24,000 to fight a subpeona?

I know the traditional response to most discovery requests is to fight them tooth and nail, but usally the simpilest and best response is to simply give in. You don’t gain anything from fighting them, and the time and expense never equals out. People spend millions of dollars and 1000s of hours doing these kind of things in the law-but at some level it has to be reciprical. They still get to make the documentary, all they have to do is give them dvd copies of all the footage. Chevron has to pay for the DVDS.

This isn’t a first amendment issue-journilistic shield laws are state laws. Either Ecuador has a variation of it, or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t your not going to get anywhere. None of the articles state whether it does or doesn’t.

I would state that my heart does go out to the ecuadourians, and i wish them every sucess in there court case. I do however belive that court fights like this are a giant waste of time and effort.

If you told me that Chevron wanted them to spend 24,000 more then they wanted the tapes i would belive you. The Goliaths of the world get a wepion to threaten people with-but there really just paper tigers. Stupid Discovery requests are one of the leading causes of the belief that people have that it takes millions of dollars to fight big corporations, and that court is a giant expensive war.

The fact that the filmmaker has chosen to take the bait ,and that his fellow citizens have helped him is their right and I don’t begrudge them that. However i am just for the record going to say there is nothing “feel good” for me about this story.

Is it a coincidence that Chevron is attempting to curtail any bad PR in the wake of the Gulf disaster and the catastrophe that is British Petroleum?

Finally people will realize with full force the absolute control and power these corporations wield and will hopefully cry out for alternatives before more oceans, wildlife and people are fatally affected.

Perhaps crowdfunding will be a catalyst, not just for filmmaking but to raise awareness to certain causes as well.

I too am skeptical of crowdfunding as a means of raising required funds for films, but I am willing to give it time to see if it can evolve into something that is more tangible. Can it be used to gather minimal development funds (mostly to pay those legal fees) instead of using expensive bridge loans? But what’s the donor’s motivation? Are t-shirts, posters, DVDs and other trinkets enough of a payback 12 months or more down the line? The novelty might work at first, but I suspect would wear out pretty quickly.

Consequences and precedents.

This battle is important on its own, but we who are concerned about such things as freedom of the press must fight it because everything at this level is about consequences and precedents. Capitulating on this issue means the next issue (oh, let’s see, what could be “the next issue?”….perhaps some bigger oil company that spends more on PR and litigation than it does on plugging its hole in the Gulf??) will fold under the weight of a pragmatic, easy-out choice now.

Abdication is destructive to our society.

Thanks, Jeff, for wandering into this controversial issue.

And, yes, to bring the point back home to your blog’s main focus, crowdfunding has great promise, but who knows where it will go?

You make an interesting point about the lawyers being the ones to benefit so far, but here’s my observation (and you know I’m wary of the model): a couple months ago when I assessed crowdfunding as having the potential to generate a “normal” maximum of, say, $5,000 if one spent all their time on it, it now seems to have leapt forward to the potential “normal” maximum of $15,000 to $20,000. This is merely observation, but those are the numbers I now see.

And it’s just as susceptible to “catching lightning in a bottle” as indie movies are: look at the quarter million raised by DIASPORA* because of the timing of their crowdfunding at the same time the public was going ape-shit over Facebook’s privacy fiasco.

People WANT crowdfunding.

I’m beginning to think the moribund, inadequate, bureaucratic nightmare that is the SEC is going to be forced out of the picture, like it or not. The mass is forming behind crowdfunding, and the bureaucrats, as defines them, don’t even see it coming.

The SEC is quickly becoming anachronistic, an annoying ante-bastion only for the uber-level of professionals who still dwell in studio slate financing (whatever that is). Madoff is proving to be the gravestone for the crippled,…

Jeff…

Not sure if you saw this post about crowd funding. If not wanted to pass it along to you.

SEC Insight into Film Crowdfunding Via a Public Securities Offering

Its not always only the lawyers that make out in the end. Take for example, the documentary soccer film “Rise & Shine” (see link). This is a perfect example of Kickstarter can be an exceptionally important vehicle in a certain type of films financning.

Rise and Shine is a film about the incredible journey of US Soccer start Jay DeMeri and his unlikely rise from the US into the UK football system and on to the US National team. The producers funded the actual film themselves, but then need over $200,000 to pay for the licensing for the footage they needed from the Engligh Premiere Leauge, etc.

With an incredible social marketing campaign and an inherent built-in fan base, Kickstarter was the perfect vehicle to raise the necessary funds. No one (including, I must say, myself) thought that they could do it, but they raised close to $225,000 becoming the documentary with the largest raise ever.

Because they were able to then procure the footage, the film eventually got actual distribution and is now opening (today) in theaters across the U.S.

Without the kickstarter platform and all the donations (which included other U.S. National Soccer players and the lead singer of Weezer), this project never would have seen the light of day.

This may be more the anomaly, but it shows how important crowdfunding can be for the right project and how, if used correctly and in tandem with a blitzkreig social marketing campagain, incredibly successful it can be.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/grant_wahl/11/03/rise.and.shine/index.html