#Creative industries

[alpaca-clouds]

Media Production: It takes a village to make a thing

I want to talk a bit about media creation this week. Mostly because I want these blogs then to be a reference for whenever that discussion comes up again. Because, frankly, I am very tired of people not understanding - and not caring - about how many people it actually takes to make most media they consume.

We see that both when a piece of media succeeds - and when a piece of media flops or is heavily critisized. In both cases both the general public and also fans will usually latch onto one or two people involved in the production to be deserving of either all the praise or all the blame. Usually this is the person with most name recognition, or, if there is nobody like that involved, a general idea of "the writer(s)" or "the director", because while a lot of folks do not quite know what is in the control of either role, it feels kinda right that they should be able to have the most say about the outcome.

And don't get me wrong: There definitely are examples of media where indeed it was the writer(s), director, or whatever person with most name recognition making a project fail or succeed. And yes, this even goes so far as including actors. I can think of at least two movies where an actor, who was very full of themselves, made it almost impossible to work on a set. Just as I can think of examples, where a project would have failed without an actor putting all their name recognition and everything behind it to secure enough money to actually finish production.

But most of the time... It is a lot more complicated than that.

General rule: If a piece of media is not a self-published published book or comic, there is definitely more than one person involved into having gotten that piece of media onto the market.

Yes, even with a book. Sure, generally speaking, an author is allowed to ignore any advice given to them by an editor and publisher, unless their contract states something else (which it rarely does, because publishing industry standards). Does not mean that writers do. And yes, I know definitely cases where at least in my view editors have made books worse - often by pressing for more traditional climaxes of books that originally did not have such a thing. (You know, at times you can resolve the tension in certain books without a big BOOM. But I definitely know a lot of editors who will at least advice authors to do an action finale in a fantasy or scifi book, rather than one where characters talk that shit out.)

And of course, once we are talking "multimedia" there is gonna be a whole lot of people involved. If you have ever sat down to watch that by now 10 minute long credit roll of a movie or game, you know how many people there are. And... yeah, often not everyone gets credited. Because other wise those credits would be 20 minutes.

Of course, of those often hundreds of people, most do not have the kind of power over the project to make it either become amazing, nor fail. Neither the single accountant, nor the gaffer, nor the catering service will probably majorly influence the outcome of a project. But there are absolutely other people than just the director, the writer and the headline actors.

If we talk about both TV and movie production, it usually starts with a pitch or a script. Both are options - though the pitch will usually never get anywhere, unless there already is someone with a recognizable name and/or some influence attached. Though these days it is also very common that a pitch is: "Let's do a movie based on recognizable IP XYZ." At least when we are talking projects with some budget.

But let's not assume the "big budget" stuff for now. If it is not big budget, it usually starts with a script. And that script is gonna get sent into with a variety of producers. Most of them will usually put those scripts right into the trash, because they might on some days receive tens of those things. But some might read a script when it sounds interesting and if they see some promise, they might give some feedback for the writer to workshop it. Often it will get sent back and forth then, until the producer then goes to pitch it to investors and studios. And if the people involved are lucky, it is gonna get picked up.

Now, this is where a lot of people think the involvement of the writer ends - which studios will use to horribly underpay writers, mind you. But no, usually the writer is gonna be involved till the shooting is wrapped. You know why? Because no script will survive the reality of shooting or even just animation.

There is stuff that sounds amazing on paper, but just will not work in real life on set (or in the animation). Maybe a line sounds cool when written out, but once the actor says it, it sounds wrong. Maybe the writer imagined an amazing scene, but when they try to make it work, it won't because physics are a thing - and working against physics while possible does take more budget than a project eventually has. (Not to mention: In action heavy productions, there are enough writers that have learned to write in something across they lines of "they fight, X wins" and let the director, stunt coordinators, and actors/stunt people figure it out. I have seen fans of certain media rage about those "lazy writers", upon getting their hands on scripts, but... yeah, no this is actually a good practice, because those other people will usually have a better idea of what is possible than a writer.)

Also, directors and actors often have ideas about a story, and will want to change a scene or two.

If you have ever watched anything having to do with productions (no matter if movie or tv) you will have heard actors talk about receiving their pages for the shooting day early in the morning while in make up. That is because of those last minute changes. And that is why usually you do want to have writers involved in the production - and also why writers want writer rooms. Because two to three writers can mostly handle a movie, sure. But a TV production, that covers a lot more screentime in a few months of shooting/animating? You want more people working on it to make the daily adjustments.

And again: One of the main reasons why the writers guild was protesting last year was, that studios did a) not want a writers room (because more writers to pay) and b) actually did not want to pay the writers for those last minute adjustments during shooting. Which we hopefully can agree is very much unfair towards the writers.

