Stealing a Penny from a Rich Man - An Interview with Olly Lambert
- Posted: 18th Jun 2010
- Category: Articles
For part two of our COPYFRIGHT season on Creative Confusion in the Digital Age, DFG looks at the impact of digital distribution and piracy from the point of view of a career documentary filmmaker working in broadcast.
Olly Lambert is a freelance documentary filmmaker who works exclusively in the commissioned world, making films for the BBC, Channel 4 and Sky 1. His most recent work was a series on the Middle East with Ross Kemp, which is on the BAFTA jury list for Best Current Affairs Documentary. He has won a number of international awards, including the Foreign Press Association award for Journalist of the Year in 2007. Other acclaimed films include Confessions of a Traffic Warden, The Tea Boy of Gaza, and Ben: Diary of a Heroin Addict.
DFG picks Olly's brains about the confusing issue of copyright to see how a commissioned filmmaker views it, feels about it and above all understands it.
How do you feel about your work being shown on YouTube?
If I'm really honest, my feeling is that I'm delighted to see it on YouTube and other places. After I spoke to you last time, I did a YouTube search for various things, and some clips from a film that I’d made about three years ago has been viewed about 40,000 times. Part of that is ego, that people might actually go look at stuff that I've done, but the other part felt very rewarding that something that I've made and put a lot of time and care into had got a life beyond one transmission on BBC 1 - that's a very pleasing thing. I may have spent half a year on something, it's broadcast once and it may be severely impacted by Britain's Got Talent or something else that clashes. The fact that it has some kind of life in another way, in a very private way with people, is very rewarding. I don't get any kind of financial return on that but I don't really want any financial return on that, I've been paid, well, on a weekly basis to make that film, which is a ridiculous privilege in the first place… There's something very English, perhaps, in thinking that well, I've been paid, it's not really in my gear to try and exploit that anymore. It's got some kind of afterlife, and I think that's fantastic.
Just going back to what you said about your personal YouTube search, did you read any of the comments?
Yes and they're hysterical! I mean I find it really fascinating... When you go and put something out on television, it's a bit like putting a message in a bottle and off it goes, and you very rarely get a response. Your mum might say she didn't understand it and what was that all about… It's very rare that you have any kind of meaningful conversation or get any kind of response back. So to see people actually responding and coming out with either sometimes quite astute comments, other times complete nonsense, and other times, an opportunity to have a rant about something completely different. I just think it's really funny, and I don't feel precious about it at all.
I imagine it is quite a satisfying experience to see what kind of conversation it's generated.
A lot of films I've done have been in conflict zones: the particular hit that I referred to earlier, seen 42,000 times, was the evacuation of this soldier I'd filmed who actually died in transit while I was filming them, so this has become a sort of legacy for him, and a testimony to what was done to try and save his life, so it's got its own life now. That's a very satisfying thing, as opposed to just going out at 10:30 on BBC1 a few years ago, and is now a distant memory if that.
In the commissioned world, what do you think will be the impact of online piracy for digital distribution? How do you think broadcasters will be affected?
Two sides to that - on the one hand, in the short term, I don't have the stats, but I question to what extent online privacy in the television world is really being hijacked by YouTube, because both Channel 4 and the BBC have got very impressive online viewing platforms which act as a watch again service. No one would go to YouTube first, they would go to 4OD or BBC iPlayer. It seems like they've made a fist of it and are seizing that ground back, so I doubt that it is making a dramatic impact in online terms.
But those films aren't on permanently, whereas on YouTube you have access to it all the time.
Well I've got mixed feelings about it - because I'm someone who likes to trawl over archive and look over stuff that I might have missed 1 week or 10 years in the past, and the fact that you can find very good BBC documentaries online. I like the fact that I've got access to them and that's more important to me than protecting their copyright. At that point I become a consumer rather than a provider, and I'm quite glad that they're there. Given that these broadcasters to my knowledge don't exploit programme to a huge extent after their transmission in the UK, I'm not sure to what extent they really damage the commissioning financial structures.
But something like YouTube transcends national boundaries. For broadcasters, would something like YouTube harm their international sales arm? Would that be something that would come back to you and would you have to adapt to it?
Um, I do get a bit of money (from international sales); every single director that's registered with the DPRS (now called Directors UK) gets a bit of international sales. Would something's presence on YouTube stop the Danish TV channel from buying the documentary? I doubt it. It would impact on how much the Danish TV station is perhaps prepared to pay, but for me personally as a filmmaker, the financial implications are minimal in the short term. In the long term I suppose there could be quite big financial implications if it affects the commissioning budget that is consequently relayed onto me. To be honest I haven't really got strong feelings about it, it just seems like another world which in terms of finance and sales and marketing and distribution I've worked very hard for the last decade to not know anything about!
