Saturday, March 8, 2008

participative filmmaking

This post may turn into a mini novella, and a boring one at that, so be warned.

Well, I've been thinking a lot about turning a script for a mock reality piece I have into a film, but a lot stands in the way of ever getting it done. My excuses range from a young daughter to a 9-to-6 job to, well, the "Intelligent Designer" who decided randomly that there would be 24 hours to a day.

Given the situation, the key to getting my film made would be to split the entire filmmaking process into delegatable/distributed parts. The existing process is that way already - no single person writes, directs, shoots, edits and distributes film - not unless you're Steven Spielberg. Each of these is controlled by a different department.

Of these, to my mind at least, the most essential to getting a film made is to get the shots/footage for it. Without it, a film is just a bunch of papers stapled together. Combine that with the power of the Internet and cheap video/editing technology, and you got a low budget film.

Consider this:
- a script is published somewhere on the web
- people discover it, decide they like it, and decide to make a film with it
- through word of mouth, blogs, etc, more people become aware of it.
- people with camcorder wielding skills sign up to shoot any part of the film they like, and send the footage to a central place
- an editor sifts through the footage, decides what makes the cut and what doesn't and puts together a film.
- the film is published - again on the web. It's free to download, distribute. Whoever likes it donates whatever amount he feels like to the team that put it together, which divvies up the spoils, based on contribution to the final film.

This wouldn't work for all types of films - maybe reality TV type programs that have low production values in the first place, also maybe ensemble films that can be easily broken up into parts.

I'm dying to get this idea out, and maybe do a practise film or something. Let me know what you all think - I know there are really creative people that visit this site.

1 comment:

Jaya said...

The idea is pretty cool. The only concern is something too general can have issues of responsibility and decision making. If you ask people to donate whatever they want, most likely they would not put anything.....

Are you in east coast? Me in NJ