I'm a Belieber

Sometimes when we don’t like certain artists we mock them for whatever reason appeals to us the most. Justin Bieber went through that exact same thing at the beginning of his career, and, let's face it, he still is. But for reasons that I still can’t come up with, I can’t help to say that I love Justin Bieber. 

His story is one of fairy-tale galore. It’s one of those stories that artist managers dream of. This guy (Scooter Braun) receives an e-mail with a link to a YouTube video with a 12 year-old kid singing his heart out. And suddenly the stars aligned. He convinces them to get them to fly to Atlanta, and then the adventure began. Justin sang for Usher, who basically fell in love with the kid, as many other would as well, myself recently included.

Sometimes we mock these people because they have everything that the rest of the world would kill for. But we forget that they do have a journey as well. This kid, was literally, and in every sense of the word, born with talent. (If you still find yourself incredulous, I HIGHLY recommend watching his movie “Never Say Never”).

What interesting connection I found between the film and this month’s class (Product and Artist Management) is that and online presence is what makes and/or breaks you. In this case, it made Justin Bieber. He wasn’t even playing on the radio; instead he played one song on different radio stations across the country. But while he did that, he created himself an online personality through twitter. And on top of that he was already a very famous YouTube artist. So, its safe to say that by the 10^th acoustic presentation on a radio station, he already had a following. When he started using twitter, everything just exploded. He exploded. He became a pop star.

But what we seem to forget that just because this kid suddenly came into an immensely fortunate situation, we can underestimate his hard work, and the fact that he’s so gracious with his fans. On to of that, when you have stars on the scale of Usher, Snoop Dogg, Drake, Sean Kingston, Jaden Smith, Will & Jada Smith – the list goes on, behind you, supporting you; that has got to mean something. When you have fans around the world, crying at the very sight of you, defending you from the worst critics in this business, because there are a LOT of those, THAT has got to mean something.

This kid is what I like to think of as special. 

When you see this movie,  you see a kid who luckily found his calling early in his life. That it is what it is, is just a pure coincidence. You see a kid, who respects his parents, his grandparents, respects the people who know more than he does (specially Mama Jan). 

You see a kid who is gracious about the opportunities that he has been given. You see a kid, who loves his fans, and actually feels indebted to them. You see a kid, who has been given the world, and actually shows humility, or whatever works for a 17 year old, haha! At that age is pretty clear that we all thought that we were invincible. 

So this is my praise to him. I only saw the movie for the first time last night, or this morning's more likely (I went to bed at 6:55 AM), and I can safely say this: I am a Belieber.

The Reality About Artists, Age, Talent, Experience, and This Business of Entertaining You...

Have you ever pondered on the fact that there are more child stars in the business now than there were 20 years back? People would get to know them early on, and they would grow up and be the patriarchs or matriarchs of their entertainment business family. And then when they’re all grown up, for some reason, they don’t want their age to be publicized on entertainment online databases. This is precisely the case regarding IMDb.com, owned by Amazon.com.

The case that I’ll be discussing is that of Screen ActorsGuild and AFTRA with IMDb and its owner Amazon.com. The aforementioned parties struck out at IMDb and consequently Amazon.com “condemning their practice of revealing ages of performers without the actor or actresses’ permission – and the refusing to delete or change it even when that person requests them to do so.”

Apparently there had been talks going on behind the scenes “about this practice that involved SAG, AFTRA and other unnamed guilds, but that the talks have now been broken down” reports The Hollywood Reporter.

My question about this all is: why is age so important to this business? Isn’t ultimately the talent that the person, (whether its an actor/actress, or a crew member) possesses what’s important when managing an artist? Am I the only person in this business who’s interested more in talent than in someone’s age? The best example I can give you right now is that of Stanley Tucci. He’s relatively low-key, he’s in his 50s, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone do for his craft like he does. He’s one of the greats, in my humblest opinion – of course.

But apparently according to a Texas-based actress, who is “described as an Asian-American but not named”. The woman filed a law suit against IMDb after the website took information she provided when signing up for the IMDb Pro subscription service and they used it to publish her age on the IMDb website.”

