Getting Paid, Part II: The 13 Most Insidious, Pervasive Lies of the Modern Music Industry

Real money is in selling those DVD's at screenings....

In my last blog post, I mentioned an article that tore apart the conventional wisdom about making money in the "new" music industry.  I finally found it, The 13 Most Insidious, Pervasive Lies of the Modern Music Industry, by Paul Resnikoff, published last week in the Digital Music News.

It is really worth reading by anyone involved in any kind of media creation.  Much of this conventional wisdom will sound vaguely familiar to people in the film world.   And isn't horrible bandwidth in the U.S. really the main protection the domestic film industry has right now from suffering massive amounts of high quality downloading by regular folks?

Regardless, the article is worth a read.

My favorites from the article:

Lie #1: Great music will naturally find its audience.

Lie #2: Artists will thrive off of 'Long Tail,' niche content.

Lie #8: Kickstarter can and will build careers.

Lie #10: Google and YouTube are your friends.

Lie #13: 'Streaming is the future...'

Someone is Making Money

Interesting story here.  Arianna Huffington is being sued by bloggers who created free content for her site, which she recently sold for $315 million.

So, let me get this straight.  If you create content for free, whether out of passion or because you think it will lead to paying work, someone else is going to take what you've done and try to make money off of it regardless?  Really, I've done plenty of free work and I understand how it is used in the entertainment industry to grow your career, work with awesome people or do things that you may not have been able to do otherwise.   I still do free work for people I know and like, it's fun to have a shared passion with old and new friends.

But, it's not a business model.  Unless you can make up for the no income part with volume.  I am constantly amazed that there are people out there who don't understand that if you don't make money, you won't be creative because you aren't sustainable.  Being able to sustainably support yourself is an ongoing radical act of creativity. When you're 25 and living in your parents' house it doesn't seem so important but it gets clearer as time passes.

Surprisingly, to people who take a  more black and white view of life, I welcome the new world into which we are heading:  low-cost or free content, aggregated by companies and fed back to consumers at a profit.  It's what people seem to want, and the idea that people are interested in what each other have to say is encouraging.  Even if what they have to say isn't always well-formulated or presented in an artful visual manner, there are some moments of real clarity that come out of this cauldron of living culture.   

My only message is: keep your eyes open, and make wise choices for yourself.

Who Comes Up With These Anyways?

 Home, suite home

This Wall Street Journal blog post lists the "Top 10 Dying Industries."  Included in it is Video Post Production Services.  Has post production been hit any harder than any other aspect of the entertainment world?  I am really curious as to how they measure this.   These kinds of lists are kind of silly: best company in the world to work, best place in America to live.....How do they measure this, is it only large post-production houses, what do they consider Video Post Production Services....sometimes it's amazing the authoritative tone that these things take on without any supporting information.

Happiness, like opportunity, lies in the eyes of the beholder, whether it's in Irvine or South Philly,  in your home post suite (i.e., bedroom) or at Deluxe.

Ari Emanuel Speaking about the Future Media Landscape

This is a very interesting conversation with Ari Emanuel, Hollywood super agent at the recent Web 2.0 Summit (whatever that's supposed to mean).  Some of the things that he says about the future of media are similar to points that I have been making.  Of course, the difference is that he actually knows about what he is speaking.   The future is coming quickly and for small players, the window of opportunity is getting smaller as the big players start to actually figure out what is happening.  Agility and the ability to pull together sophisticated media production and marketing quickly by leveraging technology and the incredible wealth of knowledge available to everyone with an internet connection will be as important for indies as it is for Lady Gaga.

Hope everyone is having a great holiday.  Much exciting news coming in the next couple of months.

The Burden of Dreams

I have been a little silent lately.  There is a lot going on, in mid-November I am going to Brazil to help shoot a film in the Amazon about a non-profit that is doing a sustainable development project.  I have also been thinking a lot about what I am doing, professionally.  That, is a dangerous thing in the film business.   It is an industrial workplace, geared towards grinding out film after film, with everyone hoping that each one will advance them a tiny step towards their ultimate goal or at least help them pay their rent.

