This is an old news story, dating back to a few months, but we could not stop commenting it given the relevance that The Cosmonaut has given to the category of transmedia.
TheProducers Guild of Americahas officially acknowledge the position of transmedia producer. The PGA, for those of you who don't know about them, is an American trade association that represents producers from the television, film and new media industry.
This announcement has a great historical significance because, it's the first time that they have ratified a new role in the industry. From now on, anyone that produces the transmedia part of any project will have the same rights and will receive the same credit as, for example, the scriptwriter or the director of artwork.
The definition of transmedia producer provided by the PGA does not fulfill everyone's expectations, given that it contains several aspects that limit the application of such title, like the minimum number of mediums to be used in order to obtain the credit. Christy Dena reflects on this matter in her blog, taken from the definition of the title that appeared in the original source of the news article.
In any case, we believe that it is big news that the role of transmedia producer has been officially recognized, independent of the over or under qualifications to became a transmedia producer. The decision contributes to a wider acknowledgement of the new and rising role that transmedia plays in the audiovisual industry.
We have been playing Moonbase Alpha, a videogame set on the moon in the year 2020, developed by NASA and recently published on Steam. And it's a free download.
At first glance, it is a pretty fun game. Its a strategy game in which you need to restore the oxygen production on a lunar base that has been hit by a meteoriote. An online game where the sucess of the mission relies on the collaborative work put on by the members that join the same online room.The best thing of the game: to roam the lunar surface, simulated using real moon physics, on a rover.
It's best to download and give it a whirl. Follow this two small steps to download the game:
We have the studio full of Kolibries, Tereshkovas, Vostoks and matrioshkas all itching to go out and breathe the air outside, go to the beach and travel...
We have decided to reduce the prices of many of our products so can you can take them with you on your holidays.
The merchandise that we want to liberate:
- All the T-Shirts: we dropped off the price and on September we will have new models.
- Badges, stickers and patch : We have decided to dropped the price because the design will change in September.
*If you are already a producer, remember that you can always buy any product and instead of the welcome pack, you will receive the soviet solution.
Apart from all this great news, we are announcing a new contest: The redesign of the Matryoshka model of Isidro Ferrer. We want to take a spin, so we decided to start a new contest to change the colors of:
-T-shirt (it could be white, red, yellow...)
-Image (instead of white and red, it could be any two combination of other colors, but there's a maximum limit of three colors)
You can download a two color file in a .tiff format here. Please make your own design and upload directly to Flickr and tag them, or send them to mario.orellana@riotcinema.com.
We met a lot of interesting people in Campus Party Europe. We shared a most of the time with Gemma and Marie, the eyes and brains behind elmur.net.
Their initiative shares some common things with our movie. The first one being, the spirit of sharing, of taking an image to any part of the world, of being international (or what is the same as on the internet, being form every part of the world but none in particular), to create besides others in order to make it into something bigger than itself.
In this blog we usually talk about the future. For being such an inspiration for the future, they deserve a spot here. :)
Today, following from a bad experience that we had, we are going to talk a little bit about the new power that the Internet has given to the consumers.
As you may now, a week before, we presented our business plan in the HUB Madrid. Part of that presentation consisted in the giving out cds that contained The Plan, attachments, teasers and a couple of files.
We gave this all important task to a company call Fdw, in theory, experts of cd and dvd duplication. What happens next?
They made 500 copies that would only work on... PC. Half of the files gave out an error if inserted into a Mac computer.
We have spent two days arguing with them so they could do the duplication of the CDs out of their own pocket. There hasn't been any way. They have given us a thousand and one excuses and they will not acknowledge that it was their own fault. We have now 500 CDs inside a box that are useless to some of you.
What is the good thing about this? We can tell you all about it. We can create a big and fast word of mouth thanks to the internet.
Maybe it is a lost cause, but in may occasions the noise generated on the internet has made many brands retract their policies or change the way the way they are doing things.
The cases of Tulipán,
Domino's
Pizza or the most famous one Nestlé , give a great account of the active consumer on the internet. Brands are slowly taking notice that the consumer isn't passive, he is an active viewer, or as they say in the business: "The customer is always right".
Gonzalo Martín, one of the greatest minds of this industry of ours, who is worth following for how he writes each comma, has dedicated us a post which falls right into our absolute top ten most exciting things that we ever read about us.
