Jane McConnell @janemcconnell  and @futureartists

May 8th 2012, Salford, UK

In Emily James’ Just Do It, we watch news packages from major news outlets interlaced with POV footage from protestors scaling the giant cooler chimneys at the Ratcliffe Power Station. For a UK audience, a film like Just Do It is particularly subversive – even controversial. The protests were decade-defining – it was the first time we saw a domestic conflict of interests play out in new and old media – with audiences truly divided. Were the news outlets biased? Who’s the hero, who’s the villain? And crucially, did we agree?

As any filmmaker will know, this is when it’s time to make a documentary.

Just Do It. No Dress Rehearsal. And here’s some titles from more shorts and features: Your State of Emergency. Young Hearts Run Free. Sound It Out.

Every title has an urgency – each stamping a precedent, a protest; striving and independence.

Or, if that’s a bit too high-flown, maybe at there’s at least a deliberate link between the present tense and activism. In the US, it’s caught the attention of the Academy this year via Marshall Curry’s brave documentary ‘If A Tree Falls’.

And in the UK (through crowdfunding and hey – the rather traditional own-funding,) the entire scene has found itself leaning towards political realism for reasons that affect our lives in the most obvious ways. With documentary and documentary-drama (see: Jason Wingard’s ‘Louise’ (2010) for example) taking precedent in screenings across the UK’s major cities every single month, are directors losing sight of fiction film as a vehicle for change? Are audiences no longer wanting escapist routes from which heroes soar?

Or, are directors, amid government-enforced arts cuts and increased taxes discovering that the only way to tell the story about any modern hero, is to tell the tales that are closest to home?

Case Study 1– Just Do It: A Tale of Modern-Day Outlaws (2010)

In Emily James’ Just Do It, we’re invited merrily into a world of social discord and disenfranchisement with capitalism. Emily James’ captures this in her film, following our 6 activist heroes-of-the-story as they protest with campaign groups Climate Camp, Plane Stupid, and finally to the headline stealing Ratcliffe Power Station protest – as well as featuring unflinching footage from the Copenhagen Summit in 2009.

The film’s tone is more exuberant than darkly political, and avoids the pitfalls of being overly solemn or weighty. A good thing really, when the typical representation of protestors in the mainstream media is one of violent ‘extremists’. A bright soundtrack, which provides the backdrop for friendly narration, animations, maps and crucially – unedited details on the nuts and bolts of staging a protest – are all freely portrayed in the film. Just Do It follows James, Lily, Sophie, Marina and we even get a glimpse of Emily – as they resist arrest, blockade the Royal Bank of Scotland and take action. Perhaps in this case, the heroes of the story have been saved from anti-hero ‘terrorist’ status – and are real people.

Case Study 2 – Invisible Circus: No Dress Rehearsal

Invisible Circus: No Dress Rehearsal by Naomi Smyth, documents a four-year labour of love and subversive artsquat and performance group that take over abandoned properties across Bristol – a city renowned for street art, and unfortunately for the group, large property developers. The hero of the tale is Doug Francis, the assumed lead of the circus – even though he would probably deny such a title. (Eitherway, he is the go-to man throughout the feature.)  The documentary movie tells an underdog story of guerilla art performers; a collective of travelling performers who turn something empty and abandoned, into a work of circus and burlesque art. There’s footage of audiences queuing around the block who heard from each other via text or word about an underground show – as well as messy footage of the stars of the show fighting city councils, landlords – and putting in hard graft to reclaim derelict, dirty spaces and transform them in the name of art for all. We learn that during Naomi’s four year journey – her role moves form being the documentarian, to being part of an art movement.

WATCH THE FULL FILM FOR FREE HERE VIA DAILYMOTION

Invisible Circus: No Dress Rehearsal – www… by futureartists

Are the Directors Heroes? Battling to get distribution

The ultimate struggle, it can be argued, for any filmmaker is getting people to care about the premieres are over. …No Dress Rehearsal’ has managed it – through decidedly independent means: pubs, pop-up venues and indie cinemas. This year, the film is crossing the pond to San Francisco – it’s just won the 2012 award for best film with a New York-based online distribution site, Dynamo. After laying low for a couple of years following it’s release, the film is now reaching brand new audiences throughout the world, working with the UK’s only independent film distributor, Future Artists. Interestingly enough, the distribution of Just Do It followed an equally subversive model. Screened in its near-complete state at Sheffield Documentary Festival in 2010, Emily James made the call for more funds to complete the movie. Then, after some serious crowdfunding, the film premiered, complete, at the following 2011 festival – to a standing ovation. It’s now screened all over the world, at pop-up venues, artsquat venues, indie cinemas and festivals. It even had it’s own “Recycled Red Carpet” event inside a reclaimed building.

