Your attention is required at 4:00 for the Ninja cameos, and then again, at the dramatic turn of events at 4:27.

I would comment but I’m speechless, helpless and now slave to the charm, tunes and brilliant dramatics of Ismail YK, German-born Turkish pop star with a serious love of Facebook.

Before you throw me into the the hater camp, hear me out. I don’t hate Ridley Scott. In fact, I admire him a great deal. The man was and is a legend to all aspiring filmmakers who at some point encountered the stunning, prescient piece of filmmaking that is Bladerunner while learning to make films. It was with some excitement that I examined his recently announced “Life In A Day” project, launched in collaboration with the Sundance Film Festival and Youtube.

Below is the video explaining the project, which is fairly self-explanatory: The film director Kevin McDonald will accept crowdsourced video from YOU, shot on a single day, and will create a feature length “experimental documentary” to be shown at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

On the surface, it seems the focus is to engage viewers, aspiring filmmakers, and create a narrative that ties the globe together in a neat way, sort of like, um…a commercial. At three minutes, Nike’s Write the Future World Cup ad is exactly THAT, only shorter, more exciting and actually ABOUT something. Nike’s spot is a brilliant, energetic, beautiful and poignant celebration of a world’s fascination with a single sport – about how the love for a game can be experienced across cultures.

While I’m not saying that such meaning and profundity as soccer sometimes inspires cannot be found randomly around the globe about other subjects. I just want to know – what subjects exactly? What is it ABOUT, people? I wish these large scale, commercially overblown so-called experimental projects would have meaning, otherwise it becomes a waste of the crowdsource, just another marketing ploy to keep the old school relevant in the new media world, something I referred to in my post about Ridley Scott’s initial foray into this arena, via the (now defunct)Purefold initiative back in November of last year.

Crowdsourced art isn’t about broad, jumbled collaborative initiatives asking everyone to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. It should be about taking a point of view on a real subject and hunting down the truth and beauty in an idea, like artists are supposed to do, if they care about their art.

Such is the case in the new partnership announced last week between the illustrious Guggenheim Museum and Youtube, called YouTube Play. According to the Washington Post article on the launch, the Guggenheim sees this collaboration as an opportunity to “raise the standards” of YouTube. The writer of that piece takes issue with this idea, arguing that the beauty of user generated and curated content is precisely the randomness of it, and that it’s “strange to introduced a juried sensibility to a relatively new, user generated world”.

I feel as though this is a conversation I’ve had with folks who find “curation” as an idea to be yet another way to limit the forms and bind the creativity of artists, media makers and their audiences who are freely discovering all the randomness of the video/film art frontier on the web. While I don’t think institutions like the Guggenheim are well-informed enough about what is really happening in the frontier they are seeking, I do think there ought to still be curatorial forces that engage in thoughtful considerations of what is happening now, AS it is happening. We don’t have to wait a decade to figure out what the movements in video art were in the first decade of the 21st century. Information is readily accessible but it has to be searched for, studied and considered, before any grand pronouncements can be made.

In the museum world, there has traditionally been a very small pipeline leading to the galleries and eventually museums, and in order to have access to it, an artist had to be somewhat “in the know”. So I wonder now whether an open call for artists to submit their work publicly via YouTube isn’t just taking opposite yet similarly limiting tactic – that is to say the fact of YouTube doesn’t make for a better considered curation, it only makes for more submissions. It isn’t terribly different from any kind of open call, even a blatantly populist one like American Idol.

I wonder if institutions like the Guggenheim wouldn’t do better to study the troves of video ALREADY out there, and curate something based on real discovery, wherein a serious study of emerging video art forms is undertaken, and the discovery of video artists who may or may not consider themselves artists, might actually occur. We live in a culture of over-abundant content, and that is why I support curation. In my estimation, there shouldn’t just be a choice between clueless high-art curator vs. engaged user-curated option. There are lots of interesting movements happening right under our noses, and we don’t need a competition to discover them. Alright, Guggenheim?

