Yup, We’re in the right place.

As many of you may already know, the Ten Angry Men relocated our World Wide Web operation to California, following the acceptance of the Webgineer into University of South Carolina. The graduate film school specifically.

Orientation began on Friday, and if there was any doubt as to whether we were in the right place, all questions were answered when we noticed that the kid sitting on front of us was wearing black boots, black pants, black shirt and a black trenchcoat.

Part of Friday's orientation was a mandatory safety seminar for all film school students. Typical presentation by the school fire marshal, facilities managers, etc. on how not to hurt ourselves, other students or, more importantly, the USC cameras and equipment during the course of our education. Two thirds of this seminar consisted of a serious disucssion of how students can avoid being shot by the LAPD while filming in the streets of Los Angeles.

(Not a small problem. About half the questions from the students that day were about the use of weapons and explosives on their films.)

The rest of the time was spent arguing about the finer points of copyright law and, eventually, the use of other copyrighted works in a student film. (If you ever want to drive yourself crazy, look at the laws governing what material you can and cannot use in a movie. Far more restrictive for film than in any other medium. Puffy Coombs and all his compatriots in the rap game can steal entire songs and rap over them with new words, and that’s considered an original work of art. Or some guy can photocopy panels from someone else's comic strip, and be labeled a genius. But if you are shooting a movie and somewhere a car drives by blaring “I’ll Be missing you” on the car radio, the filmmaker needs to get permission from a) the record label, b) Sean Coombs, c) Sting and d) Epstein’s mother, otherwise that scene had to be taken out of the movie. This explains why a lot of old TV shows aren’t out on DVD- it’s too expensive to go out and get permission to re-use all the songs and soundtracks that were used in the original televised version. But we digress..)

This conversation was just about wrapped up when one of the faculty raised his hand and doused a fresh gallon of gasoline on the campfire. It was the Cinematography teacher, a big, gruff guy who had the build, bearing, and attitude of a 1950's high school shop teacher. He blurted out:

“Graffiti too. Graffiti is copyright material too. “

Great. Try finding a wall in LA that does not have graffiti. Now we’re extending copyright protection to taggers?