Useful Links, and thoughts on the changing media landscape.
You might have come to this page after seeing a lecture I've given. The notes below are a bit of a brain dump - and not organised very neatly, and some of the older links might be broken. But I hope you can find what you want. If not - then just drop me a line.
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“It's a known fact that the film industry has no shortage of middlemen. The path between filmmaker and audience is littered with them - some good, some bad. But the promise of a direct connection to an audience has become the currency of the future.”
Lance Weiler - http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/issues/spring2010/culture-hacker.phphttp://www.filmmakermagazine.com/issues/spring2010/culture-hacker.php
History of New Media
Anthropological introduction to Youtube from Kansas State University
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU
Web 2.0 - The Machine is Using Us - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g
The BBC's first live webcast
July 2001 - https://vimeo.com/67687561
Film Funding Options
Venture capital -www.aramidfund.com
Other funding
http://www.mediadesk.co.uk/ - and their links to the European Community Film development and production grants
http://www.mediadesk.co.uk/information/mediaunit/
Amazon Studios - / http://studios.amazon.com/
Article on Amazon Studios:
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/11/amazon-offers-cash-and-exposure-to-budding-filmmakers.ars
TV Options
BBC Channel strategies
http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/network/index.shtml
Channel 4 - http://www.channel4.com/corporate/4producers
- http://www.channel4.com/corporate/4producers/commissioning/documentaries_2.html
Channel 5 - http://www.five.tv/aboutfive/producersnotes/controller/
PACT - association of Independent Production Companies - http://www.pact.co.uk/
Not from Concentrate - http://www.notfromconcentrate.co.uk/
Independent Production Companies:
New emerging Technology
http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/28/e-inks-am300-developers-kit-gets-shown-off-on-video/
Tools for Crowd Funding
from the producers of The Age of Stupid http://www.indiescreenings.net/
http://www.indiescreenings.net/
In June 2010, Indie Screenings is launching its white label software which will let any filmmaker anywhere in the world distribute their film via local screenings, DVD, download and pay-per-view. Viva la revolution. Sign up to the Indie Screenings mailing list to keep in touch with developments or contact us at filmmakers@indiescreenings.net
Kickstarter.com
http://www.kickstarter.com/ - Kickstarter is a new form of commerce and patronage, not a place for investment or lending. Project creators inspire people to open their wallets by offering products, benefits and fun experiences.
IndiGogo.com
“If you can get 100,000 followers you've got a career”
(Slava Rubin, founder of Indiegogo.com)
http://www.indiegogo.com/
http://www.indiegogo.com/fansoffilmchannel - approach to indie film funding and distribution (see distribber.com too)
and the demand it button - http://eventful.com/
The Explosion of Crowd Funding 2011 AngelList, Caplinked, BuzzBnk, CinemaShares, CrowdCube, Crowd Funder, FeedtheMuse, FondoMat, Funding4learning, Grow VC, PeerBackers, PledgeMusci, Poizible, RocketHub, Sponsume, UnBound, WeFund
Online shops for your films:
Netflix –www.netflix.com taking DVDs from independent film makers.
Cinema Now www.cinemanow.com
Click Star www.clickstarinc.com (Morgan Freeman’s company)
Amazon Unbox – www.amazon.com Movie and TV Downloads
Look up the following too:
Daily Motion
Hulu
Babelgum
Sundance Channel
Metacafe
iTunes
Revision3
MyDamnChannel
Frameline
Play4film
LoveFilm
Amazon Unboxed
Slingbox
EyeSoda
Tribeca Film Festival Channel
NetFlix
Film 1
Bbtv
Play Station and PSP
Cinema Now
And the Distribution aggregator sites:
New Video
Gravitas Ventures
Diva Pro
Arts Alliance Media
Shorts International
Crackle
Zambalan (music only at the moment)
Further help with DIY Distribution
www.breakthroughdistribution.com
Filmsbazaar.com
http://www.filmsbazaar.com/submission_procedure.php
Filmsbazaar.com shows programmes that are looking for distribution and financing partners, helping the films and projects to be seen, and known, and fit into a slot, a line-up, a programming schedule. All requests from the website go directly to you.
