The Biracy Project

Ms Temple,

This is an excellent blog post that you have written on us and for that we want to say thanks.

You bring up some valid points but we want to start out by explaining the 2 sides of The Biracy Project.

1. The process (the experiment, the SoKap platform, and how it is being tested and optimized)

2. The project (the film itself)

THE PROCESS: We built the SoKap utility to allow business people within media an alternate way for them to fund their projects without the typical intermediaries causing stress or trying to force creative control on the artist. Our system allows the market to dictate whether or not there is enough demand for an artist’s project. The Biracy Project is merely the beta film project which is owned by us. We welcome all comments on how to better the PROCESS. For those people contributing who are members (like yourself) we award with “Krill” which will earn such members additional compensation, based on the film’s performance. Those who provide us with feedback will be rewarded. This is crowdsourcing + crowdfunding working together.

THE PROJECT: The project is a science fiction film that we announced on day 1. Over the course of the film the members will be asked to help us decide on alternatives as development and production of the film proceeds. What we ask is that during development that you limit your comments on items that are subjective. There will be plenty of opportunity to get active with the project itself, but keep in mind that in the case of The Biracy Project, we are acting as the filmmakers to test the system so that others can use the platform for their own films at no cost for registering. Also, remember that most people on the site are not filmmakers but moviegoers and fans of social media and transmedia applications. Asking to read the script at this point is pointless as we have more than a dozen scripts under option OR we may be asking members to select a log line to develop our own script.  That choice will be presented to members at the appropriate time. You imply in your post that we haven’t done our homework, but I can assure we have done our homework! The site as it sits right now…is completely transparent. Just because we’re not allowing you to read the optioned and internally developed scripts that we control does not mean we are not being transparent.

Comments on your post.

1. The Biracy Project is in its infancy and has generally been limited to only friends and family who have been helping us debug and optimize the process. The fact that you are now a member is unusual, but also a good thing as we welcome comments and suggestions to make the system better for the formal launch of the Biracy ProjectTM and ultimately SoKap.

2. The SciFi announcement was made Day 1. This decision was made as a result of a poll we did FACEBOOK on whether or not people should get to pick the genre or have the genre picked for them and then move forward. The numbers came back in favour of us picking the genre so that if people did not like SciFi they could opt out. This was a better thing than having 1,000,000 fans pay and then find out that through a democratic process (possibly a minority victory) that most fans that paid were not fans of the genre selected. This was just too big of a risk and thus – SciFi.

3. I like the opportunist comment. It’s essentially biomimickry of how Hollywood works! The nice part of our system is that you don’t HAVE to tell or sell anything if you don’t want to. You can simply buy a 25 dollar membership and get involved in the process. Those people who fancy themselves as players can also focus on making as much money as they can through promotion and sales, which by the way is one of most overlooked and necessary parts of the film industry. You can have all the great writers and all the great directors in one room, but they don’t mean anything without a great producer, and production management team. Have you seen WAG THE DOG?

4. The CRAP comment is also good as this is really the heart of the experiment. We think that if the creative team asks of the crowd to vote on a series of either/or questions, as well as have the crowd source ideas around specifications put forward by department heads, those in charge may just find some things even they  did not know existed. Keep in mind the crowd is not rewriting the denouement…they’re hanging out, throwing ideas into the ring and voting on suggestions put forward by department heads.

5. I’m not going to address the issue of filmmaking experience as it kind of offended me… Ok OK…here goes…If you have been keeping up with the production feeds you will see that all the people involved have been active in the film business for many years. Jeff Richards, Jason Bourque, Alain Mayrand, Scooter Corkle, Rob Connon, Daniel Domachowksi have all been active for years in the feature film, television series and animation worlds. As for myself, I have been working in film production and film finance/distribution for over 15 years. How is it that we don’t know what were doing? As more people are announced (line producer/PM, VFX producer, editor, etc etc)..this may make some people more comfortable; however, in the T&C we state that we are required to have a bond to go into production and anyone who knows the film industry will understand that they don’t hand these out to just anyone.

6. As for the REDUSER comment. I’m tired of dealing with this. You’ve read the terms and conditions. We’re on-side – PERIOD! I went on the site in the first place to address the spam issue as someone had posted their code in the forum and I wanted it removed, as we are trying to promote word of mouth and social media not spam I then answered some questions politely and was attacked by some “forum basement dwellers”. We were called everything under the sun and I just got tired of responding to jealous naysayers.

7. The part about how we gloss over the use of proceeds is not true. It’s pretty clear in the terms that we allocate 75% of all revenues back to the fans. At this time it has to be “virtual” currency, as we have done our legal homework and this would make us “offside” if it were not “virtual” currency. That being said…the earnings will be allocated by the fans themselves into SoKap projects of their choosing, and we are merely providing the platform. Biracy is our film. SoKap is our platform. Producers who get listed on SoKap will be approved by their ability to list a project as per our accountability requirements (budget, schedule, LM package, etc). I hope this clears this up a bit.

8. I like your comment on Legal Advice. We agree with you but we need to also say that “if” you don’t understand the terms… go talk to a lawyer. This was merely to protect the model of crowdfunding as a whole, as it only takes one person to bring down a group if you’re not protected in this manner and we felt it was better to be properly documented than not.

What we’re trying to do is build a social utility that allows filmmakers to make their projects without the financial encumbrances that currently inhibit creative people in the industry. We think this type of program/utility can provide this freedom and the market can be dictated by those it serves… the audience – unless you’re a narcissist.

Cheers,

David Geertz

founder + president

The Biracy Project

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