There is only one thing left to do: thank him eternally.
Today is, after the day we launch the project, the most important in the whole enterprise of The Cosmonaut.
There are so many things that we have to tell you that we decided to make it public in the second newsletter, so all of all you, producers or not, can see it.
The Cosmonaut closes its the first stage and heads right to the second one, filled with new features and a lot of energy. Below is the second newsletter:
Summary:
| We launched ThePlan, a new business model that has been worked for seven months, were we propose a new financing, production and distribution revolutionary model. . | We followed this with the Attachments, a series of studies made about our means of distribution. | We make public our first draft script of The Cosmonautscript. | We make public our budget for the movie and its corresponding financial plan. | We launch our new website, so you could see all of the content in a much clearer and simpler way.
| We announced the deal between Cameo and Filmin on the the DVD/Bluray distribution for The Cosmonaut. Jaume Ripoll, editorial director, will tell you on this video the reason for this decision.
All of this will be available at 19:00 hours, moment in which we will present the new changes in the HUB Madrid, in front of newspaper reporters and colleagues of the industry.
Charlie
Burton, who has already reviewed us in Wired UK, is now doing a whole report for Audi Magazine UK
, and they sent us a photographer from London for the photo session.
He is Sam Barker , and this is how Fuencarral looked this morning. :)
Organized by, among others, the MEDIA program and the Russian Culture Ministry, the MIFF Business Square 2010, is an organized encounter that runs at the same time as the Moscow International Film Festival, it is THE place for those projectslooking to co produce withRussia.
Its main event, the Moscow Co-Production Forum, has chosen18 projects from Europe,Brazil, Russia, India and China to introduce them to its vicissitudes, their inner circle, the names and pockets of the BRIC zone. Ultimately, to meet a crowd of co-producers that could make into reality the making of the movie in those places.
Here are some of the requisites for participating:
- Films that are currently in development.
- With a high potential to be distributed in Europe and, or globally.
- Have at least 20% of the finance covered for the project.
"The Cosmonaut" has been chosen to be one of those 18 selected projects.
We go back to Moscow months later to participate on round tables discussions, master classes about co-production, meeting people with the same dream as us, snooping on other current projects in the Russian film industry, being the only representation of Spain in the event and to eat blinis and borsch.
To receive ae-mail that ended with "Your presence at the MIFF Business Square» would be of critical
importance for the success of the program", has been the first sign of confirmation for the upcoming next stage of the project.
After a hard pre-selection day around Cannes, here we have the
candidates. From the last success by the renowned Takashi Miike to the
most recent hiper-mega-productions such as The Asylum.Furthermore, some of them have really relevant figures such as David
Hasselhof, Traci Lords,...
Pick up your favourite one... and the last day, we'll try to pinch it!
We start a new series of video diaries, in the style of Qué Vida Más Triste, but with frantic updates. Without the help of sponsors and practically nothing else... hey: that's how handy we are. We will deconstruct, day by day in our own way, our descent into the Marché du Film of the CannesInternational Film Festival trying toget financial agreements for The Cosmonaut.
We have just received great news: like the title of this post announces, IndieFlix is going to distribute our movie. For those of you who don't know them, they are an importantamerican film distributor of online independent cinema.
This agreement implies that The Cosmonaut will be streamed (Low Definition Video-On-Demand) through the IndieFlix website on a non exclusive clause. This non exclusive clause is vital to a project like ours, giving us the liberty to distribute the movie on any chosen medium.
In all truth, we are very happy to have this agreement. We have always loved IndieFlix for it's support to the independent cinema and their wide array of options for the creators. We can't them thank them enough for their trust on our project. We sincerely hope not to disappoint them!
After a week of thorough discussions, we now have the list of winners of the Teaser Remix Experience. The election has been so difficult that we ended up creating a special category, to award even more remixes. But we'll tell you all about it below.
Before announcing the winners, let's remember whatwere the prizes. The winner will get a LOMO L-CA+, meanwhile for the second and third places and the 8 áccesits, they will received a LOMO OKTOMAT. All of the winners, except the 8 áccesits, will have a month subscription to The Auteurs and a special Riot Cinema pack.
