The author an endangered species?

Having referred back to the Middle Ages in my most recent post in the series tagged Serial drama, the passage below caught my eye this morning.

"The medieval theatre audience was an active part of any performance, supporting certain characters, opposing others, and voicing their opinions and preferences loudly and clearly... at times even throwing food at the actors. Similar behaviour is still apparent in, for instance, the Japanese Kabuki theatre, where actors can step out of their roles and interact with the audience, who get to respond."

The full article is here and in it Simon Staffans argues that the author is an endangered species if he insists on ignoring transmedia and interactivity.

Step change

That the Emmy nominations included so many citations for a series produced exclusively for web distribution must have come as a shock for the heads of old-school television networks.

I find it salutary to recall that back in 1999 I was frustrated by the constraints limiting online video... often stuttering at 12fps and in a window sized roughly like a credit card. Who then would have dared to predict that conventional linear television programming would be so soon under threat?

"I was lucky to get into film at a time that was very interesting for drama. But if you look now, the focus is not on the same kind of films that were made in the nineties. When I look now, the most interesting plots, the most interesting characters, they are on television."

— Kevin Spacey

“This is the future, streaming is the future. Television will not be television in five years from now... everyone will be streaming.”

— Beau Willimon

.
Wired Magazine puts it all into perspective here.

Post-privacy

The poster caught my eye earlier last week. The visual reminded me immediately of the preceding months during which I took a close interest in the research Jessi was doing for her thesis sub-titled From the Panopticon to Surveillance Art. Taking a closer look I saw that the symposium would take place close by in my neighbourhood, at the Akademie der bildendnde Künste, the Academy of Fine Arts. This institution was founded in 1808 and is housed in a beautiful complex built in Venetian Renaissance style, competed in 1887.

The third session of the all-day conference was titled Netz und Kunst, Web and Art, and there were presentations by creative activists whose exploits reminded me of the quote from Frank Rieger of the Chaos Computer Club cited by Jessi in her paper:

“We need to develop a ‘let’s have fun confusing their system’ culture that plays with the inherent imperfections, loopholes, systematic problems, and interpretation errors that are inevitable with large scale surveillance. Artists are the right company for this kind of approach. We need a subculture of ‘in your face, peeping tom’… exposing surveillance in the most humiliating and degrading manner, giving people something to laugh about must be the goal.”

The couple of hours we spent at the event brought no eureka moments, as such. I did, however, pick up a flyer issued by IRISS, the acronym standing for Increasing Resilience in Surveillance Societies. One hardly expects mischief from the instigators of an EU research project, the allusion to the eye’s central component, the iris! No this is a very serious piece of investigation, with the universities of Edinburgh and Barcelona among the academic institutions participating. The local partner is the University of the Federal German Armed Forces (Universität der Bundeswehr), which in the present climate gives pause for thought. The research goal is an evaluation of the concept of privacy in a networked world.

And thus my thoughts are once again focused on ‘privacy’, ‘secrecy’, ‘publicness’ and ‘art’. I find myself still hooked on the issues my daughter dealt with in her paper. And I am surely not alone, with the astonishing Edward Snowden story still developing almost hour by hour.

And yet more and more I am wondering what all the fuss is about. As one of the inalienable human rights surely universal individual privacy is a rather bizarre addition to the list? And it is an addendum we owe largely to Anglo-American thinkers, and a concept which sets English and North American cultires apart even from Western European cultures such as French or Italian. Many languages do not have a specific word for ‘privacy’. Such languages either use a complex description to translate the term (such as Russian combining the meaning of ‘solitude’, ‘secrecy’ and ‘private life’) or simply borrow from English. To the extent that the term was in use prior to the Middle Ages, the connotations were of ‘seclusion’, ‘mystery’ and even ‘conspiracy’.

Is it entirely whimsical to return to the Genesis story and those hastily grabbed fig-leaves of privacy? I think not. I also cannot imagine the notion of privacy as having any reality in the societies of earlier centuries. In tightly knit communities little could remain hidden from the elders of the tribe or the leader of the clan, and even their own secrets could be revealed by conspirators or even just by gossips. Can it be said that the Church of Rome placed value on privacy? Certainly not for the unschooled faithful, whose lives were transparent in the most intimate detail thanks to the discipline of the confessional and the peer pressure of the community. Surely for the longest time there was much which was darkly ‘secret’ but little that was lauded as ‘private’? Modesty and circumspection might be seen as virtues but was it not ‘in private’ that many dreadful sins could 

be committed?

