Soft stroking on culture’s head

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Let’s talk about an alternative script: on its première day, a movie is also officially released on Overmundo project website and on peer-to-peer file sharing networks. That’s how came to light Cafuné, the first full-length film by the Brazilian director Bruno Vianna, known and awarded for his short movies.

In his debut on theatrical circuit, the director chose to bet on audacious and innovating distribution strategies. Besides using traditional and virtual networks, Vianna licensed his film under the Creative Commons license that allows society to use the work according to conditions set up by the creator – in this case, non-commercial use, putting aside the idea of “piracy”. More than this, he also released on theatres and web two different endings and convoked the internet users to create new conclusions for the work, opening paths for the spectators’ creative expression. Cafuné opened a new way for Brazilian cinema.

Two months after the première, that took place on the 25th of August, Bruno Vianna chatted with Open Business project staff and made a reflection on the chosen paths, their impacts and repercussions.

Public funding and free culture

Cafuné prize-winned the Brazilian Ministry of Culture competition for low budget films. Vianna received R$ 600.000 (circa US$ 280,000) and, according to the competition rules, was not authorized to raise funds with others. “It doesn’t make sense not letting wide open a work supported by public investment”, considers the director. Cafuné was already full paid in the moment it was concluded, and still some change was left over for divulgation, mainly made in busdoors (advertisement on buses back).

There are people questioning the investment of public funds on Brazilian film industry because of the fact that only some of those movies achieve huge audience. There are others alleging that the stimulation by those resources is fundamental to create a national permanent cinematography, even though with small audience. There are, still, those who support the idea that, if the first motivation is what counts, then that cinematography shall be accessible to everyone. What’s the sense of creating something if only a few will have access to it?

For Bruno Vianna, in Brazilian cinema, filmmakers got used not to foresee a way out for this issue. “It is intended to create a self-sustainable audiovisual industry. According to this logic, we could not ‘give away’ the film if a production office invests money in it. But now, if one makes a film with governmental money through incentive laws, and find it already paid on its conclusion day, everything that comes from the ticket office will be a profit, even with little spectators”. Bruno does not find a sense, then, in not setting the artwork free, mostly when it is all about public funds. “It is the return of investment on Culture”, reaffirms.

Obviously, there are many who do not intend to facilitate the access to their works and there are pressures, as like in any field, so that it does not happen. However, there are being created spaces for the emergence of new models and what today is taken as “alternative” can turn into tomorrow’s mainstream.

The director knows the limitations that industry can impose to the distribution of open films, especially forged according to Hollywoodian filmmaking model. A film usually belongs not only to its director, but also to the producer, distributor, etc. That condition imposes limits to the decision power of a filmmaker. When a production office invests in the work, for example, it is much harder to propose free licensing. Bruno Vianna believes that if he had as a partner a more “commercial” production office, or an international distributor, he would not have had the opportunity of innovating on distribution, and possibly neither on the speech.

But he categorically affirms that, even if he had made a big and commercially possible movie, he would had given up the benefits drawn by copyright, in case there were no restrictions imposed by the other work “owners”.

Audience and distribution
The film and the audience took advantage of the distribution on theatres and Internet, although one still cannot calculate the effects of that decision over the ticket office. One still cannot know exactly how many people downloaded the film, as it is not made available on a central server. Even though, in a quick visit to peer-to-peer networks, one month after premiere, the director found 80 copies all over eMule. Twoo weeks after, we checked the downloads made through Overmundo: it counted 490 whole copies downloaded.

There is no doubt that the strategy gave more visibility to the movie that if it would have been traditionally released. But not only theatres and p2p networks were reached by the film. It also reached cinema clubs, festival exhibitions, universities and schools, and the director joined debates and gave lectures. It was more than 15 participations in a single month.

According to Filme B, Brazilian company that analyses and keep up with film market, Cafuné got into the list of the 20 most-watched movies in Brazil during some weeks – not bad for a fresh filmmaker and for the small number of theatres in which the movie was released.

The film started being exhibited in five theatres in Rio de Janeiro and only one in São Paulo. In the first two weeks after première, it left two theatres in each, resulting in an isolation of the movie in a single theatre in Rio and other in São Paulo. But, on the forth week, the public got surprised by the “little big movie” return to three theatres in Rio de Janeiro. “Who wants to see the movie in the cinema goes there because of the ritual, not because of the film. And the number of spectators increased as time passed”, says Vianna.

