Hi, I'm Stu Buchanan, I'm Head of Digital Programming at Sydney Opera House. Before we kick off, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which we're gathering here today for this conference and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. Where to begin with this topic? And.. Well, I kind of wanted to continue on from the last panel that we had, which was I enjoyed very much the presentation, but the panel then seemed to get into a little bit of a spicy territory, which I really enjoyed. So I think I wanted to begin today's panel by encouraging us to be as honest and forthright as possible, and if we veer into spicy territory, then maybe all the better. Be thinking about some questions that you might want to ask of the panel, clearly the spicier the better.
There'll be some opportunities, obviously, for us to have that discussion afterwards. Now, we've got quite a varied panel here today in terms of, I guess, kind of experience with, exposure to and working with technology. And I kind of wanted just to kind of give a little bit of brief context about how we might talk about technology in this panel. When we talk about live performance, the go-to is often a live stream or recording of a performance. Sometimes what we talk about at the Opera House is kind of pointing cameras at the stage. That's a pretty valid and common process, and so we will talk about that.
We will also talk about works that are designed, I guess, exclusively for film, or for screen, rather. So, digital performance in their nature, but not necessarily presented in front of a live audience. And we also talk about digital.
We talk about collaboration. We talk about learning. We talk about infrastructure. And we talk about engagement within a variety of different digital frameworks. So we'll touch on all of these. Now, I've already broken my rule that I try and impose upon myself, which is not to use the word digital.
How many times have we heard the word digital today? Try as best we can, maybe, to see if we can not use the word digital and see how much of a tongue tie that gets us into. One of the things I should also point out, obviously, that everybody sitting on the panel here today, or rather my three colleagues, have been mentees as part of the CEO Digital Mentoring. There was digital there.
Sorry, it's inherent in the title. I can't get around that one. The CEO Mentoring Program.
I was fortunate enough to be one of the mentors in the first and second round. And in both of the rounds, actually, the wonderful mentees that I was working with, some of the outcomes was actually to put the idea of a digital strategy to one side and think about the placement of technology within an overriding either artistic or organizational strategy. So this was actually an idea I think Seb introduced very early on, that it's very easy to compartmentalize an other digital as being off to one side as a problem that can be solved as opposed to centralizing it within organizational strategy and frameworks. That's a bit of a rambling setup for you. So let's get into questions. And let's kick off with something fairly straightforward and, I think, interesting to start the conversation, which is actually perhaps none of what doesn't fall into any of the categories that I started with, which is the recent productions of Pitcher, Dorian Gray, and Jekyll and Hyde as part of the Sydney Theatre Company.
Because those are certainly within, I guess, a kind of state-based theatre company, are some of the most innovative presentation works as far as technology is concerned. Can you just give us a little bit of a what are they and what led to their creation? First of all, let me just correct you when you say straightforward, because they are not that. There are many things, but they are not that.
So Pitcher, Dorian Gray, and it had a run here in Melbourne last year, and it's currently on stage in Sydney, about to go to Auckland for the Auckland Festival. And strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is currently on stage in Perth. Perth Festival is about to go to Adelaide to Adelaide Festival.
So they're pieces of work that were adapted from the original books and directed by our artistic director, Kip Williams, and they are what he terms Sydney Theatre. So live theatre on stage, but interspersed with live cameras on stage. So five cameras on stage in a mix of steadicams, tripods, programmed jibs, which do a mix of performance direct to audience, performance to camera.
There's some pre-recorded content which is then live mixed through a media server and played so that in the picture of Dorian Gray, one performer plays 26 characters across a two hour performance. With only probably about 5% of the content kind of pre-recorded, so most of it is live. With costume changes live on stage, so an incredibly complex technical team around it and also stage management and props and wardrobe team around it. And Jekyll and Hyde is similar to performers this time, playing also multiple characters. And it's this interesting thing about these kind of Victorian Gothic pieces transformed through very contemporary technology.
So in terms of the audience interaction of it, it provides this incredibly contemporary access into what otherwise might be quite a dated feeling story. But as I say, none of it is straightforward. You said there was cine theatre there. I don't know if anyone had cine theatre on their bingo, but that's a new one, which is great to hear. I mean, obviously those choices inherent in the idea of presenting cine theatre are artistic choices driven by KIP.
