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Toronto filmmaker turns to the Internet to raise funds for his film
By Lee-Anne Goodman, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Sunday, July 6, 2008

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TORONTO - Canadian television director Casey Walker has dreamed for years of making a romantic comedy for the big screen, but the thought of pleading for government grants or going broke to make the movie wasn’t terribly appealing.

So Walker, 32, who directs the YTV kids’ reality show "Adrenaline Project," has come up with an innovative way to raise funds for his movie - he’s selling future frames of the film on the Internet at his website, www.mymilliondollarmovie.com.

The Toronto-based Walker launched the site earlier this year hoping to raise $1 million to make "Free For All ... But You!" by selling the frames for $10 a piece. In exchange for buying frames, investors get a credit in his movie, advertisement rights on his site and a piece of the profits if the film is a hit.

"I’ve seen so many of my friends spending months of their time putting Telefilm Canada applications together and being denied for amazing projects - it’s really a lot of the much more established film people that get Telefilm money," Walker said in a recent interview.

"It’s a hard nut to crack for us, and for many people it’s the only way to make a movie. We don’t have access to the Hollywood power brokers, and if you can’t get government money, you’ve got to raise funds another way, and I don’t believe racking up your credit card or mortgaging your parents’ house is the answer."

So far, Walker has sold 17,900 frames, meaning he’s got almost $180,000 in the coffers, and there are still 126,100 up for grabs. Investors - Walker prefers to call them producers - have kicked in cash from 18 countries around the world.

Walker, a native of Thunder Bay, Ont., says they’re not doing it to become rich. Many of them are friends and associates, or young filmmakers themselves who are happy to help a colleague get his movie made. They also like the idea of circumventing the establishment.

"He’s been a mentor to me and I really truly believe in the project he’s working on," said Amy DeCorte, 25, who also works in television as an associate producer, including on "Adrenaline Project," a sort of "Fear Factor" for kids.

"His technique of fundraising is inspiring, especially for Canadian filmmakers. I really believe it will open doors and show other filmmakers that we don’t have to go through these traditional, typical funding methods to get our movies made. This is new, it’s exciting and it could really change the way we make movies."

Walker says he was inspired by the story of Britain’s Alex Tew, a then 21-year-old student who started up a website in 2005 - called The Million Dollar Page - to raise funds for his university education. Tew raised more than a US$1 milllion.

"We looked at his business model, adapted it to suit our own needs and came up with mymilliondollarmovie.com," he said.

Walker aims to start shooting the movie in the late fall or early spring with an all-Canadian cast, and has already approached William Shatner’s agent to discuss a possible cameo. He describes the film as a "boy meets girl, boy loses girl to seven other people she’s already committed to" story.

"It’s a bit racy because she has this set-up with friends - the group formed because they were afraid of STDs and outside relationships, and they’d all had troubled relations, so they only have sex with each other," he says.

"I knew because of the subject matter we’d have a hard time convincing people to give us money, and we didn’t want to do drastic rewrites that would change the overall story ... I’d rather compromise my vision on my terms and not the terms of other people, because it’s not their dream."

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