South By Southwest (SXSW) is an annual gathering of interactive, film and music creatives, executives and marketers in Austin. It is the ideal setting to explore multiplatform storytelling, multiscreen experiences and projects that reflect the talents of the collective. After several days of knowledge-filled panels and hyper-networking featuring digital thought-leaders, there were a few notable trends that made an imprint once the conference’s closing credits hit the screen.
The Two-Screen Experience
The two-screen, or so-called companion viewing experience, was recently implemented at the Academy Awards via the Oscars All Access app, which gave viewers multiple camera angles within a paid app. While laptops, smartphones and tablets are all capable of the two-screen implementation — basically, using a device while watching additional programing — the ideal form factor is the tablet due to its screen size and ease of interaction. The rapid emergence of tablets such as the iPad have opened up a new opportunity for studios and networks wishing to amp up DVD sales and TV ratings.
SXSW featured the “TRON: Legacy” Lounge, which allowed visitors to experience Disney’s Second Screen — a parallel universe of interactive features on an iPad in sync with the Blu-ray version of the movie (available April 5). The additional content on display included filmmaker annotations, image sliders, progression reels to show effects in a scene and more ways to immerse yourself in the movie’s Grid. Learn more about it in this video:
A separate SXSW panel titled “TV + New Media = Formula for Success” featured executives from USA Network highlighted Psych Vision, a two-screen experience to promote the TV show “Psych.” The app enabled viewers to check into the show, unlock exclusive video content, earn points and redeem them for show merchandise.
Telling stories in multimedia
Transmedia, or telling stories across multiple platforms and formats, is in chapter one of its journey to mass adoption. But it has quickly moved from experimental buzzword to a powerful new storytelling genre.
There were several panels focused on transmedia at SXSW, including: “Can Transmedia Save the Entertainment Industry?,” “Transmedia Storytelling: Constructing Compelling Characters and Narrative Threads,” and “Next Stage: Transmedia: An Interactive Exploration of the History and Future of Production in a Transmedia World.”
I attended the “Unexpected Non-Fiction Storytelling” panel, which featured many creative interactive projects, including “Collapsus,” this year’s SXSW Interactive Award winner in the Film/TV category.
“Collapsus” is a great example of the promise of transmedia. This eco-thriller from director Tommy Pallotta (producer of “A Scanner Darkly”) was developed by SubmarineChannel and is based on the documentary “Energy Transition” from Dutch broadcaster VPRO. It is a mix of animation, interactive maps and documentary, presented in three panels and requiring viewers to make informed decisions about energy production:
While a worldwide tour with PowerPoint slides may have been effective in driving awareness on global warming, “Collapsus” presents a compelling new media approach to addressing planetary issues.
The National Film Board of Canada showed several interactive projects, including “Test Tube.” It deals with another global crisis — the exponential growth of the human population (represented by bacteria) within a finite planet of resources (symbolized by the test tube). The site asks visitors what they would do with an extra minute, then environmentalist David Suzuki makes a compelling case on why we’re in the final minute of existence. The concept is thought-provoking and the innovation is evident in the various tweets that are dynamically pulled into the site based on your “extra minute” entry.
Out of more than 67,000 entries, the most popular response to the minute question is “sleep” followed by “eat.” (Disclosure: I entered “make coffee” for my final minute, which may not have been the best answer to save the world/test tube.)
Crowdsourcing and Collaboration
Star Wars Uncut “The Escape” from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.
SXSW also featured award-winning crowdsourced projects and the premiere of one of the most anticipated crowdsourced video initiatives. Creators of the Emmy-winning “Star Wars Uncut” film, which is featured above, discussed how “the Force” of the crowd helped re-imagine one of the most beloved films in the galaxy. More than 1,200 contributors from 100 countries helped build the final film, elevating scenes into the film based on popularity or likes.
Annelise Pruitt, one of the project designers, called it “the largest user-directed movie” in history. She attributed its dynamic playback capability as the main reason that “Star Wars Uncut” won the 2010 Emmy for interactive media.
Another contemporary classic in the brief history of crowdsourcing is The Johnny Cash Project, a music video for “Ain’t No Grave” composed of 1,370 frames built from art submissions worldwide. And there ain’t no stopping the success of that project as it received another prize at SXSW, the Interactive Award in the Art category.
The YouTube project “Life in a Day,” produced by Ridley Scott (Oscar-winning director of 2000’s Best Picture “Gladiator,” as well as “Alien” and “Gladiator”), also relied on the submissions of the collective. The project received more than 80,000 video submissions from people in 140 countries who wanted to share their personally documented story on July 24, 2010. The film made its premiere at Sundance earlier this year and was screened at SXSW last week. National Geographic Films picked up rights to the movie and will distribute it in theaters this summer.
For filmmakers looking to develop and distribute full-length features rather than a slice of a larger project, JuntoBox Films is a new collaborative film studio that merges social media with traditional film production. They plan to finance five films in 2011 with a budget range of $200,000 to $5 million each. Filmmakers are encouraged to “get junto’d” after creating a profile on the site and having their project rated by their peers in order to be considered for the film assessment phase.
“Junto” means together in Spanish. The interactive storytelling, the two-screen experiences and the collaborative initiatives showcased at SXSW reveal that projects built together and experiences shared together are worthy of the highest rewards.
Nick Mendoza is the director of digital communications at Zeno Group. He advises consumer, entertainment and Web companies on digital and social media engagement. He dreamstreams and is the film correspondent for MediaShift. Follow him on Twitter @NickMendoza.
