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In a case of mistaken identity, a man passes off a case containing who-knows-what to the wrong guy in a restaurant. The guy who was supposed to get the case sees the wrong guy leave with it. And then… Well, actually, that’s completely up to you.
Kevin Antoine and Erik Luchauer, the co-founders of Rootclip, have only created the first chapter of this short film. They’re inviting the rest of the world to help them finish it.
“Users come to the site, watch the video, then go out and shoot what they think should happen next in the story,” says Luchauer, vice president of the company. “The rest of the user community then gets to watch and vote on the videos that they think should be the next chapter in the story.”
Winners from each individual chapter get a $500 Visa gift card and the chance to shoot the final chapter. Whoever wins that competition gets an all-expenses-paid trip to the Traverse City Film Festival, curated by none other than Michael Moore, with whom the winner gets to hang out. The completed Rootclip film will premiere at the fest.
“Michael Moore is a friend of the family,” explains Luchauer, “I got to meet him over the holidays and kind of told him about the idea and what we were planning on doing and he has been ever so gracious in giving us advice and ideas.”
Antoine and Luchauer got the idea while reminiscing about the Choose Your Own Adventure books of days gone past. Says Luchauer, “We were like, ‘How cool would it be to have something like this online?’ But not just picking how you want the story to end, but be able to create how the story ends yourself.”
After getting some startup cash from Scripps Entrepreneurial Ventures, the duo set about putting together the infrastructure of the company. “On the organization chart, we had to identify who was what,” recalls Antoine, “Erik and I just kind of looked at each other and he pointed at me and said, ‘You’re the president, I’m the vice. Sweet.’”
Antoine and Luchauer shot the initial or “root” short film over a weekend with Nick Hollensbe, their producer and resident video guru. They placed objects and clothing in the first chapter that could carry over into the second to maintain continuity, knowing that users would not necessarily have access to the same actors or locations when they filmed their contributions. “Writing this [first chapter] is probably the hardest part for us,” says Antoine, “Trying to figure out a clip that will be able to continue through multiple chapters.”
The pair hope that ultimately the site will reach a point will users will be able to submit root clips of their own. “One of the options for a second channel could be where we just open up the channel, open up the submitting and let the users start the first chapter and let the users vote on what the first chapter’s going to be and then the users can take it from there,” says Antoine.
Putting narrative power in the hands of the people seems to be Rootclip’s prime directive, and given that chapter two of the story has already been selected, with voting already begun on chapter three, it looks like the revolution has begun.
Find out more about Rootclip here.
Update: Listen to the podcast interview with the founders here.
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