Home-made Hollywood
By James Norman

Is re-editing a film a welcome instance of artistic licence, or a serious breach of copyright? James Norman investigates

IMAGINE if you could redesign any movie in the history of cinema to suit your own personal cinematic vision. Who said ET goes home? Or that Luke Skywalker didn't tragically die in battle?
Digital editing software, in combination with the increasingly popular DVD format, has opened up the possibility for anyone to become a movie editor without leaving their home computer desktop.
Simultaneously, the prevalence of piracy and copyright breaches in the broadband/ADSL environment has meant the entertainment industry is gearing itself toward value-adding -- supplementing DVDs and audio CDs with extra features in an effort to lure consumers back into the practice of purchasing legitimate products.
``Some might argue that the medium of film is changing toward movies becoming more fluid and evolving according to viewers wishes,'' says Tim Anderson, director of Madman Interactive and Madman DVD Distribution in Melbourne.
The practice of DIY movie-editing raises serious questions about copyright and artistic license.
It has the potential to radically change the nature of cinema towards becoming a much more fluid, open-ended, and user-interactive medium.
``To use a DVD as a video source, edit the video, and then produce your own version, is relatively easy with the generally available multimedia software on both the Mac and PC,'' says Martin Gardiner from Planet X Digital Animations.
``Utilising a piece of transcoding software -- often referred to as a video-ripping application -- it is relatively simple to extract the video into a non-copy protected, editable version.
``Once you have the unprotected video stream, it's as vulnerable as your home movies, and you can easily mix and incorporate the two.''
And that's exactly what D.J. Hupp, an independent filmmaker from Sacramento,
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California, did when he created a new version of Spielberg's AI, entitled AI -- The Kubrik Edit, using the original DVD and popular mainstream editing program Adobe Premiere.
According to Hupp, Spielberg's AI was a ``prime candidate'' for a re-edit given the history of the film.
AI was a film project originally devised by meticulous filmmaker Stanley Kubrik (Clockwork Orange, 2001, Eyes Wide Shut) before his death in 1999, when Spielberg took over the project.
Many disgruntled fans, including Hupp, felt that Spielberg radically deviated from Kubrik's original vision of AI, with trademark traces of Spielberg schmaltz.
Taking matters into his own hands, Hupp created a new version of the film based on interviews and research into the now deceased director's original artistic vision, and distributed it free of charge on peer-to-peer networks such as KaZaA and Gnutella.
``It's not very time-consuming to do a re-edit of a film, but it depends on how much you are going to edit out and how long you spend trying to make it right,'' says Hupp.
``It took me just a few days to do my re-edit of AI.
``I think that Hollywood films have always catered to what the viewers want to see -- it's that mentality of trying to cater to every demographic that results in films like Star Wars Episode I and AI.
``Both of those films could have been completely aimed at adults, but instead, both films were littered with elements that were thrown in to make the films appealing to a younger audience.''
Hupp's version of AI cuts out all the cutesy bits and maintains a darker edge throughout, closer to how Kubrik originally envisaged the film.
So far, perhaps because he is not profiting from his re-edit, Martin Gardiner from Planet X hasn't run into any legal problems. The response from Hollywood has been muted.
But AI is not the only film to have fallen under the home movie editor's radar.
Several versions of Star Wars -- The Phantom Menace are floating around cyberspace, one entitled The Phantom Edit.
And, according to Gardiner, the industry is not overly concerned at this stage.
``Parity is a form of a compliment, and the result only tends to market the film more,'' he says.
``So long as the piece is not slanderous, nor has any negative commercial impact, I don't think the industry worries too much about the process.
``Having said that, I don't think they publicly support it either.''
What the industry is concerned about is the ease of outright video piracy on broadband.
``As Napster changed the music industry, video piracy -- through the use of the internet and digital files -- is set to alter the entire commercial model of film/video distribution,'' he says.
But according to some independent filmmakers, the process of remodelling blockbuster films can be seen as a legitimate reaction to the monopolising, homogenising and ``dumbing-down'' nature of films coming out of Hollywood.
``To confuse Hollywood with anything other than a hard knuckled money-minded business is an error,'' says Jon Jost, a London-based filmmaker
``There is no artistic license in that business; everything is geared, however errantly so in any give case, towards making money.
``Digital formats, cutting out the middleman of the producer, allow fools to walk in where angels would decline to tread.
``Digital formats are a major threat to Hollywood insofar as it makes what was previously a laborious, costly technological medium available for nickels and dimes.
``The internet offers a path around the advertising/promotional system.
``In a while this is likely to result in some kind of major cultural shift, away from Hollywood and its system.
``Hollywood will resist at all costs.''
Leading distributors say the DVD medium is already expanding and successfully capturing viewer's enthusiasm through legitimate extras.
``Distributors are responding to a perceived outcry for more and better extras on DVDs,'' Tim Anderson says.
``And some of the more popular forms of extras appear to be deleted scenes and alternate endings.
``While much of this content on DVDs is dross, extras can sometimes restore a film to greatness, or at least credibility.''
Such DVD extras are adding previously unimaginable options to the movie-viewing experience.
Standard DVD extras include language and subtitle options, as well as director's commentaries on the films.
Many new release Australian DVDs, such as Robert Connolly's The Bank and Steve Jacob's La Spagnola, include the option of watching other short films from the same director.
In one recent DVD release, the US/Japanese animated co-production Sin, the viewer can choose between English and Japanese versions and there is also an option for an alternative storyline, told purely through altering the voice dub.
Another Madman DVD title about to be released, Neon Genesis Evangelion Death and Rebirth, has an added feature called Mokuji Interactive, which means that at various appropriate points in the film, a contextual menu superimposes itself over the film. This allows the user to read more details about characters or elements relating to that part of the film.
The music industry is also getting in on the act.
``With the ease of music piracy these days, we are trying to offer people a bit more when they purchase CDs,'' a Shock Records Australia spokesperson says.
One of their latest release CDs by US band They Might Be Giants features animated game segments, as well as singing along to a display of each song's lyrics.
Is it then foreseeable that instead of seeking to prosecute people making unauthorised digital edits, big-name studios and DVD distributors could pick the best of the crop from fan sites and peer-to-peer networks and offer them as extras or special editions?
D.J. Hupp says such re-edits are simply a case of individuals using technology on hand to create something in tune with personal artistic vision, and this poses no immediate threat to the motion picture industry. ``It may be an opportunity for them to market the re-edited films as a special edition,'' he says.
But Tim Anderson is not entirely convinced.
``While peer-to-peer transmission of copyrighted content is a serious concern for the near future, at present it is the realm of hard-core computer types. Should the edits pro duced by these people be more popular than the original version, then the filmmakers should ask themselves some serious questions.''