I have a somewhat unpopular view.  There are too many films being made.  What?  Ok, more precisely, there are too many films being made that are not adding anything to the conversation about film or life, or even the conversation about the potential of technology in media production.  Does the world need 10,000 short films that are basically variations on the same thing, over and over and over again even if they are shot on the newest camera?  Hard question, particularly when the industry of film schools is churning out thousands and thousands of bright eyed graduates who are sold a dream (and very high tuitions) every year and the industry of film festivals is selling the same dream (news flash, most film festivals are about tourism and economic development).  It is a big machine that sucks you up, regardless of your intentions.  I have been disappointed to recently see a few really interesting projects, innovative in structure or process, gradually become "regular" projects because that is where the positive feedback comes from the system.

Anyway, I hope to share some of my thoughts in the not-too-distant future about, well,  possible futures in media creation.  There are a lot of really interesting possibilities out there, even if the current tendency is to milk the present model to death.  I am a firm believer that, for the most part, it is human nature to only change when we must.  In the meantime, I will satisfy my current need to do something that will hopefully be of use on the ground for people doing important, difficult (and unglamorous) work.  I will be working hard to let them tell their own stories, a far harder job than many people realize.  We all like to overlay what we know, or think, instead.  In this age of media over-simplification, vilification of those who think differently and "instant experts," I think we can all use a lot more small dollops of little truths from those who do not have the time to have a media presence.  I don't pretend to have answers, but hopefully I can at least learn to start asking some good questions.

Destroy what we do not understand or,  just try to make money off of it?

Is it me, or does Werner look kind of buff in this?

River City

I had an iPad/Alexa/DSLR/DaVinci dream in 4K/3D last night.

Am I the only person out there who gets weary of all the shuck and jive going on in the creation of culture?  Blogs that are promoting technology, selling dreams to sell themselves by association?  Tweets that are just personal brand building?  I have to admit that, at times, I find it extremely discouraging that the new normal for making ground-level culture seems to often be so cynically capitalistic, particularly when we have so recently seen on a large scale just how likely this mindset is to fail and leave us all to flail on our own.  I'd like to think that we are all more than personal brands.  Don't get me wrong, I love technology and know that there are extremely liberating aspects to what is happening right now.  But just how real are these "relationships" that we claim to be building in the ether?  Are we all just salesmen?

Every time I log into my Blogger account, there it is, the monetize button.  Is that all we can aspire to now, to be little Mad Men?  Is that all culture makers can aspire to, being productive sub-units in Adam Smith's dream?  It seems to be an unquestioned assumption now, internalized by even the most ground-level culture makers.  My hope is that people will realize at some point, you are doing it all on your own anyway, create your own path and do what feels right for you.  You don't necessarily have to follow the "new" rules any more than you need to follow the old.

And for heaven's sake, please stop buying technology and throwing it away, replacing devices every few months.  Somewhere, there is an extremely poor person disassembling your "recycled" piece of technology and most likely getting poisoned (and poisoning their local environment) doing it.  Really, it's not ok.  The questions I ask myself are:  Can I do what I want without the new upgrade?  Will I make any money off of it?  Not perfect, I know, but at least it keeps in check the mindless upgrade beast that lurks in all of our hearts.  OK, no more cranky posts for a long, long time.

On a positive note, I'd like to mention a blog that I've found that I like quite a bit by Brad Bell.  It's really quite nice, beautiful and an interesting mix of technology, film, social concerns and their intersection.

I Want My (3D) YouTube TV

Come with us on a trip to the 3D future!

Zowza.  It's starting to look like the early 90's all over again.  Sony has just announced that they will be supporting 3D YouTube video on the PS3.  Why is this like the early 90's?  Well, they are supporting Flash and promoting that as a 3D video player, lining up Sony, Google and Adobe against Apple.  The stars are aligning again for another battle of a generally inferior technological standard (Flash) promoted by "PC" against the upstart technologically superior HTML 5.0 (at least in non-3D, I need to research HTML 5.0 and 3D) being promoted by Apple.  I wonder where Microsoft stands in this battle.  Frankly, I liked the world a lot better when Google was lined up with, and not against, Apple.

This whole 3D thing is either going to bust open and be ubiquitous or is going to be another spectacular flameout, with dens across America littered with unused/unusable 3D televisions.  Click here for a short and interesting history of 3D film.  The most interesting fact is that prior to Avatar, the most financially successful (adjusted for inflation) 3D movie was a softcore porn flick, The Stewardesses.

Free the Bits

Is there latency in your packet shaping, or are you just glad to see me?