But maybe to draw on something that actually we covered off in the last panel, like how much of that is also audience led insofar as the proclivities of the audience towards screen based culture, let's say, and bringing that into the live performance context? Look, I mean, I think KIP's been playing around in this form for a while. This is not the first production of that nature, but it's probably the two productions that have pushed it, pushed the edge of the envelope. And it's audience led in that, you know, Sydney Theatre Company is an incredibly box office driven company. 70% of our revenue comes from box office.
So you learn pretty quick whether audiences like something or not. And to the earlier point about where's the role of audience in this conversation, for us it's a massive driver in where we prioritise things and how we structure the business going forward because we need audiences to stay afloat, bluntly. And they need to buy tickets. It's not, these are not engagement pieces, although obviously there's those pathways. But there is a commercial reality that one has to take into account when going, are we going to embark on another of these? And they've had incredible audience appeal. Audiences love them because they are really innovative.
They're really interesting. And there's this kind of sense of unexpectedness as you engage with these stories through these means. Whether there's something that the audience said, we want this thing and then we created it, it's probably, it's been an iterative relationship development over time. Okay.
We'll come back to the question of recording and live streaming in a second. But Kath, here to my left, now you are, you have the privilege of presenting Pietro Dorengrey as part of the upcoming Adelaide Festival. What sort of challenges does that type of live theatre present and how might they differ from other types of works that can be presented in a festival context? Yeah, thank you. We're doing Jekyll and Hyde. Sorry. We did Dorengrey last year to massive success.
What a wonderful piece. And yeah, so we're following up with Jekyll and Hyde, which we're very pleased to be doing. And I can confirm, and it's correct, they're not straightforward in their, you know, one person on stage.
It's not a one, it's not a fringe one person show, that's for sure. But I think that, I think what you say there about audiences and access is really, is really important. And, you know, Kepp and other directors aren't responding directly to what audiences want, but they are thinking about what does an audience, you know, what do they want to sit through? What do they want to see? What are the stories that they want to hear? And I think the great thing about the theatrical staging of Dorengrey and Jekyll and Hyde is that it is very accessible.
The story of Jekyll and Hyde is very accessible. You know what it is. It's Gothic, it's noir, there's a lot of that stuff around.
But then the cinematic, cine theater presentation of it does give another weight into it when we talk about it too. We have various donor groups in Adelaide and we do a sort of shark tank, kind of what do you want to put your support to and we pitch. I want to see that.
Yes, we won't. It's a small thing in somebody's house. But the, you know, we various have pitched different parts of the program to that group to see what they want to support and they overwhelmingly wanted to support Jekyll and Hyde having seen Dorengrey because of the, just the, I guess, the accessibility of it and the excitement of the way that it's presented. And I think that, you know, we talk about technology or if we're thinking about how technology is changing performance, I think when it works best, it's when a director is using it as another tool in a director's toolkit. So it's something else that will help really tell the story in a way.
So it's not about using video or live streaming or whatever for the sake of it. It's about how do I, you know, if I want to tell this big story with all of these multiple characters, how can I do that in a way that doesn't involve me employing 26 actors or whatever and the result of that I think is often something that pushes the art form a little bit more. During COVID, we saw obviously that some types of festivals were able to adapt to the environment very quickly and I'm thinking particularly film festivals and writers' festivals, film festivals where works could be screened online, obviously writers' festivals moving to a Zoom style presentation. In thinking about how the last couple of years have propelled transformation, do you think as a, dare I say, more traditional performing arts festival that you might have somehow missed out on some of that transformation because you weren't necessarily as, I'm going to say compelled to do so, but less able to adapt to that changing environment? Yeah, I think about that a lot. I mean, we are a very traditional festival.
We are thinking all the time and we've got new artistic leadership now about how we build on the incredible success that that traditional festival has brought us to really think about how we widen our reach and our access. But I was here, I was in Melbourne for most of the pandemic and then went to South Australia where it's not a competition and everybody has had a horrible time in the pandemic, of course, but in South Australia and Adelaide, it was not the same situation. An Adelaide festival in 2020 happened entirely as normal and then the lockdown happened at midnight on the last night in the year that Rising didn't even get announced in Melbourne.
2021 was impacted, there weren't internationals, but actually the festival did some commissioning and live streaming of work from Moscow, Berlin, London into theatres in Adelaide and the audience went to watch them there to try and keep that international component. And interestingly, actually from an access perspective, then also streamed them out into Mount Gambier and Wai'ala and into the region, so that was a nice kind of access thing. And then in 22, the festival that we had last year was pretty much apart from a 75% density quotient, pretty much back to normal. We did Rites of Spring with actors and dancers from 35 countries who all made it in. So it was a very normal kind of world and that's been great and a very successful thing for Adelaide festival, but I think a lot about how everywhere else and what certainly we were doing here and at Rising, really looking at, all right then, what is the value of what we do if we can't do the thing that we do and what's our responsibility to our artists and to our sector and to our organisations and our staff and how are we innovating and melding ourselves around that.
