MySpace helps create a feature length film
Monday, June 16th, 2008Social network site MySpace claims to be responsible for the world’s first ever community-created feature length film. Here’s an excerpt of the article from the TimesOnline:
For Faintheart, a comedy centring on a battle reenactment club, the director and much of the music were chosen by users of the networking site MySpace.
The same online group was asked to compete in auditions for some of the smaller parts and users were even asked how elements of the plot should develop.
“It’s the world’s first publicly generated movie,” said Jamie Kantrowitz, vice-president of marketing for MySpace. “It’s about involving a potential audience for a movie in the making of the film itself.”
This really isn’t anything spectacular because if you read behind the “press release” you can see that a production company put up 1.3 million pounds (about 2.6 million dollars) and more or less went overboard with getting some community feedback. The MySpace community hardly created it themselves and were simply the beneficiaries of a stunt. Were it a collaborative effort spawned out of the blue within the community, I would be impressed, but this is nothing short of expensive marketing. Don’t expect this to catch on, especially not in Hollywood. See the rest of the article here.
