CONCEPT ETHICAL PROD 2021
Please note that the word “free” in this entire text should be read as in “freedom” and not as in “no price”.
General concept
ETHICAL PROD is a film production concept with it’s main goal being to define a way of making cinematographic art, that is ethical and beneficial to everyone.
Our Philosophy
ETHICAL PROD was born from our philosophy concerning free distribution and free sharing of knowledge and creativity.
We believe that Creativity, in general, is jailed by restrictive copyrights and restrictive access to the creative resources.
Creativity is not just about making some great artwork or some great inventions.
What about if this creativity doesn’t benefit everyone? What about if this creativity is selective and discriminating in some way? Imagine the knowledge around a great invention being kept secret for the sake of one personal profit?
Creativity is also about sharing. Sharing with no conditions. It is about sharing the knowledge behind it, to make it live and to make it be improved.
We don’t own our creativity. Everything we create is just an expression, at different levels, of one global creative energy. We are inspired and we inspire. This creativity can be seen as a global energy that flows through all of us. It makes us learn and evolve.
We are all guarantor of this global creative energy, as well as of our own evolution and we must not break it.
Instead of making a world of creative competition restricting our harmony and natural evolution, what about releasing all our knowledge to the public place and letting anyone share it, improve it for one common interest?
This philosophy may sound silly and very Utopian but the creation of the free license, that initiated a, still growing, world of free software and free technology design has shown us that this way of being creative while sharing is possible and can even have its place within our current western economical system.
How is this possible?
This vision of an ethical production and free distribution is based on a collaborative business model very much inspired from existing and successful business models in the world of free software. In this time of digital technologies, the world of film production is almost always dependent to the world of software production.
This kind of business model is usually driven by the people’s interest. This interest being in the quality of the creative work instead of the financial profits. The people is, therefore, the main financial investor in the project. In return, any creative work is made public for anyone to be able to freely use, study, share and improve this work.
ETHICAL PROD is the opposite of a competitive concept. The more independent productions, the more creations owned by everyone, the more mutual help, and the more beneficial the concept is to other productions.
The public is also directly benefiting from this mutual help as the projects goals will totally ignore financial profits to focus only on quality.
To make it possible, the ETHICAL PROD concept is defined by 3 rules.
Create
Creative tools in an ETHICAL PROD production should be based on free technologies when possible.
Proprietary technology may be used when the creative team has some specific need for it and no free equivalence exists.
If a film is made with digital technologies, free formats of any kind, should be used.
The computers used by the production team should be running a free operating system and free software.
Contribute
This free technology is the essence of what makes creative expression accessible to anyone. Using it and improving it is essential in this concept. This rule helps creating a collaborative harmony between different film productions.
In that regard, an ETHICAL PROD production must also technically and/or financially support the creation or development of one or more free technologies.
Share
An ETHICAL PROD production is financed by its supporters. In return, the creative work that takes place during the production of the film must be given back to the public.
Any development or creation made during the making of the film has to be made available to everyone through a free license. This license defines these creations as a public belonging. It also protects the people’s rights to freely use, study, share and improve the creations without any restrictions.
The ETHICAL PROD label requires the film production, as well as its original soundtrack to be released under a free license that is approved as Free Cultural Works.
Note that if a film labeled ETHICAL PROD is including 3rd party content, this content must be released under a license that is acceptable within the final film’s license.
