How Kevin Spacey Inspired ascribe.io
We are all creators now.
ascribe is a service to help creators share their valuable works directly to consumers with an unbreakable chain of authenticity. Take a tour here.
It wasn’t his portrayal as the ruthless, diabolical Francis Underwood in the Netflix series House of Cards. It was a lecture he gave in Edinburgh.
Two years ago, almost to the day, I was relaxing in a sweltering Bangkok hotel, scrolling through my Twitter feed. I stumbled across a couple of posts about Kevin Spacey giving a speech.
I mean, who’s isn’t a fan of Kevin Spacey?
Intrigued, I clicked through to find a video of him not as an actor, but as the real life Kevin Spacey, giving a speech to the audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. It was no ordinary speech. Spacey was clear and passionate about advocating for supporting and encouraging talent.
And he did it by sharing his own personal story. When he was 13 years old, he met Jack Lemmon. Jack encouraged him to pursue acting and over several decades, became a mentor. He spoke about how Jack would talk about the early days of TV in the 1950’s. At that time, people experimented with total abandon to discover how best to use the new medium.
Creators Always Face Resistance
Sympathizing with the challenges creative talent face, he gave the example of Hill Street Blues, the hit series that almost never was. Focus groups had described the program as “depressing, violent and confusing.” But after a slow start, the show became a huge success. And the template from Hill Street Blues was then used for over a dozen hit TV series ranging from The Sopranos all the way to House of Cards.
Creators Need to be Encouraged
Channeling the voice of Sir David Lean, director of Lawrence of Arabia, he implored to the older, controlling establishment to give young talent a chance:
”I don’t think we do enough. And like David Lean, I’m disappointed. Disappointed this industry doesn’t do more to support new talent …I want to encourage the best of the storytellers coming up … because I believe ‘sending the elevator back down’, Jack Lemmon’s philosophy he handed down to me.”
Every Creative Medium Needs Time to Mature
Cautioning the establishment that it needs to give new talent the time to emerge and find their own voice:
“It takes every artistic medium a number of decades to find its footing and be recognized as a legitimate art form. Novels were not taken seriously at first because they were not poetry. Photography was seen as inferior to painting for its first 50 years. It took decades for film to graduate from cheap nickelodeon entertainment for the masses to something considered to be a fine art.”
Talent Can Spring Up Anywhere
Emphasizing that revolutionary and innovative programming comes from the creatives:
”We all know that it’s always been about creative talent, right? And I’m not just talking about emerging talents, because talent can come from anywhere and anyone. Talent comes in all shapes and sizes; we should be open to discovering those with a lot of experience and those with no experience.”
Reiterating the imperative to nurture talent and take risks, he went on;
“I believe culture is not a luxury item, it is a necessity.”
Give Consumers What They Want
Using the Netflix model to release a whole season at once as an example, he segued into the idea that audiences aren’t making distinctions on how they consume content. They want content friction free, regardless of boundaries and geography. And they’re willing to pay for it:
“The audience wants the control. They want freedom … Give people what they want — when they want it — in the form they want it in — at a reasonable price — and they’ll more likely pay for it rather than steal it; well, some will still steal it, but I believe this new model can take a bite out of piracy.”
The speech is full of nuggets of wisdom, but these are the main parts that resonated with me.
Why?
We are all creators now.
Problems Digital Creators Face
Most of the value being created now is digital. If we are serious about nurturing and supporting new talent, we need to solve the inherent problems of digital.
And the main problem for creative digital content? Digital is copied and shared at no cost while attribution to the creator is lost. Creators are not fairly paid and consumers lose control of being able to have an authentic connection to the creator. Attribution is the key to connect creators to consumers.
Today, ideas are explored and expressed in a myriad of ways. But one thread ties them all together: they are all expressed digitally. The creations can be more traditional like books, music and photography, or emerging such as digital and computer based art, 3D designs, or virtual worlds.
Everyone is generating content that can be shared, pinned and Tweeted. An idea can spread and take flight, like a meme, but the creator is rarely mentioned and easily forgotten.
In our digital times, it’s second nature to share your work with the world on the internet. But sharing is a double-edged sword. A creator gets exposure, but risks losing control of how the work is being used and where it’s going. By sharing, the creator gives up the chance to be paid.
The model isn’t sustainable. There’s a lot of talent out there that won’t be developed because they’ll be focused on paying rent and not creating if we can’t find a way to reward them and their work in a digital environment.
There has to be a solution that allows work to be shared and creators to get paid.
That’s why we founded ascribe. One year ago, we set out to help creators to claim attribution for their work and to build an unbroken line between them and the consumer.
The best example is digital art. An artist creates an artwork that should be shared, appreciated and rise in value over time. Knowing the problems of digital, collectors need to trust the gallery or marketplace to know that they are buying authentic works directly from the artist. But the chain of authenticity is easily broken or lost in today’s world.
Where Authenticity Has Value
Our company is built on the idea consumers want authentic work directly from an artist or creator.
In our digital age, where copies are cheap and limitless, the only thing of value is authenticity. It’s the authenticity of knowing you are buying something real, with a chain of provenance and a trusted story.
To start the chain of authenticity, we give creators the ability to register their work using revolutionary blockchain technology. Once registered, creators can share it with the world freely, and their attribution is preserved forever, without DRM or watermarking.
Consumers Want Authenticity Now
On the flipside, a consumer or collector using ascribe can make sure the digital work they buy, is directly tied back to the original creator — so they know they are buying authentic, digital works.
It’s a win-win that gives consumers more control to support the creator directly, while locking-in the attribution to the creator forever.
With ascribe, we are supporting all creators. We give them a path to get rewarded fairly, while contributing fresh, new ideas and innovation, that enrich our culture.
It’s one year since we established ascribe and two years after Kevin Spacey’s talk. Here’s hoping there are many more years ahead of us.
Take a tour of ascribe at: https://www.ascribe.io/tour/ and sign-up for an account to start ascribing your authentic work.
Bruce Pon is the CEO of ascribe.io, a service to help creators share their valuable works directly to consumers with an unbreakable chain of authenticity. Email your comments to bruce@ascribe.io. His Twitter handle is @brucepon.
