…crazy as loons
Sasha Explains It All
NHTA Overview: Art For Art’s Sake
Let’s cut right to the bone here, folks: No NHTA art, from painting to big budget films to community theater to musical acts, is done for profit, and it is all government subsidized.
Even more different from you humans, the line between Art and Science is pretty blurred. We can appreciate a well built beaver dam as much as a great vaudeville act or a well designed computer program. There is beauty and joy in everything.
Now, this does not mean we ooh and aah over everything. We have personal tastes, same as you. I love dogpunk and metal music, but my boyfriend Sam is more into rockabilly. My friend Jadra, a tiger, loves kinetic sculpture, while I like, and own, great landscape paintings.
But on to all our artists being government funded. They are. If you are an artist, you generally get the equivalent of about $100.00 a month, plus about half that for supplies. Some artists get more, maybe twice as much.
But wait, you exclaim in your amusing human style, that’s not enough money to live on!
It sure as fuck is! Re-read my last post, folks. We do not pay for housing, basic food, transportation, healthcare, education, or most necessities of modern life. We only pay for luxury goods, and even then, we don’t pay a lot.
Internet connections? FREE
Basic cable (which for you is an expensive “everything” package)? FREE
Museums (not very large in most cases, due to our short history)? FREE
Admission to movies, concerts, stage shows, etc? About half a buck per person.
Hell, even admission to one of our theme parks is only about $3.00 each.
So, we NHT can get by on way less money than you need.
Now let’s get on to how movies work in the NHTA.
Let’s say that some young director want’s to remake “Goodbye, Blue Eyes”, one of my favorite films, about a cat who has to leave her human to go help the NHTA effort to create a cat Sanctuary.
This director goes to the Arts Ministry and tells them what he wants to do. They approve it and since his request is for 50,000 credits (call it $150,000.00 USD), he is approved for 55,000, “in case of unforeseen circumstances”. Because that’s how we roll.
So now, Young Director starts gathering up his cast and crew. Pretty much everyone is doing it for love, not money, so the budget is okay. Additionally, many folks on a film crew do double duty. Actor not filming today? They might be painting a set or doing something else. Crew member not busy? They might be an extra in a crowd scene. Even big name actors do this. My brother Luke used to help set up scenery, and his wife used to help with meal prep.
So the movie, shot on digital since about 1990, gets made. The way things work is that the first 100,000 credits go back to the Arts Ministry, because we NHT always repay debts very generously. After that, the director and producer get about .01% of the gross, actors and crew get half that much.
Oh, sounds like very little money to you?
Let me point out that there are about 10 billion of us and we are movie watching fans. A kid’s 15 minute short of his friends playing the Crazy Game will get 300 million views, and even if it’s free to watch, most of those viewers will send Arts a buck or two in appreciation. A big hit movie, like “Pigs VS Monsters” might get an audience of 6 billion over a month, raking in 3-4 billion credits.
And most of those credits, including the filmmakers slice, get returned to the government so more movies can be made. Because who needs a shitload of $$$ when you can help more art get created?
What goes for movies goes for paintings and music and live shows and everything else. And the science connection? Well, I’ll just say that the Great Museum in Gorilla City has a display of my various styles of ottopuses, mutant insects and mutant plants, all under the banner of “The Art of Science and the Science of Art.”
Until next time,
Dr. Sasha Jane Cross, PhD, MD.
The Dociverse Blog 