Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to Chris Waugh,
I always hated Shortland Street, but that is an excellent point.
And while I can sniff at soap operas with the best pointy-headed elitists, it's also hard to miss that they've also been a great training ground for an awful lot of "highbrow" actors, writers and directors. Art is all very nice, but it doesn't hurt to learn the craft of being tight, precise and extremely adaptable on an unrelenting timetable and and unforgivingly tight production with next to no money.
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to Paul Campbell,
yes exactly – that’s why we need public TV if we want anything more high-brow than Shortland St
Oh, Jesus… I’m trying to find one level on which that sentence doesn’t bug the fuck out of me. I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention over the last decade or so, but there’s plenty of “high-brow” television coming out of the dirty commercial sector and having spent two weeks in Blighty I can confirm the hallowed British Broadcasting Corporation is more than keeping its end up as a net contributor to the global shite supply.
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Hard News: Moving right along?, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Given that the mayor heads the council that employs the Chief Executive of the council, I don’t imagine how any investigation by him could be called independent. Power over etc.
Oh, FFS… if you take that to the reductio ad absurdum you can’t trust Ernst & Young either, because who commission them and, I assume, set the (as Russell pointed out extremely broad) terms of reference? Not that the usual suspects are going to accept any result that doesn’t damn Brown as a corrupt whore-monger anyway…
It’s great we now have a template for the terms of independent audits and investigations into allegations and appearances of the potential for impropriety in the public sphere.
What nzlemming said. If we have a “template” here, it’s one we shouldn’t be too pleased about. I know I’m in the minority here, but where’s the independent audit and investigation into the newspaper and blogger that decided to have a good crack at nullifying a democratic election because they didn’t like the result?
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Mike Kilpatrick,
How they try and minimise that is the key and that’s much more complicated than me criticising their press release, so I’ll step away from that argument!
Please don’t, Mike, it’s been a pleasure being sorta-kinda-not-really disagreed with by you. Complicated stuff is complicated, and just because we're not coming up with all the answers doesn't mean there's not insight to be had. :)
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Hard News: Movie Disaster, in reply to Simon Bennett,
If we say to International Producer X: “If you spend $100 million dollars in NZ making your movie, we’ll give you $30 million back”, that’s still a net gain of $70million that we wouldn’t have otherwise.
And that's fine, as far as it goes Simon. But all I'm suggesting is that we be upfront about the opportunity costs, because do we really want to try outbidding South Carolina for the next Iron Man 3?
First, we pay cash! South Carolina sends you a check at the end of production. No bartering or fiddling around with credits or filing tax returns.
Oy... With all due respect, I wouldn't be quite so free with the chequebook around people Peter Jackson had to sue to get just to get an independent auditor in the building to guarantee compliance with the terms of his contract.
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Hey, all. I have to get out of the bathrobe and go interact with meat people but thanks for the groaning buffet of thought-food. :)
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Russell Brown,
But, of course, using a common, open format also has the side-effect of making your works more amenable to piracy.
Sure but Macmillan imprint Tor Books (and it’s UK sister) seem to be doing just fine without DRM, and it would be a safe bet Stefan von Holtzbrinck wouldn’t be playing ball if it wasn't the case. (As Amazon discovered, you don't play chicken with the Holtzbrinick Massive lightly.)
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Mike Kilpatrick,
Pardon? They took the infringing content down before they normally would have. Unless you believe any potential host/dropbox etc for online files should scan for possible copyrighted material before accepting it, what else are they supposed to do?
I don't know if they can, around here that's a question way above my pay grade as they say. But should they? I think that's a perfectly legitimate question to ask. Just as I think it's perfectly legit for small publishers like Sam Elworthy and Fergus Barrowman to ask why they should have to put time and resources into playing take down request cat-and-mouse.
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
It doesn’t help that the text publishing industry is going down the same DRM loop that failed for the music industry.
Well you might want to drop VUP and meBooks a line if that’s the case with The Luminaries because when they launched they made quite a noise about being DRM-free.
The Publishers Association release was pretty strong stuff though – it accused Mega of knowingly “ripping off” New Zealand authors. It’s pretty hard to stand up such an accusation in the circumstances.
That's a fair tone note, Russell, but I think we can both acknowledge there's a fair amount of legitimate frustration behind it.
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Mike Kilpatrick,
I found the Publishers Association’s response laughable, particularly given copies of ‘The Luminaries’ are available on at least two other more easily accessible sites than Mega.
What was laughable about it? You are aware, right, that PANZ president Sam Elworthy is also the publisher of Auckland University Press, not some subsidiary of a sub-division of a media multinational for whom New Zealand barely registers at the corporate mothership.
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