Minnie_girl
Active Member
Another very astute and excellent post. Money talks and, well, you know...
So true
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BLACKFISH
- Thread starter JPatton
- Start date
- Status
So true
BuddyThomas
Well-Known Member
Sorry to break it to you guys, but a film maker typically does not make much money on a very low budget documentary. I don't know what the terms were for her distribution deal, or her director deal, or if she receives profit participation, but I sincerely doubt she is laughing all the way to the bank on this. If I was her (and I am not) , I would donate a large portion of my royalty income to something that benefits helping the whales. I don't even know what organization that might be.
On the other hand, because of the acclaim the film has received, I bet she books more jobs because of it, ones that are even more high profile, and with higher budgets. She has probably done so already.
Finally, for those who continuously say that this film is not a documentary, have you seen it?
Have you seen the footage of the trainer being dragged to the bottom of the tank over and over again?
Have you seen the footage of the whale that is dripping blood while performing? Are you saying this is a lie? Is this footage doctored? Is the blood added in later in post production?
What about the footage of the whale captures? What about the assertion that they only take the babies because the adults are too expensive to transport? All made up?
What about the statistics on trainer injuries and deaths? All lies?
I could go on, but I know I am talking to deaf ears.
OFTeric
Well-Known Member
The SeaWorld of the 1970's and the SeaWorld of 2013 are two very different organizations.
OFTeric
Well-Known Member
A Note on why I love and support SeaWorld:
Over the past year Mike Madsen and I have embarked on a journey where we have become advocates for an organization that has been taking a lot of heat. That organization is SeaWorld, here in Orlando, San Antonio and San Diego. Since my first visit to SeaWorld San Diego when I was 7 years old I have been inspired by the animals of the ocean. There is no way I would have understood the size and scale of whales, and the need for their protection without SeaWorld.
It is simple to just jump on a band wagon, and file petitions, and tweet at people, and sit at home and post in any forum, website, comment box possible about how "evil" a place is, simply because you wanted a biased documentary.
SeaWorld while not perfect is a place of incredible good. Over 12 million people a year visit all 3 SeaWorld Parks, and are inspired. While SeaWorld is a for profit company, they support organizations around the world that seek to protect and save endangered and threatened species. SeaWorld itself has been credited with saving the Asian Small Clawed Otter from extinction in China.
SeaWorld funds research, and conservation programs on every continent around the world. Since opening SeaWorld has rescued, rehabilitated, over 23,000 animals.
SeaWorld San Diego has been working to save the White Sea Bass where it has just bred the two millionth of that species and introduced to the wild. Sadly pollution, over fishing, and habitat destruction ruins most of SeaWorld's work.
Again it is easy to tweet the "evils" of a company without doing any real research, and talking to the people who love and care for these animals. I am heart broken when I see people hate an organization which I feel is one of the very few that is working tirelessly day and night to save animal species from the destruction we as the human race are causing all around the world. I would invite everyone to visit SeaWorld to see how incredible it is with their own eyes, and I invite them to listen to our podcast the The Unofficial Seaworld Podcast to learn the inside stories about the #SeaWorld parks. And I ask that if you are tempted to become a "copy and paste advocate" that you take a minute and think of all the programs around the world, and the 23,000 animals that have been given a 2nd chance at life by SeaWorld and look and celebrate the good that they do.
- Eric Davis Creator and Co-host of the USWP
Over the past year Mike Madsen and I have embarked on a journey where we have become advocates for an organization that has been taking a lot of heat. That organization is SeaWorld, here in Orlando, San Antonio and San Diego. Since my first visit to SeaWorld San Diego when I was 7 years old I have been inspired by the animals of the ocean. There is no way I would have understood the size and scale of whales, and the need for their protection without SeaWorld.
It is simple to just jump on a band wagon, and file petitions, and tweet at people, and sit at home and post in any forum, website, comment box possible about how "evil" a place is, simply because you wanted a biased documentary.
SeaWorld while not perfect is a place of incredible good. Over 12 million people a year visit all 3 SeaWorld Parks, and are inspired. While SeaWorld is a for profit company, they support organizations around the world that seek to protect and save endangered and threatened species. SeaWorld itself has been credited with saving the Asian Small Clawed Otter from extinction in China.
SeaWorld funds research, and conservation programs on every continent around the world. Since opening SeaWorld has rescued, rehabilitated, over 23,000 animals.
