lanthimos or the Romanian New Wave if the rules for these institutions did not allow producers from Greece and Romania to take advantage of the European Film Fund. It’s all part of the process because you can’t just hand money out to people who don’t know what they’re doing. Art and culture have to be verified like anything else that we want to exhibit quality. There are many parallels to start-ups and start-up culture to be found here. You might say: ”nobody should tell me how my start-up idea should be because I have this vision.” But if you want money from an accelerator, you’re going to have to encounter some sort of evaluation process. And usually a big part of that will be some experienced committee or board asking you to thoroughly explain it and verifying that you can in fact pull it off. Here in Europe we often trust the institutions and experts to do this part. I dunno, distribution regulation is definitely key, you can still find just about everything that is made somewhere online. But nothing about the modern internet makes it easy to find out, and I suspect that this is by design.

scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago

Im not so sure you get my point. Every single one of these fantastic European films at festivals does go through this process with the experts and relies on institutional funding at some point. This fantasy about dedicated artists finding a way at great sacrifice is simply naive and in my humble opinion typically American in it’s “pull-up by your own bootstraps” way. I’m sure your experiences with a committee in your job were awful, but in general it all depends who is on it, how honest they are and whether they can be trusted when it comes to merit. Companies that build products aren’t a good parallel to institutions which are built to protect culture. So, the film institute I described above runs a process in which the committees are split up into sub-committees. And the producer petitioning for financing gets to choose which particular set of people they want to be evaluated by. So if you’re making a documentary you might want to direct your proposal towards a committee of documentary filmmakers you know and respect. It’s designed to prevent this kind of “decision by committee” effect we know so well. And then there come additional layers of complexity. Most of the time producers first apply for “development” funding, usually small sums directed towards fleshing an idea out, paying a screenwriter, paying for scouting trips, pre-roll footage. At the point at which you’re applying for the big bucks, you’ve already developed the concept well enough that it has some appeal. This is usually necessary to convince an investor to risk actual money to begin with. And then even then there is even more complexity layered in because often incentives are designed to encourage international co-production efforts. We would never have Yorgos Lanthimos or the Romanian New Wave if the rules for these institutions did not allow producers from Greece and Romania to take advantage of the European Film Fund. It’s all part of the process because you can’t just hand money out to people who don’t know what they’re doing. Art and culture have to be verified like anything else that we want to exhibit quality. There are many parallels to start-ups and start-up culture to be found here. You might say: ”nobody should tell me how my start-up idea should be because I have this vision.” But if you want money from an accelerator, you’re going to have to encounter some sort of evaluation process. And usually a big part of that will be some experienced committee or board asking you to thoroughly explain it and verifying that you can in fact pull it off. Here in Europe we often trust the institutions and experts to do this part. I dunno, distribution regulation is definitely key, you can still find just about everything that is made somewhere online. But nothing about the modern internet makes it easy to find out, and I suspect that this is by design.