

Trailer for "first" crowdsourced movie - jawngee

Sorry if this comes across as spam, but I'm psyched that our little website hit one of its major goals.<p>When we launched Massify two years ago, our goal was to make a movie through the website - from picking the story to casting the film to the film's poster - everything happened and was decided on-line, through the site.<p>Well, we've done it and the film is finally coming out :)  The trailer is here:<p>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P-2rXS5LS4<p>Will be in theaters Jan 9th-15th and then straight to DVD after that.<p>Big shout out to all the peeps in #startups :)
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markessien
The more people you have working on anything artistic, the more average the
result is going to be. The possibility to crowdsource books has existed for
thousands of years - all you'd need to do is make a group of people sit
together in a room and try to collaboratively write such a book.

But it has never worked with that. And it will never work, because when too
many people collaborate, they tend to stay safe. They don't do new things.

The only way to crowdsource is if you make several people work parallel on
independent parts of the project, and then mix them together at the end. For
example, you have 15 people who are working independently on the soundtrack
for the movie, and then a panel of judges picks the best soundtrack. If you
let people vote on the result, they won't choose the best, they will choose
the most familiar.

Crowdsourcing can work, but you still need to specialize people within it, and
then give them creative freedom free of criticism from others.

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ryanwaggoner
A little surprised at the negativity in the comments. Most student films suck
ass, too, but they're an important accomplishment nonetheless. Come to think
of it, the majority of work that hackers churn out is shoddy and a reinvention
of the wheel, but it's part of the process that sometimes produces something
awesome. Even if this movie sucks, it's still an important accomplishment
because they actually created something in a way that no one has before (to my
knowledge).

Congrats to everyone who worked on this.

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mattmaroon
Doing something in a new way is not an important accomplishment, doing
something in a better way is. If a new way of doing something is
scientifically designed to produce crap, it's far from an accomplishment. It's
a waste.

Having a large group of people vote on a movie is the easiest way to ensure a
result that is mediocre for its budget range.

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paraschopra
I disagree. Doing something in a new (and curious) way is definitely a
worthwhile venture (if not an accomplishment). There is a very good chance
that new way can inspire other people do something the better way. New ways
inspire ideas in people, which is good.

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mattmaroon
Yeah, I disagree with that. New is not, in and of itself good. Granted, good
and new is better than good alone, but new itself is not as good as either.

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mattmaroon
Well, it looks just as awful as every low budget slasher Hollywood puts out
these days. Do you count that as a success? If so, then good job.

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jawngee
Yes, I consider it an accomplishment.

I consider it an accomplishment because we opened up a career for a bunch of
people who were outside the system. We made dreams happen and we're going to
be doing it again and again and again.

I think it's pretty cool that this twenty-something kid from South Carolina
has now produced his first film that is dropping in 800 theaters. He went from
working at a gas station to sitting on a set watching his idea be brought to
life by a crew of people. That's fucking awesome no matter how you slice it.

I also think it's cool that 4 people got cast into roles that would have
otherwise been years away from them.

And I think it's an accomplishment that a plucky web designer was able to
design a poster and have their work show up in theaters and on DVD covers.

As a bonus, it's an accomplishment that we were able to put a community around
the process and do something really far outside of the system.

The end result is in the hands of many more people beyond those that worked on
it through the site, so the process of getting there is much more important
than the final destination.

I mean, dude, we made a movie with PHP. Who the fuck has done that?

So yeah, thanks, I think we did a fantastic job.

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mattmaroon
Yeah, it's neat the way the process worked, but I guess I'm unable to see the
value in coming up with a novel process to produce more slasher-film garbage.
Hollywood regurgitates this crap 10 times a year, except (judging from the
trailer) with more polish. They don't need crowdsourcing to add to it.

There's an entire independent film system out there. Lots of plucky people
from a gas station in Whereversville end up getting their movie produced that
way (or even through the major studios occasionally) every year. Not every
movie is written by a John August or a Josh Friedman.

Hollywood is still much more meritocratic than most of the rest of America,
and if 4 actors are years away from such a role, there's a good reason for
that. The system is flawed and imperfect, and ripe for change, but it still
functions at a level where if anyone is so good that they can't be ignored,
they'll end up on top. By removing the process entirely, you remove what
little quality control remains.

I'm just not sure that making a movie with PHP is a good idea if more of the
same crap that's been destroying the industry that some of us still love for
20 years is the result. Perhaps I'm just a curmudgeon clinging to some silly
notion of the movie as America's greatest art form, but this looks like
something we'd be better off without.

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rrival
Congrats guys!

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jawngee
The site is here: <http://massify.com/>

