MMASFY

Yes, it’s always important to respect other artist’s hard (hard!) work to make a film, produce and distribute a DVD. This much is true.

However, as documenatry filmmakers, we have reason to thank God for a new opening in resources that could change everything… if we’re careful to learn the best practices of Fair Use Doctrine!

Here’s the official government page on the doctrine. (FL-102, Revised May 2009)

Well, the big news came out a few weeks ago that University of Southern California Law students from the USC Intellectual Property and Technology Clinic won a copyright exemption in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The announcement was made on July 26, 2010, by the United States Copyright Office.

This is especially helpful for documentary Movie Makers and Shakers for Yeshua! As long as we abide by Fair Use Doctrine, we are now FREE to use any DVD we own or can buy in plotting out our documentary stories.

Whether educational, revelational, investigative, critical or to add that touch of modern idiom to our dramatic storytelling (picture a TV announcing the news or showing an excerpt of another fictional film), we are now free to explore (somewhat) vicariously through other artists and storytellers throughout this “information age.”

We’re NOT talking about Youtube copycatters here. We’re talking about using best practices for film production starting with a script! But, now, our script is free from worrying (too much – Fair Use Doctrine still strictly applies) whether any such iconoclastic reference to another film or documentary will be allowable by law.

More from the University of Southern California here – http://lawold.usc.edu/news/article.cfm?newsID=3604

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Here’s the latest (mp3) from 3D evangelist and extremely successful writer/director/society-shaper, James Cameron (Thanks, marketsaw.blogspot.com/, for this excellent interview). James talks about the state of 3D cinema and some of the buzz around Avatar being re-released August 27 (2010) and Avatar 2 which is already in the works.

As a believer who is writing a script and wants to make movies that move people to Yeshua, King of the Universe, I think it’s incumbent upon us to examine the highest grossing movie of all time – Avatar. Call me a faddist, if you will. But, really, I want to pose some important questions we shoud all be asking right now (some 2-parters)(test on Monday):

1 – Is Real3D, as the front runner technology of the new 3D wave of films (of which this best-selling Avatar is a fan), the key technology for us to look to when thinking about our feature length films? Should we join Joss Whedon (Toy Story, Titan A.E., Serenity) and J.J. Abrams (Armageddon, Mission Impossible III) in dissenting from this huge 3D boon altogether?

2 – What is it about Avatar that gets to people? Could it be answering some questions Christians currently aren’t even addressing?

3 – What does Revelation 11:18 mean to you? Is it a verse you might use in “giving an answer for your faith” (Colossians 4:6, 1st Peter 3:15) and in “becoming all things to all people in order, by any means, to win some?” (1st Corinthians 9:22)

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