And so the journey begins in February 2007 with ten events around the country proclaiming one great ambition - a shared yet steadfast desire to harness the collective creative power of the world's first fully user generated feature film.

Myspace, along with Vertigo Films and Screen West Midlands, gave each and every user the opportunity to upload a short piece to showcase their filmmaking ability before, from over eight hundred entries, twelve individuals were hosen to pitch via video upload, their unique vision of what our final feature may eventually become. Click here to check out some photos from the launch event.

Searching for a Director

Aspiring Uk filmmakers were given the opportunity to win a £1 million budget to make a feature film by uploading their short film to MySpace. more than eight hundred top notch short films (not a single dog on a skateboard) were entered for the first stage of the MyMovie MashUp contest

Together the short films were watched more than a million times. An industry panel including Kevin Macdonald and Sienna Miller selected the three finalists from a shortlist of 12 and MySpace users voted for the winner, Vito Rocco fought off stiff competition for Tom Harper and Matt Kirby and won the popular vote on MySpace with his touching entry Goodbye Cruel World and his hilarious pitch for Faintheart. Check out Vito's acceptance speech

Online Casting

Over 1400 MySpacers auditioned via video or web cam for eight lead and supporting roles for Faintheart. Each role had a MySpace profile where a scene from the script or instructions for an improvisation were available. The results included the incredibly funny (and terrifying). Many auditions consisted of people's best Viking roars. Brilliant. Check out the audition for the part of Richard here.

Production & Set Diaries

With Faintheart now shooting MySpace users were invited to take assistant roles to the heads of each dept of the film and Vito together with cast and crew made video diaries on the set of Faintheart allowing MySpacers to stay involved in the whole filmmaking process throughout the production

Music Competition

No MySpace project would be complete without music and in this final stage emerging bands were given the chance to have their song on the soundtrack of Faintheart as one of the five selected artists alongside major EMI acts and Katie Melua.

Click here to see Vito announce the finalists which were Eastern Front, Frensham Records, Dennison String Quartet and Miss Misery.

Faintheart made its world debut as the Closing Night Gala at the Edinburgh Film Festival on June 28th 2008. Check out the photos from the red carpet event and some of the reviews:

ign.com

cambridge film festival

What Now?

We wanted to do something completely innovative that no one has ever done before in the UK and we wanted to show our appreciation to you the MySpace community who have given so much to the creation of faintheart.