Grants/Shared Film Festival
Describe the project you are proposing as clearly as possible in just five sentences.
In South Korea this year we organised the 1st Shared Film Festival in collaboration with CC Korea, VODO, KODIFI and BitTorrent. The purpose of the festival is to bring free-to-share films using CC licenses to the attention of local audiences in cinemas, promoting both shared culture and the films and filmmakers involved. The event was seen as a success and we would like to extend it as a "satellite" event, both to other CC conferences (Australia has expressed an interest in hosting) and to film festivals worldwide. We think this can be valuable both to free-to-share filmmakers and to the promotion of CC objectives.
Detail the tangible project output (e.g., paper, blog post, written materials, video/film, etc.; this would be in addition to the final written report that successful grant recipients will be expected to deliver to CC at the conclusion of the project).
The central output is the Festival event itself, wherever it takes place. This will center around the model of a series of free/pay-what-you-want screenings made available through local infrastructure in collaboration with relevant cinemas and groups. We also produce brochures, posters and generate press around the event. In addition we will maintain the sharedfilm.cc website and extend that for use outside Korea. We would expect to use this grant toward the development of at least one further event in 2010 and one during 2011.
Describe the community you are targeting. How would the project benefit the community?
The Shared Film events target local audiences who are interested both in the concept of sharing and in independent film itself. While these audiences are different, it's highly productive to bring them together to discover how free-to-share is enabling a new film culture through a new mode of distribution. Access to culture is one important benefit the Shared Film event can bring. The other key benefit is increased awareness of the benefits of sharing and the rich culture growing around CC and free-to-share. Finally, we see important benefits for filmmakers basing their developing careers around sharing: our events are a great way to reward them for the value they are giving to shared culture.br />
Having already organised the 1st Shared Festival in Seoul in 2010, we feel well placed to extend the concept and work with other venues, organisations and festivals. While we would very much like to see others pursuing curations of shared culture in festivals, for now it seems that we will have to lead the way. Our background in CC Korea (HyoJung Sun) and filmmaking/distribtion (Jamie King) give us good connections and experience to take the project forward, both in terms of finding and sustaining partnerships, and making sure there's exciting new content to show around the world.
How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact - on your main participants? Other contributors? On the larger community?
There are a number of measures of success in this project. One is attendance the events themselves, and we'll measure this. Another is how well the event works to promote the idea of a free-to-share film culture that works to bring new filmmakers into the discourse. This is harder to measure, but we'll make a strong effort to understand how well the event functions in this specific outreach capacity. Lastly, we'll be able to poll our partner organisations (such as CC Australia) to understand how much value they feel the Shared Film events provided to them -- we know that in Seoul it was seen as valuable. Taken together these should provide good measures of success.
How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement?
We'll have two core organisers, named above, and around 2-3 others working on the development of the project. This grant will pay those others as we work towards the future events. Once we reach the point of organising a specific festival, we'll leverage the support of partner organisations, as we did in Asia, to help with organisation on the ground. This enables us to make the grant go a long way, but we'll also be seeking specific support from commercial sponsors.
Describe how your project will benefit Creative Commons' mission to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons".
This has probably been covered above, but one the key benefits here is that the Shared Film event provides a further motivation for filmmakers to distribute their work in a free-to-share form -- that they may be invited to an occasion where they'll be given a public forum and honoured in a way associated with traditional film festivals. This is an opportunity often not open to shared-culture contributors, so it's important, and it will clearly help motivate new creators to consider sharing their works.
Describe what technologies and tools your project will use. What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs?
This is not really a particularly technically innovative project, though it does rely on a number of technologies to make it work. We'll use the normal assemblage of blogs, chat, ftp and so forth to handle logistics. Other technical needs are handled by editors, cinema engineers and so on. We do not see technical requirements as a limitation here except, perhaps, in the case of trying to export the event to a less developed country.
What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them?
For us the key challenge is finding sponsors that can enable us to bring enough filmmakers out to the events. Having filmmakers present is great for filmmakers and CC culture (see above) but it's also important for audiences grappling with the concepts of shared culture who are able to discuss with creators who have direct experience with the benefits and problems associated with sharing their work. This means that we need to develop strong relationships with supporting organisations, and that's something this grant can help us find the time to do.
How do you plan to sustain your project after the Creative Commons funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future?
See above.
How can this project be scalable, or have a scalable impact?
With a 'cuckoo' model of running alongside others' events, this is not really scalable, but certainly replicable and repeatable. We'd intend to off the Shared Film programme as a free-to-use component for events, using BitTorrent to distribute the core content; but each year we'd be aiming to run 2-3 events ourselves at strategic conference and festivals. We're already in discussion about doing this alongside the Berlinale, but it's our hope that others will pick up the programme and do it without us, choosing their own artists to invite!
What resources and support do you expect Creative Commons to provide to your project to ensure its success (if any)?
We'd like to ask for the maximum grant of $10,000 from CC to help us continue to make this event possible. In any case we'll continue to work with local CC organisations to bring the event to CC events each year.
Describe how your organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners. (100 words)
We communicate with audiences through sharedfilm.cc and we'll soon develop Twitter and Facebook presences. In addition we are able to leverage local CC networks, and the networks of VODO and BitTorrent
Legal
Yes
