Don Krim – 1945-2011

Don Krim: 1945-2011

This past Friday the film community lost a legend. Don Krim was the president of Kino Films for the last 33 years and in that role he had an immeasurable impact on the film community both within the United States and beyond. He brought works of iconic filmmakers like Wong Kar-Wai, Michael Henneke, and Amos Gitai to American audiences and he passionately believed in the importance of cinema history. He oversaw the remastering and re-releasing of iconic works like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, and Potemkin - the last two of which are available in the US on Blu-Ray courtesy of Don. Kino also released seminal collections of classic works including those of Buster Keaton, Douglas Fairbanks, and Ingmar Bergman. In addition to the classic and foreign works, Kino recently released on DVD important American indies like Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy and Lance Hammer’s Ballast.

Last wednesday Don sent out an email:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

As of Friday, May 13th, I am withdrawing from active participation in the film industry due to health reasons.

It has been a terrific and productive 30 years, first at Kino International and during the last 18 months at the newly formed Kino Lorber.  I am confident that what we have started with Kino Lorber has not only brought into being a respected, medium-sized distribution company – a whole greater than the sum of its parts, as the expression goes – but an enterprise with considerable potential to assume a still broader role in the acquisition and release of important classic and international cinema in North America.

I am sorry that I will not be able to continue to participate, but I will certainly be watching and listening with great enthusiasm.  I extend my deeply felt thanks for your friendship and for our many shared experiences.  These experiences brought us close together and resulted, ultimately, in a large measure of success, success in which we can all take pride.

As we face the future, I wish each of you all and only the best.

Thank you again.

Don

Two days later Don passed away. If ever there was a person who lived great cinema, Don was it.

Among the films that Don released was two by my filmmaking partner, Raphael Nadjari. Our Cannes Competition feature Tehilim in 2007 and the two-part documentary A History of Israeli Cinema in 2009. In 2009, Raphael took the above photo of Don in the Kino offices.

Live Stream of “New Opportunities For Writers” Panel Today @ 2:30

I will be moderating the “New Opportunities For Writers” panel at IFP’s Script 2 Screen conference today, Saturday, at 2:30PM (Eastern). It will be livestreamed on uStream so please check it out. The panelists will be Carol Kolb, Head Writer of the Onion News Network, Ursula Lawrence from the WGA East, and Susan Miller and Tina Cesar Ward from the webseries “Anyone But Me“. The live stream is here:

 

http://www.ustream.tv/flash/viewer.swf
Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV

Amazon Associates Links Made Simple

* If you already know about and understand Amazon Associates links, jump here and get the bookmarklet to make your life easier. *

I’m working on a website today and needed to include some product links to Amazon. When including links on my sites I tend to use Amazon Associates links so, if people buy something, I get a little thank you kick-back from Amazon. It doesn’t cost the user anything and it helps puts a few extra shekels in my pocket at the end of the month.  If you don’t have an Associates account, go get one now, they’re free and easy to use.

The only problem with Associates links is that the ones that Amazon generates for you suck. They are incredibly long and, to someone who doesn’t know html, hard to understand. First, you have to login to your associates account and then you have to go through a multi-step process to generate the html for a text link. Here’s the code for a typical Amazon-generated associates link:

<a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014241056X?ie=UTF8&tag=21releas-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=014241056X”>Up Over Down Under: Special Double-Length Edition (S.A.S.S.)</a><img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=21releas-20&l=as2&o=1&a=014241056X&#8221; width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”" style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />

Let’s take a look at what we have there and then I’m going to show you a way to make it very, very fast and easy.

Let’s first divide this block up into a few key elements:

<a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014241056X?ie=UTF8&tag=21releas-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=014241056X“>Up Over Down Under: Special Double-Length Edition (S.A.S.S.)</a><img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=21releas-20&l=as2&o=1&a=014241056X&#8221; width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”" style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />

The first thing we have is the actual link:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014241056X?ie=UTF8&tag=21releas-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=014241056X

This has a lot of unnecessary and redundant information in it. For example, the ASIN number (the product ID – in this example: 014241056X) appears twice. Why? I haven’t a clue. You have your associates account tag (in this example “21releas-20″) but the linkCode, camp & creative codes are all irrelevant. Lastly, you have a couple prefixes – “/gp/product”. Those are a bit redundant because “gp” stands for “General Product”. So let’s get rid of everything that we don’t need here. What we are left with is actually just this:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/014241056X/?tag=21releas-20

So now we have Amazon’s URL + “dp” (detail product instead of general product) + product ID + our associates tag. And guess what? That’s all Amazon needs. They need to know what the product is and who to credit for the sale. So what’s the rest of it?

