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A List of Film Collaboration Websites

It seems like I get a pitch in my inbox once a week for a website that allows filmmakers to collaborate or raise funds. In the interest of keeping them straight in my own head, I've decided to start a list. Here they are, in alphabetical order. Add the names of the many I've overlooked in the comments below.

Amazon Studios
studios.amazon.com/

This site can be used to collaborate on scripts and make demo movies (with strangers mostly). It got a lot of heat when it launched in 2010 because it is under the Amazon name. Sadly, the terms of use are very bad for the writers who are submitting scripts and critiquing each others' scripts and the filmmakers who are making the demo versions of these scripts. Yes, some people will win cash prizes, but they'll be paid a lot less for their intellectual property than if they had sold it in Hollywood, and so far no Amazon Studios project has ever been produced. Read more in my initial analysis.

Now, a year later, the conclusions I'm reading from users seem to be not to enter a script and only consider participating the short film aspect, which doesn't seem to be as gamed in terms of the voting. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 11/5/2011

Boolaka
boolaka.com

Booklaka is a Web 2.0 site that aims to be a one-stop shop: a social network, jobs board, fund raiser and web distribution platform. They are somehow associated with another site, exploretalent.com. I tried creating an account and never got the email with my password. I'm suspicious of their motives because they ask for a birthday and a zip code, neither of which are relevant for film collaboration, but which do make mailing lists more valuable. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 11/29/2011

Craigslist
craigslist.org

Yes, I'm including this old standby. Why? Because, although it doesn't offer all the social media bells and whistles of other websites, it's a great way to crew a movie, or find used equipment. It definitely has the widest user base of any of these websites, and it is conveniently organized by geography. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Crews.TV
www.crews.tv

Readers outside the US should check out Crews.tv, a "boutique-like" social network for freelance film crews that has been operating in New Zealand for 10 years and then expanded to Australia, Asia and South Africa and the UK. According to rep Yves Simard, you have to be vetted to join. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Eumagine Factory
eumagine.eu

This site bills itself as a watering hole for producers and editors, at least I think it does. The English on the site seems to be machine-translated. Also, the pages loaded slowly when I tried clicking around. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Film Annex
filmannex.com

"Film Annex is an online film distribution company and Web Television Network. Its mission is to finance the productions of independent filmmakers and the social responsibility projects of organizations through the use of its distribution technology." Distribution technology meaning an embeddable player that can also serve ads. In other words, it does what YouTube does, only more selectively. It seems like their terms are better than YouTube's Partner terms, but of course do your own due diligence. They also have a feature where you can have your own blog. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

FilmFunds
filmfunds.com

Launched in August of 2011. Clicking around, it looks a bit Kickstarter-y with Promoters instead of Backers. The new wrinkle is that actors can create profiles and get themselves attached to projects, which is interesting. Not a lot of signs of life yet but it is early days. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 10/30/2011

Five Sprockets
fivesprockets.com

Five Sprockets is a Web 2.0 offering that is designed explicitly for filmmakers. It has modules for collaborating on every aspect of production. I like that it feels more like software than 'Facebook-for-filmmakers.' You can read my initial assessment here. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Icewhole / Underground Movies
icewhole.com

This site appears to have abandoned the name and are calling themselves Underground Movies. What icewholes. From the looks of it, they run competitions in addition to being a social networking site for filmmakers. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

IndieGoGo
indiegogo.com

This is a crowdfunding site that started before Kickstarter and is geared explicitly towards filmmakers. The main difference seems to be that Kickstarter has a 90 day cap and you can only do all-or-nothing campaigns. (Note: Unintuitively, the deadline is a good incentive to raise money.) You can also use IndieGoGo with a non-profit to make your backers' donations tax-deductible -- a great incentive. For more about this and other aspects of IndieGoGo, read my interview with filmmaker Jason Decker. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 10/30/2011

Kapipal
kapipal.com

Another crowdfunding site like IndieGoGo and Kickstarter. It is open worldwide, works through PayPal donations and seems to have a more laid-back approach to fleecing your family members than other fundraising sites. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Kickstarter
kickstarter.com

This site gained prominence thanks to a nytimes.com mention, which didn't make their model sound entirely solvent. But they've stuck around and I would now call them the prime crowd-funding site. One drawback is that the contributions your donors make through them are not tax-deductible, which can be a big incentive for people to give, but if your project is non-profit, you should be going through a non-profit anyway.  For further commentary from this blog, see Kickstarter and the Rise of Crowdfunded Filmmaking. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 10/30/2011

Mandy
mandy.com

Mandy seems to be one of the main production jobs boards, at least here in LA. They have a great user base of working professionals. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

