Photos by Mavis/Flickr
The entertainment industry is one of the largest and fastest growing industries in the world, set to make over $2 trillion annually by 2016. Many parts of the industry have evolved drastically and quickly. After all it wasn’t long ago that we drove down to the local Blockbuster in hopes they still had a VHS copy of Total Recall available so we could watch in utter amazement of it’s “cutting-edge special effects”.
But many vital parts of how films actually are made have gone virtually untouched by the technological advances of the 21st century. Great scripts have a better shot at getting into Harvard than getting produced unless the writer has lots of famous actor friends; casting is still done by a small group of talent agents mailing out hard copy black and white pictures of actors; and funding is often accomplished by hordes of producers flocking to Cannes to all beg the same small group of billionaires for money.
The results of the inefficient systems are obvious to anyone who has seen a movie lately. Really bad stories are acted out by bad actors in films that should have never been funded in the first place.
Fortunately there is a New Hope (apologies to Mr. Spielberg), crowdsourcing promises to open up these closed outdated systems and usher in a new golden age of filmmaking that might actually make it worth paying a 1000% markup for theater popcorn again.
Amazon has adopted a new approach to which scripts to produce that is as revolutionary as it is obvious. Ask the people who you are making it for what they want. That’s right they put the scripts online and let the crowd vote for the stories they would like to see made into a series, and the ones with the most votes are the ones that actually get made. When you think about how studios currently decide which scripts to produce it almost seems crazy, like a restaurant that believes it can go a better job guessing what everyone will want to eat than asking the patrons.
At Casting to the People we are seeking to democratize how casting directors find new talent by incorporating crowdsourcing into the submission process. Actors are now able to apply with a small audition video and after applying they vote on their peers to help the best submissions rise to the top of the pile. Meaning the crowd will help filter through thousand of hopefuls to find the true talent who may have been overlooked by traditional channels.
Finally, funding is no longer a matter of sucking up to billionaires, now that filmmakers have harnessed the power of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Zach Braff was able to raise an impressive $3.1 million for his latest film. Not only does this give the filmmaker the freedom to explore more interesting and unique stories that would have been difficult to fund using the traditional system, crowdfunding has the added advantage of generating large amounts of buzz and free marketing for projects even before the first day of filming.
It adds up to a new golden age of filmmaking, one in which incredible stories that may not have ever been made can be skillfully acted by amazing actors who may never have been seen, to create movies that transform how we see the world around, and serve to inspire audiences and future filmmakers alike.
Aiden Livingston is the founder of Casting to the People.
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