The woman continues saying that “in the entertainment industry, youth is king, that if one is perceived to be ‘over-the-hill,’ i. e., approaching 40, it is nearly impossible for an up-and-coming actress, such as the Plaintiff, to get work as she is thought to have less of an ‘upside,’ therefore, casting directors, producers, directors, agents/ managers, etc. don not give her the same opportunities, regardless of her appearance or talent.”

Now, I see her point very clearly and I agree with her. The sad reality of the business right now is that talented people, not just actors and actresses, but potential crewmembers as well, are being overlooked by production teams, directors, and managers.

The ones that do have the jobs already are looking for people with experience, but what if I don’t have the experience that they’re looking for? What can I do to get the gig that I’m applying for without being discriminated because of “age”, “lack of experience”, “our lack of talent” and/or whatever scheme they come up with these days.

All I know is that we have to keep trying as hard as we possibly can to actually get in the business. No one better than us, at least us Full Sail students know, thanks to our Professors, how hard it is to land a high profile job in the business.

So, my intention with this blog was basically to put these things out there so that some of you could read about the reality of our situation if we don’t pay attention to what’s going on in the business, how are the different companies moving. Do they have anything new coming up? Even if it is in an unpaid internship, we should always, at least try.

Hit me up in the comments section, I would like to know what your thoughts are…

Happy Sunday!

From Copyright Law to Defamation to Publicity

There are two constants in the law world: copyright, and publicity. In this blog we will discuss these subjects and better understand what is it that they really do. What do they protect in the entertainment business?

First of all, copyright is nothing more than a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive right to it, usually for a limited time. Copyright also gives the copyright holder the right to credited for the work, to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who may financially benefit from it, etc. It’s an intellectual property form applicable to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete.

Copyright protects everything that is properly registered and complies with the requisites it needs to be determined copyright-protected. Such as works of art, scripts, manuscripts, music, songs, compositions, recipes drafted in a specific way, websites, titles, names, architectural projects, etcetera.

And that’s what Mr. Firemark discusses in this episode of “Entertainment Law Update” podcast. More specifically he discusses the case of Right Haven, a “copyright troll” as Mr. Firemark calls it has been filing hundreds of suits against bloggers and sorts, who’ve been republishing bits and pieces an even entire articles from newspapers. He tells us that the “Las Vegas Review Journal” has been suffering three losses in one week. He continues explaining that a “copyright troll is a company that goes around acquiring rights in copyrighted material, so that they can go sue people and they often exact little settlements from those people”. According to Mr. Firemark settling is always cheaper than litigating. He proceeds to tell us that these little companies have been fighting and succeeding with pre-trial motions for dismissals. The suit was brought about on August 10^th for a five-sentence excerpt of a Las Vegas Review-Journal news story that a user posted on the forum, with a link back to the Review–Journal website. Righthaven claims damages of up to $150,000 under the Copyright Act’s statutory damages provisions, seeks the target’s domain name and uses these threats to attempt to push defendants into a quick settlement. Democratic Underground, on the other hand, asked the court to affirm that the excerpt of the article does not infringe copyright and is a fair use of the material, with no damages due to Righthaven.*

The question on our minds is: Do you think there was a clear violation of copyright in this case? The way I see it, the user always gave credit to the original poster (Las Vegas Review-Journal). So, I don’t think that he violated any rules or laws.

 

*According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (Democratic Underground's representation), on June 14, 2011, the Nevada federal court dismissed Righthaven's copyright claim, finding that the company did not own the copyright. The case for a declaration of non-infringement proceeds against Stephens Media.

“Monkeying Around with Copyright Law” Episode 23 by GordonFiremark, Entertainment Law Update Podcast

 

Defamation, which can also be called calumny, vilification, traducement, slander, and libel, is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image. The only requirement: that the claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed (the claimant).

