‘What is Film Crowdfunding and what does it mean for the future?’, a question recent events in the media world have brought to the forefront.  But what of the other question on the edges of wiser commentator’s lips? To what extent will this Crowd film truly be crowd-developed, global networked film-making as opposed to just another funding strategy for essentially old school methods?

With a distinct nod to our earlier post about Lynch I believe the area of social media-orchestrated  film-making (as opposed to the highly impressive Dark Knight viral alt-community publicity campaign of 2008 which utilised forums to orchestrate real world and virtual-universe events alike but which were anterior to the film body itself) certainly is at a stage where it looks primed to expand exponentially .  (Perhaps this is a particularly good time for it to do so, with The Social Network coming out soon). In what direction though?

Coming Soon: The Social Network

As the qualifications above illustrate, it’s important to define what we mean by current and/or hypothetical film-making specifically orchestrated through digital social media means, even before we might attempt to cover the issue of commercial vs ‘short’ film-making.  For the past few years online communities of film-makers have existed.  Examples include Talent Circle, Shooting People, Shout or the US based Film Making, along with Myspace Film Channels. On the one hand their primary purpose has been to orchestrate film-shoots in the real world. On the other, the online discussion process inevitably leads to the Shooting-Talent-Shout community co-authoring the film by shaping concepts and production strategies  early on.

Because, after all, high budget film-making at a technical level is extremely diffuse, spread as the operations of the most complex corporation.  What Lynch seems to be doing is offering his fans a sort of stock in the completion of a project upon which otherwise he assumes complete responsibility (albeit with tasks delegated to crew members, of his choosing or sometimes not), one borne out of greater financial freedom. The only accountability is to critical response, and in qualitative terms how likely fans are to back the project in the same, greater, or fewer numbers the second time around.  Film-making is different to music in its degrees of institutional delegation and consequently has been faced with more intense debates over directorial authorship. These debates aren’t reserved for beret clad sophists but should  potentially be on the minds of brand strategists looking to move into film tie-ins, key as they are to determining who the chief decision makers are on set and how much input can be exercised by external agencies. Indie film-makers not backed by large Arts Council grants, for whatever reason, have had to adopt variants on the strategies made famous by Robert Rodriguez (of Desperado, Sin City etc.) and temporarily donate either themselves or their film to commerce (In Rodriguez’s case, funding El Mariachi off a month’s participation in medical trails), and/or rely on their small network. In the case of, for instance, Christopher Nolan’s first feature, Following, this meant a year of weekend shoots to accommodate everyone’s work schedules.

It’s no coincidence that music has adapted collaborative models based on fan community engagement earlier, given the economies of scale.   When we talk about ‘authoring’ a film or album, in the sense of influencing arrangement and sequencing as well as tone and theme of the completed work, music comes only second to IT in taking up and adapting concepts like collective-art-making at the initial end, or Creative commons as a continuation of, reflection/homage upon, and adaptation of the artist’s work.  Rock band Mansun asked fans to help them fund their last album release, whilst the Smashing Pumpkins, to spite their record company and reward their fanbase, put up their last album for fans to download gratis and distribute amongst themselves in the early 2000s. Around this time period, in June 2001, Weezer allowed fans to choose which demos became album tracks on Maladroit.  Trent Reznor,  a frequent musical collaborator of Lynch’s and exponent of New Media,  began by using the Internet to  publicise his work through generating  memes, linking to specially designed sites and introducing RPG participation akin to the Dark Knight’s online publicity campaign.  In 2008 though, following the release of Ghosts I-IV and ‘free’ album The Slip, Reznor finally made the move towards complete creative dialogue by licensing  these records as Creative Commons.

Trent Reznor

So, where do film-makers fit in? We have seen heavy engagement in the social media sphere from Kevin Smith especially.  He’s offered walk-on parts as well as answering fan’s queries about films head on through his official message boards, to say nothing of the fan orientated festivals and Q/A’s he holds. But when it came to financing his ‘edgy’ project Red State, after two years of on-off speculation about whether fans would be required to invest in order to get the script off the ground, with talk of regular studio collaborators, the Weinstein’s , refusing to take the plunge, Smith has eventually secured a low-to medium Hollywood budget (somewhere between $10-20m) through private investment.  In a sense the social media aspects of Lynch’s proposed scheme are analogous to his film. Lynch’s creative process is notoriously spur of the moment but also deeply centred around his autonomy. His films are comprised of embedded cultural memories, which are assembled in a particularly Lynchean way. He is separate but also master of a pre-existent ’share’ he taps into. Lynch’s films encourage a kind of private enterprise or rugged creative confusion, but also have a mass-cult following.  Lynch’s films are as tightly knit and unpredictable as the nature of a sprawling Facebook network, full of potential alliances and also often baffling to outsiders. The idea of a fan funded level of funding for a Lynch-helmed project goes hand in hand with Lynch’s declared political, aesthetic  and existential libertarianism (rather like Mark Zuckerberg).

