Good Point: Could Documentaries Form the Core of the Cross-Platform Story Revolution? : DocumentaryTech

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Posted by DocumentaryTech on September 29, 2011 · 1 Comment

"As audiences come to expect interaction along with media consumption, “old” media is showing documentarians the potential for video as a tent pole in cross-media storytelling.
Since its invention, film has been a permanent medium. And like a book with its threaded binding, a documentary film’s spooled polyester strip represents a series of moments set in figurative stone. We find ourselves in dark rooms absorbing its definitive message, a product of months, or years, of inquiry.
But a stand-alone film, these days, works against the nature of modern media, with its vortex of information, reaction and reassessment. New media actually invites the involvement of audience, rather than simply its attention. And this interaction has come to define the media landscape.
Could documentaries form the permanent center in a changing tableau?
An audiovisual work that evolves as its topic evolves could be the future of the form. Part of the drive to work across platforms, into a digital environment, relates to something as simple as return visits to a site, which one might translate to mean “increased engagement” in a social issue, or “increased revenue.” The dirty secret of online journalism is that those comment sections below stories, those cesspools of discourse, create return visits and, by virtue of that, ad impressions. Gawker has built its empire not on the content but on the comments, an example of morphing media that extends a story’s life by days. A documentary that can be the foundation of an ongoing discussion gives it a life beyond a single view...."

Sweet: How Chris Burden Created Metropolis II, A Tiny City Where 1,100 Toy Cars Zoom | Co. Design

The blogs have been buzzing about California artist Chris Burden's toy-car megalopolis project, Metropolis II, for ages. The latest news: A collector bought the installation for "millions" of dollars, but was gracious enough to donate it to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for display over the next 10 years. (Whew!) But what does it take to design something like Metropolis II, and what does it all mean, anyway?

It took Burden and his chief engineer four years to make Metropolis II.

Love: Cornell Lab's Twitter-Mining Captures Global Mood Patterns | Wired Science

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"...An analysis of mood patterns distilled from half a billion tweets has produced a civilization-scale picture of how moods rise and fall in tandem, over time and across the world.

The details seem intuitive: positive feelings peaking in the morning, dipping during work and rising at day’s end; negativity accumulated over the workweek dissipating late on Friday afternoon. But they’ve proved surprisingly tricky to measure.

“There’s a whole generation of lab work that’s been inconclusive,” said sociologist Scott Golder of Cornell University, co-author of the tweet analysis published Sept. 29 in Science. “Every study would have something different to say about what they saw in their subjects’ affective rhythms.”

Many studies of how moods — or, more technically, positive and negative affect — change from minute to minute and day to day rely on self-reported surveys, which can be inconsistent if not misleading. The subjects of these studies also tend to be undergraduate students from western colleges, a group that’s not always representative of humanity at large.

'A systematic daily pattern of positive mood is a fundamental part of human existence.'..."

Mozilla and The Factory Explore Web-Native Filmmaking | Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC)

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From the site:

"This spring and summer The Factory embarked on an adventure with a few exciting new partners. The Bay Area Video Coalition collaborated with the Mozilla Foundation and ZeroDivide to explore the possibilities of web-native filmmaking: to help the internet find its own storytelling voice. They asked the question, “What would a story made FOR the internet look and sound like? And how would it be told?” After all, the internet is not a television or a movie-theater: it is its own entirely unique creation and a story told on the internet should take advantage of the immersion, immediacy, and non-linearity that the web can offer viewers.

Twelve youth in The Factory beta-tested Mozilla’s “Popcorn Maker”, a kind of web-native filmmaking software devised in Mozilla’s Web Made Movies innovation lab, by integrating the software into the program’s summer-based Community Filmmaking Partnerships (“CFPs”– short films that The Factory makes for/about East Bay non-profits). In doing so, The Factory filmmakers got a taste of cutting edge storytelling technologies, while Mozilla got the best kind of beta testers for their software: limber-minded, net-savvy teenagers.

These are the four web-native videos that The Factory produced in partnership with Mozilla, ZeroDivide, and our Community Filmmaking Partners...."

"...INSPIRE YOURSELF (image above)

INSPIRE USA is an organization that uses media technology to share first-person stories from teenagers who struggled with, and overcame, mental health issues like depression and suicidal impulses. They distribute these stories to other teenagers so young people can benefit from the experiences of others in similar situations and so they can be made aware of the resources and support that are available to them.

Lauren, Fifer and Raymundo, the Factory filmmakers collaborating with Inspire USA, wanted to develop an interface that conveys some of the crucial statistics around teen mental health issues – making evident how common they are – but they also wanted the interface to be interactive and embedded with stories of how other youth have pulled themselves up and become happier. They envisioned a webpage with stick figures representing teens with mental health issues, with each figure being clickable and linking to an uplifting video or written story. Participants would also have an opportunity to post their own stories, which would then be uploaded to the webpage via Tumblr. WATCH NOW >..."

Wow. Moshi Monsters TV to launch within weeks | Media | guardian.co.uk

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"Moshi Monsters boasts more than 50 million pre-teen users. Photograph: Mind Candy
It has already dominated kids' magazines and social networking. Now Moshi Monsters is set to take on the world of children's TV, with a new online channel described ambitiously as "YouTube meets Nickelodeon".

Moshi Monsters, the UK-based social network that boasts more than 50 million pre-teen users, will launch Moshi TV within weeks.

While the fine details are still being ironed out, Moshi TV will feature popular "moshlings" such as Dustbin Beaver and Lady GooGoo, alongside animations uploaded by users and syndicated content.

"TV is really critical because kids are begging to see [Moshi Monsters] characters a lot and hear more of the story," said Brad Schultz, the newly appointed head of Moshi TV. "We're holding ourselves up to a Looney Tunes here. We're going to create shorts [animations] that will be talked about for years and years and years."

Schultz, who joined from US video-on-demand channel Kabillion in August, is the son of Bill Schultz, the renowned animator behind The Simpsons, King of the Hill and The Transformers...."

Of Course: Disney Cars to get 'Appmates' toys that work with new iPad app | Technology | guardian.co.uk

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"Children will push the Appmates cars around the iPad screen to explore the virtual world

Disney's next big iPad app? There are toy cars for that. The entertainment company has unveiled a new range of physical toys called Appmates, which will be used to interact with apps on Apple's tablet.

The first Disney brand to get the Appmates treatment is Pixar's Cars. There will be six toy cars sold in packs of one or two for £12.99 and £19.99 respectively, which go on sale in October. They will be sold in Disney's physical stores and on its website, as well as in Apple's real-world and online stores.

The companion iPad app will be free to download. It includes a mode for children who don't own one of the physical toys (or at least don't have one to hand).

"We've been working on this exciting new technology that really brings together the physical world and the app and tablet world," says Jeff Jones, vice president and general manager for digital games for Disney's european division. "They have a capacitive footprint, so when you put them onto the tablet, it recognises what the toy is, where it's positioned and what direction it's pointing in."

Children drive the cars around the virtual Radiator Springs world by pinching the two front windows with their thumb and finger to complete the conductive circuit. They can explore, stop by characters from the Cars movies to talk and get missions, and take part in races. Buying more toy cars opens up new areas of the world, while additional levels will also be released in the coming months, bought by the parent through Apple's in-app payments system...."