Imagine American Idol for TV and filmmakers and you’ll have
some idea of where Filmaka is coming from.
It’s an independent We-based movie venture, and after more
than a year in betam, it’s finally come out to the world.
The project has a couple of high-profile backers: indie film
producer Deepak Nayar (responsible for movies such as Bend
It Like Beckham and Buena Vista Social Club)
and former Fox TV network honcho Sandy Grushow, who gave the world
shows such as The OC, 24, The
X-Files and Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Grushow was also one of the network executives behind American
Idol, and says Filmaka is based on a similar premise.
Promoting Up & Coming Producers
The founders say they want to find young or up-and-coming TV
producers and filmmakers and in some cases to help them get major
studio or network deals.
The site already has a stable of
more than 40 Web-based shows that it plans to run on networks such as
YouTube, and has been conducting a kind of Web-based talent search with
a contest that ends on April 28.
The winner, who will be chosen by a
jury including David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog and Neil LaBute,
will get as much as $3-million in financing to produce a movie for
theatrical release.
Multiple Contests
That’s
not the only contest
Filmaka has been sponsoring either: the venture has also been running a
sitcom competition with the cable channel FX, which will see the winner
get $40,000 to shoot a 15 to 20-minute pilot for a potential FX
television show, and the site has a documentary competition and a
“branded entertainment” competition.
Fox ran a similar kind of contest
with MySpace, but didn’t turn either
of the winners into a pilot. Jerry Zucker of NBC has spoken
in the past about how expensive — and in many cases,
ultimately futile — the current
pilot-oriented TV production process can be.
Worldwide Response
More than 3,000 submissions have been received from aspiring
filmmakers in more than 90 countries, and all of the submissions can be
streamed from the Filmaka.com
website. Visitors can choose to see entries by category (documentary,
TV, feature etc.) or only the ones that have advanced to the jury
level.
Submissions include everything from animated shorts featuring
“claymation”-style characters to sitcom-style
comedies, and at least
one Canadian filmmaker has several entries in different levels of the
competition: Terry Miles has submitted a feature film called Lost
and Found and also has an
entry in the TV-pilot contest called The Secret
Life of Amanda Jones, about a twentysomething college
student who is also a vampire.
Amazing Quality Of Work
In an
interview with Wired magazine,
Grushow said that after 20 years in the network business, he
wasn’t
sure that any independent or unsigned filmmakers could produce content
that he might be interested in, but he says his eyes were opened after
Filmaka started the competition:
“I was astonished at the quality level
people were capable of creating … at such a low cost. To me,
that
represented a game-changer.”
In Filmaka, he said, the partners hope
create what amounts to “a studio with essentially no
overhead.” And
there’s already Canadian
content.
Written by Mathew Ingram, a technology journalist. Catch his views on the intersection between media and the web at MathewIngram.com. This post is licensed under the Creative Commons.
