Last month Poptent.net announced that they had passed a major milestone; the site has now paid out more than 5 million dollars to their members.  That’s huge but what’s really amazing is that they had just passed the three million dollar mark late last year.  This is great news for spec/video contest filmmakers since a number like this really helps legitimize the industry.  Five million bucks is a serious amount of cash but in a few years, I think companies like Poptent will be paying filmmakers that much annually.  Right now Poptent has 20 freaking video assignments running!  That’s about twice as many as they were running last summer.  Ok, 80% of the current assignments are invite-only but at least somebody, somewhere is gettin’ paid….right?

Poptent’s recent shift in focus does actually have me a little worried. How are they going to find new talent for all those private assignments if they run so few public assignments? I talked to a filmmaker recently who said his partner gets about 2 or 3 invites to private assignments a month. That’s awesome for that particular guy but not so awesome for everyone else who’d like a shot at some cash. During the spring and summer of 2011 I was shooting maybe one Poptent submission a month. I didn’t make any sales last year but I did win a few thousand bucks in other poptent awards. (enough to fund all of my video contest shoots for the year) But so far I’ve only shot 2 poptent videos in 2012 simply because there haven’t been many assignments that got my creative juices flowing.

So personally, I’d really, really like to see more public assignments. Of the 4 commercial assignments that are currently open to everyone, I think the one for Micheal’s Craft Store might be the best one to go after.  There’s only one guaranteed purchase of $7,500 but there are only 9 days left to submit and so far only 311 people have accepted that assignment.  I bet they’ll only get about 40 submissions for that one so if you’re feeling crafty (lol) you can head here to check out the details.