http://www.peterbroderick.com/consulting/consulting.html
http://www.peterbroderick.com/writing/writing/welcometothenewworld.html
Advantages of “New Media” Distribution
http://www.indiewire.com/article/first_person_peter_broderick_welcome_to_the_new_world_of_distribution_part1/
The Webby Awards
http://www.youtube.com/webby
http://www.the-specials.com/home
http://www.indiewire.com/article/declaration_of_independence_the_ten_principles_of_hybrid_distribution/
Hybrid distribution has come into its own with such successes as “Valentino: The Last Emperor” and “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” both of which hired service deal companies to handle their theatrical distribution. Working with Abramorama, ANVIL has grossed over $675,000 in U.S. theaters. Through Truly Indie and Vitagraph Films, “Valentino” grossed more than $1,755,000 theatrically. In addition to consulting on “Valentino,” I also consulted on a number of other films that successfully combined theatrical service deals and semi-theatrical runs, including “The Singing Revolution” (Abramorama), “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” (theatrical: Balcony Releasing; semi-theatrical: Film Sprout), “Note by Note” (Argot Pictures) and “Throw Down Your Heart” (Argot Pictures).
1. GREATER CONTROL - Filmmakers retain overall control of their distribution, choosing which rights to give distribution partners and which to retain. If filmmakers hire a service deal company or a booker to arrange a theatrical run, they control the marketing campaign, spending, and the timing of their release. In the OW (Old World), a distributor that acquires all rights has total control of distribution. Filmmakers usually have little or no influence on key marketing and distribution decisions.
2. HYBRID DISTRIBUTION - Filmmakers split up their rights, working with distribution partners in certain sectors and keeping the right to make direct sales. They can make separate deals for: retail home video, television, educational, nontheatrical, and VOD, as well as splitting up their digital rights. They also sell DVDs from their websites and at screenings, and may make digital downloads available directly from their sites. In the OW, filmmakers make overall deals, giving one company all their rights (now known or ever to be dreamed up) for as long as 25 years.
3. CUSTOMIZED STRATEGIES - Filmmakers design creative distribution strategies customized to their film’s content and target audiences. They can begin outreach to audiences and potential organizational partners before or during production. They often ignore traditional windows, selling DVDs from their websites before they are available in stores, sometimes during their theatrical release, and even at festivals. Filmmakers are able to test their strategies step-by-step, and modify them as needed. In the OW, distribution plans are much more formulaic and rigid.
4. CORE AUDIENCES - Filmmakers target core audiences. Their priority is to reach them effectively, and then hopefully cross over to a wider public. They reach core audiences directly both online and offline, through websites, mailing lists, organizations, and publications. In the OW, many distributors market to a general audience, which is highly inefficient and more and more expensive.
Notable exceptions, Fox Searchlight and Bob Berney, have demonstrated how effective highly targeted marketing can be. “Napoleon Dynamite” first targeted nerds, “Passion of the Christ” began with evangelicals, and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” started with Greek Americans. Building on their original base, each of these films was then able to significantly expand and diversify their audiences.
5. REDUCING COSTS - Filmmakers reduce costs by using the internet and by spending less on traditional print, television, and radio advertising. While four years ago a five-city theatrical service deal cost $250,000 - $300,000, today comparable service deals can cost half that or even less. In the OW, marketing costs have risen dramatically.
6. DIRECT ACCESS TO VIEWERS - Filmmakers use the internet to reach audiences directly. The makers of the motorcycle-racing documentary, “Faster,” used the web to quickly and inexpensively reach motorcycle fans around the world. They pulled off an inspired stunt at the Cannes Film Festival, which generated international coverage and widespread awareness among fans. This sparked lucrative DVD sales first from the website and then in retail stores. In the OW, filmmakers only have indirect access to audiences through distributors.
7. DIRECT SALES - Filmmakers make much higher margins on direct sales from their websites and at screenings than they do through retail sales. They can make as much as $23 profit on a $24.95 website sale (plus $4.95 for shipping and handling). A retail sale of the same DVD only nets $2.50 via a typical 20% royalty video deal. If filmmakers sell an educational copy from their websites to a college or university for $250 (an average educational price), they can net $240. Direct sales to consumers provide valuable customer data, which enables filmmakers to make future sales to these buyers. They can sell other versions of a film, the soundtrack, books, posters, and t-shirts. In the OW, filmmakers are not permitted to make direct sales, have no access to customer data, and have no merchandising rights.
8. GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION - Filmmakers are now making their films available to viewers anywhere in the world. Supplementing their deals with distributors in other countries, they sell their films to consumers in unsold territories via DVD or digital download directly from their websites. For the first time, filmmakers are aggregating audiences across national boundaries. In the OW, distribution is territory by territory, and most independent films have little or no foreign distribution.
9. SEPARATE REVENUE STREAMS - Filmmakers limit cross-collateralization and accounting problems by splitting up their distribution rights. All revenues from sales on their websites come directly to them or through the fulfillment company they’ve hired to store and ship DVDs. By separating the revenues from each distribution partner, filmmakers prevent expenses from one distribution channel being charged against revenues from another. This makes accounting simpler and more transparent. In an OW overall deal, all revenues and all expenses are combined, making monitoring revenues much more difficult.
10. TRUE FANS - Filmmakers connect with viewers online and at screenings, establish direct relationships with them, and build core personal audiences. They ask for their support, making it clear that DVD purchases from the website will help them break even and make more movies. Every filmmaker with a website has the chance to turn visitors into subscribers, subscribers into purchasers, and purchasers into true fans who can contribute to new productions. In the OW, filmmakers do not have direct access to viewers.
10 things to avoid on social media - (marketing)
http://webworkerdaily.com/2010/02/17/10-things-to-avoid-in-social- media/?utm_source=gigaom&utm_medium=brand-explorer
Resoruces online for film makers (Ireland mainly)
http://www.mediabreakers.com/blog/filmmakers-resources-pt1/
http://fansoffilmchannel.com/distribution - new distribution opportunity.
http://www.marcjward.com/twitter-tools/10-top-twitter-tips/ - top twitter tips
Managing your social Networks
http://sproutsocial.com/
Social Networking trends 2010
Average Uk Visitors per day (millions) 2009
Facebook 11.86
Bebo1.03
MySpace 0.4
Twitter 0.38
LinkedIn 0.30
Av minutes per user per month
Facebook356.1
Bebo 113.0
MySpace 16.6
Twitter 23.4
LinkedIn 14.8
Annual change in monthly vistors
Facebook +54%
Bebo -37%
MySpace -33%
Twitter +1783%
LinkedIn +269%
UK Ad Display impressions (billions)
Facebook 12.52
Bebo 4.95
MySpace 2.63
Twitter 2.19
LinkedIn 2.01
Social Networking Infographics 2011
http://www.pamorama.net/2010/03/03/35-great-social-media-infographics/
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-growth-of-social-media-an-infographic/32788/
Social Cinema
Used to be film societies - using social media now to create an event. Couple of weeks ago - secret cinema event to show a movie - Alexandra Palace cinema screening of 'Laurence of Arabia' - 20,000 people turned up. The Cineroleum in Clerkenwell - 60 seats - sold out for Badlands screeing in 1 minute!!! Utilising social media to become your own cinema for your own film!
Open Source Movies
Swarm of angels - Matt Hanson founded project an open source film studio, onedotzero digital film festival, and ViewShareRemix open content initiative. A groundbreaking project to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members.
It’s not for everyone - but if you have a more adventurous streak and want to participate in the future of entertainment then have a look at http://aswarmofangels.com/
The Peach Open Movie Project - “Big Buck Bunny” - a collaborative animated feature using the open source animation software Blender. http://www.blender.org
http://www.bigbuckbunny.org
Project London - 760 CGI scenes created by recruiting animators from Craigs List and the Blender Communitym, then coordinating them by email. Watch a trailer here: http://projectlondonmovie.com/
Fan-made Films
1. The Hunt for Gollum - Audience 6million, Budget £3000 - Chris Bouchard - crew worked for free on this Tolkein/Jackson tributeCompared to Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - UK Audience - 14.4 million, Budget $94million
2. Star Wreck - audience - more than 8 million. Budget E15,000 - Finnish sci-fi parody of Star Trek and Babylon 5 - so popular it lead to a new fully funded project called Starwreck.com - with a E6.5M budget! Compare with Star Trek UK audience - 3.9 million and Budget $150 milliom
The team behind Star Wreck have now come up with Wreckamovie - a social network of film talent to help you get your film made in an industry distrupting way.