We haven't done that so much in Adelaide and I think we will have to, I think that will have an impact, I don't know if that's positive or negative or not, but I think we will have to think about that kind of examination as we go forward. So now segue, Jamie, to you in terms of Next Wave Festival because that over the last couple of years has undergone a significant transformation from a festival model to year round project based commissioning model or essentially kind of always on framework from one of the bit of work. Can you talk a little bit about what brought about that change and how much of it was pandemic led and how much of it was more broadly just in lockstep with how things are evolving? It was not pandemic led in that I think I came into the organisation having a practice as an artist and an understanding of the sector from a few different perspectives and I think coming in and seeing Next Wave from the outside as an alumni of the festival as well as in over a couple of different years and then as a peer assessing grants and seeing those applications come through and all that sort of stuff, I think there was a sense of where the organisation was at and then when I inherited the organisation at the start of 2021 in the middle of lockdown as well, yeah, there was a real question of like what are we actually doing and for who and how and is this really the best way to support early career artists as the organisation is set out to do? But I think the pandemic gave me permission to maybe push further than anticipated maybe and with a little less resistance than I also anticipated which is something I understand is a real privilege and joy.
But yeah, I think at the heart of the transformation was really about asking what is our current set of resources? The reality of that, we don't have federal organisational funding, we have state organisational funding and then we rely on project funding so what can we actually do and how can we also funnel the maximum resourcing back to artists? And then I think also the context of the cultural sector, we can't talk about centring First Nations voices or people across a diversity of lived and cultural experiences without them saying where are they and where they're not and so to continue to be Melbourne based and have that kind of centrality of one outcome in a rhythm didn't feel right anymore and so if for us taking that away means now we can support them where they live and work and I think for a national global conversation that's far more interesting as well to say that's where you do your community engagement, that's where you build audience, that's where you sustain your practice and find longevity in that as opposed to the sexy premiere you might have in a Melbourne festival and then you're disconnected from your community and then yeah, we're looking at a cohort of artists who increasingly have a diasporic relationship to somewhere else whether it's in Australia or internationally so even some of that international context like what does that mean today? I don't think it's just about a market development and touring, it's actually about global sensibilities and that kind of cultural relevance so for me the transformation was a lot about that sort of stuff and then reorienting how we centre those things and then finding the containers that then best nurture that change in context for early career independent artists. So let's talk about that, use the word container there and you're alluding I believe to one of the kind of key outcomes I guess of this transformation which is All School which is a platform that encompasses, I mean you can talk to it but essentially it tells a little bit about All School and how that has developed out of some of those discussions. Yeah, again another privilege of the timing in which I inherited the organisation, previous team had, founder funding for this had a really basic proposals around what a learning programme might look like and when I sat on it, you know, it made a lot of sense that we've always run Kickstart and a lot of artist development kind of platforms like how do we now take that knowledge, that wealth of knowledge and experience and offer it to more people in the artistic community but then actually also what is a more intergenerational conversation and whose practices are we centring when we say learning and exchange as well. So All School kind of then flashed out and it's still in a very iterative life in terms of testing the versions over the next year and the year after and Emma is actually in the audience who is the creative producer overseeing that so if you see her around as well you know say hi and talk about it but we've essentially in working nationally more meaningfully then we also had to really think about how this platform would be hybrid, would have a digital presence but even in that digital presence what does that mean and I think for us it's about in some ways loosely a publishing platform to publish experimental offerings and I say offerings because I think we can also reimagine what workshops or master classes might look like, we might use that language behind the scenes but I think what we might see on the platform might look slightly differently because artists are doing those things differently but yeah I think what we want that space to be is that coming together of ideas of testing of works in progress of the conversations around making work as well as the skills and stuff and practice exchange and yeah that's kind of where it's designed to be quite loosely and again being led by a creative producer who is a practitioner herself and then the team and the artistic director and we've been on a kind of co-design consultative space as well with peers around that programming and so really looking at how it's really artist led and letting that shift in form and nature. Great yeah and a component of that will be I believe you know sort of performance based in so far as a kind of a live stream performance component and I wanted to swing back to that. The performances of Dorian Gray and Jacqueline Hyde were they filmed and or live streamed at all? They've only been filmed for archival purposes they've never been live streamed.
