Film as Software The final installment of this series is about the actual screening of The Lost Children feature film at Film Society of Lincoln Center. In working out this screening, I am working with a concept called “Film as Software.” What exactly does this mean? To me it means film taking on some of the qualities of software. One of those qualities is the ability to react to user input in real time. That’s my take. But I asked Mike and Hal of Murmur to join in on the discussion. Murmur is the hybrid studio/technology company handling the interactive …

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a lover of science. Astronomy especially. I grew up watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and James Burke’s great series Connections. Even today, I am indebted to writers like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking and Sean Carroll for writing about subjects like black holes and the nature of time in ways that a layman like me can understand. I think people like this are imperative to society because many of the subjects they study are critical to us as a race. Two of those subjects are NEOs (Near Earth Objects) and astrobiology. NEOs …

They came up with a great idea. Within months, they received the highest critical acclaim. They continued to perform and planned to make a movie of it all. It took 13 years. At Sundance 2013, in the New Frontiers section, the 3D film version of the acclaimed performance piece about plane crashes, Charlie Victor Romeo, will have its premiere. A few weeks after the shoot was completed, and as an Associate Producer and behind-the-scenes documentarian of the film, I asked several of the projects principal creators to share an inside account of the transformation. First, Charlie Victor Romeo was a …

I am continuing my quest to better understand the wild new world of films that aren’t just on your TV or in your movie theater — but those that tell stories interactively, that are native to the web, that you can carry around on your phone, and whatever else clever storytellers are dreaming up (lest we be restricted to calling it all the ugly word transmedia). So, I share with you today the stories of the POV Hackathon. POV, the incredible PBS documentary series, hosts this event for documentary filmmakers to connect with designers and developers in the tech community, …

Developing an understanding of code is a valuable skill. In fact its now a 21st century storytelling reality. While it’s not critical for you to rush off and learn how to code, it wouldn’t hurt to become more familiar with the terminology, process and realities of producing digital / interactive projects. As filmmakers expand their work beyond a single screen new roles such as creative technologists are emerging to bridge the gap between tech and story. The role has been adapted within ad agencies, interactive firms and media companies as a way to plan and execute digital strategies. At the …

Public transit’s always been a great place for art, from busking musicians to the New York MTA’s current Sam Shaw photography exhibit, sponsored by Arts for Transit. Such exhibits are often moving in the direction of narrative media, and today the Toronto Transit Commission is launching a new project that explores the boundaries between public art and a good old-fashioned transmedia detective story. Every day for the next two months a new thirty-second episode of Murder in Passing will play in the Toronto subway. The series, which adds up to a roughly twenty-minute film, begins today with the discovery of …

Part 1 of this series laid out the overall plan for The Lost Children Premier event at Film Society of Lincoln Center in January 2013. In this post, I’m going to focus on some thinking behind the live immersive portion of the event. As I’ve been working on this, I’ve been thinking a lot about this term “immersive.” Any great piece of art can be immersive. Any time you get sucked into an amazing movie to the point that you forget you’re actually watching a movie, that is immersive. I remember having that experience with No Country for Old Men. But here, I’m …

Last year I wrote about Twine, an easy-to-use sensor kit that broke out on Kickstarter by raising 1,500% over their initial ask. The interest in Twine was so strong that their goal of $35k ended up bringing in over $500k. The concept taps directly into the “internet of things,” where interactions involving everyday objects are given a voice. Since contributing to the project, I’ve been waiting anxiously for my Twine to arrive. In December, it finally came and I immediately put it to work in a storytelling context with my students at Columbia University. Listen to your world talk to …

My feature film The Lost Children will have its New York City premiere with the Film Society of Lincoln Center in January, 2013. The premiere will not be a film screening alone. It is presented by Convergence: Film Society of Lincoln Center, which is an arm of the FSLC devoted to immersive and transmedia storytelling. Like many organizations in New York City, FSLC is reaching out and exploring new storytelling methods. The 50th anniversary of the NYFF included its first ever series of panels on transmedia. This year, the Tribeca FF is accepting basically any type of project. And the …

Back in April I published this interview with Andrew Allen, filmmaker and developer with the software company 53, about his newly launched Paper app. This week the app was named by Apple as its #1 app of the year for iPad. Our original conversation about Paper’s development, and Allen’s journey from filmmaker to developer, is detailed below. — SM Andrew Allen, one of Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces of 2011,” had a big premiere this month, but it’s not a film. Allen is part of FiftyThree, the company behind Paper, an iPad drawing app that made Apple’s App Store “App of …