Tuesday, May 6, 2014

The LAMP Mediabreaker Stops By Class



The Lamp is a New York City based organization dedicated to creating a world of critical and active media participants.  The organization was founded to educate and equip people to shape the media landscape through hands-on learning especially with its tool the Mediabreaker.  The Lamp Platoon highlights the work of teens to take on ads with responses using the Mediabreaker:

LAMPlatoon is an initiative by The LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project) encouraging people to think critically about media they see every day. By unpacking the messages sent through advertisements, you are learning to navigate a world of media which can be overwhelming and confusing. LAMPlatoon is also an opportunity for you to exercise fair use, talk back to mass media, and hold media producers accountable for the ways in which their messages impact our lives.




Thursday, April 3, 2014

Jeff Gomez and Starlight Runner



Jeff Gomez is one of leading experts at transmedia storytelling in the world will be talking to class today.  His childhood was spent in the housing projects on Manhattan’s Lower East Side graduating from Queens College in 1985.

Jeff is the CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment and has worked on such projects as Pirates of the Caribbean, Microsoft's Halo, Avatar, Transformers and Mattel's Hot Wheels.  Gomez’s company was launched in 2000 with partner and Vice President Mark Pensavalle. They focus on turning intellectual property/story into transmedia successes. They also work on the story and create a book of worlds for each, so when the story moves from movie to video game, the video game creators can follow the same story and learn all there is to know about the story world.

Today he will talk about his "Never Surrender" philopshy and his life in the business of transmedia storytelling.  He has given his "Never Surrender" motivational speech to more than 120,000 students in over 1,000 venues.

His bio on Starlight Runner reads, Prior to launching Starlight Runner with partner Mark Pensavalle in 2000, Jeff Gomez was a prominent figure in the adventure game and video game industries serving as a producer for Acclaim Entertainment’s comic book division. He helped create the Acclaim Comics super hero universe, in addition to adapting Valiant Comics super heroes into videogames for Nintendo and PlayStation consoles. Characters, concepts and game-play Jeff conceived, wrote and produced for Acclaim’s Turok, Dinosaur Hunter and Turok 2: Seeds of Evil helped that franchise to gross over $420 million. Turok was recently revived as a new videogame franchise from Disney Interactive and as an animated feature from Starz Entertainment.

In addition to serving as a brand extension consultant to such corporations as Disney, Microsoft, 20th Century Fox, Coca-Cola, Scholastic, Wieden+Kennedy, Mattel, Showtime, Konami and Hasbro, Jeff has also delivered his seminar, Creating Blockbuster Worlds: Developing Highly Successful Transmedia Franchises, to the MITFutures of Entertainment Conference, Game Developers Conference, International Game Developers Association, the NewTeeVee Conference, the New York State Bar Association and the Producers Guild of America.  A board member of the Producers Guild of America with over 20 years experience developing, writing and producing content, Jeff has been featured and quoted in such periodicals as Forbes, Business Week, Los Angeles Times, Variety, Investors Business Daily, Publishers Weekly, Produced By, Wizard, and Animation, and he has been profiled on MTV News and American Latino.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

IFP Media Center Road Trip


The IFP Media Center opened in September  in Dumbo, Brooklyn. The Made in NY Media Center by IFP is a multi-disciplinary creative space with over 20,000 square feet at 30 John Street in Dumbo, Brooklyn. The space was until recently a split-level shipping/receiving/truck parking area.  The space is sliced into several sections wi th the lower area acting as a large incubator and the upper area a short-term open workspace for creatives in the media fields.  The space includes classrooms, conference rooms, editing rooms as well as a screening room, library, cafe, and rest rooms.  The Media Center website tells:

DUMBO has long been home to individuals and companies with equal parts creativity and business acumen. The combined density and diversity of the neighborhood, and New York City as a whole, allows us to tap into an abundant wealth of knowledge and industry – from Madison Avenue to Wall Street and the Tech Triangle to independent content creators all over our bustling city.  Historically, 30 John Street has been home to creative types. Starting with Arbuckles Ariosa Coffee in the late 1800s, the building was originally home to a growing coffee factory. The Arbuckle Brothers, inventors in their own right, designed a machine that efficiently roasted, ground and packaged coffee for mass distribution. In later years, the space had subsequent incarnations as a whiskey storehouse for the Kinsey Distilling Company and a warehouse for A&S, Brooklyn’s leading department store. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the space was repurposed for offices and studios for creative professionals.  As home of the Media Center, the space will return to its original function as a site for manufacturing—but this time around, the incubator at 30 John Street will brew stories and ideas. And instead of products leaving the doors via railway car or ship, these digital creations will be beamed around the world to be uploaded, downloaded, streamed—and perhaps even shown on a local screen near you.