Well the green section is the actual linked words that will appear on your page. Go ahead and change that to what you need.

Finally you have this:

<img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=21releas-20&l=as2&o=1&a=014241056X&#8221; width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”" style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />

What does that do? Well, for you? Absolutely nothing… It’s a hidden tracking beacon for Amazon. It calls a tiny (1px x 1px) invisible image from Amazon every time someone comes to your page. It let’s Amazon know how many times their links are viewed rather than clicked. You don’t need it on your page. Technically it makes your page heavier and a little slower to load. Get rid of it.

So, the problem is, doing all that editing is really a pain in the ass. Fortunately I found this great site which has built a bookmarklet that you can put in your browser’s menu bar and will instantly make a link from any Amazon product page. Check it out here.

Google Changes TV

Google just announced a fantastic product. Google TV.

We’ll see what it looks like when it goes live, but it appears to embody so much of what TV needs to do. It seems like someone out there was annoyed by the same things I highlighted in my post on Mark Cuban. The idea is that no longer will TV be hijacked by the tyranny of your local cable operator’s interface. You can now search for content non-linearly. But there’s more: it appears, from the screen shots, that it connects with Amazon & Hulu & Netflix. Search once, find what you’re looking for on your TV schedule or online. This product, in one fell swoops, takes a swipe at services like Speed Cine, AppleTV, Boxee and more.

I, for one, applaud them.

Film Futures

The Comodities Futures Trading Commission approved today the creation of infrastructure for the first ever Hollywood Futures Exchange. There is still another round of approvals to go but it looks like Media Derivatives and Cantor Fitzgerald will both be starting film futures exchanges soon. Cantor Fitzgerald is the company that created and runs the Hollywood Stock Exchange (they are also the company that took a direct hit on 9/11 and for which my friend Kevin McCarthy worked that day, along with 657 coworkers, none of whom survived).

Hollywood has been vigorously fighting the establishment of the exchanges via an MPAA-led coalition. Their written argument is:

“A distributor for a variety of reasons could determine to substantially reduce or expand its marketing budget, which can materially affect opening weekend box office receipts. A major exhibitor could determine to show the motion picture on smaller or larger screens, which can materially affect audience interest and capacity.  (The Media Derivatives exchange) has no effective means to detect or prevent such conduct or to determine whether it was undertaken for valid business reasons rather than to manipulate futures prices.”

Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the following:

“We are additionally concerned about the nature of these movie futures exchanges in the wake of the recent financial crises.”

I actually think those are weak arguments against the exchange. The better argument? The exchange can create it’s own market. Specifically, if you are betting on pork bellies, or gold, or concentrated frozen orange juice, you are assuming that the market is immutable. There is a supply and demand, both of which don’t respond to the market. The market reflects the demand. For example, if there is an early frost then orange juice production might be down, supply would be more limited and prices would go up thus futures would go up (ie: the future price will be higher than it is today so buy now and sell later). The problem with film is that an opening weekend box office can be massively affected by word-of-mouth. If people perceive that a film won’t be successful they’re less likely to go to it. If the stock exchange sees a dropping futures price on a film that could become the tale of the tape for the film – people would hear that the experts think the film isn’t going to be good and they, themselves won’t show up and voila, the market has changed the market.

Why Unions Are Not Your Friend

Dear Reader,

Unions are the enemy of independent film.

I know, I know, they have “indie” deals but at the end of the day, they are your enemy. And now it is starting to show.

