photo credit: eschipul This post is a direct update from  "Open Invitation to the Creative Content Community's Open Source Filmmakers - Let's Work Together" where I invited a group of independent filmmakers to collaborate on Jathia's Wager with us.

After exchanged a few private emails with Jim of Creative Content Community, he explained their collaborative model in more detail.  They want to make collaborative films by shooting everything on green screens and then having teams from all of the internet work on the background and compositions of each scene.  I like the way that sounds and I responded with: "I have a 20ft by 12ft green screen and professional lights. (soft boxes with tungsten bulbs and umbrella lights) I could shoot some test shots and send you some footage. I might write a quick character study set in the same universe as Jathia's Wager and shoot some samples. That way I could publically release the footage and it would help build exposure for the film. One doubt I have in the back of my mind ( and the reason I didn't use a model like this) is that most low budget green screen shots look very visually fake, In my personal tests I've had some difficulty with realism especially in HD it's very apparent. I read that even hollywood uses rotoscoping for especially difficult green screen scenes ( like in the matrix ) and they've got giant studies with optimal lighting and separation of the actors from the screen. I'm usually shooting in a mid size room which makes it a lot harder in scenes with lots of action. I'm interesting in knowing how professional you can make these green screen shots look and I'd love to send you some test footage. Say I send you some footage in 2 weeks, a character study with mainly dialogue and a confrontation between two actors. If these looked good enough I'd consider changing my model and shooting the entire film on green screens, but I have lots of reservations about quality. Thoughts?" Jim's overwhelming positive response was: "I think you'll be happy with the results. I use Adobe Ultra and it has a lot of control for the greenscreen process. Take a look at the stuff I greenscreen'd on GreenScreenCinema. It was super quick, no set-up, very little lighting help and it came out pretty good. Imagine how great it will be if you actually took the time to make a consistent light across the screen! I couldn't imagine shooting sci-fi any other way. Let's give it a try and see how it comes out." I'm taking him up on the offer and we'll be sending their group an entire short scene set in the same universe as Jathia's Wager in 2 weeks or less - see Jathia's Wager Prequel - Short Scene to be Shot this Week.  Here is a post  (Open Source Films - Jathia's Wager First Meetup Notes) that summarizes our progress and the motivation behind the move to write, shoot and release an initial 2 minute scene to kick off collaboration between our production teams (assembled in different places throughout the world - New York, Silicon Valley, India).