Looking at the film this way, perhaps hero of these stories is the film director – actively promoting a film, irrespective of numerous failed bids to the now defunct UK Film Council thanks to a stream of extremely conservative public funding cuts made over the last two years.

We Could Be Heroes?

Recessions and credit crunches, it is often said, creates a surge in entrepreneurialism. Parallel to this, a cultural backlash to lower arts-funding in essence, leads to a stronger independent film scene. And weirdly, each film represents this as an entity.

Yet their appeal extends beyond the often tragic and serious narrative lines that often provide the blueprint for documentary film. The UK’s current trend for social realism has, whether deliberately or not, leaned towards that all-too-familiar hero’s narrative. Albeit, each film provides a rickety, handheld, yet proudly alternative (with a capital Alterative) story arc. There is an insatiable urge created within the audience of these films to wonder where the films’ thundering courses of action will lead to. But these courses of action are only set in motion as a reaction following, we believe, oppression by an assumed authority figure. In Just Do It, it is bankers and the police. In Sound it Out (2011, Jeanie Findlay), it’s the major record stores. In Your State of Emergency (2009, Mark Ashmore), it is the police and in …No Dress Rehearsal, it’s bulging property developers and arguably old-fashioned land laws that are guilty of perverting the course of our heroes.

A theme which links three of these films together, however, is the fear of a police state. In Just Do It, there is one rather revealing moment in which the UK’s sensitivity of an increased ‘police state’ shows the group not only turn their phones off – but take their batteries and SIM cards out their mobile phones to ensure they’re not tapped. The film makes every effort to show that protestors are, after all, human and subject to the same policing threat as any non-activist member of society. It’s this steady, playful tone, which allows the high-octane – and completely real – clashes between protestors and the police in the movie, to be the most memorable.

And yet in all the films, we find the real life captured within them throwing real-life enemies left, right and centre from all over the political spectrum. Many Uk directors such as the one metioned have successfully found their reactionary characters. And these characters are also the heroes – the ones who lead themselves and us exactly where we want them to: overcoming and moving beyond a domineering adversity – and often, government and financial corporations. And both the hero and the villain are completely unmasked, too, from start to finish.

reactions to this article please tweet @janemcconnell or @futureartists

#OCCUPYMEDIA.

One Film Versus The World. The Lost Generation.

They occupied Wall Street. NY. DC, Chicago. London.

…What if they occupied the media?

#occupymedia

New Manchester film The Lost Generation is the UK’s newest feature film to be released independently – at the end of the world – on the 20^th December 2012, which takes a searing look at freedom, cyberwarfare and our idea of celebrity.

FILM SYNOPSIS

“Think of a law. She’s broken it. Think of a crime. She’s committed it. Sarah Jane (SJ) signs up to the ultimate reality TV show.

The rules are simple. Kill your opponent, stay at the top of the leader board, win 10 million pounds.

Fail, and you’re dead.

Set in a dystopic present-day world, public executions have come back into vogue – only with a gory, reality-TV twist. The Lost Generation exists in a world governed by a corrupt media who have the police in their pocket. Able to scandalise the government at the drop of a phone, the media creates propaganda on how to live a life – and left desperate civillians in its wake.

But there is hope.

They are called The Unknown.

An underground movement, fragmented youth in revolt, rebels with a cause, are waiting for the right moment to strike back…The Unknown rescue SJ from her certain fate. Despite being part of the walking dead, SJ is taken away and shown a world where choice is a possibility. But the only problem, is, she will have to become the evil she is trying to escape.

In an epic finale, SJ, once the hunted in a reality TV show, now becomes the hunter and those that created her will be her final victims.”

