NESTA suggestions:
"If you think that the idea may have the potential for further development please include details here."
Re-mixing is an idea that could be applied to all film and video content, and made widely available to audiences. Despite many expensive failures in trying to establish an "interactive film" market, the idea is still alive because this is a dream about empowerment. Developments in popular culture over the last decade have increased the potential for re-mixable film. Film sampling is inevitable given social and cultural trends towards more malleable media.
A technical platform, used for performance alone, based on this project, could be developed with individual artists in mind. This platform could be adapted for
* interactive television
* web sites
* live events
* consumer home entertainment
* interactive cinema
The real potential is to contribute greatly to the evolving industry processes for high end media. The reason that the BBC is considering releasing vast amounts of content online for free non-commercial use (annouced after my initial proposal) is because the organisation recognises that it stands to make more revenue from old content if it is accessible as opposed to it being locked away out of mind, out of sight. A re-mixable production processes and technology will complement such developments and hopefully open up vast back-catalogues of content for wider benefits.
Key to the financial potential of a re-mixable medium will be advertising. Re-mixable films will be very appealing to advertisers who can license individual film assets for commercials (e.g. film spoofs in commercials) and also release their own "sponsored versions" with virtual product placement. The latter is becoming viable with virtual billboards being inserted into US sports broadcasts and products being digitally inserted into popular television shows.
My idea is to further develop the story universe for SANCTUARY into "ten weeks in the head bin", a feature length re-mixable film project for which this project is a pilot. The script property, developed as an interactive narrative and technical specification, has the potential to form the basis of a film franchise covering commercial re-mixes of SANCTUARY, "ten weeks in the head bin" (the feature) and two subsequent games that re-use art from the proceeding films.
"The Stadium" is a sports stadium simulation game set in the future, a cross between Football Manager and Harry Potter Quidditch, except that the game is more like Rugby Union and played in virtual space.
"Cityscape" is a persistent world (i.e. massively multiplayer online game) based on the virtual world in the "head bin" script that acts as a virtual venue for live performance and role-playing.
It is viable to suggest that all DVDs could be re-mixable in the way proposed here, whether they be for internal studio use or for public consumer use. A standard for this kind of re-usability is likely to emerge over time in response to economic pressures.
Ultimately the potential of this idea is to influence the development of open source media technology in a way that provides greater benefit in social and creative terms to end users. It is possible for this idea to have universal benefits if allowed to "muddy the waters" between film and game. The idea is deliberately proposed in terms of a console product for commercial reasons but, as with the way ID Software eventually release the source code for their seminal games ("Doom", "Quake", "Quake II"), there is real potential to influence an entire industry with quality titles that demonstrate wide appeal.
Posted by .M. at October 17, 2003 12:25 PM