Julia Levy, from the distributor and exhibitor group Estação, explains that it was possible due to the cinematographic market moment and to the releasing agenda of the distributor. But also recognizes that, if there were no demand, the film would not have returned to the big screen. After three weeks with the film available on p2p networks, the tide of habitués of the traditional venue “movie-and-popcorn” did not exchange the box office lines for their computers. It is possible to presume that the Internet divulgation had, on the contrary of what some may think, contributed to Cafuné’s divulgation.

When a product is licensed through Creative Commons on the web, the accounting of the benefits is very simple and fits every cultural area. If X is the number of people that won’t watch the movie on theatres due to online distribution, and Y is the number of people that would have never bought the work if there was no online distribution, the effort is always worth when Y is bigger than X. This equation was positive, for example, for the writer Cory Doctorow’s or for the professor Lawrence Lessig’s books, all of them licensed in Creative Commons.

The Estação group is notorious since 1990 for releasing classics of international cinema, independent films and less-diffused cinematographies. But it was this year that Estação began distributing Brazilian films, giving priority to productions classified, by them, as “innovating and alternatives”, mostly small and medium budget movies. For them, it is a new phase and its première was exactly with Cafuné. The distributor is making every effort to discover and develop new distribution formats, more creative and compatible with the market reality, more attractive and accessible to public.

Levy says that the decision was exhaustively debated amongst distributor, director and production office – Raccord Productions. Their reference were the stories of films boycotted by exhibitors in the USA, like Steven Sordenbergh’s “Bubble”, simultaneously released on cable TV, DVD and theatres. But Estação had a trump: it was distributor and exhibitor – so it would not boycott itself. Julia Levy tells that it took them uncountable meetings to discuss how the distribution would be made, and that de decision was deeply studied. From those meetings, for example, was born the distributor’s proposal for Vianna to shoot different endings. The director’s boldness and the distributor’s predisposition for adopting new models, as well as the permanent dialog amongst direction, production and distribution were determinative for the emergence of the model and for the results of that work.

Even knowing that anyone can download the film and burn a DVD, Vianna will release that product. He bets on the box fetish and extra features like making of, comments and other novelties to value the DVD.

As every artist likes to get a living from what he or she does, and as the Open Business project aims at investigating open business models, we asked Bruno Vianna what would be the way to assure access to culture and profitability. The director’s reflection about new distribution and business models for cinema calls in and recreate other experiences and ideas. From websites that give away their content but show advertisements before each exhibition, to viral networks, there are a range of possible alternatives. It is possible to allow a visualization of a film but charge for a better resolution version, way defended by Joi Ito, famous Japanese businessman creator of websites like Flickr and Technorati.

Other possible way for an open film industry could be involving incentives for the users to create a viral network. That scheme would result not only in a massive distribution of the works, but also in the inclusion of new agents in the production chain. Spectators would become also distributors and would participate in the work incomes – “maybe it would be more interesting to the spectator-user to share the film with more people if earning a percentage”, reflects Vianna.

The end

The director still waits to watch the proposals on re-editing the film ending – possibility and expectation generated by the presence of the work on the Internet.

Bruno Vianna, that studied new technologies in New York, is always connected to possible innovations: “I think a lot about convergence now; some projects work in a way for theatres and in other for internet. I don’t want people to spend 2 hours in front of a computer. Cafuné is a movie to be downloaded, DVD burned and watched on TV”.

As a matter of fact, Vianna already revealed his fantastic ideas for next films that transcend the limits of audacity proposed by Cafuné. “I’m starting to develop a project that will be a digital cinema one: live editing, me being my own film’s VJ”. The film will be shot in various parts, to be combined in different ways according to each exhibition, that will count on the director inside the theatre, editing and exhibiting in real time. “I could not do that with Cafuné, that is not a movie to be watched sectioned in parts; it is for the coach and bed ambient”. As the meaning of its title suggests, Cafuné was made to be felt like a soft stroke on the spectator’s head.

You must be questioning yourself: but what if everyone do the same? The achieved visibility is not anchored on Vianna’s pioneering? It is reasonable to think that the uniqueness of the initiative had, yes, contributed for the “hype” around the movie. But that is not restricted to it. There is an existing innovating potential, whose limits still are not known. And it is in this unknown dimension of the new models that we will find the path for Brazilian filmmaking industry solid growth.

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Thanks to Paula Martini for translation into English