Judge Rules on Matrix Copyright
over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
– Morpheus –
A judge has ruled that the Matrix film trilogy did not plagiarize the work of Thomas Althouse.
Althouse claimed he had submitted a screenplay “The Immortals” to Warner Bros in 1993, and the Matrix Trilogy produced by the studio had infringed his copyright by incorporating ideas from his screenplay into the Matrix films.
He listed 118 alleged similarities in the Matrix to his own work.
Judge R Gary Klausner stated that the areas referred to were “too general for copyright protection.. or are commonly used, unoriginal ideas.”
The Matrix, written and directed by the Wachowskis is a science fiction action film set in a dystopian future with a storyline in which computer hacker “Neo” (Keanu Reeves) discovers the world experienced by most humans is a dream world of simulated reality – “the Matrix”, created by sentient machines in order to subdue the human race, while machines harness electrical energy and body heat from them as an energy source.
Other humans who have been freed from the illusionary world are involved in a rebellion against machines – a rebellion into which Neo finds himself drawn.
Althouse claimed that his screenplay, set in the year 2235, in which CIA agent attempts to stop a cryogenically reanimated Adolf Hitler from destroying non-immortals, was the inspiration for the Matrix films.
Judge Klausner ruled:
“the only similarity in plot [was] that both stories portray a protagonist attempting to prevent a dominant group from oppressing and annihilating a subservient group”.
“The basic premises of The Matrix Trilogy and The Immortals are so different that it would be unreasonable to find their plots substantially similar,”
“Examining the protectable details in the two works, no jury could reasonably conclude that The Immortals has substantially similar expressions of ideas to The Matrix Trilogy.”
Other projects by the Wachowskis (formerly the Wachowski Brothers) since the success of “The Matrix”, have included writing and directing its two sequels -” The Matrix Reloaded” and “The Matrix Revolutions” (2003), “V for Vendetta” (adapted from the Alan Moore comic), “Speed Racer” a live adaptation of the Japanese anime series and “Cloud Atlas” based on the David Mitchell novel and co-directed by Tom Tykwer.
The next Wachowski film “Jupiter Ascending” and their television series “Sense8” are both due for release in 2014.
Read MoreRebirth of Gaea: A Visual Love Letter
Artist Jesse Michael Newman calls the “REBIRTH of GAEA” “A visual love letter for my daughter.”
“This video provides a layer-by-layer deconstruction of “Flowing Meditation,” a small part of REBIRTH of GAEA.”
See an excerpt from the video on vimeo.com/36092192
“REBIRTH of GAEA is an epic visual tapestry delicately interweaving reflections on the environment and spirituality through the rich imagery of Greek Mythology. My daughter Emma has had a deep connection to the environment for as long as I can remember. As she grew older and became enchanted with Greek Mythology, I decided to show my support for her interests by creating REBIRTH of GAEA, depicting her as the Goddess of Earth.”
As Newman immersed himself in Greek Mythology, his eyes were opened to a seemingly endless supply of wonderfully vivid inspiration. The scope of the project slowly evolved from a few-week-exploration into an all-encompassing creative undertaking spanning six years so far. Since the project began, Emma welcomed two younger siblings who dovetailed perfectly as other figures in the piece: her brother as EROS (The God of Love) and her sister as the NEBULAIC EMBRYO (the Birth of the Universe).
Newman hadn’t originally considered that Rebirth of Gaea would be seen outside of his daughter’s bedroom and was caught off-guard when some close friends wanted to purchase a print. They encouraged him to show it publicly, which he did for the first time in 2012. Ultimately, he aims to continue transforming the passion he has for his children into a way of life, with his artistic expressions allowing his love for them to echo long after he is gone.
The incredible music, “You’re Too Late Satan” by Worm Is Green, is available on iTunes and Amazon.
Above Artwork: “Chaos” by Jesse Newman
“Before all things came CHAOS, the vacant and infinite spacewhich existed previous to the creation of the world and from which all gods and men arose Anthropomorphized by Newman using his wife as a model, the universal energy forms the mind of the cosmos.”
Some of the highlights of his career that he notes on his website are:
—– Accepted into permanent collections of the MOMA and Whitney Museums
—– Academy Award short list, Best of Show at SIGGRAPH, Official selection for Cannes, Sundance and LA Film Festivals (ONE RAT SHORT – lead flame artist)
—– Best Visual Effects by AICP (MMs Kaleidoscope – lead flame artist)
—– BDA Gold for SciFi “If” and Paramount’s “Unexplained Mysteries”
—– Feature Film work includes FLUBBER and ARMAGEDDON — nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects
—– BFA in DESIGN, UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
New York-based artist JESSE MICHAEL NEWMAN has built a career as a visual effects artist on award-winning projects including many films. Since turning his focus to his personal art and premiering at the International Art Expo in March 2012, he has been recognized by Art Business News as a Top 50 Emerging Artist and his art is now in private collections on four continents.