Mr. Firemark has a special guest on this episode that has special experience with defamation, Mr. Adrianos Facchetti from the California Defamation Law Blog. The first case that they discuss starts by saying that a court in New Jersey ruled that a blogger is not a journalist. With which brings us to the next case about a blogger from the state of Washington who was writing in her blog about a specific business, and this business sued her for defamation in New Jersey. And the court, ruled that she is not a journalist, so therefore she would not get the protection from the state’s Shield law. The court said that in order for her to be covered by the Shield law, she would have to be affiliated with a major media outlet. One thing that Mr. Facchetti goes on to say, I found very interesting is that the message boards that we experience now a days can be more damaging than the old Ben Franklin’s printing press. Granted, journalism should never be about expressing an opinion, but an unadulterated fact. The truth of the matter is that now a day we have multiple ways of communicating with others. Whether its fact or opinion? It all depends on the receiving end of that message. This is why the First Amendment is so tricky when it comes to journalism and then co-related to defamation.

What are your thoughts?

“Bloggers, Journalism and Defamation” Episode 3 by GordonFiremark, Entertainment Law Podcast

 

Publicity is the deliberate attempt to manage the public’s perception of a subject. No one knows better than us, that the best examples for subjects of publicity are artists and politicians. Mr. Firemark tells us that the new Google-branded smart phone called the Nexus 1. Apparently the term Nexus 6 was used in a novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" penned by author Philip K. Dick, which is also the book on which the film "Blade Runner" was based on. The androids on that movie were called the Nexus 6. Mr. Dick's daughter said that this "brand" was in violation of our intellectual property, claiming trademark violations. There's obviously a conflict here, because it's a play on words, I see what she means, but at the same time, I can't say that she has a point, because droids are under trademark with LucasFilm. so, it's interesting to see the conflict between the two, but how do you separate one from the other. We know that Nexus means a connection; androids means a robot possessing human features.

My question about this is: how do we separate the terms from these three parties? These are obviously different "entities", we know in some aspect, we're not talking about the same thing. But how does publicity in law cover this? How is it "unglued" from each other?

It's truly an interesting discussion. But I want to know what you guys think... Looking forward to your comments down below!

“Rights of Publicity” Episode 8 by Gordon Firemark,Entertainment Law Podcast

Famous Legal Liability Battles

Famous Legal Liability Battles

Something that is not left ignored by the members of this industry is that sometimes people tend to believe that they were the ones who discovered the business and that they own everything. Others, rightly so, claim what belongs to them by suing the according party. That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about in this new blog post. Specifically three different cases that in one way or another impact the industry. The first one being Deadline.com vs. The Hollywood Reporter and their copyright infringement claim.

Apparently, according to Deadline.com’s parent company PMC, “an initial review of the complaint shows that it is replete with examples of stories that originated from widely-released press releases from publicists, or widespread confirmations from publicists to numerous outlets, including both The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline.com. To what The Hollywood Reporter says, “It is not copyright infringement to report these stories, even if on occasion Deadline.com posts them first.”

The Hollywood Reporter has had an ongoing growth, specifically 4.4 million visitors per month as measured by comSore in comparison to Deadline.com’s 1.5 million. Deadline.com has also accused The Hollywood Reporter of having openly offered job positions to PMC employees, to what THR has completely denied. In addition to another allegation regarding the code for a “carousel” feature on their website, which according to THR, was coded for them by a third-party vendor. They proceeded to remove said carousel feature from their webpage whilst they look into it.

My opinion.

I use The Hollywood Reporter to keep myself informed about the different stories that surface not only domestically but also internationally. At the beginning of my Master’s completion, however, I used Deadline.com. As I familiarized myself with the different webpages that dedicate themselves to keeping us informed about the current state of the industry and its everyday happenings, I found THR to be easier to access. And not only that, they gifted me with a free subscription for a year to their digital magazine. I guess I might be a bit biased, but the facts are that during the three months that I didn’t even use THR, Deadline.com didn’t even post anything on their Facebook page. THR did. I agree with them completely when they say that just because Deadline.com publishes a story first, doesn’t mean that any other publication is stealing the story from them. They are not the only website or periodical dedicated to show business.

They will be settling this case in court.

Charlie Sheen and 9th Step Productions vs. Chuck Lorre, Warner Bros.

