Authors — Mark Harris
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The Lost Children Experience at FilmGateMiami 2014
This is a brief post-mortem on my last interactive live event at a small interactive festival in Miami called FilmGate 2014. Over the past year, I have been focusing on a few core principles in my work. These are not rules, but questions I return to when making a piece of immersive/interactive work. Rules/audience agency. When we go to a movie, we know the rules. Sit in the dark, eat our popcorn, watch. When designing a new experience, it’s important to communicate the rules to your audience so they can let go of their minds and get immersed. Along with this, […]
by Mark Harris on Apr 2, 2014 -
Immersive Storytelling for The Lost Children Pt. 4
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 […]
by Mark Harris on Jan 28, 2013 -
Immersive Storytelling for The Lost Children Pt. 3
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 […]
by Mark Harris on Jan 22, 2013 -
Immersive Storytelling for The Lost Children Pt. 2
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 […]
by Mark Harris on Jan 2, 2013 -
Immersive Storytelling for The Lost Children
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 […]
by Mark Harris on Dec 23, 2012 -
IFP NARRATIVE LAB RECAP #2: FIRST THOUGHTS FROM MARK HARRIS
Imagine you’re a boxer just starting out. You’ve been given the opportunity to go learn from a group of pros. You’re excited. You feel honored. You might even be a little full of yourself. Yeah, they picked me. I must be the shizzle. You get to the gym. There are pleasantries, how-are-yous, and the like. Then, the pros tell you to step into the ring. You think “Oh good, they are going to start teaching me some moves right away!” Then they spend the next week beating the living shit out of you. By day two you’re questioning things you […]
by Mark Harris on Jun 18, 2011 -
TEST SCREENING “THE LOST CHILDREN,” PART ONE
In other places I’ve talked about our process for trying to vet a story ahead of time. We’ve had script readings, we’ve made small test videos expressing the tone we would shoot for in the feature. We’ve shot shorts with the characters from the feature. Now in the rough cut phase, we’re about to have a test screening of my feature film, The Lost Children, on May 4th. This screening is generously provided by Cinema Speakeasy out in L.A. The purpose of this screening is to show a rough cut and get some audience feedback before we lock. We will […]
by Mark Harris on Apr 29, 2011 -
Why Filmmakers Hate Transmedia
I’ve been mulling this topic over for a while, as I encounter many filmmakers — usually independent filmmakers — who kind of sneer at the word “transmedia.” They think it’s just marketing, or they don’t understand why people can’t just sit and watch a good film. I wanted to talk a little about this, as I certainly think there are some filmmaking topics transmedia developers need to keep in mind to make the work as a whole really soar. I’ve noticed a number of common traits in several recent high profile transmedia projects that I think can be improved. I’m not […]
by Mark Harris on Apr 18, 2011 -
MULTI-FACETED STORYTELLING
The IFP and Power to the Pixel’s Cross-Media ForumNYC is coming up April 19, and, as it approaches, several of its participants will be blogging for Filmmaker. Today’s first post is from Mark Harris, who will be presenting his new project, The Lost Children, at the event. Click on the link above for more info and tickets. One of the things that excites me the most about “Cross-media,” “Transmedia” or whatever it is, is the idea of telling a story in many different ways. I know this may not fit into a lot of peoples’ definitions of these terms, but […]
by Mark Harris on Apr 8, 2011
