Here are my notes from Brian Newman’s (ReNew Media) talk at at CCNMTL’s Video, Education, and Open Content conference:

ReNew Media is founded by Rockefeller Foundation to help media artists with funding their projects. ReNew offers Media Arts Scholarships and in this process they hear a lot about what filmmakers and media artists do not make (meaning $$) from their productions.

Media Artists and Open Content Current Paradigm

• Artists want: freedom to create their vision and Second is that they hope to make a living by doing so.
• They are under-funded in an over-produced field.
• Everyone thinks they will be discovered.
• There is limited thinking about distribution and educational use.
• No real numbers to tell you how little filmmakers are making on their films.
• Paid educational marketplace important
• Most not very aware of alternate licensing, or of open content movement
• Most are resistent to the notion of alternate licensing like CC
• Filmmakers and Distributors like payment and DRM
• No viable model which pays them for their work

ReNew thought about how to fund media artists’ work up front. Stipulation of funding was that the work had to transfer to an alternate licensing (Creative Commons, etc.) scheme after 5 years. In asking that question, they found that filmmakers and other media artists’ are open to those ideas.

They decided to give money to artists saying, “we’ll give you money up front” to make a short piece under a CC license. They got some great works which they premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. They have a contest that allows people to remix the work.

ReNew has contracted with Intelligent Television to study the economics of distribution. With the goal of finding out how much filmmakers are actually making, because there is no information here. Brian says there are really only about 4 or 5 people every year who are making money off of independent/documentary films.

Proposals for Open Video Finance

• It’s not black and white
• Need to enlarge our thinking and accept new ideas which combine our hopes and current realities
• Need for real numbers on funding, revenue from various markets and consumer/educational preferences
• Need viable models for open content - and very few, if any, exist

Philanthropy needs to think about new ways to fund open content projects.

ReNew is also working on a project called The Reframe Project, subtitled, “Making our visual Heritage accessible to all”.

There’s a lot of film stuck on the shelf that educators want to use which are not open. ReNew is interested in sustainable models for funding digitization and archival projects. They are working with Amazon on the project. The deal is non-exclusive. ReNew will help with digitization and they will give sources back as a DVD. Owners can take it back and make it free or sell it all on iTunes.

They are helping people with delivery through:

• DVD on demand
• Digital download to own or rent
• Variable time, users, prices (set by rights holder)
• Ingest on demand (through Amazon)

All of these processes are opt-in.

Brian also talked about the new Reframe website, which will include:

• Educational focus
• Curated - top down, bottom up
• Branded
• Participatory
• Recommendation systems (from Amazon)

They will also being doing a lot of work on rights issues. They are hoping it can become a nexus for people interested in these issues. They think this project will be a sustainable solution for long-term support.

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