The Centre for Content Protection (CCP) conducted the Digital Future Seminar Series Dec 2 to engage the digital distribution industry at the Asia Television Forum(ATF) in Singapore.
Speakers reiterated that paramount to the success of media industries is the role of music. “It is critical that musicians can earn income,” said Mike Ellis, President, Motion Picture Association (MPA) Asia Pac. Music can help media industries to grow and vice versa. It costs USD $200 million to make a movie, yet the majority of movies that go out are losing money. The challenge and opportunity lies in the fact that 16% of movie revenues come from cinema, and the remaining 84% from home entertainment. “Our collective futures depend on (our ability to adapt to) the digital transformation that’s going on,” Ellis told the industry players gathered at the conference.
Five times Golden Rooster winner Li Qiankuan emphasized to the audience of media industry players how the integration of music with regional and national features was crucial for a merger between western and eastern music. Dick Lee referred to his personal experience in championing the inclusion of Asian elements in pop music. He cited Japan for becoming the undisputed leader of Asian pop culture by picking up the best of American pop culture and “refitting it to Japanese size.”
Qiankuan, who is the President of the Shanghai International Film Festival’s Jury Board, and Xiao Guiyun, member, China’s National Film Approval Board, later conducted a film masterclass and workshop Dec 3 with MDA support. The masterclass provided an understanding of China’s film industry followed by an overview of opportunities for partnerships and proposals in the industry.
Looking to the film industry
Panelist Nina Ossoff, who has been writing successfully for movies and TV, including American Idol, advised musicians in the audience to “make your master sound awesome.” She bemoaned the fall in the number of movies with soundtracks. Philip Wu, Exec Chairman, GRID MMS, conceded that it is a very tough game to live off music. Go around and get yourself known, he advised, submit your lyrics to the movie industry and put up your talent for review.
Singapore is one of the easiest places to make networking connections, says the director of Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, Bernard Lanskey. He observed that the educational opportunities here are immense from an international perspective. “We underestimate the professional dimension of musical work,” he said. “Training in professional awareness and maintaining quality should be your priorities,” he told the listening students of music and film in the audience.
Cutting to the recession, Charles J. Sanders, Esq. Songwriters Guild of America, who moderated a panel, recalled how Hollywood came to the rescue when the Great Depression nearly wiped out songwriting in the 1930s. “Now again we’re looking to the film industry,” he stated. Panelist Malcolm Young finds that the challenges are emerging more rapidly than the answers are coming back, with the film industry downturn predating the current economic downturn. Young is soon to produce The Durian King, a zero-budget film set in Singapore.
New media are taking eyeballs off traditional media, says Wu. This makes it imperative that the movie industry work across all industries. Creating legitimate business models rapidly would enable survival on ever-emerging new platforms.
The Singapore opportunity: Networking and self-belief
Panelists pointed out that Singapore is uniquely placed in world terms. As a modern bilingual society, it is uniquely connected to South East Asian countries. The Singaporean awareness of the global community is unparalleled, says Lanskey. “What will drive internal passion is networking and self-belief.” He compared Singapore to where Paris was in 1900, or to Vienna in 1750. “Change can happen fast. The speed at which Singapore’s evolving is phenomenal.”
Wu touched on the country’s three strengths: trust, technology and the financial system. “We might not make a Titanic,” he said, “but there are niche areas we can come into with these strengths: post production and songwriting, for instance.” There are many who dare to dream, but many other Singaporeans are pragmatic. Singapore has not reached the critical mass of talent and we should aspire to reach that, said Wu.
“We are always calling ourselves too small and berating our lack of a long history. We must think big; we must think differently,” observed Joshua Simon, a student at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.
Spell out rights: IFPI
As music is the primary driver of the entertainment business, be it karaoke or nightclubs, it is important to clearly spell out rights, concluded the panel on copyright and legal issues.
Leong May Seey, Regional Dir(Asia ), International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) recommended the ISO standard to identify country of origin and the first owner in every commercial sound recording, and the embedding of the ISWC(International Standard Musical Work Code) to protect composers.
Frank Rittman, Regional Legal Counsel, MPA – Asia Pac, suggested a centralised licensing corporation which would allow a producer to pay a single fee, rather than needing to conform to varying structures in each country of release. Complicated sets of rights exist separately in different countries for the two pieces of intellectual property in music: the underlying musical composition, and the performance. For instance, said Sanders, US law has so many anomalies, despite being a pro-copyright country. Compulsory licensing exists, but once the song is released, anyone can make a cover of it. The licensing also does not extend to synchronization rights.
