For the last few months, we've found ourselves up to our armpits in engineers, scientists, developers and designers from Ford Motor Company. It is part of a larger initiative launched recently called Ford Drive One, a part intended to help find some of the interesting stories among the fascinating teams at Ford Motor Company. Now the auto and mainstream press are starting to weigh in on the first of that larger series of web videos. We're fortunate to be working again with friends at Team Detroit (including Toby Barlow, Sam Walsh, Matthew Jacobson and Rick Todd), some of our dearest collaborators (including Jonny Leahan, Darren Himebrook and Miguel Drake-McLaughlin), and a number of new faces (including editor Chris Bremer and the Detroit crews from Rare Medium), all for a client we've worked with before. Our brains are spinning with science ... in a good way. More of those collective labors forthcoming.
It is time again for the Tribeca Film Festival, which means the kick-off of our annual Filmmaker Talks at the Apple Store in SoHo. We're flattered to have an amazing collection of guests again, this year including actor Clive Owen (4/25), screenwriter Tony Gilroy and comedienne Amy Poehler (4/26), filmmaker Guy Maddin (4/27), documentarian Morgan Spurlock (4/28), screenwriter/producer Tom Kalin and legendary actress Isabella Rossellini (4/29), director Greg Mottola (4/30), screenwriter/director Harmony Korine (5/1), director and Beastie Boy Adam Yauch (5/2), screenwriter Paul Haggis (4/3) and actor/filmmaker Matthew Modine (4/4). All of the events are free, but have limited room and have been known to fill up. Meanwhile, indieWIRE's in-depth coverage of the Tribeca Film Festival starts ramping up next week as well.
Back in April, we mentioned there was this game called Eldritch Errors but that we didn't want to spoil any surprises. In December, a Wired article about alternate reality gaming hinted at what we've been aiming at with the project. As an immersive horror story playing out in real-time on the Web and everywhere else, Eldritch Errors places the participants in the center of the story as the protagonists. They might also find themselves starring in future graphic novels, television shows and films re-telling their adventures for broader audiences. It is an independent media model that collaborates more deeply with participants than just thinking of them as the "target audience". As the events of Book Three start to stumble into view, the curious might keep their eyes on EldritchErrors.com and the Sentry Outpost forums ... but then, we all remember what curiosity did to the cat, right?
Last year, indieWIRE picked up the mantle of an annual poll of film critics at alternative weekly dropped by the Village Voice, expanding the critics list with some of the best film reviewers on the web. Tommorrow, we'll announce the results of our 2nd annual poll, but we've already revealed one of our favorite aspects of it -- the best undistributed films of 2007. Congratulations to Lee Chang-dong (for "Secret Sunshine") and all the other unsung filmmakers who caught the critics' eyes this year.
Unlike most project launches, a story that relies upon mystery and suspense requires you to cultivate a certain level of intrigue that trumps self-promotional instincts. There's a fine line, though, between mystery and the appearance of deceit. As people discover something strange and look for confirmation, trust-building requires that some authentication be out there. So, yes, there's this game. If we tell you too much about it, you'll get fewer goosebumps, so perhaps all you need to do is think about what the name might promise:
eldritch (adj) - suggesting the operation of supernatural influences. Syn: weird, uncanny, unearthly.
errors (n) - wrong actions attributable to bad judgement or ignorance or inattention; the occurence of incorrect results produced by a computer. Syn: mistakes, faults, wrongdoing.
Just because people are reporting all kinds of strange experiences doesn't mean those weird occurences aren't connected, however obscure that connection might seem as the story begins. Although a rose by any other name might still smell as sweet, a loathsome canker still lies in sweetest bud.
Getting ready to catch a plane tomorrow for one of the longer conference junkets I've been on in a while. First stop, San Francisco, where the intimacy of the ARGFest-o-Con kicks off on Friday and through the weekend before heading into the chaos of the Game Developers Conference next week (where I'm going to soak in the independent games movement for a few days.) From there, it is straight from San Francisco to Austin for SXSW where we have a few things going on, from another panel about alternate reality games at SXSW Interactive to our Sunday night mashup party. Intrepid indieWIREr James Israel also debuts his newest short, "Face Value," and Eugene Hernandez will also be kicking in for the film conference. Whew! Already looks like a tremendous opportunity to catch up with all kinds of old friends from a variety of media (as well as soaking in some fresh inspiration from IGF.)
