New Film 'Zenith' Now Available For Free BitTorrent Download 123
airfoobar writes "This seems like a good week for libre culture. The first part of an surprisingly well-made cyberpunk thriller called Zenith has just been released as a torrent download through Vodo, and the third episode of Pioneer One is being released on the 28th."
Re:Preview (Score:5, Insightful)
The equipment is the easy part. The prices for facilities and equipment have been very quickly approaching the marginal cost -- if you can get skilled people to donate time you're in.
Competent writing, acting, directing and producing are much trickier.
Pioneer One ep1 was worth watching. (Score:5, Insightful)
Downloading.. haven't watched the second yet (didn't know it was out) but the first episode was actually pretty intriguing. It pretty much had no effects, no stunt shots, just actors doing a good job of making us believe that something curious was happening.
It's nice to see homegrown sci-fi being done, since I have no doubt they'll manage to at least equal or even best what we've been seeing out of the networks lately, minus their over-reliance on special effects to "wow" their audience. Good stories can be told without a big budget. Considering the absolutely terrible job that television has been doing lately at making science fiction, it really reinforces the notion that good stories require good writing, above and beyond anything else that goes into a show; although editing, direction, production, etc., are all important, good writing and good acting are more important, and it happens that if you find some good talent, these can be had at low cost if you're careful about how you run things. Often the best art is made under difficult budget constraints.
don't use the youtube link, use the torrent (Score:2, Insightful)
the youtube link cynically removes the way you support the film
use
http://vodo.net/zenith
c'mon they're already torrenting it, do you - youtube link maker - really have to stripe the way you support the film?
Re:6856 seeds 2993 peers (Score:5, Insightful)
Downloads: 146939
Donations so far: $246
If you're expecting the number of dollars per person to be the same as it is for traditional distribution models, you're doing it wrong. It's econ 101 that when you set the price at zero, you get maximal demand, i.e. many downloads. This is especially true here because you get not only all the pirates who download without paying and claim it's because they wouldn't have paid anyway, but also all of the non-pirates who actually wouldn't have paid but decide that a legit free download is worth the look. All that really matters is how the total profit stacks up against what it would be under a traditional distribution model.
Also: It was just released, no? Certainly it was just posted to Slashdot. Consider that some people may have downloaded it but haven't gotten around to watching and/or donating yet. We'll see how the numbers look in a day or two when that shakes out.