SeaWorld San Diego has been working to save the White Sea Bass where it has just bred the two millionth of that species and introduced to the wild. Sadly pollution, over fishing, and habitat destruction ruins most of SeaWorld's work.
Again it is easy to tweet the "evils" of a company without doing any real research, and talking to the people who love and care for these animals. I am heart broken when I see people hate an organization which I feel is one of the very few that is working tirelessly day and night to save animal species from the destruction we as the human race are causing all around the world. I would invite everyone to visit SeaWorld to see how incredible it is with their own eyes, and I invite them to listen to our podcast the The Unofficial Seaworld Podcast to learn the inside stories about the #SeaWorld parks. And I ask that if you are tempted to become a "copy and paste advocate" that you take a minute and think of all the programs around the world, and the 23,000 animals that have been given a 2nd chance at life by SeaWorld and look and celebrate the good that they do.
- Eric Davis Creator and Co-host of the USWP
cheezbat
Well-Known Member
Ooh I know the perfect place to donate money to help whale conservation...Sea World! (Oh wait, never mind.)
919Florida
Well-Known Member
Very excellent post here. Its so very true. I love this!!!
BuddyThomas
Well-Known Member
So the recent deaths and injuries are made up?
BuddyThomas
Well-Known Member
No one is saying Sea World is evil. At least I am not. Yes they do a lot of good on the rescuing and rehabilitating front, which is wonderful..........but they also keep some of the most intelligent creatures on planet earth in concrete bathtubs, which is not wonderful, and is just sad.
PS- Blackfish was today nominated for the 19th Annual Critic's Choice Award for Best Documentary.
So what do you think of the BLACKFISH Movement now? It’s getting interesting, yes?
Thank you,
Willie Nelson
Martina McBride
.38 Special
Barenaked Ladies
REO Speedwagon
Trisha Yearwood
Cheap Trick
Ann and Nancy Wilson
For canceling your concerts at SeaWorld Orlando and for sending the message to fans around the world that---SeaWorld is not cool.
Change is coming to SeaWorld....
You have a Twitter account for this, right?
And curious that they originally had no problem performing at a BBQ....
wcjordan06
Member
After watching the movie on Netflix I can say I was not really that moved but more annoyed at how biased it was. I'm not a big SeaWorld fan at all, we don't even visit when we go to Orlando as we spend most of our time at Disney & Uni, but I don't like seeing a company that has done much good for the conservation of many wildlife get media slammed because of some low budget film that got a lucky break on CNN. Also, the guy above thanking most of those artists for backing out has to know that those artist backed out because of fan pressure and their pocket books, most likely not because they support the same cause he has been all about in this thread. The only change that is coming to SeaWorld is their attendance goals getting raised after a great year.
I will continue to support those AZA accredited zoos and aquariums (DAK, Busch Gardens, & SEA parks are all accredited for those unaware) that have done outstanding work to save many threatened to extinct in the wild species, something I have been apart of first hand with the Cincinnati Zoo and the Sumatran Rhino breeding program.
I will continue to support those AZA accredited zoos and aquariums (DAK, Busch Gardens, & SEA parks are all accredited for those unaware) that have done outstanding work to save many threatened to extinct in the wild species, something I have been apart of first hand with the Cincinnati Zoo and the Sumatran Rhino breeding program.
919Florida
Well-Known Member
Change is not coming. Who cares about a bunch of has been musicians. Out to get some free publicity from the media. Have you looked at what your people are like on twitter and facebook? You guys don't let these people alone. Its very childish and foolish. There are animals out in the ocean dying because of pollution and viruses etc and what are you focused on? Releasing animals from a place that takes amazing care of them and putting them in a poison pot? Really??
SeaWorld is PACKED I tell you. Was just there Friday, Saturday and again yesterday. If you are not showing up to shows early you are not getting a seat. Parking lot on Saturday was completely filled and they were parking you across the street at 6:30at night. The guest are loving SeaWorld and that's what counts. Not a bunch of celebrities who dont matter.
So the "blackfish" movement mr patton is not interesting. Wish you could see it for yourself how busy the place really is.
You realize if you guys would join forces with SeaWorld what wonderful changes we could make for animals worldwide. If we all work together side by side the beauty of our oceans will continue to thrive!!!!
BuddyThomas
Well-Known Member
I was just about to post this. Thanks for doing so.
Whether or not JPatton has a twitter account, this is a thread called Blackfish, and as I have said before, the posts are on topic, so not sure what the problem is. If you don't like to discuss Blackfish, then there are so many other threads on here.
