Digital Coast 2000
By David Geffner
Photos by Robert Hale
"Talent Rights: Artists, Agencies & the Risks and Rewards of Online Opportunities" panel (from left): Joseph Levy
('George Lucas in Love'), Sallie Weaver (SAG), moderator Mark London Williams
('Digital Coast Reporter'), David Tenzer (CAA), Elizabeth Stanley (DGA) and Chuck Slocum
(WGA).
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If Wall Street has already fallen in and out of love with the internet industry like a fickle teen, then Hollywood is looking more like a middle-aged suitor, cautiously dating the new medium to see where the relationship might lead. Nowhere was this fact more evident than at the recent 2nd Annual Digital Coast Conference held at the DGA. A three-day smorgasbord of panels, parties and "fireside chats" with the movers and shakers in both online digital entertainment and the diverse
dot-com universe, DC2000 reflected both the highs and lows that Hollywood has come to associate with the rapidly shifting new digital technologies.
On the one hand, DGA members like Penelope Spheeris and Wayne Wang, on panels like "Storytelling v2.0: Sound & Vision in the Networked Age," trumpeted the advent of new digital mediums as more user-friendly forums to tell their stories.
"The studio process for making films," observed director Spheeris during the nearly 90-minute panel, which also featured Marvel comic books legend, Stan Lee, "is a very cumbersome way to make movies. I've recently done three different documentary projects in DV and High-Definition Video, and it was a liberating experience. The last show I did I was able to shoot 270 hours of digital tape."
Fellow panelist Wayne Wang, who has just completed his first digital feature,
Center of the World, after notching such classic independent films as Chan Is Missing, Smoke
and The Joy Luck Club, was equally as enthusiastic about working digitally.
"These new technologies allow for much more flexibility," Wang observed. "As a director, I'm not locked into a screenplay that's been overwritten to death after years of different drafts. I can work organically with an eye toward improvisation and explore a mix of documentary and fiction. With such small, lightweight equipment I can put an actor into a real-life setting and play with the medium in ways I've never dreamed of before."
On the other hand, while film directors like Spheeris and Wang described the digital medium as a potential "rebirth" of creativity in Hollywood, online visionaries like Bill Gross, of the Steven
Spielberg-financed and Pasadena-based Idealab!, were lamenting the demise of high-profile digital entertainment companies, DEN and Pop.com. Gross, whose so-called "incubator" outfit, Idealab!, has launched a slew of successful web companies, hinted that the April crash of many prominent internet stocks would compress the crowded online universe into a handful of more established companies which pursued more traditional business models to stay alive.
As for the DGA's presence at DC2000, it was aimed squarely at attracting those new media artists who are creating original products for online distribution, as well as those directors whose work in traditional media is exploiting new channels on the web. Like the conference itself, the mix of old and new school was a combustible one, as evidenced by a DGA sponsored lunch in the 6th-floor boardroom.
"How will an organization like the DGA serve a person like me?" quizzed former
Simpsons-animator-turned-web-director Tom Winkler after the luncheon was opened up for a roundtable discussion. "I'm not covered under the Guild's contract as an animator. And, as a live-action director, I'm making one-minute movies every day in my house with a digital camera to upload onto my website. The old models the DGA have in place may not be able to account for a director like me. Is a one-minute home digital media piece considered a movie? I certainly think so."
DGA President Jack Shea (left) with director
Alex Singer (right) at DC2000 luncheon.
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"Digital technologies are creating an entirely new language for what is considered entertainment," snapped Marc Scarpa, founder and CEO of Jumpcut, a company specializing in producing interactive web casts of various live events including the first-ever online "Town Hall" web chat with a sitting President of the United States. "The kind of web casts we produce occur in real-time for an interactive community which has control over what the director can show them. The audience is 'directing' what areas of the web cast they want to participate in. That's a radical new way of looking at things and it requires a complete shift from traditional media like film and television."
The DGA lunch was one of the high points of the conference. The open lines of dialogue between DGA vets like
Randal Kleiser and Penelope Spheeris and fledgling new media artists like Winkler, was exactly what was missing from many of the other panels. During the DGA lunch, new Hollywood players like
George Lucas in Love producer Joseph Levy had the chance to compare notes with such long-standing traditional artists like director Alex Singer and DGA President Jack
Shea.
