“Hit record! Are we recording?”—Joseph Gordon Levitt

Recently, I’ve been obsessed with Inception (refer to previous article) and spend ample time on the Web searching for anything Inception related. This brings me to my very bad habit of stalking celebrities on Twitter, which I’m sure a good number of us are guilty of.  In my endeavour to satisfy my need to know everything about the actors, I’ve stumbled upon Joseph Gordon Levitt’s online community, HitRECord.org.

I was intrigued by this actor’s innovative mind and entrepreneurial skills.  In short, HitRECord.org is a professional production firm for artists and writers to work on collaborative projects that can potentially be screened at film festivals and be published.

For a long time, I’ve been fed up with mainstream media making the calls for what is to be broadcasted. In my previous article on Toy Story 3, I’ve mentioned my hopes for Asian and Western cultures to collaborate more together, but now I don’t need to sit and wait for something to happen, I can do it myself.

As I browse through thousands of “records” (HitRECord lingo for audio, video, image & text), I was impressed by the diversity of people on the site. There were illustrators from the Philippines, filmmakers from Malaysia, photographers from Germany, etc. Before visiting the site, I had no idea what people in Indonesia were drawing or what people in Ireland were filming. Instead of having mainstream media tell me what artists aboard are doing, the artists are showing me themselves.

As an Asian living in Canada, my artistic influences have always been a mixture of many cultures: Chinese, Japanese, American, Canadian…the list goes on.  HitRECord’s international flavour appeals to me as a transnational citizen and as a media producer.

The combination of different styles of art made it clear that HitRECord was different from Hollywood’s cookie-cutter formula. Not only were artists exposing one another to their own cultural influences, but they were also inviting each other to download and remix their work in group projects.

I was impressed! These people were producing short films for the Sundance Film Festival, making music videos for Sean Lennon, and working with professionals from Hollywood.  Over 300 contributors worked on each project and all of them were paid 50/50!

Needless to say, I signed up for an account. I wanted to become part of this international community. There were no prerequisites. I just had to promise that 1) all my work is original, 2) others can use it in their projects, and 3) HitRECord can profit from it if it was used in a moneymaking collaboration. Of course, I would get a slice of the cake too.

Now, you may say “Hey! There’s Youtube!”. Yes, but Youtube’s always been more of a site for viewing mainstream media and has discouraged users from remixing anything copyrighted. I do get a chance to see what people around the world are doing, but it’s hard for me to collaborate with them since there’s always a “do-not-violate-my-copyright” wall. On the other hand, everything on HitRECord is expected to be reused, hence the 3 rules were set up to keep members in line.

So I’ve been working on projects for the site for about 2 weeks now. I enjoy learning about what people around the world are doing and what they have to say about my work.  They remind that part of being an Asian in North America means to share and appreciate all cultures. That’s what I love about Canada and that’s what I love about this site.  No more flipping through TV channels or passively watching Youtube videos, I’m hitting the record button and I’m definitely not alone.

Images belong to Hitrecord.org: Wirrow, tori & Marke.

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