Popularity contests for commercialising creative output may not always be the best idea (see The X Factor and the completely unnecessary flap over Strictly Come Dancing this year), but I'm keeping my eye on Massify.
Given the amount of dreck that has come out of Hollywood recently (and the faltering economy virtually guarantees more brainless and uninspired 'safe bets'), a community of writers, directors, production crew and actors collaborating on and offline to make independent film can only be a good thing.
Not every pitch by an aspiring filmmaker on Massify gets made into a film - the community has to get behind it. The first Massify film is supported by After Dark, and it is - perhaps predictably - a horror flick, Perkins' 14. It was organised online, from the story and script, to the casting, to the marketing poster, and will be part of a film festival known as Horrorfest.
While horror might be a little too 'genre' and an easy sell, this democratic, self-sufficient method of realising mass entertainment - to me - is the future of independent filmmaking. The community of filmmakers and film-lovers is key to the success of this venture, and Massify supports this community by providing the tools to enable them to get their ideas, portfolios, and skills noticed. They also provide funding and relationships with distribution companies for the (sadly but realistically) most important part of filmmaking - the bottom line.
YouTube and others like it give the impression that they have revolutionised entertainment. They are really just the Internet-enabled version of recording something off the TV (or video camera) onto a tape and sharing it with your classmates. Massify helps filmmakers and utillises the community to make something new, original, and - most crucially - commercial. And that is truly groundbreaking.
