Devlin to Zapruder: Transfer something to us

| | 75 Comments

n670097904_3054.jpgAfter watching tonight’s episode, Kastner Sydney creative partner and AWARD co-deputy chairman, Darryn Devlin (pictured) has a few words to say about The Gruen Transfer:

As much as I hate to step up on the little soap box, I am desperate fora little “elevated debate”…. so as I prepare to die by the wrath ofanonymous here goes;in a world where we fight to protect our IP and be paid a “fair” amountfor our commercial ideas, we as an industry run like lemmings toprovide FREE content for a production company that then sells the 30mins of content for a lot of money to the ABC.

My point is not aboutraising the understanding of what we do, all fine and dandy and hatsoff to reasoned debate and a small modicum of “fame” for thoseinvolved, but rather that as a creative community we should havediscussed what would Zapruda films could give back to US as a creativecommunity ….i don’t know, like maybe 10% of revenue? That then couldhave been invested into AFA Traineeships, or God forbid the AWARDSchool that most of us have in some ways invested for purely altruisticmeans.

What have we achieved as an industry in the Gruen T?Yes, a little more understanding of the creative process and themachinations of what we do, both good and bad.But what we have really shown, is that for a fleeting moment of fame,we as an industry are prepared to work for nothing (and I call the veryvery small “fee” that they offer Pitch Guests-Nothing!)

And now after achieving phenomenal success for the public broadcaster,it has just been announced that they have sold the concept into the UKmarket…no doubt for a lot of money that also won’t be invested backinto the content creators.

I cannot see any other industry being as “generous”-  congrats to Zapruda. Very smart. They know IP a hell of a lot betterthan we do. Just seems to me that Zapruder with a little flattery, hasmade monkeys of us all.(*any grammatical errors or verbosity is due to me being an artdirector).

Getting down down from the soap box, don’t like heights.