Peter Bihr on Social Media, Web 2.0 and Digital Life » A Swarm of Angels

A Swarm of Angels: Worlds Will Shatter

Peter Bihr — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:19:34 +0000

Ground-breaking collaborative film project A Swarm of Angels just released the first video trailer, and boy, I can’t wait to see more:

Worlds Will Shatter – The Unfold trailer from Nine Orders on Vimeo.

I’ve been a proud member of the Swarm for a while. And while it’s not always easy to find a good way to actively get involved in the process of shooting this massive collaborative open-source movie, it’s amazing to be part of something as grand as this could be. It is, seriously, what I think could be a glimpse at the future of movie production.

As of now, it’s again possible to join as a member. For quite a while registration had been closed while things were prepared to proceed. Click here to join for a donation of $47/â‚¬37.

A Swarm of Angels: Poster release

Peter Bihr — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:09:24 +0000

If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you might be familiar a film project I find to be really neat: A Swarm of Angels (former posts of mine here) will be a real, and radical, innovation: It’ll be big-ass, professionally produced movie funded (in terms of both money and creativity) by a community of film fans, the so-called Swarm. It’ll be released for re-mixing under a Creative Commons license.

It’s a great project which I think really takes community-involvement to a new level: As a member, you can get directly give your input at all levels, even script development. In between things, promo materials are developed, and later voted about. The best get used. One vote I’d like to point out is one out of a whole bunch of votes: The teaser poster vote. You can see a short-list of five poster drafts here.

My favorite? Jonathan Valiente’s poster design.

As soon as registration opens up again, you can join The Swarm here.

A Swarm of Angels: Thousands not hundreds

Peter Bihr — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 12:39:55 +0000

Click To Play

I was thrilled to hear that A Swarm of Angels (the amazing collaborative community-based film project lead by Matt Hanson) is hitting the 1000+ members mark: This also means its time to freeze membership for a little while to guarantee for the necessary stability. Phase 2 out of 5 accomplished!

You can join here.

As I’m typing this, the countdown to freezing the membership shows 001:08:28:34, i.e. 1 day and 8 hours to go. If you’re already a member, or if you joined before this countdown runs out, you’ll get First 1000 status, granting a number of privileges including the right to invite more members during the next phase. Membership, or the relevant investment if you want, is 25 pounds ($50, â‚¬36). You’ll be funding an amazing & fun collaborative film project. (According to Forbes Magazine, you’ll even be supporting a revolutionary.)

I’ve been involved (a lot more passively than actively, which is a bummer, really) with the Swarm for quite a while yet, and it’s been really interesting to get a glimpse into the way movies can be produced as collaboratively as this.

The two scripts that are being developed for production as of now are The Unfold and Glitch:

The Unfold
A disaffected Musician receives a phone call from his Mother, who everyone believed died a decade ago, triggering a search to rescue her inside â€˜The Foldâ€™. He sets off on a journey where he must confront family secrets, a shadowy organisation, Cell Division, and a strange dimensional force that threatens to destroy the world.

Glitch
A videogame artist recreates his childhood love as an idoru. A voyeuristic cable installer meddles in his customers lives. A neglected housewife finds evidence of an affair on a lost phone. In a world of the wireless, the powerless, and the loveless, it is time they all made a connection.

Both of which could be quite intriguing from what I’ve heard so far.

Link, join

A Swarm of Angels: Movie Poster Competition

Peter Bihr — Wed, 23 May 2007 23:11:04 +0000

Ever thought of designing a poster? Like, one that’s going to be the official promo material for a real movie? (And a kick-ass one, too!) Well, here’s your chance.

The great independent, collaborative & community-driven film project A Swarm of Angels has started a movie poster competition.

Palla has released his latest stunning image for A Swarm of Angels visualisations under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0), so we can use it as the main photographic element of our teaser poster for The Unfold. Weâ€™d like you to make the final design.

Brief: The image explores one of the main visual effects of the story â€” the idea of the world splitting, fracturing, and unfolding. The poster should showcase this using the photograph as a core visual, but with additional typographic and illustrative elements as the designer sees fit. This is an opportunity to indulge in classic and artistic poster design free of the usual commercial imperatives and informational clutter associated with many modern examples.

Posters format: Final size – A2 (16.5 x 23.4 in â€” 420 x 594 mm). Portrait or landscape aspect ratio.Submissions should be preview jpegs no more than 1500 pixels in length maximum. All images submitted must fall under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license, with the winning image able to be used in all ASOA activities.

Link to the poster competition
…or join The Swarm and support the movie, too.

zeit.zuender covers A Swarm of Angels

Peter Bihr — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 15:05:20 +0000

Community-based, super-collaborative film project A Swarm of Angels is picking up speed. By now, it’s even slowly getting some credit in German media. Meike Richter just wrote a nice piece for zeit.zuender.

It’s always nice to see A Swarm of Angels covered – it’s an awesome and ambitious project which I’m glad to support. (Older posts about the Swarm here.) Maybe it’s time for a new year’s resolution: Support the Swarm more actively.

