Last week i had the pleasure of meeting and spending time with Matt Hanson, who other than being a softly spoken gentleman jedi, is also on the Forbes.com top 10 list of people who will change the world this year. He’s also the inventor of the phenomenal phrase “value-added-ness” and a thoroughly nice guy. Yes Matt, it’s on video

What he’s up to is nothing short of extraordinary, and we talked through it on the Newcastle quayside and on the plane back to London. His is a world-first – truly democratised cinema for the people, by the people. He is applying the collaborative framework of open-source software development to film-making by recruitng 50,000 people to produce a movie together from start to finish. In Hollywood, the movie industry is a highly-development investment bank-style venture backed by hundreds of millions of dollars and controlled by a small community of people, and generally caters for the lowest common denominator of social class (e.g. Southern Baptist America).

In Matt’s universe, people from all over the world donate £25 to become part of a community that works together through the Internet to develop the characters, storyline, screenplay and production style for a movie that evolves as they go along. The aim is to raise £1 million +, and then distribute it to over a million people for free over the Internet under Creative Common licensing, which means anyone can modify or mash it up afterwards in any way they want.

The project is called A Swarm of Angels, and appeals to me because like everything i’m passionate about, it’s innovative and involves social change.  Its described on the website as “A groundbreaking project to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members.” Head on over to his site and check it out. Join the swarm.

Forbes.com Article – “Hanson’s Open Source Cinema”