Beautifully executed pixel takeover of NYC, and then the world. If you like retro arcade games mixed with real-world footage in a fantastical mashup. Then you’ll love this. Ensure a full-screen view, wait for it to load and then hit play.

The lovely Rachael sent this.

Blu Dot inspired by the furniture finding scene of NYC (called ‘curb mining’). Dropped 25 Real Good Chairs in NYC to see what would happen. This video is what they discovered.

When I first moved to Bondi collecting furniture from the street was the only way I could furnish my place. You’d see me carrying random items up the street at all hours of the day – seizing the opportunity when I could. With the comings and goings of the local inhabitants it wasn’t hard and you often found some gems. Even electrical stuff with stickers saying they still worked. I’d always wonder how many owners an item might have had. Blu Dot’s experiment goes some way to explore that culture and I applaud them. I like the chairs too.

The clip got me thinking. Story writing comes to life through a variety of mediums. A book, allows you to get inside the head of the characters, get direct access to their internal thoughts. TV, stories can be told through interpersonal relationships. And film, due to its longer format and cinematic delivery, often explores the human condition and delves into bigger questions. Of course there are many types of books, TV shows and films that break these rules – but ultimately this is what the mediums afford the writer to get their story across.

An interactive/digital narrative remains un-defined in how to lead a user through a story or stories. Often ego-driven, whereas I the user am in control, but can the talents of writers and directors come to life in these new channels?

In the internet only ‘Where are the Joneses’, the 2007 interactive comedy, is still the only example I can think of that tries a new method of story creation, where viewers/users help create and steer the story from a simple idea. The traditional role of a writer, as storyteller, is removed and the idea of them as ‘nurturer’ and ‘guide’ directs the story writing via forums and wiki’s.

The TV series LOST deployed cross-channel narratives. The ARG allowing fans to delve deeper, yet the primary story still lives out in the episode-by-episode format. The Dark Knight, Cloverfield etc. have all deployed ARG’s to create hype around launch and expectation. But it doesn’t actually become the story – it remains peripheral content that draws you to the primary storytelling medium.

The above-mentioned film and TV examples are for a certain type of audience – one that wants to delve deeper, to crack the code, unveil the clue and so forth. Perhaps its mobile, in the context of the shared clip, that provides us with a real opportunity to create a new type of storytelling?

Jen talks about screens, the 1st Cinema, 2nd TV, 3rd Computer and the 4th Mobile. Each screen providing the user a different experience, the first and second, sit back – the third, lean forward – and the fourth, mobile, a truly personal experience. However, does it mean we have to stay within the screen?

In the last few days IBM and OgilvyOne London launched an Android app for Wimbledon 2009. Amongst other things the app allows visitors to Wimbledon to get information on everything in their proximity. Simply point the phone and the onboard GPS, compass and camera identifies what you’re looking at. Superimposing the scores from centre court, restaurant and other location information on its screen. [see it in action here]

Forget tennis for a minute and observe how that environment is bringing a deeper experience. In the case of storytelling the environment could set the scene – and then the user explores the space to bring in pieces of the story – choosing a narrative path.

Augmented reality activated by environment throws up a world of possibility. Imagine pointing your device at the wall, you see characters whispering – the floor, a body lies motionless – you then search the rest of the space for the story. Every room, building and environment now has the opportunity to truly share its story – or one that we wish to bring to a space.

Writers and directors should be ablaze with ideas at the possibilities ‘augmented storytelling’ throws up. Whereas for me and the rest of the digital marketing world let us see how clients can fund these experiments so we can push this new and exciting space.

More…
35 augmented reality examples on Bannerblog

Right now you can watch the trailer, view an eight minute featurette on the making of Lucky Country (worth the time if you have it), you can get to know the characters and the actors. In the not so distant future expect blog posts from Kriv Stenders (the director), Andy Cox (the writer) and members of the cast and crew. We’ve an abundance of behind the scenes footage that will be shared also – so if you’re into film (and in particular westerns set in 1902 Australia) – get the lowdown on this one.

