SMU-11-0011

TWITTAMENTARY: CROWDSOURCING A PROJECT

This is an absolutely crazy way to make a film, Tan thought. Tan Siok Siok, a Singaporean
filmmaker living in Beijing, was about to launch her latest project. In August 2009, Tan and two
friends, expatriates living in China, set up a website supporting the ambitious project she called
Twittamentary. The website would serve as an online property where people could learn about
the documentary dedicated to Twitter and share their own stories. Perhaps, the reason this project
seemed crazy was that Tan did not possess a clear vision of the final story, in the traditional sense,
nor did she have project funding or distribution venues for showing the film.

This film was to be entirely crowdsourced. Volunteers from any walk of life could share their
stories, thereby potentially becoming part of the final film, or contribute in whatever way they
thought appropriate.

The idea first came to Tan while promoting her previous film, Boomtown Beijing, which
documented the build-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Boomtown Beijing was made in
the traditional way. Tan had the idea, spent months pursuing funding for the project, shared the
idea with only key people until funding was secured, and then proceeded to storyboard and shoot
the film. To promote the documentary, she decided to try social media and brought Twitter into
her marketing mix. Tan quickly realized that something important was happening. Following
her natural curiosity, she set out to understand this new channel, how people were using it and to
what end.

This curiosity soon led Tan to network online and learn from talented individuals from around the
globe who were already using Twitter. The next step for her was to use Twitter to create a
documentary about Twitter because, I wanted to learn how I could use [social networks] to my
advantage. Everything she had learned about Twitter compelled her to make this documentary in
a nontraditional way. There would be no IP protection and no guarantee of the projects success.
Many of the most successful Twitter personalities were, with much public fanfare, giving away
their best ideas for free. Ideas were openly shared and discussed, and lessons learned could be
put into a self-published eBook and made available for download within days.

But why would anyone volunteer their stories about Twitter and give away their thoughts for free?
Who would contribute ideas, time, and resources for no visible pay-back? Even if she could
crowdsource the films content, how would this trendy idea of outsourcing work to strangers via
social media help fund the project or secure venues for showing the film (distribution)? Maybe
Tan had done nothing more than find a new path to development hell. Perhaps this was a crazy
way to make a film.

This case was written by Professor Michael Netzley at the Singapore Management University. It was prepared solely to provide material
for class discussion. The author does not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation.

Copyright 2011, Michael Netzley Version 2011-08-26

Distributed by ecch, UK and USA
www.ecch.com
ecch the case for learning All rights reserved
Printed in UK and USA
North America Rest of the world
t +1 781 239 5884 t +44 (0)1234 750903
f +1 781 239 5885
e ecchusa@ecch.com
f +44 (0)1234 751125
e ecch@ecch.com

This case has been made available as part of the ecch collection of free cases (www.ecch.com/freecase).


SMU-11-0011

Calling over Skype, Tan said to her two friends, The light is green. Lets get started with
Twittamentary.

Twittamentary

You are the star of this movie! Share a great story that answers the question: what is the most
interesting thing that happened to you because of Twitter? Add videos and rich media to show why it
is a must-have story for Twittamentary1

Twittamentary wass a documentary about Twitter with content sourced through Twitter. While the
end product was likely to closely resemble most films in the documentary genre, the process by
which the film was being made differed from classic filmmaking. Not only was this film, according
to Tan, about Twitter by the core people on Twitter, the whole process from development to
production to post production and screening is organized by the logic and principles by which
Twitter works.

With this question, What is the most interesting thing that has happened to you because of Twitter?
Tan revealed to the world her idea and the process by which this film would be made. Launching
the website let the cat out of the bag and there would be no putting it back. The experiment with
content collection, curation, and co-creation was now underway and the whole world could see it.

As one friend said when she learned of the project, and perhaps in an unintentionally daunting
manner, Siok, this is really quite ambitious.

Tan Siok Siok

Tan Siok Siok, Singaporean by birth, was raised on the island-state until she moved to the USA to
study comparative literature at Brown University. After graduation, Tan returned to Asia where she
first worked in local television at MediaCorp, a pioneer in Singapores broadcasting industry. Next
she moved to international television and worked as an executive producer for Discovery Channel in
China and Taiwan.

Her executive producer credits included Discovery Channels China First Time Film Makers
Initiative, Portraits Taiwan a biography series of prominent Taiwanese as well as travel and
lifestyle shows for Discovery Travel and Living. Her efforts at Discovery Channel clinched more
than a dozen awards and nominations at the Asian TV awards and the Golden Bell Awards, Taiwans
equivalent of the Emmy Awards.

