Creative minded people who’ve always wanted a chance to break through and work on a major motion picture now have their chance. After Dark Films and massify.com are challenging raconteurs, horror hounds, filmmakers and regular folk alike to bring their creativity to a full-length horror film through the newly launched online network, www.massify.com. This venture, the first feature film developed entirely via the internet, will be released by After Dark Films as part of its 8 Films to Die Forâ in 2008. The initiative, dubbed “Ghosts in the Machine,” will give the massify.com community the tools to create, submit, choose the idea and cast this unique motion picture. One filmmaker will be a producer on the movie, and four actors will have the chance to work on a feature film.
Aspiring filmmakers will have the opportunity to create a range of content along the way, including pitching ideas, auditioning for roles and creating ancillary materials, like a movie poster or song. The initiative will have a series of laddered rounds. The first, the “pitch phase,” will seek out the best new horror ideas, narrowing them down to one, which the script will be based on. This will mark the beginning of the casting round, in which both aspiring and professional actors are invited to upload audition videos to play the four major roles in the feature film. The community will then vote and elect ten male and ten female semifinalists to fly to Los Angeles for screen tests. Once the idea and the cast are chosen, the movie will move into production – all of which will be documented reality-TV style on massify.com. As the film nears completion, the Massify community will pitch marketing ideas that will be used as keyart during the release of the films well and will have the opportunity to score music to completed scenes.
“The ‘Ghosts in the Machine’ contest will offer fans a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring the next generation of horror film to the screen,” stated After Dark Films CEO Courtney Solomon. “We are confident that in the minds of passionate fans and young filmmakers, the next great horror idea is being dreamt up right now, and eagerly anticipate the opportunity to turn one inspired idea into a feature horror film in a way that has never been done before.”
“This is the perfect launch for our new platform,” stated Massify President and Co-Founder Kenneth Woo. “Our goal is to provide a place where those who passionately make and act in films can collaborate directly with those who passionately watch films. And few communities are as passionate as the horror community.”
Massify.com will be giving updates all the way through the production and post production process so that fans can watch and be participatory in the film they helped create and grow. Audiences can also log onto www.horrorfest.com to catch updates of the production.
