anyone else see this?
a little embarrassing coming from australian authorities...
( found via fibre culture mailing list )

SYDNEY -- Film company, MOD Films, employing Creative Commons licensing, was refused any dispensation from the Australian Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) to contract local actors to an interactive re-mixable sci-fi film called Sanctuary. The decision on Wednesday brings to a halt an AU$100,000 short film shoot scheduled this month by preventing actors from being contracted under the MEAA award, despite letters of support from all the principal actors.

The MEAA Board decided that it could grant none of the dispensations sought by MOD Films, on the grounds that these would be “inappropriate”. The production had asked for dispensations and support for its world-first plans to employ professional actors in a film with only “Some Rights Reserved” by the production company. The company intends to permit non-commercial use and re-voicing of the film by the audience. The MEAA also rejected the option of any further negotiations with MOD Films.

MOD Films had sought a dispensation, since early January, to allow professional Australian actors to participate in the short (15 minute) film and had worked with actors agents to communicate the extent of the project before auditions. The cast chosen for Sanctuary had been offered 110% on top of the MEAA award rate to take part in the experiment.

MOD Films is using the Creative Commons licensing scheme that expressly permits more audience freedom than All Rights Reserved. The Creative Commons was first devised in 2002 and Australian-specific licenses were released in February. Mash-up and re-mix potential is an intrinsic part of the Sanctuary project – empowering the audience to exercise greater control over purchased film content and treating re-use as an opportunity as opposed to a threat. Audience re-use is already prevalent in the computer games industry, often referred to as MOD'ing, and certain bestselling games have started out as MODs (e.g. Counter Strike). MOD Films is exploring how this may work creatively and commercially with films.

Michela Ledwidge, the director of Sanctuary, and the recipient of the Inventions award that is primarily funding the film, said "Having worked for years to fund this project and bring it back home to Australia to showcase local talent, I'm both dismayed and rather embarrassed by the MEAA position. It is no small irony that the actors and talent agents, who supported our little pilot and our submission to the MEAA, have the most to lose from this decision. We will still make the film but plans for an Australian shoot will have to be revised."

MOD Films is yet to receive a written response to its formal submission to the MEAA.

See also: www.modfilms.com

About MOD Films

Film is going to change dramatically in the next ten years. Not just in production values, as in the last ten years, but in production methods and how the films are packaged for audiences. Digital asset management is going to be the key to commercial and creative re-use, increasingly the likelihood of any film investment returns.

The key will be the exploitation of new means of leveraging film assets instead of throwing them away after a film is released. In this way films can become their own commercial production libraries. Re-use has never been a focus of film-making but it is fundamental to exploiting creative potential in any industry. In order for film and interactive productions to work better in tandem, there has to be a shift in perception. The film print is now only one part of the master.

MOD Films makes re-mixable films and tools for film re-use. Sustainable Story Systems.

MOD Films helps film companies manage assets and manage their relationships with interactive companies. The key to "re-mixable" is reliable process management; the efficient documenting and packaging of the bits and pieces of a film production so as to help support future revenue streams, be they DV releases, game console releases, online communities and their products or beyond.

MOD Films helps film-makers rapidly visualize new possibilities for the cinema and game consoles.

MOD Films helps studios by exploring a film's interactive potential early on, while there is still time to come at the story from a different angle.

MOD Films helps film producers and distributors grow online businesses by preparing the groundwork for digital rights management - the categorization and packaging of networked assets.

The films of tomorrow may be successful for one of an increasingly broad set of reasons. Story world creators who allow the networked audience to re-absorb the artistry, power and entertainment value of films may well be the first to harness the next phase of the Internet - the Semantic Web - a Web flush with new context and new opportunities for cross-pollination. For film-makers, game makers and their combined audiences, this could be a new age of story-telling. MOD Films has a part to play.