How is it curious that these artists did not have an issue performing at a bar-b-cue (or however you spell it).
They are not claiming to be vegetarians, when last I checked. They are not protesting baby back ribs.
It is about whales in concrete bath tubs.
I'm well aware if the thread name, just as I'm aware he's using this site to reach more than his Twitter account would....
And why not? Isn't concern about animal cruelty an across-the-board issue?
BuddyThomas
Well-Known Member
Does anyone know which artists are left, now that seven have cancelled from the music fest? I don't see anything listed on the Sea World site. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place?
unkadug
Follower of "Saget"The Cult
http://www.avclub.com/article/do-documentaries-need-to-be-fair-to-both-sides-of--86478
Do documentaries need to be fair to both sides of an issue?
By Noel Murray
Oct 10, 2012 • 12AM
Last week, I reviewed Eugene Jarecki’s very good documentary The House I Live In, about the pervasive, destructive failures of America’s “war on drugs.” But as sympathetic as I am to the movie’s explanations of how our drug policies have led to a self-sustaining industry of prisons and law-enforcement equipment—with no vested interest in rehabilitation—I couldn’t help thinking throughout the movie that Jarecki did his case a disservice by not giving his opposition a strong voice. Most of the pro-drug-war points made in The House I Live In come from footage of old political speeches, and not from people who necessarily believe in the cause, or can argue for it intelligently. And this is a common problem with issue docs, which frequently don’t allow the other side to advocate strongly for itself. It doesn’t matter whether I’m in agreement with the filmmaker. Without a forceful counter-argument, I feel like documentaries are fudging something.
Let me clear: I am in no way saying that documentaries about hot-button issues need to remain neutral or objective. One of the biggest problems with the news media today is that in the interest of fairness, reporters give both sides of a debate equal weight, even when one side is either lying or crazy. Documentaries are a different kind of journalism, more like magazine reportage or a non-fiction book, where a strong point of view isn’t just allowable, it’s preferable. But one of the other biggest modern problems with the media—and politics, for that matter—is that too much of it is designed to play on emotions, not reason. In the documentary Windfall, for example, the argument against wind farms is largely carried by the story of one rural community that was torn apart and perhaps permanently ruined by the arrival of “big wind.” And while that’s a moving story, and one worth telling, it’s ultimately too personal and constrained to one perspective to be as persuasive as it could be.
Back in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan adviser Ed Meese was quoted as saying that reports of hunger in America were possibly “anecdotal,” which left-wingers cited for years as an example of the Reagan administration’s insensitivity. But with each passing year, the more I get what Meese meant, though I still disagree with how (and why) he expressed it. It’s not that Meese was denying the existence of the poor; he was only saying that if one were describing the state of the union in the early ’80s, it would be inaccurate, statistically speaking, to say that the small percentage of people struggling to afford food represented what was happening in the country as a whole. (The irony of all this was that few politicians were more committed to using anecdotes as a substitute for data than Reagan, who earlier in his career helped conjure the specter of the “welfare queen.”)
Issue-driven documentaries don’t need to be wonky per se, but if a filmmaker is trying to define a right and wrong side of an issue, hard data doesn’t hurt. Nor is it a bad idea to provide some appropriate perspective, to give a sense of how important the issue actually is. Is this one of those “the balance of nature is about to be upended and we’re all going to die” kind of problems, or is it just that something that used to be nice is going to become a little bit less so? A lot of agit-prop docs stack the deck in that way as well, turning every matter of public policy—from gerrymandering to school lunches into the last stand for civilization as we know it. Watch enough of these films, and the standard for genuine alarm gets higher by the frame. (This may be why I enjoyed the recent Side By Side so much; it’s a documentary about digital filmmaking that presents strong arguments for and against shooting digitally, and never presumes that this is a life-or-death matter.)
Oddly, the best way to avoid the trap of making every issue doc too scarifying and one-sided is to narrow the focus. This has actually been a very good year for documentaries overall, and the best have been narrative-driven, exploring larger issues through a single story: For instance, The Queen Of Versailles looks at how the financial crisis affected one ridiculously rich family, in the process offering some clues to how the economy got screwed up in the first place. Jiro Dreams Of Sushi considers tradition, taste, and foodie culture in the context of one brilliant Japanese chef. The Imposter is a tricky true-crime doc that manipulates the audience to show how the film’s subjects could’ve been similarly misled. And arriving this weekend are two more very good, blessedly “small” docs: The Iran Job, which shows life in a complicated Islamist republic from the perspective of an American basketball player who joins an Iranian pro team, and Ross McElwee’s beautiful Photographic Memory, which is sort of about how modern technology is widening the generation gap, but is mostly about how McElwee understands his teenage son too well, and sees rough roads ahead for the boy.