 

I think three factors contributed to placing a new value on the idea of privacy. The first was the democratization of knowledge after Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, the second was the Protestant Reformation which followed and the third was the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. If the Founding Fathers of America promoted a right to privacy (if not in word then at least in spirit) they must have found themselves treading very carefully. Their intention was not to facilitate sin hidden from sight, after all! I suspect that there was already talk of the virtuous having no need of concealment. The uncurtained windows characteristic of Holland to this very day, recalling a Calvinist suspicion of what draperies might mask, proclaim the readiness of the inhabitants to be subject to the gaze of equally upright fellow citizens.

In this perspective we can see ‘privacy’ as a concept which we have fetishized in very ambiguous ways for no longer than a couple of centuries which are now irrevocably over. We are again as comprehensively ‘known’ both to the organs of the state and to each other as in earlier times. We must no longer line up in front of the confessional, it comes to us as we walk along the street, surf the web, shop online, register our details or update our status on social networks and our shriver exacts digital penances.

 

This was a week which started (as noted here) with an exploding egg. Two years ago the interactive art project caught my fancy, allowng me to participate in ways which were more facetious than profound. Lissie Pötter, the artist behind the Broken/Unbroken venture, happened to pass through Munich mid-week and it was a pleasure to have drinks with her and her husband and to discuss future performance art plans.

‘Performance art’ is quintessentially post-private, an interdisciplinary performance presented to an audience. It may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or via media. The performer can be present or absent. It can be any situation that involves four basic elements… time, space, the performer's body, or presence in a medium, and a relationship between performer and audience. Performance art can happen anywhere, in any venue or setting and for any length of time. The actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work.

Post-privacy we are all performance artists, each time we post a ‘selfie’ online or upload a clip to YouTube, we benefit from what the writer Hille Koskela called  ‘empowering exhibitionism’, making reference to the webcams used at home, to complicit candidate participation in voyeuristic television shows and to the use of the camera function of mobile phones.

The future may not be without modesty and circumspection but I feel that privacy will be the exception and not the norm. And I am convinced that we shall learn to live with that quite well.

Chapters end

 Indecision about whether the word 'chapter' should have an apostrophe or not! Chapters do end, hence I'll let the headline stand. Although the genitive would also be very apposite as the first half-year of 2013 recedes into the past. Google Reader is a chapter closing. My first RSS tool was Bloglines, but I very quickly switched to the Google service. At the end of 2006... as this post indicates... my morning perusal of the feeds was a precious routine as soon as I had checked the overnight emails at the office in Abu Dhabi. At one point I had about 140 subscriptions, although these have now been reduced to half that number.  

I felt that the combination of reading RSS feeds and writing this blog was perfectly adequate for my communication needs. Facebook never held any real appeal and since I am probably by nature anti-social, subsequent developments like Twitter were of little interest. When Google decides that Blogspot has had its day... and I am well aware that anything digital is by nature ephemeral... I dare say there will be alternative which will present themselves, much as Feedly will now be the means by which I shall satisfy my hunger for the latest news on the interwebs.

Back in May 2011 I wrote... "For my daughter and I have for many, many months been accustomed to having the Skype messaging window permanently open when we are both online. It is for us like sitting at opposite ends of a long, long desk stretching from Maastricht to Munich. The Long Desk is a comforting form of 'telepresence'..."

It was not only comforting but a pure joy! But that is another chapter now ending now that Jessi's three years at Maastricht University is over. The upside is that for the next few months she will be back here in Munich where her internship looks as if it could be very interesting. And when again there is a geographical hurdle to be overcome... if she takes up the internship she has been offered at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C... we'll extend the Long Desk across the ocean. 

For many, many years when I was working in the Sandlands and she was in school in Munich the ritual contact was a short telephone call to her before she left home in the mornings. It was at the time very important for both of us. But the 'always on' Skype window is incomparably better, enabling both of us to feel present during each others' daily lives.

Another chapter ends this weekend. For two and a half years I have been doing daily translations for the German automotive-themed media group Motorvision.But now they have decided that my services are no longer required. Admittedly I have found their international strategy to be somewhat inconsistent and so the termination of my contract came not so much as a surprise.

A shock, nevertheless, since now I must urgently seek a new source of income.

