A Swarm of Angels - Case Study 7
March 5, 2009 – 7:29 am | by ChristianWho are they?
A Swarm of Angels was set up by film producer and author, Matt Hanson. Its advisors include writer Cory Doctorow, graphic novelist Warren Ellis and digital film producer Tommy Pallotta.
What do they do?
A Swarm of Angels is a collaborative open source movie-making project (‘cinama 2.0’), a new way of funding and making feature films. It plans to create a £1 million film and make it freely downloadable under a Creative Commons licence to an online community of over 1 million people.
How does it work?
It recruits an online community of members to vote on production and development decisions, collaborate on the project, and/or join the crew.
The concept envisages five phases of development, with a growing number of members allowed into each one. The first, with 100 members, involved ‘developing an online presence’, while the second, open to 1000 members, involved early development of 2 scripts (‘The Unfold’ and ‘The Ravages’). With the project now in phase 3, the scripts will be finalised and trailers produced. In phase 4, one of the scripts will be chosen by a member vote and put into pre-production. Finally, open to a membership of 50,000 people, phase 5 will involve filming, post-production and distribution.
Community
As part of the ‘swarm’, members communicate primarily through a forum (‘The Nine Orders’) and through wikis. There are also plans to develop a separate ‘script wiki’.
Business model
Full membership to A Swarm of Angels costs £25. Alternatively, it costs £5 to be a supporter, without posting or voting rights. The project is non-profit distributing, with profits funding the next production.
Establishing trust
The voting system allows members to have an equal say in the creative process.
Performance
As part of phase 3 of the development process, a trailer, of sorts, is now available on the website for ‘The Unfold’ called ‘Worlds Will Shatter’, although it does not contain any information on the plot of the film. With only around 1000 members at present, it is still well short of the 50,000 required to start filming.
Problems or limitations
Unlike MyFootballClub, A Swarm of Angels does make provisions for involving its members in a more hands-on way, as people could potentially be directly involved in production. The main problem, however, has been getting things done in the first place. After four years, its members have yet to reach an agreement on the script, thus forestalling subsequent development.
One Response to “A Swarm of Angels - Case Study 7”
By Matt on Mar 11, 2009 | Reply
Thanks for the case study.
Just wanted to correct a couple of things:
- Filming is scheduled to sync up with the 25,000 member mark. 50,000 is the suggested amount of a sustainable ‘Swarm’ community though - a self-sustaining nanostudio.
- In terms of problems/limitations:
The development time is wrong: ASOA softlaunched mid-2006.
You are correct about the long development time for the scripts - this is due to the fact we are testing two types of collaborative approach to scriptwriting. As it is participative and collaborative the writing process is a long one, but we do have two scripts that are in advanced development.
The project development time for the ‘beta test’ of creating two feature films is still within the traditional timeframe of approx 5 years to make one ‘traditional’ independent feature film.
That said, the site and structure of http://aswarmofangels.com is currently being reconfigured to take account of what we have learnt in the process so far, toward streamlining participation and accelerating development while keeping it true to its pioneering open source, co-created, and crowdsourced nature.
Thanks.