The main director(s) will usually make a lot of decisions of course of how things happen on set or in the animation. Ideally a good director in this listens to the other specialists involved - though not all directors do, and in terms of certain productions recently (MCU *coughs*) often do not get the chance. But ideally they will get the input of actors, stunt people, the cinematographer, the people in command of set stuff, and also the people working on the visual effects. While the director(s) are definitely creative people and the role is a creative role, it is also very much a management thing, to get everyone onto the same page.

How much a director is involved in the pre-production (aka: getting an idea of the visual language, getting sets, costumes and whatever prepared, casting talent, getting the character and environment designs done, and so on) and the post-production (aka editing, visual effects, reshoots, retouching and so on) is very different depending on the project. Again, with Marvel Studios in recent years directors are usually only hired for the main production, with Marvel mainly taking care of both pre- and post-production, as most directors do not get to put in their unique creative style - it has to fit the brand after all. But even outside of Marvel it is also very dependent on the director and the kind of project it is, whether the director is heavily involved in this. Some directors will be sitting in the studio every day during post-production helping out whereever they can, others bring people for these things they trust and will only be on call, and some others will disappear on the last day of shooting.

And of course there is always the producers and executive producers. Every media project has them in some way or form. They are the people mainly there to secure funding and work as the communication line between the heads and board of a studio, and the creatives on set. As Guillermo del Toro once said (I am paraphrasing here): "A good producer is there, when you need them, but leaves you alone, when you don't." But... The higher the budget and investment, the worse the producer is usually by this metric.

Please note: By now it is fairly usual that at least big stars (both in terms of directing, and acting) will have their own production studio, and yes, also be credited as producers in a movie or TV show. However, as soon as there is more budget involved, that budget usually comes form a bigger studio or media conglomerate (like Disney, Netflix, Warner-Discovery and so on) and the producers who are responsible for the big investors in a project will have a lot more say. This might lead to something called "executive meddling" about what I am going to talk in two days.

And yes, before I forget. There is of course also game production, which usually is very different from anything else, because game productions most of the time do not start with a story concept, but rather with a general concept/game play concept. This might of course be different when you produce within established franchises, where people might expect a certain gameplay and your question is more what kinda story will allow that gameplay to happen again, but generally speaking: Gameplay will trump story in game productions.

But here is also the issue with game productions: These work very, very differently depending on what studio we are talking about. Sure, the AAA studios work in comparable ways, but everyone who isn't AAA has their unique style, because compared to every other form of media games are still fairly young as a form of media. And while for big budgeted releases certain "best practices" (given these will usually involve crunch for at several weeks) have been established that managers and investors will push for, smaller studios might well have their own best practices (that ideally will involve less crunch). But of course, with games the effect that there is not a single person or group of people to be praised/blamed for something being really amazing, or really bad, is even stronger, because usually game productions are more spread out and have a lot more moving parts that can make a thing really great or really bad.

Though a general rule still holds true for games as well: The bigger the budget, the bigger the power of certain producers and managers to overrule any creative decision in an attempt to appease investors. Because executive meddling definitely isn't a problemt unique to a single medium. But I will talk about that on Wednesday...

[imaginativewriter23]

PSA to authors, readers, and people who believe in giving proper credit to creators.

Another great way to support your authors and writing community that costs NO money is to report plagiarism and people who repost work without permission or proper accreditation to the original author.

The amount of times I see authors hard work become plagiarized, reposted, or given poor accreditation (such as "credit to the original author") is crazy.

Keep in mind, plagiarism isn't always copy and paste, it can also be:

Changing the names or looks of characters (if it's a story) but keeping the main story.

Changing a couple of sentences in the work.

Stealing the story concept completely (Keep in mind this does not include tropes).

On that note, proper accreditation should, at the least have the following:

A link or statement to where the original work was found (i.e from Tumblr)

The original creator's name (or username/pen name)

Anything else at the original creator's request (Most creators just want the first point and it's not that hard!)

Best way to help if you find plagiarism or poor accreditation? Tell the original creator. They can decide whether they'd like to report the individual or take it into their own hands.

[music-matters20]

the technological changes at work in the creative industries today are fundamentally different from those that came before them.

please do check out the article: Back in time (i)

[finehoney]

from the RMIT grad exhibit

[scout-ai-loud]

Re-imagining Walt Kuhn's Chorus Captain

I wanted to have a contemporary version of one of my favourite paintings which you should check out at the Yale University Art Gallery.

My prompt: a painting in the style of Walt Kuhn's Chorus captain of a pale female computer programmer with light pink hair wearing muted baby pink clothes, a pearl necklace, and red lipstick looking tiredly past her computer screen. very dark background.

I actually created this ages ago before i even knew about #Midjourney's /describe feature. I might revisit this to see what happens when I use it.

the original Chorus Captain as seen on the YUAG website

[simontebrinke]

"Creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought." - Albert Einstein

(Image via Reddit, Inc.)