I wonder if this means that my professional activities will no longer revolve around automobiles? For the five year from 2005 to 2010 'the cars were the stars' of our GearOne television channel uploaded from Dubai Media City. Now in 2013 I can hardly imagine anyone who has never been in possession of a driver's license who is better informed about motoring matters than I am! Were a lottery win to enrich me I think I might go for a 2005 Ford Thunderbird 50th Anniversary Edition, a car so beautiful that I think I would have no difficulty finding willing drivers. 

Yes, chapters of all kinds come to an end, even if dreams persist. 

Amusing that this is Sandlander post number 2013!

Transmediality

"I wonder how long it will be before soap opera writers and movie producers are using AI [Artificial Intelligence] improvisations to create content. After all the three act structure that governs most mainstream film releases is so intricately shaped, it is almost a computer program in itself; start combining the data from successful movies, and allowing AI characters to experiment within the resulting confines and you have the sort of crazed hybrid of Hollywood formula and Marxist dialectics that can only result in hit romantic comedies."

The quote is from producer Sean Coleman who heads the team responsible for Channel 4 Education's new online drama named 'SuperMes', about a shy loner moving into a shared house with three lively characters. The series uses virtual actors and settings from popular computer game 'The Sims' (from an article about emergent drama here). 

Reflecting on this the movie 'Simone' came to mind, filmed exactly ten years ago. Remember? It told the story of a producer whose star walked off the set and left him with a big problem. His solution was a 'Sim', a digital actor who was photo-realistic to an extent not actually possible back in 2002. Today for sure there is technology almost able to deliver far more advanced verisimilitude... But prompted by what Sean Coleman had to say by thinking went off in other directions... towards a near future in which human actors have still not been replaced by avatars but where technology enables new ways of creating content.

Only a couple of years before 'Simone' came out I had been fortunate to spend a year producing serial drama using green screen tech not just for a few 'special effects' sequences but on a regular day-for-day basis. Since the dramatic action took place on an express train, moving backgrounds were essential and this posed an interesting challenge for multi-camera studio production.

The background footage had been shot from five different angles and stored as five synchronous feeds on a server. While shooting each cameraman had to pick the background feed which best corresponded to his perspective of the foreground action and by and large the end result was extremely convincing. It was also fascinating to have the task of integrating young computer geeks with veteran television crafts people to form a harmonious, efficient and productive team.

To be perfectly honest it was only the technology aspect of 'CityExpress' which can be recalled as a success... the series had many, many flaws and it was not renewed by the network for a second 40-episode season.

My thoughts will, however, return to green screen production later.

But what about the possibilities technology offers for the earliest stage of story generation?

The storytelling for episodic serial drama traditionally starts with what is commonly called the 'bible'. This outlines the long to medium term narrative arc development but importantly also sets forth the constraints in terms of the core characters and their relationships, the settings in which the dramatic action takes place and establishes the emotional tonalities of the series.

Conventionally the 'bible' is a hefty but succinctly formulated text. If I understand the implications of the 'SuperMes' project correctly, then the 'bible' can also be extended as a parallel collection of metadata, conformed to be subject to intelligent algorithms. This would enable the parameters contained in the 'bible' to become not only 'rules' binding for the subsequent work of the storyliners but would allow for autonomous AI contributions to the stories as a result of algorithmic interaction.  In this way the computer's program becomes one of the valuable creatives sitting at the table in the writers' room.

Coleman again...

"We spent a number of weeks working out the personality traits that would work best to give us the most interesting characters, the most dramatic conflicts and the most quirky entertainment. The game is very sophisticated in the grey areas that it provides... the kind of ambiguities of personality that make really fascinating characters, and we were constantly surprised by our Sims. Like the time the two boys decided to go skinny-dipping. Nothing we had done told them to do that."

Would an AI presence among the storyliners working on an episodic drama series stifle creativity, lead to predictable formulaic content creation? Some will doubtless take that stand. My feeling is that the opposite outcome is more likely... one which is richly positive and which could blow the cobwebs off traditional soap opera... with its roots in radio fiction back in the late 1930s... and make it bubble with the effervescence that today's transmedia multi-screen on-demand audience increasingly expects.

So let us assume that the robot... for in the context of emergent drama the term is justified... is there at the writers' conference table. At the end of the storylining week the outlines of five new episodes will conventionally be 'signed off' by the head writer before being passed on to the five writers of the individual shows. But a new step can intervene... the parsing of the new storylines by the computer program in order both to check for conformity with the metadata 'bible' and to add any new data which my have become relevant. My feeling is that at this stage certain expressions would have to be recognized by the program as significant, words revelatory of intent or emotion or cognition.