McElwee is one of the pioneers of the first-person documentary style, later popularized by Michael Moore. This can be a powerful tool for documentarians, to put themselves in front of the camera and thus put their agenda and opinions front and center, openly eschewing objectivity. Or it can be a terrible distraction, turning complex sociopolitical problems into a feature-length ego-stroke for the filmmaker. One of the better recent examples of how to do first-person in an issue doc is You’ve Been Trumped, in which Anthony Baxter makes himself part of the story of Donald Trump’s seizing of Scottish farmland, mainly because Trump’s people forced the issue by having Baxter arrested in the middle of an interview. But even though Baxter is an unabashed on-camera advocate against Trump, he still shows himself trying to get answers and explanations from Trump and his lackeys throughout the film. And whether Baxter’s efforts were genuine or not (I imagine they probably were), it’s easier to take You’ve Been Trumped seriously because it at least seems sincere in its efforts to cover the story comprehensively.
The real question may be whether documentaries should be considered as journalism or cinema, and whether the same standards apply for both. I have friends who are only interested in documentaries as movies, and as such, tend not to like many docs, because they feel they’d be better-served by reading about the subject in a magazine article than watching fuzzy video images of dull talking heads. I get that. When I’m watching documentaries at film festivals in particular, I often think of what my friend Scott Renshaw (critic for City Weekly in Salt Lake City) says: If you can learn just as much from reading the description in the festival program as you can from watching the movie, then it’s a bad documentary.
But for the most part, I tend to judge documentaries based on what they’re trying to be. If they’re narrative-based, I’m interested in how well they tell the story. If they’re abstract and arty, I consider the imagery and the rhythm more. If they’re personal, I look for passion and insight. And if they’re issue docs, I want sound journalism.
Again, I’m not saying documentarians should come at their subjects without opinions to express, and I’m not even saying it’s a problem when they stack the deck in favor of those opinions. But it’s always frustrating to me to watch a documentary in which some corporate spokesman spouts the company line, and then the filmmaker cuts to another interviewee who thoroughly refutes the spokesman’s statement. I always want the filmmaker to cut back to the spokesman and present the case we just heard, to spark a real debate. When that doesn’t happen, the documentary loses some of its credibility. If the movie has the form of journalism, it should be journalism. Otherwise, the filmmaker should’ve found a different way to get the point across.
Do documentaries need to be fair to both sides of an issue?
By Noel Murray
Oct 10, 2012 • 12AM
Last week, I reviewed Eugene Jarecki’s very good documentary The House I Live In, about the pervasive, destructive failures of America’s “war on drugs.” But as sympathetic as I am to the movie’s explanations of how our drug policies have led to a self-sustaining industry of prisons and law-enforcement equipment—with no vested interest in rehabilitation—I couldn’t help thinking throughout the movie that Jarecki did his case a disservice by not giving his opposition a strong voice. Most of the pro-drug-war points made in The House I Live In come from footage of old political speeches, and not from people who necessarily believe in the cause, or can argue for it intelligently. And this is a common problem with issue docs, which frequently don’t allow the other side to advocate strongly for itself. It doesn’t matter whether I’m in agreement with the filmmaker. Without a forceful counter-argument, I feel like documentaries are fudging something.
Let me clear: I am in no way saying that documentaries about hot-button issues need to remain neutral or objective. One of the biggest problems with the news media today is that in the interest of fairness, reporters give both sides of a debate equal weight, even when one side is either lying or crazy. Documentaries are a different kind of journalism, more like magazine reportage or a non-fiction book, where a strong point of view isn’t just allowable, it’s preferable. But one of the other biggest modern problems with the media—and politics, for that matter—is that too much of it is designed to play on emotions, not reason. In the documentary Windfall, for example, the argument against wind farms is largely carried by the story of one rural community that was torn apart and perhaps permanently ruined by the arrival of “big wind.” And while that’s a moving story, and one worth telling, it’s ultimately too personal and constrained to one perspective to be as persuasive as it could be.
