The 1 Second Film

The 1 Second Film
The 1 Second Film flier
Directed by	Nirvan Mullick
Written by	Nirvan Mullick
Produced by	Over 10,000 producers
Music by	Carlo Dean
Distributed by	The Collaboration Foundation
Release date	2009 or 2010
Running time	90 mins and 1 second.
Language	English
Budget	US$ 1,000,000 (intended)

The 1 Second Film is a non-profit collaborative art project being created by thousands of people around the world, including several celebrities. The production is financed by thousands of small donations; everyone who donates a minimum of one dollar gets their name listed as a Producer in the movie's credits. The film currently has over 10,000 producers from 60 countries.

'The 1 Second Film' is built around one second of experimental animation (made of 12 large collaborative paintings), immediately followed by 90 minutes of end credits that will list everyone who participates. The end credits will include a feature-length 'making of' documentary. After the premiere of The 1 Second Film, the 12 pieces of artwork will be auctioned off to benefit the Global Fund for Women. All profits raised by the finished film will also be donated to this charity.

The 1 Second Film is the flagship production of The Collaboration Foundation, a non-profit arts organization formed to create global collaborative art projects that address various social issues. A significant part of the production involves web development; the project has used donations to build an online social-network to allow participants to collaborate with the production. The Collaboration Foundation will continue to create collaborative projects with the online community after The 1 Second Film is complete.

Production

The title of The 1 Second Film derives from the fact that the animation at the core of the film project is just one-second long (24 frames). The animation consists of 12 large frames (9ft x 5ft paintings). The frames were painted by hundreds of people during a multi-disciplinary event on March 8, 2001 (International Women's Day) at California Institute of the Arts. The event included live-performers and musicians; people attending the event were invited to help paint the frames of animation. Each frame had an art director that engaged the audience as participants; color design for the animation was selected by Jules Engel. Each of the 12 paintings is filmed twice (on 70 mm film) to create the 24 frames in one second of film.

The one second of animation will be immediately followed by an estimated 90 minutes of end credits which will play alongside a 'making of' documentary.

Fundraising model

The film is being financed entirely by donations. Donors receive a Producer credit on the film for a minimum of US$1.00 (with no maximum). Depending on the amount of donated the contributor is given credit either as Associate Producer (US$1–9.99), Producer (US$10–99.99), or Executive Producer (US$100 and up). Every producer also receives a Producer Profile on The 1 Second Film’s social networking website.

The 1 Second Film lists the Producer credits in order of amount donated. This has led to celebrity and non-celebrity bidding wars, as first time filmmakers outbid celebrities to get a higher listing in the film credits. Comedians Tom Green and Andy Dick began an escalating bidding war to out bid one another in the credits, sending videos of their bidding war back and forth.

Project history

Kiefer Sutherland holding a check for the film

The 1 Second Film began as a student project by Nirvan Mullick in 2001 while at California Institute of the Arts. The director originally intended to create a collaborative art project to bring his school together, but expanded the project after the success of the initial event. Seed funds for the animation painting event came from a $1,500 CalArts Grant, an additional $3,000 was raised by selling producer credits for donations of $1 or more. In 2004, after graduating and finishing two other animated short films, the director began fundraising to expand The 1 Second Film project by selling $1 producer credits on the streets of Los Angeles. After raising enough to buy a video camera, the director began to document the fundraising process to include as part of a documentary about the project. In 2005, after getting several celebrities to donate, the director launched a petition drive along with the help of Stephen Colbert to get the credits of The 1 Second Film listed on the Internet Movie Database. In March 2005, IMDb began listing the credits.

The IMDb listing helped the project to grow online. In May 2006, a video of several high-profile celebrities donating to The 1 Second Film was featured on the homepage of YouTube, helping the project raise over $7,000 in 4 days. In 2007, the project's first automated website was built using Drupal to give community profiles to all participants, allowing the project to scale up. The site was featured on the homepage of digg.com.

In November 2007, Apple donated over $25,000 worth of computers to The 1 Second Film project for post-production of the documentary.

Celebrity producers

Samuel L. Jackson with daughter Zoe Jackson holding a producer credit

A variety of high-profile celebrities have donated to become producers of the project. Producers include: Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Stephen Colbert, Pierce Brosnan, Christina Ricci, Ben Harper, Tom Arnold, Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, Tom Green, Andy Dick, Tony Kanal, Mark Ruffalo, Seth Green, Bob Odenkirk, Drew Pinsky, Jesse Bradford, Robert Carradine, Tyson C. Beckford, Selma Blair, Patrick Fugit, Bill Pullman, James Cromwell, Bobby Cannavale, Steve Coogan, Atom Egoyan, Jason Ritter, Don McKellar, Mark McKinney, Steve Buscemi, Alan Cumming, David LaChapelle, Zoe Bell, John Leguizamo, B. J. Novak, Coolio, Pauly Shore and Nia Vardalos. Zoe Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson's daughter, is also on board.

