Code Creating Culture
So what happens when you combine the 30th anniversary of Star Wars being released in theaters, cheap stop motion technology, and a great script? Why, the Death Star Crisis Management Video! It’s something perfect for a Monday and finally answers my question – just how exactly did Darth Vader got picked up after the explosion.
When copyright critics need an example of everything that’s wrong with the current system Disney is nearly always mentioned. The company has been a leading advocate of extending the length of creative works despite having a foundation in open source fairy tales (Cinderella, Snow White, etc.). That’s why an enterprising person has put together this movie about appropriate fair use situations. Oh, and they used nothing but Disney clips to do so. Educational and oh so clever.
You might have heard of ‘Gears of War’. It, thus far, has been the premier title for next generation gaming. One of the most notable things about the game’s success was its marketing. Rather than have the traditional rain of empty slug casings over a throbbing techno beat ads featured the incredibly down tempo ‘Mad World’ (originally by Tears for Fears) with incredible in-game footage.
The ads hit a cord with gamers. The commercial quickly shot up the download charts at iTunes and launched a slew of user generated remixes, mashups, and homages. As Long Zheng writes on the istartedsomething blog it was a marketers wet dream. Mich Matthews is the Senior Vice President of Central Marketing at Microsoft:
Speaking at the Microsoft Strategic Account Summit, Mich was discussing the effects of building reach through information sharing by the customer. “The ideal campaign may get two times, four times, even ten times more of that reach via pass along and remixing.”
Mich’s comments, along with the original Gears of War ad, are in the embedded video:
The comments on Long’s board quickly keyed in on the cold, almost calculating nature of Mich’s comments. My response:
Planning for customer engagement does seem to be incredibly cold and calculating. It also seems to miss the point. People didn’t send time on mashups because the saw the commercial and thought “Wow, what a great brand to be associated with”. They contributed the time and effort the did because the commercial resonated with them. In the ad we see a war torn city. We hear the melancholy rendition of ‘Mad World’. Almost inevitably one’s mind draws parallels to our own troubled world. The song and images speak to our own fears and insecurities. The commercial fades out with the avatar of ourselves firing back at seemingly impossible darkness. What happened? Did he survive?
Mich can share all the information she wants with the customer. If all that’s there is something more to buy the effort will fail. The information must be an experience that reveals something more about ourselves.
If you want your content mashed up provide a profound experience. Speak to the human condition. And then let people tailor it to be their own. That’s how mashups get started.
Agree? Disagree?
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Finding cool Internet entertainment has always been a fun past time of mine. Not just because of the obvious upside – a great distraction – but what it represented overall: talented people creating stuff and sharing it with others. A quick search for TV in the mutednoise archives shows its a topic I keep coming back to.
As a current favorite of the moment, Galacticast, states there are a lot of great reasons for Internet TV (while mentioning several of the better shows):
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Kevin Rose may have hit a bit of a legal bump with the Digg/HD-DVD fiasco. But despite the ‘Diggnation’ rising up and quite possibly forcing the social news website to close because of legal ramification they still love the spokesman – at least enough to take a offhanded bit of slang and remix it into numerous humiliating variations. The clip as it originally appeared:
Less than a week later we have Kevin Rose Trance mix:
and this lovely bit of electronica:
and then there’s this enterprising use that delivered exactly what Kevin wanted (squirrel and all):
For a moment lets suspend the reality of just how plug-n-play most generic electronic music vocals are. When people reach a certain amount of ‘Internet fame’ they simply hint that something should be done and there is some enterprising individual who will go out and make it happen. Steven Colbert has been plumbing the depths of viewer created content for some time (even going so far as to attempt an all out mass-made Google bomb). ZeFrank also turned his audience from passive viewers into content creators (which amplified his own efforts).
So we have legions of video editing, song writing, and prose typing people at the ready to make a gag. But why can’t we harness this same amount of creativity and passion for solving some of the world’s problems? Is it much easier to agree on humor than on the proper course for famine relief? Or does the weight of such ’serious’ causes turn content creation from fun into work?
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As I’ve talked about recently I love the quirky, original shows that have been filling up the series of tubes we know and love. Now the makers of the Democracy video player have launched a new online resource called MakeInternetTV. Its a site dedicated to sharing knowledge on just how to get up and running.
As much as I’d love to do my own video show two things are holding me back: (1) there are already way too many ‘talking-head’ technology shows to warrant my own blather and (2) I just don’t have the time. I make sure to carve out at least an hour each day just for writing and that’s orders of magnitude simpler that prepping, shooting, editing, reshooting, and uploading a semi-professional video. I fear that until I am independently wealthy with my virtual lama scam multi-level marketing offer I just can’t do a vidcast.
How about you – if you were to do a show what would it be about? Are you already doing it? What’s the link?
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Television weekends for those of us without cable are very slim pickings. This time of year the networks are either airing the latest golf, nascar, or infomercial ‘event’ to fill time until the workweek prime time. Its a situation that has repeatedly driven me online to find my entertainment. This weekend the latest expedition came up big: I discovered The Burg.
No, this isn’t a civil war drama set in Williamsburg, VA – this is Williamsburg, NY. And, like most things from said city, the characters believe the world revolves around their little pocket of shoddy apartments and weekend antics. However, with writing this sharp and situations this funny we can forgive them for their narcissism. Each episode runs around 10-15 minutes in length and some episodes do contain profanity (no blaring at work – you’ve been warned). That said the Burg has that kind of cool credibility that Friends always lacked – and are all that much more fun to watch because of it.
Would a show like this been possible even five years ago? With broadband just reaching penetration its doubtful. The Burg could very well be a harbinger for great things to come: online only, real to the core, and damn proud of it.
The Burg, episode 9: the 90’s:
GeekBrief TV is a well produced, bite sized look at the day’s technology news. In a very recent behind the scenes recording they show just how they put the Geek Brief together. While anyone with a webcam and a Stickam acocunt can theoretically put together a show there is a perceptible difference in quality (of course).
They do cover the common sense stuff like a computer for editing things together and a camera to capture images. But they also go over a lot of the stuff that may be forgotten because its not on camera – the teleprompter, lighting, etc. If you’re interested in running a ‘pro’ podcast, check it out!
One of the easiest ways to demonstrate code’s contribution to modern culture is the explosion of mashups and remixes. With an entry level PC anyone can sit down and splice together an incredible reinterpretation of media that once was ‘read-only’. As just another example of this check out the incredible Gwen Stefani/Madonna ‘What U Waiting For’/'Hung Up’ mega-mix:
Not directly related to code but the following is a fantastic video non-the-less. It amazes me that in the age of all kinds of whiz-bang special effects and easy-peasy digital editing doing something as simple as carefully choreographed backwards filming (like that is simple) can create such incredible results.