Two Fists One Heart is a new family drama film from Australia, centered on the story of a young boxer. The film was released widely yesterday in theaters across Australia and to help promote the film, the producers have created a stand-alone site, Cut Your Own Scene, where fans can download rushes of the film for free under a CC BY license. This means that footage from the film can be put to any use as long as the source is acknowledged and there is a link back to the official movie page.

The idea to use CC for this footage came Bronwen Clune of Norg Media, an Australian media company, who had this to say on the motivation for the plan:

“It’s not often you get the ear of major film players and personally I have always thought creative commons is an underutilized concept in the film industry. I see this as an opportunity to prove in some way that the web and it’s culture of sharing and share-alike is a good thing for creative industries

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the producer mentioned that they had a lot of great footage they weren’t able to use in the film – more than usual – and I suggested to him we not let it be wasted and we release it for anyone to mashup and play with. To me, the thought of footage being wasted and unused when someone could make something really creative with it was a real shame. There are so many people out there cutting great videos and posting them on YouTube, but the biggest barrier is often having the footage to play with. This way we could give them something to use – and the footage is what professional editors deal with – and promote the film at the same time – it was a win-win.”

As further incentive to use the footage, the five best scenes will be posted on the Two Fists One Heart promotional site. These scenes will be selected by Bill Russo, head of Editing at the AFTRS and the creative team from Two Fists One Heart. Russo will also personally give the winners editing advice in regards to both their specific clips and their careers in general.