Back in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan adviser Ed Meese was quoted as saying that reports of hunger in America were possibly “anecdotal,” which left-wingers cited for years as an example of the Reagan administration’s insensitivity. But with each passing year, the more I get what Meese meant, though I still disagree with how (and why) he expressed it. It’s not that Meese was denying the existence of the poor; he was only saying that if one were describing the state of the union in the early ’80s, it would be inaccurate, statistically speaking, to say that the small percentage of people struggling to afford food represented what was happening in the country as a whole. (The irony of all this was that few politicians were more committed to using anecdotes as a substitute for data than Reagan, who earlier in his career helped conjure the specter of the “welfare queen.”)
Issue-driven documentaries don’t need to be wonky per se, but if a filmmaker is trying to define a right and wrong side of an issue, hard data doesn’t hurt. Nor is it a bad idea to provide some appropriate perspective, to give a sense of how important the issue actually is. Is this one of those “the balance of nature is about to be upended and we’re all going to die” kind of problems, or is it just that something that used to be nice is going to become a little bit less so? A lot of agit-prop docs stack the deck in that way as well, turning every matter of public policy—from gerrymandering to school lunches into the last stand for civilization as we know it. Watch enough of these films, and the standard for genuine alarm gets higher by the frame. (This may be why I enjoyed the recent Side By Side so much; it’s a documentary about digital filmmaking that presents strong arguments for and against shooting digitally, and never presumes that this is a life-or-death matter.)
Oddly, the best way to avoid the trap of making every issue doc too scarifying and one-sided is to narrow the focus. This has actually been a very good year for documentaries overall, and the best have been narrative-driven, exploring larger issues through a single story: For instance, The Queen Of Versailles looks at how the financial crisis affected one ridiculously rich family, in the process offering some clues to how the economy got screwed up in the first place. Jiro Dreams Of Sushi considers tradition, taste, and foodie culture in the context of one brilliant Japanese chef. The Imposter is a tricky true-crime doc that manipulates the audience to show how the film’s subjects could’ve been similarly misled. And arriving this weekend are two more very good, blessedly “small” docs: The Iran Job, which shows life in a complicated Islamist republic from the perspective of an American basketball player who joins an Iranian pro team, and Ross McElwee’s beautiful Photographic Memory, which is sort of about how modern technology is widening the generation gap, but is mostly about how McElwee understands his teenage son too well, and sees rough roads ahead for the boy.
McElwee is one of the pioneers of the first-person documentary style, later popularized by Michael Moore. This can be a powerful tool for documentarians, to put themselves in front of the camera and thus put their agenda and opinions front and center, openly eschewing objectivity. Or it can be a terrible distraction, turning complex sociopolitical problems into a feature-length ego-stroke for the filmmaker. One of the better recent examples of how to do first-person in an issue doc is You’ve Been Trumped, in which Anthony Baxter makes himself part of the story of Donald Trump’s seizing of Scottish farmland, mainly because Trump’s people forced the issue by having Baxter arrested in the middle of an interview. But even though Baxter is an unabashed on-camera advocate against Trump, he still shows himself trying to get answers and explanations from Trump and his lackeys throughout the film. And whether Baxter’s efforts were genuine or not (I imagine they probably were), it’s easier to take You’ve Been Trumped seriously because it at least seems sincere in its efforts to cover the story comprehensively.
The real question may be whether documentaries should be considered as journalism or cinema, and whether the same standards apply for both. I have friends who are only interested in documentaries as movies, and as such, tend not to like many docs, because they feel they’d be better-served by reading about the subject in a magazine article than watching fuzzy video images of dull talking heads. I get that. When I’m watching documentaries at film festivals in particular, I often think of what my friend Scott Renshaw (critic for City Weekly in Salt Lake City) says: If you can learn just as much from reading the description in the festival program as you can from watching the movie, then it’s a bad documentary.
But for the most part, I tend to judge documentaries based on what they’re trying to be. If they’re narrative-based, I’m interested in how well they tell the story. If they’re abstract and arty, I consider the imagery and the rhythm more. If they’re personal, I look for passion and insight. And if they’re issue docs, I want sound journalism.
Again, I’m not saying documentarians should come at their subjects without opinions to express, and I’m not even saying it’s a problem when they stack the deck in favor of those opinions. But it’s always frustrating to me to watch a documentary in which some corporate spokesman spouts the company line, and then the filmmaker cuts to another interviewee who thoroughly refutes the spokesman’s statement. I always want the filmmaker to cut back to the spokesman and present the case we just heard, to spark a real debate. When that doesn’t happen, the documentary loses some of its credibility. If the movie has the form of journalism, it should be journalism. Otherwise, the filmmaker should’ve found a different way to get the point across.
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