[oc-oscarcruz]

The activities performed in the sector of CIs originate from an individual creativity of talented and competent workers. Creativity like any other mental work requires intellectual engagement, reflection concentration, creative passion, and personal interest. At the same it is the process of crossing some designated borders, questioning and overthrowing accepted and universally applicable principles or rules, defining problems, and the reality in different  ways. This means a violation of certain taboos, breaking the stereotypes, repudiation of allegiance to some theses applied in popular consciousness.

(Morawsky, 2017)

[the-creative-industries]

IP and their importance in the creative industry

What do we mean by the term IP?

IP or intellectual property is a creation from the mind that is protected by the law. Some examples of material that could be intellectual property are a character, a story, an artwork or an invention. You own intellectual property if you created something and it meet the requirements of a patent or copyrighted material, if you have bought intellectual property off of its creator (or from a previous owner), if you own a brand that’s trademarked.

Why do IP rights in the creative industries matter?

IP rights on an artist’s work means that it is legally owned by the holder of the IP and it has legal protection placed on it preventing its misuse. IP prevents the theft of a creative work meaning someone else couldn’t come up and take an artist's work for themself and twist it for their own purposes such as a person taking an artist’s character and then using it in their own story and claiming it as their own original work. IP means its creator (or owner) gets to dictate who can and can’t use their protected property and on what project it may be used for. It’s creator/owner can receive royalties from the IP’s ongoing use by others and they could sell it off to whoever they want and for however much is deemed reasonable giving an artist an income boost whenever they see fit to sell it.

Does IP stifle creativity?

I can understand that some may argue that it prevents the ability to take and learn from each other due to the nature of IP being about strict ownership and control but i don’t believe that to be true, if someone wanted to study another artist’s drawing they could still do so they just couldn’t claim it as their own creation and artists are largely nice so most would love to share tips and inspiration if asked.

My views on intellectual property and it’s theft

I see IP as a valuable tool for artists as the protection it affords them is invaluable as well as the potential to sell off IP to others can give artists a great source of income, especially when artists find themselves in some sort of bind such as sudden hospital bills or upcoming rent and need a quick source of income.

Art theft is a huge problem and has been for quite a while whether that be tracing someone else's work or when AI models scrape through an artist’s library of creations to feed it’s own algorithm, the harm that it brings to an artist can be immense.

Tracing has been an issue on the internet for a long time from causing confusion on who actually created an artwork, larger creators bullying smaller ones into being quiet about their art being stolen and the destruction of someone’s reputation when they were found out to be tracing. Recently there has been a bit of a switch from tracing being seen as purely evil to a relatively ok thing to do, this could be due to a ‘bigger bad’ showing up (AI) or simply people have just started to see it as a tool to create, I personally lie somewhere in the middle. I can see tracings use in helping an artist improve through its use as a way to learn anatomy, figure out posing or how clothes interact with a character’s body but I can also see how it leads to an artist becoming lazy and stagnant and never learning how anatomy truly works for themself. Tracing also has the issue of other artists claiming a traced piece of work as purely their own creation; here's an example from a steven universe fan artist having their drawing traced. I think artists can be allowed to trace but it should really only be used for learning but if the tracing artist really wants to show it off they should have both the permission of the owner of the artwork and credit to the original artist.

AI art is created through the use of word prompts that are then generated from an algorithm into a visual format and there are many controversies that come into that process. One problem artists see with people trying to create art this way is that it is just lazy and souless, the people that want to create in this way are doing because they usually think stuff like ‘i don’t have enough skill for this’ or ‘i don’t have the tools to make art’ but there are many free tools to create and art can be made from anything it just takes practice, artists don’t start out as amazing and super talented they build up their skills through hard work here’s some examples of my art evolving over time.

Another issue is when someone wants a piece of art and they choose to use AI to make it they are then not hiring artists and taking away work that could’ve been gone to artists, someone may think it’s not that harmful for just one little artwork to be made by AI instead of an artist but if a lot of people think that way then it just becomes a mindset shared by many people and then lot of work that artist don’t get and anyway even one bit of work can help a struggling artist.

The biggest issue with AI is its use of artists IP in their training models without the consent of the artist, it takes images scraping through them for all that makes them up and then uses it all to reproduce something else ignoring that it belongs to someone else.