The flip side of all that is that I recently did some work for a pair of films for Ross Kemp, for Sky. Ross has got this huge following on YouTube and within minutes of the programme being broadcast... it will be on YouTube. They've got very mixed feelings about it and I can understand why: on the one hand it's fantastic for the brand of Ross Kemp and the brand of Sky, that it is immediately catapulted into all sorts of areas. [It reaches] people who might not sit down and watch sky with the wife and kids, it becomes a cult and viral thing, now that's really good for brand Kemp, but it's also pretty bad for the distribution arm of Tiger Aspect or Sky Television.
I sense that within a decade, all of this is going to be completely academic, it's going to be completely locked down, everything will be able to be tracked - exactly how many times a film we’ve made has been watched, everything will be monitored in the same way that Apple controls the music tracks it sells. It feels to me that all of this discussion about YouTube and piracy is in a transitional stage. We've gone from the appointment to view from 9pm on BBC 1 and eventually you will be able to make your appointment to view at any time. But you'll still be working within structures set down by broadcasters, and at the minute it's just lots of grey areas that people are trying to lock down… I would never see online distribution as a primary distribution method for a film. It's just not the world that I'm moving in; it's not on my radar.
Would you be as happy to have your work on YouTube if you hadn't already been paid to make it?
If there's a choice between my work being seen on TV or on YouTube on a computer, then I would far, far prefer by a massive shot for it to be seen on TV… The experience of sitting down behind your computer is one of casually browsing and of - I do it myself - having a very limited attention span and wanting much smaller bites of many more cherries. TV is pushing it much more into the realms of going to the cinema… you're focusing and you're prepared to be surprised and you're going on a bit of a journey. It doesn't always work with TV - you can very easily switch over, you can very easily be distracted, the phone can ring, but you're much more inclined to be distracted and approach the work with a much more casual attitude if you're sitting at a computer. I would always fight hardest to get my work shown on TV or at festivals or at cinemas before it gets brought out on YouTube.
Apart from that, it looks shit. The speakers on computers are rubbish, and I've spent days balancing out sound and music, and I've hired incredibly expensive skillful people to do that and I don't really want people to watch it on some shit laptop with a 2cm speaker in mono. That's just deeply depressing.
Do you then feel through lack of choice, television holds people?
Yes, that's also very true, that's one of the benefits is the lack of choice - never thought I'd say that!
Have you illegally downloaded stuff?
Yes I have. I've used BIT torrent sites - I've recently used a BIT Torrent site to download a documentary series by the BBC who I'm currently working for. And I have no shame about that whatsoever. Because I paid the licence fee. Also I was away traveling recently and I was downloading movies from a bit torrent site.
That's a bit different isn't it?
How do I feel about that? A little bit guilty - I did at the time. I suppose it’s like stealing a penny from a very rich man. I say I feel guilty but not guilty enough to stop me from doing it in the future. It's not like mugging my next-door neighbour; it's like stealing a chip from McDonalds. Also, because I am a filmmaker and I don't mind if someone nicks something off me. I haven't really got strong feelings about it. You kind of got me about that. I would far rather purchase those films and watch them on television or in the cinema… I wouldn't do that in a normal situation, I've only ever done that when I'm traveling. I would never do it by choice, but I'd do it if it were the only way to entertain myself for the evening.
Your website has a copyright symbol - and I was going to ask you what that means.
Fuck knows why! …I hadn't really thought about it… It's instinctive that you put copyright on your website, but why do it? A. It's not my copyright. B. I don't want it to be my copyright. I think there's a lot of closed thinking about this whole area. I think I'm going to take it down. I had never really thought about it. I don't want there to be a ring fence around that material anymore, because actually what I'm usually doing is fighting broadcasters not to ring fence it and I’m trying to get films into festivals or keen to get other people to see because I think they might buy it from the international distributors, to get it out.
If you were to start out as a filmmaker now, do you think the internet would help you or do you think it would make things a lot more difficult?
I'm hesitant to endorse it completely… in a strange way [it feels like] the internet is an easy option. You can post your stuff online, but you suddenly enter into a market place that is just clogged with people trying to achieve the same thing… You can get something online and you can call yourself a filmmaker - if that's enough for you, that's great, but I really regard it as a stepping stone to actually get stuff broadcast. There may be a whole culture of people who have watched stuff online only but it's not part of a conversation I'm part of.
Could you live without YouTube?
Oh no, I like having it there, but it's almost like a relative I never go and visit. I'm quite glad that they're there but I don't really want to go have tea with them all the time. I've also found it very useful for research. I do a lot of stuff about the Middle East - and it's incredible - you go online and you have the Eichmann trial from the 60s online! You've got what would be incredibly difficult footage to get hold of - it’s there in 15 seconds…it's a bit geeky, but that's what I'm interested in.
Interested? Then read these:
COPYFRIGHT: Creative Confusion in the Digital Age
Ken Loach: UK's YouTube Pioneer?
COPYFRIGHT! Get Off Your Arse and Read This Article!
COPYFRIGHT! Conveying the Right Message: Digital Copyright and Dogwoof
COPYFRIGHT! They think we're fools: Copyright from an Indie Filmmaker's View