3. Losing Lois Lane - Audience 20,000 budget $6,000 - superman is depressed. He is drinking, whines, doesn't shower or wash his tights obsesses over his split with Lois Lane and hates his day job - secretidentityproductions.com Compare with Superman returns - Uk Audience 3.4 million and budget $209million
4. Ashes to Ashes - audience 3000 - budget E10,000 - set in 1938 - highly stylised re-imagining of Batman casts the caped crusader as a vengeful and brutal force. ashestoashes-themovie.comcompare to Dark Knight - UK Audience 9.5 million budget $185m
5. Starwarsuncut - Casey Pugh and Annelise Pruitt's divvied up Star Wars: IV into 15 second slices of crowd sourced fan versions uploaded to starwarsuncut.com The result was nominated for an Emmy and the trailer racked up 636,000 views!
6. Born of Hope - a 2009 fantasy-adventure film based on the appendicies of J.R.R.Tolkein’s Lord of the rings and made by fans of the Peter Jackson film and released on dailymotion & youtube.
Self Publishing (books and DVDs)
http://www.lulu.com
and createspace
Advantage is for physical inventory only. However, you can still list and sell your products via the Make-On-Demand services of Amazon.com affiliates BookSurge (for books) or CreateSpace (for books, CDs, or DVDs). BookSurge and CreateSpace are wholly-owned by Amazon.com and offer inventory-free fulfillment to Amazon.com's customers. Visit www.booksurge.com or www.createspace.com for more information.
self publishing - http://www.authorhouse.co.uk - author house - builds social networking around your book.
Tom McNab has just used it for his previous best seller Flanagan's Run - to re-publish it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sn9w6 - Liz Thompson - editor of website Book Branch. She says Mick Shatskin's ideological company predicts "Chunking" - publishing to niche markets. People out there will buy it and find it. Author house will do PR and build social networking - but you can get traction for a first time novel. Celestine Prophecy self published - and caught fire! Apple have created an ibook store to self publish and waterstones have invited self publishing authors to approach them. Print on demand makes it possible to print and re-print it.
TV/Film/Music/ clip sites:
YouTube, Daily Motion, MySpace, Google Video,Yahoo video, Joost, blip tv…etc..
Tools to use:
Opensource Animation software - Blender
http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/movies/
The new Digital SLR cameras with HD video capability
Which DSLR http://philipbloom.net/2010/06/06/whichdslr/
Using the Digital SLR camera kit to shoot HD footage can be explored here:http://www.stillmotion.ca/site.html - click "cinema" at the bottom of the page.
There's more here: http://www.vimeo.com/6496808?hd=1 all shot on the Canon EOS 7D Digital SLR.
The cinematic look was also achieved using a whole load of portable kit from these guys:
http://www.cinevate.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=32
Have a look through their customer featured footage in their "theatre" at the top for more examples of DSLR camera films.
Nikon just fixed the audio problem with DSLR video by adding a stereo mic input on their new D300, with full hd video mode included D-movie it's called. All for just £1499.99.
The Cannon 5D and 7D are still the choice of most pioneers and a team at Magic Lantern are improving it's performance all the time. http://vimeo.com/7838475 & http://vimeo.com/7851909
Other examples of DSLR work include:
The short film 'Reverie' by Vincent Laforet - shot on Canon 5D MkII - http://www.vincentlaforet.com/index_reverie.html and 'First Look' - also filmed on the Canon 5D MkII and a Red One: http://www.vincentlaforet.com/
Philip Bloom's work http://philipbloom.co.uk/ with tips on syncing sound for interviews using the software pluraleyes - http://www.singularsoftware.com/pluraleyes.html
Iain Philpott's work behind the scenes on 'Psychologies Magazine' http://vimeo.com/7546003
And FXGuide's podcast number 61 - http://media.fxguide.com/fxguidetv/fxguidetv-ep061.m4v
with tips about focus pulling using The Red Rock Micro support rigs: http://www.redrockmicro.com/dslr/index.html
Hypervideo
Commercial exploitation of Hypervideo (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervideo)
Perhaps the most significant consequence of hypervideo will result from commercial advertising. Devising a business model to monetize video has proven notoriously difficult. The application of traditional advertising methods - for example introducing ads into video - is likely to be rejected by the online community, while revenue from selling advertising on video sharing sites has so far not been promising.[20]
Hypervideo offers an alternate way to monetize video, allowing for the possibility of creating video clips where objects link to advertising or e-commerce sites, or provide more information about particular products. This new model of advertising is less intrusive, only displaying advertising information when the user makes the choice by clicking on an object in a video. And since it is the user who has requested the product information, this type of advertising is better targeted and likely to be more effective.
