And so it happened. For the distribution and promotion the pair teamed up with the VODO BitTorrent distribution platform, and the first $6,000 that was needed to shoot the pilot was collected from supporters through the Kickstarter website.

Mid-June 2010 the first episode of Pioneer One was eventually released to the public through VODO. With support from all the big players in the P2P-scene, the BitTorrent-only TV-series quickly gained a huge audience.

In the months that followed the episodes were downloaded more than 3 million times in total. Quite an audience for a web-only show with a very limited budget and a rather unpredictable release schedule.

Today the 5th episode of Pioneer One came out, which means that there’s only one episode left before the first season ends.

As always there are free .torrent downloads available. However, those who want to support the project are encouraged to donate (and receive some nifty goodies).

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In the months that followed this idea slowly transformed into something real. Within a few days the makers secured enough money to shoot a pilot, and with the help of many volunteers it was released to the public during June last year.

The pilot was released on the VODO platform, which guaranteed maximum exposure through partners like The Pirate Bay and FrostWire, but getting people to download it was the easiest part of the puzzle. There were still five episodes to go to finish the first season.

Luckily, many people liked what they saw and decided to donate money to keep the project going. An additional $20,000 was raised in two weeks and the counter topped the $30,000 mark early September – enough money to shoot more episodes.

As was hoped, the project was kept alive by fans of the show and the second episode was released late last year.

Today, Pioneer One reached another milestone as episode 3 of the show was just released. The fourth is currently scheduled for a release next month. Pioneer One writer Josh Bernhard is convinced that despite the unusual release format the show’s fan base is growing.

“The release of episode 2 demonstrated that the audience was still there, with more people discovering the show for the first time. I think each new episode is going to build our momentum, and people are going to become more invested as we reveal more pieces of the story,” Bernhard told TorrentFreak.

And it’s not just BitTorrent users following the project, there has been plenty of recognition from other filmmakers and traditional TV people too. The peer-funded episode won an award for ‘Best Drama Pilot’ at the New York Television Festival, which was quite a morale booster for the makers and an indication that they are on the right track.

“I think the idea of BitTorrent as a viable means of distributing content is really starting to break through,” Bernhard said. “BitTorrent has something of a stigma, especially for people in the entertainment industry. When you say BitTorrent, I think a lot of people hear ‘piracy’ and stop listening. But between Pioneer One, Zenith and other projects adopting the same model, it’s going to become too big to dismiss.”

Although the Pioneer One crew have left their mark on history already, there is one major downside to the BitTorrent model. Shooting a TV-show is a costly exercise, and since the main budget also comes from peers, the crew has to raise money after every release so they can finish the first season. Thus far this has worked out, but an extra push is needed to fund the remaining episodes.

“We’re starting production of the last two episodes of our first season in May, financed with whatever money we raise between now and then. Our main focus is finishing out the season of 6 episodes, which I think will be a huge achievement. Naysayers said it couldn’t be done, that we were foolish for even trying. But we’re closer than ever and we’re determined to finish this chapter of Pioneer One, come hell or high water,” Bernhard said.

The third episode of Pioneer One can be downloaded on VODO, and don’t forget to chip in if you support the project.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

And so it happened. For the distribution and promotion the pair teamed up with the VODO BitTorrent distribution platform, and the first $6,000 that was needed to shoot the pilot was collected from supporters through the Kickstarter website.

Mid-June the first episode of Pioneer One was eventually released to the public through VODO. With support from all the big players in the P2P-scene, the BitTorrent-only TV-series quickly gained a huge audience.

Hundreds of thousands of people had downloaded the show, and many decided to donate money to fund future episodes. An additional $20,000 was raised in just the first two weeks and the counter topped the $30,000 mark early September – enough money to shoot more episodes of the first season.

