By asking people to buy single frames of a future film for $10 a pop, Canadian filmmaker Casey Walker is hoping to raise the money he needs to make a romantic comedy.
By FilmStew Staff, FilmStew.com
Like the tote board that Jerry Lewis keeps pointing to every Labor Day Weekend, the home page of MyMillionDollarMovie.com features a more modest but no less intriguing scroll. William Foss, United States, 10 frames; Lance Sherbourne, Canada, 1 frame; Neil Green, Canada, 10 frames…
Each one of these people is jumping into the opportunity to purchase single frames of celluloid for Casey Walker's upcoming romantic comedy Free for All But You for $10 each. There have certainly been efforts of this kind before, but the consumer-friendly angle of a movie ticket equivalent buy-in price and the catchy URL name may well help Walker find more success.
"Raising money to fund an indie film has become an incredibly difficult process in Canada," the Toronto based Walker explains. "I decided that rather than going about doing this the conventional way, I wanted to create a new business model leveraging the Internet to raise capital to fund the film."
If all goes well, the end credits for Free for All But You should scroll an absolutely gargantuan number of Associate Producers, the title each $10+ donor is guaranteed, along with a piece of any future profits. And credit Walker with exploring all avenues: he is already in discussions on the product placement front with Mytagalongs, a disposable panties company that hired Walker to direct their TV commercial.
Although $1,000,000 in purchased frames would equal a 69 and a half minute movie, Walker is in fact - despite the URL name - trying to raise a total of $1,430,000. He claims to have so far found buyers for a total of 17,000 frames of film, leaving him with 126,000 more to find sponsorship for.
Walker has a 2007 comedy short to his name as well as experience directing multiple episodes of the Canadian TV series Prank Patrol and The Adrenaline Project. He was also able to convince Netscape co-founder Bill Foss to throw in some seed cash.
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