Watch this short film (10mins) in HD. It’s with great pleasure that I finally share Rachael’s film ‘feeling_lonely?’ which she wrote and directed.

feeling_lonely? : Rob is “the man who has everything” (and everyone). But when 45-y-o ‘Mother Manchester’ catches his eye online, he gets more action than he bargained for.

I’ve been fighting with Vimeo to get the clip to display correctly (16:9 rather than 4:3) – note to Quicktime Pro users: click options in export and choose the dimensions you wish (1280×720 HD in this case) then select ‘Deinterlace Source Video’. When Vimeo receives the file it maintains the aspect ratio.

64,000+ photos highlight cities and countries on a moving globe over 24hrs. Best watched full screen. First found on FlowingData and the clips author is here.

Great stop-frame story of a fisherman’s rescue from the rocks near Tamarama beach by photographer Keith Loutit. The photo effect makes the people seem like plastic figurines in a diorama.

I’ve found a few tutorials on how to make this effect with stills photography on Digg.

However the first time I saw Pika Pika (JP blog) was on SBS last night.

I’d watch it in HD, looks better, just click the icon far left of the YouTube player.

Minilogue – Animals from ljudbilden on Vimeo.

Danny Boyle’s masterpiece gets mashed and mixed by the Addictive TV crew…

MIFF stands for Melbourne international film festival. I forgot how much I love Melbourne. Intimate bars, incredible food and interesting individuals from all walks of life.

Didn’t do nearly enough, but we had a good go. Saw just two films in the end; Ben X, arresting film about bullying, autism and the strength of anonymous personas. Then there was Donkey Punch, lookup the meaning, everything goes ‘pete tong’ after the punch as twenty somethings deal with misadventure.

Ate amazing tapas at Mavida. Japanese at Chocolate Buddha and breaky in Block Arcade. Enjoyed Sofitel & views of the city. 36hrs with lots of memories.

(this is a first post from the iPhone Wordpess App, so will add links later)

I know that New Line Cinema got them to mixup Shoot Em Up and Snakes On A Plane [below]. But I wonder if Paramount commissioned them to do Iron Man?

Of course the marketers wet dream is that you get a ‘user generated reaction’. Your audience takes the initiative to cut-and-paste-and-remix your content creating something more real than the art directed client approved version. Those clips then go viral and become the media for your film. That said commissioning a crew like Addictive TV takes it to a whole new level and hopefully throws down the gauntlet for other creatives to have fun with the clips…

I want to see great content like this becoming the trailer for the film in the first place, rather than being an extention or addition to the usual formats.

Discovered via BigShinyThing blog.

Addictive TV MySpace page and Wikipedia explanation.

iDistribute
Australian consumers are not just at the end of the food chain, they’re part of it – iTunes ready or not.

In mid-January at Macworld, Apple launched iTunes Movie Rentals that allows users to download movies direct to their Mac or PC and the new Apple TV. The deal was struck with all the Hollywood majors – Paramount, Universal, Walt Disney, Warner Bros, Sony Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Lionsgate, New Line and News Corp’s Fox. Three weeks later, it announced that this would not be immediately available to Australia.

As is typical with Apple’s iTunes-related inventory, it takes a while to filter through – the music store launched in Australia almost a year after it did so in the US and Europe, and we still don’t get all the features and content delivered elsewhere. And although we’ll have to wait a while to experience the iTunes rental service, we shouldn’t be quick to forget what a milestone this is for film distribution, or the considerable activity in Australia – current and potential – for new forms of digital distribution.

The charismatic and determined Apple CEO Steve Jobs seems to have convinced the major studios that he could provide a safe and solid distribution channel, and it would seem he has. Having downloaded a film, consumers have 30 days to watch it. From the first play of the movie, a consumer has 24 hours until it expires – at that point the file simply disappears, which is a hot debate online right now, but not one we’re going to get into.

Apple spokesperson Fiona Martin is aware of the waiting masses. ‘There is potential,’ she agrees, ‘But it’s very country-specific. With any content, we need to get the rights agreed for each territory we’re going into. Those agreements take time.’