It's interesting the intersection of the kind of live performance industry and the screen industry comes kind of head to head in a union discussion at the point in time when you're kind of talking about rights and that's kind of sync rights on music that's it's recording broadcast you know royalties and payments it's rights for the performers and the pools for the creatives and so on. So they've those works have never been streamed there's been discussion about it I think there's two barriers one is that actually they're designed to be viewed as a live performance and the translation to screen we have done a high quality archival of one with the thought that maybe but it just doesn't translate in the same way but the other barrier to those works and quite frankly all most of our works actually turning into to captured content is that there is a huge amount of complexity still around the rights discussions and those discussions are very slow and very painstaking and they're very individual you know you end up in extensive discussions with every agent for every actor every creative and so on and the economics of them just don't make sense at this point in time so for a company that's strapped for resource and time you kind of go and that's not your core mission is that really where you're going to invest the time when you know there's no economic return on it in any short term or quite frankly long term framework at this stage. Can I respond to your questions Drew because I just had this conversation last night in a dress rehearsal with Devika and Amaya who are presenting burial over the next two days at you know and it's a kickstart commission and this came up and they're working with technology they're playing sound live they're playing they're editing video live for a work that we are essentially lying on the ground and watching this immersing in this and I think the question of life performance and lifeness right it's I think to talk about recording is a moot point because when we talk about lifeness, lifeness for who and the essential part of life performance is a lifeness that you know and Amaya's and Devika said this beautifully there is a danger for performers when they're performing life and there is also that equal vulnerability of experiencing life and so yesterday you know whether we knew they were playing the music the sound live or the video live or not didn't matter I was lying on the ground immersed in this space where I felt like I was moving in this space because the work moved me not just emotionally but like sensorially and that lifeness which even at that moment maybe the artist didn't completely understand but the lifeness is for the audience. Yeah and I think you know there are you know there is a film there is a screen industry and lots of you know great ways to look at things on small and big screens and then there's the live performance which is what you know and the kind of congregation of physical people in a place doing a thing and I think I'm more interested in how technology changes that how you use technology to change that live performance rather than just as and maybe this is because you know post pandemic we're all you know I watched all of the NT live things that I'd never seen before you know through the pandemic and maybe I was desperate to get back into theatre but you know the work that you know the video work in the KIPP's pieces the you know the set piece which we did at Rising and last year with Anna's piece with you know that had video in it in a really incredible way that was very much part of the live experience so it's using technology but it's not just oh let's just get this to somebody who's not in the room right now although I do think and we think about this a lot in you know South Australia is a big state and we are you know 50% funded by the South Australian taxpayer so you know what does that mean if you're physically very far away or you know are there other barriers to your tent so I think there's a role for it but I think it's more interesting when you say what are the what are the technological tools that a director can use to really enhance the work so that it really engages an audience yeah but is it is it more than just having a role for it I mean the latest pattern makers survey that came out in January talked about 26% of people either having I'm going to read this so I don't misquote it 26% of audiences identify as being disabled or close to someone who is and so these the issues that we talk about of liveness of cost of resourcing obviously to be balanced with access and understanding that you know attending live performance can often be a privilege you know a privilege of wealth a privilege of location a privilege of mobility even if we just looked at it through those lens through that lens isn't there a way we can move through some of these sort of the the liveness issue in order to open that up more but I think one of the things there is about the transformation of form you know fundamentally theatre tell stories as do movies as do TV shows and so on and so you know there are countless numbers of things where there's been a musical there's been a stage show there's been a book and there's been a movie and a TV show they're all forms of the same story I mean I think yes absolutely there is we there is a responsibility for us to try and find those access pathways but we have to also accept that sometimes those access pathways are going to happen in a theatre as well so the use of technology for you know predictive text sorry you know voice to text transfers so that you can get subtitling and so on across more performances that sort of thing hearing loops in theatre experiences and yes ideally you'd be able to find some pathway for remote or you know financial viability accessibility barriers but there is also it is a different thing it is you cannot actually replicate that same experience for people via delivering it via a different form and to the point earlier about you know what is digital and that notion that well if you I mean I have a marketing team and I have a digital marketing manager and I rail against the title because I'm like no it's just a form of delivery you didn't used to say the analog marketing manager when you sent a letter and I think they should but you know it's a the form of delivery inherently changes the experience and absolutely we need to try and find pathways but there's also pathways about you know the touring programs with industry about taking work to regional audiences now there's going to be limits there about can a theatre hold that scale show or you know can they still get to the theatre because for physical access reasons and there are some things that are going to be more accessible and yes we need to keep trying to make those but I also think sometimes it's about making particular product that will actually serve that need in terms of being able to be transmitted through that form without significant degradation of the actual product because I also think to give a product