Hi Andy,
Yes OpenIndie launched on the 1st of March as promised you can find a film to request and sign up at http://openindie.com/films

I've just Googled OpenIndie myself and all the links are working, would appreciate it if you're still getting those errors you could tell me what the exact message is.

Cheers,

Kieran Masterton
OpenIndie Co-Founder

Is Open Indie up and running? I have tried to google it and none of the links work...

Open Indie went live today. Looks promising. I've set up my account for HEART OF NOW and have already received to unsolicited donations from fans. Very excited for the potential of this site as it grows. And I love this map function... http://openindie.com/film/heart-of-now/map

Hello, I am a independent film maker. I just came to know about Kickstarter. Openindie is a great concept.I am trying to get my film done and its in the final phase of VFX and color correction. I am strapped at this point and want to raise some funds. I would love to know if someone had a valuable invite for me to start a fundraising project here.

Thank you,
Hari

Excited to be part of OpenIndie! Thanks to Arin, Kieran, and Susi/Center for Independent Documentaries-- and of course, to everyone else who contributed. Now, onward and upward! ..

Hi Brendan,
No, no, you're not jumping the gun at all and I do, in fact, have a blog post planned on my (very long) list of things to do which will let filmmakers know how to prepare for the launch of the filmmaker tools. To answer your question, postal codes are gold dust. We really wanna see those postal codes people!!! :) Essentially, the filmmaker tools will eat up postal codes and turn them into prospects for you guys, however, OpenIndie.com will eventually be able to take a town / city / province name and guestimate a geo-location for that user. Don't forget, if you already have email addresses without exact postcodes, these are just as useful, because we when we send out the beta invites to those email addresses they will be prompted to enter their postcode thus giving you one "request" in that area.

Thanks for your enthusiasm mate, we're just as excited to get moving and we'll start to push out advice like this via our blog soon :)

Cheers,

Kieran

As one of the filmmakers super excited to be involved in phase one, I want to make sure that my film is well set up to be a valuable asset to the OpenIndie community. Both for the benefit of the new site itself, and to help make my film as successful as it can be once audiences are able to start hosting screenings.

What steps can I begin to take to make OpenIndie work, for everyone involved, and for my film?

One thing in particular I want to know, as I'm starting to work harder to map the audience's location, is: Is it better/does it matter whether we are collecting postal/zip codes, or city/town and province/state names? So far for my film we've been collecting city and provinces, because it felt less intrusive to people's privacy and thought the information was just as helpful. But if it is important to OpenIndie, we will begin to get postal codes instead.

Sorry if I'm jumping the gun a little bit, I know that building the site is going to take a while, but I am so excited about getting started! Let us know what we can do to help make everything work.

So pleased everybody rose to the occasion to get this funded - can't wait to see how it develops. Only sorry I couldn't give more! Here's to the future!

So excited to see this project funded! Can't wait for the site to open up :)

Thanks Mike, your support means a lot, I've got a huge amount of development ahead of me but after handing in my notice at work today, and thanks to everyone who donated, I now have the freedom to put every hour available to me between now and March 1st into making OpenIndie a reality.

I already eat, sleep and breath OpenIndie and I am incredibly excited to be able to spend my time building something that I believe in and obviously so many other people believe in.

Thanks to everyone for your support and watch this space for updates on my journey building OpenIndie.com

Kieran I respect your efforts and ideas. Have fun over the next few months with the building of something grand!

Hoo-raa - I'm in for $20. (well it is pay-day after all) I'm predicting $15k by close. I wonder if this has gone out on any cinemas mailing lists? That would hit a few 'fans of change'. Carry on.

So exciting! Well done :)

Looks like you might make $12,000 before the times up. Way to go.

I was getting worried for a while there. Whew, I'm glad so many others feel as passionate towards this as I do.

Amazing accomplishment.

You made it! I'm proud to support this project and I can't wait to see how this takes shape in the coming months.

Yay!

As co-founder of Film POP! and someone dedicated to supporting indie films and teaching the filmmakers about new distribution technology and community building, digital marketing, etc, We support this project for helping filmmakers get SEEN. :)

man, what a relief.

Well done! What an amazing push at the end. I got quite exciting. A big credit to you both.

Thank you so so so much to everyone who donated, it is fantastic that we've reached our goal of $10,000 and with still 30 hours remaining. Everything above any beyond that $10k will go toward paying Kickstarter's 5% fee as well as hosting costs etc. Don't forget there's still 29 hours for people to become a part of this, so whether you have a friend who's a filmmaker or just know people who would love to put on screenings, or love to see you film via OpenIndie please continue to push them to this page.

