Ukoko

I am so excited about the film version of Dave Gibbons’ & Alan Moore’s Watchmen. One of the most influential comics ever when it came out in the eighties, the film adaptation finished principal photoghraphy a few months back and has several more months of post production to go through before it’s release in 2009. There is a scene with a bank of TVs showing footage and commercials (presumably in Ozymandias’ HQ) and the production company are offering fans the chance to fill them with thier own Fan-Generated videos… but first the backstory.

For anyone not familiar with the Watchmen comics / graphic novel, it’s hard to explain what a landmark it was in the evolution of comics and how it’s release helped to move superhero comics away from the juvenile and into a more mature, literate position. Watchmen is a story of aging heroes, failed dreams and masked vigilantes who are no longer wanted by society……. imagine a Mike Leigh version of The Incredibles and you’re mostly there.

Watchmen (and The Dark Knight Returns) both came out in 1986 and practically pinpoint the exact moment when superheroes really started to get character. Until then, character depth was limited to Peter Parker being a bit shy with girls. Alan Moore’s work, like that of his contemporary Frank Miller has been directly responsible for re-defining comic-book and paved the way for the darker, richer film-adaptations we see today. However, unlike Frank Miller, Moore seems to shy away from the cinema remakes, asking for his name to be taken off V for Vendetta, and disassociating himself on more of his creations including The league of Extraordinary Gentleman and the Keanu Reeves led Constantine (a character Moore originally created in Swamp Thing that spun-off into it’s own series).

In addition to the iconic source material, the film of Watchmen is directed by Zack Snyder with production design by Alex McDowell, one of my favourite production designers - I worked for Alex on Breaking and Entering (directed by the late, great Anthony Minghella) and not only is he a gifted Production Designer but a really nice guy too.

But I digress. This is supposed to about the competition, so here’s the links:

the production blog was at:
http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/

some more info at
http://www.youtube.com/watchmenmovie

And the competion rules etc are here:
http://watchmenmovie.warnerbros.com/veidtadvertisingcontest/rules.html

Oh, and Frank Miller’s The Spirit site is here:
http://www.mycityscreams.com/

Just watched a wonderful, refreshing, down to earth presentation by David Heinemeier Hansson from 37 Signals‘ - the people who brought us Basecamp, BackPack, Highrise and that awesome Omnicom spoof site back in the nineties and one of the people behind Ruby on Rails.

As someone brought-up in Essex with a family in the second-hand car trade, my idea of business has always been at odds with the VC backed, buzzword driven valuations   (I mean how can Twitter be worth 75 million USD) and we all have a friend trying to create the next myspace or youtube and giving it away for free ;), this presentation on good business sense is like an affordable photo on GettyImages, a rare and precious thing.

There are no secrets in it, you don’t need to buy the book or subscribe to the service and, in fact, you won’t learn anything that good old common sense won’t tell you. It’s just clear, simple, straightforward old-skool business talk, updated for the digital age. Genius.

Startup School 08

So the “Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations” comes into effect in May 2008. For those of us even remotely involved in the creation and practice of buzz marketing, word of mouth and some aspect of Viral marketing, it could start flashing warning lights and we should probably all read-up on the new laws coming-in next month.

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising is warning that this law represents greater restrictions on commercial communication via the internet, social networking and word of mouth communications. In some cases, such as Seeding viral ads on the internet without clearly stating you are a representative of the brand, it could spell trouble.

Now, while this has the best of intentions and really should be a good thing, it does make it hard for some of the more original areas Viral marketing to get going. Take , for example, the viral and extended reality concept behind the new Batman campaign:
http://ibelieveinharveydent.com

Is that clearly related the new film? How about the site at:
http://www.ncc-1701.com

Is that obviously a film site for the new Star Trek movie? Or is the latest Lost viral, another from the JJ Abrams camp, which uses an unfolding narrative to told a backstory in the run-up to the new series of Lost
http://www.find815.com

These may not be breaking the law, because they aren’t UK based, but it might prevent us UK based folk from using the same kind of engaging and creative narratives in future if we have to explain the punchline upfront. None of these are harming anyone. In fact part of the fun and engagement factor of these is *being-in-the-know*. People join-up to be one of the select few, the insiders, the ones who actually went out and campaigned in Seattle, Denver, and all over the US for Harvey Dent, a fictional character - and possibly made an ironic and important political statement at the same time. I’m not convinced it would happen if it had Batman logos all over it.

