Del Toro Promises Serious Scares in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark | Underwire

SAN DIEGO — Guillermo Del Toro told would-be horror storytellers to keep things visual if they want him to consider their projects.

“I can’t listen to story pitches,” he said during the Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark presentation at Comic-Con International here Friday, “but If you’ve got a portfolio of drawings or a short film, fucking show it to me!”

He’s not just blowing hot air. First-time feature filmmaker Troy Nixey got his shot at directing old-school screamfest Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark by e-mailing Del Toro a few .jpgs featuring monsters from his 2000 short film Latchkey’s Lament.

“To get a guy like Guillermo Del Toro to see your short film and then ask you to direct a movie he wrote the script for is like a dream come true,” Nixey said during the Hall H presentation.

The filmmakers unveiled a Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark trailer and previewed a gripping Gothic sequence centered on an exceptionally brutal bit of dungeon dentistry performed on a hapless housemaid who falls down the stairs. After the clip, Del Toro questioned an admiring fan: “Did you crap in your pants?…. Figuratively of course.”

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, set for Jan. 21 release, contains no profanity or nudity, but nonetheless received an R rating because it was simply too scary for younger audiences.

“I consider that R a badge of honor,” said Del Toro, who wrote and produced the movie, which is based on a 1973 TV movie of the same name.

He scripted the remake in 1997 but had a hard time selling its hard-core terror to studio bigwigs, who wanted the filmmaker to tone down the ending. The setup: When a little girl (played by Bailee Madison) visits her father (Guy Pearce) and his girlfriend (Katie Holmes) in the old mansion, she triggers evil forces within.

A day earlier at Comic-Con, Del Toro announced that he will be developing a movie called The Haunted Mansion based on the classic Disney attraction.

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See Also:

L I V E  E V E R Y  L I T R E +>online participatory doc hits the road in a Honda hybrid -how far will they get?

Not all journeys are about distance. Earlier this year we set out on a road trip across Europe to film people on their own once-in-a-lifetime journeys. From sailing a bouncy castle to dancing naked on the streets of Paris.

We asked you to be the stars of the films, to plot the routes and even make the music. Thousands of you took part and helped us choose 13 people to hit the road.

38 days, 18 European cities and 10,000 kilometres later, you can see all of the films you helped make, right here.

You Suck at Transmedia post» David Varela talks YSA Measurement & ARGs

Excerpt:

"The numbers: our core space in Home got 4.5 million visits from around 620,000 players in 3 months. There were another 11 spaces that came and went during the course of the game. There were other numbers too: the Xi messageboards had 18 million views and tens of thousands of messages. There were hundreds of Xi-related videos on YouTube and a dozen or more wikis and fan sites. Anecdotally, some players said they’d gone from visiting Home maybe once a month to spending 40+ hours a week in there.
So a few lessons in learned:

1. Advertisers love these figures. But the thing is, the anecdotal ones carry more weight than you’d think – they become the headline that the ad man leads with when selling the concept. They maybe not have the rigour of online tracking, but they have emotional power. Like a good newspaper quote, they can really help demonstrate success."

Read more at Christy Dena's blog, You Suck at Transmedia:

http://bit.ly/b9iOwY

Hill Holliday Blog » A Site That Went Viral and The Numbers Behind It - grazie Christy Dena!

A Site That Went Viral and The Numbers Behind It

by Ilya Vedrashko | July 21st, 2010

It is an unfortunate but understandable reality that while we often marvel at digital projects that spread like wildfire across the web, we rarely get a chance to look at the numbers behind them. Between January and May, we built, launched and monitored Jerzify Yourself (warning: sound on autoplay) to get just such a glimpse into the dynamics of spreadable content.

This is going to be a long post, so if you are in a hurry, check the summary published in AdAge or scroll all the way down to the list of the most important things we’ve learned from this experiment.

The Setup

Jerzify Yourself was created in January a week after the first season finale of a certain MTV show that had attracted an audience of 4.8 million. The site, written in a few days in Flash, provides a familiar attraction of uploading one’s headshot onto a stylized body, and is packed with references recognizable by the show’s viewers. Or, in the much more lively words of Village Voice: ”The gist is Snooki-grade simple: upload a medium-sized jpg, scale the image to fit, choose your spraytan shade, pick your pose — and holy Freckles McGee, you’re magically recast as a human meatball.”...

read more: http://www.hhcc.com/blog/?p=2814

Read Online! Spider-Man: India Comics Online Issue #4 |

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The Story: When Pavitr Prabhakar donned the costume of Spider-Man, he didn’t realize the danger and tragedy that he’d have to face. Now Pavitr finds his whole life has led to one moment, one chance for Spider-Man to put things right and bring down the maniacal man-turned-monster known as…the Green Goblin! In this final issue of the first Spider-Man: India limited series, It’s a desperate fight to the finish with the fate of India hanging in the balance!