Location: New York, NY
http://www.jessenewman.com/gaea/
Website: http://www.facebook.com/Rebirth.of.Gaea
http://www.whoscreative.com/jessenewman
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Good Books Change Lives
Books can be entertaining, educational, escapist and sometimes life-changing.
There is even an online bookshop that will ensure that the next book you read (that is bought via their bookshop) will be life-changing – if it doesn’t change your life, it will definitely be helping to change someone else’s life.. for the better.
Good Books works together with Oxfam so all profits from their books go to funding Oxfam projects. It also gives its customers free international delivery
This charitable website is called UseGoodBooks.com and they explain the simple concept behind their project:
“The Good Books model is simple. Every time anyone buys a book through the Good Books website, 100% of the retail profit from every sale goes to support communities in need through Oxfam projects”
As a result, charitable donation is built into an everyday activity at no extra cost.
No one at Good Books is paid and we have zero operating costs. All time, professional services and resources are donated.
Good Books is about creating positive and enduring connections between commercial worlds and wider, less advantaged communities. Rather than fight a system that privileges a few over many, we wanted to transform it from within to constructive effect. Now, each time you buy a book through us you challenge traditional barriers that prevent commercial involvement in reducing poverty.”
Good Books “Metamorphosis” from Antfood on Vimeo.
This video by creative Agency Antfood uses two main sources of inspiration – the wonderfully evocative imagery that well crafted words on a page can conjour up in our minds, (in this case stepping into Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”) and the paradigm shift that people like those at Good Books are working to promote – that commercial activity need not be exclusively about maximising profits to benefit a few, but can have a direct role in ending poverty and creating a better life for all.
“We dug through the darkest recesses of our minds and studio to create original music and sound design for this Buck masterpiece. Working with squirming, analog-tape leeches, moaning coeds, screaming guitar goats, and brain-exploding psychedelia, we were certainly in our element. Plus, it’s always fun to rock out and get a little weird for a good cause!”
Read MoreVimeo Festival + Awards 2012
The Vimeo Awards celebrate the world’s best videos, and the people who created them. This spectacular visual festival and award ceremony is held in the heart of legendary Chelsea area of New York.
Prizes include $5,000 grants in 13 categories, plus a $25,000 Grand Prize — all to reward creators and help them make new work.
The festival on June 8th and 9th includes talks by speakers which cover the most salient topics in video production today, an area which is explored in even more detail in the many excellent workshops available over the period.
Of course the highlight are the screenings of the videos themselves.
13 Winning videos have been chosen from an original submisson of 14,567 videos – the quality and diversity of imagination in the work is quite phenomemal.
You can see the full schedule of events here:
The event ends on a high with a great all-night party, with a DJ (and an open bar)
TALKS/CONVERSATIONS
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Keynote Address: the End of the Beginning With Dr. Reginald Watts
The illustrious Internetologist Dr. Reginald Watts returns to the Vimeo Festival + Awards to discuss his latest theories on the tubes, wires, and webs that connect us all. This weekend he addresses a key question: How do you know whether you’re at the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?
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The Self-Expression Tsunami
At what point does information about a person become a little too much information? 2010 Festival + Awards Honorary Award-winner Casey Neistat and Sundance winner Josh Safdie explore the growing number of ways in which people divulge seemingly everything about their lives online. Whether we think it’s too much or not enough, these personal sharing trends change the ways we understand our friends, family, and colleagues—and our own place in the world.
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Director Profiles: Steve James and Lucy Walker
Who best to interview a master of interview techniques? Another interview master, obviously. In a very special event, documentarians and unparalleled question-askers Steve James and Lucy Walker take to the stage together to grill each other on their careers, their creative processes, and how they get their subjects to open up on camera.
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Limited Editions in the Digital World
The art experience has moved beyond the museum gallery to become a dialogue between people and the devices on their desks and in their pockets. How can digital and media artists be effective players in shaping this trend and distribute their art online without giving it all away? How does encountering art online affect its interpretation? Media artist Marco Bambrilla and MoMA curator Barbara London discuss the issues and opportunities that the digital world and the Internet offer artists.
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The Future of Creative Careers
The landscape of creative work is changing. Much of the friction that once inhibited independent careers has been removed, and the distance between idea and execution is smaller than ever. During this Q&A, featuring Scott Belsky, CEO of Behance and author of Making Ideas Happen, we will explore the ways in which our professional output is powered by the latest technology and shaped by the new ways in which we collaborate.