that is significantly less than what it originally was is also disingenuous and not respected. Sure sure but I guess this might then lead into something slightly different from just that notion of capture or live streaming of performance which is a moving away from that live form and moving away from capture into essentially a new form because you know we've seen I think scant few examples where theatre has translated to screen and retains the best of theatre and the best of screen you know you're either doing if a straight capture will do a disservice to one or the other it's not the greatest live experience it's not necessarily a great screen experience. I don't know how many people would have seen this but go and check out the trailer if you can find it online because it's not available I think outside the UK there's a production of Uncle Vanya that was done a couple of years ago which was probably one of the best examples of sitting somewhere between essentially what a film or what a theatre production looks like I've tried to describe it so many times and just can't because when you see something new for the first time it's hard to put words to it so I guess I'm sort of looking and thinking about I take all your points and like is there an evolution of theatre more broadly that can transcend some of those.
But I think there was like during lockdown there were a couple of examples of you know theatre companies who were making work and dance companies own lots of arts forms who were making work for that distribution mechanism and so you know so Sitting Dance Company where I was at the time made a lovely work called Quattro which was done with Sitting Symphony and it was you know filmed it was created and filmed and for distribution for broadcast distribution there was a theatre piece that was made where it was performed live every night but zoom but to camera so you know bought your tickets went on at seven o'clock and so on so I do think there is this thing about it's a different form and actually if we think about the evolution of kind of theatre companies and the product that they make the evolution might be that there is a stage model of work and then there is a model of work that sits in a studio with cameras and is performed live to camera but that the script and structural stuff around it is of theatre nature rather than film i.e. it's live you don't get to go back and edit and go oh cut just do that one again and again it has all that vulnerability of being in that moment and just having to push through but it is a different delivery mechanism and I think you know for me that's that's one of the kind of interesting opportunities around breaking down those access barriers rather than just degrading this other piece yeah it's trying to find a model I suppose that is not it's not degrading the form or that it's not just like it's not just watch it here or watch it here actually what are the story what's the story that you're telling and how are you capturing all of that and what are the other ways that you could disseminate that to an audience that wouldn't just be about filming I think there are you know that would go to your access point and you know I think and I think there's a lot of technological things that we can be doing so that so that the work that we present is more accessible to everybody you know we're doing a show this year with windmill theatre Hanson Grett which is a story of Hansel and Gretel and they're using the headphone shocks headphone technology which use your cochlear implant technology so that you can hear something in your head while still hearing something in your in the room so it's really starts to kind of mess with your head about what you are you hearing am I hearing what you're hearing you know this kind of thing and so that's it that's a device that's a theatrical device for that show which will be very brilliant and please come and see it but it but actually we're starting to talk with that but there's an accessibility application for that too that actually if we can you know for an audience perspective that could be used in a way that would make you know that you could think of multiple ways that you could use that in theatres that would would help people who not just people who are deaf and disabled but people who have you know different attention spans and want to experience things differently. I just want to put back my artist hat on and just as a respond to I feel like your question is kind of asking capital T theatre for how it might shift but you know I think we think about contemporary performance and experimental theatre yeah and no but also that that you know in the realm of contemporary performance and experimental theatre technology as text as material and more than that form and all of that like that those change those shifts have have happened actually it exists and artists are making that work it's just you know a major theatre company has a remit to make capital T theatre where some of that that that rules of what what the form is is still pretty true and as it should stay and then there's room for experimentation and what not where you know I think that that's where the breadth of the work so I think I think it's also yet to remember that actually that that changes and experimentation have already occurred like you know thinking about Nat Randall's work Second Woman, Next Wave Work you know regrouped last year as well and was at Sydney Opera House like they're also making they're already they're also experimenting with it they just were doing it on a scale that is on in the independent sector so also again the sector is broad and big and and multiplicitous and artist-led. Yeah and I think one of the things you know that comes out of that is you know dare I say generational which is that is and it actually talks a little bit to some of the discussions we're having earlier particularly Seb's point around group work in school and group work in education and the sort of collaborative nature I guess particularly a lot of emerging multidisciplinary artists in that field where digital is the word again technology is second nature is completely inherent to the work but how do we balance that how do we sort of look to and work with artists who are pushing for them in that way whilst I said asked the question earlier not wishing to put all the responsibility for solving problems to them how do you balance those the fragility I guess of that emerging practice and emerging discourse not even emerging really because it's pretty emerged but certainly that kind of you know where that practice is sitting now. As in you know like we're in I think even like I'm in my late 30s right and and even I feel like you know five years ago I looked at NextWave and I thought oh you're not marketing to me actually I'm not your audience I am I think young you know we're in a space of facilitating this organisation to then better support them and so the only way to know how to better support them is to put them in a room and and be guided by them.
