Synopsis: Legendary producer Ted Hope explores how digital technology can help film-makers regain control of their work, from creation to marketing.

Hey, you. Yes, you with the DV camera. Feeling pretty smart because you can make movies without a Hollywood film crew, huh? Don't be. According to the producer of American Splendor, you're only tapping a fraction of your true indie potential.

In a polemical keynote speech at Power to the Pixel, part of this month's Times BFI London Film Festival, legendary US film mogul Ted Hope called upon directors to stop obsessing over the "false victory" of gaining access to the tools of production.

Instead, he argues, we need to get involved with what happens after a film is edited and "take control of what was always ours: the six pillars of cinema".

According to Hope, digital technology already gives film-makers access to the processes of content creation and production. That leaves four remaining ‘pillars’: discovery, participation, promotion and presentation.

The first of these is discovery. Rather than seeing the marketing of a film as a purely commercial activity, Hope believes, we should treat it as part of the narrative process.

“The sell is part of our creation,” he said. “We enter our stories by the path the piper of marketing lays down in front of us.”

Accordingly, Hope called upon film-makers to create short-form works – teasers, bonus material and spin-offs – in parallel with their movies, in order to ‘seed’ the story into the public consciousness: via video channels, social networks or games.

Part of this process is simply making use of material that is generated as a natural part of film-making: footage that would otherwise end up on the cutting-room floor.

But artists need not confine themselves to traditional formats. In his assault on the second remaining pillar, participation, Hope pointed out that the artwork of cult US singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston – the subject of one of his own documentaries, The Devil and Daniel Johnston – has now been turned into an iPhone game.

“We have to ask ourselves what [parts of a film project] would make a fun widget or application,” he says. “I envision a whole class of fourth-graders learning who Daniel Johnston is through this game. That would be a better world, I think.”

Hope also called upon directors to blur the boundaries of ‘fictional’ projects, by recording the process by which the movie itself is made.

Such documentary footage can function as the kind of seed material discussed above. However, the process also plays a role in reclaiming Hope’s third remaining pillar of cinema: promotion.

By allowing the audience members to view the early stages of a project, the film-maker effectively co-opts them into the role of a supportive friend or family member watching an early rough cut.

“We have to allow the audience to get to know the creators,” he said. “We have to let them in, and on an equal basis.”

Not only is such an audience predisposed to treat the finished film more kindly when it eventually appears, it may actively help to conquer the final pillar: presentation.

Hope believes that film-makers should provide the public with ready-made tools to create their own posters, trailers and fan fiction; furnish them with study notes; and provide “totemic items” from the film that they can carry into the world around.

“Some may call it merchandising, some may call them fetish objects, but as film-makers we’ve restricted ourselves [by only providing] a single product,” he said.

The result, as Hope sees it, would be a discipline that “erases the division between content and marketing, between art and commerce, between creation, presentation, and appreciation.”

“Cinema is no longer an isolated, location-centric experience, but an ever-present and consistent part of our lives,” he argues.

Such a holistic view of film-making will prove alien to many, even those within the film-making community.

One respondent to Screen International’s report on the conference calls it “nonsense on so many levels: your typical ‘the sky is falling’ bullshit” (read the full article here). Another audience member asked Hope if he were calling for directors to become CEOs of their own limited companies.

Before jumping into the argument on one side or the other, it’s worth remembering that the story above is only a brief – and necessarily incomplete – summary of a rapid and closely argued presentation, the full notes for which can be found on Hope’s blog (read them here).

Hope himself is keen to stress that his ideas are not a template for future cinema: just a series of proposed best practices.

“It keeps me awake at night thinking there’s so much to do,” he said. “But whether we call [the result] cross-platform, transmedia or good old cinema, we will do it.”