Now how could we play with this??? 3D Printing Inches Toward Affordability for Small Businesses

Check out this website I found at networkedblogs.com

Excerpt:

"High-resolution 3D printing crept further into reach for small businesses this morning when Z Corporation announced two new models of its ZPrinter line of 3D printers.

The ZPrinter 150 and 250 models, priced at $14,999 and $24,999 respectively, are being touted by the company as an ideal solution for classrooms and small businesses.

3D printing has been used for years by large firms, medical professionals and governments to quickly create 3D prototypes of product designs, human body parts, architectural models and just about anything else that can be imagined and drawn up using CAD software. It's only in recent years that the printers have begun to drop in price to the point where they can fit within the budget of smaller companies."

It's about unique value & participatory narrative: Transmedia & Jeff Gomez: from the Bible to Middle Earth to Coca-Cola to Melbourne

 

by: David Tiley

Screen Hub, Wednesday 21 July, 2010

Jeff Gomez, transmedia proselyte, is a high priest of a development model which proves there actually is a secret conspiracy to control us all. This is something you should probably know.

Jeff Gomez, who owns Starlight Runner Entertainment, has one of the best roles in the screen sector. In public he is called a transmedia producer - a role he helped develop - but his task is actually much deeper than that.

Transmedia producers manage the spread of a project across its attendant media and ancillaries, which can encompass comics, novels, music, toys, spin off series, webisodes, and the vast range of product-based tie-ins, which in turn can involve the placement deals. It is about spreading the brand, creating new connections and opportunities, tracking the monetisation, and resolving the complex intellectual property issues. It is connected to the original property, to project income, to marketing, and the management of fans.

This is not about plonking a character on a shirt, or a doll in a toyshop. To the proselytes like Gomez, the task is to tell important stories related to the original material across the range of material. It is called transmedia storytelling.

On the phone, Jeff cited the webisodes for Battlestar Galactica as an elegant example. "Things were revealed about ancillary characters, or terrestrial creatures or certain concepts that could be viewed independently but gave you new insight into the characters and concepts of the show." he said. "They made you want to go back to the show, and re-examine their characters and motivations – that’s a great transmedia mutation because it caused you to look at the ancillary and rethink whats going on in the main content."

This makes sense as a marketing tool. The ancillaries reach far beyond the film, and can be made to point back to it. "Look at District Nine", he said, "and its marketing. Almost everything in that marketing was canonical. That makes it fascinating, and helped to build the level of interest in the film. You are paying for that if you are a studio. However, you might also accrue a number of licensees for the tee shirts and magazine and comic books and toys, based on your IP. Why not go further and give them bits of canonical content so you are simultaneously licensing the content, and nurturing the storyworld? That is a major rethink for many of our clients to get that."

To do this, the story elements have to be distributed across the media, and therefore ruthlessly consistent. Indeed, the central property has to be able to bear the strain of all this extra material. This is far more elaborate than ensuring all the properties enhance the brand - it cuts to the heart of the script and the world it creates and inhabits.

This is the bit that creates a model of development which explains just why and how the big tentpole franchises are filling our multiplexes - a process which can be subverted for our more modest purposes.

Gomez is creating bibles for films or television series which go far beyond the bible as we understand it in series production, although we are familiar with the basic notion. It is an intricate description of the world, the characters, the connections, timelines, backstory, any fantastical elements or conventions or special devices. It articulates, binds and bounds everything.

He used the example of Tolkien, saying, "Middle Earth was built on an enormous amount of research and development. A hyper-elaborate bible with a whole language and world was made before he wrote 'The Hobbit'. So what we are building is closer to that model. A platform neutral development of the storyworld."

read more.... www.xmedia.com

whoa! Celebrated authors bypass publishing houses to sell ebooks via Amazon (check the authors list!)

Philip Roth Philip Roth is one of several major authors bypassing publishers to sell digital versions of their books via Amazon. Photograph: Orjan F Ellingvag/Dagbladet/Corbis

An eye-wateringly stellar list of authors, from Philip Roth to Orhan Pamuk, Martin Amis and John Updike, is bypassing publishers to sell digital editions of books directly to readers, via Amazon.

The brainchild of uber-agent Andrew "The Jackal" Wylie, Odyssey Editions launches today. It offers 20 modern literary classics as ebooks for the first time, exclusively via Amazon.com's Kindle store. The books, all priced at Amazon's usual ebook rate of $9.99, range from Amis's London Fields, Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and VS Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival to titles from the estates of dead authors such as John Updike, William S Burroughs, Saul Bellow and Hunter S Thompson.

The authors all share Wylie as their agent, and the move makes good on his threat last month that, dissatisfied with the terms publishers have been offering for ebooks, he would remove them from the equation.

"We will take our 700 clients, see what rights are not allocated to publishers, and establish a company on their behalf to license those ebook rights directly to someone like Google, Amazon.com, or Apple. It would be another business, set up on parallel tracks to the frontlist book business," he told Harvard Magazine in June.

The exclusive deal with Amazon, which will last for two years, effectively removes other booksellers from the equation as well: modern classics including Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas will only be sold through the internet retailer.

"As the market for ebooks grows, it will be important for readers to have access in ebook format to the best contemporary literature the world has to offer," said Wylie, who worked with the UK company Enhanced Editions on the digital project. "This publishing programme is designed to address that need, and to help ebook readers build a digital library of classic contemporary literature."

The move is likely to concern publishers. In December, Random House wrote to agents informing them of its belief that it holds exclusive rights to digital editions of the "vast majority" of its backlist titles, even those acquired before electronic rights were specifically included in contracts. That letter enraged authors, and the Authors Guild issued a statement saying that "publishers acquire only the rights that they bargain for; authors retain rights they have not expressly granted to publishers. E-book rights, under older book contracts, were retained by the authors."

The guild also pointed to a 2001 court ruling, which dismissed Random House's claim that its copyright had been breached when ebook publisher Rosetta Books acquired digital rights in eight novels by the American writers Kurt Vonnegut and William Styron.

But Random House – which publishes physical editions of some of the Odyssey titles – looks set to challenge the new venture. Spokesman Stuart Applebaum said in a statement that the publisher was "disappointed by Mr Wylie's actions".

He continued: "Last night, we sent a letter to Amazon disputing their rights to legally sell these titles, which are subject to active Random House publishing agreements. Upon assessing our business options, we will be taking appropriate action."

Eleven of the Odyssey titles will be available globally, according to Amazon.com. The tension between publishers and authors over ebook rights has also been growing in the UK: earlier this month historian and novelist Tom Holland, chair of the Society of Authors, said that the deals authors were being asked to sign up to for ebooks were "not remotely fair".

The current standard royalty for ebooks in the UK is 25%, but authors believe it should be 50%, as digital editions have lower warehousing and distribution costs.

American literary agent Robert Gottlieb, chairman of the Trident Media Group, said agents were also pushing for better royalty rates in the US. "As of this time, publishers are doing their hardest to hold to the 25%. My view is this is a moving target and, as time goes by and the market place becomes more competitive, publishers will have to negotiate ebook royalties on a case-by-case basis," he said.

Although Gottlieb wished Andrew well in his new venture, he felt that an agent becoming, in effect, a publisher contained "the potential for a conflict of interest with authors and/or estates", and is not contemplating a similar move himself.

Wylie's initiative is not the first time authors have looked to bypass publishers. In December, bestselling business author Stephen Covey announced that he had sold exclusive digital rights in two of his bestselling titles to Amazon, cutting out his traditional publisher Simon & Schuster. The deal was made via Rosetta Books, which also struck a similar deal in the US for a collection of titles by Ian McEwan. And with Amazon.com offering authors a royalty of 70% for ebooks sold via its Kindle store, the trend only looks set to continue.

Full list of titles published by Odyssey Editions and available on the Kindle:

London Fields by Martin Amis

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

Ficciones (Spanish edition) by Jorge Luis Borges

Junky by William Burroughs

The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The Enigma of Arrival by VS Naipaul

The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson

Rabbit Run by John Updike

Rabbit Redux by John Updike

Rabbit is Rich by John Updike

Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Excerpt:

"An eye-wateringly stellar list of authors, from Philip Roth to Orhan Pamuk, Martin Amis and John Updike, is bypassing publishers to sell digital editions of books directly to readers, via Amazon.

The brainchild of uber-agent Andrew "The Jackal" Wylie, Odyssey Editions launches today. It offers 20 modern literary classics as ebooks for the first time, exclusively via Amazon.com's Kindle store. The books, all priced at Amazon's usual ebook rate of $9.99, range from Amis's London Fields, Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and VS Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival to titles from the estates of dead authors such as John Updike, William S Burroughs, Saul Bellow and Hunter S Thompson.

The authors all share Wylie as their agent, and the move makes good on his threat last month that, dissatisfied with the terms publishers have been offering for ebooks, he would remove them from the equation.

"We will take our 700 clients, see what rights are not allocated to publishers, and establish a company on their behalf to license those ebook rights directly to someone like Google, Amazon.com, or Apple. It would be another business, set up on parallel tracks to the frontlist book business," he told Harvard Magazine in June..."

read more: guardian.co.uk

Holy Crap! check the detailed data summary: You want an interactive map of where Facebook is used? Happy to help | Technology | guardian.co.uk

You want to know which countries Facebook has made the greatest inroads into? Happy to help.

With data from Nick Burcher, plus some data about the world population (thanks, Wikipedia), plus a little bit of SQL, plus OpenHeatMap, we've got an interactive map you can play with to see where Facebook is all-conquering - specifically, which countries it has the largest (and sometimes smallest) number of the population signed up for, in hitting its 500 million user mark.