What influence can the robotic colleague then have for the next stage, the work of the five writers assigned as what the French so helpfully call dialoguistes who turn the bare-bones provided by the storyliners (or scénaristes) into final shooting scripts for a subsequent week of studio production? Here I imagine a second open window on the writer's screen providing metadata guidance concerning the behaviours of specific characters, to make sure that consistency with the canon of the series is safeguarded.

• When John returns to his flat at night he always goes to get a beer from the refrigerator before switching on the lights.
• Alice always goes back to check whether her car is locked even after she has used the remote control key.

Given that the writers of individual episodes come and go during the life of a series... whether an open-ended 'soap opera' format or a long-form telenovela... such an aid would make the job of the script editor less onerous.

Now that five scripts are ready to shoot it is almost time to move into the studio. And... if we are to further espouse advances in technology... how can it not be a green screen production environment?

However before work can start in the studio the director assigned the responsibility for a 'block' of five episodes must do his prep. The technology here discussed must surely allow the director to benefit from having an AI assistant, most likely taking the role of storyboard artist.

The same virtual sets later used in the studio would be used in the storyboarding phase, with the human cast members represented by avatars. The director's preparation work would to some extent resemble the interface of the online virtual world 'Second Life'.

• A text-to-voice app would allow the running time of each individual scene to be be fine-tuned.
• The metadata for each setting could proscribe certain stylistic elements which might be part of the series canon... for instance, scenes set in a 'billiard saloon' might invariably start with the potting of a coloured ball in extreme foreground before framing actors beyond (although the billiard table sequences would most probably be composited CGI elements!).
• The final storyboard output would essentially be a pre-visualization of each episode. It would not only generate 'shot lists' for camera operators but also could include inputs from the wardrobe department and provide guidance for the props crew. This would be especially helpful in determining what 'practical pieces'... items with which the human actors will come in physical contact in the virtual sets... will need to be available for the shoot.

Fully prepped and his blocking and staging choices confirmed by the storyboard, the director can now confront the human talent in a phase which might still be called 'rehearsal', although new terminologies will certainly emerge when AI-supported content creation takes hold.
x

[to be continued]

A new tool to try out

Whether this works or not I don't know, but I'm testing what seems to be an interesting alternative to PowerPoint, called SlideRocket.

Apart from some odd rectangular artifacts it looks more or less okay. An advantage is that audi and video can be embedded, so I think it is very much in line with my thinking concerning transmediality.

Transmediality advancing

I have Jill Gollick to thank for spotting this. The Producers Guild Of America has defined the role of the Transmedia Producer.

A Transmedia Narrative project or franchise must consist of three (or more) narrative storylines existing within the same fictional universe on any of the following platforms: Film, Television, Short Film, Broadband, Publishing, Comics, Animation, Mobile, Special Venues, DVD/Blu-ray/CD-ROM, Narrative Commercial and Marketing rollouts, and other technologies that may or may not currently exist.

These narrative extensions are NOT the same as repurposing material from one platform to be cut or repurposed to different platforms. A Transmedia Producer credit is given to the person(s) responsible for a significant portion of a project’s long-term planning, development, production, and/or maintenance of narrative continuity across multiple platforms, and creation of original storylines for new platforms. Transmedia producers also create and implement interactive endeavors to unite the audience of the property with the canonical narrative and this element should be considered as valid qualification for credit as long as they are related directly to the narrative presentation of a project. Transmedia Producers may originate with a project or be brought in at any time during the long-term rollout of a project in order to analyze, create or facilitate the life of that project and may be responsible for all or only part of the content of the project.

Transmedia Producers may also be hired by or partner with companies or entities, which develop software and other technologies and who wish to showcase these inventions with compelling, immersive, multi-platform content.

To qualify for this credit, a Transmedia Producer may or may not be publicly credited as part of a larger institution or company, but a titled employee of said institution must be able to confirm that the individual was an integral part of the production team for the project.

User created advertising

Re-posted from Gizmodo who explain...

"In response to a call from HP for user-made advertisements, two students at London's Kingston University pulled off a mesmerizing synchronized printing routine with a stable of HP printers. It's important to bear in mind here what's really been accomplished here. Yes, two students have created a professional-level advertisement, which is artistically and conceptually impressive. But more importantly—and I say this as someone who, like millions of others, spends my his life just one spool error away from a blinding fit of rage—they've tamed one of our generation's greatest technological beasts, and made it dance for us. Good work, fellas."

Okay, I was going to buy an HP anyway...

New from Animoto

Animoto I have mentioned before. It's an interesting service which creates from your uploaded photos a dynamic slide-show synchronised to the music track of your choice. The demo above, made when Animoto was winner of one of the Webby awards, hints that very soon their service will also be able to handle full-motion video as well as still images.

Now that would offer an even better storytelling tool, chunks of video eye candy, short flashy segments to be dropped into the NLE timeline of a video project. The obvious benefit, the saving of hours which would otherwise be needed to edit such sequences from scratch in Avid, FCP or in Sony Vegas (which I have just bought and plan to install next weekend).

Animoto, another weapon in the arsenal of the DIYLBM brigade (do-it-yourself low-budget media).

Weekend video

More a 'food for thought' video this weekend.

Victory and calamity

"A small British company has been named Best in Show at the South by Southwest Web Awards, in Austin, Texas. Six to Start won the top prize for We Tell Stories, an interactive approach to retelling literary classics and redefining modern online story-telling."

I'm not surprised that the Six To Start venture involves Penguin, ever reminding us of how innovative it has always been as a publisher.

My current read bears the Peguin imprint and I cannot remember enjoying a book so much for years.

Of course I'm not at all influenced by the fact that the writer is female, comely and about thirty... No way!

"I’m the author of the prep-school-confidential thriller, Special Topics In Calamity Physics. A lot of ya’ll have asked if it’s really me. Ya. It is."

Do-it-yourself low-budget media

The video clip is pleasant to watch, the music not disagreeable, but the reason for posting it is explained here.

Transmediality...

...that's one of the labels I could use to tag some of my posts were I not so lazy about these devices which could theoretically bring me more readers. But it certainly applies to the video embedded below. I was thinking along these lines ten years ago, making the first baby-steps in the direction of interactive soap opera. Unfortunately my client at the time decided to throttle back when the dot.com crash loomed.

But Mr Alexander talks the talk most persuasively. Then think of what he's saying and combine it with the possibilities presented by the new generation of affordable hi-def cameras (thanks, nzm, for the further info on the Canon!) and it's for sure that story-telling is on the brink of the biggest change since the advent of the Kinematograph.

An American's encounter with the BBC iPlayer.

NewTeeVee's correspondent compares in this post the BBC tool very favourably to Hulu, which of course those of us in Yurp cannot evaluate for ourselves.

90210 - the reviews are in

The reviews are in from last night's two-hour premiere of the much-buzzed-about 90210. Here is what the critics had to say:

“90210 is a perfectly competent and reasonably seamless revival that understands what made the original tick (and tick and tick), while being infused (occasionally suffused) with enough contemporary touchstones to remind new viewers that this isn’t their parents’ (or at least older siblings’) trusty fave… 90210 is not a disaster, and the CW can now officially let out a deep … sigh … of relief.” — Newsday

“More than just a famous zip code, 90210 is easily the most hyped show of the fall season and the CW is banking on all of the buzz to draw in big ratings. This spinoff, eight years after the first series ended, is a pallid copy of the original fish out of water story only with shinier cars, fancier clothes and Botox aplenty.” — Variety

“All the expected ingredients were there: gorgeous teens, lots of style and extravagance, raging hormones, and always the potential for backstabbing, broken hearts and payback. Same old, same old at West Beverly Hills High School.”– AP

Vaguely on topic, the image just above is a screencap from a frame of full 1080p hi-def video shot by what is essentially a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera, the Canon 5D Mark II. Relevance to 90210? It was the series which inspired me when I was producing soap opera. And this amazing new camera inspires, too. The tools are coming faster than we can envisage the new storytelling paradigms they facilitate.

Felix Bavaria

By the eighty-ninth minute I had come to the conclusion that I had seen more supreme mastery of footballing skills in matches in the Sandlands pitting Al Wahda against Al Ain.

This impression lingers, in spite of the last minute goal scored, like the previous two German goals, by a player from Bayern München.

It is estimated that the game was watched by about forty million viewers in Germany, 29.5 million via the ZDF channel (who tallied an incredible 85% viewership share), the rest being those attending 'public viewing' venues and the not inconsiderable audience served by satellite channels targeting the Turkish-speaking community here. Somehow amusing that one of the few broadcasters who did not expereince an interruption of transmission during the second half was Al Jazeera Sport.

