Inside PBS Blog

Ever watched something on PBS and thought, "Hey, I could do that better?" You're not alone. This spring, “Independent Lens" invited visitors to its site to create short films using clips from “King Corn," a recent documentary about the politics of food. (Yeah, that's right. Food - much like oil, race and gender - has its own politics now. Welcome to the 21st century.)

More than 130 users took “Independent Lens" up on its offer, using Eyespot's video-mixing tools to create their own statements about America's corn addiction. The name of this experiment? “Filmocracy," a play on “film" and “democracy."  We're always looking for new ways to reach new and younger audiences.

Civic dialogue is a big part of our mission, and this combines all of that," says Cathy Fischer, senior interactive producer at Independent Television Service, the San Francisco group behind “Independent Lens." As part of Filmocracy, Cathy's team will choose 15 or 20 of the best user-made films. The “King Corn" filmmakers will then choose a grand prize winner, who will receive $1,000 and have their short screened throughout the United States as part of ITVS's Community Cinema screenings.

You can review the entries, too, and vote for your favorites here. Winners will be announced Monday, June 23. “King Corn," which PBS stations aired in April, explores corn's importance in the American diet, showing how the crop moves from Iowa fields into restaurants, stores and homes.

Cathy suspects older filmmakers would have been reluctant to allow users to remix their footage. Not Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, the two recent Yale grads who helped make the film, as part of a younger culture that came of age doing mash-ups and sampling music, says Cathy.  The sharing element  putting the whole elements online. Sharing comes easy to the younger demographic. What do you think of Filmocracy? Would you like to create mashups using other PBS content? If given the opportunity, what would you make?