One Minute Movie

Having been recently inspired by the concept of a one-minute movie, I have an idea that I thought I would pose to you, the readers. It is an intersection of flash fiction and wikis. In an effort to gain some support and enthusiasm for a longer short film (is that a contradiction?), I would like to facilitate a very short film with a maximum of audience participation.

I see the structure breaking down as such:

I will create an open Google document and share it here. This will be the forum for creating a script for our one minute movie. (NB: One minute of screen time is approximately equal to one page of properly formatted script.) Readers may create, edit, and revert to their heart’s content. I will suggest that disputes be negotiated discussions be handled in a separate GoogleDoc, which I will also provide. I will come up with a mechanism for closing the script. Perhaps offering a poll to the readers on whether to accept a final copy or continue revisions. Once the script is closed, we will move on to the next step. (Note: I am suggesting GoogleDocs because they are simple. If you have experience setting up a wiki I would love to hear from you.)

I don’t know of a tool to collaborate on storyboards, although I’m sure one of you could suggest one. It basically has to allow for simple drawings to be shared between many users. If this is possible, then we could follow a similar process for the storyboards as for the script. When that is complete filming will begin. I will likely shoot all the footage over a weekend with a consumer miniDV camera. Others are obviously welcome to do the same, which would give some extra flexibility, but I will assume that others will not do their own shooting. People in the area could contact me to help out with my version of the shooting. I would then take the raw footage, encode in a codec suitable for distribution over the web, and make the footage available via torrent (if a tech savvy person can assist me in setting one up), server (if someone wants to donate the bandwidth), or Pando (if I’m on my own).

Once the footage is available, you are free to download and edit it together yourself, adding any effects you wish, in whatever program you wish. If there are any musical people who would like to contribute original music to the project, that would also be greatly appreciated. The resulting one-minute movies will be shared here, and possibly elsewhere as well.

In the interest of more diverse interpretations, in may be worth forgoing the storyboard process in favor of letting editors cut together the scenes in whatever way they wish. In terms of legal considerations, I would be in favor of releasing all material under some kind of open source license, perhaps GNU GPL or Creative Commons. If you have advice on or experience with this matter, I would love to hear from you. This is all I know about using the GPL so far.

If this is a project you would like to get involved with, particularly if you have any of the technical knowledge that I have referred to above, please send me an email (producer@grad.com) to let me know what you are willing to help with.

Help Requested:

  1. Torrents set up
  2. Server space
  3. Wiki set up
  4. Licensing knowledge

Opportunities for creative folks:

  1. Writing
  2. Shooting
  3. Video Editing
  4. Original Music

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