All films with two or more people are collaborative, but there’s a wide range of films trying new ways to exploit current technologies for film production and distribution.
Pssst Pass It On
The mission of PSST? “Produce original short films through the collaboration of different teams of designers, directors, and animators. Each film is comprised of three sections produced by three different teams. This process is the whole idea behind PSST! – a technique derived from the Dadaist game of Exquisite Corpse and the children’s game Telephone and applied to the arts of motion graphics, animation and film-making. There are nine films made through the collaboration of different teams of designers, directors, and animators.” Gorgeous range of styles too.
The 1 Second Film
A non-profit collaborative film being produced by thousands of people around the world. Anyone can help produce this film by donating as little as $1. Worth a look, this is quite an involved project with five phases… which starts with a 1 second film and ends up with an 11,111 Second Film – a narrative movie lasting 11,111 seconds (approximately 180 minutes). The film will be divided into two parts, a 90-minute animated feature film followed by a 90-minute credit-sequence with ‘making of’ documentary. The 90-minutes of animation will be narrative, with an original story to be written by an established screen writer. The 90-minutes of animation will be made during thousands of simultaneous events around the world, with each event making one-second or more of the animation.
Swarm Of Angels
Good range of creatives gathered on this, with good momentum. The plan is to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members. Key features:
* Participative – Vote on major decisions, including which of two scripts goes into production. Post on the forum.
* Open source – Contribute to development and production through script input, materials creation, or be part of our distributed film crew.
* Creative Commons-licensed – Freely share the film. Sample project visuals for your own work.
* Crowdsourced – Feedback into the production, use your expertise, and become part of the team.
The Basement Tapes
“Everything we know about copyright has been turned upside down. From mash-ups to filesharing, creation to distribution, everything is in flux.Thats what I want to explore in this documentary…. it needs your help to be made – thats why Open Source Cinema exists – to faciliate online collaboration – to create a participatory way to discuss these issues.” Script viewable here – http://www.opensourcecinema.org/wikifilm
Your Broadcaster
“A test whether a film can be done with most of the major production decisions made through an online social network.”
Members of the YourBroadcaster social network can become involved in 5 different movie projects ( bollywood, horror, thriller, drama and comedy ). Members will be able to upload scripts, auditions, characters, etc that will be voted on by all members to determine what will be used in the movie project. Subscription fee of $10 (one project) to $35 (multiple projects) is required for full participation. Advertisers can also get in on the movie making action with opportunities of product placement within each movie.”
David Lynch had a nice line on product placement in a recent interview : ” Bullshit. Complete fucking bullshit.”
XIFilm
XIFilm is one of many films claiming to be ‘the world’s first feature film created entirely over the Internet’, but interestingly offers the option of joining a Production-Assistance Team (non-artist types who can offer “idle” computer time for the production team by downloading and installing the XIFilm screensaver).
Awesome, I Fuckin Shot That!
Bustin’ wide their camera crew list to include 50 members of the audience, this Beastie Boys concert doco was made with footage from a few higher quality cams on stage and 50 video cameras handed out to audience members with instructions to ‘keep on shooting’.
Echo Chamber Project
“An open source, investigative documentary about how the television news media became an uncritical echo chamber to the Executive Branch leading up to the war in Iraq. By developing collaborative techniques for producing this film, then this project can potentially provide some solutions for incorporating a broader range of voices and perspectives into the mainstream media. To that extent the project is well documented, there’s an interesting and complex diagram explaining a collaborative filmmaking workflow and a rant on the implications of being able to export Final Cut Pro projects into an XML format. Which means – ‘because Final Cut Pro supports XML, you are no longer limited to creating clips, bins, and sequences within Final Cut Pro. This means you can create your own Final Cut Pro projects outside of Final Cut Pro, using any software or platform you want, as long as you generate a valid Final Cut Pro XML file.’ Or in other words, potentially an open source content management system like Drupal could be used to collaboratively edit a film.
There are three end products for The Echo Chamber Project:
1.) A collaboratively edited 90-minute documentary film about how the mainstream media became an uncritical echo chamber during the lead-up to the war in Iraq.
2.) A set of open source tools and methodologies for participatory journalism and collaborative film editing that is sustained through a viable business model.
3.) An online, interactive collection of transcribed video segments that are annotated and filtered with user-contributed context and meaning at www.echochamberproject.com.”