Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Stacking Up The Online Film Submission Sites
Last night, Amazon.com jumped into the movie business, with its own, online film submission site, Amazon Studios, backed by the help of a number of notable USC Film School advisors. Amazon is not the only company looking to make a business out of online film submissions: We dug up some of the other local competition in this space, mined from our database of startups, with brief details below:
Amazon Studios
Hollywood Heavyweights: Jack Epps, Jr., Mark Gill, Mike Werb, Michael Taylor
Summary: Amazon.com's own entry into the online movie contest business, Amazon Studios said it will award $2.7 million in awards over the next year to the best movies submitted to the site--with an exclusive option for Warner Bros. Despite coming from Amazon, the local involvement is heavy, with USC's School of Cinematic Arts heavily involved, as well as other local entertainment execs.
OpenFilm
Founder: Dmitry Kozko
Hollywood Heavyweights: James Caan, Scott Caan, Robert Duvall, and Mark Rydell
Summary: Openfilm has its own warchest of film financing dollars as part of its online movie competition site, saying in April that it would invest $1M into independent filmmakers who are selected through the online community. Submissions to the site are eligible for a financing package to produce a feature length film.
Filmaka
Founders: Deepak Nayar, Thomas Ausberger
Hollywood Heavyweights: Colin Firth, Werner Herzog, Tim Delaney, Neil Labute, Paul Schrader
Summary: Filmaka holds monthly competition for shoft films, judged by a number of Hollywood insiders, to gain their own funding to develop a longer feature film. However, the site looks to be turning to commercial web series development--currently, the site's biggest competition is to create a web series around the brand Hungry-Man.
Poptent
Founder: Rick Parkhill
Summary: Not really a film submission site, but worth a mention because it's closely related (see Filmaka above)--Poptent offers up an online competition for user generated commercials, where companies offer up prizes to producers of commercials around a central theme to the best, user-produced video fitting a contest. Interestingly enough, Amazon.com's ads for the Amazon Kindle last year were pulled from a similar contest run by Amazon last year for user generated advertising.
Have we missed other notable, film-competitions sites out there? What's your opinion on these sites? Let us know in comments below!