Open source film making

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In a previous SurfFoo, I pointed to an idea about Open Source Filmmaking.

Basically the idea is that directors make all the raw footage of their documentaries freely available, to allow their audience to see the uncut picture, the whole truth so to speak. Thus, the audience can edit their own version of the documentary.

I also see some pitfalls with this idea (I tried posting a comment on the original site, but there you have to register first. Jeez, I thought this was web 2.0, and OPEN source. Anyways…)

• How will you make money?
• As pointed out by others, — especially with documentaries — there is a whole lot of raw footage (100 hours of video for a 1 hour doc is not unheard of.) To edit a good documentary you need lots of time. Why would anyone invest their time to edit - for free supposedly - something that has already been edited before.
• How will you go about distribution of the film. Why should a TV station pay for the rights, if all raw footage is freely available
• The idea totally ignores the directors impact. The director first comes with the idea, and according to that idea, the raw footage is shot. And according to that idea, the final film is cut. If people want to make their own films, they should really do the whole process.
• Filming - like photography - can never ever ever be objective. It is all about choosing the moment, the location, the framing, the sound, the lens, the lighting, the exposure, the camera angle, the camera speed, the colour temperature, the questions, the tone of the questions, your behaviour before the shoot, your clothes, the microphone, placement of microphone, make-up, etc. (you get the idea). This is not a weakness, it is the very nature of filming, and ever so more of documentaries.

I know that in the software world there is Linux, but usually Open Source is connected with smaller scale projects. I cannot see the Open Source idea producing well researched, gripping, relevant, balanced documentaries.