Recently we got a comment on our youtube posting of Coda from a person who seemed pretty upset and claimed that they and another person had essentially made the same film 2 years earlier. By her tone, we felt she was implying that we had seen the film they made and duplicated key elements from it.
Well, for the people involved in Coda we know this to not be the case. Whatever direct influences we had, we were largely unaware of them... well except for rules of the race of course. Old Twilight Zones, Hitchcock, M. Night Shyamalan and other such broad influences, sure, I think were clear about those... but none of us had ever seen a film exactly like what we were quickly writing and we had certainly never seen their film which was never distributed and played once at a film festival in Florida as near as I can tell. We simply would not have had the opportunity.
I still haven't seen their film, but I am taking it on faith that it has some strong similarities. (They seem like nice and honest people after getting to know them a bit) Thats really interesting to me. I have been speaking with the person that made the post and I think I have convinced her that we never saw their film. (they are trying to get it up on youtube, I hope they do I am dying to see it) If it really is as similar as they say, then it will have some interesting social ramifications to me.
Like I told her in a message "I really do understand, I know it must have been shocking to see something that appeared to be a copy of your work. Having done creative work professionally and personally for 20+ years I know that feeling... and Its always disturbing. The internet is only going to make it worse I think. In the past we may have lived the rest of our lives never knowing we did films so similar! But I suspect this is a good thing, It allowed us to meet, have a great story to tell, and perhaps have a few more people seeing our projects because of it."
Will people feel less compeled to create if they feel all the good Ideas are spoken for? what If you have a concept for a film 10 years from now and you search the web wich by that time is overflowing with films and videos from vast millions of people. and you find that in 2011 some person did almost the exact concept withsome friends on handhelds an barebulb 3 point lighting... will you keep going knowing that you will likely get accused of ripping them off?
With so many people making so much media, duplication of ideas is almost guaranteed.
The real answer of course is to not care and ignore the crys of foul... interestingly this is the same answer for both the person that honestly arrived at the concept on their own as it would be for the person that DID steal it. I just don't know if I can "not care" because I really pride myself on supporting the creators of content and just the idea that someone thought I would blatantly steal from someone else would make me ill.
By the way if you haven't seen Coda, and liked it... go give it a good rating. : )
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