COUNTERPOINT

ONE

CULTURE+

COMMERCEissue one

arts investment - crowdsourced cinema - taming the fringe - transforming television

@_counterpoint Summer 2013

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Counterpoint is a new online publication featuring thoughtful

journalism and considered illustration. The journal is edited,

written and illustrated by students.

Counterpoint is based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

CONTENTS

4 TRANSFORMING TELEVISION

8 MORE THAN DECORATION

12 CROWDSOURCED CINEMA

16 TAMING THE FRINGE

Photo: Sam Bradley 3

the increasing commercialisation of the edinburgh fringe

looking at the issues surrounding fan-funded filmmaking

examining the state of contemporary arts funding

investigating the growth of netflix and online tv

Transforming televisionCounterpoint investigates the rise of Netflix and the arrival of on-demand tv as the ‘new cinema’. Can 36,300,000 subscribers be wrong?

Words: Jack MurrayPictures: Bethany Thompson

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As well as eating chunky chips and swivelling his increasingly chunky hips, Elvis Presley used to shoot TV sets. It has been reported that on one occasion in 1974 upon seeing singer Robert Goulet on the box, Presley removed his pistol and shot through the screen, snarling “Get that shit outta my house!” Presley’s aversion to that particular moustachioed crooner, though starkly denied by Graceland, still stands as a snazzy metaphor for the current viewer’s relationship to traditional methods of television watching.

Click. Boom. Get that shit outta my house. We’re bored of the box. Give us a tablet. Or a phone. Click. Boom. Get that shit outta my house.

LoveFilm, Netflix and other sites of their ilk have ushered in a new age of TV in which the convention of gathering around as a family and sharing the same sludge of entertainment is no longer a proper portrait of square-eyed suckers.

By placing the remote into the hands of anyone who wants it, the television has become a portable pad for perfect viewing, encouraging binge-watching, (the entire series of Arrested Development was dropped as a chunk of silly stuff for you to devour as you please on Netflix) innovative programming (such as the Netflix-only House of Cards) and changing the way that consumers enjoy television, and indeed how much they’ll pay for it, forever.

When Spotify launched in 2008 to immediate paranoia, questions were raised over the effects it might have

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on the music industry. Giving the public access to a bulky music library for free seemed certain to quash the power of the performer and diminish an increasingly puny economic arena. Conversely, in 2012 there was a 0.3% increase in music sales, measured by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and representative of the first rise in 14 years. It is by no means the perfect platform but, with Premium subscribers consistently growing and the library constantly replenished, consumers and artists are flocking at the green gates of Spotify and considering it to be one that will pass into a golden future.

Its closest compatriot in the television streaming market is Netflix. In the past year Netflix has reinvented itself as not just a streaming service but a content provider; as a consequence, at the end of 2012, Netflix had 29.2 million people in the US subscribed to its $8-a-month streaming plan, which surpassed HBO’s domestic subscription base of 28.7 million for the first time.

The familiar sound of a crackling screen that precedes HBO-produced

By placing the remote into the hands of anyone who wants it, television has become a portable pad for

perfect viewing

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shows has become a sonic signature of quality programming since 1997 and it’s first original output Oz. When the hulking figurehead of the small screen’s new golden age, James Gandolfini, passed away in June this year, he left behind him a performance in The Sopranos that perfectly matched HBO’s commitment to brave, intelligent, bold entertainment. Netflix is still waiting for its very own Tony Soprano, although Kevin Spacey’s performance as Frank in House of Cards contained enough snarky malice to encourage the company that their foray into the liberating experiment of a streaming-only show has been quickly mirrored with intriguing content.

We don’t want to sit down and shoot when something shit comes on, we want to move and choose, get sucked in on train jouneys and stay up late watching

Swedish drama

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The success of Netflix, with 36.3 million people across the world as subscribers, points profoundly to a changing consideration of how much that warm glow should cost. And though it is likely to boom and fluctuate, the monthly fee that Netflix offers, a subscription plan adopted from television and moved seamlessly to the new world of television-on-internet, seems the most likely way that the industry is going to do business with its new clientele. What’s more interesting is why we’re so willing to pay it.

