Crowdsourcing: Lazy Writing Or Lame Idea?

What kind of knucklehead thinks he can crowdsource a film?

Film—art for that matter—is not often the product of multiple minds. The movie business likes to contradict my little piece of wisdom—hundreds and hundreds of people, of course, work on any given Hollywood film. But at the end of the day, I would tentatively posit, it’s still a Hitchcock film or a Spielberg film (or even a Michael Bay film). And if it’s not a single person, it’s a group of people…but you wouldn’t make the case for more than a handful. The Wrestler? Let’s say equal parts Mickey Rourke and Darren Aronofsky.

But turning a film over to the masses? As I recently read in a Slate article by Christina Gossman, the latest venture of director D.J. Caruso (I Am Number Four, Taking Lives) is exactly that. Starting out with a plot—attractive girl trapped in room with a computer (*gasp* a Toshiba computer with an Intel processor!)—Caruso is mining the murky online world for ways to solve his plot problem…and, frankly, ways to sell laptop computers.

The hook of the project is that its Hollywood’s first “social film experience.” Starting on July 25, Facebook users will be able to post escape suggestions on the main character’s wall and Twitter users will be able to tweet advice at her. Not only that, Caruso et al has also sent out a casting call for one “talented and well-connected person” who will receive a cameo appearance in the final cut of the film. (How sad to see “talented” so bluntly bound to “well-connected”.)

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What’s so dismal about this whole project is not the overt, despicable product placement going on, but the seeming lack of creativity. Perhaps Caruso has good intentions in his attempt to conjure a “social film experience,” but I doubt that he will truly manage anything of the sort. I would not be shocked to see the film become a blockbuster in horror circles (it doubtless will be), but am, if I may say so, disappointed in Caruso.

It seems as if Caruso has abandoned storytelling mode. Whether it be laziness or his lackluster social networking dreams, he has fashioned the first ten minutes of a screenplay and tossed it off into the horror chatrooms that certainly abound online. A writer myself, I have a twisted respect for him being able to toss his story to the wolves. (For wolves I’m sure they are; websites with names like “mortalgore.com” have snapped up and reposted the press release.)

But will he really be leaving the story up to the horror fandom out there?

From the press release:

“…viewers will be invited to activate their social channels and help decode Christina's dilemma by posting tips, insights, ideas and clues. The editing team, led by Emmy-winning editor Josh Bodnar, will incorporate posts that best fit the storyline into the episodes.” (emphasis mine)

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So perhaps there’s a plot out there after all. Maybe they'll disregard the posts and tweets and quietly cough into they're hands that it's...well...just a sad, silly gimmick. It's mostly a fantasy, after all, to imagine that the audience could have much of a role in creating a film. Note that I’m being literal here; I would not dare to discount the theoretical wrangling that must go on between the finished product of a film and the audience—I would not ever dream of offering film (or art) as a purely passive exercise…of course there’s a role for the audience. But not a role in the way that Caruso’s dreaming it.

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Caruso's Casting Call

Inside Trailer / Behind the Scenes: