Shared Creation Projects

All Consuming Principle (need to change this title)

Its been a long time since the Consumed film project was first mooted. Some footage has been produced (links here) but the final film was never produced. I think this is due in part to the brilliant script. Thats not sarcasm. The original Consumed script was brilliant. It also was one that we found hard to complete. There will shortly be a video blog telling the story of the script, the crew from a producers point of view, but the short version is - not everything came together.

All is not lost however. I’ve have been watching the Web video and have come up with a way of telling the zombie story behind Consumed. Not with the original script - that will wait for the right day to be made. This is what will happen instead. The principles behind the Consumed zombies will be published and I will follow those principles to make some very short films. Cameos of the action if you like. Each one showing a fragment from the overall story of the Consumed story arc. The objective here is to build up a feel for the Consumed ‘Universe’ because I would like to throw the gauntlet open to other Zombie fans. Make your own film true to the Consumed mythos and lets build up the story of the society being ‘Consumed’ by a rising tide of Zombies.

So here’s the plan. I’ll shortly release a video and a PDF that talks about the idea of opening up the Consumed universe and then I will produce some very short vignette pieces that set the tone. Slowly we’ll build Consumed up into a great Zombie story.

Until then watch out - there may be a zombie behind you.

Take a look at

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeRX1R8Nmnk

Its a advert from a student media project.

I’m including it because it is cool and I want to support new talent.

It also heralds a start of a change in posting style. I’m going to start seeking out talent and helping the world to find it

Hopefully this will work out cool

I’m going to mention a project right at the very start of its life and I’m wishing it the very best of luck.

It’s called the Mindmunity and it is a blog dedicated to the creation of a community of like minded individuals sharing and improving ideas.

The Mindmunity team have put together a fun video to explain their concept. You can see it here

There is a kinship here with Shared Creation. SC shares news, ideas and projects to help out with creative projects. Whilst Mindmunity openly publishes and refines ideas. I think in a way I was bound to like this idea.

Taking a look at the website the MindMunity team are making full use of the current wave of online communities. This is a good idea. If you want to talk you need to go where the people are.

There have been ideas communities in the past, but the ones I can remember seeing have taken the form of a forum. I think blogs, micro-blogs and social networks area good modern take on this idea. Not just because these are the way of doing things right now, but because it raises accessability. Future readers and contributors of Mindmunity can work from their comfort zone, and probably create better output as a result.

Good luck Mindmunity.

Technorati Tags: idea, share, community

Ok things have been a bit quiet on Projects recently. I apologize for any inconvenience. To make up for this here are few thoughts on the nature of broadcast.

I cannot help to see the rise of personal broadcast. These thoughts have been brought on by a culmination of experiences. I think these are important and I hope you find these interesting.

I’ve been experimenting with Twitter. I’ve not really experienced anything like Twitter before. It’s part blog, part instant communication and part social network. It enables a stream of consciousness to reach the world, and for immediate crowd sourcing. It is a subtle and powerful tool. One that enables its user to make friends, support friends, and broadcast to like minded strangers. I’ve recently heard it mentioned that the next big thing on the Internet is the conversation. If my experience with Twitter is anything to go by then this is true. Twitter is also cheap to use. The minimal requirement is a mobile phone (you can broadcast by SMS), although it is at it’s best with a basic PC. PCs are now so cheap that some ISP’s are giving them away to encourage custom.

My next thoughts come from how cheap it is to set up a basic to web TV station. I’m not talking about the new cool stations emerging like Channel Flip or Joost or even the familiar fun and games on YouTube. I’m talking about individuals or community groups. You see I’ve recently been working with a community that over a few months has been teaching people to use PCs and video camera’s to create local content. The equipment bought has been cheap and from the consumer end of things. Literally a few thousand pounds - and that’s to equip 3 workstations and 2 cameramen. The people have all joined the project to learn how to use PC’s,Video Camera’s and to make films. Yet their quality of output slowly gains quality and tells me that using facilities such as YouTube and Blip TV it is now possible to for any community to broadcast to itself and the world. You can see the early output of the group I’ve been working with here.

