The Lionshare tells the story of Matty and Jane who hook up through OkCupid. During their first date Jane invites Matty to her house, and to her favorite BitTorrent site – ‘The Lionshare.’
“I was interested in making a film that depicted how people actually get their media today,” filmmaker Josh Bernhard told TorrentFreak, as he explained his decision to introduce a fictitious torrent site. “There’s this whole underbelly of community-oriented filesharing sites out there that, as much as DVRs and DVD box sets and 99-cent iTunes singles, has fundamentally changed the way we obtain and experience media.”
“The Lionshare site in the movie felt like a good basis from which to bring up these issues and how they have ramifications for people – consumers and producers of content – in the real word.”
The film is an independent production which was shot for just a few thousand dollars. If anything, it shows that film making is an art where talent can easily compensate for a lack of a multi-million dollar budget. And thanks to BitTorrent, it can be distributed to millions of people at no cost.
Today the film makes its official debut on BitTorrent through VODO. Short for voluntary donations, VODO offers a novel distribution platform for indie filmmakers, fully supported by The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, Mininova and many other well known file-sharing partners.
Thus far, VODO has been a great success for all the people involved, in particular the filmmakers.
Previous releases though VODO were downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, making it the ideal platform for up and coming as well as established film makers. Because it carries the name of a fictional BitTorrent site, The Lionshare most definitely has to be distributed among peers.
Like many other filmmakers, Josh is more than happy to share his work through BitTorrent. “I think new technologies like BitTorrent can benefit indie filmmakers, but beyond that, I don’t see it as much of a choice,” he said. “I could never have made this movie unless I made it on my own, and online venues allow me to get it out there to be seen by people.
“I’m not looking to make a million bucks, just enough to make another movie. It’s hard to say what distribution model is going to take a firm hold in the future, but it’s definitely not going to be the way big media companies have been doing business in the past,” Josh Added.
The film can be downloaded through VODO or one of the many partner sites including The Pirate Bay. Don’t forget to donate to the makers if you like what you see.