The Case:

Charlie Sheen filed a $100 million lawsuit against chuck Lorre and Warner Bros. on behalf of himself and Two and A Half Men’s production company 9^th Step Productions, in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Officially placing blame on “Warner Bros. capitulating to Lorre’s egotistical desire to punish Mr. sheen…” and having nothing to do with sheen’s controversial comments about Mr. Lorre for “the cancelation of the remaining eight episodes of this season”.

Marty Singer, Sheen’s lawyer, says that the defendants fired Mr. Sheen “when he was willing, ready and able to proceed taping, but that had they used his ‘condition’ as cause to terminate his contract, it would’ve been a violation of the law.”

As of right now, all parties involved in this case are working towards a settlement in which Mr. Sheen will be heavily rewarded.

My opinion:

Honestly, I’ve never been much of a Charlie Sheen fan. The truth of the matter is that while he is the perfect actor for that role. Him as an employee is a liability. And the studio and Mr. Lorre did the right thing in firing him.

Daniel Malakhov vs. Rogers & Cowan

The case:

This is basically an abuse of power and inhumanity case. Mr. Malakhov filed a class action against the PR firm, one of the most successful ones in the business, for “deeming attendance at promotional events with clients to be ‘voluntary’, but informed its employees that failure to ‘volunteer… would negatively affect their ability to advance in their careers.”

As it turns out some employees were paid, but others, who worked without being compensated nor afforded proper meal and rest periods, were not. This class action demands back compensation, damages, attorney’s fees, and interest, plus an injunction prohibiting the firm from engaging in the complained acts. “Mr. Malakhov alleges that the post-regular-shift work constituted a violation of various California labor laws.”

As of Thursday, 27^th of October, 2011, a federal judge turned down the requested injunction “because the lawsuit was brought by a former employee who would not benefit from such relief.”

My opinion:

Honestly, if someone goes through the trouble to sue a high profile PR company in the PR capital of the world, then something must be going on. The fact that the judge decided to do nothing in favor of the 1600 employees who, for fear of retaliation have not made any comments, speaks volumes about the justice system in the country. These claims are really dangerous to any company. Labor laws violation is no joke. Specially considering how much of a luxury a job is now a day.

What are your thoughts on these cases?

Hit me up in the comments down below…

The Importance of an Artist Manager

Many people think that managers are just a waste of time and money. That is just a sign of how supersticial the industry is. But let me tell you little story. There's always been this show battle where six hosts are on the same category of shows (Variety), they're on after prime time, and they've been fighting for the #1 spot on television since Johnny Carson retired. I think you know who I'm talking about. 

That's right. I'm talking about the late-night show wars. They all have managers, agents, publicists, etcetera... all, except one. That is Jay Leno. He mentioned many times that he doesn't have a manager and the rest of that hooplah is history as they say... 

The importance of a manager is not just to help you get the gigs that you want, and be your friend when you have no one else to talk to or hold your hair when you need to go to the bathroom (it happens to many stars/celebrities/whatever you want to call them, let's be honest), when you need a mother figure, or a father figure, or a shrink... or simply when you need a friend. They are there. They help you make the decision that goes accordingly with the situation you may find yourself in. 

In the absence of those you trust with your entire heart, there's always going to be your manager. Which is why, its important to know well whom you're going to choose as your manager. This person is in charge of you getting paid. And subsequently you’re paying those who are on your service. This person should know who you are as an artist, as a person. As a human being. Know your limits, your boundaries. This may sound a bit like over-stepping. But the perfect example of a manager that has had to deal with a “big-deal” celebrity/artist/star is Larry Rudolph, manager to Britney Spears. This woman, who I love as a performer, has had to deal with everything that she has been through. And we all know or at least have an idea of what she’s had to go through in the past 6 years, with the exception of the last two or three. She has been taking care of herself and her kids. And Larry has had a huge impact on her getting well again.

We might mock the fact that an up-and-coming artist gets a manager. But this person certainly becomes the most important ally an artist can and will have for the rest of their careers.

I hope you enjoyed my post this week! Let me know what you think down below on the comments section! Looking forward to it! Happy week everyone!