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Made-For-Torrents Sci-Fi Drama "Pioneer One" Debuts
QuantumG writes "The first episode of the new science fiction drama Pioneer One has debuted and it looks like a hit. The pilot was shot for just $6,000, raised through the micro-funding platform Kickstarter, and the production is being supported through donations on the show's website. Donations can be made on a sliding scale with 'bonus' rewards for each level, such as an MP3 of the opening theme and deleted scenes. The show is being distributed through file-sharing systems such as BitTorrent and LimeWire thanks to VODO, the group that also helped produce it. Is this the future of television?"
"This production was possible due in no small part to the willingness of talented, professional people working for free"
I would have to concur.
But what if it kick-starts a world-wide audience of 1 million people willing to pay $10.00 for a season?
All projects have to start somewhere. Whether it is seed money from an angel investor or sweat equity, it doesn't matter. If you're working on a project that you truly believe in (passion, political statement, future earnings, etc.), then working for free at the beginning might make sense.
Every week, Hollywood produces hundreds of pilot episodes. These are screened and the vast majority (~99%) are dismissed, never to be seen by anyone beyond the test screening audience.
If Hollywood had half a brain between the lot of them, they'd start a pilot episode channel via the different on-demand delivery systems (Hulu/Netflix/Comcast VOD/Verizon VOD) and get their pilots screened to an order of magnitude more people.
The difference here is that Pioneer One has put their pilot up on TPB and the like instead of on some Hollywood stooge's desk, and they're greenlighting themselves for more episodes, no matter what.
It's really not as different as it initially appears.
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
Maybe Firefly didn't capture enough audience to pay for the production costs *plus* distribution costs *plus* desired profit? Likely there was another show (dancing with stars? blech!) that was shown to make more money in that same 1 hour slot? I dunno.
as much as I don't like seeing slashvertisements in general, this one is actually fairly on topic. I do hope they do well. It's in our best interest that efforts like this succeed in a big way, and send a strong message to the movie and media cartels.
That, and getting a front page draw on a Sunday on slashdot ought to guarantee they shatter their fundraising goal over the course of the afternoon. Their servers are doing remarkably well considering what's hitting them. Would have been quite the epic fail had they been offering direct downloads instead of torrents.
But on the downside, I bet their monthly traffic allotment just busted through the ceiling and into the gruesome "pay per additional bandwidth this month" point.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I would have paid $10 into a fund to film season 2 and release it under a creative commons license. I strongly suspect that enough other people would have done the same for them to have been able to make a reasonable profit. If season 2 had been good, I'd have put another $10 towards season 3, under the same terms, and so on. Once they'd released season 2 under a CC license, I could have given copies to all of my friends and encouraged them to contribute towards season 3.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I don't know that that's really true. The point of network TV isn't to sell DVDs, it's to sell commercials. If Ford runs a commercial, and viewers go out and buy Fords, the show is a success, regardless of whether the viewers were really enjoying the show.
It may be possible that if a person really likes a show, they're more likely to think highly of its advertisers, but I think the networks are really more interested in attracting the maximum number of eyballs, and the more gullible they are, the better.
-jim
A one-hour scripted drama can cost anywhere from $1 mil to $5 mil an episode.
What proportion of that goes into paying the salaries of a handful of well-known "stars", though ?