Funders are turning to the crowd to help green light their projects.

Storyhive, Telus Optik TV’s web series venture in BC and Alberta, has already listened to the crowd to fund a first round of 29 semi-finalists to shoot their pilots. Voting concludes tomorrow, March 26, 2015, for a further $50,000 for two teams to produce five more episodes.

Cinecoup‘s 74 hopefuls have posted their trailers online and now await the crowd to begin voting on April 6, 2015. By mid-June, one project will advance to win $1,000,000 to shoot a feature film.

In both cases, teams have worked hard to advance their projects. Storyhive was free to enter (although required residence in certain cities) with a two-minute pitch video. Semi-finalists were awarded $10,000 to make their first webisodes. On the other hand, Cinecoup cost up to $120 to enter, with a one-minute trailer. Teams agree to tackle a series of up to a dozen (unpaid) missions while the crowd votes projects through a series of gateways: Top 60, Top 30, Top 15 and the Final 5. In both cases, juries make the final decisions.

My take: please check out these sites! My kudos to the participants for investing so much of their time and energy into their projects — and it’s a lot of work! — work that supports two ‘contest’ platforms in exchange for the promise of future rewards. I personally don’t think that either platform has solved the website versus television design question yet — video galleries on static pages versus the single video focus of TV. Channels and up-down, left-right grids may be the best solutions for now.