About a year ago, I was commissioned by the Centre for Screen Business (a division of AFTRS, the film television and radio school) and Screenrights to look into why more screen content practitioners (film makers) didn’t get more involved in the digital space. The idea was to produce a White Paper from the results to see if we could do anything to change this.

After countless hours, lots of interviews and a great deal of research, I ended up coming up with a pretty heft document that really identified two major overarching issues: education and rights. In the end, we decided there were two papers in here, not just one.

So, on 26th August, at AFTRS, we will be releasing “Getting in the Digital Frame: a screen content producer’s guide to the digital landscape” and “The Digital Deadlock: How clearance and copyright issues are keeping Australian content offline”. You can get the details here and please RSVP to Lois if you plan to attend.

To give a tiny overview, the Digital Frame paper was based on my discussions with screen content practitioner and their clear lack of comfort or familiarity with regard to the digital space, the language used and the the key concepts which underpin this. The paper provides an overview of the digital environment and then looks more closely at three key things: Distribution, Audience and Commercialisation.

The Digital Deadlock looks at what happens when someone wants to either re-purpose their (heritage) content for digital distribution, or when they decide to embrace digital to provide enhancements, story extensions or backstory. The paper looks at the complexity in getting rights clearances and provides some suggestions of what might be a new way of thinking about this. It also looks at how we might make content more freely available while still recognising (and rewarding) authorship and copyright.

I’ll be posting some of the key points on this blog and the papers will be available for download from the CSB and Screenrights sites.