It has been speculated for years that bandwidth providers (that'd be phone and cable companies) in the U.S. are slowing innovation and capacity increases on their networks.  Don't take my word for it, even the conservative Wall Street Journal is finally on board.  Why would they want to do that?  It seems mostly like a waiting game, trying to put off the day when entertainment users can download content as easily as music lovers were able to download mp3's back in the day.   These companies fear the day that their lucrative (and in the case of cable companies, local monopolies) businesses models that have served them so well are changed.   The companies that own the pipelines and distribution are increasingly the companies that own the content,  say NBC/Comcast or Time Warner.

What does that mean, besides the fact the people pay huge cable bills and still cannot pick (and only pay for) exactly what content they want delivered?  Now there's a radical idea, not paying for the Golf Channel because you don't want it.   For one thing, it means that innovation in new media forms are being stifled.  There are people out there with ideas out there that cannot be tried because they just are not feasible given data constraints.  It is in the interest of these companies to keep you passively watching cable TV and at best letting you DVR it so you can watch it on your schedule.  Forget interactivity, forget mob-sourcing, forget just about anything that isn't pretty much just a sickly derivative of the same stuff that's we've been watching for the past 60 years.

This has been a pet peeve of mine for years, especially with regard to decreased innovation.  Why is this important?  Culture is big business in the U.S.  It is a huge export product as well as being a political tool.  Will Hollywood become like GM and lose it's market share and profitability to other foreign producers through willfully slowing innovation and clinging to dying business models in order to control (slowly dwindling) profits?  Remember, in the 1960's it seemed inconceivable that Japanese cars were anything other than oddities to American consumers.   People laughed at the cars, their size and their quality.  With the democratization of media production, isn't there a whole world full of people out there now with their own media creation dreams?

The U.S. currently ranks #28 in Internet access speed and and "is not making significant progress in building a faster network."  The average download speed in Korea is four times faster than it is in the U.S.  And upload speeds, key for interactive media, those are even slower, usually by an order of 2-3X.  How long will consumers raised on interactivity and the belief that they are all media creators be willing to live with that?  And given the recent performance of U.S. mobile broadband providers like AT&T, will the future be more of the same?

The Good Old Days are Gone

Interactive,  multi-media experience circa. 1973

Nice short article here in Advertising Age with observations about how media consumption patterns are going to change, quickly, with the coming generation of infants that are immersed from birth with multi-touch, interactive media tools.  The human mind is a plastic thing, malleable, and many people are predicting the demise of the type of deep thinking that we typically associate with reading and, well, reflective thinking.  Interestingly, there's a decent NY Times article here today that explores the effects of immersing the human brain in an increasingly digital environment.  It pays to remember that  generally TV and most film never induced a deep-thinking type of brain activity, so I guess the difference is the length and type of media immersion that we are experiencing.

We don't understand the long term evolutionary impacts due to changes to the format, interactivity or length of media experience.  But, I think it is safe to say that media creators need to be thinking hard about what they're doing.  The old dominant command and control structure of large media companies seems even more vulnerable as young consumers search for more personal and, well, interesting media experiences rather than the one-size-fits-many approach that is still surprisingly prevalent today.  Or, it is possible that alternatively the bulk of society will be feeding their children slightly modified interactive marketing intended to create lifelong brand loyalties from infancy, delivered through ever cheaper e-waste produced offshore.  Only time will tell the story on that.

It should be a really exciting time to be a young media creator.  Many of the constraints of the past are being thrown aside and the people who can visualize the future will be the new powers.  Media creation is more decentralized, less "heavy industry" and more nimble than it used to be.  People starting small production companies now should have relationships with developers and information architects as well as with camera people, electricians or animators.  They will also require new types of creatives.  People who understand how to create satisfying and intimate experiences for the users (note, not consumers) of their media.  Personally, I think it's good and that there will be some real pioneers in the next few years who breakthrough in reaching people in a way they've never been reached by media before.  I think it's reasonable to expect that in the not-too-distant future, the kids of today will be laughing (hopefully) at what we accepted as entertainment.

We're ready for the future here.

