by Anthony O'Connor
The announcement of a new streaming service is hardly novel. These days, it seems like every second company is bringing a streamer to market, serving up mouth-watering piles of content for a price or an ad view. However, while the concept is borderline ubiquitous, you’ve probably never heard of a streaming service quite like Vidiverse.
Vidiverse is the brainchild of director Alex Proyas (The Crow, Dark City, Gods of Egypt), with a bold mission statement and a heady philosophy underpinning its creation. The premise is to give a home to short films (and some features) from all over the world and – here’s the twist – actually get the artists paid!
“There’s this little thing called Youtube. Heard of it?” Alex asks, his tongue firmly in cheek. “It’s convinced filmmakers to give it free content, and in exchange Youtube gives those filmmakers… crickets.
“As ‘content providers’, it’s not that we don’t like giving friends and fans free entertainment, but Youtube profits from our content and we want a fairer situation, so we can earn something from our work and keep making it.”
Proyas was inspired to create Vidiverse after first-hand experience.
“It stemmed from a short film we made called Mask of the Evil Apparition which is streaming on the platform now,” Proyas explains. “MOTEA (as we know it) did the rounds of the festivals and was very favourably received… and then what? Here I was, like so many indie filmmakers, with a short film that we could have dumped on Youtube and continued to enable the exploitation by giving them more free fodder to advertise around, or we could build a platform that as far as I know, no one’s done before.”
Why short films, though, specifically as a focal point? “Well, I like short films. I think they’re as relevant a medium as short stories for a novelist. It also seems to be the most exploited part of the industry in that few filmmakers make any return on their films, no matter how many festival awards they receive,” Proyas laments. “To me, it seems like if you make a great short, that should be regarded as, say, a band having a hit single. The artist shouldn’t have to wait to benefit from the sales or streams of that single until they make an album.”
Proyas is eloquent in his celebration of the short film as a medium: “[They’re] perfect little bite size morsels. Unique ideas, well crafted, that make their point succinctly. It’s a challenging medium to do well and often requires very different skills to features. I’ve often thought that telling a story well in a 60 second TV commercial is the height of skilled filmmaking. When you distil things down to the most integral necessary bits to communicate an idea to the audience in this way you can often see the skill of the filmmaker more clearly. When shorts work, they transport you without fuss, it’s like an express train that gets you somewhere without all the unnecessary stops along the way.”
As well as short films and some features from across the world, Vidiverse offers other Proyas short works. Striking and strange flicks, they are a far cry from the director’s most recent feature film effort Gods of Egypt (2016). We had to know if that was due to dissatisfaction with the studio system, or just a random explosion of creativity?
“A bit of both,” Proyas muses. “You can’t get anything made through the studio system without it being analysed, distilled, developed, and often to death. I think some ideas should remain raw and unprocessed… like a great song. Sometimes, over-developing can be the death of an idea. I love that Vidiverse is giving exposure to ideas in that raw state… some will go on to become features. But we are showcasing the wellspring, the fountainhead … sometimes, it’s the more potent rendition of an idea. I’ve also been judging short film festivals through Covid, and I’ve been constantly dazzled by the incredibly talented filmmakers out there – the standard of production is very high, and the standard of the writing, the acting, the depth of ideas is truly inspiring. I wanted to tap back into that source of inspiration for my own work.”
Proyas also has plans for Vidiverse’s future, far beyond just getting artists paid fairly for once. “We are trying to rebuild the way films are made from the ground up. A revolution really is needed, as the old ways don’t serve the artists at all well. They never did, but it has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for indie filmmakers to survive. But help is on its way. It’s happening through technology, as films become more affordable to make and imagination does not need to kowtow to limitations of budget, filmmakers can finally be free to do whatever they want, tell any story, and most importantly have it seen by a supportive audience.
“That is our dream, to finally free filmmakers from the shackles of commercial exploitation and let them write their own rules, and determine their own future. We want to empower filmmakers, galvanise them to keep creating, by joining forces with them to build a new way.”
Vidiverse is currently live and growing at https://www.vidiverse.com/
