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The formula
Rosey Tyler, one of our sainted Executive Producers, spotted this link on the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7644338.stm (forgive me, I haven’t worked out how to embed these links in a more elegant way). As you see, it’s for something called Co-Producer a ‘crowd-sourced movie’ that says it has 90,000 producers. Blimey. If we get 90,000 executive producers - well, you do the maths. PayPal will be happy, anyway. Maybe we all should give up on the film and buy, I don’t know, Lloyds TSB instead.
Look out too for A Swarm of Angels (aswarmofangels.com) another crowd sourcing thing in which collaborators pool ideas and together, gradually (and democratically?) decide the kind of movie they are making. I applaud both these projects but confess they blow my mind a little bit. Doesn’t a sound creative idea need, at its germ, some singularity of vision? Safely transferring the heart of the idea to key collaborators is the trickiest thing you do - what happens when there are thousands of them?
For the same reason I was sceptical a year or two back when i read a wonderful Malcolm Gladwell piece on software that would predict hit movies http://www.gladwell.com/2006/20061016aformula.html It’s unpredicatble isn’t it? The great Hollywood dictum is Nobody Knows Anything. The Oscar & Jim executives are making the thing possible, coming up with distribution ideas and spreading the word too - but the creative buck has to stop with Paul and me. Maybe next time though?
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Published by: Rosey on 17 October 2008
What you say about needing a singularity of vision is exactly what I thought when I read that BBC article. The old saying goes "Too many cooks spoil the broth" and I think it's quite right. Making a movie where 90,000 people have a creative input would be rather chaotic to say the least.
Also, art (which I believe filmmaking is) is a very personal thing and I think it would be quite insulting to the creative genius who conceived of it to have everyone and his uncle dictating to him how his art should be. A little advice from people one trusts is what one really needs.