A version of this story aired on NPR’s Morning Edition.
The online video sharing site YouTube is this generation's MTV. Artists like Gotye and Psy have found mainstream success when their videos go viral. Yet the site is dominated by amateurs covering other people’s songs – from toddlers chirping The Beatles to teens tackling Led Zeppelin.
Between those two extremes is an alternative universe of aspiring professional musicians who use their versions of cover songs on YouTube to build fan bases of their own.
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A version of this story aired on APM’s Marketplace.
Silicon Valley may be the financial center of the tech industry, but lately San Francisco is earning a reputation as the heart and soul of it. Tech workers who don’t want to live in the Valley’s sprawling suburbs have migrated northward. And hundreds of tech-related businesses have set up shop in San Francisco too. But the culture of tech that’s taking hold in the city hasn’t come without controversy. (more…)
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Check out the podcast edition of our recent Google Hangout with Brian Clark of GMD Studios.
From the orignal show notes:
At last year’s StoryWorld Conference in Hollywood I had the honor of meeting Brian Clark (@gmdclark) of GMD Studios, longtime publisher of IndieWire and one of the leading designers and thinkers in the world we often refer to as “transmedia”. Brian gave one of the last talks at the conference, a talk on what he called “Phenomenal Work”, in which he applied the principles of the movement known as Phenomenology to examine the work that creators and storytellers have been empowered to do thanks to the New Media revolution.
It would be hack to say that the talk was phenomenal, but sometimes you have to call it like it is.
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It’s the audio podcast edition of our recent Google Hangout with director Marcie Hume. Join Lucas McNelly, Marcie and myself as we talk about her lastest project “Where The Magic Happens” a doc about the lives of stage magicians… and the successful Kickstarter campaign that is making the film a reality.
Music featured in this episode is by the Portland artist Podington Bear and is being used under a Creative Commons license. I found these great tracks thanks to the wonder that is Free Music Archive.org.
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A version of this story aired today on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Thousands of Americans lined up last night, not to vote, but to buy one of the most anticipated new video games of the year. Halo 4 is the latest installment of the popular franchise for the Microsoft XBox 360. Some gamers refer to Halo as their Star Wars.
Now, after five years, the game’s hero, the Master Chief, returns. And the fantastic world the Master Chief inhabits is hardly confined to just the screen. The game’s publisher hopes that this latest installment will be an evolution of the franchise. (more…)
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http://soundcloud.com/turnstyle-news/stewart-hendler-director-of
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One of the downsides to broadcasting is that sometimes, no matter how much you like something, you have to cut it for time.
Such was the case the our story on today’s Morning Edition about Halo 4. As part of the research for the piece I had an excellent discussion with Stewart Hendler, the director of the webseries Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn which can be found on Machinima Prime. Hendler is an on-the-rise director who was turned his career on its head. He’s gone from making feature films inside the studio system that got a modest amount of attention to making web series like Forward Unto Dawn and H+ The Digital Series that cannot be ignored.
Hendler and I spoke at the NPR West Studios in Culver City.
You can read an expanded edition of the Halo 4 story here, or view our earlier exploration of Halo’s transmedia campaign.
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A version of this story appears on NPR’s All Things Considered.
He wouldn’t make the claim, but when it comes to comic book writers, Mark Waid is one of the greats.
“I’ve pretty much hit all of the pop culture bases,” Waid told me as we spoke at his Los Angeles home, surrounded by comic book memorabilia. Batman, Spider-man, even The Incredibles have had their adventures dreamt up by Waid.
“January 26th 1979 was the most important day of my life. Because that’s the day that I saw Superman: The Movie,” said Waid. “I came out of it knowing that no matter what the rest of my life was going to be like, it had to involve Superman somehow.
His writing made the DC Comics miniseries Kingdom Come into one of the definitive Superman stories, the ultimate ‘what if’ tale.
“What happens when Superman retires and the next generation of heroes come along and make a mess of things; and Superman has to come back and set the world straight?”
I ask him: isn’t that what he’s doing right now? (more…)
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It may seem as though critics are preoccupied with how Celeste and Jesse Forever, the new indy film written by actors Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, conforms to the expectations of the “romantic comedy” genre. In the vein of other indy darlings like “500 Days of Summer,” the two wrote a script that strains away from predictable archetypes. But perhaps the preoccupation with the label is because films like these seem rare, even as a young crop of mostly male directors with an eye for the juvenile is credited with reinventing the form.
“I’m happy to be called a romantic comedy,” McCormack said. “Because the spirit in which this movie was written, we were informed by romantic comedies that really just changed my life like When Harry Met Sally and Broadcast News, and hopefully this movie was a throwback to the kind of romantic comedy that totally changed my life.” (more…)
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Yesterday, we tracked Socialcam’s rise as a competitor to native mobile video apps for smartphones. YouTube has been the leader in online user-generated video, but that lead position hasn’t translated to mobile creation. Only about four percent of the videos uploaded to YouTube are mobile.
In the podcast above, I spoke with Francisco Varela, YouTube’s Director of Global Platform Partnerships, about its evolving mobile strategy. As Socialcam’s Michael Seibel did in our interview this spring, Varela emphasized YouTube’s focus on enabling more video creators and frictionless sharing of what they make. (more…)
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A version of this story aired on NPR’s All Things Considered.
It may seem like there’s no shortage of user-generated video being shared on the internet. Those “caught on camera” moments of everyone, from cops, to cats, to babies, are in healthy circulation on YouTube. But only about four percent of those YouTube videos are mobile videos: recorded on, and posted by, a smartphone.
Maybe that’s because it hasn’t been easy to make and post great video from your phone. Not being an avid phone video creator, I only recently encountered the frustrations of the exercise at a Robert Glasper show, where I became one of those annoying phone wielders marring a clear view of the stage so I could capture the band’s virtuosic performance of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It was dark in the club, and my video could have used a flash effect, as you can’t even make out the lead singer’s brilliant orange pompadour. And then there was the cumbersome upload process. To post the video, I had to close the phone’s camera, open my phone’s Facebook app, then fetch the video to upload to my profile. And it didn’t even appear on the page til hours later. Hardly the instant gratification we’re looking for when the joy of mobile sharing is to convey, and get feedback on, the emotion of the moment.
“When you’re using the Socialcam app, there’s literally a big silver button in the middle of everything. The second you’re inspired, you can take your first video,” said Socialcam CEO Micheal Seibel when I talked to him during his company’s rapid iteration of its product this spring. The social video app is trying to address the pain points of sharing phone video with its features that streamline the beautifying and uploading process. (more…)
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As you all undoubtedly already know, Google Glass is finally here.
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Now streaming: the archive of our Google Hangout On-Air with Jesse Vigil of Psychic Bunny, one of the designers of the new audio adventure game FREEQ (iOS/Android).
We’ve featured dancer Matt Luck’s work before.
I first encountered Sifteo Cubes back at IndieCade last October, and spent some time playing around with the little blocks which I first mistook for iPod Nanos.
Over the weekend I was having a conversation about the new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum that’s been announced.
