I’m Here (2010) Spike Jonze

I’d missed out on seeing the short at Sundance but signed up to receive a ticket once it became available online. I received the following email tonight.

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When I went to the site it mentioned that 3,785 tickets we’re available. Found myself wondering if limited viewing was due to tech limitations of the server or if it was a play on creating a demand based on scarcity. Either way it is an interesting way to release a short. It gave the feeling of something special in a connected world that’s become all about the “right now.” But at its core it was the story that carried the experience. Hats off to Jonez for making a heartfelt piece of branded content that took me some place and didn’t bother to shove a brand or a sale down my throat. I really hope that this type of branded content becomes the norm – subtle with art, craft and engaging storytelling.

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NEW BREED park city vid series

The WorkBook Project joined forces with Filmmaker Magazine to produce a number of daily videos from Park City. SABI filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah speak with Ted Hope, Jon Reiss, Mynette Louie (Children of Invention) and Linas Phillips (Bass Ackwards) to explore the solutions that are emerging for independent filmmakers – featuring some of the insights and actions that came from the 2010 Filmmaker Summit.

The Tingler (1955) William Castle

I received a mention in a New York Times article entitled Talking About a Revolution (for a Digital Age) The article also references William Castle and the experiences he created around his work. Castle was an inspiration for some of the Cinema ARG experiences I did around my last film Head Trauma. DIY and the concept of transmedia were popular topics at Sundance this year and both have been popping up more and more in the press. Here’s a trailer from 1955 where Castle – always the showman – is plugging the experience around his newest film The Tingler.

Gaming via the cloud

More and more things are moving to the cloud. The hype around OnLive and their solution for “Cloud Gaming” reached a fever pitch in early 2009. By years end they had a beta running. The following is a demo by CEO Steve Perlman to students at Columbia. As more things move to the “cloud” it offers interesting opportunities for new forms of social interaction. The following vid is cued to the demo section. But there is interesting info throughout the vid and Perlman gives a nice overview of the platform and biz model.

Filtering the news and tv

This past week I came across two filtering / aggregation projects which were both developed within internal lab divisions – one from url shortening service Bit.ly and the other from Google.

Bitly.tv takes the 2 billion plus links that flow through the service and filters them to find trending vids. Based upon Bit.ly’s own bitrank algorithm which measures popularity, persistence and velocity in an attempt to predict what could go viral. I would imagine Bit.ly is swimming in interesting trending data that can be monetized in a variety of ways. This marks the first of a number of filtering projects that the company plans to rollout.

Living Stories is a collaboration between Google, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. An experiment to rethink the presentation of the news in an online environment. The effort aggregates a collection of stories surrounding a topic, presents a nice timeline view and attempts to harness a community discussion around the newsworthy topics. It’s early yet but you could see this merging at some point with google reader. I’d love the ability to trace linkage and timelines between news stories.