Technology has provided us with an integrated and relatively secure method of donation – controllable and visible. Just as distance is no obstacle for emergency help, neither is it an obstacle in the generation of content based on these online fan-bases clubbing together to produce tangible movies.   Social network related film, as opposed to using social networks to hook-up for on location meet-ups ala traditional networking sites, has been on the agenda for several years.  See Social Filmmaking – The New Age Mashup by Betsy Parker for a random example. From Crowdfunding it seems natural to portmanteau into Crowdfilming.

The problem, as any cursory trawl through Wikipedia cross-referenced against social media film sites shows, is that film content produced by cross-network editing is minimal , outside of occasional post production carried out in pre-existent (studio  assembled) teams. Minimal and minimalist,  shorts, in contrast to the  ‘demo- vox-remix’ to and fro dialogue musicians have with each other and with self selecting, techno and creative-minded members of their fan communities (see Massive Attack for an example of the former and  Reznor for an exemplum of the latter). One of the few creative commons based films is Oceania, a Frisco based film.  No, me neither—for a Creative Commons’ movie, it’s curiously hard to secure a copy.  It’s possible though  that based solely on this exchange model we might see incremental growth in the catalogue of public domain movies and more or less successful experiments in community sharing unaided.  Yet the signs are mixed.

Which is not to say that the concept itself is intrinsically unsuited to the world of film-making. After all the relationships between businesses and films when it comes to funding are themselves  as arcane and labyrinth as any social media experiment.  For businesses looking to ‘engage’ through social media whether  by impacting the film creative process directly or gauging market information and social-technological trends through indirect interaction,  traditional film already has a long (and chequered) history of marketing tie-ins and interventions.  From movies being based on ides created by movie studios in a perfect synergy, to the kind of movies espoused by Bond and satirised most notably by Return of the Killer Tomatoes (also notable for George Clooney’s first ‘starring’ vehicle).  This latter played the postmodern-card to mock internal film product plugs whilst still  advertising its willing sponsor’s goods at the same time, capitalizing on its low-budget to manufacture or at least pre-emptively assume a cult movie status.

Return Of The Killer Tomatoes

Alan Parker and the Scott brothers (Ridley/Tony) worked in advertising prior to entering movies and have returned on occasion for select campaigns, whilst the likes of Gondry and Spike Jonze along with Tony Kaye have created content which worked as ‘arty’ short films and promos alike.  Shane Meadows, of unimpeachable credibility, devised an acclaimed film, Somers Town,on the back of an advertising project which organically evolved into a piece of narrative art which was still able to encompass the Chunnel theme. In this case, the Chunnel was promoted positively and also worked artistically as an analogy or metaphor, in and of itself replaceable by any number of methods of Europe associated transport.   At one level replacing Coke with Pepsi or vice versa isn’t a compromise, whether the reasons are motivated by random will or commercial preferences,  nor would it be in any situation where the narrative called for a drink for metaphorical or narrative/diagetic reasons.

What Lynch offers is a variant on the top-down financier route, entrusting resources to the artist based on speculation. But what we could see developing amongst medium sized film-makers is a network-based film-making ala the creation of gamescapes and virtual universe engagements on Second Life or worldwide game networks, to create movies. Myspace has allowed mashups already between online acquaintances to spread virally, in small versions of free-domain, non-determined open-code sharing.  These artistic interventions can take place ‘horizontally’ or ‘vertically’, and we might see brands engaging in constructive dialogues based on integrating their creative and social media departments.

For Hollywood based, large scale film-makers to be considering these ends would be revolutionary in the world of the big beast studios. Social Media sites like the UK Film Network and Shooting People have relied on interchanges of power, resources and cash.  Productions, in film more than the theatre, technically necessitate the management of large resources and are a gamble financially. Particularly in a recession, films are reliant on charity/trade-offs of experience.  The flipside of that is that, with so many people energised by the DIY ethic, with access to cheap cameras and educational possibilities, together with the huge numbers of ‘freelancers’ with studio experience here, in the States and Europe, with sufficient management infrastructure investment and the market research/sponsorship possibilities of being in partnership with any social network as a brand, we might see studios, creatives, enthusiasts and brands all coming together in one creative, sometimes potentially incendiary, but definitely interesting brand.  Even if one can’t see Lynch giving away his (or the voices of his subconscious’s) directorial authority, this avatar of the American experience might well approve.

About The Author

Martin is an Intern Analyst with the SML Research team. He has a BA in English from Corpus Christi College Oxford and a Masters in Film/Film-Journalism from Glasgow University.  Martin is particularly interested in the role of social media with regards to shaping public policy debates and concepts of political accountability.  After daytimes spent tracking blogs and tracing early adopters he moonlights as a Freelance Film and Arts  Critic – doing much the same.