As Joseph says, this is only the beginning, we have even more planned for phase 2, but before then, I have a hell of a lot of development work ahead of me :) I've made a great start during evenings and weekends but nothing compares to dedicated yourself full time to a project, and so, to answer Joseph's question:

A beta version, well I can't promise a beta before March 1st 2010, HOWEVER, for all you OpenIndie filmmakers out there we will have a set of filmmaker tools ready for Christmas. Those tools will allow you to add information about your film, title, poster, trailer etc. to the OpenIndie database and upload any list of names, email addresses and postcodes that you may have already collected from your fans. Those fans will then later be invited to become beta users of OpenIndie.com. To keep you entertained during that time I will also be writing a production blog over at http://blog.openindie.com which will include screencasts of development progress for all you geeks out there :)

Thanks again everyone, this is fantastic, I'm totally moved by your generosity and belief in this project. Now my hard work begins!

Kieran Masterton
OpenIndie Co-Founder

ETA of Beta version?

Right on, I just checked in to see how it was going today and I see that we did it. Awesome, so there's obviously some call for indie distribution, ;) now it'll be interesting to see where they take this project.

CONGRATULATIONS! We did it. Pat ourselves on the backs. But no self hugs yet. This is only the beginning everyone...there's a long rocky road ahead of us, and the existing paradigm of the film industry looms over it like a dark storm. Let's keep the momentum that we've got going and put the word out there! Time for phase 2!

Thank you to Arin and Kieran for putting together this wonderful groundbreaking project which gives Hope to all the newcomers like me to the Film world. I cannot wait to see Everyone's movies and hope one day soon to show you mine. Let's make ART.

Hi everyone. I'm one of these first 100 filmmakers signing up in support of a first good idea I've seen in a couple of years; Arin's call to self empowerment for indie filmmakers by group effort. Kudos. Letting you all know my film CREATING KARMA is going into its second theater Nov 13-19 (we just had our LA Theatrical Premiere Oct 16) and while its wild to be an indie moving on after two years on the fest circuit and entering this other world, the reality is we are little fish in these places where studio films with huge promotional monies, compete over screening space. It's essential that as a group we empower ourselves to create demand by announcing our presence and availability of our titles by offering alternatives for a public that so often wants to see our films but we can't point to a venue to screen them easily; addressing this issue could create a flow of monies and compensation into the indie community for our work to continue as self-empowered artists in these trying economic times. Hollywood will always have its place but there's room for content out there if we provide the alternative to the traditional theatrical venue with this thought provoking and do-able framework.

Kathryn, Joseph, and Taylor - thanks for your support folks :)

Let's do this!

mowcrew.com

excitement is ensuing

Philly's students are getting behind filmmakers on this one. Hope my contribution helps!

We're rooting for you guys... http://www.gpsff.com/blog/

Fantastic to have you on board Jeremy!

Finally got to work a shoot this weekend and push 100 dollars into this!

Justin & Mike,
Thank you both so much for your support, I'm really starting to get excited now; we're so close. Keep the donations coming folks, they are much appreciated!

Kieran
Co-Founder OpenIndie

Just kicked in another $100. and challenging the other filmmakers to do so as well.
In the overall scope of what I've already spent to make 'Desert Vows' this is definitely worth $200.
Rise to the challenge.
Mike Merell
www.desertvows.com
http://desertvows.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Desert-Vows-the-movie/105229409018...
http://twitter.com/DesertVows

...to all you filmmakers who have already donated...please repost & push all your friends, family, & fellow filmmakers to at least give a dollar...
We need to stop being pessimistic & apathetic...whether you buy into the concept 100% or not...at least give a dollar towards innovative thought, hard work, & progress...nothing is guaranteed...but original ideas need to be nurtured & explored! Even if you think this will fail...give at least a dollar to give it a shot to do so...it's easy to give your opinion & do nothing...do something...support INNOVATION & potentially a REVOLUTION!

I really must remember to use the correct account when posting... apologies folks! :)

Kieran

Arin and Kieran,
We at the Center for Independent Documentary look forward to working with you on this "experiment"! Hope to be able to host you for a meeting in the Boston area soon at one of our Filmmakers Workshops or other event.

Hi Chris,
Interesting question, and one that Arin and I have discussed quite recently actually. In phase one of OpenIndie, meaning the version that goes live for private beta on the 1st of March 2009 (subject to this campaign funding), short films will be treated in almost exactly in the same manner as feature length films. Therefore, the decision to screen a collection of OpenIndie shorts will be entirely in the hands of the user. However, we will be encouraging users, via various methods, to think about screening the shorts in conjunction with a feature, or to put together a group of shorts for exhibition and to give back to all the filmmakers involved. In terms of what to screen, OpenIndie is currently focussed upon that decision lying with the user, rather than filmmakers suggesting other films.

