An unprecedented number of first-time producers are setting their sights on the 2010 Rotterdam Film Festival. In fact, such are the expected levels of investment frenzy, this year’s event is likely to attract more first-time producers than just about any international film festival you care to mention.

But few of these fledgling producers are professional, and their investments can only be measured in relatively modest terms: online coins valued at €5 each. Nevertheless, their involvement in the 2010 Cinema Reloaded experiment represents what IFFR chief Rutger Wolfson believes to be a revolutionary development in the funding of projects in the independent film sector.

The festival has selected three directors to pitch a short-film project online, at cinemareloaded.com. Alexis Dos Santos (Unmade Beds 2009, CineMart 2007) is web-pitching Another World: Rocky + Lulu (working title), a film about love and friendship in the virtual world. Ho Yuhang, whose short As I Lay Dying won a Tiger in 2008, is pitching an as-yet unnamed comic project about a group of radical Indonesians who wish to invade Malaysia, while the wildly idiosyncratic Pipilotti Rist (Pepperminta 2009, CineMart 2007) pitches her surrealist Liebling. The web audience is encouraged to invest in the projects by purchasing €5 coins, thereby becoming in effect co-producers on the film. When a project hits the €30,000 investment mark, it is ready to go into production. The budget can increase to a maximum of €60,000 per project, at which point no more investment in that particular project is possible. If a film fails to hit €30,000 its monies will be re-allocated to the leading film, as determined by investment to date. If no film reaches the minimum requirement, the donations made to the two lowest-yielding projects will be transferred to the highest-yielding project. If that film subsequently fails to hit €30,000, gap financing will make up the shortfall. It is expected that one or more of the films will be screened at IFFR 2011. The running totals for each project are at cinemareloaded.com for all to see (and the Daily Tiger will also be featuring a daily update).

Committed audience
“It is difficult for the type of films we love at this festival to always reach an audience”, Wolfson points out. “And at the same time, this means that the whole production, finance and distribution model is under a lot of stress. As a festival, we are were very well placed to do something about this problem practically, and not just to philosophise about it. We have a very large and committed audience, who I really believe is prepared to step in at the early stages of a film to help finance it. They are then more closely involved with the film than an audience would otherwise be, and for filmmakers it is a great opportunity to start building an audience right from the beginning of a project. Rotterdam has a very long tradition of responding to developments in the industry, with initiatives such as CineMart and the Hubert Bals Fund. We try to support filmmakers and find ways to facilitate what they do. Cinema Reloaded seems like a logical progression of this into the digital era.”

Another World producer Soledad concurs. “The first film we made together, Glue [2006], was partfinanced by grants received from Rotterdam”, she states. “Unmade Beds [2009] had been in development for four years when the money came through from Rotterdam. So the festival’s concept of Cinema Reloaded isn’t altogether alien to me, as the festival has played such an instrumental part in Alexis’ career.” Malaysian director Ho Yuhang expresses his gratitude to the festival in equally robust terms. “A bunch of strangers are giving me money – this is very exciting”, he exclaims.

Internet casting
UK producer Rupert Preston sought to embrace and empower the web audience when he set up a partnership between MySpace and his company Vertigo Films to produce the £1 million-budgeted feature Faintheart (2008). The film’s finances were secured through conventional UK channels following the company’s high profile search for a director and cast from MySpace users: an exercise that garnered 1,000 showreels and over three million hits. After the film’s completion, 60 exclusive screenings arranged for MySpace devotees preceded a simultaneous DVD and VOD release. Preston explains, however, that the 14-month process was too protracted. Such projects, he argues, need to be vigorously compressed to retain a level of interest among the film’s potential internet audience.
“Turning this interest into bums on seats means you have to shorten the whole process,” he comments. “On another of our productions, Outlaw by Nick Love, we went to Nick’s massive fan base through the web community and asked them to invest in the film in various ways, from being an extra to buying a t-shirt. That […] actually raised some money and it created huge awareness of the film before we even started shooting it. […] It is important to keep the momentum.”

Experiment
Wolfson remains enthused by a model that favours more soberly-budgeted non-feature product. “I’m hoping that we’ll have at least one project funded,” he adds. “And if we see that there is enough enthusiasm to do it again in 2011 then we’ll do it. But, for sure, we want to share what we are doing with everybody who is interested. We’re not just going to present the Cinema Reloaded project itself during the festival. We’ll also have debates around the subject and publish articles about the experiment on our website, and hopefully during the year we’ll publish more to share what we have learned. Then in 2011 we will have a premiere of one or more of these projects with a roomful of the co-producers who made the films possible. That will be a lot of fun.”