Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. It was once so rich that Concorde used to fly from Caracas to Paris. But in the last three years its economy has collapsed. Hunger has gripped the nation for years. Now, it’s killing people and animals that are dying of starvation. The Venezuelan government knows, but won’t admit it!!! Four in five Venezuelans live in poverty. People queue for hours to buy food. Much of the time they go without. People are also dying from a lack of medicines. Inflation is at 82,766% and there are warnings it could exceed one million per cent by the end of this year. Venezuelans are trying to get out. The UN says 2.3 million people have fled the country - 7% of the population.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Acad: Digital indies face early death...

Acad: Digital indies face early death
Indie and docu filmmakers unaware of risk, says report
By DAVID S. COHEN

The Motion Picture Academy's Science & Technology Council released the executive summary of part 2 of its "Digital Dilemma" report on the problems of long-term storage of digital movie footage. This new document focuses on the independent and documentary sectors of the movie business, and it paints a grim picture of filmmakers largely unaware how fragile today's born-digital movies are.
"In general," says the report "independent films that beat the odds and secure some form of distribution do so after a much longer time period than movies produced by the major studios. This time period quite likely exceeds the 'shelf life' of any digital work; that is, by the time distribution is secured, the digital data may become inaccessible.

"Most of the filmmakers surveyed and interviewed for this report were not aware of the perishable nature of digital content, or how short its unmanaged lifespan is compared to the 95-plus years that U.S. copyright laws allow filmmakers to benefit from their work."

The original Digital Dilemma report, released in 2007, focused on studio pics. It laid out the expense and difficulty of maintaining a digital archive of any kind, showing it is far greater than that of storing film in a temperature controlled vault. Originally the Acad's Sci-Tech Council recommended a "migration" strategy of moving data regularly from hard disk to hard disk periodically. However in subsequent presentations the Council has said it's been proven to a mathematical certainty that migration is ultimately bound to fail.

The bottom line: "Suitable long-term preservation and access mechanisms for digital motion picture materials have not yet been developed." In other words, there's no known way to preserve digital data over decades and ensure it will remain readable. That is not simply a problem for movie footage. The same issues pertain to digital medical records, financial data, and other information. The Acad is working with Library of Congress and other major industries, to search for a method to preserve digital assets.

However, because those efforts are being backed by big business, they may not prove suitable for indie films and filmmakers. Indie films that lack studio distribution -- and the financial resources that come with it -- are at particular risk of being lost entirely. "Unless an independent film is picked up by a major studio's distribution arm," says the summary, "its path to an audiovisual archive is uncertain. If a filmmaker's digital work doesn't make it to such a preservation environment, its lifespan will be limited - as will its revenue-generating potential and its ability to enjoy the full measure of U.S. copyright protection."

Awareness of the issue was no greater among documentarians than among narrative indie filmmakers. Says the report: "Surveyed and interviewed documentarians did not seem concerned about or aware of the possibility or likelihood of digitally acquired historical footage being lost. To the contrary, they believed that the Internet and today's digital technologies offered unprecedented access to historical footage."

The full report, not yet released, will include proposals for more education, sharing of information and collaboration among archives and other orgs.

The summary concludes by saying that unless preservation becomes a requirement for planning, budgeting and marketing strategies, it will remain a problem for indie filmmakers, documentarians and archives alike. "These communities, and the nation's artistic and cultural heritage, would greatly benefit from a comprehensive, coordinated digital preservation plan for the future."

Thank you Variety.







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