This morning, indieWIRE released the results of our first annual poll of film critics, providing a glimpse into the minds and tastes of film reviewers as we head into awards season (you can pick through the individual ballots of each critic to your heart's content.) 107 film critics with newspapers, alternate weeklies and online film sites participated, coordinated by Dennis Lim (who previously ran the Village Voice critic's poll) and Anthony Kaufman, both of whom provide wrap-ups among the meaty coverage that comes with the announcement.
Our thanks to all the reviewers and writers who participated ... and to the filmmakers and films who showed up anywhere on the list.
indieWIRE 2006 Critic's Picks Winners (full list)
- Best Film: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
- Best Performance: Helen Mirren, The Queen
- Best Supporting Performance: Mark Wahlberg, The Departed
- Best Director: Martin Scorsese, The Departed
- Best Screenplay: Peter Morgan, The Queen
- Best First Film: Brick, Rian Johnson
- Best Documentary: Iraq in Fragments, James Longley
- Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, Children of Men
- Best Undistributed Film: Woman on the Beach
For the last few months, we've been collaborating with Ford, JWT and @radical.media on a rather remarkable project that launched at the end of June: FordBoldMoves.com, a weekly online documentary and journalism project looking at Ford's efforts at transforming their North American operations.
At my blog at ReveNews, I pondered a bit more about the project's connection to Cluetrain and transformation and about the role of activity theory and scaffolding in digital media. Those just barely scratch the surface, though, of the ways some familiar and not-so-familiar ideas come together in a project as unusual as this one.
Ford Bold Moves continues weekly at least through the end of the year.
Getting backed up on exciting announcements, but none as exciting as a couple of HUGE expansions in indieWIRE. Focusing on the San Francisco indie scene, SF360 is result of our new strategic partnership with the San Francisco Film Society and is headed up by new indieWIRE San Francisco Bureau Chief Susan Gerhard (welcome aboard!) At the same time, indieWIRE expanded on its core commitment to community with indieLOOP, our independent media social networking environment. Why settle for discussion boards and classifieds when you can give your community of readers so much more?
It seems like a lot of the time, companies don't treat all of their customers all that well. That common experience, we hope, becomes the fuel for an amusing blogging experiment called Everyday Hogwash: elicit some therapeutic yuks on your blog at the millions of little ways companies stick it to us and win daily & weekly cash prizes. Impress the judges in the finals and you could be taking home a $5,000 grand prize ... for a blog entry on your blog. Everyday Hogwash continues daily (duh!) now through the end of March, 2005 (and we hope it proves a blast.)
A small launch, but a really pretty one, for agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky and their clients Viacom and the Kaiser Family Foundation focusing on AIDS awareness. "Spread the Know" features some more stellar Flash work from collaborator David Kraftsow (who worked with us last on the great Virgil Tatum mini-games for Audi like this one) and was coordinated by good buddy Darren Himebrook (who was our producer for the Sharp "More to See" project last year before joining Crispin.)
Wow, we're sometimes bad about announcing when relaunch stuff for ourselves, so while our indieWIRE regulars certainly know that indieWIRE got a massive facelift just in time for the Toronto Film Festival, I neglected to even mention it here. Bad, brand builder, bad!It has been getting rave reviews in the past few weeks (especially for its new approach of focusing on strong imagery), but the best is still in development pipeline as we energize our indie film blogger network and encyclopedia efforts. The most exciting (and geekily revealing) aspect for us? indieWIRE is now powered by Movable Type, the same platform that thousands of bloggers use -- which shows you just how flexible a "blog" could really be once you start thinking of it as a content management system that you can build upon.
Steve Rosenbaum (who I keep running into in the strangest places) turned me on today to really amazing tool called the Broadcast Machine from the folks at Downhill Battle (who I promise not to call silly anymore). I got excited about broadcatching (BitTorrent + RSS) about a year ago after struggling to make feature film downloads work financially. Now an organization that spawned from people resisting the RIAA have birthed an interesting new weapon for indie filmmakers, especially since it could dove-tail with other initiatives. I suspect it will take filmmakers a bit longer to realize how podcasting was just a warm up for them broadcatching, and by then they'll be glad they have something that makes it easy.
