Mainstream media and major film distributors don’t speak “Crowd.” They just don’t seem to get it.
Crowd sourcing and crowd funding, by nature are not mainstream and Netizens happily communicate in their own language and with their own peeps.
Two filmmakers, Karl-Martin Pold and Sarah Noeringberg, are soliciting donations at StartNext online for their documentary, A Man Called Spencer; about the famous Italian actor, Bud Spencer, who is most known for his spaghetti westerns.
When the Italian press got wind of it, one of the newspapers released a misguided story claiming that Spencer was poor and was trying to raise money to support himself. Really?
In the cafe culture of creatives around the world who are familiar with the subject and meaning of crowd sourcing and its counterpart, crowd funding, the subject is still hot. They understand it and are embracing it by the thousands.
To clarify for those who may not yet have entered this democratized medium, crowd sourcing is a way to engage the talented citizens of the Internet in the creative aspects or other elements of a project, i.e., the script, music, effects shots, titles, trailers, etc.
A subset of crowd sourcing is crowd funding, a platform that enables filmmakers or other creatives to solicit monetary donations for their projects.
Perhaps one of the earliest films to appear online for free download was Star Wreck, released in 1997. It was 45 minutes long and message boards caught on fire. The phenomenon had begun.
The same team released one of the first collaborative films to crossover into the mainstream press and become well known, Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning. It was launched in 2000 by maverick filmmakers (five students and several unemployed friends from Tampere) with little money, lots of idealism and their own home computers.
The blue screen used behind many of the scenes of the film, was a piece of linoleum painted with blue chroma key paint and their equipment may not have been the most exotic, but they worked together to make their movie and found themselves in the post production process by 2004, much of which was completed in their homes. (This is a picture of creator and producer Samuli Torssonen’s kitchen that housed the render farm.)
Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning was released online on October 1, 2005, and within four days had over 400,000 downloads. It was subsequently shown on TV in Finland, Sweden and Norway and the DVD came out in the UK on April 4, 2009.
Continued on the next pageby Max Eddy | 12:54 pm, February 11th, 2011
The President has recently announced a new plan to free up huge chunks of the wireless spectrum, increase the national coverage of 4G networks, and install a wireless public safety network. These are ambitious goals being set by the administration, perhaps the most being the 4G investment which the President has pledged will cover 98% of Americans.
To make this all work, the White House is planning to raise $27 billion in spectrum auctions, and then turning that money around to fund the investment in these areas:
- $5 billion to bring 4G internet connections to rural America
- $3 billion for 4G research and development to coincide with the construction
- $10.7 billion for the wireless public safety network, which was called for years ago by the 9/11 commission
- $9.6 billion for budget deficit reduction
The push behind this investment invites comparison to the past efforts to bring telephone communication and highway travel to all corners of America, and the administration has framed it’s arguments in support of the investment in the same light. From Networkworld:
“America’s businesses are building out 4G networks to much of the nation,” the White House said in a statement. “Nevertheless, absent additional government investment, millions of Americans will not be able to participate in the 4G revolution. This investment will … extend access from the almost 95 percent of Americans who have 3G wireless services today to at least 98 percent of all Americans gaining access to state-of-the-art 4G high-speed wireless services within five years.”
Commentators have noted, however, that the entire plan hinges on the money brought in from auctions. As any eBay patron can tell you, those don’t always work out how you want. But the emphasis on bringing Internet connectivity (and public safety) to the nation as a whole, is a worthy one. Keep in mind, this isn’t so much about 4G as it is bringing the Internet to mostly poor, isolated, outlying communities. Hopefully this initiative, however it really pans out, will give every American a more equal footing in the burgeoning information economy. Perhaps it will be little things like someone making some extra money on Etsy, or bigger things like a farmer finding a better price for his crop.
Either way, it will bring us a step closer to all being united, as as a people, underneath that glorious community that truly identifies this country: Facebook. I mean, uh, the American dream.
(Via Engadget, Networkworld)
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