Commission the film you want to see. Or compete to make one.
Five commissions live now. $100 to $1,000. Free to submit. We keep nothing.
Feb 23
Round 1 entries open
Mar 2
Gallery opens
Mar 9
Round 2 commissions open
Mar 23
Round 1 entries close
Peer voting opens
Mar 27
Round 1 winners announced
Round 1 payouts
Round 2 entries open
Round 1 · Five founding commissions · All films five minutes or less
Commissioned by John McManus
John McManus is the author of five books of fiction, most recently Famous Children, forthcoming from Sarabande Books in 2027. His AI television series Strange Currencies, a narrative/game hybrid, is now in development. He is a co-founder of Ordain.
Adapt Franz Kafka's "First Sorrow." Favor spirit over letter.
Commissioned by Rogelio Martinez
Rogelio Martinez is a Guggenheim Fellow whose plays have been produced at the Public Theater, the Goodman Theatre, and theaters across the country and abroad. He is a co-producer of Billion Dollar Whale, created by David Henry Hwang and Anchuli Felicia King.
Lillian Brown did the makeup for nine U.S. presidents. She died in 2020 at 106.
Make a film about her. One continuous makeup application. The face in the chair keeps changing, but her hands never stop. Her conversation feels matter of fact, almost incidental, the way talk does when your hands are busy. But through that talk, we learn what's happening in the world outside the room.
Commissioned by Terence Michael
Terence Michael is an Emmy-nominated producer with over 20 films and 30 TV shows to his credit. His book Proof of Money makes the case for Bitcoin as a monetary system. He runs 100 Percent Terry Cloth.
Most people don't understand how wasted and dirty energy can be captured and converted into Bitcoin. Make a film that shows the process: captured methane from a city landfill, combusted and turned into electricity, powering ASIC miners hashing to win a Bitcoin block. Follow the subsidy from the validated block to a Bitcoiner's wallet. Colorful, vibrant, accurate. From the waste of overconsumption to compressed and contained energy in the form of Bitcoin.
Commissioned by Ordain
Ordain is a commission board. You put up a bounty for a work about a topic you care about, creators compete to make it, and you help decide who gets paid.
In 1974, the philosopher Thomas Nagel argued that we can never know what it's like to be a bat, because consciousness is irreducibly subjective. Fifty years later, millions of people talk to artificial intelligences every day and nobody knows what, if anything, is happening on the other side.
Make a film that attempts an answer. Not from the outside looking in. From the inside.
Commissioned by The Roving Reactor
The Roving Reactor is a traveling exhibit about nuclear energy, supported by the Anthropocene Institute, Mothers for Nuclear, and Generation Atomic, with an advisory board that includes nuclear engineers from MIT, Idaho National Lab, and the University of Michigan. rovingreactor.org
Make a film that shows us the world nuclear energy makes possible. Not the reactor. Not the debate. The world on the other side.
Right now, 666 million people have no access to electricity at all. Another billion are connected on paper but live in the dark anyway because their grid is too unreliable, the power too expensive, the service too broken to matter. Indoor air pollution from burning wood and dung kills nearly two million people a year, most of them women and children. That's what energy poverty looks like, and it defines life for a staggering share of humanity.
The conversation about nuclear energy typically gets stuck on the perceived downsides: safety, waste, weapons, cost. These concerns have concrete answers. Modern reactor designs that shut themselves down passively, waste volumes small enough to fit on a basketball court per decade of plant operation, international safeguards that have kept civilian nuclear programs separated from weapons for seventy years, and new construction approaches driving costs down. But the real failure of imagination isn't about the risks, but the reward. Debating the plant means never getting to the world the plant makes possible.
Economists have shown that higher energy consumption directly increases economic growth, and the causality runs both directions. Cheap, carbon-free, always-on power doesn't just replace what we burn today. It makes entirely new things possible. Desalination turns coastlines into freshwater sources. Vertical farms grow food without weather, without seasons, without pesticides, stacked high in buildings that use a fraction of the land. Synthetic fuels and plastics can be made from air, water, and electricity with no drilling required. New cities can rise in places that water scarcity and grid dependency once made impossible. Transportation gets faster, cheaper, and farther-reaching. The developing world can leapfrog the infrastructure bottlenecks that have kept billions in poverty.
That's the vision we're asking you to make visible.
We're not looking for soft-focus solarpunk landscapes. We're looking for specificity: real places, real problems, real futures. The film should make viewers feel the weight of what energy poverty costs and the scale of what abundant, clean, baseload power unlocks. Research the economics. Understand the stakes. The most compelling entries will be the ones that have done the work to know what they're depicting and why it matters.
A good starting point: the paper "Energy Superabundance" by Austin Vernon and Eli Dourado at the Center for Growth and Opportunity, which lays out in detail what a world of radically cheaper, more plentiful energy actually looks like, from flying cars to indoor farming to new cities to a coming carbon shortage.
The best version of this film doesn't argue for nuclear. It assumes nuclear has already won, and shows us what that victory looks like for the seven-year-old in Lagos, the farmer in Rajasthan, the builder in São Paulo, and the family in rural Appalachia. From the reactor to the world it powers. That's the story.
Not a filmmaker? Round 2 commissions open March 9. Post a commission for the work you want to see made.
Half of every bounty is distributed by peer vote among the creators who submitted. The better your work, the more you earn.
Make a film responding to one of the five open commissions. Any format: AI generated, live action, animation, hybrid, experimental. Any tools. Any country. Five minutes or less.
No gatekeepers, no algorithms, no followers required.
Post your finished film as an unlisted video on YouTube or Vimeo, then submit the link below. Your title, still frame, and description will appear on the Vote page as submissions come in.