So yeah I think co-design and consultative processes are really about that approach just cannot programming has to happen like that I think like full stop as a methodology the infrastructure will come the technology exists they have the language and the vocabulary you know that's yeah so I and it's for us to catch up not for us to the challenge is yeah for us to keep catching up and and then yeah let them lead it actually. Yeah I love the stuff that Jane Jane was saying before about you know the kind of oh no you what don't you lose your curatorial expertise if you let the audience start making decisions for you think well no that's the audience yeah keep up you know and and we've been thinking about that with you know as we try and increase our own you know competency capability literacy all of those things but just by doing projects and because with festivals you have to you know it's the same when we think about you know what's our responsibility what we're going to do about reconciliation about sustainability about you know all of these kind of things you think about that as an organisation then you you don't get anywhere you've got to think about that as the festival because that's what we're doing and so thinking about how we start to diversify what the curatorial model looks like and we're doing a project this year with or for next year with university in Adelaide about machine learning and actually working with students from that department but thinking about how you how you curate work that comes out of that so it's not about the work we're not influencing how you how you create the work but start thinking because what a festival has that's sort of distinct from lots of other arts organisations is that curatorial kind of picture so how do we how do we start to change how that looks so that in the future the audience might also be a bit different. One of the things that sort of comes out of this I think is that and sort of reflecting on some of my experiences at the Opera House which is you know apart partially presenting venue in terms of receiving work but also commissioning venue as well but certainly when we talk about filming or recording or working with artists who are touring let's say that it tends to be that artists who are presenting new work who are at the kind of younger end of the spectrum are more flexible in terms of or more interested let's say and flexible in terms of how that work might be captured or filmed or a new piece is created with them and I wonder you know I mean one of the things that kind of to your point earlier and about rights I mean can we wait for generational change within you know rights managers and literary agents and so on like because it's because it's as you know as part of the you're part of the LPE digital rights panel it's a it's a glacial process and it seems to be moving so slow that it's that seems to be some sort of you know crunch emerging whereby that that just will sort of run aground in some way. And I think that's probably right if we leave it to that and I absolutely think it's it's the younger artists and the independent artists that will lead that change because they are more in control of their own destiny around that and so the opportunity that they create by being much more open and willing and able to look at those different forms of capture and distribution will push the rest of the industry forward or drag the rest of the industry forward probably and and that's fantastic and I absolutely take my hat off to them and I quite frankly would like the rest of the industry to just come on look keep get dragged a little quicker but it you know we can't just ignore it it will because if we don't challenge it and keep pushing it the glacial will just stop and not speed up at all so you know that that digital rights working group that LPA has been convening for a number of years now has sort of made some progress but really only probably in the education the the distribution of recorded content for education purposes and beyond that of course other individual agreements are possible but they are painful to negotiate because you do start to cross over into that kind of the film rights world and so on but I think that to your point Jamie about the the younger artists the independent artists that experimental artists and are really pushing that distribution form and so much more comfortable and and it's also just part of their kind of world and you know the the opportunity the the bleed between a video going out on insta versus a video that's captured for distribution on a an aggregate platform like the opera house a streaming platform versus you know any other form of distribution is actually just its distribution all of it whereas within the kind of you know more structured framework around distribution rights the the differentiations are painful and negotiated at each and every point and then there's a whole lot of grayness that just is muddy and whatever you know like you said earlier whatever you know you managed to negotiate for one will be completely different from the other and which can be extraordinarily painful and we could talk for a long time but I'm conscious I'm the person sitting between you and lunch so it's by all means let's carry on the discussion later throughout the day thanks so much for your attention and your questions and have a great day and thanks very much to our great panel.
2023-03-16