Mike, Macchiavelli also wrote books other than 'Il Principe'. One of of the lesser known of them is Art of War (Dell'arte della guerra).

Sun Tzu's has the 'historical copyright' to the name, though.

Nicely commented Jani. You pinned down the the facts for successful collaboration:
1) The more you give to the community the more you recieve
2) Give the community inspiring material
3) Make the tasks well defined and make them focused. You can set several tasks to cover a large area in the production
4) Invite people and market your production also on other sites than WAM.
5) Be excited about your production, the excitement is contagious
6) Have fun, because after all, that is why we are here. Having fun with film productions and your friends :)

That demo had something, but I feel empty after it. I need to watch it again. But this thread and film idea has certainly made me interested in Machiavelli. I need dwell deeper into his work.

That was _interesting_. Cacophonous at times and clear at times. I think I got something you wanted to tell with the video.

I've read Macchiavelli's Prince, although I really don't remember much of it anymore. What I recollect is, that, despite it still being considered a masterpiece in politics, Macchiavellis ideas are very much in doubt, when it comes to ethics.

Basically his idea is: "Let them hate, so far as they fear."

That's basically a very rude militaristic way of thinking politics, which can be seen quite reasonable under the extreme uncertainty and volatility, which was the environment Macchiavelli lived in like But fitting the same rules of thinking into the relatively calm environment of today's world would be complete barbarism and cause major losses of wealth to the community by pressing people under practical totalitarism and fear.

Now, don't understand me wrong. Theory of decision making happens to be my specialty and I'm also a reserve military officer, so I can see very much point in his ideas even today - but only under some very extreme conditions. Such may be even very close. Only a few minutes before writing this reply I was discussing the extreme volatility of global financial markets today. Such volatility may well lead to something, where Macchiavelli's way of thinking may well appear the only possible one. But if so happens, that'll only be, because we people haven't been clever enough thinking in more intelligent ways of conducting policy. It shouldn't be a necessity, except when we've already screwed our politics somehow else.

I'd squeeze what I mean into something like: "If we humanity won't turn intelligent enough, we'll become all animals."

Gary put out the production news:
"At the moment, I am working on a short "preview" film, that could be used as a template of sorts to get people's brain juices flowing. I hope to have something up in the next few weeks. So, keep tuned!!!!"

I hope we'll see some inspiring stuff soon!

I copy with that - Perhaps people need some more information about the project in order to be able to give their contributions...

Machiavelli,

I don't think most people understand the significance of the man, or his relationship with " la familia di Medici ". Perhaps it would help if you laid out a synopsis of the story you're trying to tell. Is it already written somewhere else? Tell us more about the project. What phase is the project in?