Film Futurist

DIY filmmakers have always inherently understood the idea of microfunding, because in some sense or another, raising a few hundred or thousand from friends and family IS essentially the same idea. And now, with social media providing the kind of community reach that would have been impossible even ten years ago, this model has become [...]

I hate rules. I’ve never been able to follow them. And I find the tyranny of web lists obnoxious. BUT, somehow one cannot deny that in an era of such chaos as we are experiencing in the media arts especially, this kind of list may…possibly… have some value. There, I said it! This is my [...]

It all began one night last week. I was in my apartment in New York, feeling somewhat nostalgic for LA, which like some kind of happy-slash-sad drug, makes you miss it. I turned on the TV and surfed. Caught the last few minutes of Californication. Sighed. Then remembered I could watch the whole episode again. [...]

At the FOE4 Conference, I was struck by something Mike Monello said on when speaking on a panel. He said something I had never thought of quite that way before: that as a Transmedia creator, one’s role becomes that of a creator/performer – not in the sense that the storyteller is acting per se, but [...]

This weekend is the fourth Futures of Entertainment Conference, hosted by MIT’s Convergence Culture Consortium. I’m looking forward to attending and will post during and after. (Follow my twitter feed @filmfuturist) for updates during the conference.
When I found this nicely done video of Henry Jenkins (of whom I am a great fan) talking about [...]

Extracted from the NewTeeVee Live archive of yesterday’s great 1 day conference, this video is long video but very worth worth watching if you’re curious what the folks in the new media video world think is coming next. Answers to the question: ”What’s The Next Big Thing” had experts weighing in on technologies, creative shifts, funding, [...]

With the popularity of Twitter, Facebook status updates, one expects to see all manner of ideas useful and useless, swirling around these platforms and vying for our attention. so it was no surprise when Mashable ran a piece last month on Twitter Art.  The ideas tend to revolve around the age-old putting visuals-to-text using — what [...]

I should say first that I have NOT seen Paranormal Activity, chiefly because, well…I’m a scaredy-cat and probably wouldn’t sleep for days afterwards. BUT, that never stopped me from a big picture analysis. Of course the hype everyone is hanging on to right now is the parallel between Paranormal and Blair Witch. And I get [...]

Chances are, you’ve been sucked in once or twice, most likely by Facebook. Farmville, Mafia Wars ring a bell? And there are lots more. As someone who didn’t really play video games as a child, and seldom played casual games before the smartphone revolution (in my head), the concept of social gaming as a real [...]