Below is a CBS promotional video for the series, launching this fall. My immediate feeling was that I enjoy the twitter feed more than what I can see of the show so far. The obvious reason is that so much of Halpern’s dad’s humor is totally R-rated, and it doesn’t translate to network TV.You can watch the video below and also read the original Twitter feed to see what you think.

I’ve long been fascinated by memes like I Can Haz Cheezburger and FAILblog, many of which have been extended to print and published in book form. The beauty of most Memes is that they are image-based and take a split second to appreciate – essentially a single joke that can be played in many ways to great comic effect. But with entirely text-based memes like we’ve seen on Twitter, including TextsFromLastNight (which I’ve also heard will soon become a TV show),  I wonder if there is something that makes some memes more narratively compelling than others.

With William Shatner in the role of the Dad from ShitMyDadSays, a nice dovetailing of Shatner’s own social media savvy and interest (he’s very active and often amusing on Twitter as @WilliamShatner) with the clippy, 140 character way in which the Dad character developed on Twitter makes for a more interesting experiment than most. It makes me wonder if the secret sauce is character + personality = sustainable series. We will soon find out if the 1.4 million fans of the @shitmydadsays meme will actually enjoy the extension into story and stick around to watch the show.

I dare you not to laugh.

I know it sounds preposterous but I didn’t make these numbers up. These are real data reported from the Hollywood Stock Exchange, where you can buy and sell stocks and bonds based on real people and projects in the entertainment industry. HSX is a fairly recent acquisition of brokerage house Cantor Fitzgerald, and the precursor to the proposed Film Futures Exchange about which there has been much mumbling, grumbling and gnashing of teeth. On the HSX, which has been around since 1996, you can buy and sell stocks and bonds with funny money called $H — essentially betting on the value of stars, opening movies and now, shows like American Idol. It’s great interactive entertainment. I have friends who are obsessed with the exchange, buying stock in an actor, director or movie literally the minute the project is announced. (By the way, it’s worth noting that these friends are IN the movie business, in which everyone knows everything and no one knows anything.)

So, you might ask yourself, after reading that Cantor Fitzgerald was ready to get into REAL trading of movie futures and then seeing the ensuing bruhaha about Congress possibly banning it, what’s the big deal? Why are Senators Lamar Smith, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and the MPAA, DGA, WGA  getting their panties in a twist over some good gambling fun? Well, precisely that – they seem to agree that this kind of gambling, albeit in “futures” form, will destabilize the entertainment business.

Hmmm, let me think about that for a second: I’m a producer and I pitch RED MENACE, my giant menacing alien ladybug epic to five investors. I show them a historical list of box office stats on ET, Jaws all the way to District 9 and I say: “It’s a home run. Obviously.” They hesitate. I say: “I’ve got Tom Cruise in the title Ladybug role and he always brings home the dough” They start coming around. I say: “And, I think I could get JJ Abrams to do it.” They seem more convinced. “I can see the sequels now”. One of the greedy bastards is still not convinced, then I say: “We’ll roll out the red carpet for you at the Oscars. Angelina Jolie will be there.” SOLD!

What part of that conversation seems financially sound? or sane?  If we are to be honest, none. We producers are snake-oil salesmen selling vanity and greed – two very compelling motivators in the gambling business. Just spend 20 minutes at the Bellagio in Vegas and you’ll get my drift. So dare I ask, what is so crazy about buying and selling “innovative” financial products to and about a business patently comfortable with gambling? Ok, I get it: we’re still digging our way out of the hole created by immensely “creative” bankers and their dodgy derivatives. But let’s get to the bottom of this particular product that is being proposed and make a distinction. Felix Salmon explains the trading system simply in his insightful NYT op-ed:

The proposed contracts are simple: they would allow traders to bet on the total box-office receipts of movies in their first four weeks of release. A contract on “Iron Man 2,” for instance, might be trading at $390, meaning that the market is expecting the film to gross $390 million in its first four weeks. If you think it’s going to make more than that, you would go long, or buy the contract; if you think it’s going to make less, you would go short, or sell it. At the end of the four weeks, the contract would expire at whatever the four-week gross is. If you went long at $390 and the film ended up earning $450 million in its first four weeks, then you’d make $60 for every contract you bought.

