Prison Valley – a web documentary exploring the prison industry- 'Canon City =the clean version of hell'

Welcome to Cañon City, Colorado.

A town in the middle of nowhere with 36,000 souls and 13 prisons, one of which is Supermax, the new 'Alcatraz' of America. A prison town where even those living on the outside live on the inside. A journey into what the future might hold.

A web documentary by David Dufresne & Philippe Brault.

Nothing is Impossible - Aniboom Open Contest for 3 min shorts- 4 days left!

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This is a new opportunity made available for its animators by Aniboom. In fact this could be the ultimate imagination stretcher for twenty-something Aniboom filmmakers around the world, because what we're looking for are films that bring to life the idea of nothing is impossible. When you think about it, animation and digital filmmaking is the art that can defy all the natural laws of physics and logic to make anything happen before your very eyes. Saatchi & Saatchi's creative reputation has a lot to do with the conviction that nothing is impossible, which explains the name of the challenge.

First, every year the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors' Showcase is presented at the Cannes Advertising Festival. The audience is the industry's creative and production elite from around the world, and the winner will be announced and the film screened as part of the twentieth Showcase this year. Which explains why the Challenge is open to twenty-something filmmakers. Second, if you win, you'll be offered the opportunity to work on a project with one of Saatchi & Saatchi's 140 global network offices. And third, your success will be celebrated here and on Saatchi & Saatchi's NDS Channel on YouTube.

You can enter an existing film of yours that brings to life the idea of nothing is impossible. Or, you may look at the deadline, decide that nothing really is impossible and create a new piece from scratch. All submissions must be 3 minutes or less.

We're open for submissions from May 6th, then you have until midnight (CET) on June 6 to enter your film.

On 14th June twenty finalists will be be featured on Aniboom's site.
The Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide Creative Board will choose the winner from these.

Visitors will be invited to vote on the twenty finalists too, and a People's Choice will emerge based on these votes. The People's Choice will be featured and celebrated on this site and on Saatchi & Saatchi's NDS channel on YouTube. Question is, will the Board and the People think the same?

Augmented Reality for Autism « Games Alfresco plays of Sixth Sense tech

I have very little experience with people on the Autistic spectrum, but designer Timothy Byrne of Western Washington University has a brother with an autistic disorder, a fact the propelled him to invent “Sixthsense for Autism”. Building upon MIT’s Pranav Mistry’s SixthSense technology, this conceptual project tries to provide its user social cues for everyday situations. Here’s for example standing in line while using the device:

In the following video Byrne explains the motivations behind his design and show some other uses:

Visit the West Washington University’s channel on Youtube for more possible uses of Sixthsense, such as aiding those with impaired memory, in the classroom, for construction, and while driving or traveling.

[via Yanko Design]

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Part 6 Using Interactivity |Maureen McHugh's final installment

How then, to create an interactive experience that is also scripted? There are a couple of answers to that.

Of all of the aspects of making a transmedia project, writing is the most flexible. The place where the audience is most likely to affect the story is in websites and in email responses. This can range from referring to something that the audience has emailed to a character, or left as a message on an answering machine (more likely the former than the latter, because it is a lot easier and takes a lot less time to scan 300 emails for content than to listen to 300 voice mails, and these projects are usually run by a very small crew) to actually using audience speculation as a plot detail. During The Beast, two different graphic production guys working on two unrelated websites picked stock photos of the same woman to use on the site. The audience noticed the mistake.

On the email thread where they posted about the mistake, they eventually came up with a reason. The character, who worked for a research company called Donutech, had moonlighted by selling her likeness to a company that made androids. The idea was such a good one that the people creating the experience (called puppetmasters by the audience) incorporated it into the story. They put something in (I don’t remember if it was an email or what it was) that dramatized the scenario worked out by the audience.

Unfortunately, if the audience corrects a mistake, they don’t know about the effect they’ve had on the story until after the story is over when the creators tell them. It’s an odd interaction that doesn’t feel interactive.