“Once our heads stopped spinning after the pilot, we sat down in July to figure out our game plan. If we were going to produce more episodes, we knew we had to do more than one at a time to make it cost effective and timely,” Pioneer One writer Josh Bernhard told TorrentFreak.

“So a lot of preparations had to be made. Initially we didn’t think we’d be able to move forward with the money we had, but the cast and crew were all eager to do more based on the success of the pilot. So based on their generosity, we called in the rest of the favors we had and were able to start shooting in October,” he added.

Three new episodes were eventually shot in October, and the first one was released on VODO just a few minutes ago. Like the pilot, this second episode can be downloaded for free. In the coming weeks the Pioneer One team plans to release episodes 3 and 4, and gather enough funds to complete the remaining episodes.

Although the delay between the first and second episode is not something the general TV-audience is used to, it is one of the inevitable downsides of a peer-funded production. According to the current schedule it looks like the first season will be completed within a year, something the production team and all those who supported the endeavor can be proud of.

The first season has 7 episodes in total, but after that the show is far from done.

“From the beginning we knew this was a multi-season story with an arc that would play out over time. The first season is limited enough in scope that we felt we’d be able to pull it off with the resources that we had, but moving forward, it gets bigger,” Bernhard told TorrentFreak.

“How exactly those future seasons will happen, and what form they will take, is not set in stone. Ideally, we’d love to keep producing the show the way we have been: on our own, releasing through BitTorrent. But right now we’re focusing on getting the first season done, because I think that’ll prove what we set out to do, and all together it will stand on its own as a unit,” he commented.

The series was ‘invented’ for BitTorrent, and the team wants to keep it that way for now. However, there has been plenty of recognition from other filmmakers and traditional TV people. The peer-funded episode won an award for ‘Best Drama Pilot’ at the New York Television Festival, which was quite a morale booster for the makers and an indication that they are on the right track.

“We had some great meetings, but we felt very strongly that we had an obligation to our audience that supported the pilot to continue releasing episodes on BitTorrent. That was the stated goal, and that’s what we want to deliver,” Bernhard said.

Eventually, the Pioneer One team would of course be happy to see their work on traditional TV as well, which serves a wider audience than the traditional BitTorrent public. In the end, a collision between traditional TV and content funded and distributed on the Internet might benefit both sides.

For now, however, Pioneer One still relies on the BitTorrent community. Today, the release of the second episode will again be promoted by many P2P partners. Among other initiatives it will be bundled with all the new installs of BitTorrent Inc.’s uTorrent client. Through these promotions the Pioneer one team hopes to gather enough donations to finish the first season.

“We have no funding beyond user donations, but we’re hoping if we can repeat the success of the pilot and beyond, we may attract more support through some kind of sponsorship model. But for now user donations are absolutely crucial. At the moment, we’re depending entirely on the support of our audience to fund episodes 5 and 6.”

It will be interesting to see how the second episode will be picked up by the public. Josh Bernhard has high hopes, but realizes that the success of the pilot won’t be easily matched.

“I hope people will get a better sense of the kind of show we’re trying to make. Personally, I think this next episode is a step above the pilot. We’re all really proud of it. And, hopefully, people will get excited enough to support us and spread the word. I’d love if we outdid the success of the pilot, but we’re taking nothing for granted.”

Pioneer One, episode 1 and 2 can be downloaded through VODO, fully powered by BitTorrent.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

At the time of writing, Pioneer One is still the best seeded TV-show on BitTorrent with more than 20,000 people sharing the file simultaneously. Even more impressively, the number of downloads exceed those of traditional TV-shows such as True Blood, Family Guy and Doctor Who that were released in the same time period.

Thus far, the regular quality release of the episode has been downloaded well over a million times, with another 300,000 downloads for the high definition release. To find out how the makers view events of the past weeks TorrentFreak decided to catch up with Josh Bernhard, who started the project together with Bracey Smith and is currently working on future episodes.