Widely regarded as the new cinema, TV has enjoyed incredible critical acclaim in recent years with shows like Mad Men, The Wire, Homeland and AMC’s Breaking Bad creating characters and narratives that tap into this instant-coffee swilling, rolling-news reading, Timeline–scanning society of grabby-hands Generation Brat. Perhaps now more than ever before following on from the landscape lunacy of The Sopranos, television executives understand the profound draw of television and why it’s worth paying for.

We don’t want to sit down and shoot when something ‘shit’ comes on, we want to move and choose, get sucked in on train journeys and stay up late watching Swedish drama. We’re the anti-Elvis, and the extension of that box-set mentality that saw us swapping discs in frenzied fever.

No need to change discs any more. Just press next. Click. Boom. Get that disk outta my house.

So we’re paying for Netflix as it’s a place which houses the brilliance we crave constantly. And we’re paying because it’s personalised, and the warm glow will cost what it has to cost if it means that television will continue on its expediential curve of caustic class. Does the decaying sense of a collective televisual experience therefore diminish the sense of family that shows like The Simpsons suggests, a show that we used to subconsciously imitate when we’d slump on soft sofas to stare at it? Not necessarily.

In houses now, furniture remains pointed towards a Technicolor glow and an eerie quiet, informed by moving pictures, still falls. But in separate rooms, at different times.

We watch TV alone, together. Joined by isolation. Paying a price that means we won’t need a pistol.

No click. No boom. Just great TV.

TV has enjoyed incredible critical acclaim in recent years with shows like Mad Men, The Wire and Homeland

More than decorationCounterpoint examines the relationship between government and culture and asks whether the coalition’s funding policy is the right one.

Words: Sam BradleyPictures: Steph Shaw

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“British culture is perhaps the most powerful and most compelling product we have available to us.”

Maria Miller, the coalition government’s Secretary for Culture, is fond of describing British culture as a commodity. In a speech given in April, Miller was highly explicit about which profits the cultural produce of Britain will reap. She said, “I would argue that culture should be seen as the standard bearer for our efforts to engage in cultural diplomacy, to develop soft power, and to compete, as a nation, in both trade and investment.”

For Miller, a former advertising executive turned politician, culture is not valuable for its intrinsic value but for its monetary worth, and for the impression it makes on the world beyond our borders. To her, culture is part of the brand of UK Plc, the window dressing in Britain’s shopfront.

From the point of view of government, this is not necessarily an objectionable standpoint. Investment in culture is clearly a project worth pursuing, an exercise that both compliments the public well-being and generates revenue for UK companies. The bitter end of the message comes when you consider how the coalition government has been saying one thing about culture, and then pursuing a diametrically opposite course of action.

When it comes to their flagship funding programmes for instance, the government has been brutal. In 2012, the grant of the UK Arts Council was reduced by around 30%. In 2010, they

abolished the UK Film Council, an organisation which was responsible for funding highly successful films like The King’s Speech, In The Loop, and This Is England, and that created jobs and income for the UK film sector.

If we consider regional arts funding the picture becomes even bleaker; in Newcastle, the City Council cut their arts budget by 100% in order to protect social services and refuse collection from the £90m worth of cuts to their overall budget. Council leader Nick Forbes told the BBC at the time, “I love the arts, I appreciate what they can do - but I love protecting the vulnerable more.”

Cuts to arts funding follow a line of thought that is irredeemably flawed. Despite Miller’s exhortations to creative groups to “hammer home the value of culture to our economy”, research shows that arts and culture directly lead to £856m of spending by tourists in the UK. A report released in May by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) showed that the arts budget accounts for less than 0.1% of public spending, yet it makes up 0.4% of the nation’s GDP.

For every £1 the UK government puts into arts and culture, £4 is generated for the

economy.