Without further ado, the names of the winners are:
First prize goes to Robert Pratten, becuse his perfect remix from beginning to end, on its atmosphere, as well as the image treatment process, as well as the game about the memory, las lomos and everything else. It is the mind of the Cosmonaut in images. Inspiring.
On second place we have Miriam Mira remix. This teaser is, without a doubt, the best that managed to capture the essence of the movie beyond images, using fragments from the first draft of the script and it's own text and giving it an absolute radical spin to the general aesthetic seen on the totality of all the teasers. It is a jump into the void, an act of love.
Edgar Lledó takes the third place. His teaser is, maybe, the one close enough to the aesthetics of the movie. Its content, promising and well rounded. The treatment of the image is by far the best we have seen.
First prize: Robert Pratten
Second Prize: Miriam Mira
Third Prize: Edgar Lledó
We go on now to enumerate the eight áccesits.
Jack Shadow. We have been flabbergasted by the backwards take of the cosmonaut, in which his eyes seem completely white.
Tom Schestak. We think this is a very bold teaser. It's first 20 seconds is a work of art, playing with the thunderous sound as he removes his helmet . Because of its experimentalism, a worthy teaser remix.
Santiago Fernández. A pretty disturbing teaser. The take of the cosmonaut "flying" backwards seeming like it was been absorbed has our 5 start rating.
Alfonso Martínez. The use of interpose still film frames is superb. Besides, the sound, the takes and music make a good tight teaser remix.
Visiophone. Experimentalism and lomos, what more can you ask for?
Óscar Rabasa. This may pretty well be the most classic of them all. It's a very "American" movie feel to it, but on a closer look with all that written text, it managed to put our hairs on end. It captured pretty well the spirit of the film.
Ernesto Valiente. A unique atmosphere through the use of still film frames and inverted takes. The music is another point in favor.
Antonio Jarreta. Because it's different, epic and for being ambitious.
We finished the list of winners with three additional award badges, creating it's own new category. This new category is for all those remix teasers that seem more like a video clip than a teaser trailer. All three of them, will be given a T-Shirt with the logo of the hummingbird and a copy of Poetic for cosmonauts, the book that inspired the film script.
Gil McRipley. What can we say about this teaser? It's was love at first sight. Humming the song under our breath while we worked. We have seen it a million times and showed it to all our friends.
Isaac Rupérez. Few times have a song moved us so much, and it's exceptional use of the images with the music.
Alberto Romo. For it's amazing work put into this "video clip", worthy of winning this award, but also, for using a format different from that being posted online, adjusting the images to a superb ratio of 2:35, making it worthy of its award.
The only thing left is to congratulate all of the winners and thank all of those who participated in the contest. We also take this opportunity to thank those who made possible the original teaser trailer, to Cumie, for letting use her song and her voice; to Jonathan Mellor, who dub the English voice over; to Alexey Shurupov, who dub the disturbing Russian voice and to the rest of the people who participated in the creation of the teaser: Carlos Martínez-Abarca, Rubén Durán, Daniel Torrelló, Ezequiel Romero, Angel Trancón, Juan Cabrera, Miki Ávila, Edward Artemyev, Luz Nicolás, Carola Rodríguez, Javier Serrano, Margarita Mansilla y Silvia Benito).
We leave you with a few words from the film director of the movie.
As the film director, seeing each of the 78 teaser presented continuously to the contest has been a wide opening experience. Not only have they made me realize the sheer magnitude of this project and of the potential of what we are putting forward. But also being deeply moved. It made my hair stand on end thinking of all the people that played, giving a new interpretation to the images and on the multiples ways it transform the teaser.
And not only that. Also, seeing them as a whole, I have learnt more about cinema than any other class about editing or realization. This is a magnificent exercise to see how a piece of work can change the view of the creator. How you can go from one edge to the other, from the experimental to the classic Hollywood. From the contemplative to the emotive.
I strongly urge everybody to download them all and give yourself the pleasure to learn. This have has been to me, a wide opening experience.
All that there is left for me to do is to give a big THANK YOU, for making of this movie a bit more real and beautiful than yesterday's dream.
This is an old news story, dating back to a few months, but we could not stop commenting it given the relevance that The Cosmonaut has given to the category of transmedia.
