• by Shankar Gupta , January 24, 2006

Online movie company AtomFilms Monday launched a new effort to develop original content for its site. The initiative, Atom Studios, will provide funding and guidance for five filmmakers, and then host the finished product on AtomFilms.com, where they will be monetized by pre-roll advertising.

Scott Roesch, vide president and general manager of AtomFilms, said the company was hoping to encourage independent filmmakers on the Web. AtomFilms has also partnered with the Sundance Film Festival to air the top films in the shorts categories on their site.

The first set of releases from the studio, which will launch in March, include "Casual Encounters," a six-episode reality series inspired by the Craigslist's Casual Encounters section, by filmmaker Mike Mohan; "New Boobs," by Matthew Bonifacio, a comedy about a woman contemplating breast implants; and "Dog Years Chapter 2," by Sam Hearn and Richard Penfold, the sequel to a previous project about a dog and his owner.

"This initial crop of filmmakers were collected by our content team," Roesch said. "We put out the word earlier last year that we were going to systematize our content development efforts, and we invited a few hundred filmmakers to pitch us."

Roesch said that AtomFilms intends to fund additional projects from new filmmakers. Projects will be selected specifically for content that will play well online and on mobile devices--short films with fast pacing, mainly in the comedy, action, animation, and sci-fi genres, with "edgy and extreme" subject matter, he said.