[precisemuzic]

Lil' WeezyCon to Kick Off November 2, Expanding Lil WeezyAna Fest with a New Networking Platform

By Eddy “Precise” Lamarre On November 2, 2024, Live Nation Urban, in partnership with Culture Creators, will debut Lil’ WeezyCon—a dynamic addition to the annual Lil WeezyAna Fest in New Orleans. The inaugural event will take place at The Fillmore from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., offering high-level networking opportunities with thought leaders, creatives, artists, and young professionals. The event…

[trendynewsnow]

Artists Rally Against AI Exploitation: A Call for Copyright Protections

Artists Unite Against AI Exploitation in Creative Industries In a significant move, thousands of artists, including renowned musicians from the likes of ABBA, The Cure, and Radiohead, have come together to sign a powerful protest letter against the unauthorized use of their creative works in training artificial intelligence tools. This initiative highlights a growing concern in the creative…

[cobragardens]

Notice as well the link between pressure to hold one's work in awe/passion rather than adequate remuneration, and industries considered "women's" work.

Teaching. Pregnancy and childbirth. Childrearing. Nursing. Caring.

Meanwhile industries considered "men's" work underpay women on the basis that the passion of pioneering into "men's" industries is the driving motivation of women who do so:

Professional sports. Construction. STEM.

Women's self-sacrifice is expected and enforced.

This is by no means solely a feminist issue; rather, there is a point of intersection here where misogyny has been harnessed by capitalists to defend classism.

Every single craft has been paying “The Passion Tax” for generations. This term (coined by author and organizational psychologist Adam Grant) — and backed by scientific research — simply states that the more someone is passionate about their work, the more acceptable it is to take advantage of them. In short, loving what we do makes us easy to exploit.

Guest Column: If Writers Lose the Standoff With Studios, It Hurts All Filmmakers

[music-matters20]

For the creative industries – music, film, and publishing – these are the best of times and the worst of times.

please do check out the article: House of cards (I)

[creativityandinovationday]

(Part 1) Celebrating the Future with Localization of SDGs, Culture, Youth and Digital Innovation.

Expected Outcomes:

Strengthened collaboration between youth, local communities, and global partners.

Enhanced digital innovation and data integration for SDG localization.

Increased awareness of cultural initiatives and their role in climate action and sustainable development.

Networking opportunities for stakeholders to explore future partnerships and initiatives.

This event serves as a significant precursor to the UN Summit of the Future 2024, setting the stage for impactful discussions and actions toward achieving global goals.

This conference, held just before the UN Summit of the Future 2024, focuses on engaging youth, promoting digital innovation, and localizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It brings together various stakeholders to explore creative solutions and governance innovations, essential for a sustainable future.

Watch (Part 1) Celebrating the Future with Localization of SDGs, Culture, Youth and Digital Innovation.

[phetheringtonnz]

Creative Kiwis Community

A new online community for New Zealanders in the UK that work in the Creative Industries.

I’ve created a Facebook Group for Kiwis that are based in the UK and who work in the creative industries. This came from: 1) some of my Kiwi friends have moved to London from Welly, and we arranged a brunch with other Kiwi creatives, and 2) a Career Development training that I did at work, talking about building your brand, and, to a lesser extent, 3) meeting more Kiwis through my work, and 4)…

[penig]

They do not realize that, because the people at the top levels of business believe that only the people who put money in are due money out. They are completely divorced from reality.

This is true across all modern industry. Look at any job you ever had. You must have noticed that the people making the most money were the people doing the least work. Maybe there was a time when working hard was the way to make your fortune, but it hasn't been true in my lifetime. And I am not young.

I have consistently not pirated my entertainment through the years, because the only way money gets from consumer to creative (and bookbinder, and copyeditor, and key grip, and janitor, and so on and on) is through the medium of the consumer economy. But where the creators aren't getting paid anyway...

These people are determined to eat their seed corn and the earth it grows in, too, and have no grasp at all of the reality that their economic model is not viable. This is the world they have always lived in. Poor people aren't real.

[nomellamocata]

#Blog: Me gané dos fondos de cultura 😱

🖼️𝘍𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘕𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘊𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘰́𝘯 𝘈𝘳𝘵í𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢: ¿𝗖𝗼́𝗺𝗼 𝘂𝗻𝗮 𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗮 𝗽𝘂𝗲𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘀𝗽𝗮𝘀𝗮𝗿 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘀? Obra sobre Buscarita Roa, Abuela de Plaza de Mayo que es chilena. Pinturas, planos perceptuales y collages. Estaré actualizando los avances acá: https://www.instagram.com/nomellamocata/

📝𝘉𝘦𝘤𝘢 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘊𝘳𝘦𝘢: 𝗣𝗮𝘀𝗮𝗻𝘁í𝗮 𝗲𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗼́𝗻 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮 en el Museo Etnográfico "J. B. Ambrosetti" de la UBA. Atentos que estaré realizando actividades virtuales y presenciales sobre este tema ✍️ La bitácora de mi pasantía la podrán ver acá: https://www.instagram.com/kmfpatrimonio

Mención especial a las universidades públicas: la UNA y la Universidad de Chile. Sin su educación, no sabría cómo postular a un fondo 💖