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Advertising Adapts: What’s a Brand to Do?
There have been seismic shifts in the advertising industry since TV moved on- demand and audiences moved online. Viewers are increasingly sophisticated, and advertising has evolved in tandem, with brands delivering messages through clever content that viewers choose to watch and share. This discussion tries to identify the line between advertising and entertainment, and examines the consequences – both positive and negative – of erasing that line altogether.
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Director Profiles: Daniels
Two guys, one name, one singular vision. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert recently burst onto the scene with videos and commercials that turn chaos into humor and beauty. We ask them to sit still for a moment and tell us where they came from, what shaped their worldview, and why they refuse to be serious even for one second.
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The New Viral Video: From Keyboard Cat to Ideas Worth Spreading
Videos with millions of views come in many flavors, but they have a common thread: they inspire us to share them with others. Viral videos have often provided decidedly ephemeral entertainment—think cats playing pianos and dogs riding skateboards. Yet TED is at the forefront of a burgeoning trend that puts ideas worth spreading high up on the list of things your friends and family simply have to watch. What makes users want to share a meaningful video? What drives success? With more than 750 million views to date, the TED case study illuminates some of the most important trends defining the new viral video.
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Going Pro
So, you want to do this for a living, huh? The gap between serious amateur and budding professional can look quite large, so we’re bringing in some new and seasoned pros to share their perspectives on making the leap. We’ll talk with experts Kevin Iwashina, a film, tv & digitalcontent producer and media advisor who spent 10 years working as an agent at CAA and Lana Kim, who represents directors such as Megaforce,Andy Bruntel, Romain Gavras, and Sofia Coppola. We’ll also get the scoop from director Nima Nourizadeh, who recently made the journey from creating low-budget music videos to directing Project X, his first feature in Hollywood.
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Failure FTW
Not succeeding plays a hugely important role in the creative process. This session features Ted Hope and Ed Burns discussing the importance of embracing failure in creative work, with postcards from their own personal dark days—jobs that went wrong, ideas that fizzled out, expectations decidedly unexceeded—and exploring how failing miserably is crucial to artistic achievement (and even finding happiness).
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Director Profiles: Saman Keshavarz
Saman Keshavarz was born in Tehran, Iran, raised in the United States, and, according to the bio on his blog, his last known whereabouts were in Smurf Land. But the director, whose music videos for !!!, Cinnamon Chasers, and Deus have made him one of the field’s rising stars, will be right here at the Festival to take us through his journey so far — and let us know what lands he plans to explore next.
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World Premiere of ‘Limbo,’ the New Film by 2010 Grand Prize Winner Eliot Rausch
At the 2010 Festival + Awards, Eliot Rausch took home top honors for his touching film “Last Minutes with Oden.” During this profile, Eliot will tell us how winning the Grand Prize changed his life and what he’s been up to since. The session includes the world premiere of Eliot’s new film, “Limbo,” which he made with his 2010 prize money, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at how the Limbo came to life.
Saturday
Putting the Fun in Funding
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When it comes to obtaining a decent budget for your project, you are no longer reduced to groveling at the feet of rich friends. This session looks at three more dignified ways to find funding: through grant organizations, crowd-sourcing, and brands that want to catalyze great content. Kickstarter’s Art Program Director Stephanie Pereira, The Creators Project’s Global General Manager Hosi Simon, and Adella Ladjevardi, Grants Manager at funding body Cinereach, will tell us how they work, what they’re looking for in projects, and what you need to know when approaching them.
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Building Your Audience
You’ve spent lots of time, energy, and money making your film, and once it’s done you want make sure it doesn’t end up like a wallflower at the online video party—you need to actively seek out watchers. Vimeo’s Blake Whitman, director Philip Bloom and designer Nick Campbell get down to some serious talk around how to grow and maintain an audience for your work.
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The Art of Getting Paid
Yes, you create because you love doing it, but imagine loving doing it while being compensated appropriately—or even handsomely. Learn where the money is and how to get to it in this insightful look at the financial side of filmmaking through the eyes of fundraising expert and all-round maverick Brian Newman.
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The Science of Storytelling
With high-quality camera equipment now widely accessible, almost anyone can shoot videos that look good. But pretty pictures get you only so far — the way to truly captivate viewers is by telling a story that grips from the get-go and hangs on well after the final frame. And while we can feel that stories are powerful, there’s science behind them, too. Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, draws on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology, and biology to argue that storytelling has evolved to ensure our species’ survival. With insight on the basic human impulses behind tragedies, comedies, and cliffhangers, this session is a must for anyone who wants to tell a story that hits audiences in the heart, the gut, and other important organs.