To learn more read this article from Fast Company

The space is intended to give media projects and media creatives a chance to work indepently and creatively in a community.  Check out the Color Project:


The Color Project at IFP Media Center from MPC Digital on Vimeo.

Black Girls Code




Kimberly Bryant, Founder of Black Girls Code wrote,

When I was first introduced to computer programming, as a freshman in Electrical Engineering, Fortran and Pascal were the popular languages for newbies in computing and the Apple Macintosh was the new kid on the block. I remember being excited by the prospects, and looked forward to embarking on a rich and rewarding career after college.

But I also recall, as I pursued my studies, feeling culturally isolated: few of my classmates looked like me. While we shared similar aspirations and many good times, there’s much to be said for making any challenging journey with people of the same cultural background.  Much has changed since my college days, but there’s still a dearth of African-American women in science, technology, engineering and math professions, an absence that cannot be explained by, say, a lack of interest in these fields. Lack of access and lack of exposure to STEM topics are the likelier culprits.  By launching Black Girls Code, I hope to provide young and pre-teen girls of color opportunities to learn in-demand skills in technology and computer programming at a time when they are naturally thinking about what they want to be when they grow up.  That, really, is the Black Girls Code mission: to introduce programming and technology to a new generation of coders, coders who will become builders of technological innovation and of their own futures.  Imagine the impact that these curious, creative minds could have on the world with the guidance and encouragement others take for granted. I have, and I can’t wait! 

You can find out more about Black Girls Code on their blog.



Monday, March 31, 2014

All Star Code



All Star Code is a non-profit initiative that prepares qualified minority boys for full-time employment in the technology industry by providing mentorship, industry exposure, and intensive training in computer science. ASC is dedicated to closing the opportunity gap between young men of color and the tech industry.  







Ariana and the Voices of Fillmore Place


Voces de Fillmore: Celebrating Stories from Los Sures from Voces de Fillmore on Vimeo.

Voces de Fillmore is a film tracing the memories and experiences of families living on one block in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The block, Fillmore Place, is a small street nestled in the Southside, or more affectionately known by long time residents as Los Sures.

The Southside’s Latino population has steadily decreased from seventy to forty-five percent of the neighborhood. In the past decade, the population has gone from roughly 20,000 to 15,000 Latino residents. Voces de Fillmore is a first-person narrative of families who have lived and raised children in Los Sures for several decades and their quest to preserve a sense of community in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

One of the fillmmakers is our own Ariana.  Ariana was born in 1987 in Northern California.  She attended Fordham University graduating in 2009. She was accepted into an AmeriCorps program and placed at New Design High School. She was hired after her internship by Urban Arts Partnership to develop a new program at the school that targets low attendance and low overall school engagement through counseling, academic advisement, art classes and family involvement.  She currently runs the iDesign program at New Design.  She has been engaged in filmmaking for a number of years.   Her advice to young Mediastormers, “Never underestimate the power of human connections!”

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Swan Song


Luis Weinstein on 'Swan Song' from World Press Photo on Vimeo.

Swan Song follows the story of Marilyn, diagnosed with dementia at age 58, and her daughters as they refocus their lives to care for her during her most precious years. They try to juggle it all until they are forced to make a heartbreaking decision.

The film grew out of a project commissioned by the Neighborhood Centers Inc. to profile the organization’s work in the city of Houston. While documenting the stories of the people the organization works with everyday we discovered “The Greer Girls.” Swan Song takes a deeper look into this amazing family of women dealing with dementia, using their personal narrative to illustrate the struggles of families dealing with this difficult disease.

The film was awarded  3rd Prize in the Online Feature category of the 2014 World Press Photo Multimedia Contest.  First place in the Online Feature category was awarded to Witnessing Gezi by photojournalist Emin Özmen and second place went to Hers to Lose by Brent McDonald and Stephen Maing. A complete list of winners with links to the winning entries can be found on the World Press Photo website.

World Press Photo organizes the leading international contest in visual journalism. The foundation is committed to supporting and advancing high standards in photojournalism and documentary storytelling worldwide. Its aim is to generate wide public interest in and appreciation for the work of photographers and other visual journalists, and for the free exchange of information.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

