March 10: 3-5.00pm Carnegie Institution for Science
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The Five Dollar Movie
Directed by Stephen Wright
United Kingdom / 2018 / 60 mins
In 2013, filmmaker Stephen Paul Wright stumbled upon a website called Fiverr, an online marketplace where every seller offers a service for only $5. The more he used the site, the more he became fascinated by the strange, sometimes ethically questionable services available for sale: buying an online social media following, photoshopping your ex out of a picture, even having someone juggle a chainsaw while shouting fake news.
He also began to wonder why people were on the site. Was it really about the money or was it something more? It just didn’t seem like you could make a living working for $5 at a time.
To investigate, he started making his first feature documentary film—and making it only with services he found through Fiverr. That means the film’s voiceover, music, illustration, sound effects and animation were all purchased online, $5 at a time.
In the five years he’s spent making this movie, the internet and Fiverr along with it have grown-up; but the problems he was interested in when he began haven’t gone away. An increasingly interconnected but unaccountable world is still wrestling with low wages, fake followers and fraudulent product reviews.
This documentary takes you on a journey to one of the most innovative and oddest versions of the gig economy.