THE DIRECTOR

Director and producer Mark Ashmore, based his main character SJ on the idea of reality TV stardom – taken to a gory and violent extreme while her foil character, Blair, is based on activists within the underground occupy movements.

“SJ gets hired to kill bankers, MPs: The Lost Generation, it’s a revenge movie; and the idea is that by using all the villains of today’s society, we’ll have the audience cheering in the aisles,” says Ashmore.

“Imagine that a producer was let loose in a world where there aren’t enough new ideas…Taking on twisted visions of a nihilistic media corporation – with everyone thrown to the lions. So this is the extreme of a saturated media environment.”

Contestants in the game become unknowing rats in a maze, forced to break the law and exploited completely by a TV producer fixated by cash, ratings and recognition.

The universal themes of the individual; fear, government doublethink, and especially ideological and covert control have persevered throughout film and literature and can be seen in many 20th century thrillers – science-fiction of course – and even popular novels like The Da Vinci Code contain traces of these ideas. And they’re themes that are pervasive in this film.

The occupation of this film is one of existing within the framework of the media.

By blurring documentary footage from the riots, the Arab Spring and the biggest union march in Manchester, UK…  with the Thriller – and suddenly you have a tale of drama, cruelty and rebellion about the gladiatoresque voyeurism of disposable entertainment, recklessly chewing through the minds and aspirations of its contestants and viewers.

The Lost Generation is aimed at an adult audience within the era of the Occupy movement – featuring documented footage from real protests in UK cities – as part of the movie.

Victoria Connett, who plays SJ, says of her character: “A young woman took on something that was bigger than she expected. She’s joined up with a cast on a reality TV show – and she’s taken on more than she can handle. She has to prove herself. But all the time she’s thinking – why has she signed up for this? What was her motivation?”

The Lost Generation. Let the payback begin.

#occupymedia

A film by Mark Ashmore

Produced by Future Artists

http://www.projectlostgeneration.co.uk

Project lost generation – a project with a new beat

This article a perfect introduction to a variety of future artists workshops that will take place in Leeds, Birminghamduring October and at Channel 4 in London during November.

The digital campfire – a social revolution with its own beat. (By  Mark Ashmore FRSA 29/8/11)

In this essay I will explore how social communications and convergence culture has put a greater emphasis on storytelling, creating a 3^rd tier content distribution network, which is unrecognised by traditional broadcast media and its funders, but participated in by an ever growing audience connected directly to the artist.

I will explore how as a content producer or artist (across film, music, art, literature, game etc) you are about to revolutionise liner/ non liner narrative and be part of a new emerging and ground breaking industry.

But only if you move to your own beat.

So you have discovered this article because someone has ‘shared’ it with you, or maybe you where in the digital wilderness and you ‘stumbled’ across it as you ‘searched’ via google, or maybe you saw that someone ‘liked’ it and out of curiosity thought you would check it out, all terms you should be familiar with if you use social media, you have just entered a digital camp fire.

Welcome 

These terms are nothing new, what happens in the online world, the rules, the terminology and more important the actions they represent, are the same as community engagement in the real world, and thus I must stress at this point that online social/community tools and their usage are the same as their real world counterpart,

for example, a 140 character tweet about ‘you need to watch my acting showreel’ is the same as interrupting a group of random strangers in a packed coffee shop and telling them ‘you need to watch me perform like a monkey’,

alas, the constant facebook updates telling the world how ‘great’ you are, are the same as a real world situation in which you dominate the conversation by telling people ‘how great you are’ as you spill coffee down their white shirt.

Nobody likes a show off.

this must be at the forefront of the mind throughout its usage and when reading this essay.

So you have found a start of a conversation, this blog is my opinion, but later you can give yours.

New world, old rules.

Anyway we could spend an entire chapter looking at the fu pars and do’s and don’ts of correct usage of social media, but that’s not the point, as long as you use it, in a good or bad way, you are engaging in the digital camp fire, its just that people WILL decide your status in the online community,

I would also like to stress that your writer here is no angel when it comes to social media, so I’m defiantly not a judge.

Back beat the word is on the street,

I am a story teller,

I use a variety of art to communicate what I have to say, I in turn help others to have a voice (paid and unpaid) and in doing so, the art of story as a medium of communication connects with whoever happens to be in my path.

