Drumbeat/Challenges/webmademovie

Title (ADMIN)

A Movie About The Web, By The Web
a collaborative documentary exploring how the web is creating an open, participatory world all around us

Background (ADMIN)

Brett Gaylor [(Rip! A Remix Manifesto]) and Henrik Moltke ([Good Copy Bad Copy]) are developing a documentary project investigating the social effects of the World Wide Web. The goal is to show how people use the web everyday to shape and reinvent their lives, their jobs and their communities.

USER INPUT HERE (USERS)

Here is my input

Description

An overall "umbrella project" will begin on OpenSouurceCinema.org to host a series of episodes profiling communities that illustrate the community-building power of the web. These will be built collaboratively using the task-based system of Open Source Cinema - each episode will be built in a participatory manner.

MORE INPUT HERE (USERS)

The project will be bootstrapped by a team of professional, international documentary filmmakers who will shoot initial episodes and serve as moderators of their respective episodes. They will manage the communities that sprout up around their episodes and bring their own communities. In this way the project will have a pluralized, international feel, and will have wildly divergent aesthetics, processes and perspectives. Just like the web.

HTML5 video and other open web technologies will be combine to create a whole new kind of media experience -- letting viewers and community members mix video, social media and data from across the web in real time. The goal will be to keep nimble and generative: as open video practices and technology evolve, so will the project. The blue sky vision would be the creation of a living documentary, a wiki-type experience that can be changed and morphed through user contributions.

Eventually a "release" version will be edited together to create a feature length film, which will be toured to international film festivals and broadcast on TV networks and spread to P2P networks in a finished state. If the community building the film is large and lively enough, multiple releases may be made over time (once a year?).

How does this make the web better?

As it unfolds, this 'web made movie' will:

1. Remind the world that the web public commons by focusing on everyday people creating things at the edge of the network. It will NOT be interviews with web stars and geeks - it will be every day people who are building the web by using it.
2. Show the creative potential of open HTML5 video by building a high profile participatory project that blends video clips, social media and data from across the web. At both the technical and creative level, it will demonstrate the online video is more than 'tv on a computer'.
3. Advance the field of 'open source cinema', pushing the envelope of collaborative online movie by drawing on experience from RIP, GCBC and Mozilla.

Tags

open video remix manifesto good copy bad copy collaborative documentary

Video

Examples of work by the two lead directors can be found here:

Rip trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oar9glUCL0

Good Copy Bad Copy Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9vaQ9Ncmps

Participation asks

• Contributions from working filmmakers
  • Recruited from colleagues, "professional" filmmakers will seed the project with exciting and engaging work
  • Creating core story lines and episodes to prime the pump
  • Editing and refining materials into compelling media experience (release version and episodes)
    • In a way, the filmmakers become like DJs or curators of the whole experience
• Contributions from "amateurs" (those who do it for the love of it)
  • photos
  • videos
  • the soundtrack
  • storylines and shoot suggestions
  • edits and remixes
  • subtitles and localization
• Everyone on the web
  • Participating via all sorts of social media
  • Layering on annotations, tweets, images, etc.
  • Communities and conversations form around episodes

Donation Target and Ask

• Dollar amounts and campaigns TBD
• Online fundraising via Drumbeat
  • a loose goal of 20% of the project raised online

Toolset and Platform

• Project mgmnt, publicity, community recruitment and fundraising using Drumbeat
• Participation, production and distribution on OpenSourceCinema.org

Timeline and Milestones

• Tied in part to Drumbeat rollout
• First call for participation and trailer Q1 2010?
  • Fundraising push follows this
• First 'episode' Q2 2010? ROFLCon?

Current challenges and questions

• Film projects are expensive. It needs support from broadcasters and funding agencies, who are typically scared of Open Video
• Open Video technology is immature - need support in developing tools to make a truly collaborative documentary a reality.
  • This means having both film and open web tech people on the lead creative them. At least one smart open web hacker has to be a core part of this team.