Finally I must mention a very special broadcaster,  one from whom an awful lot can be learnt. His name is Leo Laporte. His main website (one of many) is here. I’ll refer to him as Leo for short. Leo is an established technology journalist and pundit in the USA. I first became aware of Leo about 3 years ago listening to technology podcasts. However this was only a warm-up. His latest enterprise is outstanding. Leo is sitting in a studio, creating content, and talking to the world via a variety of Internet based broadcast means. Leo is now not a just a man - he is a combined on demand TV and Radio station. If you’d like to see this in action then click here.

These three factors - the ease of mass broadcast, the ability of anyone to create video content and the rise of the one man broadcast network all validate this thought - that we are living on the verge of the individual and the community becoming increasingly important. That for me sounds like the rise of the story-tellers and bards of ancient times. It feels to me as if a circle is being completed and something outstanding will rise from it.

I’ll continue - as I have been to talk about this and to do what I can to help people get creative - by sharing experiences and information.

Tags: Leo, Laporte, Broadcast, Web, Community, Internet, Personal, Channel, Flip, YouTube, Joost, Twitter

I’m just going to spent a moment pointing out an interesting little video project in South Wales.

Based around TRAC2 (one of two community resource and activity centres in Torfaen) the Community Snapshot project aims to teach people basic use of video camera’s and PCs through the medium of making short film(s) about the community.

The projects first piece - an introduction to its members is now out on YouTube and can be found here.

The actual project itself is not so unusual.

That said if you are part of a community video program please contact Shared Creation so that you can have a mention.

What it does do is make me realise that creating video is becoming fairly easy. After all with a half decent laptop, a small video camera, some basic software and something like a YouTube or BlipTV account not only are community videos possible but so is a community TV or radio station.

Which leads on to a question to answer - if community Internet TV or Internet Radio gets big - how do you list and use all the stations and talent that emerges.

Barely a week ago I was talking about how easy it was for a creative project to have problems with its supply of energy and that Consumed was such a position.

Now I have great news. Our director and lead cameraman has released edited footage from our last shoot to the team and it is looking very good. There are moments in it that have exceeded my expectations. Alas I cannot show this new material yet, thought I do feel a video blog coming on regarding it. The important thing is that we have a new point to rally around. A fresh point of focus if you like. It is exactly what was needed and it came at the right time. It would seem that you can’t keep an attempt to make a good film down.

At the moment we’re distributing this as a piece of private footage on YouTube. We’ve done this before and it works very well. Don’t try sending footage around for viewing purposes only. Use something like YouTube or Google Video. It simplifies the entire process.

There’s a useful side effect too. How it will index. Under YouTube put in a private video, play it a few times and you can see which related videos will come up alongside it. So far we’re seeing Consumed videos from different members of the team grouping together. This self networking should help us out in the long term.

It would seem that things keep looking up and up.

Tags: Consumed, Film, Progress, Report

10 days ago I announced the Eggy Challenge, and now it is time to announce the results, but first a few discoveries I made along the way.

Last year we focused on amateur videos from You Tube. This year there were videos, but I had a look around You Tube and one year on it is dominated by commercial adverts. They look cool , but it is a sign of a times that viral marketing by the man is getting more prevalent on You Tube. Of course one search isn’t a trend - and everyone does love Cadbury Creme egg adverts but I hope the massive results of commercial work don’t make it harder for small producers to find their niches.

Here though are the video results. Despite what I’ve just said all from You Tube. I’ll just post the links here, and let you have surprise when you see what’s behind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsCGWpQSwfQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrCb_fNmSTA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl6ggWqpB1c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uDJK9NxwVg

Now it is time for photographs. No photos were send to me so I visited my favourite stomping ground for pictures - Flickr. What I found here were plenty of very documentary and representational pictures of Cadbury’s Creme eggs, and things didn’t get more interesting until I widened the search somewhat. It would seem that photographers don’t get quite so creative with the Great British pastime of creme egg abuse.

So here are the pictures. Again - I’ve avoided description so you’ll have to click to find out more

http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonkimber/413757286/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/azredheadedbrat/392296378/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/-sel-/128179574/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jsuler/449660891/

All that remains for me to do is to say have a wonderful Easter.

Tags: Cadbury, Creme, Egg, Easter, Video, Photograph