Craig Mazin is a very successful screenwriter (SCARY MOVIE 3 & 4) & sometime director (SUPERHERO MOVIE) and the author of a blog that I really enjoy, The Artful Writer. It is definitely worth adding to your RSS feed as he has lots of good insights. Craig is also a former board member of the WGA West and last week he wrote a post On Net Neutrality…

In his post, Craig makes an interesting argument against net neutrality legislation and in particular, WGAw current board member Carleton Eastlake’s assertion that the WGAw should support net neutrality.  Below are some of Mazin’s points from the post and some of my thoughts. But where it really gets interesting is in the comment section which I highlight below. But let’s start with the content of the post:

if we do not have net neutrality, it’s quite easy to see how the major ISP’s could, as part of content provision deals with the studios, throttle or completely block out the major P2P channels. In fact, the efficacy with which this could be accomplished is one of the battle criesfor net neutrality by those who support it. This isn’t a question of conjecture.

Mazin is arguing here that the best thing for writers (and content creators in general) is to let the major ISP’s strike deals with studios as that will ensure that the ISP’s will pay the studios for that content and the studios will pass that money on to the creators.  Craig is being incredibly optimistic here. First, he’s assuming that the ISPs will be paying the studios and not that the studios will be paying the ISPs NOT to be slowed. If I’m an ISP, what’s to stop me from going to each studio and saying: “Hey there, that’s a mighty nice set of films you have there. Would be real shame if something were to slow them down… hehehe”. If Craig would like proof of who is setting payments, take a look at iTunes. You want on the best distribution network out there, you have to play by their rules. You don’t want on the network, fine, you can go sit with all the other people making fortunes in the Capitol Records building these days.

Oh wait… I forgot…. *crickets*

Then Craig is assuming that the studios will share that revenue in a reasonable way. But the reality is that that revenue (if there is any) won’t be generated film by film, it will be an overall deal. A blanket payment for content. How do you, as a content creator, ensure that you’re getting a fare cut of it. This is a fair pricing issue and one which is far more complex than anything the unions have encountered as it doesn’t involve the sale of content. It involves the speed of data. Craig continues:

I’m a big believer in free speech on the internet. However, let’s be honest about P2P networks. They exist almost primarily to circumvent licensing agreements on software, music and video. And they’re stealing money from writers every day. What an odd institution for the WGA to be defending…

Craig’s just wrong here. Some networks are dominated by illegal file sharing but others don’t have any. Take Skype. Yep, the calling service. Guess what, it’s P2P. How about Chat Roulette, the hot site of the moment? Yep, P2P as well. And there are dozens of other examples. If you pass judgement on the whole set of P2P as illegitimate you’re shutting down innovation because you aren’t smart enough to enforce your laws effectively. It’s akin to saying that we should ban highways because a lot of people speed. There are even people using the most “dangerous” of the P2P networks and turning them into powerful marketing and distribution networks for their work. Check out Jamie King’s Vodo if you want to see how that can work. Criags argument is what happens when people who don’t understand technology try to come up with 20th Century solutions to 21st Century issues.

Then comes this exchange with Carleton which I think gets to the most interesting point. First Carleton:

As for maximizing the revenue of the surviving major media companies on the net by allowing a degree of monopolization, that’s a point I’m ready to debate. I agree that no one should want out of spite to reduce the revenue pool that writers and other talent share in from the major companies. But I’d much rather see independent and specialty production and distribution companies also thrive on the Net. Having worked for several years at Cannell, a successful writer-owned TV production and distribution company that expired along with fin-syn “broadcast neutrality”, to coin an analogy, I’ve directly experienced the model of how net neutrality can restore an era of independent production that creates enormous opportunity -and revenue – for writers.

And now Craig’s response:

This is kind of shocking, coming from a board member of the WGAw. Let me get this straight. You favor the economic prospects of individual EMPLOYERS over the economic prospects of individual EMPLOYEES? Cannell the man was a writer. Cannell the company was an employer. As union members, our interests have to first run to the employees, Carleton. I, for instance, write movies for studios. My salary generates dues and P&H contributions to the union. Are you honestly saying that my financial bottom line is less important than the financial bottom line of a company hiring writers for an internet show?