Ultimately as hypervideo content proliferates on the Internet, particularly content targeted for delivery via the television set, one can imagine an interlinked web of hypervideo forming in much the same way as the hypertext based World Wide Web has formed. This hypervideo based "Web of Televisions" or "TeleWeb" would offer the same browsing and information mining power of the Web, but be more suited to the viewing experience of being 10 feet from the screen on the living room couch than the Web is. Here may form an environment of not only interactive ads, but also one of interactive and nonlinear news, information, and even story telling.
The changing face of print journalism - and the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/25/cudlipp-lecture-alan-rusbridger
The Web is Dead - Long Live the Internet - Internet Traffic Useage 2010:http://www.michaelsinsight.com/2010/08/wired-magazine-article-highlights-decline-of-web-browsing-as-a-percentage-of-internet-traffic.htmlhttp://www.michaelsinsight.com/2010/08/wired-magazine-article-highlights-decline-of-web-browsing-as-a-percentage-of-internet-traffic.html
Other video camera innovations include the new JVC offering which shots .mov files which can be dragged straight into FCP to ease the workflow:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/camcorders/jvc-hm100.shtml.
Mold breaking online video:
All began with lonely girl 15 http://www.lg15.com/
Sofia’s diary now pushing 400 'webisodes'.. http://www.bebo.com/sofiasdiary - now on Channel 5
Richard Hammond presents Bloody Omaha (The Graphics) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRS9cpOMYv0
The Gym, ITV's first production for mobile devices
Hot Desk - another ITV entertainment mobile series
NOVEL FILM DISTRIBUTION PROJECTS
Danny acey’s New Film Project Love Like Hers
- Uses live stream to raise $1000/hour
- http://twitter.com/dannylaceyfilm
- http://www.youtube.com/user/dannylaceyfilm
- http://www.lovelikehers.com/funds
- http://www.indiewire.com/article/first_person_peter_broderick_welcome_to_the_new_world_of_distribution_part1/
Wayne Wang will follow in their footsteps when he premieres his new feature “The Princess of Nebraska” on YouTubeOctober 17th.
- http://www.indiewire.com/article/first_person_peter_broderick_welcome_to_the_new_world_of_distribution_part1/
The power of the internet was also demonstrated by the remarkably successful documentary, “The Secret.” During the first stage of its release, “The Secret” could be streamed or purchased at the film’s website, but was not available in theaters, on television, in stores, or on Amazon. During the next stage, the book was launched by Simon & Schuster in bookstores and online. After the book shot to the top of the bestseller list, “The Secret” DVD was finally made available in retail stores and on Amazon. Over 2 million DVDs were sold during the first twelve months of its release.
http://www.thecosmonaut.org/ - from the “Riot Cinema” collective
http://vimeo.com/12171653
getting Noticed
Sir Bevois, film premiere competition using social networking
DIY Distribution Pointers:
Breakthrough Distribution www.breakthroughdistribution.com
Freeformfilm www.freeformfilm.com
Eyesoda (the place for indie films online) http://www.eyesoda.com/
From here to awesome www.fromheretoawesome.com
Fully funded web projects
Sponsorship for your own platform – Jeffery’s story. www.jefferysstory.com
Youtube: Add sales department that puts on adds and divides revenue. (Youtube and Family Guy - they came to Youtube and asked for distribution with Burger King as a sponsor). Read their blogspot at http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/ Join their Partners program at http://www.youtube.com/partners check out their screening rooms at: http://www.youtube.com/ytscreeningroom and the creator institute's online Mew York Video School at www.nyvs.com
For inspiration watch Life in a Day, YouTube's crowd sourced documentary of 2010/2011http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT_UmBHMYzg
Bebo don't come up original ideas - but if production companies go to them with ideas then they help them build a fan base. 30 people in UK office will take the finished shows and secure sponsorship.