Simple enough, and a gamble the average speculator could get into for fun (a la vegas) or in a larger stakes way as a method of hedging. And for the record, these are NOT derivatives. Sure, once studios get involved on a large scale, and begin hedging, there will be accusations of insiders “gaming” the system. That is to say if a studio sees more money to be made in sinking a movie and betting against it, they might be more inclined to sabotage a release. But to that I say: um, yeah… that’s being done even without a futures market – ask the long list of directors and actors whose projects got the cabash after a studio decided it would compete with something else they deemed more profitable.

As far as I’m concerned, the only issue that the Hollywood cartel, also known as the MPAA and their pupeteers have is the possibility that any measure of control might be lost to anyone outside of their little circle. Hollywood has been by and large a business of closed doors, secrets and power that benefits a select few. Which is why my friends who play the HSX enjoy their role so much: they are editors, production designers, gaffers – people who are locked out of the big cash that the cartel controls. But they have access to inside information that could earn them a few extra dollars and create a great deal of fun. So I say, why not let the wild cards in?

Hollywood gambles on other peoples money, but they won’t let other people gamble at their expense. “Get the hell outta here!” is what one of my pro gambler friends would say. I certainly took the humor in what a Naked Capitalism blogger suggests while lamenting the invention of film futures: that it is “Wall Street’s revenge on Hollywood” for all the money they’ve gambled and lost in it. I think that’s a little paranoid but funny, nonetheless. They love gambling. We love gambling. That’s all it is.

Let the games begin.

JULIET: @julietcap16 You need to remember that he didn’t tell you the truth. Do you honestly WANT to be with someone who lies to you?

Ok, that exchange between Juliet and Nurse is probably not the Shakespeare verse you remember from your high school English class. It seems that this Juliet,(@julietcap16 on Twitter) has more in common with lonelygirl15 than she does with the classic 14th century heroine. (As we discover from her Facebook profile, she loves Taylor Swift and Twilight).

But the beauty of Shakespeare is that it never gets old, and the genius of the great author’s classic texts is watching them get reinvented over and over in various eras. So it should come as no surprise that Such Tweet Sorrow, a Twitter performance of Romeo and Juliet is having its moment. A British production performed (or tweeted) by the Royal Shakespeare Company with the help of cross-platform media shop, Mudlark , it is funded by Channel 4′s digital investment fund, 4iP.

A loose interpretation of the original text, this Romeo & Juliet began on April 10th and takes place in the span of five weeks and over 4,000 tweets. Now a few weeks and storylines in, you can follow all the characters tweets on a timeline that lives on the website, read a summary of what has happened so far, and check out the playlist for Juliet’s masked birthday party on Spotify and last.fm. which include, with some irony I imagine, Beyonce’s unforgettable Single Ladies whose lyrics demand a ring on the finger. And no less cheeky, the inclusion of MGMT’s Kids, no doubt a nod to the folly of youth, with its hypnotic refrain “control yourself.”

For Juliet’s party, she invited guests on their Facebook page to RSVP and send photos of their masks. 83 people responded and a handful participated in the mask challenge. It seems Juliet has the most active social media profile, including a Youtube page with 3 videos, where we get a glimpse into the Juliet’s feelings and interests, in the teenage girl bedroom (again another nod to lonelygirl15). The  most viewed of all three videos is the first, with 13,690 views at this writing, is perhaps the one that gives the most insight into Juliet. See below.

Based on the mainstream media’s response and coverage of the project, it appears to have made some sort of impact and certainly marks a notable moment in the expansion of theater performance into social media space. While I’m fascinated by the collaborative work this project is doing across theater, literature and social media, I have to say that this attempt falls into the caveman days of of interactive fiction. I have some quibbles with the actual design of the site (including the annoying inability to move through the timeline with ease), but most importantly  I’d have to critique the experience/story designers for not integrating the performance more into the social media space.

