Archive

Posts Tagged ‘actor’

Want To Join My Production Team?

January 25th, 2011

I posted a Spidvid project last month named “Blog Hacked” with an outline for a story about a startup entrepreneur who can’t get any coverage across the blogosphere. Frustrated, he hires a hacker to hack into a popular blog so he can post his own story through their publishing platform. Hijacking a blogger’s control panel if you will. The post goes live to millions of people, but how is this unprecedented event going to unfold and be received?!

Dennis Moore has already written a fantastic 6 page script for the project that will ultimately become a 5 minute video thriller. He has been fantastic to collaborate with over the past few weeks. He has 32 years in the screenwriting industry, and really knows how to tell an interesting story that people can relate to.

At this point I’m unsure where to film the entertaining video. It could be Toronto, Salt Lake City, Seattle, LA, NYC, or somewhere else. If you want to join my team as an actor, director, videographer, or editor then please bid on the project, or contact me.

Looking forward to wrapping up this fun project next month or in March. If you want to be part of this project opportunity then please let me know the unique value you can provide to it.

Cheers to collaborative filmmaking!

Jeremy Campbell New Project , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Spidvid Creator Initiative

December 8th, 2010

Been thinking up creative ways to increase projects on Spidvid, provide some extra incentives for video creators, and get the Spidvid community more engaged with new opportunities.

So today we are launching an initiative for current and future Spidvid creators where we act as a video project producer.

Here’s how the Spidvid Creator Initiative works:

- A video concept or script must be submitted to us and pre-approved.

- Each created video should be 1-5 minutes in length.

- Each video needs to have good original entertainment and production value.

- Each video must be ad-friendly for brands.

- Since collaboration is at our core, each video must be created with at least one Spidvid community member. A team member can quickly and easily get a free Spidvid profile.

- $50-$500 will be provided for each project budget.

- The video creators and his or her teams will be given 25%-50% of the content ownership.

These are the key points of our Spidvid Creator Initiative as of today. There will be likely changes over time, and so updates will be well communicated here on our blog, in our newsletter, and via Twitter and Facebook. If you have any questions please contact us, or post a comment below.

Jeremy Campbell Visionary, community , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Converting Star Trek Into Reality

November 19th, 2010

I’m going to start writing about new Spidvid projects created by our community that may be of interest to the amazing world-wide video creation talent that reads our blog.

Today we have a project posted by author Rodney Bartlett who wants to see a film about Star Trek about becoming reality. If you are a Star Trek fan and happen to be an actor, producer, writer, director, editor, story teller, or a videographer, then this collaborative project may be for you. See the project details below, and bid on it if you want to join Rodney’s team.

Title: 10 Steps To Convert Star Trek Into Reality

Ideas:

1) In July 2009, electrical engineer Hong Tang and his team at Yale University in the USA demonstrated that, on silicon chip- and transistor- scales, light can attract and repel itself like electric charges/magnets (Discover magazine’s “Top 100 Stories of 2009 #83: Like Magnets, Light Can Attract and Repel Itself” by Stephen Ornes, from the January-February 2010 special issue; published online December 21, 2009). This is the “optical force”, a phenomenon that theorists first predicted in 2005 (this time delay is rather confusing since James Clerk Maxwell showed that light is an electromagnetic disturbance approx. 140 years ago). In the event of the universe having an underlying electronic foundation (hopefully, my summary will make it clear that this must be so – also … an electronic universe is a necessary precursor to scientific fulfilment of Star Trek’s “magic” which becomes clear as these steps are read), it would be composed of “silicon chip- and transistor- scales” and the Optical Force would not be restricted to microscopic scales but could operate universally. Tang proposes that the optical force could be exploited in telecommunications. For example, switches based on the optical force could be used to speed up the routing of light signals in fibre-optic cables, and optical oscillators could improve cell phone signal processing.

2) If all forms of EM (electromagnetic) radiation can attract/repel, radio waves will also cause communication revolution e.g. with the Internet and mobile (cell) phones. I anticipate that there may be no more overexposure to ultraviolet or X-rays.

3) In agreement with the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics, EM waves have particle-like properties (more noticeable at high frequencies) so cosmic rays (actually particles) are sometimes listed on the EM spectrum beyond its highest frequency of gamma rays.

4) If cosmic rays are made to repel, astronauts going to Mars or another star or galaxy would be safe from potentially deadly radiation.

5) And if all particles in the body can be made to attract or repel as necessary, doctors will have new ways of restoring patients to health.

6) From 1929 til his death in 1955, Einstein worked on his Unified Field Theory with the aim of uniting electromagnetism and gravitation. Future achievement of this means warps of space (gravity, according to General Relativity) between spaceships/stars could be attracted together, thereby eliminating distance. And “warp drive” would not only come to life in future science/technology … it would be improved tremendously, almost beyond imagination. This reminds me of the 1994 proposal by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre of a method of stretching space in a wave which would in theory cause the fabric of space ahead of a spacecraft to contract and the space behind it to expand. Therefore, the ship would be carried along in a warp bubble like a person being transported on an escalator, reaching its destination faster than a light beam restricted to travelling outside the warp bubble. There are no known methods to warp space – however, this extension of the Yale demonstration in electrical engineering may provide one.