Will the future of media production be more "boutique-oriented"?  There will probably be an element of that start-up type culture, which will eventually grow into a more complex, mature industry.  Disruptions to the current model are just beginning and people who are waiting for things to get "better" may be disappointed.  I can't help but wonder whether the schools that are churning out "film school" graduates, particularly the 1 year or 6 month certificate-type programs, are preparing their students for careers in 1995 Hollywood.   It seems to me that the future media maker is going to have to be more and more nimble and manage their career in ways that unionized workers never had to consider.   But, if you're young and smart, you should be excited because your time is coming and our environment will be more media saturated than ever.   Those who don't adapt may be relegating themselves to a never-ending life of low paying, non-unionized freelance work, with no benefits and scrambling even for that work.  

I'd really love to hear other people's thoughts about what the future is going to bring to media creation.  People seem to be getting so distracted by things like 3D and new cameras (and learning endless workflows that seem to become obsolete in a year) that I worry they are not seeing the bigger picture.

Back to the Future(s)

We have perhaps reached a tipping point in Hollywood, film investing can now have absolutely nothing to do with stories, or even making films (yes, I know what the cynical among you are thinking).  The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved creation of "a market for trading futures contracts based on the predicted box-office revenue of Hollywood movies."  That's right, a film futures market.  On the bright side, if you fund a film you will probably be able to hedge your investment and bet against your own film's profitability.  It worked great for sub-prime mortgages!

Read about it here.

Think Like a Pirate

It is worth taking a look at this video if you create media.  He doesn't say anything that, if you're really paying attention, you don't know already.  But, he does say it clearly and concisely.  I like at the end how he says off-hand, "people have moved on from Blue-Ray."



The lessons:

The days of tightly controlling your product are, or are nearly, over.   The Blue-Ray "consortium" example is a great one.  High licensing fees and lots of rules have made many people just avoid it until a new means appears (online distribution).

There will always be "Hollywood."  However, it will exist only to make projects that require that type of artistic/financial complexity.  It seems doubtful that all those union jobs that have disappeared are coming back.  Just ask all those people who worked for record labels in the 90's.  Right now it feels like a lull in the storm for film and television.  Once the stranglehold is broken on bandwidth, many of the large media producers also own the cable companies, all bets are off.

Trust

When's my movie deal?

The name of this article says it all, Thanks to All Those Shills on Twitter and Facebook, People Don't Trust Their Friends Anymore.  Now, hurry up and sell your camcorder that you use to mostly make web video or DVD's and buy a RED.  Or is it, sell your RED and buy a DSLR to shoot a documentary?  Sell your DSLR and buy an entire 3D work-flow?  Then, spend every waking moment learning twisted work-flows for each new product out there that has been social-media marketed directly to producers and directors by a blog/twitter feed/Facebook friend, etc. that they follow.

I almost choked the first time I saw an ad on Craigslist looking for a DP to include a RED with lenses in their day rate.  Are there that many of those cameras out there already?  Don't get me wrong, I love all the technological advancements of the past few years.  It's truly an amazing time to be a creative person, but I always have to stop and ask myself "what's in it for me?"  Will it help me pay my rent?  Will it make me creative in a way that the technology that I am currently using can't?  Would I be happier spending a little of that time, money and energy on life, my family and friends?  And, what's in it for the people pimping the dream?  Sometimes it feels as though we have so thoroughly internalized all the hype that we are doing the manufacturers marketing for them.  That wouldn't be of the plan, would it?  Hopefully, there is more for us to aspire to be, as individuals, than unique brand identities cross marketing with other brands.

R.I.P. Miramax

Ready to be consolidated?

Nothing seems to signify the end of an era better than the news that Miramax is closing its New York and Los Angeles offices.  It will continue to operate on a small scale after being "consolidated" within Disney Studios.

Indie Apocalypse

For a particularly bleak outlook for independent film, check out this article, extracts from the diary kept by director John Hillcoat during the making of The Road.   The diary ends with this epilogue:

My own new project – with a much-loved script by Nick Cave and a dream all-star cast – has fallen apart. The finance company that we began The Road with has also fallen apart, having to radically downsize to one remaining staff member. The great divide has begun, with only very low-budget films being made or huge 3-D franchise films – the birth of brand films such as Barbie, Monopoly: The Movie – who knows what’s next, Coca-Cola: The Movie?

I end the year appropriately – gazing into the apocalypse of my own industry.

