50,000 angels will fund £1 million film: A Swarm of Angels


A Swarm of Angels is an ambitious project from an accomplished film-maker to produce a £1,000,000 movie with small donations from 50,000 people. The resulting film will be released under a CC license, and will be developed through feedback from the 50,000 angels who fund it.

Matt Hanson is the impressario here, and he's produced several movies, TV series and film festivals. He's signed Tommy Pallotta (A Scanner Darkly) as a producer, and both Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan) and me are serving as advisors.

The process is very cool. Matt is signing up angels in batches: first 100, then 1000, then 5000, then 25000, then 50000. At each stage, the angels get to participate in different parts of the film production: script development, teaser production, trailer production, pre-production planning, production, post-production, etc.

The first 100 angels are already signed, and Matt's opened the membership again to 1000 more, who get to work on script doctoring and making the first teasers. At £25, it's the cost of a couple CDs, and you get to participate in the production of a major feature film, using a radical, participatory methodology. Pretty cool!

A Swarm of Angels reinvents the Hollywood model of filmmaking to create cult cinema for the Internet era. It's all about making an artistic statement, making something you haven't seen before. Why are we doing this? Because we are tired of films that are made simply to please film executives, sell popcorn, or tie-in with fastfood licensing deals.

We want to invent the future of film. Call it Cinema 2.0.

To do it we need your help.

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