7) Since Relativity says space and time can never exist separately, warps in space are actually warps in space-time. Eliminating distances in space also means “distances” between both future and past times are eliminated – and time travel becomes reality. This is foreseen by the Enterprise time-travelling back to 20th-century Earth in the 1986 movie “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” and by Star Trek’s “subspace communications”. Doing away with distances in space and time also opens the door to Star Trek-like teleportation. Teleportation wouldn’t involve reproducing the original and there would be no need to destroy the original body – we would “simply” be here one moment, and there the next (wherever and whenever our destination is).

8.) Another step might be to think of “… the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything” (words used by Stephen Hawking on the American version of Amazon, when promoting his latest book “The Grand Design”) in a different way than physicists who are presently working on science’s holy grail of unification. Recalling the manmade Genesis Planet in the 1982 movie “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”, we might anticipate that the future will actually see a manmade planet (literally forming a planet is merely an advancement of terraforming, where a planet is engineered to be Earth-like and habitable). We might even free our minds from all restrictions and imagine science and technology creating every planet in the universe. The universe’s underlying electronic foundation (which makes our cosmos into a partially-complete unification, similar to 2 objects which appear billions of years or billions of light-years apart on a huge computer screen actually being unified by the strings of ones and zeros making up the computer code which is all in one small place) would make our cosmos into physics’ holy grail of a complete unification if it enabled not only elimination of all distances in space and time, but also elimination of distance between (and including) the different sides of objects and particles. This last point requires the universe to not merely be a vast collection of the countless photons, electrons and other quantum particles within it; but to be a unified whole that has “particles” and “waves” built into its union of digital 1’s and 0’s (or its union of qubits – quantum binary digits). If we use the example of CGH (computer generated holography, which is reminiscent of the holographic simulation called the Holodeck in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”), these “particles” and “waves” would either be elements in a Touchable Hologram – demonstrated by Japanese researchers in August 2009 (search for “Touchable Holography” in Google or You Tube) – or elements produced by the interaction of electromagnetic and presently undiscovered gravitational waves, producing what we know as mass (in September 2008, renowned British astrophysicist Professor Stephen Hawking bet US$100 that the Large Hadron Collider would not find the Higgs boson, a theoretical particle supposed to explain how other particles acquire mass) and forming what we know as space-time. Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, and measurements on the Hulse-Taylor binary-star system resulted in Russell Hulse and Joe Taylor being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993 for their work, which was the first indirect evidence for gravitational waves.The feedback of the past and future universes into the unified cosmos’s electronic foundation would ensure that both past and future could not be altered. (I’m disagreeing with Einstein’s view of weights [mass] causing indentations in a malleable “rubber sheet” called space-time, but the system I’m proposing can yield exactly the same measurements as his and I think Einstein would welcome the chance to consider a different interpretation.) (Our brains and minds are part of this unification too, which must mean extrasensory perception and telekinetic independence from technology are possible.)

9) Elimination of diseased matter and/or eliminating the distance in time between a patient and recovery from any adverse medical condition – even death – would also be a valuable way of restoring health. With time travel in an electronic universe, people who have long since died could have their minds downloaded into clones of their bodies – a modification of ideas published by robotics/artificial- intelligence pioneer Hans Moravec, inventor/futurist Ray Kurzweil and others – allowing them to “recover” from death (establishing colonies throughout space and time would prevent overpopulation). Or if the distance between recovery and a patient is reduced to zero before illness or accident occurs (we might call this “eVaccination” – electronic vaccination); prevention of any adverse medical condition, including that of a second death for those resurrected, can occur. Science’s real-life conquering of all disease, and even death, would certainly make the technology employed by Leonard “Bones” McCoy, the Enterprise’s doctor, appear non-futuristic.

10) These paragraphs imply the possibility of humans time-travelling to the distant past and using electronics to create this particular subuniverse’s computer-generated Big Bang (but there’s still room for God because God would be a pantheistic union of the mega universe’s material and mental parts, forming a union with humans in a cosmic unification). We’ve seen several examples of how science fact could equal, or surpass, science fiction. A final example of surpassing is that, in Star Trek, there are many military conflicts with Klingons, Romulans, the Borg, etc. In a real-life cosmic unification, there are no wars between the stars but peace is normal – even on Earth – since nobody can attack anyone in any way without knowing they’re attacking themself.