Nice analysis here of the backstory on Cinemablend.  Further signs that the only indie films will be no-budget this year?  While I do think we shouldn't extrapolate too much from the emotional state of one obviously very tired director, I do believe that it is time for the non-mainstream cinema to embrace change and to embrace its changing audience and new economic circumstances.  The cinematic experience, as it is currently exists, is over a century old and stuck in the past.  Funding/distribution?  Maybe not as old of a model, but rooted in an outdated command and control mentality (I am being extremely polite here) that seems destined for a shake-up, analogous to what the record industry went through during the past decade.

Motion Media in Magazines?

The idea of "living magazines" is one example of how media is changing, of how forward-thinking media makers will be able to find new opportunities as old ones evaporate. It also is an example of the "smaller" opportunities (as opposed to the dream of creating motion pictures, big budget T.V. or commercials) that will be available to media makers in the future. I suspect the future will be full of these smaller "disposable" media experiences throughout the day with the more engaging content being interactive.

I do have big concerns about e-waste for this type of media, especially magazines. What are the ramifications of creating largely single-use high tech media experiences?

The downside of this convergence between still photography and motion photography is that both traditional motion picture producers and still photographers are now competing for the same opportunities. In the end, the old rules will still apply: those with a good eye and who can shoot quickly and economically will thrive.

Helicopter Boyz and Your Future

The old ways of doing things are passing more quickly than many people realize. Or as Ted Hope succinctly puts it:

Cinema, in its current concept and execution, is both derived from and depending on a world that we’ve passed by.
• It is no longer is the most complete & representative art form for the world that we inhabit.
• It no longer mirrors how we currently live in the world.
• Cinema is now a rarefied pleasure requiring us to conform to a location-centric, abbreviated, passive experience that is nothing like the world we engage with day to day.

Mobile, light, nimble, ....those are the future media makers. It's actually really exciting, technology is moving so fast that it is already leapfrogging those who want to create old style media by using new technology (that would be the deluge of stuff out there that tries to pass itself off as innovative web-content or some indie film that really is just a low budget imitation of Hollywood film).  More people seem to like to do things now, or at least they want interactivity.  That's a good thing, right?  Does anyone really think that the old passive entertainment model was that great, aside from T.V. network executives?  Social media is just one example of people shaping media to their own world.

The new DSLR's are awesome, especially for people like me who like the discipline of distilling a story down to one frame; the addition of HD video/depth of field is like a gift. But there are lots of little miracles out there that will help change the way we tell stories, so I am equally excited about the S1000PJ's of the world as well (what was used in the Helicopter Boyz performance). What will write the future is how you, the creatives, put it all together. Don't mourn the passing of the old, keep your mind open to the answers that appearing daily and have fun playing with them.

10 Most Watched Web Videos of Summer 2009

Hmmm, what if TV were eliminated and people could distribute whatever they created economically to nearly everyone else in the world? Surely a new golden age of creativity would follow? It does seem that the web really is having a democratizing effect: as a repository and distributor of the lowest common denominator. As Jimmy Cliff said, "give the people what they want."

Here are the most watched web videos, summer 2009. I recommend skipping the videos and just listening to the song. Trust me, you'll be a lot happier and feel a lot better about the future of mankind.

I think one of the greatest fears I have in my life is that I become so overwhelmed by mediocrity that I can no longer tell the difference.

Dogs on a skateboard

God I just love that dog on a skateboard. Hang on baby, Friday's coming.

My current favorite blog, The Business Insider, has been providing an ongoing analysis of the current state of (the lack of) monetizing online content. It looks at Google/YouTube, Hulu, et al. using real numbers to give the state of the art. The bad news? No one, including the big boys, are making money off of content. And the heralded democratization of content creation brought about by online distribution? It says, "content creation is expensive, it takes talent, and lowering barriers for the creation of crap only provides you with more crap." So, professional content isn't making money and we are sinking in a sea of crap made by amateur (or amateurish) content creators, what hope is there? According to the article, "whatever golden tomorrow video may acheive, it won't be driven by the major media companies, at least not in the foreseeable future." Hmmmm, wait a minute. Where's the money going to come from to create the new paradigm, if not from deep pockets or inspired individuals?

The article is deja vu, all over again. It could have been written a few years ago, verbatim. So, why does it seem like we're going nowhere, fast? No one, including a lot of really smart (and well-paid) people, seem to be able to answer that question. The article, while flawed, does raise some good points and is definitely worth a read. For me, another question is, are we starting to approach the end of "free?" Today, Rupert Murdoch announced that all of his publications worldwide will begin charging for certain content. I expect other major online content providers will follow in kind.

