Many people assume that “pirates” structurally refuse to pay for any type of entertainment. In reality, however, we often see the opposite happening.
About a week ago, EZTV owner Novaking stumbled upon an Indiegogo campaign launched by a female director from Laos aiming to raise money for her next horror film “Nong Hak.”
EZTV is known as the most visited TV-torrent site, but in this case NovaKing figured that some of its TV-fanatics may also be interested in this independent film project.
To promote the crowdfunding campaign NovaKing added a banner to the top right corner of the site. Since the site has millions of visitors per week, this didn’t go unnoticed by the filmmakers.
Chris Larsen, the writer of the “Nong Hak” screenplay and husband of director Mattie Do, tells TorrentFreak that they noticed an immediate boost in both visitors and donations.
“Since the EZTV promotion went up, users from the site now account for about 25% of the total donations, about 80% of the traffic to the campaign, and about 80% of the Vimeo views of our campaign video.”
While crowdfunding projects aren’t really new, not even among BitTorrent users, the makers of the first Lao horror flick have a special surprise in store for the EZTV community. As a token of their appreciation they are now promising to make their first film open source if they reach their $30,000 goal.
The filmmakers reached out to EZTV’s NovaKing to discuss the plans, and all agreed that it would be a great idea to enter their previous film “Chanthaly” into the public domain. This weekend Do announced this community challenge in a special video message to EZTV users.
So in addition to some other perks, EZTV users and everyone else who donates to the production of “Nong Hak” have the option to make the first Lao horror film open source.
“If we reach our goal then we’ll release the copyright on her first film and we’ll put the film into the public domain. Nobody will own the film anymore, everybody will own it,” said Larsen confirming the plan.
For the filmmakers this is an exciting proposal, and something they had not previously considered. However, since they own all the rights and because the film has been paid for entirely, it’s an offer that makes sense.
“We’re in a unique position with Chanthaly. We own the film outright, everybody that worked on the film has been paid. The film has a bit of festival prestige, and honestly some historic value, since it is the first Lao horror film, and the first film directed by a Lao female director,” Larsen explains.
“And honestly, I’m sick of it sitting on my hard drive here collecting dust,” he adds.
NovaKing is happy with the offer. Releasing all raw film material will spur creativity, as anyone can then make their own edits, or turn it into something completely different.
“The beauty of releasing the first film to be Public Domain is the fact that hobbyist film makers can get everything from the project files and raw video stream of an existing movie and see how it all works, and tinker and even possibly re-edit and make a different version of the movie,” NovaKing tells TorrentFreak.
“The possibilities are quite endless!” he adds.
If you are interested in helping to fund “Nong Hak” and the open-sourcing Chanthaly, then head over to the Indiegogo campaign.
Update: The campaign goal was reached and the first Chanthaly files are already being uploaded.
