Rookie directors vie for Spielberg reality show

LOS ANGELES - Aspiring filmmakers from around the world are vying for one of 16 slots in Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett’s “On the Lot,” a reality series that Fox will launch in May toward the end of the “American Idol” season.

Ahead of next Friday’s deadline, thousands of filmmakers — from 13-year-old YouTube amateurs and skateboarders with hand-held cameras to a 54-year-old black grandmother in Florida — have posted their shorts at http://www.onthelot.com, which had logged 8 million page views before “Idol” promos boosted traffic sixfold, “Idol” producer David Goffin says.

The ultimate prize: a $1 million development deal with Spielberg’s DreamWorks banner.

Anyone can enter, just by registering on the site, uploading a short less than five minutes long and mailing a DVD copy along with a 45-second intro bio to the show. The rest of us can all participate in this process by watching and reviewing the shorts, awarding them one to five stars, blogging about them and adding friends, MySpace-style, within the “Lot” community.

As she has for Burnett’s reality series “Survivor” and “The Contender,” casting director Michelle McNulty is conducting what Spielberg calls “an exhaustive worldwide search,” which in this case will “give a lot of filmmakers a chance to show us who they are.”

But it’s not just sheer talent they’re looking for, says “Lot’s” co-executive producer Darryl Frank. “We need great personalities for the show and great filmmakers. They have to be both.” Right now, McNulty’s team is narrowing thousands of submissions down to hundreds. Once a month they send a compilation reel to Burnett and Spielberg, who give back notes.

The show might start with more than 16 contestants, Frank says, and then whittle them down in the first three episodes to four teams of four. Each week each team will produce a film in an assigned genre, with one member selected as the director. Once a week there will be a one-hour “Premiere” episode followed the next night by a “Box Office” results show.

‘Idol’ for filmmakers?
The producers are hiring two permanent judges from the motion-picture industry, a series of guest judges and a real-life moviegoer to critique the films each week. But the Fox viewers will do the voting on which movies make the cut.

On the “Box Office” show, the losing director will be sent home, leaving that team with fewer people to produce the next movie. As the show nears its climax, the surviving filmmakers will be left to create their shorts alone.

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McNulty’s casting team has created a MySpace page, placed ads in Filmmaker Magazine, reached out to film schools and festivals and distributed fliers at January’s Sundance Film Festival. But the Web site has played an unprecedented role in the casting process. At the beginning, says Frank, the site was “focused on helping us find contestants, but it will grow to have multiple phases,” he says. “It will grow into a community.”

The contestants can live anywhere in the world, but they must speak English. “We have gotten films with subtitles,” Frank says. The volume of submissions, well into the thousands, with more arriving every day, has shocked the producers. And so has their quality. “We expected a lot more YouTube stuff,” McNulty says. “I’m so impressed by what we’re getting in. It’s everything from definite film school students and people who’ve had films in festivals to first-time filmmakers. I’ve been blown away by the first-time movies. Some are beautiful and touching. They’re way better than I thought they’d be.”

Some of the filmmakers come from commercials or music-videos. “We’re more focused on storytelling and narrative filmmakers,” Goffin adds. The 45-second intro bio pieces are as essential to the selection process as the films themselves. “We’re checking off who we like and who we don’t. We’re making sure we cut through a wide swath of filmmakers, not unlike ’American Idol.”’ A broad range of contestants is important, says Frank, who is looking at “the type of films they make, their ages, ethnicity and gender.”

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