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One Day on Earth – Connecting the World Through Video
The Internet has enabled creators to call upon the world to act, uniting people and helping us work together on a global scale. This session shines a light on one of our favorite collaborative projects, One Day on Earth, and on how the group galvanized people all over the world to work together on a film that captures what happens on our planet in a single day.
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Director Profiles: Vincent Laforet
Vincent Laforet started by making a splash in the world of still photography, working for The New York Times at the tender age of 25 and winning a Pulitzer Prize. He’s since turned to moving images and maintained pace — he received Cannes Lions Awards for Canon’s “Beyond The Still,” and his recent short “Mobius” for the same camera brand immediately went viral. We’ll talk to Vincent about his accomplishments and learn how budding filmmakers can achieve big goals.
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Beyond the Screen: Notes from the Bleeding Edge of Filmmaking
Executing big ideas can require big technology, and the most forward-looking filmmakers are inventing their own to bring groundbreaking concepts to life. From holographs to projection maps to apps that facilitate extraordinary levels of audience interaction, the topics of this conversation run the gamut: what’s hot now, what’s next, even what hasn’t been thought of yet. Participating are two of the industry’s leading innovators: Kenzo Digital, the new media heavyweight and creative director behind work for Nike, Beyonce, the Obama campaign, and Nam Jun Paik Studios; and Loc Dao, the award-winning executive producer and creative technologist for the National Film Board of Canada’s digital studio. Led by moderator Lance Weiler, the pair will discuss the technology they are most excited about, how new tools spark new ideas, and why telling a great story is still of paramount importance.
VIMEO
Vimeo is a US based video sharing website where users can upload, view and share videos. It was founded in 2004 by Zach Klein and Jake Lodwick, who created the name “Vimeo”, which plays on the words video and “me” to emphasise the site’s dedication to user-made videos. The name is also an anagram of the word “movie”.
Read MoreOK Go: This Too Shall Pass
This Too Shall Pass: Rube Goldberg Machine
“This Too Shall Pass: Rube Goldberg Machine” was the second video done for OK Go’s album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”. The single was released in January 2010 and the band made the unusual decision to create two official videos for the album, both of which premiered on YouTube.
The first video records a live performance of the song in collaboration with the University of Notre Dame Marching Band. For the second the band wanted “a giant machine that we dance with”.
It features a four-minute sequence of a song being played in time to the movements of a giant Rube Goldberg machine built over two storeys of a warehouse.
Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson Dance in their Graves
Rube Goldberg is the American equivalent of Britain’s Heath Robinson. American inventor and cartoonist Rube Goldberg (1883-1970) was famous for his cartoons of intricately complicated over-engineered machines that manage to perform very simple tasks in hundreds of unnecessary mechanically inspired movements.
The sequence is carefully orchestrated but appears to be a single shot, following the convoluted route of objects along the machine. The contraption consists of more than 700 household objects which create a route estimated to be over half a mile long.
Parts of the machine are synchronised in time with the music, with members of the band singing alongside the machine and being shot at by paint guns in the grand finale.
This Too Shall Pass on YouTube
The video “This Too Shall Pass: Rube Goldberg Machine” appeared on YouTube on 2nd March 2010 and was viewed over 900,000 times on its first day, and reached 6 million views in six days…it has now been viewed over 30,876,540
times.
It was named both “Video of the Year” and “Best Rock Video” at the 3rd annual UK Music Video Awards
The Band: OK GO
The lead singer of the band Damien Kulashwas was attending the Interlichen Arts Camp to study graphic design and while there met, met the bassist Tim Nordwind who was there to study music. The name “OK GO” was inspired by their art teacher saying: “OK…Go! while they were drawing.
Kulash and Nordwindmet the band’s former guitarist and keyboardist Any Duncan in high school, and their drummer and percussionist Dan Konopka in college, and launched the band in 1998.
In 2005 Andy Ross – guitar, keyboards and vocals, joined them and replaced Andy Duncan.
Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of “This Too Shall Pass” off of the album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”. The video was filmed in a two-story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The “machine” was designed and built by the band, along with members of Syyn Labs ( http://syynlabs.com/ ) over the course of several months.
You can share your views on this video or the band OK Go on our music forums:
To find out more about the making of the video, the an in-depth behind-the-scenes setup of the warehouse can be seen at:
http://www.okgo.net/this-too-shall-pass-rube-goldberg-machine/
OK Go on Tour http://www.okgo.net/shows/
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