Will they succeed? A couple of things seem apparent. First, people don't seem willing to pay for online content alone. They expect some kind of added value. Content creators who can come to terms with that in a big way (and figure out what is the "added value" that people are willing to pay for) will at least survive until this is all sorted out. The other thing, which I repeat over and over again, is that somebody has to pay something somewhere for the content we create. I know it sounds obvious but there are armies of people out there working for free, or close to it, to create content that is not innovative or particularly interesting. Emulating what exists already may be gratifying, "Look, I can do that too," but ultimately is slow death. Unless, you are willing to have another job to subsidize your creativity. But, if you're footing your own bill, why make watered down garbage that emulates TV?

Record Low Year for LA Film and Commercial Production

Chauffeur Queue- BTR

This is a record setting year in Los Angeles filmmaking, according to the Los Angeles Times. I feel pretty happy that I'm starting work next week on an indie feature, even if it is low-budget. It's actually kind of amazing that film production has become such a heavily subsidized industry across the entire country, from Des Moines to Baton Rouge to Asheville to Bridgeport (a quick internet search turns up at least 7 features being shot in Connecticut in 2008--due to their 30% tax rebate), especially given the record box office numbers of the past year. Kind of makes you wonder how taxpayers feel in these states about subsidizing feature films 15%, 25% or more with their money (California does not offer major rebates, incentives, etc. for media production). Especially given that when the free money stops, the productions leave.

Sustainability

On location, France

There are lots of interesting discussions going on out there about sustainable models for filmmaking. I admire the amount of thought that is being put into these discussions. Personally, I think that for the conversation to be truly productive, there should be a discussion defining what sustainable filmmaking is. The funny thing is that I actually completed a sustainable agriculture program in Minnesota a few years back (if you need any pointers about sustainable, pasture raised pork and beef, shoot me a line). These folks were dead-serious about advancing this purpose and had devoted their lives to living (and empowering others to live) sustainable lives through local agriculture. Why? Because they had seen so many people before them fail. I think that some of the things I learned there are definitely applicable to this discussion.

Money, Money, Money
No discussion about sustainable models for filmmaking can be taken seriously without a serious discussion of money. Stories about people making films using different creative methods are always interesting, but the point is about doing it sustainably. What am I talking about? A business plan. Any credible discussion about any model for sustainable filmmaking needs to have the nitty gritty included, expenses, income, fundraising, distrubution, marketing, ROI on every single piece of equipment, etc. The sustainable agriculture people were clear about this: if you don't have the discipline to create a plausible business model on paper (using real world experience and not hopeful numbers), you are 99.99% likely to fail.

Your Soul
A discussion about sustainable filmmaking should also include an evaluation about whether it is psychologically or spiritually sustainable. Sound squishy to you? I don't think asking yourself what you really want from life if squishy. Want a family? What are your financial needs (yes this is an internal question)? What kind of social relationships do you want? Will you be able to create the kinds of projects that you want, that are truly satisfying to your vision? And on and on... You need goals before you can figure out how to reach them. And if you don't do this, ultimately, you're potentially just another miserable person on planet earth, whether you're working in an office or making films.

Me Me Me
How does what you want to do impact others and the world in general? Do you have a way to get crew that is fair to their needs in the longterm? Are you committed to creating your films in responsible way that actually feeds the community of other like-minded filmmakers rather than parisitizing them? How about mitigating ecological impacts, which rightfully should be included if you truly want to be sustainable. That discussion seems very applicable to the new world we seem to be entering.

Process
This is the part of the discussion that seems to usually eat up about 99% of all discussions about sustainable filmmaking. It's important, no doubt. I like to think about Cassavetes' use of 2 cameras and improvisation in his early films as much as the next film nerd. Making interesting films is the heart and soul of the endeavor, unfortunately, it's not the whole endeavor.

This is just a bare bones, off the top of my head, list. Does any of this have anything to do with filmmaking? My experience with sustainable agriculture has taught me that you cannot separate any of these parts from the whole if you are truly serious about being sustainable. Getting there is a lot of work, both from the external and inward-looking points of view. Anything less is, well, unsustainable.