Embrace local artistes
The panel on Asia strategies recommended that Singapore embrace local artistes. “There’s great music in Singapore; you just have to play it,” observed Allan Nicholls, Department of Graduate Film, Tisch Asia( Singapore). A Stefanie Sun had to leave the country and be endorsed by Taiwan before she got accepted here.
“We are not hungry enough as a nation. That said, I’d rather have the security of Singapore, than professional footballers and recording artistes if they come at the cost of security,” says Michael Hosking, CEO, Midas Promotions. He suggested introducing a radio station that played local music.
To meet the challenge of changing the Singaporean mindset, Lim Sek, Chief Exec, Music & Movement (S) Pte Ltd, said that the Republic of Pop has been started with MDA support. It is an umbrella of local talents and a movement to appeal to the Singapore audience. The website will launch in the first quarter of 2010, detailing agents, contacts and a step by step guide for talents.
Talks are on with MediaCorp to get airtime for local talent, said Yeo Chun Cheng, Chief Information Officer, MDA, and the second round of proposals for music has just opened. “But I don’t think the government is the solution to everything,” he said. “Be careful of government officials telling you what is to be done.” The solution was instead, to be “really, really good at what you do.”
The DFS seminar is an initiative under the MoU signed with the Media Development Authority(MDA) Sept 9, as part of MDA’s agenda to develop a conducive business environment with a robust intellectual property regime and a pro-business regulatory framework.
Archive for March, 2010
Making Media Work through Music
03.31
What Has the Government not Been Telling Us About Ufos
03.31
Ironically, it is so called “conspiracy theorists” such as Alex Jones and Anthony J. Hilder, who are preaching to the public to reject the idea of alien invaders. Instead, they feel that the classic UFO’s could be man made crafts, probably housed in Area 51, that could someday be used as the ultimate false flag terror alert to frighten the public into submission. There is evidence that such a stunt would work when you consider the famous H.G Wells fictional radio broadcast of War of The Worlds in the 1930′s that caused many to believe that they were hearing reports of a true alien invasion.
Alex Jones, who is a phenomenally successful syndicated radio talk show host and filmmaker, said during a broadcast that he does not believe that a fake UFO false flag invasion will occur in the near future but that it is a possibility. He did mention on one of his radio broadcasts that he did believe that if the government needed a false flag of titanic proportions it could build a fake UFO, much like the craft that landed during the Olympics Games in Beijing China, and have genetically engineered, mutated animals tumble out of it to bring the nation into a panic to give the government a chance to step in and say that they have things under control as long as people submit to martial law until things are under control.
UFOs are sometimes an element of elaborate conspiracy theories in which governments are said to be intentionally covering up the existence of aliens, or sometimes collaborating with them. Some also contend that physical evidence is swiftly and sometimes clumsily suppressed by governments, aiming to insulate a population they regard as intellectually unprepared to deal with the social, theological, and security implications of dealing with the knowledge and that people would stop working, shopping, and possibly explode in an uncontrollable worldwide panic. There are also conspiracy theories which claim that physical evidence might have been removed and/or destroyed by some governments. Again, many polls show that about 70 percent of the population feels that the government has not been sharing everything it knows about UFOs or extraterrestrial life. It is assumed by many ufologists that the government, especially the CIA, is lying and covering up alien landings and communication.
The hypothesis that UFOs are either top secret American or Russian manmade craft led to the creation of the Air Force’s Project Sign in 1947 to try and debunk these claims. As the UFO phenomenon raged in the 50′s, Project Sign eventually morphed into Project Grudge and then the infamous Project Blue Book In 1952. In 1948, the government wrote a top-secret intelligence estimate to that effect. Its final report, published in 1951, remained secret for over 50 years until a secret study of UFOs undertaken for the UK’s Ministry of Defense between 1996 and 2000 was publicly released in 2006 through the Freedom of Information Act. Other private or governmental studies, some secret, have concluded in favor of the studies conclusions or have had individual members who disagreed with the official conclusions.
According to the report, alien craft had been discovered that was capable of surviving for long periods of time underwater and would occasionally dock with a recently discovered secret undersea alien base. Ufologists claim that the label conspiracy theory is no longer valid and that this is a case of an evidential conspiracy with credible people revealing secrets within the system.
