A collaboration between Getty Images, seven filmmakers, RES Media Group, Warp Records, Moving Picture Company and Moving Brands®. Viewing a film will take you to a related page where you can go behind the scenes and hear each filmmaker discuss The Big Idea creative process, explore the film’s backstory (sketches, storyboards, photos, etc.), see what hardware and software the filmmakers used and more.

Extras Backstory The Brief How big is a Big Idea?

Backstory What does it take to have The Big Idea? As new ways of working online deliver new ways of communicating, Getty Images investigated the impact of new methods on the eternal quest for great filmmaking concepts. We partnered with seven innovative directors to capture The Big Idea, working from brainstorming to completion via thousands of digital clip downloads to deliver groundbreaking films through a revolutionary workflow. We traveled the globe to interview each contributor and found that the search for The Big Idea is a desire to understand the world and yourself and images, and to play as a child and to play god, to play as if you know exactly what you are doing and enjoying the buzz of only finding out after you’ve done it. We documented the filmmakers’ experiences working with our recently enhanced film site -- where you can now preview non-watermarked film clips, download broadcast-quality footage and easily search 70,000 clips shot by talented directors. Top

The Brief Addressed to the seven filmmakers of The Big Idea films: All creative communication depends on having a powerful idea. Whether it’s a great commercial, film, design or book, style and technique are not enough without having a powerful vision...a Big Idea. Make a film about The Big Idea. Length: minimum 30 seconds, maximum 60 seconds. We know that you have ideas and a way of working that can communicate with a new vision of ‘the idea.’ We want to help give you that space -- unfettered by some of the pressures of commercial briefs, but with the opportunity to have your work seen around the world. Our brief is simple: make a film about The Big Idea. Yes, The Big Idea. Whatever that means to you. It could be a narrative. It could be a hallucinatory sensory experience set to music. It could be abstract. It could put forth an argument, it could tell a joke, it could make us laugh or move us to act. It could be something else...something original that you care about and that we can’t predict. An integral part of The Big Idea project is using our groundbreaking film site. Take your pick of Getty Images content, film and stills. Use our website to download non-watermarked preview clips and broadcast-quality footage, and choose from 70,000 film clips. As you create your Big Idea, explore how our recent film enhancements can revolutionize the way you work with film and with Getty Images. Top

How big is a Big Idea? To tell the idea of Cleopatra (Queen falls in love with Emperor/Emperor dies/Queen falls in love with his buddy/Queen commits suicide) took director Joseph L. Mankiewicz four hours and three minutes. The filmmakers of The Big Idea films had one minute -- and a month to make their movie. But, like Mankiewicz, The Big Idea filmmakers had a cast of thousands. Well, they had over 70,000 film clips from the Getty Images website to choose from. But the thing is, you can’t measure a Big Idea by how long it takes to tell it. A Big Idea doesn’t work because of its size. It can be small. It just has to be big in grabbing your attention. It’s got to have that “water cooler” element to it, you’ve got to want to talk about it, share the pleasure with a friend. It’s got to connect and have social currency. All The Big Idea films have that. They may be short but they are also epic. Each Big Idea emerged from where the filmmakers lived, from making sense of the difficult act of creation and from the chain of imagination prompted by the Getty Images film clips. These pre-formed, pre-shot ideas are injections of creativity that drop into the process. A film and image library not as database, but ideabase. Filmmaking built around pre-shot sequences has an impulsive and accelerated creativity. This virtual creativity, existing online in a web space, has a whole new relationship with time. When you can react quickly as a filmmaker to an initial spark, you can short-circuit the time-sapping bureaucracy of creative filmmaking, of planning and organizing and shooting original footage. And time becomes different not just in the creative process but in the story itself. You can see this in The Big Idea films. When your visual palette is composed of clips from the contemporary to the historical, the nature of storytelling changes. The 1920s Zeppelin airship rubs shoulders with modern-day androids, which rubs shoulders with Elvis marrying Priscilla, which rubs shoulders with whatever object the imagination lands on. Like the DJ, the filmmaker becomes a master of time where the world is your sample. See the results and hear from the directors. Top