They either like it, hate it, or are indifferent to it, none the less they have experienced it, heard the story, any reaction is a result.

But its this result, that the story teller yearns for, the point of practising the art form, it is this connection with an audience, that for the past 100 years has been guarded for both power and profit by a small group of individuals, I call them the elite,

for those that control the stories, control the world.

Freedom of speech – stories of the street.

200 years of urbanisation and globalisation has seen the way communities in the industrial world work, rest and play completely change.

Freedom of speech is so full of censorship, propaganda and mis-information, and not to forget all the sources are controlled and distributed by very few people, the artists that work within this construct have had to constantly evolve with these increasing  challenges and changes, indoing so, at certain  times, moving away from the original expression and intent,

to demonstrate where we are now, we need to see where we have been.

What follows is in no way a definitive time line of human communication, but should at least give you the understanding to the point I will illustrate later in this essay, and for those at the back of the class remember the keywords of human communication ‘Share or pass on’, ‘Search or to look for’, ‘like or have an opinion on’

Cave Paintings are Prehistoric Cinema, highly skilled artists creating images that reflect stories of that time, stories deemed that important that they where painted in caves to be preserved for generations to learn and ‘share’ ideas from,

to this day historians can get a glimpse into pre-history from these paintings. Cave paintings are a valuable story telling tool for an historic, social and artistic view point.

The artists shared these images with their community, but people would have to search for them as they where buried in caves, and if they liked them, their meaning and location would be shared with others, because they liked it, thus creating a cycle of human interaction with the media.

Oral History

All human cultures have a rich oral or verbal story telling tradition, infact the genesis of camp fire stories is the ability to articulate a story via verbal communication, every story starts with a ‘once upon a time moment’, and those stories deemed worthy enough to be documented are then incased in writing,

At one point in time, only the stories of nobility or religious authority would be written, as it was these sectors of society that had the ability and understanding of the written word, for thousands of years human history if written down was of an elitist perspective. The stories of the workers did’nt get a look in.

Stories shared in a group, re-told verbally as the people could not write. Stories shared in a group where scholars could write then down, where then stored or shared in more elitist surroundings.

The printed word changed this.

Pre 1450, before the invention of the printing press, printing was done in an individual, case by case basis, with printed works placed amongst the elite and not shared with anyone outside of that circle,

this all changed in 1450 with Guttenberg’s printing press, the written word would be available to the masses, if they could read, but more importantly printing, allowed for cartoons, pictures, drawings, images easily understood by the  those that can not read to be freely distributed, the next 500 years post printing press would see a revolution in thinking, society, and modern culture, and the invention of copyright and censorship (by those old elitist’s)

along came the analogue revolution

Late 19^th century culture saw the emergence of radio, photography and early cinema, more tools for artistic expression, and more ways for stories to be told.

these communication tools would radically begin to be censored, either by licenses, bureaucracy or in a respect to what type of content would be deemed suitable for the person on the receiving end of the artists communiqué, even up until the 1970s the BBC would broadcast in a very distinct BBC voice, aka elitist, where they talking down to the working class?

And this control would continue, with every breakthrough in science which would allow artists to progress their own thinking and expression via invention of new technology, such as television and cable tv, in would come restrictions in the form of censorship or gatekeepers.

This would see a rise in underground or counterculture society, although counter culture has always existed side by side with mainstream culture throughout the ages of communication and art, it is the 1960s counter culture revolution which seemed to breakthrough on all fronts,

from the written word and tradition’s of folk poems/music to rock n roll music, to theatre, art, and cinema, this counter culture change which grew from the various new wave movements (civil rights, war, sexual revolution, equality, social revolution) to name but a few, along with a post war generation of 20 something’s, found themselves in the right place at the right time, to bring the noise.

And its from this counterculture revolution that the ultimate communication tool would arrive, the internet. Built as a communication tool that could be used in the event of cold war nuclear attack,

the internet is a system with no central control, and thus can not be destroyed by being a traditional central target, the internet is an ever spreading entity, version upon version, constantly evolving and changing, and in doing so has now brought with it old opportunities to communicate without the restrictions and baggage of the past.

But with every new technology revolution, comes the old elitist guard wanting to shut down the party, its just this time, we out number them.

Who has the right to tell your story.