People Jar
peoplejar.com

People Jar aims to help people looking for people with specific talents. The example they give in a press release is "a blonde hair, brown eyed actor that lives in LA and knows how to scuba dive." I went to the site and searched for just that. I got 0 results. Maybe the site will get enough users for that fine-grained a search. Right now, it seems optimized for searching for actors by location and union affiliation, which is useful enough. It might work better as a Facebook or MySpace app -- some place that already has a larger built-in user base. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

ProductionHUB
productionhub.com

If Craigslist is too broad for you, you could use ProductionHUB to post and find crew. I've never heard of anyone using it - I think Mandy pretty much dominates this space. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Power Filmmaking
powerfilmmaking.com

This tie-in site for filmmaker Jason Tomaric's book has moved to FilmSkills.com. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Put It On
putiton.com

I don't know anything about this site, which seems to be affiliated with New York Film Academy. They have an online festival, and it looks like they have ambitions to include artists from other media, such as musicians and fashion. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

RocketHub
rockethub.com

I first heard about this site when it was listed in an article in Variety about crowdfunding alongside Kickstarter and IndieGoGo. Like Kickstarter, they use all-or-nothing funding. The site look well-put-together. I don't know anyone who has used it. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Paypal
paypal.com

Many filmmakers use Paypal's payment system to accept donations. They are clearly trying to change, but it remains a bit web 1.0 in terms of functionality, looks and navigation. They take 2.9% + $0.30 USD per transaction, from what I gather. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Shooting People
shootingpeople.org

This is not a website for people who like to hunt the most dangerous game, it's a social network for indie filmmakers. From what I can tell, they have a pretty active community, mostly European, especially UK. I get lots of emails from them which I quickly started to ignore which makes them a bit spammy. The site costs £30/yr to join but I don't remember paying any money so maybe it used to be free. There's a wealth of informational resources on the site (including access to David Lynch's famous weather reports) which makes the design a bit cluttered. They will host/stream your movie for you. I haven't gotten anything out of the site but I haven't put any time or effort into to trying to get anything out of the site. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Studio Beyond
studiobeyond.net

This is another site I heard about thanks to an email pitch. Their annoyingly Flash-heavy site makes big promises about "barrier-free access to industry executives and talent." Against my better judgement, I took them up on the free trial. After I created a log-in, the site failed to load. Game over. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Studio Path
studiopath.net

I got an email about this when I heard Tribe Hollywood was shutting down. I didn't dare click around the site -- it looked too sketchy. They advertise a toolbar, a classic malware ploy. Um, no thanks. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Talenthouse
talenthouse.com

Talenthouse is not just limited to filmmakers, although they claim Fernando Meirelles (co-director, City of God) as a user. They aim to have musicians, photographers, fashion designers and artists as well. Don't know much beyond that other than it looks UK-oriented and the main page is too busy for my taste. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Tribe Hollywood
tribehollywood.com

UPDATE: Tribe Hollywood has shut down and moved entirely to Facebook. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Unusuals
unusuals.net

As you can see from when I talked about this site earlier, their confused pitches didn't convince me to try a three month trial. They have a cute, clean design but it looks like the site would be dead in the water if LinkedIn added the ability to have reels. Does anybody pay to post their reel and resume? You could do it free with Vimeo and Blogspot. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Vimeo
vimeo.com

You may think of Vimeo primarily as a video hosting site. But they also have some social networking features and are more aggressive than YouTube in seeking out filmmakers and film artists (as opposed to people who upload videos of their cats). I like that you can add yourself to the credits of films to which you contributed. Although it's not built specifically for collaboration, the clean interface and social features make Vimeo an option for group projects. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

Wreck A Movie
wreckamovie.com

A group of filmmakers in Finland created a platform so they could collaborate over the web on a movie called Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning. They later decided to open up the platform. Wreck A Movie seems to have a pretty strong international user base, with a decided emphasis on computer effects specialists.

I have recently dipped my toe in the water with the site, and was able to find an enthusiastic effects artist to help me complete some green-screen and graphics work for a music video. The site can be a bit kludgy to use, and has severe limitations in sharing video files of reasonable sizes, but I have to give it a strong recommendation based on the users I've interacted with there so far. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 7/19/2011

YouTube
youtube.com

The 1,000 lb gorilla in the room. Bought out by Google, the web's most popular video site also includes some social networking-type features. I don't think they are as good as Vimeo at the social part as it relates to filmmakers, but they add features with such frequency, I wouldn't ever count them out. Already some filmmakers have been able to work out distribution for full films with paid downloads. Top producers of weekly content have been given free gift certificates to B&H and there are select few who actually make a living off the meagre ad revenues on the site. ENTRY LAST UPDATED 10/30/2011

MORE: Click here for Making the Movie's List of Sites that Distribute Independent Films Over the Web