I Believe Tweets Ideas


Larry Ackerman is an identity consultant.  He describes his work as

I help organizations, and the men and women who lead these organizations, come to terms with who they are, what they stand for and what to do about it. I bring them face to face with their uniqueness, and the potential it implies. I have other credentials as well, which in many ways, have proven to be more powerful than my professional experience. Because of its profound influence on everything I am and do, I need to tell you my story.  My story revolves around all things visual: sight, vision, eyes, perception, seeing, discernment.Call it what you will, this is my world. When I was four-years old I underwent eye surgery to correct a muscle problem; I was born cross-eyed. Medically speaking, the operation was a success, but during that operation the course of my life was altered forever.  The first moment I am able to recall is being on the operating table, looking around with a mix of childlike curiosity and growing trepidation. The doctors, nurses and various assistants were moving about, preparing for the procedure in their businesslike, matter-of-fact way. The operating room was coming alive with activity. I, however, had no conception of what was going on, no earthly idea why I was there.  Lying on my back, a cold, tingly fear crept up along both sides of my body and settled firmly in my heart. I figured something must be wrong with me; after all, my parents had put me in this place of sick people. And if something was wrong with me, then I needed to be “fixed;” I needed an operation. As I saw it, my eyes were the problem. I say that because that is what my mother and father had told me; that was the reason they had brought me here: I was cross-eyed and that apparently wasn’t OK. So, I concluded, it was my eyes that had gotten me into trouble. Suddenly, I saw my life in stark, black and white terms: fix my vision, fix myself.  To this day, I can recall being tethered to the operating table, canvas straps pulled snug across my chest and pelvis. I watched in terror as the gas mask was brought to my face. My control over myself had been torn away from me. I began repeating to myself, Doesn’t anyone care about me? Quickly, however, a new question consumed me: What is so wrong with me that I must be changed from who I am? All I could figure was that my eyes were hopelessly flawed and, therefore, so was I. I sensed imminent death. “No!,” I shouted to myself. “Please, don’t hurt me!” I begged, beneath the mask that muffled my growing horror. At that excruciating instant, unable to breathe, part of me went away down a black hole—my “tunnel” to freedom and survival. I had abandoned my identity to save my life. At the instant I slipped away, however, in the midst of my living nightmare, I pledged to myself that I would return. “No!, I screamed again. I will not die! I will be back.”
Forty years passed before I become fully conscious of this experience. My will to “return” had remained alive. If I was to come back, I needed to know exactly what had happened to me. I needed to know what had led to my obsession to be whole again and, in recent years, to help others benefit from the trauma I had survived. Since the day I slipped away, I have been at work, more unconsciously than not, to restore my integrity as a complete person. A supposedly routine medical procedure had forced me to confront the question, who am I?, far sooner than I was prepared to do so. Reconnecting with my identity, and helping others do the same, has been the governing force in my life ever since.  My identity journey has been a long, sometimes trying, often joyous, always adventuresome trek. It has been worth the trip, for I know who I am; I know my purpose: I am driven by the need to help people to see. To see the futility of some actions and the power of others. To see one’s potential as prescribed by their identity. To see the importance of living one’s difference. 

Here are some Tweet ideas from Larry.  Simply finish each sentence and tweet.
I believe purpose _________________________

I believe beauty __________________________

I believe integrity _________________________

I believe wealth __________________________

I believe trust ____________________________

I believe freedom _________________________

I believe leadership _______________________

I believe Twitter __________________________

I believe Congress _____________________­­­­___

I believe evil _____________________________

I believe good ____________________________

I believe I am ____________________________

Monday, March 24, 2014

I, Too, AM Harvard


A recent New York Times article, Students See Many Slights as Racial ‘Microaggressions’, looked at the term microaggressions.  The Times article says:

This is not exactly the language of traditional racism, but in an avalanche of blogs, student discourse, campus theater and academic papers, they all reflect the murky terrain of the social justice word du jour — microaggressions — used to describe the subtle ways that racial, ethnic, gender and other stereotypes can play out painfully in an increasingly diverse culture.

The article describes in depth the microagression controversy with some different emerging transmedia resources from college students such as the Tumblr site, I, Too, Am Harvard, and a student at Fordham University site, Dear White People.  The article also cites from videos such as, "Shit Whites Girls say to Black Girls" and "What kind of Asian are you?" which explores the microagression topic.  
   

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Nuyorkcity Company Reel


NUYORKTRICITY COMPANY REEL from friendswelove.com on Vimeo.

Nuyorktricity is a boutique production and post production company based in Los Angeles, California servicing the art and entertainment industries.  Headed by husbNuyorktricity is a boutique production and post production company based in Los Angeles, California servicing the art and entertainment industries.  Headed by husband and wife team, Mike and Moni Vargas, Nuyorktricity brings an artistic aesthetic to projects and personal attention to clients in the theatrical, television, home entertainment, music and creative fields.  Nuyorktricity’s clients include Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment, Sony Pictures Television, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Nike, Diesel, Absolut and Pepsi. Our work has been broadcast nationally and internationally, screened in 4 continents and our original series, Friends We Love, has been featured at the Bronx Museum and Brooklyn Museum of Art.  Nuyorktricity services include feature film featurettes, original short-doc series, commercials, music videos, behind the scenes documentaries, fashion editorials, branded entertainment, corporate promos, sizzle reels, EPKs and table reading productions.and and wife team, Mike and Moni Vargas, Nuyorktricity brings an artistic aesthetic to projects and personal attention to clients in the theatrical, television, home entertainment, music and creative fields.

