Month: May 2007

After my post about the great efforts of Lance Weiler, I’ve come across another example of good thinking when it comes to creation and distribution of what was previously called cinema. This project is called quite aptly A Swarm of Angels: 

A groundbreaking project to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members. By subscribing for £25 members become part of a revolutionary process to make an open source feature film.

Here is the manifesto:

A Swarm of Angels updates the current filmmaking models of Hollywood and independent film to create cult cinema for the digital age.

Whether you call it Cinema 2.0, or Open source cinema, it’s an innovative participatory experience you can be part of.

Our vision is to bring filmmaker and fan together into entertainment communities making distinctive films based on artistic choices not marketing ones. This is not about making a couple of bucks, but about making cinematic history.

A Swarm of Angels is a third way between the top-down approach of traditional filmmaking and the bottom-up nature of user-generated content. A way for anyone to influence the creation of a professional £1 million+ ($1.8M+) feature film.

We are gathering 50,000 people in a giant new media experiment to be part of an exclusive community which funds and helps make this film. We want people to freely download, share and remix the feature film and all original media made for this project and have embraced the flexible digital-age copyright of Creative Commons toward this end.

Help invent the future of film: Join us, become an Angel.

This really is impressive. It is Kiva for Filmmakers. I’ve joined the Swarm of Angels and discovered that 2 ARG scripts have been submitted and are being considered.

Become an Angel: www.aswarmofangels.com

Just came across this website, A World Without Hippos, a site that has only one category: unmitigated genuis. This blogger posted his (?) impressions of Twitter:

Collect the following ingredients.

1 pound – Boring
14 ounces – “Wazzapppppppp!”
3 shakes – Hey, Everyone, Look at Me!
A pinch – I wish I lived a more interesting live
3 gallons – Narcissism

Blend thoroughly, shake extensively, lay on baking sheet, cut into bit size chucks, and cook on an AJAX George Forman Grill. Let cool, serves 50,000 (and counting).

Very funny. When I first saw Twitter I scrunched my nose up at the site of yet another social networking tool blah blah blah. I took it up when I was travelling OS and thought Twitter would be a good way to get quick updates out on the web if I’m having trouble accessing the Net for long periods of time. What made me stay was the same reason as all the other communities I’m with on the Net: the people. People I consider my cybermates.

So I’m there now and I use it as a way to express my personal life a bit. I don’t do that anywhere else but on Twitter it works. It really is a place where people share their personal lives. This is for a few reasons, one being the transcient nature of the posts. So, now that I am in there I see it differently than I did from the outside. As for Hippo blogger? He has joined Twitter. But he hasn’t “sold out”. Instead, he has decided to just outright lie on it. Very funny.

Check out his post: http://www.aworldwithouthippos.com/?p=63

Check out his Twitter: http://twitter.com/NoHippos