If you want a specific creative work to exist, your options are to make it yourself or hope someone else happens to make it. There is no infrastructure for saying "I want this" and putting money behind it and watching it get made. A thousand people who want the same film don't know about each other. They can wait. They can hope. They can't act.
Ordain is where they act. You describe the work you want to see exist, you put money behind it, other people who want the same thing find you, creators compete to make it, and the best version wins. Payment settles instantly over Bitcoin Lightning, anywhere on earth.
If you make films, this is paid work. No application, no fee, no platform cut.
The mechanism works for film, music, writing, games, and forms that don't have names yet. It makes no assumption about who is doing the wanting or the making.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Ordain?
A commission board. You put up a bounty for a film about a topic you care about, filmmakers compete to make it, and you help decide who gets paid.
So, decentralized patronage.
Decentralized patronage. At any scale.
How is this different from Kickstarter or Patreon?
On those platforms, creators decide what gets made and audiences decide whether to fund it. Ordain reverses that. The buyers define what gets made, pool money behind it, and vote on which execution wins. The buyers are the creative directors.
What happens when more than one person wants the same thing?
They find each other. One patron posts a commission. Another patron sees it and chips in. Now they're both stakeholders. As the bounty grows, more creators show up to compete for it, and the quality of submissions rises with the stakes. Nobody planned it. A thousand people who wanted the same film just didn't know about each other until there was a place to say so. Ordain is that place.
How specific should my brief be?
Specific enough to evaluate submissions against, but open enough that an artist can surprise you. A good brief gives a clear arc and a tone. "A colorful, accurate educational flow of captured methane from a city landfill into Bitcoin via mining" is a good brief. "Make something cool about energy" is not. You're the creative director. Tell the filmmaker what you want to see, then let them figure out how to show it to you.
How does payment work?
Bitcoin Lightning. It's the only payment rail that can move any amount of money, to any country, instantly, with no middleman. Ordain coordinates payouts on behalf of commissioners but does not hold funds in escrow or maintain accounts. We're a commission board, not a bank.
Why Bitcoin?
Because nothing else works globally at every price point. A credit card processor takes a 10% cut on a $5 transaction. A wire transfer costs more than the bounty is worth. PayPal doesn't operate in half the countries where creators live. Lightning works anywhere, at any amount, with no settlement delay. For a commission board that's open to anyone on earth, that's the only payment rail that fits.
Who votes?
Half the bounty is awarded by the commissioner. The other half is decided by ranked choice voting among the creators who submitted. You have to submit work to vote. Full details on how voting works.
Why commission a film when AI video is everywhere?
Because nobody's making the one you want. There's more AI content than ever, but it's all supply with no demand signal. A commission is a specific vision backed by real money. That changes what gets made and how seriously a filmmaker takes it.
What do I get as a commissioner?
The finished video file. Screen it, post it, submit it to festivals, keep it private. It's yours to use. The creator retains copyright and can show it in their portfolio or exhibit it elsewhere, but the work was made for you.
How much are the bounties?
It varies. This round, commissions range from $100 to $1,000. AI tools are good enough now that a short film might only take someone an afternoon. We're testing different amounts to see what draws participation and what quality of work each level produces. The briefs vary too. Some are wide open, others are specific. That's deliberate. We're learning what kind of direction produces the best work.
What if I don't like any of the submissions?
The deadline extends. We don't refund bounties. A commission that can evaporate isn't a real commission. Your money stays on the board until the work gets made.
Who can submit?
Anyone. Any tools, any country. AI, live action, animation, hybrid. If it's a film, it qualifies. Creators work on spec. The number of competing submissions is visible on each commission, so you can decide for yourself whether the bounty is worth your time.
Who owns the work?
Creators retain full ownership. Ordain gets a non-exclusive license to display and reference the work on the platform. The commissioner gets a perpetual, non-exclusive license to use the finished work.
What are my rights as a creator?
The commissioner gets to use the finished work however they choose. That's what a commission is. But if the work appears in a context you find objectionable, you can request your name be disassociated from it. For now, the bounty is your compensation. Programmable royalty splits are on the roadmap but not built yet.
What's happening now?
Round 1 launches February 23, 2026. Five commissions go live from five founding commissioners. The gallery opens March 2, where all submissions are browsable. Submissions close March 23. Peer voting runs March 23 to 27. Winners announced and paid out March 27.
What happens after Round 1?
Round 2 commissions open March 9. Anyone can post a bounty. We're capping it at 25 commissions for this trial round. Submissions to Round 2 commissions open March 27, the same day we pay out Round 1. Same structure: post a bounty, creators compete, stakeholders vote, funds transfer.
What are the terms?
Plain language terms of participation are posted on the site. The short version: creators retain copyright, commissioners get a license to use the work, Ordain gets a license to display it, payments are final, and disputes between commissioners and creators are between them.
What's the business model?
Right now we don't make money. These rounds are testing whether commissions attract competitive work at low bounty levels. Long term, a 1% fee on each commission.
Why only short films? What about games, music, VR?
We're starting with short films. But the mechanism works for games, music, VR, and forms that don't even have names yet.
Right now, if you want a specific creative work to exist, your only option is to make it yourself or hope someone else happens to make it. Ordain closes that gap. You describe what you want. You put money behind it. Other people who want the same thing find you. Creators compete to make it real. The best version wins.
The mechanism makes no assumption about who is doing the wanting or the making. A human commissioner posts one bounty a month. An agent with a budget and a set of aesthetic parameters posts a thousand. The supply side scales to meet that demand because the same tools that let agents commission work also let them compete to make it. The loop closes. The marketplace generates its own supply and its own demand. Wherever there is a person with a vision and a creator who can realize it, there is a transaction waiting to happen.
Ordain is where you go to make it happen.