Moni and Mike got known for their work Friends We Love.   Check out some of their work:

Pharrell
Femi Kuti
Street Artist Boy





s.
OFF THE WALL :: Doze Green - Studio Visit from friendswelove.com on Vimeo.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Jo Jo and New Design


Joanne and Rocketboom at New Design

Joanne Colan has a wikipedia site.  She has been an MTV VJ, host of the vlog Rocketboom and most recently the co-host of the Discovery's show "Dean of Invention" alongside Dean Kamen.
Today she will be talking to Mediastorm about her upcoming transmedia project, Eventually, which documents people who has are dealing with loss, death and dying. The project description is:

Our stories, about loss, death and dying are a critical part of our collective experience. Eventually is a serial documentary for the web comprising video, audio, and written testimonials from people who have experienced the death of a loved on and are able to talk about this difficult, often transformative and intimately personal undertaking. Sharing these stories provides comfort and meaning to those of us coping with loss. For everyone else, the testimonials offer a compelling glimpse into what we will all come to know, eventually.

Each testimonial will appear on the Eventually website as a stand-alone piece of content to be considered away from community feedback or advertising. The site design will feature a hand painted landscape and animated sky that transforms in real time from day to night. The site will be a serene and contemplative place to visit.


Joanne will talking to Mediastorm New Design today about the project, setting up shoots, the secrets behind intervewing people as well as the state of affairs of the transmedia world.  After her presentation she will be interviewing two New Design students for Eventually.

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Thursday, March 6, 2014

What is Influencing Mediastormers Today? Faith

Ironlak is a p

Ironlak is part of AVT Paints.  AVT Paints prides itself on our 'more bang for your buck' approach, and we strive to maintain close working business relationships with our partners and associates.

They mainly sell aerosols paints bought by graffiti writers.  To promote their products they created Ironlak Films, an on-going film video series documenting master graffiti artists.  

New Design Mediastormer Faith is creating a graffit film and came across SOFLES - Limitless.  In just three days “Limitless” has surpassed over 2.5 million views and for a video based on graffiti that may be a record. After viewing this 5-minute piece of turnt up spray madness, you will have a clear understanding as to why. Australian graffiti writer, Sofles, with the talents of filmmaker, Selina Miles, just took the graffiti video of the year award. Also featured are artists Fintan Magee, Treas, Quench and we defiantly saw a Nekst tribute in there.

Faith is working on coming up with her own stylistic version of her film.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

The Institute


Welcome to the Jejune Institute, a mind-bending San Francisco phenomenon where 10,000 people became "inducted" without ever quite realizing what they'd signed up for. Was it a cult? Was it an elaborate game? Told from the participants’ perspectives, the film looks over the precipice at an emergent new art form where real world and fictional narratives collide, creating unforeseen and often unsettling consequences. Fusing elements of counter-culture, new religious movements and street art, THE INSTITUTE invites viewers down the rabbit hole into a secret underground world teeming just beneath the surface of everyday life.

Murder in Passing



Bike courier Mars Brito has been murdered... and everyone in the town of Passing B.C. is a suspect! The extensive roster of suspect characters include his keen green bike boss, his troubled train conductor fiancé, an ambitious chemistry professor, Passing's anti-bike Mayor and the CEO of an SUV manufacturer with Gramsci issues. Detective Epicene, harbouring secrets of her own, must untangle a bewildering conspiracy involving bikes, cars, opera, gender and corporate green-washing to expose the murderer.

MURDER IN PASSING is the first-ever transmedia whodunit series for commuters, with new episodes appearing daily on Toronto's subway platform screens and online from January 7, 2013 to March 1, 2013.
Written and directed by John Greyson, MURDER IN PASSING is a multi-layered murder mystery shot in the film noir style, featuring Greyson's signature intricacy, use of symbolism and metaphor.  Visit http://www.murderinpassing.com to review the current episodes or catch up on past instalments.

Then listen online to the daily operatic fugues composed by David Wall after each episode for a trace of evidence and fun. Find the daily clues on Twitter @MurderIP, in the Metro newspaper, and the project website. Read our citizen detective's blog posts, and share your suspicions with fellow sleuths. Follow the clues and solve the mystery of MURDER IN PASSING.



Monday, February 24, 2014

How to Write a Twitter Bio

Recent Article on How to Write a Twitter Bio from Mashable  by Ame Mae Elliot

What does your Twitter bio say about you? Don't think in terms of cold, hard facts — what does it really reveal about you to others?