Babelgum – supported by advertising - pays for content – recently commissioned a documentary about oil in Northern Alberta.
Current TV – user (viewer) generated films channel - pays for the short films it broadcasts.
Daily Motion – Started to part fund pilots to take it to the advertisers and product placement potential, but without annoying the audience.
Striving for projects like - Rock Corps, Carrot Mob, MySociety, Show us a Better Way, They Work for You, Fix My Street, Gov2.0,
The BBC's 2.0 Project and Tom Loosemore's take on it - the BBC's Fifteen Web Principles.
Non-linear Story Telling
The Work of Jonathan Harris - particularly We Feel Fine and Sputnik Observatory
Gapminder - a fact based view of the world - stories through statistics
Some Film Case studies:
Blair Witch Project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blair_Witch_Projecthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blair_Witch_Project
“Four Eyed Monster” Arin Crumley and Susan Buice
“Head Trauma” – Lance Weiler
Brave New Films – Robert Greenwald like “Out Foxed”
Crude Movie and “The Age of Stupid” http://www.crudemovie.net/
Nathan Williams “The Great Trafalgar Square Freeze” simple, very popular film on YouTube - part of a new wave of income generation
A swarm of Angels - http://aswarmofangels.com/
In the Shadow of the Moon - http://www.itsotm.com/
Moonwalk One - moonwalkone.com
The Cosmonaut - thecosmonaut.org
Paranormal Activity - www.paranormalactivity-movie.com/
Co-Producer Project - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7644338.stm
First Orbit - www.firstorbit.org
Exploring the transition from Broadcasters to Networkers. 4ip and The BBC 2.0 Project 2009-2010
Creating public service products and services that can work in a post-broadcasting world.
(see Tom Loosemore’s ‘The BBC’s 15 web principles’)
E.g. Rock Corps, Carrot Mob (are they templates for other ideas…?)
Other examples - MySociety, Show us a Better Way, They Work for You, Fix My Street, Gov2.0, Gapminder
The Work of Jonathan Harris
number27.org
The Work of Jonathan Harris
We Feel Fine - a deep dive into the emotional landscape of the Internet, with words, pictures, and statistics from millions of individual bloggers. Watch his talks about his work on TED
http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_harris_tells_the_web_s_secret_stories.html
Sputnik Observatory
An ecosystem of video interviews with hundreds of leading thinkers in the arts, sciences and technology, covering a wide range of topics.
Intel's The Museum of Me - documenting your life through your social media postings -
The emergence of Web science
http://royalsociety.org/Web-science-a-new-frontier/
entertainment in the era of networked communications
Today’s transmedia producers are planning for multiple platforms from the start.
They design fictional universes that are consistent however the audience engages on mulitple platforms.
Colapsus.com
Great Lakes documentary project – Waterlife
documentary project – Waterlife
- Discovery Channel’s “The Colony” project
- and Shark Runners
- played by more people than watch the programmes.
Search is Going Social 2011
Moving from a web of documents, pages, computers, discovery and transations to a web of People, places, devices, recommendations and Experiences. It's time for more social versions of existing business models. And that includes film production and marketing. http://www.kpcb.com/initiatives/sfund - a new $250million fund to invest in entrepreneurs invetning social applications and services. A new golden age!
Gamification of Life
to second life and back to real life
Epic Mix – skiers game lift pass attached to FB profile - With an RF tag built into every lift ticket, the mountain knows where you ride, the lifts you take and the distance you ski, and Epic Mix doles out achievements based on your accomplishments.
Chromaroma - adding colour to your journeys - Oyster gaming!
Foursquare and Gondwalla
Agumented reality transmedia projects
Hope is Missing (HiM)
And Pandemic
Collapsus - interactive Documentary
Legion of Extraordinary Dancers
Distributed by Paramout Digital on Hulu
Places to web swamp
Wikipedia, Citizendium, and Scholarpedia
eHow is an online knowledge resource with more than 337,000 articles and videos offering step-by-step instructions on "how to do just about everything". eHow content is created by both professional experts and amateur members and covers a wide variety of topics organized into a hierarchy of categories.
Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities, featuring free online classified advertisements – with sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums.