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That equates to a £4 return for every £1 invested in UK culture and arts. The economic impact goes further than returns on investment; employment in the arts indirectly accounts for over 1% of total employment in Britain. The revenue of businesses in the arts and culture industry was £12.4bn in 2011. In turn, this led to an estimated £5.9bn of gross value added (GVA) to the UK economy in the same year.

By cutting arts and culture funding, Miller’s politics are actively damaging a valuable sector of the economy, and for her to ask creatives and artists to prove their worth is to add insult to injury.

A programme of arts funding that only targets profitable or commercially viable projects is too narrow and short-sighted a policy to work. Firstly, it inevitably

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favours London-based, profit-driven ventures, leaving arts outside the capital in the cold, and ignoring the importance of grassroots and local arts projects.

Secondly, it only rewards what is commercially popular – James Bond, the X Factor and stadium comedy tours – and old favourites. This was typified in a recent piece for The Guardian, in which Miller wrote that, “we are the nation of Shakespeare, Milton and Elgar”, cheerfully displaying her ignorance of anything artistic produced in the eight decades since that celebrated composer’s death. To say that punk passed Maria Miller by is to go beyond stating the obvious. As Dame Liz Forgan, the former chair of Arts Council England, told the BBC in response to Miller’s April speech, “the danger in what she is saying is that people actually start to believe that because art produces huge economic benefits, we should start directing our investment in culture for its commercial potential.

“That’s not only philistine, it’s self-defeating, because then you get accountants making artistic decisions, which is as silly as having artists making accounting ones.

“If you start to invest in art because of an identified commercial outcome, you will get worse art and therefore we will get a worse commercial outcome.”Politicians are not known for their good taste, as Gordon Brown’s infamous patronage of the Kaiser Chiefs attests. But one would hope they would have a better head for economics, in lieu of their deaf ears.

There is another facet to this issue, however. When it comes to investment in the arts, there will always be a gulf between the givers and the receivers, between those wanting a healthy profit and those interested in artistic merit. Asked to clarify his famous statement that “all art is quite useless”, Wilde wrote:

“Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way... A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental. It is a misuse.”

To promote the arts solely for their economic benefits is to miss the point of art itself. Governments and companies can try and harness artistic success, to marketise creative works, but the very act of marketisation damages the validity and credibility of artistic endeavour. In short, all that glitters is not gold.

To them, culture is part of the UK Plc brand, the window dressing in Britain’s shopfront.

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Crowdsourced cinemaCounterpoint looks into the ethics of fan-funded filmmaking and questions the motives of celebrity-fronted crowdsourcing campaigns

Words: Sally PughPictures: Bethany Thompson

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At the end of his four minute Kickstarter video, Zach Braff fixes the camera with an earnest stare and flashes a meek, heartfelt smile. Uplifting indie pop soars as he pleads for our help, promising us that we won’t regret our decision to offer him financial assistance. The video is reminiscent of the celebrity-fronted clips that form an integral part of televised charity fundraising events such as Children In Need. However, unlike these charities, Braff is not seeking money to build an orphanage or feed hungry children. No, he simply wants to make a movie.

When Braff ’s Kickstarter funding appeal went live in April this year it was met with a barrage of criticism. Why was Braff, a successful actor who in the final series of acclaimed comedy Scrubs was reportedly earning $350,000 per 22 minute episode, asking his less privileged fans for their own hard-earned cash? Surely he could have paid for the project himself or simply followed the traditional movie making path of relying on studios and financiers - or ‘money folks’ as Braff refers to them - for funding.

These critics argued that crowdsourcing websites such as Kickstarter are there to help unsung creative talent, not celebrities.

It was created, they proclaimed, as a fundraising platform to allow artists, inventors, musicians and filmmakers who have no feasible means of funding to receive financial pledges from supporters and well-wishers who want to help their projects become a reality.

However despite this criticism, Braff ’s appeal followed in the successful footsteps of the similarly celebrity endorsed Veronica Mars Movie Project and with the help of over 46,000 supporters he surpassed his funding target and raised over $3.1 million for his Wish I Was Here film project within a month.