Ok so, what I have tried to illustrate, be it rather crudely, is that humans have always communicated via artistic expression as a means of evolving their community, 10,000 years ago, this could have been a camp fire story,

Imagine…

Gathered round at the end of the day, after a hard days hunting,

hunter gathers are sharing the tales of the day

‘don’t go down to the water well in spring, as it is full of lion cubs protected by their angry mother, the lioness will kill you’,

‘why’ someone asks,

and from this, a story is told

‘ a young warrior, brave and fearless, but did not listen to the wise one who told of the lioness and her cubs at the waters edge during spring’,

this camp fire story both a warning in how the immediate surroundings work and that you should always listen to the ‘wise’ storyteller, may come from a tradition the reader might think is extinct, but its still with us, it just that the culture of camp fire is no longer with us, no longer required, no longer deemed necessary, maybe not in practice but at a subconscious level it will always be with us, its human nature, thus control the stories, control human nature, and here is why.

What has evolved now is the digital camp fire, fragmented groups/individuals with similar interests, are being brought together on a massive scale around the glowing embers of social media, this new mainstream phenomenon has only come about in the past 4 years online,

NO you scream, yes sir, cast your thinking back,

my argument is that now the mainstream are all interconnected via smart phones and laptops and endless wifi, now that the mainstream, from grandparents to parents, to younger brothers and sisters and to family friends who can’t work a washing machine but can update a facebook status,

what we have seen that has happened in the last 4 years is that computer science, has gone from the geeky IT crowd, to the mainstream world of celebrity, once the face of computers was Bill Gates with stereotype nerd glasses, his mums knitted sweater and traveling sales men slacks,

Now the face of computing is facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg, a 26 year old billionaire, and now movie star, well by default, or Steve Jobs ex CEO of Apple, who turned the humble grey box of a PC into a designer must have item, Jobs is responsible for turning entire shopping malls into star trek conventions, everyone has a communication device, everyone holds a computer set to text, skype, facebook or stun via a flash on the camera phone.

This radical culture change in the past 4 years, has seen a new culture develop, and I would like to declare it the digital camp fire, a place to share stories.

Social media has sex appeal, its rock and roll, its content is diverse, interesting and radical, across all spectrums, it can be as geeky as the code it has been built upon, or it can be cat videos on youtube, its diversity and accessibility is the key to its mainstream success,

and best of all it has been built by the people, the internet is the embodiment of a city community, cities as geographers will tell you, are built as you need bits, you don’t build the shops till you have the industry, and only when do you have industry do you build the homes, the same goes for the internet,

Now user generated content in the form of everything from blogs, video, audio, etc out numbers the output of any major media producer, youtube contains more video than all the major broadcasters put together, it even includes some of the major broadcasters video!.

So what changed, we went from being the served to the servers.

Put simply the digital campfire is a way to describe a connected community, that gather on the city scape of the internet, around the camp fire with access to everything. with the ability to act in the same way as a real world camp fire community, where the same value systems and support networks are present, just like the old days! Yes technology for a while took us forward and created a fragmented TV dinner society, but a counter culture revolution took place right under the noses of the mainstream media and the rug got pulled back, back to a place it should always be,

This digital community with all its levels and layers present, instead of a one size fits all, 4 channel TV existence, which could be deemed as a dictatorship or at best an autocratic one by the mainstream global media corporations, we are going back to the roots of a diverse, dynamic community which is interconnected and disconnected, a diverse community made up of ever expanding niches, which debates, argues and has opinion, this now takes us into a world where a thousand individuals can set consumer choice instead of a handful of elite gatekeepers making a choice for us. (well it can if we use a variety of platforms to build our digital community on, and not just facebook)

Established media talks of an ever expanding fragmented ‘media landscape’ they look out and go

‘that was all once a land mass, we could plant out giant bill board advertising Harry Potter in the middle, and all those on that the land would see it and go spend £10 on watching it, now the landmass is split into a thousand pieces, where do we put the giant billboard now!’

But for us around the our digital campfire on our own private island, cut off and fragmented as we wish,

We look at this and go

‘I no longer have to endure that giant Harry Potter billboard in the centre of my eyeline, instead, I can choose to hang out on which ever island I wish, take part in what ever is going off in each of these new spaces, and not be interrupted by Harry Potter’

and most of the time, these spaces at best, don’t have mainstream media involved in them at all, those that truly opt out grow fastest.

