If you've been enjoying using this Internet thing to watch short films and sign anti-Uwe Boll petitions but have started wondering when it's going to begin impacting the way feature films actually get made, you might want to check out My Movie Studio. This is an Internet-based scheme designed to attract mobs of investors and unlikely sources of talent and bring them together in a plan to change the face of movies as we know it, or at least have some chuckles while perhaps making a few bucks. The site invites anyone who can come up with a dumb enough on-line pseud to set up a "pitch page" and describe their idea for a really cool movie. "Your Movie Pitch," as the rules lay it out, "is the plot of your movie, distilled to its most essential elements. Make it punchy. Make it specific. Give it a tone. Make it memorable. You can add anything you'd like to support your pitch: a synopsis, poster art, character art, storyboards, a longer treatment, a trailer you made with your friends, songs you think would be great in the soundtrack, original score by you—whatever you think will get people excited about your idea." Obviously, these should be "original" ideas; don't bother thinking up a user name just to post your suggestion that a Grand Theft Auto movie would be the shit. (Unless, of course, you happen to own the rights to Grand Theft Auto.) Also, obviously, "Your Movie Pitch should include invented characters, not the stars you’d like to see play them." Perhaps not so obviously, the site is not soliciting screenplays. The idea is to select three solid pitches that will then be developed by professional writers and directors. Who'll be doing the selecting? Investors, who are expected to pony up a hundred dollars apiece. The dream is that the site will raise six million dollars this way, and that will be enough to finance three feature films. The three people whose pitches are selected will each receive $25,000 to go with their on-screen story credit. (It costs nothing to log in and pitch.)
If parts of it sound a little Michel Gondryesque, it should be mentioned that the guys behind the site are serious men with an honorable history of chewing at the edges of the entertainment industry. Michael Bertin, who earned an MBA from the University of Chicago, is a critic for the Austin Chronicle and author (with Kevin Booth) of a biography of the late comic Bill Hicks; his co-founder, Glasgow Phillips is a past contributor to South Park and the lamented Might magazine who recorded his own attempts to redefine content providing in the 1990s in his lively memoir The Royal Nonesuch. My Movie Studio is based on the risky but intriguing notion of opening up the process by which movies get the green light. For Bertin and Phillips--and, according to their website, for the unnamed talent providers they hope to entice to come in on the projects--the excitement at this stage of the game is in waiting to see what kind of ideas are going to pour in over the transom. As for the investing side, Bertin writes, "A hundred bucks might seem like a decent chunk of change, but really, it's not much more than your monthly cable bill or maybe a ticket to a football game. But the cable company doesn't let you choose the programming and the football coaches don't let you call the plays. Then, at the end of the month or end of the game, nobody gives you any money back when the shows are good or the team wins. With this, the crowd is controlling the process and they are going to profit from it when it goes well."