Geneva, July 19, 2011
[To be checked against delivery]
Good evening.
I am here to justify what I consider to be obvious - the need to safeguard the laws of intellectual property, for film, albeit in a modified form.
As you’ve seen, I am a film producer, British, but working mainly with Hollywood - but I started out - as a kid growing up in Glasgow, with a camera.
I made little 8mm story films, and showed them in my own personal cinema, otherwise known as my bedroom, and, believe it or not, I charged an entry fee. Sixpence.
Those sixpences enabled me to buy more film, and let me make more of my little movies, or, as we might call them here today, my little intellectual properties.
Even then, I was joining up three, key things.
Creativity. Commerce. And the Consumer.
You see, I was charging these sixpences, for another reason.
I needed to prove that my family and friends actually liked my films.
They might pay out once, but they had to be really good, for them to do it a second time.
So, by charging money, I wasn't exploiting my audience, I was actually respecting them.
Their sixpences, represented their approval, and I could take more risk, be more creative, and explore. I could GROW.
We all know the power of digital technology.
As Rupert Murdoch is finding out, it is a massive game changer.
Just like any other content business, the film industry is undergoing cataclysmic change. We are facing the future with both resolve, and confusion.
Digital, on the one hand, is great.
It lets us play with new story telling toys, like CGI, and 3D. It also gives us digital projection, and digital distribution; cloud technology, format shifting, and digital cinemas.
All good.
Unfortunately, it has also brought criminal piracy, and content theft, which we are fighting. As we must.
Last year, the Hollywood dream became, quite frankly, a Hollywood nightmare.
"Avatar" suffered 16.5 million illegal downloads. "Kick Ass" came second with 11.4 million.
An estimated $25 billion dollars of lost revenue.
The business cannot continue on that basis. It is in a kind of shock. In Britain, where our film industry is a Hollywood peripheral, we are especially vulnerable. Fewer truly indigenous films, are being made, in spite of individual successes like “The King’s Speech”. Originality, never much of a winner in Hollywood, is at an all time low.
The studios have retreated into fewer, safer, bigger, 'tent pole' movies.
Into franchises, sequels, TV spinoffs, and remakes, and cinema attendances (perhaps unsurprisingly) continue to drop.
2010 was the lowest they've ever been, in 16 years.
The bedrock of audience building, paid advertising, has been devastated by the speed, and honesty, of Facebook, and Twitter.
Word of mouth, can make, or break a movie now, literally in minutes. I know, I've had it happen to me.
To add to this, the laws of intellectual property, which stick the film business together, are under attack, being seen as anti consumer, and anti creator.
Lawrence Lessig has repeatedly made the key point that while we must fight piracy, we must not squash innovation.
But filmmaking is innovation, and has to be handled, with extreme care.
Every film, by it's very nature, has to be innovative, a prototype.
Arthur Miller said, "Always give the audience what they want - but in a way they least expect."
In the movie business that is a universal truth, admittedly not always adhered to.
Replacing exclusive rights, for instance, with extended collective management, may work for certain types of artist, but just won’t work for film.
Although intellectual property arises with an individual creator, that individual has to share their IP if they want to get their work onto the screen, and admittedly there are dangers.
In the present system, creators are too often monopolistically exploited. They can be forced to sell off all their IP rights, simply in order to get their film made.
"Seven Years in Tibet" took me 14 long, lonely, and expensive years of development, to get made.
It became an obsessive vocation, rather than a rational business, but in all that time using the protection of IP, I fought to retain our fair share of the movie, against some powerful predators.
We were ultimately, fairly rewarded.
Films, even small ones, are simply not made by individuals, however tenacious they may be.
It is a collective pursuit, and above all it takes time, is risky, and expensive, certainly when compared to writing a book, painting a picture, or recording music.
It’s also incredibly vulnerable.
In a moment of frustration, Akira Kurosawa described filmmaking as a manufacturing system designed by idiots, to be run by geniuses.
So many brilliantly creative and organisational talents are involved.
Writers, directors and actors, but also designers, cameramen, choreographers, editors, make-up, hair, illustrators, etcetera, not to mention all the technical skills and professional services involved.
No wonder films cost money.
We close city streets, recreate worlds of the future, and of the past. We blow things up, smash cars to pieces, create magical happenings in space. We have scenes of war; of devastation; scenes of liberation, and hope, and despair.
And the results inspire people, everywhere.
Movies are magic, in people's lives.
But it all costs money.
Any system that brings investors together with creatives, has to somehow be able to exploit intellectual property.
It seems to me, that legislation will only succeed if it can encourage the film industries, particularly those in emerging nations, to build a smarter system of rights.
One which allows for the discovery of innovation, allows for a more equitable sharing of risk and reward, and encourages greater consumer diversity, and choice.
But at the heart of this, and for the best socio/cultural reasons, we must protect the business.
We must find a system of lower front end pricing, for commercially invested properties, that is capable of giving a proper return on investment.
In this respect, the rights of the content creators, and investors, and the rights of the consumer, are indivisible.
Consumers must always enjoy the widest possible range of content - but also of quality.
Everything from You Tube, to world class cinema.
And content owners must adequately enjoy the rewards of their success.
Without a system that invests in risk and innovation, scale and quality, 'the potent fictions of the movies', as Gore Vidal once described them, will simply disappear.
Above all, the emerging economies, growing their own creative industries, and finding their own voice in the digital world, will stand to lose the most.
Never forget, that true innovation and talent, rarely spring from established centres. They almost always come from outside of them, and sometimes against them.
Things that change the world, usually start very small.
I will finish, if I may, by recounting a great story told by Vasari, in his "Lives of the Artists".
Eight hundred years ago, 1220 or thereabouts, the most important artist in Italy, Cimabue, was out walking in Tuscany, when he spotted a young shepherd scratching something on a rock. The boy was drawing one of his sheep.
The great painter, immediately recognised the boy's talent, and with enormous difficulty (and quite a bit of money) persuaded the boy's parents to let him come to his studio in Florence, to gain a proper education, as a painter of religious icons.
By his generosity of spirit, and by his far sightedness, Cimabue educated, inspired, and protected, a painter whose reputation would come to vastly overshadow his own.
The boy's name was Giotto, and with his ascendancy, the great humanistic 'opening up' that was the Italian Renaissance, began.
Technology it seems, has brought us all to the beginning of another, and very different, kind of renaissance. A global, techno, cultural one.
The responsibility for how it will serve future generations, now belongs with people like you.
Like Cimabue, whether you like it or not, you are the patrons of innovation, in the digital age.
Please handle movies with care. Thank you.