So what the hell does this have to do with campfire’s.

Back beat the word is on the street

The word on the street, the word around the camp fire, the word is the word, the word is an expression of an idea, an idea comes from a theme, and themes are explored by a community.

We gather around the safety of a place we know, a camp fire is safe and warm, a digital camp fire is a place of like minds and shared knowledge, it’s a safe place to express yourself, it’s a place online.

This exploration to express can take part in the real world, where groups and individuals can meet, or if they are unable to meet because the community is fragmented by either location or time, then these explorations of theme can take place online in a digital space, either on twitter by using a # (hastag) as a conversation marker, in a facebook group, on a forum or in a blog conversation, or even in video on youtube and a host of new video blog services.

It is this word on the street, this word around the digital camp fire that if interesting enough, will as it is shared person by person begin to form the basis of a new peer to peer content distribution network for a new emerging film industry, it is this now that I have given context to my argument, that I know want to share with you, for the rest of this essay.

In the past 4 years a 3^rd tier of a film industry model has slowly been evolving,

I call it a 3^rd tier as I see the top tier as being mainly Hollywood film 100 million + budgets, made for the multiplex, sequels, spectacles and star vehicles to service the PR press that sustains them,

the 2^nd tier are more conservative budget films, majority can be classed as European/world cinema or art house movies, in this 2^nd tier are also the straight to DVD titles.

But what has emerged and has been documented in many indy film-making articles on the DIY scene, is now a new 3^rd pier of film-making, which is becoming ever more vibrant as technology progresses,

An Industry that uses a new wave of thinking as its currency, new digital tools of communication and even new types of story telling to get its point across, this vibrant and new film/content industry is so new it is yet to be defined and those that practice it are labeled with a variety of media tags, by the main stream media, cross platform, transmedia etc, but its this 3^rd tier which I believe will be the new mainstream in just 4 years time.

And here is why.

The rules of 3^rd tier film production

1)    Owning the means of production – the DSLR film revolution is the equivalent of the 16mm film revolution of the French new wave, cheap portable cameras, instant digital files ready for editing on portable laptops in an instant. Nobody can tell you what to shoot.

2)    Owning the means to distribution free of censorship, 3^rd tier film making is censorship free, instead of big brother dictating content, taste and decency its now peer to peer review, if your project does not fit with one peer group, another group might like it, online video is sharable and free to replicate.

3)    Owning the means to PR – social media if done correctly is not an exercise in ‘me’ culture, instead your public relationships should be a two way conversation, and at best your public/audience should also become your collaborators, way before the screening, ideally from the idea stage.

4)    Digital networks enable the film making process to be outsourced across the world, a film made in London, can outsource its special effects to a group in Texas, amateurs and hobbyists they might be, but with the same SFX packages as the mainstream media the results can be the same or even better.

5)    Raising finance – film making used to be a costly game, new producers have lowered the costs of production and distribution meaning less finance is required, if the themes and ideas are not catered for in the mainstream, then finance can be raised in a variety of ways, from the begging bowl tactics of ‘give me £10 to make my film I will give you a DVD when its done’, to more innovative takes on crowd funding. From partnering up with established players in that market, to brand the project, share networks, to negotiating pro bona kit and talent, or sell non film-making goods and services around the film, from t-shirts to seminars to screenings of films that relate to the films subject matter. All sustained by the vibrant community and culture active around your own digital camp fire.

6)    Exhibition – the cinema was once the preserve of the elite, but the modern 21^st century cinema is not the multiplex, digital HD projectors and blu ray players mean that cinema can be anywhere, from a park or beach, to cave or scout hut, a cinema can be anywhere where people gather, a cinema is a story being told around a camp fire. Get your community off online and into the real world, meetup’s around cinema are great ice breakers.

7)    Exhibition networks – social media allows for groups with their own cinema spaces be it pop up or established venue, places and people with their own audiences to now link up with 3^rd tier content creators, to play a gig circuit, film-makers become like a band, the film-makers can either turn up and show the film themselves, or at best the themes and ideas of the project will have been known by the exhibitor group since its inception via social media interaction, and thus they will be able to introduce the project to an audience, the great thing about this is that screenings can take place anywhere in the world, and the content can be e-mailed, shared via yousend it, or even given to them as a bit torrent.