In light of his success Braff was quick to answer back to his critics. He argued that crowdsourcing is not an immoral way for celebrities to exploit their fans but instead a way of involving fans in the film production process whilst guaranteeing high quality filmmaking and the creative freedom of filmmakers.

Speaking to Empire magazine, Braff stated that before turning to Kickstarter he had taken his film proposal to financiers who were willing to support the project. However, in return for this support these backers insisted that they were given the final say on who was cast in the film, preferring to cram the movie full of commercially successful Hollywood stars rather than lesser-known but significantly more talented actors.

Critics have argued that crowdsourcing websites are there to help unsung creative talent, not celebrities

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More crucially, they were determined to have final cut of the film meaning that they – and not Braff – would have the final say on how the movie was put together including how scenes were cut, edited and how the film ended. Unwilling to make such creative compromises Braff was forced to look elsewhere for support.

Braff ’s comments highlight a serious problem within the film industry and illustrate why crowdsourcing is rapidly becoming an appealing option for filmmakers who wish to maintain full creative control over their projects. In a recent interview with New York Magazine, newly retired film director

The very fact that 46,000 film fans were willing to donate their own money to Braff ’s project shows that there is a genuine demand and desire to see his new film.

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Steven Soderbergh of Traffic and Ocean’s Eleven fame reinforced Braff ’s view, stating that the most serious problem with modern filmmaking is that directors are having their power and control stripped from them and handed to those who have the money in their pockets. Directors, he argued, are widely disrespected and treated by studios and other financiers alike as though they know nothing about what audiences wants.

The theory that it is financiers and not filmmakers who are in tune with what audiences want to watch is a deeply flawed notion. A great proportion of the multi-million dollar studio-funded blockbusters that have flooded our cinema screens this summer have been met with deep dissatisfaction from both pundits and punters. The key offender so far this season has been Will Smith’s sci-fi thriller come shameless vanity project After Earth.

Described by the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw as “featuring a triple-whammy of abysmal acting, directing and story”, the $130 million production was widely

The theory that it is financiers and not filmmakers who are in tune with what audiences want is a deepy flawed notion

panned by critics who felt that director M Night Shyamalan, a once interesting and daring director, had become a bland studio puppet and ‘director for hire’.

Crucially, however, it was not just critics who derided the film but audiences too. The film currently holds an audience rating of only 4.9/10 on IMDb, and was a certified box office flop peaking at a disappointing number 3 in the US Box Office, behind such cinematic gold as Fast & Furious 6. After Earth therefore provides a perfect example of the fact that heaps of money and studio support does not a loved film make.

The very fact that 46,000 film fans were willing to donate their own money to Braff ’s project shows that there is a genuine demand and desire to see his new film. It seems highly unlikely that such a number would have donated their own money to bring Smith’s space-themed snooze fest to fruition. Braff ’s Wish I Was Here is a film that film fans want to see; After Earth is a film that was unwillingly thrust upon us.

Cinema is the medium of the people and if Kickstarter allows audiences to support and propel the films they want to see onto our screens whilst also leaving them unadulterated by big studios and ‘money folks’ then surely this can only be a good thing.

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Taming the FringeCounterpoint investigates the growing commercialisation of the Edinburgh Fringe the world’s largest arts festival

Words: Sam BradleyPictures: Steph Shaw

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The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the largest arts festival on the planet. This August the population of the city will triple, with performers and audiences travelling from across the world to watch thousands of shows in hundreds of venues, an annual northern migration that has established Edinburgh as a pilgrimage site for those wishing to worship at the cultural altar.

For many, the Fringe is the ultimate expression of grassroots culture - a mecca for alternative artists and discerning audiences where big-name acts share their stages with complete unknowns – and where an entire capital city is transformed into a month-long carnival of theatre, comedy and music.

But bit by bit, the Fringe is gradually metamorphosing from its anarchic, radical beginnings into a commercial, corporate entity. Despite being the biggest arts festival in the world today, the Fringe had meagre beginnings.

