What is the pluginmanifesto?

First came the DOGME 95 manifesto, where a collective of film directors founded in Copenhagen in spring 1995 expressed the goal of countering 'certain tendencies' towards 'cosmetics' over content in the cinema today, they remarked, "Today a technological storm is raging, the result of which will be the ultimate democratisation of the cinema." We agree, and now the online film website plugincinema.com is launching the pluginmanifesto, where filmmakers are asked to take advantage of the digital technology revolution.

The manifesto aims to create a definitive framework that filmmakers can use to produce films specifically for the Internet, to work with the medium, to see technological limitations as a creative catalyst. While traditional film was hijacked very early on in its career, filmmaking for the Internet is at a truly exciting time.

Currently, very little exists that has been designed for viewing on the Net. The difference is in the manifest aim of the film, whether it be to communicate and inform as well as entertain, or whether the overriding aim is to make money.

It's time to reclaim film!

Evolving the pluginmanifesto

Contribute to the Evolution of the pluginmanifesto:

Download your own copy of the pluginmanifesto here (PC users right click and select 'save target as', Mac users hold down the mouse button - the document is avalible as Rich Text Format at only 6Kb! and on Wikipedia too!). This is a copyleft document detailing plugincinema's manifesto for filmmaking for the Internet, the pluginmanifesto. This can be freely copied and modified. Indeed we encourage you, along with other fellow filmmakers, artists, geeks and web-users, to take the contents of this document and evolve it in-line with your experiences, ideas and perspectives. The terms that copying and modifying this document are subject to, is that of the Design Science Licence (DSL) by Michael Stutz (http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt). Please send your modified manifestos to us at plugincinema (info [a-t] pluginmanifesto dot com) so that we can add your contribution to the pluginmanifesto homepage.

A Ninja Movie Maker Writes...

We had an interesting email about the pluginmanifesto - that we've decided to share with you! More...

Steve Bennet of Iron Fist Motion Pictures on the pluginmanifesto:
"I'd get deeper into the connection between moving images and other elements in computer software applications. It may be sad for some to find that this area is more one of becoming what they see as a 'computer programmer' than a 'movie director', but that's where the reality lies." More... and a is a tiny 13Kb, or a

Steve has also provided us with his alternative web-cinema manifesto:
"The concept and framework of "movies" can be enlarged to include many of the aspects of what we think of as software applications, while at the same time, many aspects of software applications may benefit from narrative and structural ideas initially developed around motion pictures." More...

the pluginmanifesto version 1.0

(by Ana Kronschnabl - version 1.3 available to download as Rich Text Format or Text)

It is currently far easier to describe what an on-line film is not than what it is...

Films are familiar to us all, Hollywood films at least. So much so that it is difficult for us to think about film in any other terms. So we must start with experimentation, with unlearning everything Hollywood has been teaching us over the last century. Freed from the conventions and context of traditional narrative filmmaking we will be able to see more clearly the other possibilities open to us in terms of form and structure as well as content.

A film made for viewing on the Internet is not 1½ hours long.

The traditional length of a film seems right somehow. Much longer and we become restless, much shorter and we feel cheated. Plays also last the same approximate length of time. However, it is the context in terms of viewing that seems to be the most important element. TV programmes are more usually ½ an hour which seems to fit the schedule primarily but also seems a good length for much TV content. The short film, ie 10 to 15 mins isn't appropriate for either TV or the cinema but seems an ideal length for the internet. It is the length of time we want to stop for a coffee at work, the length of time we spend having a fag break, the length of time we don't mind wasting on a film we don't understand or can't read easily.

It doesn't have to have a narrative - structure can come from a variety of means.

Narrative evolved as an intrinsic part of Hollywood filmmaking. Look to other films to see how filmmakers such as Deren,Godard or Brakhage, structured their films outside of the Hollywood tradition of narrative cinema. Structure can come from an external source and be placed on top of the film eg using colour, music, division into sections etc. or the structure can come from within the film, ie allowing the content to shape itself.

Forget Hollywood...film can be art!

