Transmedia
Filmmaking - Transmedia
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Miranda July and Ira Glass Tell the Future of Storytelling
The Silent History is a fascinating new publishing project that merges app distribution with geolocational storytelling. Launched by former McSweeney’s publisher Eli Horowitz and colleagues, the project will launch next month, downloading stories to readers’ iOS devices and then coaxing them out into the streets of nearly 400 cities for more. Here is the trailer featuring the voices of Miranda July and Ira Glass. Horowitz is interviewed by Reyhan Harmanci at Buzzfeed, and he speaks of the project’s inspirations: “I got to thinking about new storytelling experiences — what can these things do, what can these things lead to,” he […]
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The Utility of Disappearing Media
One of the problems of both the physical and non-physical media economies has to do with proof of participation. You can support an artist by buying their DVD or download, but those items can also just sit on your shelves or hard drives, unwatched. Sure, the artist gets some coin but not the word-of-mouth that comes from your spreading the gospel about their work. One publisher tackled this problem in the world of literature by creating The Book that Can’t Wait, an anthology for new authors that literally erases itself if it hasn’t been read in 60 days. Combating the […]
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Christian Marclay’s The Clock
Christian Marclay’s The Clock returns to New York beginning tomorrow, July 13, through August 1 at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center. For details click here, and note that on the weekends the installation will run 24 hours. At special Twitter account, @LCClock, will post wait times. The following piece appeared in our Fall, 2011 issue. Christian Marclay’s The Clock video installation is many things. Structurally it is a 24-hour video installation in which film clips from across the history of cinema are meticulously edited together so that the fictional time inside each clip matches exactly the time at […]
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Google Glass and the 21st Century Panopticon
If you’re like me, you watched the product demo for Google Glass, found its hipster-targeting — learning about a new band from a street poster? — silly and didn’t think too much more about it. I mean, don’t we need to find a way to interact with our personal computing devices less, not more? But this morning after reading Jon Evans’ TechCrunch piece, “Heads Up! This Was Google’s Apple Moment,” I’m changing my mind. As a product category, Google Glass has a lot of potential — potential that’s fascinating and scary. In the fascinating category are some immediate uses for […]
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Story Hack, Beta Part 4
(You can read part one, two, and three.) The hackathon came to an exciting conclusion yesterday with presentations from all seven teams and a brief awards ceremony. I was too exhausted to write about it last night, an indication that the 34-hour event had been a success. Last weekend my wife ran in a 200-mile Ragnar relay race, and it occurred to me more than once that hackathons are the tech/transmedia equivalent. Hacking had begun just after 10 a.m. Saturday morning and continued nonstop until 3:30 p.m. Sunday. My own team’s final hours were fueled with adrenaline more than caffeine. […]
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Story Hack: Beta, Part 3
(Read parts one and two.) I’m sitting deep inside the bowels of the Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center on West 65th Street. The Story Hack got off to a friendly start around 10:00 this morning with an orientation by Aina Abiodun, Mike Knowlton, and Film Society of Lincoln Center Executive Director Rose Kuo. We made sure everyone was on the same page and were told our final wild card, the Emily Dickinson quote “Fortune befriends the bold,” which has to be included in every hack. Aina’s opening thoughts also laid down the gauntlet when she said that our work in these […]
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Story Hack: Beta, Part 2
In just under eight hours, the first hackathon dedicated exclusively to narrative transmedia gets underway at Lincoln Center; here’s Part 1 about what it is and who’s sponsoring it. There are seven teams of four, so 28 participants total, and if the other groups are anything like my team U.S. Maple, they’re all already feeling tired and well worked. I’ve written sample bibles and transmedia proposals before, as evidence of my versatility as a writer and ability to work in transmedia, but I’ve never finished an actual project. So this Story Hack is my first chance to develop something cross-platform beyond […]
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Story Hack: Beta, Part 1
Anyone interested in transmedia in New York City needs to know about StoryCode. Mike Knowlton and Aina Abiodun, seen below with their team, originally founded it as a transmedia Meetup group, and then last year transformed it into a nonprofit dedicated to cross-platform storytelling–the first such organization in the world. They continue to sponsor monthly meetings to discuss recent transmedia projects, and now for the first time they’re sponsoring a narrative transmedia hackathon. Hackathons, which come from tech culture, have become a popular venue for transmedia designers to develop their work, but this is the first hackathon to explicitly showcase […]
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Ridley Scott Teases Prometheus with TED Talk from the Future
Now this is transmedia! Ridley Scott has created a TED Talk from the future for his forthcoming Prometheus. (Actually, here are the credits: “Conceived and designed by Ridley Scott and Damon Lindelof and directed by Luke Scott.”) The talk is by “Peter Heyland,” who looks quite a bit like Guy Pearce and is introduced on the TED page like this: Peter Weyland has been a magnet for controversy since he announced his intent to build the first convincingly humanoid robotic system by the end of the decade. Whether challenging the ethical boundaries of medicine with nanotechnology or going toe to […]
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Storycode and Game of Thrones
All eyes may still be on Park City, but there’s still enough happening back here in the Big Apple to keep indie film lovers busy. One event was Tuesday’s presentation by Steve Coulson, Creative Director at the marketing firm Campfire, about the transmedia campaign he spearheaded for the first season of HBO’s Game of Thrones last year. The event was organized by Storycode and hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in the intimate Howard Gilman Theater. Because of the detail of some of his material Coulson asked that his presentation not be simulcast or recorded, but some of the […]