See, the thing is, we’re writers until we’re not writers. The day I create The Mazin Internet Studio and launch a web show and hire writers to write on that web show, I’m an employer. I’m on the other side of the table. That’s not to say that I can’t be a good guy. However, it is to say that my interests as an employer shouldn’t be anywhere in the same galaxy of concern for the WGA as the interests of my employees.

In short, while I think it’s nice that writers can be as entrepreneurial on the web as they wish, the Writers Guild of America has to serve its primary function, which is to protect my interests as an employee. That’s what it’s federally chartered to do. That’s what all labor unions do. It’s fine for the WGA to help its employees grow into businesspeople, but not at the expense of the writers who still get hired to write.

Yes, we want to make sure that there are lots of employers for our services, and in that regard, I understand the desire to avoid anything that feels like it will throttle competition between the employers. But let’s be real…the companies that will challenge Fox, Disney, Sony, Universal, Paramount and Warner Brothers aren’t internet shops set up by individual writers. It’s the other big monsters out there like Microsoft, Google, Clear Channel, etc.

This inspired the following exchange between Craig & I in the comments. First from me (with some edits to avoid repeating points I just made above):

Your proposal to hand over arbitration of download speeds to companies like Verizon and Time Warner means ensuring that independent artists remain out in the cold. Why would Time Warner allow these artist’s work to come over their pipes if they could, instead, throttle that content in favor of work they have a greater profit incentive for. Your position on this Craig is basically saying to independent artists that unless they sign up with a major studio that audiences shouldn’t have the same access to their work.

I am mildly opposed to Net Neutrality legislation for legal reasons (I think it is potentially an unfair restriction on commerce) and I think that companies that choose to create walled gardens of preferred content will ultimately shrink and die under market pressure. We all forget, we’ve seen this before.

AOL once believed that they knew what parts of the internet we would like best and chose to give that, and only that, to us. Then upstart service providers came along and offered people open pipes to any content they wanted.

We know who won that war.

Craig’s response (emphasis added is mine):

With all due respect to my fellow writers who work outside of the studio system, I don’t. I work within it. The WGAw is designed primarily to represent writers who work within the studio system. The vast majority of the WGAw’s financial resources are derived from writers who work within the studio system. Our pension and health is funded by the studios.

So yeah, my opinion is that the WGAw should be more concerned with promoting those of us who work within the studio system. Sure.

So apparently all writers in the WGAw are equal, but some are more equal than others. My response:

But to your point Craig, you are saying not that “it’s best at getting us paid” but, rather, “it’s function should be to ensure those of us who are paid the most continue to be paid the most. If you don’t make as much as me then the Union should be less interested in your opportunities.”

Is the function of a union primarily to help maintain the lifestyle of those who are best off in the union or to ensure that those who are most in need of defense in the union have that defense. Your argument is the former.

By that logic SAG should only do what is in the interest of the top 5% (the WGAw probably the same) since they provide the vast lion’s share of the money to the union – heck, why even bother with covering background actors? I guess I’m surprised to hear that the Union should only support the interests of those who pay it the most in residuals.

I understand your point of view and certainly why it makes sense to you. I respect it. I guess it’s just interesting to hear that the union should prioritize the interests the wealthiest parts of its membership.

In the context of this argument, why should the WGA have it’s low-budget agreements at all?

Craig responds:

Not at all. Not sure how you got that.

My argument is that anyone earning a minimum as part of a Guild job deserves to be defended by the Guild. AND my argument is that virtually all of those people currently work for the studios. AND my argument is that the day any of those people start their own internet production company, they’re no longer someone the Guild must defend for, but rather defend against, because they’ll be employers.

It’s not rich vs. poor. It’s employees vs. employers. Or, I suppose…professional studio writers vs. independent non-studio writers.

Now this sounds reasonable at first blush. But hang on a second. If you have points on a film, points above scale, aren’t you a form of an owner. You have a profit interest in the film that is on a par with the owners of that film. Furthermore, it highlights a serious shortcoming of the WGA, DGA and SAG. The very premise of a union is predicated on the idea of collective bargaining. You take groups of people who have no capacity to individually bargain for better terms and you bundle them all together.

