Movie Director Says it is OK to Pirate His Movie
Written by Ernesto on April 03, 2008Last weekend, a CAM version of the Norwegian movie “Lange Flate Ballær II” leaked onto several BitTorrent sites. Quite surprisingly, the producer doesn’t hold a grudge against the person who leaked the film. Instead, he thinks it’s an honor that someone took the effort to record it in a movie theater.
The movie, which is highly successful in Norwegian theaters, was posted on one of Norway’s largest BitTorrent sites early Sunday morning. Within hours, hundreds of people had already downloaded the movie, which is directed by Harald Zwart, one of Norway’s most famous directors.
Contrary to what most people would expect, Zwart doesn’t hold a grudge against the people who share his movie online though, as he told Nettavisen.no: “I think it’s perfectly fine that some people choose to post the movie online. It shows that people are interested in it”, says the director, and is supported by Espen Horn - the movie’s producer.
“In the IT society of today it’s naive to think that this wouldn’t happen. We consider it a huge compliment. After all, what has happened is that someone has smuggled a camera into a theater and then recorded the whole movie” he added.
Zwart doesn’t mind that people share his movie online, he did, however, make some negative comments about the quality of the recording. “The movie was filmed using a video camera in a local cinema somewhere. The quality is bad, and the movie definitely is better in theaters,” Zwart said.
Espen Horn, the director of the movie, thinks that piracy is inevitable, as long as there are no alternatives available. Horn said that some forms of piracy are “unfortunate”, but he would rather one “beat the pirates to it” instead of hunting them down. For example, by making the movies available for sale online, soon after they premiere in theaters.
“People today have all this equipment available at home, and it’s a simple thing for them to copy movies and music. This is the time to play on the same team as the ones who make available this kind of materials. I hope those who watch this copy will think the quality is bad, and go watch it at the movies instead.” Horn added.
Indeed, one of the driving forces behind piracy is still the lack of alternatives. Restricting people’s choices often has the opposite effect.
Thanks SantaBJ!
Previously: BitTorrent Throttling: Interview With Gemini Project
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53 Responses
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Well, it’s not like this was a big-budget movie that was designed to turn a profit - the film industries in Scandinavia are so heavily subsidized by the state culture ministries that they don’t really have to worry about box office receipts and video rentals the same way the multi-million dollar blockbusters do.
You can’t compare a cheap-ass movie shot with unknown actors on handheld cameras to hollywood films when it comes to the impact of illegal filesharing, because the point of the movie’s release is so different. Same in the record industry - Radiohead averaged less than a dollar for every copy of their album that was dL’ed from their site - letting the public decide if they want to pay for something they take just doesn’t work; imagine if you ran a grocery store that worked on this principle…
nice to see them have some “good” thoughts, yet i could care less whether the director thinks it’s ok or not when i’m downloading a movie. when i later decide whether it’s worth to purchase the dvd, it does, however.
btw, down with hollywood.
[quote]
Indeed, one of the driving forces behind piracy is still the lack of free alternatives.
[/quote]
fix’d
[quote comment="329855"]“Lack of alternatives ! There’s NO alternative to FREE !”
Here’s an alternative… big seats, smoking theatres, beer served out front, walmart-priced snacks, and $3-5 a ticket. Do that, and I’ll be back at the cinema 4+ times a month. At the moment, its 1-2 times a year.
Well done to this director… now if we can find and attach some English subs for the movie, he might just increase his film’s viewership 50-fold, out of solidarity. :)[/quote]
Spot on. I agree with you there!
[quote comment="330452"][quote]
Indeed, one of the driving forces behind piracy is still the lack of free alternatives.
[/quote]
Well, you can pay full price in a first run theatre. You can pay less than half price at a second-run theatre. You can pay a third of the price and rent it on DVD or download it legally. You can borrow the DVD from the library or a friend that bought it. You can watch it on a cable movie channel for almost-free. You can wait until it’s on network television and not pay a cent.
That’s lots of options, none of which is overly expensive and all of which give revenue to the producers and encourage them to make more movies! I for one don’t think my life would be better without hollywood movies - there have been some great ones in the past year that I’ve been glad to rent and share the 5 bucks with a few friends…
22:
9 bucks? That’s like . heh .. 45NOK. We pay approx 75NOK for a ticket to the cinema. That converts nicely into 15USD. Per ticket.
OTOH we earn quite well too :-D
#6 careface -_-
“Movie Director Says it is OK to Pirate His Movie”
What a pity it’s got nothing to do with him and his opinion is worthless.
What do the caterers think ?
Way to go…
He understands the mind set of todays people…
Hats off…
http://www.666health.com
Good article!
I work for a software company, developing a software product that’s recently reached the industry preview stage. This means that in about two months we’ll be going commercial.
While we’ve takens several steps to *postpone* piracy, we are fully aware that it’s a matter of time until someone cracks our product. And when that happens, we’ll know we’ve just become really important.
As someone who lives in a small rural town where the nearest movie theatre is over 400km away I think this is great. If I see this movie at a theatre I will buy a ticket even if I don’t have time to see the movie.
I download lots of movies and tv shows. If they turn out to be good, I buy the dvd. If they are crap then oh well…
Good movies etc.. are generally made by people who are in it for the love of the art form, if they get money thats a bonus. If they have this attitude and make stuff I enjoy I will open my wallet. If some penny pinching tight wad makes a movie as a money making exercise then they ain’t getting no love here.
+1 to the real artists that want their stuff seen/heard.
@22
Wow - 8-9 bucks for a ticket? Here in Norway it’s 17 - 18 bucks a ticket (90 - 100 nkr)
[quote comment="330383"]Same in the record industry - Radiohead averaged less than a dollar for every copy of their album that was dL’ed from their site - letting the public decide if they want to pay for something they take just doesn’t work; imagine if you ran a grocery store that worked on this principle…[/quote]
well, lets imagine that I have grocery store in which I can make copies of snacks and give them to ppl all around the world with zero costs…
Not totally true. He just thinks it is okay because it has such crappy quality (the cam, that is) so he thinks that people will download, laugh and then watch it on the big screen because the picture and audio are so much better then.
[quote comment="330780"]I work for a software company, developing a software product that’s recently reached the industry preview stage. This means that in about two months we’ll be going commercial.
While we’ve takens several steps to *postpone* piracy, we are fully aware that it’s a matter of time until someone cracks our product. And when that happens, we’ll know we’ve just become really important.[/quote]
Just like the head of Nero said, I’m glad they copy our program instead of a competing company’s product, it just show’s that we make the best product.
Unknown actors? Don Johnson is part of the lineup in this movie.
Unknown actors? Don Johnson is actually part of the lineup in this movie.
In my original translation (that I sent in to Torrentfreak) I included a translation of the part of the article from Nettavisen.no where they mention that SF Norge (the official distributor of the film) are not pleased with the film being on P2P networks and are planning on reporting it to the police. Who, obviously, won’t do anything about it.
However, it highlights an important part of the problem in that particular industry today - it’s not the artists that are worried so much about piracy; it’s the “surrounding industry”, those who make (a lot of) money from films and music and whatnot without actually having much of a hand in creating the works.
Now that’s the right attitude. If it is poor quality as he says, then at least it is free advertising to a worldwide audience, who if they really enjoy it will go to a theatre to see it, or even buy the DVD, at least a pirated copy.
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