For the arts content is always king, so it was great to see a wide range of the North West’s arts organisations revelling in a day of cutting edge digital content on Monday. I was the organiser, so I’m not pretending to be an impartial witness, but the day seemed to go down well with everyone.
First up was Vito Rocco, who’s forthcoming movie, a low budget British rom-com called “Faintheart” is out early next year. A traditional film in many ways, what was unusual was the support that came from Myspace in both the production process and the marketing. Before the movie was made, some of the casting was done via homemade videos; whilst during the filming the “making of” rushes were uploaded to Myspace. Perhaps even more interesting, the launch of the movie will see a “heart map” where free premieres will take place where the most fans of the movie congregate. Vito said that he’d be interested in using the internet more collaboratively in the future, perhaps through development of a portmanteau movie or similar.
Complementing Vito was Marcus Romer who is artistic director at Pilot Theatre in York. Their Second Life presence allows them to do set design in a virtual space, cheaply and easily as well as allowing streaming.
Because the arts sometimes doesn’t get to see the cutting edge, two “mavericks” had been invited along: Hugh Hancock author of “Machinima for Dummies” showed us how to make a short animation in “World of Warcraft” – the popular online RPG, and finally Christian Payne uber-blogger and social-media maven inspired everyone with his can-do approach to social media, wherever his in the world.
By the afternoon workshops we were all ready to have a go for ourselves. CJ Lyon showed us how to create a mobile phone “swarm” using “swarmteams”, an easy way of connecting a group of people via SMS and the web, and Old Trafford’s Lets Go Global helped us make a short film in an hour. Ok it was more Granada Reports than Citizen Kane, but, still!
In true social media stylee, we twittered, flickrd and live streamed the video. So you can relive some of the excitement…
http://www.manchesterdda.com/2008/10/27/digital-content-reconnected-event-live-blog/