Tans accomplishments also won her a visiting lecturer position at the Beijing Film Academy.
During this time, she directed a documentary about the Beijing Olympics with the assistance of her
students. Boomtown Beijing was to become one of the better known films about the 2008 Olympics,

1
Twittamentary webpage accessed on September 1, 2010. http://twittamentary.com/

This case has been made available as part of the ecch collection of free cases (www.ecch.com/freecase).


SMU-11-0011

scoring feature interviews on global and regional media including CNN, Phoenix TV, Brazils Globo
TV, South China Morning Post as well as major lifestyle magazines and blogs in China.

With her latest project, Twittamentary, Tan now entered a new phase of her career.

I come from very traditional TV space, so this whole social media thing is only two
to three years old for me. Following local and international television, the Internet is
like my third act.

Tan continued, I am not an Internet person per se, but I am gradually growing into one.

Twitter

Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you
share and discover whats happening now.2

Originally envisioned by Jack Dorsey in 2006 as an sms service for sending updates to a small group
of people within Odeo, a podcast production and syndication website, Twitter (see Exhibit 1)
allowed people to remain connected with their social group using a maximum of 140 characters per
message. Twitter officially began operating on March 21, 2006 when Dorsey broadcast the first
ever tweet: just setting up my twttr. According to the Financial Times, at best, Mr. Dorsey
thought it to be a more efficient way to organize the banalities of office life.

During the early days, according to Dom Sagolla who was part of the original Odeo team, The user
base was limited entirely to the company and our immediate family. No one from a major company
of any kind was allowed in. For months, we were in Top Secret Alpha because of competing
products like the now-defunct Dodgeball.3 The founders wanted to keep this idea a secret, at least
in the early days.

Twitter was opened to the public in July 2006 and quickly became much more than a simple tool for
sharing lifes banalities. With time, a niche industry developed around Twitter. Some companies
built more advanced Twitter clients, such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, which allowed users to
organize and search messages. Twitpic enabled photo sharing by providing a hyperlink to the
picture. The online community developed protocol, in a ground-up fashion, by quickly agreeing to
shared practices. Follow Friday is one example, indicated by the hashtag #FF. When
participating in #followfriday, Twitter users announced the names of others they liked to follow and
attached the #FF hashtag (making the message searchable). #FF was a simple way of promoting
others and telling your network that these were your favorite Twitter users. Other activities like
tweeting during a conference or university class, known as live tweeting, also grew to include live

2
Quote from Twitter company page accessed on August 29, 2010. http://twitter.com/about
3
Quote taken from the blog of Dom Sagolla accessed on September 1, 2010 at
http://www.140characters.com/2009/01/30/how-twitter-was-born/

This case has been made available as part of the ecch collection of free cases (www.ecch.com/freecase).


SMU-11-0011

news updates during the Olympic Games, World Cup, or breaking news (for example, news of the
U.S. Airways plane crash in the Hudson River was announced to the world via Twitter).

Twitter had also grown into a real-time search tool. Events such as the Sichuan earthquake in
China were reported over Twitter well before traditional broadcast media were able to report the
news. Journalists regularly trawled Twitter for real-time updates which might prove newsworthy.

Many acknowledged the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in 2007 for bringing Twitter to the
attention of more netizens, but arguably it was the Iranian election in 2009 which pushed Twitter into
the global mainstream. As Iranian officials were censoring traditional media during the post-
election protests, Twitter remained the one constant channel of instantaneous communication. So
important had Twitter become as a news source that the US Government requested that Twitter not
perform maintenance scheduled during the protests. Twitter, some felt, needed to continue
delivering uninterrupted service.

Twitter, however, was not without its critics. The New York Times had derided Twitter for content
which lacked rigorous fact checking, a process essential to mainstream medias editorial process.
U.S. Congressmen were humiliated in the press for live tweeting President Obamas speech instead
of focusing on the content. Others had asked more serious questions about social media and its
potentially undesirable impact on society or child development. The charges aimed at Twitter and
its social media counterparts included increased narcissism, attention deficit disorder, increased
plagiarism, lack of respect for intellectual property, a lack of intellectual depth (you cannot say much
in only 140 characters), and potentially undesirable changes to the human brain and learning.