It was decided very early on in Hollywood that films were products and not art. Independent filmmakers and artists have always known this to be wrong and have made films with genuine artistic merit; mainly outside the studio system though sometimes from within. Film was hijacked very early on in its career, claim it back. The difference is in the manifest aim of the film, whether it be to communicate and inform as well as entertain, or whether the overriding aim is to make money.

Limitations can be creative - if you don't have a wind machine; use a fan, if you don't have the bandwidth don't expect the cinema.

Filmmaking on the Internet is at a truly exciting time. Currently, very little exists that has been designed for viewing on the Net. Much has been carried across from other mediums eg TV and film. This isn't good. It means that the work being shown can't be appreciated in the form it was originally intended and it does Internet films a disservice because audiences complain about the lack of 'quality' etc. because their expectations are for the traditional film seen in its familiar context. In the same way that film found its own form in relation to the theatre and TV in relation to film, the Internet filmmaker needs to search for the appropriate form for films on the Internet. If the filmmaker doesn't do it the broadcasters will, in the same way that the studios did for film. Filmmakers have an ideal opportunity to experiment and push the technology creatively before the broadcasters decide to come back and take over, because they will.

Use Codecs and compression creatively.

Use the tools that are appropriate for the job. Filmmaking for the Internet is not filmmaking for the cinema. We should be taking the tools invented for the medium such as flash, html and compression algorithms and pushing them to see what they can do in creative terms. This is the job of the filmmaker and artist. The camera and celluloid defined films for the cinema, computers and the internet will define this medium.

Filmmakers and Geeks should be friends.

Filmmakers, in order to be good at their craft, have always had to have a certain level of technical knowledge. Currently, many of the short films appearing on the Net have been made by people au fait with the technology rather than traditional filmmakers. This is good. However, how much better would those films be if people who had spent their lives learning the craft got together with people who could make the technology work for them. Co-operative, artistic endeavours, the clash of assumptions and traditional ways of doing things can produce surprising, challenging, new work.

Never forget the medium and the viewing context.

Above all forget what the ad agencies are telling us. Who says there will be convergence, even if there is, it is unlikely to be just as they have predicted, and it isn't here yet. Make films to be viewed on the Internet now, don't wait. The challenge is to create the forms appropriate for the context, now. Its not a televisual system that sits in the corner of our living rooms but the Internet; a huge system of information storage and retrieval for individual users, with no one person in charge. Sieze the day, you can make your work available to millions of people. Use this moment; be part of shaping the worlds next, great art form.

pluginmanifesto wikipedia article  

Other manifestos

Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg's DOGME 95

This filmmaking method asserts, "DOGME 95 counters the individual film by the principle of presenting an indisputable set of rules known as THE VOW OF CHASTITY. In 1960 enough was enough! The movie had been cosmeticised to death, they said; yet since then the use of cosmetics has exploded. The 'supreme' task of the decadent film-makers is to fool the audience. Is that what we are so proud of? Is that what the '100 years' have brought us? Illusions via which emotions can be communicated? ... By the individual artist's free choice of trickery?"

More information on Dogme95 can be found at www.dogme95.dk

DOGME for Computer Games by Earnest Adams

Games designer and producer Ernest Adams has also been looking at the same issues for the game industry, "I believe it's time for a similar debate in the game industry. We, too, have an arsenal of production techniques, and they're getting more spectacular all the time. Yet how many games on the store shelves can genuinely claim to be innovative? They may have innovative algorithms, but very few of them have innovative gameplay. How many first-person shooters, how many war games, how many run-and-jump video games do we really need? We're depending so much on the hardware that we're starting to ignore the bedrock foundation of our business: creativity, especially in devising not merely new games, but new kinds of games."

More information can be found at www.gamasutra.com/features/20010129/adams_01.htm

Dogma 2001: The New Rules for Internet Cinema

Film Site Neocinema also has an internet-film manifesto; "Putting a film designed for festivals on the Internet is no more Internet cinema than putting housework on a stage makes it theater. This is a different venue, with different requirements: The Internet has severe bandwidth limitations, there's a lot fighting for the viewer's attention, and there is a significant community aspect unique to the medium which should be taken into account. This is not a theater. Here, the viewer is in control."

More information can be found at www.neocinema.com