"Carmina o Revienta": multi-platform release shakes Spanish Film Industry

Try googling Pedro Almodóvar's last film, "La Piel que Habito" (The skin I live in), released almost a year ago, and you'll get 5 Million hits. Now do the same with Paco León's directorial debut, "Carmina o Revienta": 8,5 Million hits on the search engine. Surprised? Wait until you hear this: the film was released just a week ago.

Everybody is talking about "Carmina o Revienta" in Spain. Not only because the film is fantastic -it won three awards at the prestigious Festival de Málaga-, but especially because it has shaken the whole industry by being the first Spanish film to be released simultaneously in Theaters, in DVD and online.

Paco León is a very well-known comedy actor in Spanish TV, mainly due to his role in the sitcom "Aída". He wanted to try what it felt to be behind the camera, so he went ahead and produced, wrote and directed an 80-minute mockumentary about the life and miracles of his amazing mother, Carmina, and his sister, the actress María León. When he faced the distribution of the film, he knew he wanted to try something different. So he asked his followers on twitter (over half a million) how they would be willing to watch his film, what viewing platforms would they use, how much they would pay for it, etc. He gathered the different responses, gave it a little thought... and went on to challenge the industry as nobody had done before in his country.

"Carmina o Revienta" is the first true multi-platform release in Spain. It came out in Theaters for the usual price (7€), on DVD for a reduced price of 5,95€ and online -through different services- for 1,95€. After it's first weekend, the film was the most viewed in iTunes, the most viewed in the online platform Filmin, the most viewed in Canal+ movie-on-demand service, had sold over 80% of the DVD copies and was the sixth best movie in the ratio 'number of copies/tickets sold' in movie Theaters. An incredible success for a film that cost under 40.000€.

There are many lessons to be learned from this experience, but one of them is extremely interesting: Paco León gave a choice to his audience. Surrounded as we live by screens and multimedia devices, it doesn't sound right that we are forced to go to a Theatre to enjoy a new release. "Carmina o Revienta" simply gave us the alternative to see the film wherever we preferred, without having to wait for months for the DVD or the legal streaming. It also proved that there are creative and non-punitive ways to fight piracy (and make money at the same time). As León says in his last tweet, "My mother has been more effective in fighting piracy than the Governement's Piracy Act".

Releasing your film on the Internet... for free?!

Director Dean Peterson just released his first feature "Incredibly Small" on Vimeo. Yep, online. And for free. When his Producer Todd Sklar -admirably holding himself- simply asked for a good reason to do so, Peterson sent him a list of seven. All of them make very good points, but two are especially interesting:

4. This movie is the product of the crowd sourced, internet 2.0, ‘other buzz word’ culture of the internet through and through. We raised money on Kickstarter, garnered an audience and fan base on Tumblr and Reddit connected with fans on tour through Twitter and Facebook, and if Google+ made any sense, I’m sure we’d find a way to utilize that too. Now it seems fitting to stay true to that spirit and bring it all back full circle and put this motherfucker on Vimeo or YouTube right?

7. Torrents. Piracy is viewed as a huge problem in the film industry but what if we turn it into a boon? If you go on Pirate Bay there are over 10,000 people who are currently downloading The Hunger Games, who I’m sure the studios view as villains but we should view them as potential audience members. They’re our friends! This is a huge untapped group that I think it would be a mistake to ignore. They’re going to download movies no matter what we do, so we should at least provide them with OUR movie to download and watch versus one of the other ones. Let’s put a super hi res version of the movie on torrent sites and try to get something from them. An email address, a donation, a DVD sale or them blogging or tweeting about it or using that X-Box headset thingy to tell their Halo friends about it. That’s better than nothing.

The full article, in the section "Truly Free Film" of Ted Hope's blog. And here's the full version of the film:

INCREDIBLY SMALL - Free Independent Feature Film from Dean Peterson on Vimeo.

Creative Commons: a shared culture

When uploading a video to Vimeo, we are offered the option to protect it under a Creative Commons license. The same happens with Flickr, Picasa or even Youtube. Not so long ago, all creative content was automatically protected by full copyright, but now, thanks to the licenses provided by Creative Commons, more artists are shifting from the "All Rights Reserved" to a very different formula: "Some Rights Reserved". Why would anyone want to unlock the rigid protection of their creative work and open it up to the public? Well, here's part of the answer: to build a shared culture.

One of Creative Commons's areas of interest is the relationship between

"open licenses" and filmmaking

, and many of the ideas and concepts that appear in this debate are very similar to the ones that structure

CRI's mission

:

Simply put, Creative Commons licenses allow the shift from “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved,” enabling you to share your work under terms of your own choosing. This gives you control over distribution, and the non-exclusivity of the licenses means you can retain all commercial rights if desired. [..] That's it. These Creative Commons conditions provide a simple and easy way to mitigate the hassle of sharing a film online and encouraging dialog around a film's release.

Can Creative Commons licenses play an important role in the future paradigm of movie making? Maybe, if the traditional model opened up to a more reticular, diverse and conversational system that explored new strategies to create, distribute and share cultural products.