Co-creation and the New Distribution Challenges

Technology was making it possible for anyone to deliver their latest thinking in an easy-to-
produce .pdf or eBook format, and readers quickly consumed the fresh content (thereby creating a
market), in only a fraction of the time it typically took to write, print, and sell a traditional business
book.

In an earlier and well-known case, the best-selling book Naked Conversations, written by Robert
Scoble and Shel Israel, was drafted online and readers were invited to read and share their feedback
to each chapter draft. The decision to write a book in full public sight had two consequences.
First, by posting drafts to a blog, readers were invited into an act of co-creation. Second, the
authors best thinking was shared with the world before the book could be printed and sold.
Complicating matters further, this open sharing was happening in a world where illegal copies and
downloads were common practice. The Internet was challenging traditional notions of intellectual
property (IP), writing process, and product sales.

As a case in point, newspapers around the globe were struggling with declining sales at the same
time people were posting news stories online where they could be read for free. Feature Hollywood
films and musicians were, likewise, struggling to respond to a world where their work could be
duplicated and distributed for free in digital time.
4

This case has been made available as part of the ecch collection of free cases (www.ecch.com/freecase).


SMU-11-0011

The context made Tans decision to crowdsource Twittamentary all the more interesting.

Crowdsourcing

Jeff Howe author of Crowdsourcing, contributing editor at Wired magazine, and a Nieman Fellow
at Harvard University defines crowdsourcing as, the act of taking a job traditionally performed by
a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group
of people in the form of an open call.4

Wikipedia was perhaps the worlds most recognized example of crowdsourcing. Wikipedia drew
upon the voluntary efforts of citizens around the globe to create an online encyclopedia in no fewer
than 260 languages.5

Another example of crowdsourcing was iStockphoto. iStockphoto was the webs original resource
for royalty-free stock images, media, and design elements.6 Created in 2000, the site functioned as
a clearinghouse bringing together consumers and content producers such as photographers and
designers. Artists joined the iStockphoto website, submitted their work, and then made their
content available for purchase. Consumers enjoyed the convenience of visiting a single website and
then choosing from thousands of available images. The artwork was then sold royalty-free;
consumers paid only a low cost, and images could be reused without additional royalty payments.
Images typically sold for US $1 to US$50.

iStockphoto was not universally admired. Critics contended that the site (and others like it) had
forced undesirable changes on a well-established market. For example, an image which may have
previously cost US$500, and earned additional royalty payments, might now sell for $50 with no
additional royalties. The high cost of photography equipment, compared to the decreased earnings,
made it more difficult for artists to earn a living.

Additionally, not all instances of crowdsourcing were successful. The search for missing aviator
Steve Fossett, an American businessman who was the first person to fly solo around the world in a
balloon, was crowdsourced in 2007 when his missing plane could not be found. More than 50,000
people examined over two million satellite photographs looking for clues to the famed aviators
disappearance. While countless leads were identified, crowdsourcing produced no tangible evidence
of Fossetts fate. However, his remains were discovered by hikers who chanced upon Fossetts
identity cards, which then led to the discovery of the crash site and human skeletal remains.

Despite more than a few unsuccessful crowdsourcing attempts, true believers argued that
collaborating and co-creation were the wave of the future.

4
Howe, Jeff. The White Paper Version, accessed online September 3, 2010 at http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/cs/
5
List of wikipedias in different languages accessed online September 3, 2010 at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias
6
Site accessed on September 14, 2010 at http://www.istockphoto.com/help/about-us

This case has been made available as part of the ecch collection of free cases (www.ecch.com/freecase).


SMU-11-0011

Were talking about bringing people in from outside and involving them in this broadly
creative, collaborative process.7

Conventional Filmmaking Process

In the conventional filmmaking process, filmmakers protected an idea with extreme care until
funding was secured. The filmmaker usually needed to have contracts signed, legal details resolved,
and a pre-production team in place before announcing a project. These steps, and the secrecy, were
considered essential to protecting ones IP. Tan estimated that perhaps only one in 10 films made it
through what industry insiders call development hell a seemingly endless effort to get a contract
and financing to move a film into production.

Most projects were stuck in development hell and many good ideas never saw the light of day.

With so many creative types competing in development hell, the last thing anyone wanted was to
have an idea stolen and for that competitor to reach production first. The speed with which ideas
could spread over the Internet, and the apparent lack of IP protection, could amplify a filmmakers
desire for secrecy.

Filmmaking has classically been described as a centralized process with five steps.