If you work on an assembly line in Michigan and you demand $1 an hour more than you’re being paid now they could fire you and replace you with someone else who can do your job. You have no individual value and thus no capacity to individually bargain. You are replaceable. But that’s not the case with a writer. Diablo Cody writes Juno and gets an Oscar. The next film she writes she gets paid WAY above scale because she now has individual bargaining power. What then is the purposes of the union? In Craig’s world the union is a collection agent. It’s there to do accounting work. But that’s not what they’re built for. Craig is asserting that unions should represent the interests of the members who contribute the most, but those members generally aren’t subject to the minimums that the union bargains for since they are the individual bargainers. Jack Nicholson or Tom Cruise gain nothing from being members of SAG. Joe Schmoe who just moved to Hollywood gains a a lot, but Craig says that he who pays the most should get the best terms.

My response to Craig:

What about the writer who receives points beyond basic residuals? They should now be considered someone to defend against as well, no? They are now a part of the production entity with an ongoing profit interest in the work that is in line with the producers (employers) and now should be treated as such.

You carve out an interesting role for the WGA with the following criteria for union support:

1) You must work with studios.

2) You must not have an ownership interest in your work.

Again, there is a logic to that position it just seems to narrow the role of the union and ensure that up and coming writers will likely want nothing to do with it until they’ve signed (an increasingly elusive) studio deal.

[snip - diversion section here on union history]

Also, I put the question back to you, since you say “professional studio writers vs. independent non-studio writers” – what then is the point of the low budget agreements?

Craig never answered that question.

So I ask you, what is the point of the union for the independent world if it’s primary function, according to members of it’s board, should be to represent the interests of those who earn the most by working for studios and don’t own their content in any way?

Thoughts?

The Soft Tyranny Of Bad Exemplars

Reed Martin from NYU has a post over at YouTube’s Biz Blog about the YouTube movie rental experiment during Sundance.  While the actual numbers were disappointing (probably not least of which to the producers participating – though they did get great exposure), Reed is making the case that this is a harbinger of successes to come.  I agree with him. This is the future for small indie films. Get your film out there on as many platforms as possible and grab what revenue you can.  But Reed then says this:

From now on, the Lee Daniels’ (“Precious”) and Kathryn Bigelow’s (“The Hurt Locker”) of tomorrow will be able to bypass traditional gatekeepers and monetize their hard work and creativity using only an HD camera, a fast laptop and a decent Internet connection. Indeed, the day when nearly everyone has made an independent film, in the same way that most people today have both an e-mail address and a Facebook page (and perhaps a blog and a Twitter account), may not be far off.

What?  I mean… what?

Those two statements are just bizarre.  Let’s look at them.

First, looking at PRECIOUS and THE HURT LOCKER (both very, very good films that I am thrilled got made and are having success), why on earth would those films want to bypass traditional gatekeepers. Reed is acting as though those films have been somehow hurt financially by the gatekeepers. Nothing could be further from the truth.  PRECIOUS was acquired in a multi-million dollar sale at Sundance by Lionsgate – one of the few remaining traditional distributors that still acquires. THE HURT LOCKER was made and released by Summit (yes, the same Summit of TWILIGHT) and directed by the woman who made POINT BREAK.  Neither of these films suffered from being independents. They are the wonderful exceptions to the rules. The films that did very well because the traditional system worked, not in spite of it. Why use them as examples in this discussion? Why would anyone looking at the performance of those films want to embrace new alternatives?

Second, what on earth does Reed mean that “nearly everyone has made an independent film”. Is this implying that any video clip put on YouTube is an independent film? Is Reed actually arguing the equivalent of saying that anyone who does a Facebook status update is a professional author or blogger? This makes absolutely zero sense. Is he implying that anyone who uploads anything will be earning money from that and thus we have the basis for an industry? That’s completely counter to every law of economics and reason. If everyone is a professional filmmaker (by ‘professional’ I mean seeking to earn a living at it) then the market becomes vastly over saturated and, assuming the amount of media consumed & paid for remains relatively constant (most people aren’t suddenly going to be watching & paying for vastly more movies) that money will get divided across far more films and the viability of films economically will plummet. I think Reed just undermined his own argument.

