New Deal Script
This is kind of hilarious~ Joe and I were discussing the idea of having the community author a 'MANIFESTO' for hitRECord. We actually *need* one for press inquiries, etc ASAP. Please, please please contribute to this. I'm adding the New Deal script as a contribution to this collaboration. Let's see what we can come up with!! ~jared
The New Deal
by RegularJOE & Jared
01-01-10
INTRO
Are we RECording?
Hit RECord.
RE RE RE
Regular Joe here. It's New Years Day again, Twenty Ten, happy new year!
I have a New Year's Resolution I wanted to share with you, I'm calling it the New Deal.
HITRECORD.ORG is a project I've been working on for some time now, and this year, we're making some big changes.
As you might have heard, I've decided to make hitRECord into a professional production company. So on monday, january 4th, we're going online with our brand spanking new version four website, and introducing a new way, a new deal, to turn our collaborative creativity into professional productions and share the profits with the contributing artists.
In this RECord, I'd like to explain what we're doing, how it works, and why.
So without any further ado...
WHAT'RE YA DOING?
I've been an actor for 22 years. And thank you, thank you, and thank YOU, it's been going well recently. I've gotten to this point in my career where I have the opportunity to get projects off the ground, as opposed to being an actor for hire. Which means, it's time to start a production company. Which really, is something I've always dreamed of doing.
Now, in the last five years, as I was getting to do more and more movies that I really believed in and loved, I was also doing something else that I really believed in and loved.
I put up the very first version of hitRECord.org on the same day that Mysterious Skin first came out in theaters. Well, theater, it was only playing at one.
Back then, it was just a single web page my brother and I put together to host some videos I'd made -- this was about a year before anyone ever heard of YouTube. Since then, the site's evolved through a few different versions, and now it's a place where I collaborate with a whole community of creative people: writers, filmmakers, editors, musicians, painters, photographers, candlestick makers.
We've been doing it for years now, we've sharpened our skills, and if I do say so myself, the stuff we're making has gotten pretty good. And in fact, I think we're ready to make things on a professional level. Which means, it's time to start a production company.
You might see where this is going. I find myself in the midst of this beautiful collaborative creative process. At the same time I find my career in the fortunate position to turn that creativity into professional productions.
I want us to make movies, I want us to publish literature and graphic art, I wanna curate live events, I want us to have a TV show, I want us to have a space, a venue for cinema and performance but also a studio for all sorts of creativity.
These are all things that we can make happen. But these goals are ambitious.
Just getting this new version of hitRECord ready, building the new website and drafting the new legal documents, I have spent a little over a hundred thousand dollars. Which I'm happy to do. If we want to accomplish things on the scale I'm envisioning, money's bound to be a part of it some way or another.
Now, I thought long and hard about bringing money into the equation with hitRECord. Being non-commercial was always a big part of its charm. We all know that money can be the root of all evil, but a lot of the greatest art of all time cost money to make, and definitely turned a profit. [DARK KNIGHT, SIMPSONS, SGT PEPPER]
Some of the things I hope for us to do will cost money. And I believe that the best way to achieve these goals is to become a legitamite for-profit company.
So I've spent the last year and a half working with friends, colleagues, agents, attorneys, from all over the spectrum ranging from Creative Commons to CAA to my dad. And we've developed a new kind of business model specifically tailored to meet the needs of hitRECord, the production company.
HOW'S IT WORK?
We use our website to work together on all kinds of projects in any type of media: video, audio, image, text, we call them all RECords. Anybody can contribute a RECord, and anybody can Resource, or sample somebody else's RECord and make something new out of it.
For example, if we were all gonna make a short film together, someone might write the story, someone else who likes that story might draw the characters, some one else still might animate those drawings, even more people might do a live action rendition, the music, the editing, the titles, the mixing and remixing, all coming from different artists from all over the world.
I participate on a regular basis. Sometimes I start collaborations, sometimes I just contribute. I'm always sort of around being the Director. And sometimes the drummer. [ANIMAL DRUMMING!]
And now and then, when I see something that I think will really work, I'll personally choose a certain something we've created together and use my position in the established media industry to turn it into a money-making production.
