There’s no good way to summarize the plethora of information presented last Saturday at TFI Interactive, a full-day conference held, for the second time, during the Tribeca Film Festival. Organized by the omnipresent Ingrid Kopp (who was recently interviewed by the MIT Open Documentary Lab), the day took place at the IAC Building in lower Manhattan, not far from most of the festival’s screenings and the Storyscapes interactive exhibits that Kopp also curated. Over 20 presentations covered dozens of individual projects, discussed entities like Kickstarter, the NFB, and IDFA DocLabs, and included panel discussions on creating adventure video games (think The …

This image is from Empire Uncut, part of the Star Wars Uncut project and one of the five projects at the Tribeca Film Festival’s first juried exhibit of interactive video projects, which ran this week at the Bombay Sapphire House of Imagination on Varick Street. TFI has been supporting digital, transmedia, and multimedia projects for years through programs like its New Media Fund and hackathons, and now TFI’s Director of Digital Initiatives Ingrid Kopp (who was recently interviewed by Filmmaker) has found a way to bring some projects into a physical space to coincide with the film festival in lower …

In the seventh part of Filmmaker‘s interview project with prominent figures from the world of transmedia, conducted through the MIT Open Documentary Lab,  Ingrid Kopp, Director of Digital Initiatives at Tribeca Film Institute,  answers our questions. Kopp oversees the TFI New Media Fund, runs Tribeca Hacks and produces TFI Interactive during the Tribeca Film Festival. For an introduction to this entire series, and links to all the installments so far, check out “Should Filmmakers Learn to Code,” by MIT Open Documentary Lab’s Sarah Wolozin. MIT Open Documentary Lab: How do you see people making the transition to digital interactive storytelling? Kopp: I think people have …

The most encouraging aspect of POV’s third hackathon, which wrapped with a public presentation Sunday night, was the social commitment of the five projects. When they hit close to home, events like Monday’s bombing in Boston can make you step back and reevaluate your work, its purpose and meaning. So it was gratifying, a day earlier, to see how committed the hackathon teams were to remedying some kind of societal problem, including some situated half a world away. Over two days the participants worked together to use new technologies to make real strides against issues like homelessness, war, and the …

In the sixth part of Filmmaker‘s interview project with prominent figures from the world of transmedia, conducted through the MIT Open Documentary Lab,  Brett Gaylor, Senior Director of Mozilla’s Webmaker initiative (including Mozilla PopcornMaker and Popcorn.js)  answers our questions. Gaylor has previously been a member of the EyeSteelFilm documentary production company, the founder of Open Source Cinema and the web producer of Homeless Nation. For an introduction to this entire series, and links to all the installments so far, check out “Should Filmmakers Learn to Code,” by MIT Open Documentary Lab’s Sarah Wolozin. MIT Open Documentary Lab: How did you become a digital …

Mark Harris is a filmmaker and software architect. Mark writes software for gameplay, storytelling, and transmedia. Mark was a mentor at the first StoryCode StoryHack, and creative technologist on Lance Weiler’s Pandemic 1.0. Mark is also an alumnus of the IFP Narrative Lab. Mark’s transmedia project, The Lost Children, had its New York City premiere in Jan 2013 at Film Society of Lincoln Center, with a feature film and live immersive experience. In the Fall of 2012, Mark wrote his first immersive play for Epic Theater Ensemble, and in Spring 2013, Mark joins the hybrid studio/technology company Murmur. MIT Open Documentary Lab: How did you …

Buzz about the second screen is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, as this recent (and, for me, incredibly thought-provoking) Filmmaker article by Scott Macaulay shows. Coordinating content on two devices to play (in any sense of that word) simultaneously, which some have called “orchestrated media,” is one of the next big things, and it’s causing content creators to search for new ways to make their dual-screen programs stand out. First, as that article points out, it requires new mental paradigms for filmmakers/digital storytellers as they plan and execute their work. But second, and just as important, it requires the technological means to …

One sign of transmedia’s inevitable movement to the center of mainstream media–not just technophile or indie fare–is its representation in the major awards. And while a film released on iTunes still may not be Oscar-eligible, digital media awards have been progressing far beyond the Webbys for years, with more popping up all the time. The Emmys are particularly interesting, though, because in a way they represent the heart of what mainstream television audiences are watching and praising. It’s notable, then, that the International Digital Emmy Awards will reach their eighth year at MIPTV in Cannes with the ceremony on April …

The Senior Manager at the Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Story Lab, Kamal Sinclair came to interactive via an unlikely, but, in many ways, appropriate route. While many in the interactive and new media fields hail from technology and filmmaking, Sinclair began her career in a medium where she received direct feedback from audience members every night — the theater. A trained dancer, choreographer and actress, Sinclair joined the Off-Broadway production STOMP at only 18, spending the next six years on their stages. In the below interview, Sinclair describes how she went from nightly performing to Sundance, a journey that also …

Two of the events I was most looking forward to seeing this year at SXSW Interactive were Jason Brush’s talk, Filmmaking as User Experience and Michel Reilhac’s “Meet the Insiders” panel, “Storytelling + Interactive.” Brush teaches at UCLA’s Department of Film, Television and Visual Media and is Executive Vice President of Creative & UX at POSSIBLE. Reilhac, who I have written about before at Filmmaker, is an independent transmedia director, story writer and consultant, and one of the most passionate and eloquent voices for new forms of interactive storytelling. Unfortunately, as is often the case at SXSW, once I put …