Google Base is an online database provided by Google into which any user can add almost any type of content, such as text, images, and structured information in formats like XML, PDF, Excel, RTF, Word Perfect. As of 2009, it is available to the public as a beta version and the user interface is available in English and German. If Google finds it relevant it may appear on its shopping search engine, Google Maps or even the web search.
The Changing Face of Journalism
Alan Rudbridger lecture to the Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/25/cudlipp-lecture-alan-rusbridger
In the digital world, the distance between impulse and action is shorter than ever before. The goal of most interface design is to make it vanish altogether. In this open and immediate world millions of people are realising they can be publishers, that they don't need intermediaries. The British Museum or the Tate or the Royal Society or Imperial College don't have to wait any longer for the BBC or Channel 4 to ring and suggest a programme or series; they can make their own. The same is true of any writer, scientist, politician, photographer or activist. To call this the "democratisation of communication", or of information, or of culture seems somehow inadequate.
Governments are freeing up their data, records and information; museums and galleries are throwing open their doors; NGOs and charities are becoming publishers; universities are opening their lecture halls; scientists and corporations are sharing knowledge in ways which would have been unimaginable even 10 years ago. And then there is Google, with its ambition to digitise and organise all human knowledge since time began.
We know that the fastest – almost vertical – growth in amongst all this is what is rather lumberingly called 'social media'. This involves the power to generate content and connect with others at low, or no cost; in real time. The innovation that made all this possible – crudely, developments associated with Web 2.0 – is now happening alongside the evolution of so-called semantic web, which wants to find better ways of understanding the meaning of content and how to find it, organise it and share it.
It was a paper which counted every sale in Rusholme, Didsbury or Cheetham Hill.
Today, in print, the Guardian is, even now, the ninth or 10th biggest paper in Britain.
On the web it is, by most measurements, the second best-read English-language newspaper in the world.
The last line shows the worldwide sales of the Guardian – "foreign agents" – to be 650 copies. We had more readers in Colwyn Bay than in the rest of the world.
This clever little widget is effectively our digital circulation map today. It shows you in real time a sample of the people reading the Guardian from just one of its 32 servers.
Nor is all this being bought by tricks or by setting chain-gangs of reporters early in the morning to re-write stories about Lady GaGa or Katie Price. In that same period last year, our biggest growth areas were environment (up 137%), technology (up 125%) and art and design (up 84%). Science was up 81%; politics 39% and Comment is Free 38%.
- There was the widget we built to allow 23,000 Guardian readers to help us sort through hundreds of thousands of documents relating to MPs expenses. The Telegraph's original investigation was brilliantly executed. But the future will also be about asking for help in digesting vast and complex amounts of data.
This animated map of what the Twitterati were discussing, or searching for, showed how – within 12 hours of my tweeting a suitably gnomic post saying we had been gagged – Trafigura became the most popular subject on Twitter in Europe.
Some tweeters beavered away trying to find out what it was they were banned from knowing. One erudite tweeter uncovered something called the 1840 Parliamentary Papers Act, which no media lawyers seem to know about. Others pointed to where a suppressed document was available. Others found and published the parliamentary question we were warned not to report.
Within hours Trafigura had thrown in the towel on the injunction and dropped any pretence that they could enforce a ban on parliamentary reporting. The mass collaboration of strangers had achieved something it would have taken huge amounts of time and money to achieve through conventional journalism or law.
Geolocation apps
Foursquare And Gowalla - real life gaming / social networking...
http://www.abnormalmarketing.com/2010/06/ten-amazing-foursquare-website-applications/
Geotags in Flickr - reveal city tourist spots
http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624209158632/
Google Zeitgeist lectures on youtube
TED Global (second one ever) in Oxford next month..
Lots of new generators/outlets for video content...
Eg wellcome trust
Royal Opera House - behind the scenes tours and talks, Tate Modern's online top trumps which features behind the scenes info.
Learning online - lectures posted for free by eveyone from Cambridge Uni to Harvard, Art talks from Met Museum of Art, Bobotics from MIT, language courses from Brit Council, OU served 20million downloaded tracks on iTunes U, Apple says 250mill lecturs have now been downloaded from these sites.