Interaction, promised by computers and the internet, isn’t really very sophisticated yet. Anyone who has ever suffered through a dialogue tree in a video game knows that. (Video games are developing conventions to avoid conversations between the player and npcs, specifically because of this.) Phone and text parsers make mistakes, the way spell checkers make mistakes. Language is slippery, flexible, difficult. Programming is advancing but Eliza doesn’t really feel human yet.

The ideal is the holodeck, of course. An artificial intelligence that responds to the audience, changing the plot, running the characters, making the story adapt to actions.

In the interim, we transmedia creators are all waiting for widespread augmented reality. We are looking forward to a time when we can tag the world, and leave a trail of messages that you can see, written on walls, in subways, on sidewalks, when looking through your phone.

And we are trying to create our breakthrough, our Grand Theft Auto or Gone With the Wind.

Six to Start Makes a Transmedia Game Out of Wired UK Issue

Six to Start Makes a Game Out of Wired UK Issue

June 1, 2010 · By Jane Doh in Features, Game Launch, News 

six to start wired ukWired UK has teamed up with alternate reality game designers Six to Start, creators of the 2010 SXSW Best Game Award winner Smokescreen, to make this month’s issue of Wired UK a platform for a transmedia game contest. Six to Start’s immersive transmedia games have been widely recognized for high-quality storytelling and entertaining game play. In Smokescreen, Six to Start and Channel 4 launched a fictional social network that brought issues of online identity and privacy to the forefront for a target audience of 14- to 19-year-olds. We Tell Stories, winner of the 2008 SXSW Experimental and Best in Show Awards, involved a collaboration with Penguin Books to encourage the reinvention and retelling of classic stories.

A novel mix of traditional print publishing and digital experience, this month’s issue of Wired UK contains a game within its pages. According to Six to Start producer and game designer Matt Wieteska,

The game has been designed to exist within and alongside this month’s Wired. The issue’s focus is on the rise of location-based and social gaming, and the idea of game-like ‘achievements’ and how they drive our curiosity and progress. Our tasks and puzzles are scattered throughout its pages, margins, graphics and text – so keep your eyes peeled! Of course, the issue is just the beginning – the game soon expands to take in online content and puzzles, alongside some cool bells and whistles that I don’t want to spoil for you!

Suggesting something even more than a puzzle contest, Wieteska teased me with this: “[t]he game itself does have a theme, an interesting setting, and some cool little stories nestling inside it. I don’t want to give too much away, but we’re hoping you’ll enjoy the fun, tongue-in-cheek tone and all the little easter eggs and references we’ve hidden to some of our favourite things.”

Only players based in the United Kingdom will be eligible for the grand prize  of an iPad, but according to Six to Start co-founder, acting CEO, and chief creative officer Adrian Hon, the creators have “made an effort to make as many of the assets available internationally” as possible. Non-UK players will still be able to experience most of the game online, even though, according to Wieteska, “[w]e’ve got some really cool stuff going on inside the issue, so people should grab one if they can!”

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super cool

Peter Jackson May Yet Direct “The Hobbit” - Guillermo del Toro walks - good news? bad news?

8 hours ago | Studio Briefing - Film News | See recent Studio Briefing - Film News news »

It now appears that Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson could wind up directing the two-part Rings prequel, The Hobbit, after all. Following the decision by director Guillermo del Toro to walk away from the production because of the delays brought about by the protracted sale of MGM, which owns the rights to the The Hobbit and is coproducing the movie with Warner Bros., Jackson’s manager said that prior commitments to other studios would prevent Jackson from directing The Hobbit. But Jackson told New Zealand’s The Dominion Post today (Tuesday), “If that’s what I have to do to protect Warner Bros’ investment, then obviously that’s one angle which I’ll explore.” And it did appear that it was unlikely that another top director could be brought on board until after the sale of MGM is completed — whenever that may be. And even Jackson himself might find himself involved in making another film by that time. “The other studios may not let me out of the contracts,” he told the Dominion Post. “The key thing is that we don’t intend to shut the project down,” he added. Meanwhile, Del Toro told the New Zealand newspaper that he had moved his family to Wellington two years ago to work on the script and the development of the movie and noted that he had dreamed of turning The Hobbit into a movie from the time he was a child. “So it was very personal to me,” he said. “I know [the delays have] been very frustrating for everybody.” »


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