(via)

Relaunch: A Swarm of Angels

Peter Bihr — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 23:45:34 +0000

The great & ambitious film collaborative film project A Swarm Of Angels (which I’m a proud, if passive, member of) have relaunched their website. Now it’s all in the looks of the new official poster above. A Swarm Of Angels, or ASOA for short, is headed by film maker Matt Hanson (his website, his weblog), but it’s also a collaborative effort, funded by the community and produced for the public. It’s all strictly CC and No-DRM, it’s creative, and hopefully prove a useful alternative to the mainstream movie productions we’ve all gotten used to.

ASOA is currently in development 2 out of 5. You can still become a member, more info about joining here.

Good work, Angels. Keep it up!

A Swarm of Angels is The Next Big Web Thing

Peter Bihr — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 07:41:06 +0000

Just a short note: A Swarm of Angels, the independent, community-driven and -produced sci-fi movie, just got voted The Next Big Web Thing. Congrats! (To read up on what A Swarm of Angels is and how it works, check out my former postings.)

The Next Big Thing: A Swarm of Angels

Peter Bihr — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 17:06:46 +0000

A little while ago I posted about A Swarm of Angels, an ambitious independent movie production I just find incredibly neat & innovative. A Swarm of Angels is one of this month’s nominees for The Next Big Thing, and it’s certainly worth being supported. (Some of the other projects there are worth checking out, too!) You can vote here.

As a reminder: A Swarm of Angels is raising 1m pound (yes, that’s 1.000.000 sterling) in micro-donations (from 50.000 supporters) to shoot a kick-ass real big sci-fi thriller, funded and supported by its community, and later to be given back to the community under a Creative Commons license: Free to distribute, free to remix, free to mash-up. The first elements of the soundtrack are already on the website and support by the web community has been great so far.

I think it’s really not too much to claim that by donating a mere 25 pounds, you can become part of a historic development in movie history which could change the way we produce movies profoundly. Also, you get a say in the whole production process including script, soundtrack, marketing: anything, everything.

The Swarm is recruting. You still have the chance to be one of the first 1.000 members: Join now!

A Swarm of Angels spreading quickly

Peter Bihr — Thu, 11 May 2006 23:17:20 +0000

This is pretty amazing: A Swarm of Angels, the community-funded and community-driven film project by Matt Hanson, Cory Doctorow and Warren Ellis, is finding its way around the blogosphere pretty quickly. Within the last 6 days, 33 sites have linked there, catapulting it to somewhere around Technorati Rank 78K. When I joined The Swarm 4 days ago, there were just about 20 postings altogether…

Guess this is a good sign: The blogosphere is catching on, which leaves me in good faith about the future of this awesome project.

A Swarm of Angels

Peter Bihr — Sun, 07 May 2006 13:05:24 +0000

Many aspects of the idea behind (bottom-up community-driven independent film production project) A Swarm of Angels really fascinate me:

The Swarm

It’s a massively collaborating environment: Both resources (funding, tech support etc) and creativity come from the supporting crowd. The community aspects here are almost ridiculously strong! The movie is paid for and produced with support by the community; Swarm members can contribute directly to the movie at all stages, both in terms of organization and creative input. As a swarm member, you get pretty direct access to the producers and script writers.

The copyright thing / Underdogs rule

As the whole movie will be produced independently by and for the crowds, it’s gonna be owned by the crowds as well. Only this time, it’s gonna be made by reputable and cool producers with the potential to kick some serious Hollywood butt. It’s gonna be released under the Creative Commons license, allowing for remixing, thus allowing all the weird spin-offs, follow-ups and mash-ups one can hope for. If this works out, then there’s proof that it really is possible to produce even expensive stuff like high-quality movies without a restrictive Hollywoold studio.
The Campaign

Being a campaign nerd, the aspects of how this campaign (if you wanna called it so) is planned and run particularly fascinate me. As far as I can tell at this early stage, they just got it right, as you say.

Development Stages

The campaign is sub-divided into stages of growth (5, so far). Stage 1 raised funding to set up the technical infrastructure for the rest of the campaign, emails were seeded and bloggers engaged. Smash, hit! Currently we’re in Stage 2: Script development, fund-raising for teasers. And so on. Excellent planning there.

Community Development

The Number One rule for campaigns should always be: It’s the Community, Stupid! Without a strong community of supporters, your campaign is gonna be a waste of money. (Exceptions are possible, of course, but very, very rare.) Here, the community is particularly important, as the campaign doesn’t only need it only to get known better, but also for very concrete input in forms of creativity and cash.

The Swarm community is involved in all development stages at various levels, from (passive) donations to (actively) spreading the word and (interactively) giving creative inputs. More importantly, the community is growing step by step, allowing for adjustments and the development of rituals. Any community needs rituals to develop an identity, and to allow for the development of sophisticated roles. (Or elders as they’re sometimes called: People within the community who are respected and/or seen as somewhat authoritative, in a good sense.)

As we’re expected to donate money, it’s fair to ask how it’s spend etc. Every aspect of what’s done, how it’s done and by whom it’s done are available on the website. More detailed information can be asked from the producer in the Swarm Members’ forum: Complete transparency.

I’ll definitively keep a close eye on this one. Everybody interested in online campaigns can learn a lot here!

update: A Swarm of Angels is also nominated for The Next Big Web Thing.