Local distributors point out that data costs in this country are prohibiting digital from being a fully-fledged film distribution channel, for now. ‘Digital distribution is promising to be an important distribution channel,’ says Paul Muller, MD of Paramount Home Entertainment, ‘however, due to Australia’s sub-optimal broadband connections – speed and cost – in comparison with other mature markets, we believe that the short-term financial impact on the film industry will be relatively small. At this stage, we believe there is a great opportunity to learn and test different business models, and through our Digital Entertainment team in LA we evaluate and negotiate participation in Australian businesses that are keen to enter the digital distribution space.’

The sales director of Village Roadshow TV, Greg Sneddon, agrees, noting that Telstra’s infrastructure has a lot to do with the rollout of viable digital distribution. Quite simply, he says, the pipes aren’t good enough and the charges for data are prohibitive.

Meanwhile, with the Apple TV set-top box – or, as Jobs aptly calls it, ‘DVD player for the internet’ – Apple is setting itself up to be a desktop video store. It wants to do for movies what it’s already done for music. And given that the rental and sales of DVDs in the US totalled $23.4bn in 2007, why wouldn’t it want a piece of the action?

Apple has a good place from which to start. The iTunes music store, which is available in 22 countries, celebrated in February last year with the news that it had legally delivered one billion songs – in less than three years. In April last year Apple celebrated the 100 millionth iPod sold. Not to mention the iPhone, which sold four million units in just over six months.

Hardware plays an important role here. With Apple TV, which connects direct to your TV, and the fact that the downloaded movie file can then be transferred to your iPod (only the most recent) or iPhone for viewing on the move, Apple supplies not only the means but also the mode, and reaping the gains at every point. The phrase being bandied about is the ‘iTunes Ecosystem’.

What it won’t do is allow people to share. Of course the studios don’t want this anyway, but web communities do. The internet, by its very nature, is hyper-linked, the so-called second coming Web 2.0 has been successful due to the architecture of applications around the social needs of users. Our journey online day to day is based upon finding, filtering and forwarding content. A key human behaviour is to share experiences, be it a brilliant song, an amazing film or a hilarious clip.

One only has to look at the file-sharing activity among the Bit Torrent community to see that people want media on their terms. The Pirate Bay, the largest Bit Torrent tracker, recently announced it had broken the one million mark with torrents and was serving to more than 10 million peers. Another figure quoted by Media Defender suggests there are more than 300 million file sharing users. Either way, there’s a lot.

Bit Torrent communities (though admittedly not all) do seem to be tidying up their act. Once a place for porn and perhaps substandard content, they are now indexes of quality media, more often than not policed by the communities themselves. Some, UKNova.com for example, won’t include TV show torrents that are for sale elsewhere and focus on the non-available. Bittorrent.com, which you must pay for, has partnered and licensed content for TV shows, films and games, from the likes of 20th Century Fox, MTV and Warner Bros. They’ve also released a software development kit (SDK) that will help electronics manufacturers develop for the technology – an iPod competitor?

To further stamp home the potential of the file-sharing communities a once sworn enemy, Media Defender, has turned about-face. Rather than network bomb the communities with decoy media files (which frustrates users as they download dud files), it now offers Peer-to-Peer marketing and distribution. In Media Defenders’ own words, ‘by inserting promotional material into the decoy files, whether it’s music or film, and then planting those files prominently on file-sharing sites, record labels and other marketers can turn what is now an anti-piracy tool into an advertising medium.’

Content topped and tailed with advertising? That seems a little like TV.

A number of Bit Torrent trackers are facing legal action and potentially face being shut down. Ultimately trackers are a signpost to your audience – what they like, where they are and so on. Bit torrent is a decentralised technology; by killing off the signpost the sharing doesn’t stop.

Apple provides a closed model for distribution but what the likes of Bit Torrent and even YouTube indicate is that the majority wants an open one. This year we’ll see more and more innovation in wireless gadgets that become a network in their own right, distribution gadget-to-gadget or, more clearly, person-to-person. If anything we’ll become hyperlinked nodes distributing content to one another.

Ultimately Australia isn’t going to wait for Shrek 3 or the new series of Lost if it’s out there somewhere in the world. Whether it’s through iTunes rentals or another distribution service, users will ultimately find a way to get their media. What we need to realise is that they’re not at the end of the distribution channel but in fact the beginning, and find ways to repackage our content so they become advocates of it.