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Independent Filmmakers Should Avoid Amazon Studios

November 23, 2010 by Short Film

If you have to tell someone you’re something like; you are the new hip counter culture movie studio, then you’re really not that thing.

amazonstudios.pngThis week Amazon, the online store where one can find anything, announced Amazon Studios. The Amazon Studios site tries to cast the existing movie system as an antediluvian industry that doesn’t produce anything good anymore. They do this by presenting a video hosted by a tragically hip dude, who uses tired stock photography to convey a blatant misunderstanding of the existing industry. The video is worth watching as an example of a stunning hypocrisy.

The Amazon Studios’ pitch is that you can upload your original writing, as well as all your rights to that work and then any other member of the Amazon Studio System can revise your screenplay.

If you prefer to upload a test moviethat you’ve directed you should be aware of this juicy bit from the Amazon FAQ;

If I direct a winning test movie, and Amazon Studios makes a full budget theatrical film based on that project, do I get to direct that full-budget theatrical film?

Not necessarily. We hope to hire talent from Amazon Studios for any professional movies we make when we can but we want to be upfront that we can’t guarantee this. Our priority will be to release the biggest and best movies possible with the cast and crew that promise the most commercial success.

Which is tantamount to saying; what a fabulous idea we’re going to give it a big name to direct and go make the big money on your hard work. Here, have a stipend. Don’t spend it all in one place. Kissy kissy.

John August and Drew McWeene have weighed in with August saying;

But here’s the thing: each of these writers wanted to get his movie made. I’ve never met a single screenwriter who hoped anonymous strangers would revise him.

And McWeene observing;

Look, collaboration is one of the key components of filmmaking.  I absolutely believe that.  But I also believe that you have to be able to pick your own collaborators based on their history, your history, common artistic goals, respect, and much more.  “Crowdsourcing” is a big buzzword right now, and under the right conditions, I can see how useful that is.  But for filmmaking?  This is poison.  This is very bad thing.  To me, this smacks of the sort of “let’s suck someone’s blood” mentality that marks the very worst of Los Angeles.

When I was at USC getting my writing critiqued by my classmates I was in an environment in which everyone had voice, and everyone was at the same level of accomplishment. There was a built in check and balance to the process leaving me with the final decision of what to do with the critiques. Even now, with a piece I’m finishing about my first assignment in the Soviet Union the first draft went to another writer whose accomplishments are so significant that I feel like a ten year old in her presence. In other words her criticism is worth worshipping, but she leaves me with the final decision based on my vision of the piece.

If you haven’t noticed the internet is suffused with unrepentant and unaccomplished armchair critics. This is not good criticism, this is crap being slung around for the sake of hearing the splat.
Amazon’s model is an exercise in homogeny. History is replete with examples of extraordinary leaps in science and art, usually brought forth by one brave individual who is backed by an amazing crew. Not by a crowd of people. If you want to argue the example of Wikipedia and open source programming, these endeavors have an expected result. In the case of WikiPedia the crowd sourcing is a giant fact checking machine. In the case of open source programming, the resulting code either works or doesn’t work.

PhotoCine News recommends that our readers avoid Amazon Studios. Placing your content in their system will strip you of any rights to your own work. I would hate to see any of our readers get abused by a severely flawed system.

A big thank you to John August and Drew McWeene who were the first to jump on this story and offer intelligent perspective.

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