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.

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.

Well, we've done it and the film is finally coming out :) The trailer is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P-2rXS5LS4

Will be in theaters Jan 9th-15th and then straight to DVD after that.

Big shout out to all the peeps in #startups :)

[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.

[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.

[mattmaroon → ryanwaggoner]

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.

[paraschopra → mattmaroon]

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.

[mattmaroon → paraschopra]

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.

[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.

[jawngee → mattmaroon]

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.

[mattmaroon → jawngee]

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.

[neeson → mattmaroon]

Dude. Little harsh there...

[mattmaroon → neeson]

If you think that's harsh, give me 5 minutes with Michael Bay.

[rrival]

Congrats guys!

[jawngee]

The site is here: http://massify.com/