HD film-makers trawl MySpace for talent

The world's first “user-generated” feature film is being made in HD, thanks to a competition on MySpace to find new film talent. The competition was organised by MySpace, Film4 and Vertigo Films with backing from the UK Film Council, Skillset and west midlands organisation, Screen WM.

The winner of the competition, Vito Rocco, has been given the job of directing the HD movie, Faintheart, which is being made by Vertigo Films with a budget of £1 million. Rocco won the competition by entering his short film, Goodbye Cruel World. It was chosen by the MySpace online community and received over 500,000 hits.

The new movie features cast and crew from all over the UK, recruited via MySpace, and it is described as a “Revenge of the Nerds”-style romantic comedy set in the world of battle re-enactments.

“We held a nationwide competition,” explains Vertigo producer, Allan Niblo. “A thousand short films (shot by independent film-makers) were submitted to a central panel, where they were whittled down to ten. These were then shown to a number of prestigious directors, actors and actresses and whittled down to three. The final three films were posted on MySpace, where the MySpace users voted for which they thought was the best. The winner of this competition would be given the chance to direct a £1 million budget film.

Shooting in HDCAM

“Independent film-makers and directors are always trying to get their stuff noticed,” continues Niblo, “MySpace is an enormous launch pad for these kinds of things – it was how the likes of Lily Allen and The Arctic Monkeys were brought to the attention of the public, so it seemed an ideal medium to use.”

MySpace provided the project with £6 million worth of free advertising. “It was a brilliant way of getting people involved and getting ourselves noticed. The story itself is set in the world of battle re-enactments,” he continues, “It’s a Full Monty-type story about a guy whose wife is fed up with him, he’s got no money, his son’s being bullied at school, and it’s about him having to almost win his family back, yet still retaining his inner child.”

Vertigo is shooting in HDCAM, as Niblo reveals. “As far as the technical side of things goes, we used Sony HDW-F900s for all our shoots – all our films are in HD – the cameras were fantastic, often we’d have three to four cameras on any one shoot at any one time.”

Faintheart has already generated a considerable amount of interest, gaining exposure from Radio 1, The Times, The Sun and The Independent. “With any luck”, concludes Niblo, “we’re hoping to release the film in May of this year.”

31 January 2008