Although the vast majority of claims related to UFO sightings were officially debunked as natural phenomenon or hoaxes, Top Secret USAF European documents did state that Swedish air intelligence had informed them that at least some of their investigations into what were named “ghost rockets” and “flying saucers” had to have extraterrestrial origins. Formerly top secret files from the Soviet Navy contain a lot of valuable information on UFO sightings. Fresh from the government’s Navy files, which span 50 years and include numerous eyewitness testimony, you can find numerous documented sightings and unexplained phenomena along with a stunning collection of data that presents the most chilling evidence to date suggesting that UFOs are indeed real extra terrestrial craft and that a government cover-up has long suppressed this truth. Former Soviet Naval officers have told numerous stories of serving on Soviet nuclear submarines and being chased by other underwater craft that accelerated at speeds inaccessible to man made craft, changing directions at will, and even dashing out of the water to hover in the air.
According to ufologist Jordan Maxwell, aliens or other extra terrestrial forces have for a long time been manipulating the “ignorant masses” through secret societies, witchcraft, magic, the occult, and religion. Also, that world governments reveal these secrets to a select few who are considered intelligent enough to deal with the mind boggling truth behind the so-called conspiracy, and that they will be the ones rescued from the pain and suffering that the ignorant masses will reap upon one another.
Reports of unidentified aerial phenomena date back to ancient times, but modern reports and the first official investigations began during World War II with sightings of so-called “foo fighters” by Allied airplane crews, and in 1946 with widespread sightings of European “ghost rockets”. Most military and civilian UFO investigations concluded that the majority of objects can be identified as whether balloons of military aircraft. In the end, Project Bluebook concluded that only 3% percent of all UFO claims could not be explained as terrestrial. However, with the general public being more and more distrusting of the government, the flames of UFO conspiracies have only grown with time and will probably continue to do so.
For some great information on UFOs and and FBI Files in ebook form please click here
Movie Review: "Godfather – Part 1
03.16
The Godfather – Part 1 (1972)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola Writers: Mario Puzo (novel)
Release Date: 24 March 1972 (USA) Genre: Drama | Thriller
Actors:
Marlon Brando …as Don Vito Corleone
Al Pacino …as Michael Corleone
James Caan …as Santino ‘Sonny’ Corleone
Richard S. Castellano …as Peter Clemenza,
Robert Duvall …as Tom Hagen
This supposed to be the best movie made ever and after watching the movie I won’t disagree. I wanted to see this movie for so long as every time any gangster movie releases, people say it has been inspired by “Godfather”. But somehow or other I couldn’t watch it till today. What trigger me to go fetch this DVD from library is hindi movie “Sarkar” which is brilliantly enacted by Amitabh Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan. And it is said that “Sarkar” is heavily inspired by “Godfather”. So I thought if inspired movie is so good then the original has to be outstanding and I can say after watching this movie it is outstanding and brilliant movie made ever.
What makes this movie the best is brilliant script, brilliant direction and above all perfect casting. Each and every actor outperformed his role. I was watching this movie after 36 years after it released. But it still feels so fresh and contemporary. After watching this movie I realized that almost every gangster movie I watched has been inspired by “Godfather” some way or the other. So it can be said as a bible for gangster movie.
I don’t whats up with these gangster movies which we love, we know whatever they are doing is illegal, wrong not ethical but we still get involved in these movies. And above all we start liking these characters. I think what we like is the Power or Control these people posses there arrogance is attractive for people. Everyone of us secretly has a desire to posses a power to control whole world. That’s what this movie shows the main character Don Vito Carleone posses the power and contacts. There are people to catch every word out of his mouth. He controls people around him like puppet. And that’s why movie poster has puppet strings.
This movie is a story of a Don for whom most important things are control and his family. It is a story of falling of Don Vito Carleon and emerging of his son as Don which he never expected or wanted to be in his business. The movie is about his rivalry with other families (read gang). He don’t take money for favors he does for people he want there loyalty for him. It is a story of a Don who even though mafia king works on ethics, his refusal to get involve in drugs even though it involve big money or dire consequences otherwise. He chose other option and so if other family wants to do the drugs Don Carleone has to die. And that’s what other family tries, they attack him. And this trying time Don’e youngest son has to get involve in the family business to save his father although he was reluctant to get involve earlier.
Every scene and all the actor is brilliant in this movie but highlights of it is acting of Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. Then there is scene in which right hand of Don carleon is strangled is outstanding. And with so lively expressions. And there are some dialogues which can not be forgotten ever, like “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse” and “It’s not personal. This is business”.
All I can say in the end is Don’t miss this movie. I am going to fetch the DVD of other two parts as soon as possible. As for Rating for this movie it gets 10/10.