8)    You and your audience operate in the same space, your audience have the ability to create as you do, and thus must be treated with respect, why share or show them a story or piece of artwork that they can easily create or manufacture themselves, story is key, this is a great place for the art form to progress and this is why we see the constant rise of artistic expression via transmedia and ‘new wave’ cinema being explored by artists from around the world, artists no longer asking permission, if the audience can make it, share it themselves they easily could be part of the 3^rd tier, so if you want to be the best you can be, you have to raise your game and experiment.

9)    VOD is the new DVD, itunes for so long ruled the roost on VOD and very few platforms allowed for producers to make a decent return on their content, with Daily Motion now trying to attract high quality videos and sharing advertising revenue, you tube gearing up for its evolution on google tv by publicizing its partnership program more and more and the likes of dynamo player and distrify allowing for producers to control all the distribution and price point for content with really good splits, means that video producers can now put VOD into the business plan. And more importantly share directly with their digital camp fire community at various stages of the creation process.

10)                   The most important rule of all, is don’t treat your audience as dumb, the 3^rd tier has been created as a reaction to the elitist mainstream who feed their audiences with the same reality TV, films based on theme park rides and tv shows and recycled remade stories, dare to be different and if you allow the conditions on social media, your audience will support you, they might not like what you make, but they might like you as a person, as an artist, it’s the personal, the knowing you, that will allow you to thrive and survive around the digital camp fire.

And you know you have a thriving 3^rd tier film-making industry when you see 1^st tier and 2^nd tier attempts at copying the underground from the way the film is created, its marketing, its distribution etc,

but like a good goldsmith, you the audience will be able to spot a fake a mile off!

Does this make sense, we can talk about this tweet me @futureartists

Ok so what I have tried to illustrate is that you as a storyteller and artist are free without restrictions except for the baggage that you bring to your own art practice yourself,

we have come full circle in the evolution of the camp fire, from small community groups sharing ideas, themes and stories around a nightly camp fire in real time, to the 21^st century digital space, that allows for global fragmented groups and individuals to gather and converse in storytelling in whatever media form they choose, whether it be the written tweet, the tagged picture, the free youtube content or the VOD that has value to a community, the gate keepers have now gone,

What exists is a very interesting and vibrant 3^rd tier of film makers a list of which I will provide at the bottom of this essay. This 3^rd tier is looked down upon by a film industry only interested in making a financial profit to support a large framework, and a lot of people in it purely for the profit and not for the art of story telling, in my heart I wish to see this crumble, an industry that treats its audience as idiots giving it substandard fare at a high price and starving the competition out of the game via a monopoly on supply and distribution, is not a very cultural diverse place to be,

I feel its our job as 3^rd tier film industry to win over our audience and turn them into supporters and educate them as best we can into the choices they have available to them, and with more and more film-makers realizing the power they now have, its time to stop chasing down what was, and start working on what can be, so start ‘sharing’, ‘like’, and search for new voices and support them with ideas, encouragement and pay for their work, on DVD, VOD or at a screening near you.

I hope to see you at our own underground culture Oscars one day, celebrating a new wave of cinema, created from global culture, a meting pot of stories, presented in new entertaining and thought provoking ways,

Ways that the mainstream will have to copy one day to keep up.

It will do us all a world of good, in times of great change new opportunities arise, a new beat if you will.

The digital campfire – a social revolution with its own beat, and spread the beat, please RE-TWEET, POST ON FACEBOOK and E-mail the URL to your own camp fire community, the more the word on the street gets out, the better the art that emerges from the 3^rd tier becomes.

Mark Ashmore FRSA Co founder of Future Artists LTD / Future Artists live creative Co-Op.

Tweet us @futureartists

Further projects of the 3rd tier film-making revolution, projects of note

Invisible Circus: No Dress Rehearsal (distributed by Future Artists)

Just do it: a tale of modern outlaws (Emily James)

Press, Pause, Play

Project Lost Generation (By Articles writer Mark Ashmore)

Sound it out doc

The People Vs George Lucas

let us know about your and we will add it to the list! @futureartists