Watch the Trailer

For a Crowd-Sourced

EXPERIMENT

Enjoy some popcorn! Clipboard drawing

The Idea

During a three week residency at the Borland Project Space, artist and Penn State faculty member Benjamin Andrew organized a crowd-sourced experiment where participants were invited to help make a movie. The story was determined from audience suggestions and hashed out during a screenwriting workshop.

Woman writing on huge sheets of paper.

Over the following weeks, visitors to the Borland Project Space and nearby areas of campus were invied to act out a single line of dialogue or simple action. Each character is portrayed by dozens of non-actors, whose appeance changes from shot-to-shot, with only context and simple costumes defining their identies.

The Process

Srreenwriting workshop

Write

Visitors to the gallery during the first week of the project contributed story ideas for the movie. Anyone could suggest character names, themes, motivations, and cool locations on campus. Prompts and signage broke down the screenwriting process into simple pieces.

Woman holding phone with disgust

“Act”

Students, staff, and faculty of all stripes were invited to act of brief scenes with the help of Benjamin Andrew and student assistants. Talent was not required, but over 100 people were surprised with the opportunity to jump into a character for a brief moment.

Foley recording with shoes

Record

Along with raw dailies, rough edits of the footage was projected in the galelry during production. Participants could use a makeshift audio studio to record foley sound effects and voiceovers by following simple instructions.

Watch the Movie

The entire film is available to stream right here. Thanks to all the participants! Be sure to follow Benjamin Andrew for more public art experiments at Penn State and beyond.