“The response to the pilot was unbelievable,” Bernhard told TorrentFreak. “It took a week for it to really sink in that so many people had seen it and liked it. It was also particularly gratifying to see so many people responding to the story the way we intended. I’ve never been able to get that kind of feedback from an audience on this scale. It’s kind of validating, and gives me even more confidence moving forward.”

“It was also really amazing to see people starting to pick apart the science and the details. People were actually debating the authenticity of the spacesuit! How cool is that? That tells me that they’re taking us seriously enough to pick apart. People are really thinking about it, which is fantastic. And aside from a couple of gaffes that slipped by us during our breakneck production schedule, it held up to scrutiny.”

Aside from the many positive responses, we asked Bernhard about the donations that came in after the release. The funds to shoot the first episode were crowdfunded though a Kickstarter project, but to finish the full series the crew has been looking for donations from new people who want to support the project.

“The donations were even better than we expected,” Bernhard said. “I didn’t know if we’d be able to raise $20,000, but we did it in 10 days. That money is going to carry us through pre-production on the first production block of 3 episodes which we plan to start shooting in September. I’ve taken up residence in a cave to concentrate on writing the scripts, and we’re starting to cast new characters, figure out what our workflow is going to be, what kind of cameras we’re going to shoot with, etc.”

“We’re still looking for more solid backing toward our ultimate financing goal, but the donation money was absolutely crucial for us to move forward. We have some promising prospects, and we’ll know more on that within a couple of weeks.”

That brings us to the question of when the next episode will come out. Although the makers have no fixed date yet, they do intend to carry on the project and release the remaining episodes of the first season in a fixed schedule similar to regular TV-shows.

“Producing a series is a different beast than producing a one-off feature, or a single pilot episode,” Bernhard said. “We’re shooting them together so we don’t keep people waiting an uncertain amount of time between episodes. We want to have a release schedule and stick to it, so we can build an audience like a ‘real’ TV series. I already saw a comment on YouTube wondering why 1×02 wasn’t out yet, since it had been more than a week since the first already!”

“Everyone is working really hard to make sure this thing comes together in the best way possible. It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever been a part of,” he concluded.

For those who haven’t seen the first episode yet, it’s available for download on every major BitTorrent site, or you can grab a copy on the official release page. If you like what you see please consider donating to the project. Although this type of production may not be the future of TV, it is a triumph for BitTorrent and a paradigm shift that might inspire traditional TV-production houses to think outside of ‘the box’.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

By harnessing the power of all the major players in the P2P field, VODO offers a unique platform through which independent filmmakers can share their work with the masses. Downloaders on their turn are encouraged to donate if they like what they see.

Thus far all the previous VODO releases have been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people, and that’s just the start. With backing from uTorrent, Limewire and The Pirate Bay, the number of downloads for today’s release might exceed one million.

VODO’s newest release is titled Pioneer One, a brand new 7-part TV-series that raised enough funds to film the first episode through donations from TorrentFreak readers and other supporters. Unlike traditional television, the sci-fi-ish series will debut on the Internet, on BitTorrent.

Pioneer One is an ambitious project from Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith who have collaborated before on ‘The Lionshare’, a BitTorrent-exclusive film which was released on VODO earlier this year. With support from even more big names than before, Bernhard, who wrote the script for the TV-series, hopes that today’s release will set a new record.

“Based on The Lionshare stats and the amount of coverage we’re getting on this, I’m hoping we’ll hit a million downloads. Some have higher expectations, but I don’t want to jinx anything by putting it in print,” Bernhard told TorrentFreak.

Answering the question why they chose VODO for the release of their series, Bernhard said that it was a logical choice because he didn’t expect the pilot to be picked by a network anytime soon because it’s so hard to break into that industry now.

“There’s only so much of that TV pie to go around. There’s only so much real-estate on networks. We would have to storm the gate just to get a meeting with somebody,” Bernhard explained. “Why would they pick up a show from two nobodies outside their industry?”