Development: the early stages of a film where the producer pursues a story and generally
identifies the theme about which they wish to make a film or drama. The development stage
prioritizes writing as the scriptwriter crafts a summary of the film, writes a screen play, or
creates what is called a treatment which includes both the general storyline and images.
Finally, the development stage would be incomplete without a prepared pitch aimed at
potential financiers.

During this stage ideas for the new project are treated as a secret. Ideas are protected and
shared with only a few people who can potentially fund a project and move it toward
production.

Pre-production: the second stage of filmmaking which emphasizes planning. A producer

will typically be assigned to take control of the project and then form a core team that further
designs, develops, and budgets for film production. This ideally tight-knit team typically
consists of a director, casting director, location director, director of photography, director of
audiography, and might include additional roles such as a choreographer or composer.

7
Jeff Howe (2006). The Rise of Crowdsourcing, Wired magazine, accessed online September 2, 2010 at
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html?pg=1&topic=crowds&topic_set=

This case has been made available as part of the ecch collection of free cases (www.ecch.com/freecase).


SMU-11-0011

Production: the stage where the film is created and shot. This can be a lengthy and
complicated process, which lasts for months. Production is slow, and must contend with
variables often beyond anyones control such as lighting, weather, and location. The days
are often long, additional crewmembers are required, and the next days agenda must be in
place before the days end.

Post-production: The fourth stage emphasizes editing and correction after all the footage has
been shot. In short, post-production is the assembly stage, much like a car being finished
and rolled off the production line. In general, the process begins with a rough cut where the
film is assembled by putting the film into proper sequence. Then, details pertaining to
lighting, sound quality, and artistic quality, to name a few, are worked on. These steps
require attention to hundreds of details before the film takes its final form.

Sales and distribution: the film is shared with distributors who then take the film out to
cinemas for public consumption. Films not expected to earn much public interest may instead
go direct to DVD or Blu-Ray. For independent filmmakers, the film festivals can be an
important step toward distribution and public consumption.

Development Hell

Every experienced filmmaker knew about development hell. The term described the time it took
for a project whether a film, computer game, or screenplay to move from development to
production. This could easily take months and, in many cases, years because of funding difficulties,
legal negotiations, changing pre-production team members (and thus a changing vision for the
project), executive meddling, and more. In the worst-case scenario for a filmmaker, a project never
reached production and remained in development hell.

According to Tan,

a lot of indie films and dramas have trouble getting financing. A lot of mid-budget
films also have trouble getting financing.8

Securing financial support would, in one way or another, involve gatekeepers in the film industry,
which included cinema owners who operated movie theater chains and decided what films to play.

The decision to play films, however, did not happen in isolation. The cinema owners often had
good relationships with the film studios that produced the films. In the case of indie films needing
financing to go into production (thereby leaving development hell), the gatekeepers often assumed
that there was no distribution since these were not traditional studio films. Thus, the close
relationship between studios and cinema owners (the distributors) could complicate the independent

8
Personal interview with Tan Siok Siok recorded at SMU on March 3, 2010.

This case has been made available as part of the ecch collection of free cases (www.ecch.com/freecase).


SMU-11-0011

filmmakers pursuit of project funding. Without a visible means of recouping costs, people were
reluctant to invest in a film.

Was Crowdsourcing the Right Choice?

Tan hung up the Skype call and immediately thought about what an ambitious project this was.

Would people respond to her call for ideas? If they did, would the quality of content submitted by
strangers, from around the world and for free, be good enough to use in a documentary film?
Would crowdsourcing provide an alternate path to funding and distribution, allowing Tan to bypass
entirely the negotiations, waiting, and frustrations of development hell?

Then Tan wondered what might happen if she was faced with a problem of plenty. What if the
response was so good that she became overwhelmed with submissions? Wouldnt a wealth of
responses complicate and slow down the filmmaking process? And on a personal level, would a
flood of responses make her job more chaotic?

The answers would arrive soon enough. The Twittamentary website was going live and the world
would be watching as Tan crowdsourced her next film. I hope this was the right decision, she
thought.

This case has been made available as part of the ecch collection of free cases (www.ecch.com/freecase).


SMU-11-0011

EXHIBITS

Exhibit 1. Twitter

This case has been made available as part of the ecch collection of free cases (www.ecch.com/freecase).


SMU-11-0011

Exhibit 2. Twittamentary

10

This case has been made available as part of the ecch collection of free cases (www.ecch.com/freecase).