Mike Jittlov has made his movie Wizard of Speed and Time available via bittorrent. At the time of this posting, I’m one of the seeders of that torrent. I got the files, and using the DVD burner from my work laptop I made my first actual playable-in-a-player movie DVD from a Linux system. Instead of the FBI warning at the beginning is a “karma statement” that as long as you aren’t profiting it, you are free to make a few copies for your friends.
I can remember Jittlov attending at least one of the Atlanta conventions I was at as a young science fiction fan. He was treated like a star and everyone knew about his movie but probably 2% of us or fewer had actually seen it. They probably screened the flick at these conventions, but I’ve never once in 20 years watched any lengthy video at any con. There’s always too much socializing to do to sit in the video room and watch movies. Thus, it makes me happy to have the DVD in my hands ready for me to watch it. As I gather from reading about it, the main villain of the piece is the big machine film industry so that’s right in my philosophical pocket for sure.
This is another case where it makes perfect sense to give away a movie. Jittlov is hoping to get enough attention from this to get some donations. If he builds up a little capital he then wants to redo some of the special effects and remaster it for a commercial DVD release. If all this comes to pass, the most obvious market to buy a spiffed up DVD are the people who downloaded the original release for free. If only he made this release “registerware”, with a request up front to register your email address with him then he’d be building up a catalog of people interested in his work. See how this ecology almost creates itself? The enemy isn’t the people who experience your work without paying the toll, the enemy is time and obscurity and an attention-starved world. I’d love to see Jittlov pull this off, get the mindshare and money and then release a killer definitive DVD. For us SF loving children of the 70s and 80s, this is a very cool blast from the past.
If you are at all interested, grab that torrent while it is hot.