Now obviously, once money gets involved, you have to have a well-defined system of rules and regulations. We call ours The hitRECord Accord, and it basically says that everyone who joins has to legally agree to three things.
First thing, you give everyone in the community permission to remix your stuff. They're not allowed to sell it, and they always have to give you credit. But within hitRECord, we're gonna download it, sample it, mix it into Something else, refine it, revise it, reRECord it, and upload the new version. That's how we collaborate; getting remixed isn't considered theft on hitRECord -- it's an honor.
Second thing, when a RECord gets turned into a money-making production, the hitRECord production company will share what it makes after all the costs, fifty fifty, with everyone whose contribution made it into the final product. So, when you upload something to the site, you're agreeing to give hitRECord NON-EXCLUSIVE rights to make money with it. Non-exclusive, meaning we're not taking anything from you, you still own your stuff and you can still sell it however you want. It's just if my company and I can figure out how to turn a profit with it, we're allowed to do that, as long as we share those profits with you.
Third thing's pretty obvious, but worth saying. You gotta promise that whatever you upload to the site belongs to you, and just to you, without including anyone else’s stuff. Now in my humble opinion, the intellectual property laws these days are way out of date. However, the law is the law, and if we're all trying to have a legit professional production company here, we gotta follow the law. So for now, we only put up our own stuff.
So, using the example from before, say we all made a short film together, and somehow I managed to turn it into a money-making production.
Fifty percent of that money would go to hitRECord.org LLC, our official business entity, which maintains the site, funds future projects, and pays a small team of professionals whose job it is to design, produce and direct hitRECord productions.
The other fifty percent goes to all the contributors whose RECords are resourced in the production. The writer, the actors, the animators, the musicians, the editors, everybody who had a hand in creating the final short film gets their fair share based on how much they contributed.
How does that contributor's profit pool get divided up? That's a question that was especially hard to figure out. We tried to come up with a formula that would work every time, but in reality, every production's gonna be different. So this is how we're gonna do it.
I'll propose what I think is fair in an open forum on the site. Then we'll all discuss it as a community. And then I will personally make the final call.
And that's how it works. Now, as you can see, if you want to work with hitRECord, you have to trust me.
You have to trust me to make fair business decisions.
And more importantly, you have to trust me creatively. If you're gonna contribute your videos, your music, your images, your words, your time, your ideas and your heart to a production company, you want to be sure that your work is in good hands. Well, if you like my work, I can promise you, that these productions mean as much to me as any work I've ever done. And if you don't like my work, what're you doing watching this video for the last ten minutes? :o)
WHYYY?
Why? First of all, I like making things. Not only am I lucky enough to do it for a living, it's what I do in my free time. It's just what I love to do. And I really think that hitRECord is gonna result in some beautiful, heart felt, works of art. It already has, and it keeps getting better.
Why else? I grew up working in movies and TV. And I always loved being an actor. But I always thought it was weird that there was this line drawn, almost a barrier, between a few select people who got to be on TV, and everyone else who didn't. It didn't seem fair, even when I was a kid. So many people who deserved a mass audience, just never got the opportunity. Like me, I was born and raised in LA. I didn't have any personal connections that got me any jobs, but just growing up in a house that was a twenty-minute drive from all the auditions I went on, that was a huge advantage, that almost no one else got. Well now, that barrier is dissolving. There's hardly any difference anymore between TV and the internet, so everyone can be a part of it. And I think that's a really good thing. I want hitRECord to be a sort of bridge between the way it used to be and what's starting to happen. If I can create an opportunity for anybody with an internet connection to be a part of a traditional, professional media production, not only does that open things up, but I'm betting the productions themselves are gonna be better.
And then, zooming out, the media used to be a monologue, but it's becoming a dialogue. There's a really big difference between a relatively small industry broadcasting their signal while everyone else has to just passively listen, and everybody getting a chance to have their say. Open communication is at the heart of human progress. And I'm not saying that hitRECord is gonna be the key to that communication. But I think it's a good baby step in the right direction.
OHHHH...
(step down off a box that says SOAP) -- okay.
I know I just hit you with a lot. And you probably have some questions. Ask me. I want to answer. There's an Frequently Asked Questions collaboration on hitRECord.org. While you're at it, you could help us make a better version of this video. Remix it, add some other visuals, or music, or anything. Come see the site. Join. There's a bunch of different projects we're already working on. Or you can start one. The point is, I want to work with you. Are you RECording?
again by heart...
