''From Bedrooms to Billions'' is a 2014

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

by British filmmakers Anthony and Nicola Caulfield that tells the story of the British video games industry from 1979 to the present day. The film focuses on how the creativity and vision of a relatively small number of individuals allowed the UK to play a key, pioneering role in the shaping of the billion dollar video games industry which today dominates the modern world's entertainment landscape. The film features interviews with major British game designers, journalists and musicians from across the last 30 years. The filmmakers originally conceived of the project as a three-part television series, but were unable to garner interest from either the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

, both of which considered the project "too niche." So the team, inspired by earlier success with their 2010 film ''Burlesque Undressed'', turned instead to

crowd funding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance, to fund projects "without standard financial ...

. The Caulfields raised approximately £80,000 through two rounds of crowd funding with

Indiegogo Indiegogo is an American crowdfunding website founded in 2008 by Danae Ringelmann, Slava Rubin, and Eric Schell. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California. The site is one of the first sites to offer crowd funding. Indiegogo allows peo ...

and

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

generating donations of $37,000 and £60,000 respectively. Further funds have been raised through direct donations, pre-orders for DVDs and soundtrack CDs via the ''From Bedrooms To Billions'' website which has allowed them to produce the film independently. ''From Bedrooms to Billions'' was originally scheduled for release on 30 May 2014. The digital version was eventually launched on 3 October 2014. with DVD & Blu-ray versions released in March 2015. In an interview in early 2019, it was revealed that ''Black Mirror'' creator Charlie Brooker had given the stars of ''

Bandersnatch A bandersnatch is a fictional creature in Lewis Carroll's 1871 novel ''Through the Looking-Glass'' and his 1874 poem ''The Hunting of the Snark''. Although neither work describes the appearance of a bandersnatch in great detail, in ''The Hunting ...

'', an interactive episode of the ''Black Mirror'' series, a copy of ''Bedrooms to Billions'' to help prepare them for the roles, and to give them inspiration. The makers of the documentary made two further films bearing the ''From Bedrooms to Billions'' name'': The Amiga Year''s (2016) and ''The PlayStation Revolution'' (2020).

References

External links

* 2014 films 2014 documentary films British documentary films Documentary films about video games Kickstarter-funded documentaries Crowdfunded films 2010s English-language films 2010s British films Video gaming in the United Kingdom English-language documentary films {{UK-documentary-film-stub