Contributors also include YouTube CEO Chad Hurley, YouTube stars including Jack Gregson (gregmss), iJustine and Brookers, as well as Kyle MacDonald from one red paperclip.

The full listing of Celebrity Producers can be viewed on The 1 Second Film's website.

Road to Oprah Tour

The 1 Second Film launched a Road to Oprah tour in October 2007, with the goal of reaching Oprah Winfrey's studio in Chicago and asking her for $1 to become a producer. The tour was organized online by sending a newsletter to over 7,400 producers of the project with a request to help set up presentations from Los Angeles to Chicago. Presentations were organized by online supporters at YouTube, Google, Universities, high schools, coffee shops, skate parks, a veterans' home, and house parties across America. A used school bus was purchased on ebay for $3,100, and converted to a bio-diesel production bus. The 30-day tour, covering 10,000 miles, took place from October–November 2007. An alt-country folk band called the Evangenitals joined the tour, performing music at presentations and composing songs for the documentary. The day the Road to Oprah bus reached Harpo Studios in Chicago, Oprah had traveled unexpectedly to Africa to address a crisis at her Leadership Academy for Girls. The tour will be included as part of the documentary. Another tour is being planned before the film is completed.

IMDb history

The director of The 1 Second Film submitted the celebrity producer credits of The 1 Second Film to the Internet Movie Database. After being rejected, the director sent a link to a video of Stephen Colbert requesting his $11 producer credit be listed on IMDb. IMDb then began to list all of The 1 Second Film's credits, including first-time filmmakers who donated $1 or more to the project online. Thousands of people began to discover the film title under the production credits of the various celebrities involved. The project spread online, attracting donations from around the world. Several celebrities also donated online, including Jonah Hill and Ryan Reynolds. The IMDb listing reached over 3,000 Producers. However, due to the high volume of submissions, IMDb replaced all of the film's individual producer credits with a single credit for "Producers of The 1 Second Film." This angered many who donated to get listed on IMDb. The entire project was then removed from IMDb. Jon Reeves, head of data acquisition, gave the following reasons on the IMDb message boards when revisiting the eligibility of the listing:

At the time I met Nirvan, he had assured me there would be significant national press coverage by last summer. We gave him the benefit of the doubt, and a significant grace period. I see no entries in the Google News archives or anywhere else that come close to meeting that standard. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that, whatever the intentions of the filmmakers (and Nirvan certainly seemed earnest when I talked to him), in practice, 1SF is currently more of a performance art project than an actual film. (Note that the bulk of the film has been, ever since we originally listed it, the documentary of the various events surrounding it.) I will say that this is the first time that I've looked at their site where the emphasis really does seem to be on finishing the film, and not the various circuses around it. I would point out that Nirvan said last February: "Jon, I promise we will have significant press to show within 3 months, and am fine with you suspending all our listings if we haven’t done so by then." At the time, they were working on revamping their web site and their Oprah promotional tour. Since both those activities are now complete, I see no reason not to suspend this title.

— Jon Reeves, IMDb.com, January 8, 2008

He later posted an update stating that the title manager agreed and had made the decision to suspend the listing until further notice.

When this decision was later questioned, he added:

When I spoke with Nirvan (over a year ago!), he was given specific benchmarks and timetables which he agreed to for its continued listing. Those were not met, and the listing was removed (in fact, quite some time after the deadline). This film has been 7 years in the making, and is still only about 1/4 of the way to its fundraising goal. Our usual standard for listing an in-production film is that it have significant involvement of "name" individuals and measurable progress every 6 months. The involvement of the "name" people in this case is generally about 5 minutes each, plus trivially small (for them) financial contributions. The progress has continually been a moving target, with no end in sight. The words "The Last Dangerous Visions" will make sense to science fiction fans (it's a book that's been famously "coming soon" since 1973).

— Jon Reeves, IMDb.com, April 21, 2008

Future productions

The 1 Second Film is flagship production of The Collaboration Foundation, a non-profit organization formed to produce collaborative art on a global scale while raising various social issues. The future projects include a "5 Phase Plan" that will consist of films animated during simultaneous collaborative art events around the world, with each phase increasing in length and scale, while addressing a different social issue.

The Collaboration's Board of Directors includes Julie Taymor, Albert Maysles, Ben Goldhirsh, Stephen Nemeth, and Nirvan Mullick.

External links

• Official website
• The Collaboration Foundation
• Road to Oprah
• The 1 Second interview with Nirvan Mullick, Spring 2001, CalArts Newspaper
• The brains behind: The 1 Second Film
• The Global Fund for Women Official website
• Video segment from 'Connected Life'
• TV Coverage from FOX 11 News