Twitter 140conference 4 – the 18 year old film-makers from buyacredit

Toby Ben and Adrian were billed as three 18 year-olds taking on the film industry. They want to make a film adaptation of a Jules Verne book and failing to get conventional funding, they decided to use the internet to source the one million pounds they reckoned they’d need. Their donation website is called buyacredit. They were all confident and had floppy hair so I mixed them up and so have collated their comments under the collective moniker TBA. Jeff, the host asked some questions.

11.48 Jeff: What’s buyacredit all about?

TBA: We wanted to try and make a film, found a screenwriter but fell at the first hurdle of getting money for the film. We wanted to find $1million.It sounds like a lot, but it’s a low budget for a film.

So we decided to use the internet, so if you pay a pound, you get a credit at the end.

We tried to get in contact with Stephen Fry, cause we knew he was techie. He’s been really supportive, he’s going to be in the a film too.

11.50 Everyone loves behind the scenes footage on films, but we thought we could give the public a bit of the behind the scenes while it’s still
going on real-time.

Jeff: if you dream, you dream big then anything’s possible.

TBA: We’ve learned a lot, we’ve just made a short film.
We changed the name according to what Twitter said. The public are are all film producers. We’re still fundraising. We’re living the dream at the minute.

Jeff: Do you have a message for other aspiring film-makers?

TBA: Like they say: just go for it.
We’re opening up the production – to make real-time production by the public. We’ve got so many different ideas, people could pay to be extras…

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Shiny verdict: wow these guys know how to fundraise and network, but is a crowdsourced film actually going to work? This made me more sympathetic to the points Andrew Keene raised… if getting a million pounds is down to charm and
personality and having some influential contacts, is that always a good thing? do we need some more gatekeepers and perhaps
institutions to make things a bit fairer and more meritocratic? What if someone’s got a better film but a less good fundraising
model? uh… though of course, respect to these guys for their gumption.