The New Deal
by RegularJOE & Jared
01-01-10
INTRO
Are we RECording?
Hit RECord.
RE RE RE
Regular Joe here. It's New Years Day again, Twenty Ten, happy new year!
I have a New Year's Resolution I wanted to share with you, I'm calling it the New Deal.
HITRECORD.ORG is a project I've been working on for some time now, and this year, we're making some big changes.
As you might have heard, I've decided to make hitRECord into a professional production company. So on monday, january 4th, we're going online with our brand spanking new version four website, and introducing a new way, a new deal, to turn our collaborative creativity into professional productions and share the profits with the contributing artists.
In this RECord, I'd like to explain what we're doing, how it works, and why.
So without any further ado...
WHAT'RE YA DOING?
I've been an actor for 22 years. And thank you, thank you, and thank YOU, it's been going well recently. I've gotten to this point in my career where I have the opportunity to get projects off the ground, as opposed to being an actor for hire. Which means, it's time to start a production company. Which really, is something I've always dreamed of doing.
Now, in the last five years, as I was getting to do more and more movies that I really believed in and loved, I was also doing something else that I really believed in and loved.
I put up the very first version of hitRECord.org on the same day that Mysterious Skin first came out in theaters. Well, theater, it was only playing at one.
Back then, it was just a single web page my brother and I put together to host some videos I'd made -- this was about a year before anyone ever heard of YouTube. Since then, the site's evolved through a few different versions, and now it's a place where I collaborate with a whole community of creative people: writers, filmmakers, editors, musicians, painters, photographers, candlestick makers.
We've been doing it for years now, we've sharpened our skills, and if I do say so myself, the stuff we're making has gotten pretty good. And in fact, I think we're ready to make things on a professional level. Which means, it's time to start a production company.
You might see where this is going. I find myself in the midst of this beautiful collaborative creative process. At the same time I find my career in the fortunate position to turn that creativity into professional productions.
I want us to make movies, I want us to publish literature and graphic art, I wanna curate live events, I want us to have a TV show, I want us to have a space, a venue for cinema and performance but also a studio for all sorts of creativity.
These are all things that we can make happen. But these goals are ambitious.
Just getting this new version of hitRECord ready, building the new website and drafting the new legal documents, I have spent a little over a hundred thousand dollars. Which I'm happy to do. If we want to accomplish things on the scale I'm envisioning, money's bound to be a part of it some way or another.
Now, I thought long and hard about bringing money into the equation with hitRECord. Being non-commercial was always a big part of its charm. We all know that money can be the root of all evil, but a lot of the greatest art of all time cost money to make, and definitely turned a profit. [DARK KNIGHT, SIMPSONS, SGT PEPPER]
Some of the things I hope for us to do will cost money. And I believe that the best way to achieve these goals is to become a legitamite for-profit company.
So I've spent the last year and a half working with friends, colleagues, agents, attorneys, from all over the spectrum ranging from Creative Commons to CAA to my dad. And we've developed a new kind of business model specifically tailored to meet the needs of hitRECord, the production company.
HOW'S IT WORK?
We use our website to work together on all kinds of projects in any type of media: video, audio, image, text, we call them all RECords. Anybody can contribute a RECord, and anybody can Resource, or sample somebody else's RECord and make something new out of it.
For example, if we were all gonna make a short film together, someone might write the story, someone else who likes that story might draw the characters, some one else still might animate those drawings, even more people might do a live action rendition, the music, the editing, the titles, the mixing and remixing, all coming from different artists from all over the world.
I participate on a regular basis. Sometimes I start collaborations, sometimes I just contribute. I'm always sort of around being the Director. And sometimes the drummer. [ANIMAL DRUMMING!]
And now and then, when I see something that I think will really work, I'll personally choose a certain something we've created together and use my position in the established media industry to turn it into a money-making production.
Now obviously, once money gets involved, you have to have a well-defined system of rules and regulations. We call ours The hitRECord Accord, and it basically says that everyone who joins has to legally agree to three things.