Transmedia
From: http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/08/features/what-is-transmedia
This is transmedia storytelling. Large studios and broadcasters, as well as independent filmmakers such as Weiler, are building fictional worlds that smash through their frames on to multiple platforms. Unlike quick promotional spin-offs, this new type of tie-in extends, rather than adapts, storylines. It tells various parts of the story using distinct media, exploiting the qualities unique to each platform. So when you watch a TV show, you might follow a sub-plot that spills on to the web, then read the dénouement in a graphic novel. Yes, writers have long created worlds that go beyond the page -- L Frank Baum did as much with his 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, whose story world he expanded into a musical and other books. But today’s transmedia producers are planning for multiple platforms from the start. They design fictional universes that are consistent however the audience engages.
Although Blair Witch was transmedia-shaped, nobody was using the term. That came in late autumn 2002, when Henry Jenkins, a media professor at MIT, went to an Electronic Arts workshop held for Hollywood producers and game designers in Los Angeles. “There was enormous excitement there about the prospect of deeper collaboration,” says the 52-year-old, whose work on convergence culture became a touchstone for transmedia theory. “They were groping towards a reimagining of what entertainment could do in an era of networked communications, but lacked a conceptual vocabulary.
Meanwhile, in New York, Lance Weiler was planning Head Trauma. He didn’t have much cash to burn (the film cost $126,000), but wanted an equally engaging experience. Weiler’s answer? A pervasive game. “I started to experiment with it not being a film in traditional form -- how could I put people into the shoes of the protagonist? How could the story move from one experience to another in ways that created some degree of social interaction?”
In its limited US cinema release, Head Trauma consistently sold out. So Weiler planned his next project, a post-apocalyptic mystery called HiM (short for Hope is Missing), as transmedia from the outset. It launched in 2007 as a blog set up by a man to find his missing fiancée, Hope Wilcott; the quest became an alternate reality game. It proved popular: the blog attracted 2.5 million views. Weiler is now working on an augmented-reality app for Android phones which continues the story. And this autumn he’ll shoot the HiM feature film with Ted Hope, producer of 21 Grams.
Transmedia has blurred the divisions within organisations: Locke says that he stopped making those distinctions long ago (he insists that his commissioning team is “platform agnostic”). And at the BBC, for example, multiplatform producers are embedded with the traditional production teams of each show; television writers work alongside games developers. Even the distinction between platforms may disappear as audiences increasingly engage with separate platforms simultaneously. The market-research firm Nielsen estimates that in December 2009, US viewers spent an average of three hours and 30 minutes watching TV while also using the internet. That’s nearly an hour longer than a year earlier. As new technology such as tablet devices built for sofa surfing and web-enabled TV become ubiquitous, they will make consuming transmedia content more natural.
The Media Mash uP
Channel 5 and Facebook 17th aug 2010
Channel 5 is to become the first UK terrestrial broadcaster to bring its video on-demand content to social networking website Facebook. The broadcaster, which today announced a major shakeup of its operation, reportedly plans to embed its Demand Five service on Facebook, allowing the site's 26 million UK users to watch on-demand programmes such as The Gadget Show, Neighbours and Home and Away.
Gadgets and Gizmos
High speed - Cannon 7D - 1000 fps video equivalanet
http://blog.magnoninternational.com/key-pointers-for-a-good-homepage-design/http://www.dslrphoto.com/dslr/create-1000-fps-slow-motion-video-using-canon-eos-7d-and-twixtor-effects-plugins,19133.html
Interesting Books
The art of the start book
http://blog.magnoninternational.com/key-pointers-for-a-good-homepage-design/http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Start-Guy-Kawasaki/dp/1591840562/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1285708516&sr=8-1
Webscience
Check Web Science A New Fontier Conference
http://royalsociety.org/Web-science-a-new-frontier/
Quotes
Where ideas are born - from the coffee houses of Europe which helped inspire the Enlightenment - such gathering places allowed the ideas to be shared and serendipitously improved upon. Because chance favours the connected world. Technology has liberated ideas beyond the human mind.
Keep up - www.workbookproject.com
http://powertothepixel.com/videos-london-2008
Power to the Pixel is a company dedicated to supporting film and the wider media in its transition to a digital age with a passion for connecting creative talent to audiences. All its cross-media services are dedicated to a core idea that success is driven by knowledge – most critically of how to work in a rapidly-evolving, customer-driven international market.