Suffice to say, I applaud YouTube and those filmmakers who participated (especially Tze & Mynette’s CHILDREN OF INVENTION) but articles like this that simultaneously point to the outliers and the unrefined masses are missing the point. These systems will allow the wonderful films that traditional gatekeepers deemed too challenging to sponsor to finally find an audience and will allow artists with their 1,000 True Fans, to effectively marshal those fans and create a sustainable ecosystem.

Begging vs. Crowd Sourcing

Brian Chirls tweeted the following a few days ago:

“Just gave a dollar to a Filmmaker crowdfunding on the subway. He sold about a dozen demo dvds and a toy on one car.”

It made me wonder: what is the line between begging and crowd-sourcing?

I have a mental rule about giving money on the street (or on the subway): I don’t give to anyone begging. I never buy anything from someone selling trinkets on a subway car. I will sometimes give to musicians or other entertainers, but only if they haven’t trapped you in a space. For example, I give to a good musician on a subway platform, but I don’t give to someone who leaps onto my subway car and plays between stops. I think the dividing line is whether I can choose to move away if I don’t like the performance: if I can’t then I consider it an invasion of my personal space and it is unwelcome. I would make an exception for spontaneous performance groups like Improv Everywhere as they are there to create and experience and leave, but are not then trying to get money out of you before the doors open.

So what then, is the dividing line between begging and crowd sourcing?

This filmmaker was selling trinkets, thus my ruleset says I should not buy.  However, he is (or is claiming he will be) using the proceeds to make a film, something I tend to support. I did, after all, support the guys making the One Second Film (I’m a “producer”). Despite my thinking that they are probably 99% about getting enough cash to cruise the film festival circuit, they were entertaining and ambitious and I rewarded that.  But what if they had come to me on a subway car, and not in a pavilion at Cannes?  I likely would not have bought in, I suppose, but I have a hard time saying why.  I suppose that context is everything.

I'd probably give him money...

As a filmmaker one part of our job is to find money and, in so doing, we beg. Yes we come up with business plans, financial models, marketing schemes and the like, but we are, in a way, begging. When we turn to our audience and say to them, please finance my work so I can make another we are, in a way, begging.  We are ok with that because the cause is film, it is noble and we feel justified in making that request. Why then would any other type of begging be less noble?  I don’t really have an answer but I’m interested in your thoughts.

What is the difference between being a beggar and being a crowd-sourcer?

Please Don’t Rip Me Off!

I know I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus and posting has been light but I had a good reason.

I got married!

I have a couple posts that I’ve been mulling over and will try to get those up soon, so stay tuned.  However, in the meantime, I wanted to share something with you.

My friend, Drew Bunting, is a minister by day, but by night he’s one of the coolest musicians I’ve ever known. He took a break after recording his first album, “I Want To Believe” and now is back with an awesome new album entitled “The New South”. To help promote the album he’s released one song for free – “Please Don’t Rip Me Off”, it’s a riotous screed about file sharing and artists rights – something we talk about a lot here at the 401st Blow. Give it a listen (click the play button above), pass it on (right-click or control click this link and select ‘save as’) and please go get the album on iTunes or from the great team at Idiots’ Books who designed all the packaging. The Idiots’ Books hard version includes a 4-panel album jacket and a 16-page booklet.

And ps: the awesome pic above? That’s courtesy of the amazing Pat Furey.

DIY DAYS Philly – From Here To Awesome Panel

Here is the panel discussion I participated in during DIY DAYS in Philadelphia this summer. As always, kudos to Lance Weiler for putting this amazing event together.

TALK – FROM HERE TO AWESOME: Production has become democratized while digital distribution is quickly becoming commoditized thus fragmenting the marketplace and resulting in little to no revenue. The problems that the independent film industry faces are well documented but where do we go from here? What are the new models of discovery and distribution? How are storytellers going to fund, create, distribute and sustain from their work? ARIN CRUMLEY (Four Eyed Monster, As the Dust Settles) SCOTT MACAULAY (film producer & editor of FILMMAKER MAGAZINE) NOAH HARLAN (film producer & mobile app developer), SCOTT KIRSNER (journalist and author), DON ARGOTT (ROCK SCHOOL)