Besides this pragmatic issue, the makers of Pioneer One also believe that the Internet and BitTorrent have the future. In the old fashioned TV-system it doesn’t really matter how engaged people are in a show. Passion is not rewarded in today’s numbers game on traditional television, something that has to change.

“TV has other priorities than making good TV,” Bernhard told us. “You have vocal fanbases whose enthusiasm is ignored, because to networks, their passion isn’t worth more than beating American Idol in the ratings. The fact that TV can’t sustain a show like Firefly, to use a well-known example, with such passionate viewers, shows that something is wrong with how that system works.”

The interesting contradiction is that, thanks to VODO, Pioneer One will not be an obscure indie release at all. In the coming week more than a million people are expected to download and watch the episode – numbers most network TV-shows can only dream of.

Although Bernhard hopes that a network or other sponsor will come along to fund the rest of the season, he emphasizes that it will always be released for free to the public. “Our plan has always been to distribute the whole season through VODO. That’s how we want to do it, and a big part of why this show is so exciting to us,” he said.

For VODO today’s release is yet another milestone. Not only is it supported by more P2P partners than ever before, but Pioneer One is also the first release that has a commercial sponsor, MOFILM, to bring in additional revenue aside from donations. VODO founder Jamie King told TorrentFreak that now there are so many partners in place, they will put more emphasis on the network itself instead of the distribution channels.

“In the next six months, we’re going to be rolling out a new VODO infrastructure for incentivising donation and getting more peers into active relationships with our creators. To put it simply, we continue to be incredibly optimistic about developing an independent creation culture on top of P2P infrastructure — and really making it work. Pioneer One is really the first step towards that.”

It’s going to be interesting to follow the progress of the Pioneer One project, a TV-series that is a true pioneer itself. BitTorrent has already revolutionized the TV-viewing experience for millions of people and through VODO and the high quality it brings this can only accelerate even further. In a future article will check up on the progress of Pioneer One to see if the 1 million views becomes reality.

In the meantime people can download Pioneer One’s first episode on VODO.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The paragraph above sets the stage for a brand new sci-fi series that will debut not on TV, but on BitTorrent. Titled Pioneer One, the series is a project from Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith who have collaborated before on ‘The Lionshare’, a BitTorrent-exclusive film which was released on VODO earlier this year.

Rather than the traditional path taken by most TV-makers, they do not plan to pitch a pilot to the studios. Instead, they are making the series on their own backed by donations from the public. The result will premiere exclusively on BitTorrent where it will instantly have an audience of hundreds of thousands of viewers.

The previous releases on VODO, a novel BitTorrent-powered distribution platform for indie filmmakers, have been a massive success as they were downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people. VODO is fully supported by The Pirate Bay, EZTV and many other well known file-sharing partners that help to promote the releases.

Josh Bernhard, who wrote the script for the upcoming TV-series, sees VODO as the ideal distribution channel for ‘Pioneer One’ and hopes that it will equal or exceed the success of the film they released late last year.

“Because of our success with The Lionshare, we think we have a novel incentive to give potential sponsors,” Bernhard told TorrentFreak. “With the number of people who downloaded Lionshare, and the demographic they come from, we think that forward-thinking companies would see the opportunity in associating their brand with a unique show like this.”

The series, described by its makers as a “political drama, part procedural drama, with a tinge of sci-fi”, has the potential to revolutionize the TV-business. By taking the show directly to the Internet where it will build an online fanbase, it goes directly against traditional TV-making procedures.

The production of ‘Pioneer One’ is already well underway. The casting for the pilot has been completed and the crew will start shooting in 4 days. In order to produce a high quality pilot the makers are running a Kickstarter pledge drive through which they hope to get at least $6000 in funding from contributers who support the project.

If you want to be part of TV-history, we recommend that you send a few bucks over. At TorrentFreak we will definitely keep you updated on the project’s progress.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.