A Swarm of Angels

February 2nd, 2009 in Art, by Head Honcho

http://aswarmofangels.com

With the movement of the web from static webpages to dynamic content, the term Web 2.0 was coined. User-generated, shareable content is now the “in” thing. As mentioned by one speaker in Power to the Pixel 2007, there is a bit of problem with this. You have to “dig through dirt to get to the diamonds in this situation”. Aside from this issue, there is also such a thing as bridging the gap between the crowd and traditional media creation. This is where Cinema 2.0 comes in and such is the platform used by A Swarm of Angels.

A Swarm of Angels is a new type of entertainment and cultural production community. It is a project “to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members”.

The project plans to crowdsource the funding, production and distribution of the 1.9 million dollar movie. In exchange for helping fund the project, these angels get to have their stand in all the aspects of the creative process. They are also entitled to access exclusive content. There are also cases when they can even be part of the crew in filming.

Matt Hanson, a UK filmmaker and author, is the project owner of A Swarm of Angels. He believes that the concept of crowdsourcing or open source methodology can also be applied to film production. S Supporters of Mr. Hanson include Cory Doctorow - free culture advocate, Warren Ellis – cult comic writer and Tommy Pallotta – film producer. The other supporters, of course, include all other members who joined the project.

The plan is the recruit 50,000 more ‘angels’ to reach the £1 million goal. This finished film will then be released under a Creative Commons license for sharing and remixing by the other crowds.
It is free to register but for a member who wants be a full member the fee starts at £25.

Benefits include:
- You get to greenlight a feature film and be part of filmmaking history.
- Vote on creative decisions, have direct influence in production and development.
- Priority access to downloads, including video, audio, and podcasts.
-Post and network in the global community: The Nine Orders forum.
-Collaborate in the production process. Even join the crew.
-Member-only DVD and exclusive merchandise also planned

Currently, the project is in Phase 3 Private Beta. Watch the first film trailer:

Worlds Will Shatter - The Unfold trailer from Nine Orders on Vimeo.