A Note From The Editor On Open Letters, Indie Finance, Etc.
Yesterday afternoon an open letter was posted on ScreenAnarchy addressed to Alexandre Philippe, the director of The People vs George Lucas. Earlier today we also ran a response from Philippe to that letter. [ed note: The initial letter is now included as part of Philippe's response.] Beyond the issues raised in those letters the initial post raises some issues about operations at ScreenAnarchy that I feel - as founder and editor - I need to address personally.
Twitch has long operated as a sort of collective, individual authors given open access to the site with the understanding that they will be responsible with that privilege and use the site as the news source it is intended as rather than as some sort of personal platform. It seems clear that in this case the line between those two was crossed. This is a matter that should have been run through the ScreenAnarchy senior editorial staff before being posted in public - at which point I would have contacted Philippe directly before posting. While I was more than happy to run Philippe's response in full, it would have behoved ScreenAnarchy to have that conversation with him before the initial letter was posted rather than after.
Given that the core issue here revolves around the realities of independent film finance, it is worth mentioning at this point that I've received a crash course in that topic myself over the past few years. I have personally become more involved in production and sales, and the reality is that it often takes a very long time for anyone to get paid on anything. Nobody is rolling in money in the independent world. I currently am part of a project that I've been working on for over two years, a project that was released in the US back in December of 2010, and we've only reached the break-even point now. In other words, only now can I look forward to getting paid. That's just a reality. And another reality here is that if we want anyone involved in The People vs George Lucas to get paid - whether director or artist - people need to support it. It's currently available - I've got my copy on order now.
Twitch has long operated as a sort of collective, individual authors given open access to the site with the understanding that they will be responsible with that privilege and use the site as the news source it is intended as rather than as some sort of personal platform. It seems clear that in this case the line between those two was crossed. This is a matter that should have been run through the ScreenAnarchy senior editorial staff before being posted in public - at which point I would have contacted Philippe directly before posting. While I was more than happy to run Philippe's response in full, it would have behoved ScreenAnarchy to have that conversation with him before the initial letter was posted rather than after.
Given that the core issue here revolves around the realities of independent film finance, it is worth mentioning at this point that I've received a crash course in that topic myself over the past few years. I have personally become more involved in production and sales, and the reality is that it often takes a very long time for anyone to get paid on anything. Nobody is rolling in money in the independent world. I currently am part of a project that I've been working on for over two years, a project that was released in the US back in December of 2010, and we've only reached the break-even point now. In other words, only now can I look forward to getting paid. That's just a reality. And another reality here is that if we want anyone involved in The People vs George Lucas to get paid - whether director or artist - people need to support it. It's currently available - I've got my copy on order now.
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