First thing, you give everyone in the community permission to remix your stuff. They're not allowed to sell it, and they always have to give you credit. But within hitRECord, we're gonna download it, sample it, mix it into Something else, refine it, revise it, reRECord it, and upload the new version. That's how we collaborate; getting remixed isn't considered theft on hitRECord -- it's an honor.
Second thing, when a RECord gets turned into a money-making production, the hitRECord production company will share what it makes after all the costs, fifty fifty, with everyone whose contribution made it into the final product. So, when you upload something to the site, you're agreeing to give hitRECord NON-EXCLUSIVE rights to make money with it. Non-exclusive, meaning we're not taking anything from you, you still own your stuff and you can still sell it however you want. It's just if my company and I can figure out how to turn a profit with it, we're allowed to do that, as long as we share those profits with you.
Third thing's pretty obvious, but worth saying. You gotta promise that whatever you upload to the site belongs to you, and just to you, without including anyone else’s stuff. Now in my humble opinion, the intellectual property laws these days are way out of date. However, the law is the law, and if we're all trying to have a legit professional production company here, we gotta follow the law. So for now, we only put up our own stuff.
So, using the example from before, say we all made a short film together, and somehow I managed to turn it into a money-making production.
Fifty percent of that money would go to hitRECord.org LLC, our official business entity, which maintains the site, funds future projects, and pays a small team of professionals whose job it is to design, produce and direct hitRECord productions.
The other fifty percent goes to all the contributors whose RECords are resourced in the production. The writer, the actors, the animators, the musicians, the editors, everybody who had a hand in creating the final short film gets their fair share based on how much they contributed.
How does that contributor's profit pool get divided up? That's a question that was especially hard to figure out. We tried to come up with a formula that would work every time, but in reality, every production's gonna be different. So this is how we're gonna do it.
I'll propose what I think is fair in an open forum on the site. Then we'll all discuss it as a community. And then I will personally make the final call.
And that's how it works. Now, as you can see, if you want to work with hitRECord, you have to trust me.
You have to trust me to make fair business decisions.
And more importantly, you have to trust me creatively. If you're gonna contribute your videos, your music, your images, your words, your time, your ideas and your heart to a production company, you want to be sure that your work is in good hands. Well, if you like my work, I can promise you, that these productions mean as much to me as any work I've ever done. And if you don't like my work, what're you doing watching this video for the last ten minutes? :o)
WHYYY?
Why? First of all, I like making things. Not only am I lucky enough to do it for a living, it's what I do in my free time. It's just what I love to do. And I really think that hitRECord is gonna result in some beautiful, heart felt, works of art. It already has, and it keeps getting better.
Why else? I grew up working in movies and TV. And I always loved being an actor. But I always thought it was weird that there was this line drawn, almost a barrier, between a few select people who got to be on TV, and everyone else who didn't. It didn't seem fair, even when I was a kid. So many people who deserved a mass audience, just never got the opportunity. Like me, I was born and raised in LA. I didn't have any personal connections that got me any jobs, but just growing up in a house that was a twenty-minute drive from all the auditions I went on, that was a huge advantage, that almost no one else got. Well now, that barrier is dissolving. There's hardly any difference anymore between TV and the internet, so everyone can be a part of it. And I think that's a really good thing. I want hitRECord to be a sort of bridge between the way it used to be and what's starting to happen. If I can create an opportunity for anybody with an internet connection to be a part of a traditional, professional media production, not only does that open things up, but I'm betting the productions themselves are gonna be better.
And then, zooming out, the media used to be a monologue, but it's becoming a dialogue. There's a really big difference between a relatively small industry broadcasting their signal while everyone else has to just passively listen, and everybody getting a chance to have their say. Open communication is at the heart of human progress. And I'm not saying that hitRECord is gonna be the key to that communication. But I think it's a good baby step in the right direction.
OHHHH...
(step down off a box that says SOAP) -- okay.
I know I just hit you with a lot. And you probably have some questions. Ask me. I want to answer. There's an Frequently Asked Questions collaboration on hitRECord.org. While you're at it, you could help us make a better version of this video. Remix it, add some other visuals, or music, or anything. Come see the site. Join. There's a bunch of different projects we're already working on. Or you can start one. The point is, I want to work with you. Are you RECording?
again by heart...
