By Christian Baekkelund
Filmfilm.com is meant to be a resource for aspiring filmmakers, screenwriters,
actors, crew members, and similar to find one another for film projects.
Hopeful filmmakers, who it seems the site is especially geared towards,
can come to filmfilm and search filmfilm's large databases of companies
that specialize in various aspects of film production including camera
crews, editing houses, insurance companies, music libraries, pyrotechnics,
and so on. The various options that can be searched for in this "production
guide" database are notably detailed and specific and precise
including even such services as sub-titling and on-set security. Additionally,
the production guide database is searchable by location in the United
States and by what experience is desired (TV or film, genres, etc.).
Unfortunately, all this specificity in the guide has the price that
it is difficult to find the resource a filmmaker might want in a particular
area with particular experience and the menu system does not allow
for much generalizations to be made; therefore, numerous searches
on each of these options may be necessary for some locations to achieve
an adequate match.
Another large portion of the filmfilm site is the talent search database,
which unlike the production guide, is smaller and restricted only
to filmfilm visitors that have entered that they are looking to be
hired for a project. For example, via the talent search, a screenwriter
can attempt to sell his screenplay or a crew member can read the current
posted crew calls. Conversely, a filmmaker can post information about
a crew call or attempt to find a screenplay to purchase. The matching
features of the talent search could have remarkable consequences due
to the mass nature of the Internet in matching up people with similar
work interests to get together on film projects that might otherwise
never have been done. Unfortunately, for this to be truly effective,
it must be widely used by many would-be filmmakers, crew members,
actors, and similar, and currently, the database of posts to the talent
search area is quite sparse.
A number of smaller areas to filmfilm exist, such as the filmfilm
hosting service by which films that are to be in production can get
free web-space and publicity for their film at filmfilm. The seemingly
obligatory but never used chat room exists, along with the generic
bulletin boards, that essentially are just generalized versions of
the afformentioned databases. If the "talent search" and
"production guide" databases at filmfilm ever get heavy
use, they could truly help bring together people on projects that
never would have otherwise existed; however, such use is unlikely.