As we've recently discussed on Mashable, your bio is one of the major factors that people take into consideration when deciding whether or not to follow you on Twitter, but it's even more important than that.

SEE ALSO: This Is Why No One Follows You on Twitter

Your bio is searchable within the Twittersphere, meaning you need to think carefully about keywords. It will show up in search engine results for your name, so it has to represent the true you. It's also how you choose to present yourself to Twitter's 230 million users, so it's worth giving it some serious thought.
The Bio as an Art Form

Whether or not you agree with the The New York Times' rather grandiose statement that the Twitter bio is a postmodern art form, it's certainly a skill to distill the essence of your complex, multifaceted personality (or so we'd all like to think) into 160 characters.

Embrace the space available. Don't think of the allowance as a limitation; think of it as an opportunity to be concise. When you write your bio, actually compose in the window Twitter allows. This will help with structure.

Are you creative or commercially minded? If you fall into the commercial camp, it may help to think of your Twitter bio as a a copywriting exercise. The product is you and you have 160 characters not just to summarize it, but sell it to an indifferent, anonymous audience.

If you're more creative, you might enjoy approaching a bio as you would a poem. Every word you use must justify its place on your limited canvas, add meaning, appear in the correct order and work as a whole.
The Bio as a Cliché

"Coffee expert. Twitterholic. Internet advocate. Music aficionado. Wannabe entrepreneur." This might read as a totally believable Twitter bio, but it is in fact gobbledegook: made-up, buzzword nonsense from the "Twitter Bio Generator".

Developed by Josh Schultz, the generator was designed to poke fun at the list-based bio format so beloved of key-word-minded Twitter users.

"I created that site a few years back just for fun, when I noticed a lot of similarities among Twitter bios," Schultz explains. "Folks using short, punchy phrases to describe themselves, including an inordinate number of 'social media experts' and all manner of 'mavens.' It was actually a bit of a joke: I included bits that could describe practically anyone on the Twitters, and threw in a few silly things, for flavor."

Could your bio be easily interchangeable with A. N. Other's Twitter bio? Could something you've written in your bio appear in the Twitter Bio Generator's database? Then you need to think of ways to make yourself stand out.
Bio Basics


This should be obvious, but from the amount of typo-ridden bios out there, it bears repeating. Your bio must have perfect spelling and grammar. There are no excuses for mistakes. Run your text through a spellcheck tool or get a buddy to check it for you, but be sure what you've written is error-free.

Secondly, be consistent. If you are going for the list-based format, decided whether you're separating words with commas, periods or vertical bars, and stick to that. Capitalize consistently by choosing to write the entire thing in either sentence case or title case. The same goes for if you're mentioning usernames or using hashtags (e.g., @JohnSmith or @johnsmith, or #Football or #football) — keep to the same format for every example.
Learn From Others


Don't create your bio in a vacuum. Do some research, study the different styles of bios out there and read what other Twitter users have written — especially ones with large followings.

When you've followed someone on the strength of his or her Twitter bio alone, consider what it was that prompted you to hit the "Follow" button.

Sarah Milstein, the 21st user of Twitter and co-author of The Twitter Book, has the following straightforward advice: "Look at a bunch of Twitter bios, notice which ones you like best, write a bio that imitates those."
Find Your Unique Sell

From a professional perspective, make it clear exactly what it is that you do. This helps differentiate you from others with similar bios. Don't just state you're in a sales role, mention the industry in which you work. If you're a recruiter, what kind of candidates are your speciality? Do you work in marketing? Which industry sector?

"Your Twitter bio should position you as an expert in your field who serves a specific audience," states Dan Schawbel, author of Promote Yourself and Me 2.0.

"The objective is to position your personal brand so you're using the right keywords and clearly showing what your focus is so people read it and know exactly what you do and whom you serve."

As well as widening your appeal for potential followers, Schawbel suggests this tactic may help your future job prospects.

"I did a study with American Express and we found that 65% of managers are looking to hire and promote subject matter experts. The problem is that most people position themselves as generalists or 'Jacks-of-all-trades,' and that won't work in this economy," he says.
Consider SEO

The words you use in your bio don't just add up to create a picture of you, they carry some serious SEO juice. Tools such as Followerwonk can search Twitter bios on a keyword basis. Carefully consider what topics you'd like to be discoverable under, as you never know who might be searching for just those subjects.

"Followerwonk helps users find people through bio search, which is incredibly powerful for niche audiences and building brands," says Erica McGillivray, social community manager for Moz, the company that created Followerwonk.

"On Twitter, it's all about first impressions, while finding the right audience, whether you're reaching out professionally or just looking for new friends. By optimizing your bio to give the perfect details — your interests, location, job, company, love of cupcakes — you're telling the world why they should follow you. Why you're important," she says.