Singer, whose TV directing credits stretch all the way back to the early '60s, on landmark shows like
The Fugitive, Lost in Space and The Monkees, has become one of the most-sought-after directors for sci-fi programming in the last decade. His work on all three
Star Trek spinoffs added a unique perspective to the debate.
"Technologies may change but the human response to them is still the same," Singer explained. "Back when live television was first taking off, I was offended by the idea of joining any organization that might tell me what to do. Yet, I joined the Directors Guild because strength in numbers was the only way to survive. Whether you're talking about a small piece of work produced for the internet or a feature film done for a Hollywood studio, someone, somewhere, will try to exploit the artistic process. Protecting creative intent via an artists' Guild becomes a necessity, no matter what technology is in vogue."
"Then the DGA has a huge job ahead," Jumpcut's Scarpa countered, "if they're going to aggregate all the top talent in the new media community and then leverage that power against companies like AOL and Microsoft, who may not recognize the Guilds when it comes to signing online talent."
"The way we're approaching content," chimed in Joseph Levy, now heading up Bandiera Entertainment's online division, "is to work with
top quality DGA, SAG and WGA clients. Microsoft and other companies will do the same because they want and need to work with the best talent our industry has to offer. For me it's not just about 'how does the DGA work with new media artists to ensure they and their employers adhere to Guild regulations.' It's about bringing proven Hollywood talent into a new emerging media."
Left to right: Director Wayne Wang, comic book
legend Stan Lee,
director Penelope Spheeris and DC2000's Jason Colcanis.
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On the third and final day of Digital Coast 2000, conference attendees were treated to a continuation of the debate begun in the DGA Boardroom. In the morning panel, entitled "Talent Rights: Artists, Agencies & the Risks and Rewards of Online Opportunities," the role of film industry unions in the brave-new digital frontier was dissected in a Q&A session which ran nearly two hours. Panelists from the major Guilds included Elizabeth Stanley of the DGA, Chuck Slocum from the WGA and Sallie Weaver of SAG. Also present on the panel were David Tenzer, a TV agent specializing in Web packaging from CAA, and producer and online executive Joseph Levy.
Moderated with flair and humor by Mark London Williams, senior editor for the
L.A-based new media magazine Digital Coast Reporter, the artists' rights panel showcased the DGA's efforts to create workable contracts in a fast-changing environment.
"One of the first things we need to ensure," noted Assistant Executive Director Stanley, "is that the internet industry recognizes that the Guilds do have the right to be in this new media space. We're talking basic recognition here, which, at least up till now has, is certainly not been a given."
When quizzed by moderator Williams about what models the Guilds can look to in creating new media contracts, the DGA's Stanley immediately took the lead.
"No one yet knows what kind of revenue models will eventually dominate the internet," Stanley began. "So the DGA has chosen to create new media contracts which are as flexible as possible. We have not set minimum pay rates for our directors creating original work on the net because we recognize that setting minimums based on a film/TV or even a commercial model may cost our members work. Basically, an internet employer negotiates whatever deal he or she can with our members. That may change down the line. But, I don't think anyone up on this panel can honestly say today what those revenue models will look like. It's simply too early in the medium's life."
Like many of the seminars and chats featured during DC2000, the Talent Rights Panel raised many more questions than answers. "How can the various Guilds calculate residual payments in a borderless medium like the internet?" queried moderator Williams. "How can we create fair deals for our clients with the onset of convergence?" added TV agent David Tenzer. "The melding of the internet and television not only creates new business models for our talent, but, it requires the audience to interact with this convergence in an entirely new way."
It was left to producer Joseph Levy to best sum up Hollywood's cautious courting of the new digital media: "The monetizing of content on the internet is incredibly primitive right now," Levy announced. "And, we're all learning every day how we're going to do it. Everyone sitting on this stage is approaching the internet with an open mind. They don't want to govern it with regulations, as some people might think. They want to cooperatively develop agreements where we can all work harmoniously and use the incredible talent base these Guilds represent."
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