We are very conscious that many sites who offer, "if you liked this, you might also like this"-style recommendation engines suffer from the "heap effect", meaning that we don't want to just heap films together and detract too much from the film you're interested in. However, we do think that some cross-pollination between films is a good thing. So, in phase two, we do have plans to allow the grouping of shorts into one screening (in the way you mentioned) and possibly the inclusion of an unobtrusive suggestion system.

These are all issues that we will be looking to the first 100 filmmakers to help steer the direction the site will take.

Hope that makes sense, and thanks for your interest in OpenIndie :)

Kieran
OpenIndie Co-Founder

Hi David,
I think what you're saying is very valid and these are all thoughts that I know have crossed my mind and I'm sure have crossed Arin's both during his own self-distribution of FEM and while watching the response to our Kickstarter campaign.

In the case of the 10 days to go, only 50% of the way funded issue, you're right there is a fantastic movement behind what we're trying to do with OpenIndie. What I have learnt from Lance Weiler's recent interview with Yancey Strickler, founder of Kickstarter, is that projects tend to receive lots of funding at the beginning and end of their campaign. So, I guess we'll see what the last few days holds for OpenIndie. I am confident and sincerely hope that we reach our goal and can get this off the ground sooner rather than later so that filmmakers can benefit from the site. We're certainly going to do everything we can to ensure success.

Equally, I'm am delighted and amazingly encouraged that 47 filmmakers and 56 indie film fans have already put their hands in their pockets to help make this site a reality. I think, as Zak Forsman said in his recent blog for Filmmaker Magazine, that there is most definitely a groundswell in this arena and a sense that it is time for a solution. Whether that is OpenIndie or another similar solution only time will tell, but I agree that the Internet holds the key.

Kieran
OpenIndie Co-Founder

Hi OI team - after reading the OpenIndie FAQ I saw that short filmmakers are invited to contribute, but I wasn't sure how you two envision short films being requested and then ultimately shown through the OpenIndie model. Will there be some programming step supported, so that shorts can be lumped together into a feature-length program and audiences get their money's worth? If so, who will do that? The filmmakers, audiences, or venues?

Thanks!

10 Days to go, and 50% of the way to the $10,000 goal, eh? I'm not going to be a pessimist here or anything, because with 98 backers there's obviously a community of people who think that indie distribution has a future. It's a slow uphill battle (as I've discovered trying to promote my own film Archon Defender....) and there's a lot of factors to overcome:

Signal to noise: How to stand out in an ocean of indie content producers (I think that talent, and quality, as well as devotion to artistic principles will enable this)

Short attention spans: When I was a kid, people were lined up around the block fort the first Star Wars movies, for months. Nowadays, a 'hit' film is in the spotlight for 2 weeks max, and then forgotten. Remember the movie adaptation of 'Watchmen' ? the 'biggest cinematic experience' in forever... Yeah, thought you might remember that, it wasn't that long ago. This year, even, if I recall. Point being: attention spans are getting short, but then again whatever you put online stays online forever, so there's always a supply of new fans who haven't discovered your work yet.

Despite this, I think that independent discovery is the way of the future, and that quality and talent will rise to the top, especially with the turkey farm that is the hollywood movie machine. The internet is the key to this, and social networking sites, and the inter-linking of social networking in a fashion that the OpenIndie project represents.

Jake, thanks for your support! Can't wait to see No Sanctuary on the site.

Hey Ryan :)
Ok, interesting question and perfectly legitimate. To be clear, OpenIndie's user-base, meaning users who can perform actions like discover, request and screen films on OpenIndie.com, will come from a number of sources. Primarily these users will be generated from the list of names / email addresses that the 100 filmmakers upload before the site launches on March 1st. So, if each filmmaker imports an average of 500 fans who then become users that's 50,000 users who we already know are interested in indie film. Likewise, if that average is 1,000 fans, we're looking at 100,000 users or an average import of 10,000 fans equals 1,000,000 users!!! Obviously, not all of the imported fans will respond to the email invite we send them so numbers will be slightly reduced.

Secondly, we have the users who donated between $1 and $99 on Kickstarter, we always expected this to be a fairly limited number compared to those invited by the filmmakers but thought that a beta invite and access to exclusive updates would be a nice reward for those who aren't filmmakers but want to donate.

Finally, once we have an idea of numbers from the filmmaker imports, we will look at giving limited numbers of the active users a few invites of their own, so that they can invite their friends. Similar to what, say, Google Wave are currently doing. We want to ensure that we get the numbers right so that you and your fellow filmmakers get the best possible response but also we keep the load on our infrastructure to a manageable level. Once we see how the servers respond under load, we will assess how many invites to give out to those active users. The hope is that those limited invites will create excitement and demand for access amongst indie film fans and access will spread organically.

I hope that makes sense,

Kieran