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NASA's LRO Captures High-Res Pics of Apollo Landing Sites
The Bad Astronomer is one of many readers who wrote to tell us about NASA's release of high-res photos showing the Apollo landing sites. The photos were taken from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and show the traces of earlier visits to the Moon. "The satellite reached lunar orbit June 23 and captured the Apollo sites between July 11 and 15. Though it had been expected that LRO would be able to resolve the remnants of the Apollo mission, these first images came before the spacecraft reached its final mapping orbit. Future LROC images from these sites will have two to three times greater resolution."
The business side is even more open. Every film project involves lots of agreements, which have to be made on multiple levels with lawyers and agents reviewing them, often enclosing other agreements as exhibits; then other deals are worked out for the business aspects of any media production, including distribution. Keep in mind, these projects involve financing, so bankers, investors, and their lawyers see documents; insurance, so agents and insurers see documents; then they get shopped around to various studios and other business folks; Then these producers business people, and their lawyers, have neighbors and other social contacts. And like any business folks when people get together, they talk shop. Some of the stuff discussed by business people concerning the creative process can be scandalous gossip and nonsense. We see documents, we don't hang out with Brad and Angelina. But sometimes you keep hearing the same story from multiple people who are intimately involved in the process citing multiple sources. You tend to place more credence in that type of story because it usually turns out to be true.
And there are certain things that are relatively static. For example, most business agreements involving distribution are fairly routine and there is not much room that either party has to negotiate. People didn't reinvent the wheel when Tucker/Darko came around to shop their film for distribution, there are forms that are used over and over. There are only so many distribution outlets so it is pretty well known who is talking to whom and whether they are interested in a project. And these deals in turn attach other agreements as exhibits or get sent around to firms with attachments. Although you don't always understand the creative process from these agreements, i.e. you can't tell whether the product is very good, they do tell the business story and you do see who is part of the process. And the story is pretty standard until you are talking about a half dozen folks who can dictate what they want, and Tucker is not among them--and even then, there deals are pretty standard for them.
When people talk about how business is done and what type of deal someone got, and the usual form for such a deal, it usually has a very high degree or reliability--because the information is first hand and based upon written documents. For example, a theater exhibitor does not have a different contract for every film he shows; nor do distributors for every film they distribute. There are SMALL details that change, but not much does change on the distribution side. Believe me, if you want to find a Freestyle contract in circulation around town, it is not hard to find and --unless you see snow in LA, Tucker's isn't any different than anybody else's Freestyle deal. IOW, there was nothing new or groundbreaking about his deal.
Finally, most of the generic stuff you read on the internet about how Distribution deals work is very accurate; for the reasons discussed above. None of it is secret, the industry has few players, and the deals are fairly standard. They didn't invest hundreds of thousands in legal fees over the years to refine these documents simply to discard them when Tucker comes along.