From an artist's perspective, crowdsourcing could allow a variety of styles to merge like pieces into a whole- although I feel that the completed whole would still be a bit disconnected as opposed to a project worked on by one person or a team of people working together. The overall project would have to be restrictive of the amount of stylization each individual could do, or maintain an experimental style.
When I think about having crowdsourced clips fit into a whole, I think of the microtasked "Star Wars Uncut." The film is a version of "A New Hope" which was cut into 15-second increments and crowdsourced to Star Wars fans. The results range from kids in their living room with cardboard sets to Disney-style 2D animation. It's a great way for fans to express how much they love the Star Wars films, and it's just a fun video to watch. As a whole, it's hard to make sense of the story given the constant switching between clips-- but the point is just to have a bunch of fans reenact one of their favorite films. "Star Wars Uncut" couldn't have existed (as least not split into this many parts) without the internet acting as a medium (a 'series of tubes', if you will) for information and communication.
I also think of the film "Life in a Day," which selected from 80,000 clips uploaded to youtube one day and cut a 95-minute film from all the footage. They had to cut through 4,500 hours of footage and convert from 60 different frame rates to make the clips fit visually. It does a good job of representing a day in the life of people from all over the globe-- the ones fortunate enough to have access to video cameras, anyway. This film is particularly interesting to me because the end result was completely dependent on the editors-- I mean editors certainly have a huge impact on any film, but with a different editor it could have ended up being an entirely different film. The final result is an optimistic film about the perseverance of humanity, but what if someone had cut the film to focus on negative themes? I have no idea what the footage they didn't use looks like, but I'm sure one could cut a film with a completely different feeling out of it.
Crowdfunding is something that seems to have just popped up a few years ago, and suddenly it became huge. I went to Heroes Con (A comic convention in Charlotte) over the summer, and it seemed as if every other indie artist there was asking visitors to donate to their kickstarter or indiegogo project. I've donated to a few and have been pleased with the results- the backer rewards have provided me with some cool items and behind-the-scenes info that I wouldn't have access to otherwise. I love it when artists allow an audience into their working process- last year there was a project on kickstarter called "Double Fine Adventure", which was started by the video game studio Double Fine to finance a new point-and-click adventure game. Being a fan of both Double Fine and point-and-click games, I donated. Since then I've had access to a series of behind-the-scenes documentary episodes dealing with how the game is being conceptualized/produced. A reward like that ensures that I'll be backing whatever crowdfunded projects Double Fine does in the future. (Also I get a copy of the game when it's done and it's gonna be the bomb)
In "The Cloudfilmmaking Manifesto" they say that when people look back on this time, it will be called "The Age of Collaboration." I completely agree with that-- the surge of interest in crowdfunded/crowdsourced projects will surely fade after a while, but I see it as a viable form of production/funding in the future. I'll have to try crowdfunding a short film before too long!
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