Story:

The video begins with somebody reading an article in a science magazine about light being able, on microscopic scales, to attract and repel like electric charges or magnets. At first the reader merely thought the article was interesting but, over the next few hours, it develops into ideas for things like e(lectronic)Sunscreen, protection from cosmic rays, a basis for new treatments in medicine, intergalactic and time travel. During the next few months, the reader combines those ideas with his or her love of science fiction (”Star Trek” and Doctor Who’s “Face of Bo”, who is 5 billion years old and can teleport around the universe without any technology), as well as combining the thoughts with his or her love of the idea of an electronic and holographic universe. Then more ideas came – notions about eternal health for everyone who ever lived and thoughts regarding the implications of unification. Reluctantly at first, the reader realised that the later conclusions agreed with what Jesus said in the Bible and supported the concept of God. But he or she still would not go to church, preferring to tackle these new ideas from a scientific perspective.

Additional Information:

Rodney hopes to see this film created as soon as possible. The 2 free ebooks he’s written ( “A New Earth and A New Universe” + “Humans and their Universes” and a video he put on You Tube may be of assistance.

You can learn about the complete project details on its Spidvid project page, and connect with Rodney via his Spidvid profile.



Jeremy Campbell New Project, community , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Interview With Streamy Award Winner Mark Gantt

October 15th, 2010

Mark Gantt The Bannen Way

I recently had the opportunity to interview Mark Gantt who is the executive producer and lead actor of the web series “The Bannen Way”. The Bannen Way killed it at the Streamy Awards and went on to win four awards, and has attracted over 14 million views. Mark is now passing down his knowledge of the web series business as a teacher through his workshop, so if you’re looking to learn from one of the best be sure to check that out.

Enough of kissing Mark’s ass, below is our interview.

1. Did you create your web series workshop to pass on the information and knowledge you gained from creating and producing “The Bannen Way” to other aspiring video creators and filmmakers?

Yes. I have met over thirty people for coffee to discuss my experience with The Bannen Way and have done over twenty panels in the last five months and realized that with the limited time available, there was little ‘nuts and bolts’ being talked about. One attendee of the NATPE panel I was doing called “Anatomy of a Hit Web Series” was very frustrated afterwards and I overheard her saying, “I still don’t know how to make a $#&@ web series!” I heard that, I heard that from several people. In the workshops, or on a panel, or at coffee, I explain that creating a web series isn’t brain surgery but it feels like that if you don’t have all the tools. You don’t need to be able to do everything, you just need to be able to work very hard, research like crazy, and build a team to help you with your vision.

2. Do you expect any of your students to go out and create a hit web series like you did?

Absolutely. I want them to create something that will empower them as artists, and give them a little extra leg up in the industry. It’s really about giving people a jumping off point. Enough information to get in trouble as I always say.

3. What’s the best book you’re read, or video you’ve watched that inspired you to create entertainment at a high level?

LOL. uh… I’m not really a book guy, everything is from experience. I have just worked on a lot of sets, so if people were doing a project I was there listening and learning… for free.

4. What do you think of web series creators and producers turning to crowdsourcing platforms like KickStarter and IndieGoGo to raise funds for their production projects?

I think it’s a HUGE resource. It’s an interesting model for a couple reasons. I think it allows the investors (ie: mom, dad, uncles, dentists, viewers, etc.) to feel that their money is actually going into a production, and helps force the filmmaker to FIGURE OUT how they are going to make it. It’s a great pressure on you to get things made.

5. What advantages do web series creators have over TV producers?

There are about 30 people that have to approve of you doing a TV series, not including agents, managers, and lawyers. To create and distribute a web series… you can be the boss. We worked with Sony (on The Bannen Way) so it wasn’t just us, but it was a lot easier than working with a studio AND a Network.

6. How is collaboration benefiting the new media production landscape?

Filmmaking by definition is a collaborative art. I love that you get a chance to work with a group of people with different talents to complete a common goal. People want to create. A director of photography wants to shoot, actors want to act and with technology improving, you can now actually shoot for very cheap. So instead of talented people without the money to shoot on film, they can now shoot on the Cannon 7D or rent the RED camera and end up with a great looking project in the end.

The explosive trailer for Mark’s hit web series, The Bannen Way.

Jeremy Campbell interview , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

You Can’t Create Entertaining Videos Alone

September 11th, 2010

I’ve spoken to video creators and filmmakers who have created a video or film either by themselves or with one other person, and while it’s possible it’s normally anything but ideal. The fact is most of us are good in just one area, and mediocre at the other important elements which round out the entire process. This is usually apparent when the final product has been completed, and the decision isn’t where to distribute to, but rather if distribution actually makes sense at all.

In order to create an entertaining video or film, it typically takes a few people on the team to really pull everything together in a successful way. Sure there are exceptions out there with solo talents such as iJustine, and some other young YouTube talents, but for the most part the “game” is a team sport.

Make it easier on yourself and partner up with the talent you need to make your next production project a success. Grab a free Spidvid account, post your project, and let us help you build the team you need to create some quality entertainment you can be proud of.

Or if you are looking to join a team, then grab an account, and keep your eyes open for interesting projects led by our talented community of creators and filmmakers.

Stay updated on future Spidvid posts via email, or have them delivered to your favorite RSS reader. Or if you prefer social media then follow Spidvid on Twitter, and like Spidvid on Facebook.

Jeremy Campbell community , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,