The Cosmonaut

Transmedia becomes officially recognized

2010-07-15T17:07:20Z

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.

The Producers Guild of America has 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.

Moonbase Alpha, the video game from NASA

2010-07-13T08:46:04Z

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:

Download Steam

Download Moonbase Alpha

We are having a sale at the store and a new contest.

2010-07-03T10:29:33Z

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.

¡You have until the 31st of August!

Moscow onboard diaries #3

2010-06-23T08:35:53Z

The conclusions....

Moscow onboard diaries #2

2010-06-20T13:52:15Z

Moscow onboard diaries

2010-06-19T07:40:51Z

Ya está aquí, ya llegó...

Elmur.net

2010-06-09T14:21:18Z

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. :)

Internet and the active consumers

2010-06-08T12:40:48Z

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".

Brief praise to The Cosmonaut (by Gonzalo Martín)

2010-06-07T12:09:43Z

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.

Brief praise to The Cosmonaut (by Gonzalo Martín)

D-Day

2010-06-03T10:10:55Z

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 The Plan, 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 Cosmonaut script.
| 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.

Audi Mag

2010-06-01T18:16:58Z

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. :)

We are going back to Moscow! ... one of the 18 selected participants for the Moscow Co-Production Forum

2010-06-01T10:30:48Z

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 projects looking to co produce with Russia.

Its main event, the Moscow Co-Production Forum, has chosen 18 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 a e-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.

Cannes Diaries: The chronicles of the film festival (5)

2010-05-22T10:43:22Z

C'est fini. We leave you here the last filmed material of Cannes, and our conclusions... hope you enjoy it!

The song playing is Si Gagarin levantara el casco by Los Gandules,
license under Creative Commons (and were we talked about it in here)

Cannes Diaries: The chronicles of the film festival (4)

2010-05-20T10:29:00Z

As all good things come to an end, Nico and Carla chase those last unwary people still walking through Cannes.

Cannes Diaries: The chronicles of a festival (3)

2010-05-19T19:14:22Z

Today is the Big Day: handing out DVDs...and meeting the guys from Iron Sky!

Stop callin', stop callin',
I don't wanna think anymore!
I left my hand and my heart on the dance floor...