Founded by eight theatre companies as a response to the elitist Edinburgh International Festival, the Fringe coalesced properly in 1951, when students from the University of Edinburgh opened a drop-in centre at a local YMCA.

Over the years, increasing professionalism in the administration and marketing of the festival have made it more convenient than ever for tourists and locals alike to navigate the vast amount of shows on offer. That same rise in professionalism amongst performers and venue operators has also lead to a

huge increase in quality, to the point where any of the major venues in the festival are as professional as permanent ones in London or elsewhere. Despite that, it’s increasingly hard to square the amateur, underground image of the Fringe with the current domination of the ‘Big Four’ venues - Udderbelly, the Gilded Balloon, the Pleasance and Assembly.

Taken at face value, the Fringe seems as healthy as ever. It’s certainly as anarchic, leviathan and unruly as before, though whether that spirit will continue to thrive every single August is another question entirely.

In 2008, the Big Four branded the Fringe with their own stamp. The Edinburgh Comedy Festival, a formal festival launched by the major Fringe venue companies, runs alongside and within the main festival, and despite its name is not limited to comedy. However, it is technically separate from the Fringe itself (the Edinburgh Fringe Society, which runs the central ticketing service, is a charitable organisation), and it allows the Big Four to monopolise the central locations of the festival circuit to their hearts’ content.

It might be only a superficial detail, but it’s a change that shows how the

For many, the Fringe is the ultimate expression of

grassroots culture

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previously non-commercial, happy-to-be-unofficial side of the Fringe is being sidelined by opportunist entrepreneurs and corporate conquistadors.

Amongst increasing overheads for performers and gradual marketisation of the festival, many now fear that the Fringe is at risk of being captured by corporate interests and losing its spirit.

Fringe stalwart and veteran stand-up Stewart Lee has been the most radically dissenting voice to date, writing in a Guardian article that, “The Fringe was the postwar utopian ideal” that now “reflects the cultural bankruptcy of late capitalism”. In Lee’s eyes Bristo Square, the geographical nexus of the festival, resembles “an increasingly grotesque Philip K Dick-style wasteland of alcohol-banner festooned architecture”. For him, the launch of the Edinburgh Comedy Festival amounted to a heinous act of “corporate cattle rustling.”

That salvo sparked a war of words at the time, with rival Fringe venue owners and performers taking sides left right and centre. Udderbelly operator Ed Bartlam said, “There are some people who think this whole area is an awful travesty for the Fringe.

“Yet when we look around we see thousands of performers and an amazing variety of shows and the thousands of audience members who embrace it. This is the best festival in the world. There are lots of different parts to that festival and this area is one part, but it is not a part which should be knocked.”

When commercial ventures begin to force out the amateurs in a festival environment, the effect is similar to when an alien species is introduced to a new ecosystem: they devour it. With the commercialisation of something as potentially lucrative yet fragile as the Fringe, the less popular and less commercially viable acts will be sent home, and the acts that will come to dominate the Fringe are the populist and commercial ones. In this case, we already see stand-up comedy shows being touted as the be-all and end-all of the entire festival whilst theatre, music and dance acts continue to be ignored by the national press, despite the fact that comedy acts only account for a third of the shows performed.

Between commercial partitioning of the festival’s landscape, and a cultural ecosystem that is now less able to support the wide variety of acts that have given the Fringe its unique reputation, it seems inevitable that the Fringe will become commodified. The process will probably happen quite subtly, and quite gradually, but all omens seem to point to the same fate for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

It’s getting harder to square the amateur image of the Fringe with the domination

of the Big Four

GETTING INVOLVED

The next issue of Counterpoint will be released in autumn. We hope you liked reading our words and looking at our pictures as much as we enjoyed writing and drawing them.

We want writers, illustrators and photographers for our next issue. If you want to do something creative for Counterpoint, we’d love to hear from you. The best way to get in touch is to send us an email at counterpointeditor@gmail.com.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Wordssam bradley - jack murray - sally pugh

Picturessteph shaw - bethany thompson

Editorssam bradley - mayumi ihara-quiñones - bethany thompson

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