It's not just Twitter search you have to consider, but wider searches from third-party engines. "Write a bio that will motivate others to follow you on specific topics, those you most often tweet. Use keywords and be direct," says Michael Dobbs, group director of SEO at digital marketing agency 360i.

With news that Google Search has recently made moves to include hashtag searches, Dobbs also suggests: "Consider adding hashtags on keyword topics you'd like to be discovered against."
Be Unusual

"The idea behind your bio is that you want to provoke enough interest so that somebody will follow you back," Mark Schaefer, author of The Tao of Twitter, says. "Be honest and give at least a hint of what you do in the real world. Then, add something unusual or funny to stand out. For example, I identify myself as a consultant, author and social media bouncer. That often starts a conversation!"

On an online platform of over 200 million users, it can be hard to stand out, so don't be afraid to let your quirks show and don't hesitate to use humor in your bio. If you have an unusual hobby or a niche passion, include it, especially if it's something you're likely to tweet about.

"Your bio should reflect who you are, your values and what you have to offer others," states Louise Mowbray speaker, coach and branding consultant.

Most importantly, use your bio to let people know what you're going to bring to their Twitter streams — how following you is going to enrich their Twitter experience. After all, as Mowbray says, "Twitter is all about giving something of value to others for free."

Monday, February 3, 2014

Quarter 3: Pre Production Planning and Production


Quarter 3 will be focused on pre production planning and production of your projects.  A transmedia approach means a parallel production process.  For our sakes in class that means that production must happen while pre-production planning takes place.

Step 1:  Articulate Final Project
Step 2:  Map Out Pre-Production Steps
Step 3:  Begin Production 
Step 4:  Promote Project Throughout Process on Twitter and Other Social Media Sites
Step 5:  4th Quarter:  Revision, Promotion and Interactivity

Preproduction formally begins once a project has been greenlit. At this stage, finalizing preparations for production go into effect.  During pre-production the prodcution process is broken down into individual peices and a timeline is scheduled and calendared.  

The process often begins with a demo.


Thursday, January 9, 2014

The Beauty Inside



The Beauty Inside is an ongoing film where the audience can play the main part. Watch the video, then like it to hear about the next episodes or audition to play Alex yourself on our Facebook page.

Toshiba and Intel's 'The Beauty Inside' has been named the best transmedia campaign at this year's Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity in The One Centre's Branded Arts Review.  The project recruited actors via social media and gave audiences the chance to upload video diaries that were shared on Facebook.  John Ford, chief executive of The One Centre, said the 2013 Lions would be remembered as the festival where branded entertainment came of age across a range of categories.  "Our industry globally has been talking about the art of storytelling as the new age of engaging people with products and that platform shone through very clearly this year in Cannes," he said. "Great storytelling is most effective in transmedia formats and we believe this genre will accelerate significantly in the short and long term.

The Beauty Inside allowed the audience to play a lead role of shape shifter Alex. 26 people participated in the scripted web series alongside Hollywood stars, and 50 people shared their own stories on The Beauty Inside Facebook page via photos and videos.

The combination of celebrities, audience participation and a powerful story engaged audiences and led to the viral success of the web series, which received 5.2 million views on YouTube

Audition for a chance to play Alex.
Talk to Alex on Facebook.
More Videos

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Daily Twist


Oreo Daily Twist Case Study from Megan Sheehan on Vimeo.

Kraft Foods, which makes Oreo cookies, and a team of agencies has been finding out since late June when they began collaborating on a campaign for the brand called Daily Twist — a riff on the “twist, lick and dunk” ritual followed by many Oreo fans. The campaign is offering a whimsical, humorous or eye-catching ad each day to the more than 27.9 million people who “like” Oreo on Facebook; the daily ad can also be seen on oreo.com, Pinterest and Twitter.

The subjects of the Daily Twist ads have so far included gay pride, Elvis Presley Week, Bastille Day, the Mars rover, Talk Like a Pirate Day, the introduction of the Apple iPhone 5 and the Emmy Awards.

Check out the Oreo Daily Twist

Dumb Ways to Die



Safety Train warnings aren't especially memorable, but this quirky, animated bit is hard to forget. While setting fire to your hair or poking a grizzly bear are dumb ways to die, ignoring safety rules around trains is the dumbest of all. Dumb Ways to Die is from Metro Trains Melbourne who is a current franchise operator of the suburban railway network of Melbourne, Australia.  You can play the game on your phone.