Hah, success! I honestly thought I'd find nothing to say about the game at all!

Webisodix

Sony Corp. will launch its new show "Angel of Death" on the Web, but it is using an approach that it hopes will drive sales of DVDs and boost other distribution avenues down the road.

The Wall Street Journal has the full story here...

The Platform Contest

"...it's been riveting to watch three of the most innovative companies in Silicon Valley—each representing a fundamental phase of the information era—battle it out. Apple, Google and Facebook are, respectively, an icon from the pioneering days of personal computers; the biggest, most profitable company yet born on the Web; and a feisty upstart whose name is synonymous with the current migration to social networks."

says Josh Quittner here in an important Time Magazine article.

Conversational media

Some of Sandlander's readers may have already responded to repeated exhortations to take very seriously indeed what journalism guru Jeff Jarvis has to say.

Here's video which encapsulates much that he stands for, including his belief in conversational media.



And here is proof that viral marketing can be entertaining, surprising and effective. By passing it along what am I doing, but adding to the conversation. I found the clip at NewTeeVee who explain more about it here.



And finally, there are indications that we are on the brink of a football festival. I shall probably wind up watching some of the matches which will be filling that flat-screen monitors in most of the places where I eat and drink. Most of these establishments are much more modest that the One and Only Royal Mirage, who used this elegant motif to invite fans to watch the action at their lovely roof-top bar in Dubai.

Vuguru goes Bollywood

Michael Eisner is at it again. Prom Queen was brilliant, daily short webisodic episodes adding up to enough content for a subsequent DVD release. This time the concept is even more ingenious. Foreign Body will not just be a web entertainment but also a powerful promotional instrument for Robin Cook's forthcoming best-seller.

This is platform-agnosticism with bravura. It's also not that far removed from my own thinking early last year, when I tried to publish my novel chapter-by-chapter as an audio podcast, but with a video teaser for each installment. Of course, Vuguru is throwing $10,00 at each minute of content, which makes a difference.

Here the Los Angeles Times has more about the new project and this is the take of NewTeeVee.

Foreign Body premieres today on foreignbody.tv, and on other platforms including YouTube, Veoh, Hulu, Blip.tv and Dailymotion. Episode 1 is embedded below.



Update

This today from CamcorderInfo:

Foreign Body is actually the brainchild of Robin Cook, the best selling author of a zillion medical thrillers. Cook was getting worried that the audience for his books was getting too old. He wanted to know if Eisner would be interested in producing a broadband video prequel for his next title, designed to get a younger audience pumped about his work. The webisodes would be free, the book would not.

Eisner jumped at the chance, and on May 27th the first two minute episode of Foreign Body (the video prequel) went live. . http://foreignbody.tv/episodes It's an exotic thriller, about Americans going to India for cut-rate operations. It's full murder, suspense, and sexy nurses. Over the next two months, fans who tune in will find new five new, 2 minute episodes each week ending on August 5 when Foreign Body (the book) will hit the shelves to carry the story forward.

According to an NPR story, the budget for the series is about $500,000. This is real money for an Internet production but chump change for Hollywood. The production schedule is tight and complex - 24 days to shoot 100 minutes of high quality video on the beaches of Malibu, the back streets of Delhi, and a hospital set in L.A. Eisner hired Big Fantastic, four video directors who have mastered the art of creating great-quality web video, quickly and on the cheap to produce Foreign Body. I love the declaration pasted on the Big Fantastic website: "We believe web video should not be limited to skateboard wipeouts". I also love the tag team approach they take to producing videos quickly.

Check out the great blog post/video piece found on the LA Times Webscout blog to watch the cast and crew in action. One guy will shoot a quick scene with the bikini clad actresses on his hand held camera (is that a Panasonic DVX-100 mini DV camera I see them using?) When he is done he hands over the actors, lighting and sound guy to the next director while he edits the scene on his laptop. No one sits around waiting for the next scene to be blocked out using this system.

Of course, the big question is whether or not the production is going to make money. In the NPR interview, Eisner admits that he has not made a lot of money with his first couple of productions. That’s to be expected. "If you wait for the advertising world and the distribution world to get there, it'll never happen. So I've said I'm just going to go do it," Eisner said. Then he added, " 'The money will come if I do it right,' he said hopefully."

He goes on to say that by this time next year he hopes to see that a line of well-heeled advertisers banging on his door to buy space for one of his productions.