How to get your film or music video made using Massify.com

So far, we have been used to watching movies to see how they were made.  But that was it!  Paying the bucks and watching them (enjoying or not – that’s another story).

What if you, as regular folk, could participate in making a movie?  Have a say in what movie would YOU like to see?  What is in the script? Or what actors should play certain roles?

Now you can!

Because I’m passionate about filmmaking and its aspects… Sooner or later I had to find out about Massify.com.  This is filmmaking meeting Web 2.0 type of service. Rather than starting to make movies from top to bottom this service has the reverse approach: start from bottom to top.

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The community built around the site have a say in what movie gets made, what actors should be cast, and script changes.  If you have a movie script or music video idea, for example, you can submit it to the site and the community will vote.  If it gathers enough votes your script might turn into a movie (or a video clip).

That was the story of Perkins 14, the first ever fan-created horror flick using Massify community in partneship with After Dark Films (the organizer of After Dark Horrorfest).

Many filmmakers are aspiring filmmakers who pitched the idea of an ultimate horror film.  The winner voted by the community was Jeremy Donaldson, an young aspiring filmmaker (read his interview and see the pitch). After the idea was approved, the community also approved the casting of actors.  The winners were flown to Los Angeles for screen tests.  However the filming was done mostly in Romania (because of a good infrastructure for moviemaking and saving on cost). The film is now in theaters but it seems that only some are running it.

Massify is seen as a possible partner by some music labels (like Epic) and some film production companies (like RSA Films – Ridley Scott’s production company).  It is located in New York City and has about 10 employees.  One of the founders is Brett Icahn and, yes, he is the son of Carl Icahn, the well-known financier (which is also one of Yahoo’s major investors and backs Massify as well).

The new age of online collaboration entered in the filmmaking world too.  It was expected because, like building an Internet company, filmmaking has became much less expensive now (better digital cameras, editing and compositing software, more powerful computers, 3D software, Internet, etc…).  Anyone remember Blair Witch Project or Open Water (two successful very low budget independent movies)?

How successful Massify will be remains yet to be seen…but it has a good start.