You can get the IPA’s take at:
http://www.ipa.co.uk/news/news_archive/displayitem.cfm?ItemID=2237

At Do Tank we pride ourselves on the creation of innovative and intelligent examples of digital media and, as a digital creative agency, we like to put these examples to good use. So we were massively chuffed when “White Noise“, an interactive TV application we developed for innovative Dutch broadcaster 3Voor12 won a presitigious Spin Award (the Dutch equivalent of a BAFTA) this week.

The application is a next-generation mash-up that picks-up the keywords that iTV viewers send to the TV, runs them through Flickr and broadcasts the resulting images synchronised to a Dave Clarke DJ set. We’d call it VJ2.0 but we already did one of those a few years back with a bluetooth app for clubs.

Do Tank are currently working on the next, extended and improved version of WhiteNoise ready to launch early summer.

The judges’ report ( translation stolen from Patrick Rushton’s blog! ) reads “A silver SpinAward goes to VPRO and Chellomedia for Whitenoise. Within the 3VOOR12 brand, VPRO and Chellomedia have pioneered development of interactive applications on digital television, and Whitenoise is the next step. The Whitenoise concept brings together television, interactivity and internet. Via the remote control, the user chooses search keywords from the popular internet site Flickr. The result goes further than polls or voting and the collaborative creation is a true innovation on television and is therefore worthy of a SpinAward.”
http://www.spinawards.nl/

I didn’t immediately realise why I was so shocked and affected by the news when I received a Twitter update from BBC Breaking telling me the writer, director and UK film industry evangelist, Anthony Minghella, had died following a fairly routine operation. In truth, I hardly knew the man; I had the privilege of working on one his last films, Breaking and Entering, and won’t easily forget the site of him leading the crew in song while waiting for the DOP to prepare a shot - It’s something I’ve seen many directors do. But beyond that my relationship was, officially, just one of the many crew of a film.

But then I got to thinking. In the short time I had spent in his company and the handful of times we had spoken, it was always as if I were talking to someone I had known for years. He spoke to people the way old friends speak: interested, engaged, curious and genuine. It’s rare to meet people like that and especially sad to lose one of them.

Mirage Enterprises have set-up a blog for people to leave messages for the family he leaves behind.

http://minghella.blogspot.com/2008/03/anthony-minghella-in-memoriam.html

You’d have to be living in box not have noticed Producer/Director JJ Abrams viral campaign surrounding Cloverfield. Slusho, a recurring meme in Abram’s projects, has made cameo appearances in Alias and Heroes and one viral site for Cloverfield for a bit of cross-fertislisation so he’s not just limiting it to the web. The TV show Lost (an Abrams production) also had a sucessful extended reality called The Lost Experience and, in the run up to next series of Lost, there is currently is another campaign called Find 815.

Now it seems he’s at it again with the launch of the teaser for upcoming Star Trek film. Apparently starring Chris Pine in the James T Kirk role, the teaser can be seen on the official website but if you scroll down to the “Under Construction” banner there’s a small red dot. Click it to go through to another viral website and watch the “live” video stream from the construction site of the Enterprise NCC-1701 (under construction, get it? I’m here all week, folks).

So what else might be in store for the long run up to Star Trek movie’s release? It’s certainly an audience up for another extended experience or alternate reality game and Abrams certainly earned the title of a master at exploiting cross-media to tantalise and tease his audience. We have nearly a whole year of waiting to find out.