Drumbeat/Challenges/webmademovie/fledgling

• Project Name

Web Made Movies

• Project Goal - (In one sentence, tell us the overall goal of your film or project, e.g. what social impact do you hope it will have.)

Web Made Movies is part of Mozilla’s effort to protect the Internet; by highlighting the heroes and stories of the open web, we aim to engage everyday citizens in a dialogue about what kind of future they imagine for this vital global resource.

Project Summary - (In 300 words or less, describe your project and how it will advance your social impact goal(s).) Web Made Movies is a video series highlighting the people who are building an open, participatory Internet - told by the people of the web.

Is the future of the web open? Or will it transform into a closed platform built to serve a powerful few? Web Made Movies will document the people and projects whose everyday efforts are building the Internet that the world wants. From a young engineer who wants to launch a satellite into space to provide free Internet for the planet, to the engineers who are using the Internet to open source the auto industry – from the Iranian Twitter Revolution to the Do It Yourself telephone companies in South African townships, the free Internet is being built everyday by the citizens of the world.

We will produce a video series in the same way we built FireFox, the web browser in use by more than 350 million people: by global open source collaboration. People will create episodes by submitting stories and content, and create their own entire episodes as well. Software developers will pitch in, creating new ways to play, explore and interact with web video. We want the technology and the content of Web Made Movies to evolve in tandem: geeks, filmmakers and everyday citizens working together.

Web Made Movies is a core project of Mozilla’s Drumbeat initiative – a multi-year endeavor to guard the open nature of the Internet by encouraging everyday users to contribute and get involved. We’ll be tapped into a large and vibrant community that cares passionately about the Open Internet. Into this pool, we will introduce a team of international documentary filmmakers who will create initial episodes. Just like the web, the project will have a pluralized, international spirit with wildly divergent aesthetics, processes and perspectives.

• Type of Support Requested

Outreach

• Amount Requested ($0.00)

$30,000

• In 200 words or less, describe how you will use the amount requested from The Fledgling Fund. How will it contribute to the overall project?

Fledgling Fund support would help us recruit contributors and build community in our critical first year. We would use it to staff outreach to bloggers, filmmakers, students, web developers and academics: these constituencies were key in realizing project leader Brett Gaylor’s collaborative documentary Rip! A Remix Manifesto. Support would also assist in developing a Web Made Movies component for Drumbeat local events worldwide at tech events, “bar camps”, TEDx presentations and conference. Drumbeat will be the focus of the Mozilla's outreach in the coming years, and we want to ensure that Web Made Movies will be prominent at these events.

Funding would support improvements on OpenSourceCinema.org, a collaborative documentary platform used to create Rip! A Remix Manifesto. The platform is now open to all filmmakers who want to create in collaboration with their audience, hosting remix contests, design challenges, and tasks for community members to fulfill. With 5000 registered users and an active member base, users are eager to create participatory documentaries. It is important for us that our work is “open sourced” and can benefit the community – supporting Open Source Cinema is one way that Web Made Movies will develop and empower filmmakers around the world.

• Project Leadership - (Indicate the key people on the project and include one sentence of qualifications for each.)
  • Brett Gaylor, filmmaker, Rip! A Remix Manifesto. Gaylor is the award winning director and Head of New Media at EyeSteelFilm (Up The Yangtze, Last Train Home, Taqwacore), and founder of OpenSourceCinema.org & HomelessNation.org.
  • Henrik Moltke, filmmaker, Good Copy Bad Copy. Moltke is a digital activist, media professional and advisor at Socialsquare and Public Project Lead (Denmark) at Creative Commons
  • Mark Surman, Mozilla. Surman is the Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, with a focus on inventing new ways to promote openness and opportunity on the Internet.
• Project Timeline - (In 100 words or less, describe the project's timeline and status. For example, if your film is not complete, let us know what phase you are in (e.g. development, production, early or late post production, outreach etc.) and when you expect to complete it.)

Web Made Movies is in Phase I between March and June 2010. Our objectives are to build an initial pilot/demo demonstrating the concept, as well as an active community of participants on the drumbeat website. After June 2010, we will build on the pilot with further calls to action and participation for future episodes. We aim to have a complete set of episodes/chapters by the beginning of 2011.

• Funding Status - (Please list the foundations, corporations, and other sources from which you have secured or are soliciting funding for this project and, to the best of your knowledge, the status of your proposal with each.)

Mozilla has committed an initial amount of $25,000 to fund the pilot episode, with an additional $75,000 for the remaining episodes. Mozilla is also leveraging the considerable visibility of projects like FireFox and Drumbeat to its crowdsourcing strategy – we are targeting $50,000 in donations for 2010 from our passionate users and developers. We are specifically looking for Fledgling Fund to support outreach activities that will enhance this opportunity.

We are also working closely with EyeSteelFilm to secure broadcast licenses from International Broadcasters and have begun discussions with VPro (Netherlands), YLE (Finland), DR (Denmark), Documentary Chanell (US), CanalD (Canada) TVP (Poland) and SVT (Sweden). EyeSteelFilm is also eligible to access public Canadian funds and has worked extensively with the National Film Board of Canada, who is keen to sponsor both content and software development for the project.