The Power Inside



The Power Inside is a 2013 social film developed by Intel and Toshiba. It’s Intel and Toshiba’s third social film after The Beauty Inside (2012) and Inside (2011).  The film is broken up into six filmed episodes interspersed with interactive storytelling that all takes place on the main character's Facebook timeline. It's Hollywood's first social film that gives the audience the chance to help determine the fate of the world.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Choose To Be Happy 24 Hours A Day



Pharrell Williams recently released 24 Hours of Happy.  The singer-rapper-producer dropped a video for "Happy" that runs 24 hours and features a score of cameos, celebrity and otherwise. The interface for the video, found on the website 24hoursofhappy.com, sets the clip at a time corresponding to the local time of the viewer, with the ability to fast-forward, rewind and skip around to different times of the day.  Molly of Pitchfork.com actually watched all 24 hours of the video.  Her 5 Best Things:
  1. Gas Station B-Boy [12:29 AM] - Here a dancer (whose pop n’ lock game is on point) schools the ticking clock in the nuances of his dopeness. Between the Michael Jackson crotch-grab shuffle and dude’s crazy stop-motion robotics, it’s an impressive showcase set against the unassuming backdrop of a Culver City intersection.
  2. Magic Johnson Dancing In His Private Trophy Room [5:36 AM]
  3. Six hours into the video, the camera shifts from some dancing Despicable Me mascots onto a pair of giant white sneakers. An upward pan reveals that the shoes belong to Magic Johnson, who then takes us on a jaunt through his front yard and into his Beverly Hills estate. We pass an archive wall displaying every magazine cover he’s ever been featured on as well as a handful of china cabinets filled with commemorative basketballs and other impressive trappings of accomplishment. We end up in Magic’s private trophy room, where he shimmies joyously in front of five Lakers championship plaques and five golden NBA trophies. He’s wearing an "L.A." t-shirt the entire time.
  4. Jamie Foxx Using His Adorable Daughter as a Prop [5:28 PM]  Shortly after Steve Carell’s 5:08 PM appearance, Jamie Foxx and his two daughters parade down a train track, and all the youngest one can do is throw her hands up victoriously whenever Foxx throws her over his shoulder. It's a simple but poignantly adorable scene, beautifully framed in the waning desert sunlight.
  5. Odd Future’s Dance Routine [1:48 PM]  In their goofy cameo Tyler, The Creator, Earl Sweatshirt, and Jasper do a broadway-dandy dance routine that finds them twirl-jumping into jazz-handed layouts every time they hear the word “Happy”. They share a three-way high-five around 1:49, and leap through intersections before getting low on a sidewalk while swinging their arms and snapping like extras in a Dick Van Dyke musical. They are no match for the actual tuxedo-wearing dandies at 2:20 PM—professionally-trained showmen whose tap-dancing prowess is, I should point out, next-level—but here the perennial oddballs still look more happy-go-lucky than we’ve ever seen.

Pharrell’s Final Cameo (11:00 PM)

See the NY Times article on it:


