[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/62465232[/vimeo]
in movies there are sound effects that make everything look and sound awesome. In the movies, we tend to experience something visual through our ears. When sound effects are added to visual content, it all becomes much more epic. Maybe that is why this wearable sound effects jacket was brought from idea to realization.
Continue reading… “Wearable sound effects jacket”
Hollywood’s scripts always call for a protagonist. Margin Call has none.
Raymond Alvarez: The film Margin Call has to be regarded as a distorted reflection of reality. Just as Michael Douglas stood before a soon-to-be-fired audience in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, declared greed good, rationalization has become a mainstay. At the end of the day, we’re just cannon fodder.
Continue reading… “The dark hours before the storm: “Margin Call””
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd2VBfLtqCA[/youtube]
The studio behind Star Trek Into Darkness took the film’s title literally, commissioning the flying of a giant, glowing Starfleet insignia in the night sky in London over the weekend. Comprised of 30 LED-illuminated quadrotors, the 308-foot-tall logo rotated in place 118 feet above ground, before dimming its lights alongside those of Tower Bridge and Big Ben in recognition of the WWF’s Earth Hour conservation effort.
Continue reading… “Drones form giant, glowing ‘Star Trek’ insignia over London”
Like YouTube, Facebook, or blogging platforms, it’s almost hard to believe there was an Internet without Kickstarter, which may be the greatest testament to its success. In 2009, the site generated about $23 million for its projects–an impressive figure by all accounts–but in 2012, Kickstarter pulled in roughly 10 times that, leapfrogging the grant budget of the National Endowment for the Arts. You can find all those facts and many more in the following masterful infographic (broken apart here) created for Fast Company by Catalogtree and reported by Skylar Bergl, Jeffrey Cattel, and Lindsey Kratochwill…
Continue reading… “Kickstarter’s massive leap into forefront of indie innovation”
The dependable mid-budget, R-rated action movies that Hollywood once relied on are now anything but dependable.
Hollywood has had a series of tent-pole and more modestly budgeted movies that have collapsed at the box office this winter. Revenue and attendance are both down 15 percent from the same period last year, reports the Hollywood Reporter. The industry got some surprise relief this weekend from Oz the Great and Powerful despite middling reviews. It’s also one of the few big new movies of 2013 so far clearly marketed toward kids. If you were to look at the state of the box office in the past few months, you might come away with two impressions: One, the dependable mid-budget, R-rated action movies that Hollywood once relied on are now anything but dependable. And two, Hollywood is basically just for kids.
Continue reading… “The death of the R-rated action movie”
Pixar
Emma Coates, a director and storyboard artist at Pixar, recently tweeted twenty-two rules on storytelling. A favorite rule is #13: “Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.”
Continue reading… “22 rules on storytelling from Pixar”
A remarkable Empire of One business
Rich Burlew created the first The Order of the Stick, a hilarious webcomic that celebrates and satirizes tabletop role-playing games and medieval fantasy, on September 29, 2003. The strip was originally produced to entertain people who came to his website for gaming articles, but it quickly became the most popular feature, leading Burlew to eventually abandon writing articles almost entirely.
The entire comic strip is drawn with simple stick characters, hence the name.
On September 30, 2005, The Order of the Stick began appearing in Dragon, the long-running official D&D magazine, and the strip became profitable enough for him to quit his job as a freelance graphic designer and concentrate on cartooning.
Rich also started self-publishing his comics in book form in 2005, but it became hard for him to keep all of the older books in stock. So in 2012 he decided to do a Kickstarter project with a goal of $57,750. Instead, he raised $1,254,120 from 14,952 backers…
Continue reading… “Rich Burlew’s Comic Book Business Success Story”
Recently, someone in the office came across the home that inspired Tony Stark’s house in the Iron Man movies (it’s real, but not quite as extravagantly located). Instead of talking about that actual home, we launched into a debate about Stark’s fictional palace and the many, many expensive things he’d keep inside. Debating his home lead us to another fictional character with billions of dollars and penchant for fighting crime: Batman.
It’s a little outside of what we normally post here, but come on, who hasn’t wondered this? After you review all the financials, it comes out that it’s cheaper to be Batman. He’s a bit more frugal, and seems to take better care of his stuff. He also doesn’t require the power of flight. Tony Stark is a little more cavalier with his equipment, but perhaps he recycles all those suits he trashes?
(See the infographic after the jump…)
Continue reading… “The Billion Dollar Hero Battle”
Total video views among internet users in the US were up 23% year over year in Q4 2012.
The appetite of U.S. online video viewers appears far from satisfied. Research from video monetization firm FreeWheel shows that the total video views among internet users in the US were up 23% year over year in Q4 2012. That growth has paralleled an increase in video ad volume, which grew 47% over the same time period, according to FreeWheel. (FreeWheel’s data covers only rights-managed videos, and does not include user-generated content.)
Continue reading… “More ads, higher completion rates on longer online videos”
Time spent consuming information and entertainment goods is an important element of the overall satisfaction.
Netflix released all 13 episodes of House of Cards last week, allowing subscribers to watch the series in marathon sessions. ”The efficiency that makes binge viewing so compelling also accelerates the time a consumer spends with Netflix,” Variety noted. This novel release schedule highlights the question of how consumers value paid content relative to consumption time.
Continue reading… “Cost per hour a pivotal metric for paid content”
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Devin Murphy fell in love with the new remix of the 1984 Bryan Adams hit “Summer of ’69.” But she didn’t hear it on the radio, iTunes or see it on a friend’s Spotify page. She fell for it while sweating it out at a fitness class at Barry’s Bootcamp.
Continue reading… “The new DJ’s are fitness gurus”
TED conference moving to Vancouver.
Greg Klassen, the senior vice-president of marketing for the Canadian Tourism Commission, one day in December, was summoned to a confidential meeting at Tourism Vancouver.
Continue reading… “TED conference moving to Vancouver in 2014”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.