While Twitter in and of itself is an engagement platform, the lack of context (outside of clever pop culture references and lingo) seem to kill the “play”. I guess my expectations included a high level of interactivity and audience involvement. Put simply, why would I, as an audience member on Twitter, engage this drama outside of the novelty of seeing Shakespeare on Twitter? There’s no story hook for me, no compelling invitation to participate in the (vastly underdeveloped) world of the Capulets and the Montagues, and no reason for me to stick around…since I already know the ending. If the contemporary-ness is aimed at the teenage girls who know the dance routine to Single Ladies, then it certainly fails to engage them; if it is aimed (very slightly older!) ladies like myself, it seems perhaps over simplified and too full of silly teenage drama.

I know this is just the beginning and that experimentation will be going on for a while, so I hesitate to be overly critical. However, looking at this case really drove home for me the need for completely thought-through narratives and inventive engagement strategies, even dare I say, when you are working with the master of narrative himself, Shakespeare.

You can follow the characters: @romeo_mo, @julietcap16, @Tybalt_Cap, @Jess_nurse,@LaurenceFriar and @Mercuteio

Personally, I think anyone who hasn’t seen the handwriting on the wall that says CHANGE is patently in need of some ocular examination. Crumley presents it as a crisis of distribution, which it is to an extent. But one can argue that the recent proliferation of useful distribution and marketing technologies and online communities to support our film work has presented massive benefits to the DIY filmmaker and as such, the crisis has been halfway resolved. So why are so many still mad as hell? Crumley’s is a call to action for a somewhat demoralized community to rally around alternative (non-studio) solutions like OpenIndie.

But on the other side of the spectrum it seems some people are angry at precisely this trend towards the social media driven creation and marketing of indie films. Mike S. Ryan for instance, is an established indie producer associated with well-known films Junebug, Palindromes and Choke, to name a few. In his Filmmaker Magazine article, he expresses a fair amount of panic about the swell of “Audience-driven content posing as truly independent film” which he believes “has numbed the audience that is hungry for innovative work.” From my vantage point, Ryan’s fear that the internet will chase away originality or the margins is entirely misguided and unduly panic-inducing. And I look forward to a face-to-face debate with the guy (stay tuned).

But hey, he’s got a right to be mad as hell just like Arin Crumley and all of us who yelled and shook our fists in solidarity at DIY DAYS. So many things to be mad about, and not enough time.

So, in the spirit of the “mad” conversation, please feel free share your indie film gripes: what are you mad as hell about?

I know those of us who came of age in an era when gaming was entirely console based, simplistic in the “kill or be killed” bloodbath sort of way, the appeal has been limited. But I see that changing in creative and completely engaging ways. For instance, this week saw the launch of Armchair Revolutionary, a non-profit that uses money generated from their games to support innovative science and technology projects attempting to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.

According to the Geek Gestalt blog, the games available to play on ArmRev are also lessons in social change. The article reports that among the first games are a “videogame called “Make Waves” that is designed to provide users with real-life social activism tools while they manage part of the ocean in a virtual environment modeled on the real-world. Second, “Hack Your Body,” a three-part effort designed around the “fast approaching genomics revolution” that includes the Personal Genome Project; the development of commercial software that will allow users to analyze their own DNA; and a full-length commercial documentary film about genomics. And “End of Darkness,” a publicly financed company that aims to build clean energy infrastructure for the poor.”

For anyone thinking about social change, it has become imperative to consider the impact of interactive play as active learning. Its power cannot be underestimated, especially among younger players for whom interactivity is a way of being, and not merely a time consuming pastime. Nowhere is this more of a priority than Games For Change, a hub for innovators and artists in this space to share their games with the public. In a quick peruse through the games, I immediately noticed how youth-focused the play was, and rightly so, as that is the audience we need to be innovating for.

I believe that the need to educate on social issues is pressing and to do it artfully and beautifully is an enormous but exciting challenge. I’m glad gaming is starting to fulfill its potential across the board and I’m looking forward to delving more deeply into specific games in coming posts — looking at them in terms of their design, content and social impact.