One afternoon this fall Tyler, the Creator, and his buddies Earl Sweatshirt and Jasper Dolphin, of the rap collective Odd Future, turned up on a street corner in downtown Los Angeles. Their agenda: to shoot a cameo for the music video “Happy,” by Pharrell Williams.  No elaborate instructions were involved. “He hit me up and asked if I wanted to be in it, and I’m a big fan, and I said, ‘Yeah,’ ” Tyler recounted of the texted invitation. He happened to be hanging out with Earl and Jasper when the shoot happened, so they went along. They didn’t discuss what they would do or how they would move. No choreographer or costumer weighed in, and there was no set.  “We got out, they played the song, we walked down the block, five minutes later we’re driving back to our cars, and we left,” Tyler said. “It was sick.”  On screen, the three men, in grins and T-shirts (Tyler’s features a stoned-looking cat), execute jazzy, improbably synchronized dance moves that Tyler said they improvised on the spot. It’s a goofy and joyful off-the-cuff moment that belies the months of work and painstaking production that went into the song and the video, the latest of Mr. Williams’s many genre-defying projects. Unexpectedly, Mr. Williams struggled with it in the studio, even as he also had a hand in two of this year’s biggest songs, Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” and Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.”  Those tracks have some night life slink to them. “Happy,” written for the soundtrack of the animated film “Despicable Me 2,” is G rated: a four-minute composition layered over a gospel chord progression and an up-tempo organ thrum that invites listeners to clap along, “if you feel like happiness is a truth.” Its infectiousness was multiplied exponentially in November, when Mr. Williams revealed what he billed as the world’s first 24-hour music video, known online as “24 Hours of Happy.”  An ingenious interactive work, it moves through the day in real time, following a cast of hundreds of quirky people, a few celebrities and Mr. Williams, as they dance through Los Angeles. It quickly became a viral hit, with nearly 5.5 million views on its dedicated site, and a reputation as a surefire mood booster. Giddily addictive, it has already spawned imitators from Paris to Grand Rapids, Mich.  “I’ve never been connected to anything that big in my life,” Mr. Williams, 40, said of the waves of emotion the video has inspired. Two decades into a career as a hit maker for the likes of Jay Z, Britney Spears, Snoop Dogg, No Doubt and many more, he was being modest. This month he was nominated for seven Grammys, including producer of the year, for “Blurred Lines,” “Get Lucky,” “Happy” and others. “Happy” is also on the shortlist to be nominated for an Academy Award in January, for best song.  But it nearly didn’t happen. “This was a hard song for him to nail,” Christopher Meledandri, a producer of “Despicable Me 2,” said.  Trying to highlight a pivotal moment of character development in the movie, Mr. Williams wrote and rejected nine anthems. “I was just coming from a really pure place of, you know, not having any more ideas for it,” he said. “I was backed in the corner. I had nothing left.”  The film’s directors, Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud, pushed him, and he tried to stop thinking through the problem. “Because if I use my mind, then I had all these references, and that’s what the other nine songs were,” he said. “ ‘Happy’ would have had something about a little booty in there somewhere” — some vestige of a club track like Snoop’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot.” Instead, “I was like, what does being happy feel like?” Mr. Williams said at a recent event celebrating the film and the song at the Plaza Hotel in New York.  At the party, he wore a lumpy Margiela sweater and a T-shirt of his own design — fashion and art, two more worlds to conquer — and chatted casually with a couple unfamiliar with his multi-hyphenate artistic background, about growing up in Virginia.  “All of this is new to me,” he said, of his high-profile year. “I’m used to standing beside someone in a video, not standing in front.” In “24 Hours of Happy,” he appears at the top of every hour, nattily dressed and effortlessly shimmying around alleyways and bowling lanes. He shot the four-minute segments over two consecutive days in September, in 24 locations, but the entire filming lasted 11 days.  “It was brutal,” said Mimi Valdés, the creative director of Mr. Williams’s production company. But, she added, the crew members knew that if they could pull it off, “this could be big.”  The video, conceived by the French directing duo known as We Are From L.A., starts to play at a time that corresponds to the clock on viewers’ computers. From there, viewers can watch it chronologically or scroll around a clock face to see, say, a B-boy and modern dancer bouncing off the pumps at a gas station at half-past midnight, or Magic Johnson grooving in his home trophy room at 5:38 a.m. The video was shot in real time, too — there’s Kelly Osbourne, strolling Hollywood Boulevard at 1 a.m. — with the cast of over 360 getting only a single take each.  “It was one of the most surreal five minutes of my life,” said Ms. Osbourne, the TV host and fashion commentator. She had met Mr. Williams around Los Angeles, and he invited her to participate after they happened to vacation in the same spot. But she also didn’t get much background on the project. “I had seven-inch Saint Laurent heels on, not expecting to be dancing down Hollywood Boulevard,” she said. The sound came from a speaker on a wheelchair — “It looked like a homeless person had stolen it from a hospital” — and it was shot guerrilla style, with no streets blocked off. Spectators sometimes wander through a scene, or gawk. (Impromptu, Tyler, the Creator, grabbed a broom to dance with from a store’s display, and the shopkeeper followed him to retrieve it.)  The voice actors from “Despicable Me 2,” like Steve Carell and Miranda Cosgrove, also appear, along with some costumed characters from the movie (Mr. Williams’s idea). Ms. Cosgrove merely walks, slightly bobbing, down the street in her section. “I’m a really bad dancer,” she explained. “That was, like, a lot for me. I feel like I was going all out.” But the freedom to do as she pleased was appealing.  “With other music videos, they’ve been really structured, and you have to worry about the story line, and this was really about having a good time,” said Ms. Cosgrove, an actress and singer. “All the people that were in the crew were dancing on the other side of the camera. It was really fun. I felt like it was like a flash mob or something.”  The video’s directors, Clément Durou and Pierre Dupaquier, didn’t expect audiences to watch the whole thing consecutively. “Even us, we didn’t watch the 24 hours in a row,” Mr. Durou said in a phone interview from Paris. (A few bloggers have done it, though, and Mr. Durou said his mother was making an attempt.) They did hope to disrupt the normally passive act of watching music videos.  “The main point is to create freedom for the viewers and to make actors, and not spectators, in front of the videos,” Mr. Durou said. And they wanted to showcase a canon of movement on screen, “like a dictionary of dance,” Mr. Durou said.  So the marriage of Mr. Williams’s toe-tapping song and their interactive 24-hour concept — which they had had for a while — was creatively fortuitous, they said. The diverse locations and casting, which Mr. Williams insisted on, also fit, Mr. Durou said, to show that whoever, “whenever and wherever you are, you can be happy.”