Massify and After Dark Films' "Ghosts in the Machine" contest

I just came across this and thought I'd pass it on. After Dark Films, the company that brought you "Skinwalkers", "Captivity" and "An American Haunting", has teamed up with Massify to bring you Ghosts in the Machine (link). Ghosts in the Machine will basically be an online collaboration/contest to make a horror film... it'll go down like this: Feb 8 - Mar 17, submit and vote on pitches; Mar 12 - Apr 21, Audition and vote for cast; Apr 22 - May 12, Screen test and more voting/collaboration; May 27, pre-production... then, the final film will be in After Dark Films, "8 Films to Die For" Horrorfest next year. Very interesting use of new media... I'll be watching closely to see how it turns out.

A little bit about Massify (link), which only launched a few days ago... Feb 8th, 2008, to be exact. "Massify is a film production community. They help you connect, collaborate and get films made. They are a community, they have production tools, they provide grants to get you funding and distribution" ...and they offer similar services for actors, critics and the community. On paper, this is a great idea, but, to be honest, I'm always weary of sites and competitions that ask you to pitch ideas on an open forum. Your ideas are the only trump cards that you hold, you shouldn't be just flashing them out there for everyone to see. Having said that, the idea of a community like this is fantastic. So, go check them out and judge for yourself, but you have to ask yourself, what's the point of this site? As in, why are they doing it? It's not a warm and fuzzy reason like, helping out indie filmmakers out of the goodness of their hearts, I can tell you that much. However, I may contact them and see what they have to say...

A little bit about After Dark Films (link). They're a distributor, but did manage to produce the least scary horror film of 2005, "An American Haunting". I think that film was their debut, then they just went into the distribution side of things and by that I mean coming out with the "8 Films to Die For" Horrorfest. Outside of "Captivity", "The Abandoned" and possibly "Borderland", I think the rest are all from the festival... which has been a great opportunity for a lot of indie horror filmmakers whose films would be going straight-to-DVD otherwise.