KeywordsInteractive fi lm Crowd sourcingCrowd FundingCollaboration AdvertainmentTransmedia

IS THE INSIDE EXPERIENCE A

SOCIAL FILM? OR SOMETHING ELSE?

BY MIKE HAM

This slideshow will debate whether or not The Inside Experience can be seen as a ‘social fi lm’ or something else. For example an interactive fi lm.

INTRODUCTION

Interactive fi lm is an interactive game online, that takes the form of a fi lm, through the use of script, full motion video, and animated live footage. W i k i p e d i a ( 2 0 1 0 ) [ o n l i n e ]

a v a i l a b l e a t : h t t p: / /e n . w i k i p e d i a . o r g / w i k i / I n t e r a c t i v e _ m o v i e a c c e s s e d o n [ 1 0 / 1 1 / 1 1 ]

There are many examples of this:

INTERACTIVE FILM

Interactive fi lm gets users to participate in something diff erent to the usual fi lm.

Companies can use this to draw in customers by advertising a product on the interactive fi lm. For example, ‘Being Henry’ by Land Rover promotes its Land Rover Evoque. You make decisions in Henrys life, and then at the end, your decisions take you to the type of Evoque which is best suited to you on your choices you made in the interactive fi lm.

J e ff G l u c k e r 2 0 1 1 [ o n l i n e ] a v a i l a b l e a t : h t t p : / / w w w. a u t o b l o g . c o m / 2 0 1 1 / 0 5 / 0 6 / l a n d - r o v e r - l a u n c h e s - b e i n g - h e n r y - i n t e r a c t i v e - fi l m - s e r i e s - t / a c c e s s e d o n : 1 0 / 1 1 / 1 1

So it could be argued that The Inside Experience is an interactive fi lm, as participants get to participate in helping Christina, where they can eff ect the fi nal fi lm, much like participants can do in interactive fi lm where they make the choices.

INTERACTIVE FILM CONTINUED

Collaboration is seen as a diff erent way to connect people together to create fi lms online.

Similar to Interactive fi lm, collaboration looks to break the boundaries of traditional fi lm by encouraging creative fans and audiences, to participate in a way in which it is diff erent to the traditional fi lm culture.

An example of this is ‘The story behind the still’

COLLABORATION

• It was the first ever user generated, HD video contest. photographers became filmmakers and we all saw beyond the still. Month after month, aspiring filmmakers were invited to pick up where the previous winning short film ended – on an evocative photograph.

• This is using Crowdsourcing in which crowds of participants are coming together to become a community to create the medium.

• Vimeo [online] (2010) avaiable at: http://vimeo.com/groups/beyondthestill accessed on: 10/11/11.

Shirky describes collaboration as: ‘the power of organizing without organizations’ S h i r ky , C . ( 2 0 0 8 ) H e re c o m e s e v e r y b o d y , Lo n d o n A l a n L a n e , p 5 1

The Inside Experience is similar to a crowd sourced collaboration fi lm.

Inside, connects people together via social networks to collaborate to help Christina out.

This could be argued to be crowdsourcing and a collaborative fi lm as participants are coming together and sharing their ideas and answers to the clues Christina provides. Much like participants provide videos or still images used to create a collaborative crowd sourced fi lm.

But Inside makers Intel and Toshiba are an organsiation, so according to Shirky, The Inside Experience is not collaborative.

THE INSIDE EXPERIENCE AND COLLABORATION

Crowd funding is where people come together and share their money as a community in a network so that a medium can be created. For example making an online fi lm.

One online fi lm that used crowd funding was ‘A Swarm Of Angels’

Here participants provided money to join and to help the project take off.

A s w a r m o f a n g e l s 2 0 0 8 [ o n l i n e ] Av a i l a b l e a t : h t t p: / /a s w a r m o f a n g e l s . c o m a c c e s s e d o n [ 1 0 / 1 1 / 1 1 ]

CROWD FUNDING

‘ADVERTAINMENT’ AND TRANSMEDIA

P e n i n g t o n , A ( 2 0 1 0 ) [ o n l i n e ] N e w M e d i a A g e a v a i l a b l e a t : h t t p : / / w w w. n m a . c o . u k / f e a t u r e s / t r a n s m e d i a / 3 0 1 7 9 4 4 . a r t i c l e a c c e s s e d o n [ 1 0 / 1 1 / 1 1 ]

‘Transmedia is about more than just running content across multiple platforms; it involves engaging an audience in a story wherever they happen to be coming to it from’

Advertisement works with companies l ike BMW to use trans media by making movies advert ise their product in a more entertaining way than an advert isement on TV to the consumers, by using mult iple forms of medium.

Like TV and onl ine TV, i t looks to gain an audience. Consumers are becoming an audience.

They produce a smal l number of episodes of a drama featuring their product along side big names used in TV shows and fi lms.

There are many examples of this:

The ‘social fi lm’ features the Toshiba Satellite p775 laptop. It could therefore be argued that the fi lm takes place around

this laptop as the main character Christina is interacting with it in most of its episodes. Just like other entertaining advertisements do.

This would make it an advertising fi lm. However when looking at the participants comments on

Facebook, it would suggest that they do not like the idea of it being an advertisement.

Sheron Neves - “Come on guys, you were doing so well up to now... No hard sell please. It 's the main point of branded content, isn't it? You have a bunch of people super engaged with the whole project, real fans ( including myself) so mission accomplished. Branding gold. Now don't mess it al l up with short term, sales department mentality.. . You wil l sel l your laptops, don't worry. But don't spoil this experience and bri l l iant marketing strategy by turning it into cheap product placement :- /”

t h e i n s i d e e x p e r i a n c e ( 2 0 1 1 ) [ o n l i n e ] a v a i l b l e f r o m h t t p: / / w w w. f a c e b o o k . c o m / T h e I n s i d e E x p e r i e n c e / p o s t s / 1 6 3 0 5 4 4 0 7 1 0 4 6 0 8 a c c e s s e d o n [ 1 0 / 1 1 / 1 1 ]

IS INSIDE AN ADVERTAINMENT?

29/56,115 participants of the inside experience facebook page, liked the link posting to the inside experience website about the laptop on 15th August.  

14/56,115 participants of the inside experience facebook page, commented on the link posting to the inside experience website about the laptop on 15th August.

From these results, I can conclude that not many people showed an interest in the laptop as not many comments or likes were produced as a huge amount of participants did not comment. Also this was posted before a finished fi lm was produced. So it shows that not many people were interested.

SAMPLING COMMENTS ON THE ADVERTISMENT ON FACEBOOK

To conclude, The inside experience claims to be a social fi lm. But there is a narrow terminology of social fi lm today, as inside experience only started this year. So The Inside Experience can instead be seen as parts of: Interactive fi lmCrowd sourcingCrowd FundingCollaboration ‘Advertainment’Transmedia

CONCLUSION

References A swarm of angels 2008[online]Available at:

http://aswarmofangels.com accessed on [10/11/11] Jeff Glucker 2011 [online] available at:

http://www.autoblog.com/2011/05/06/land-rover-launches-being-henry-interactive-fi lm-series-t/ accessed on: [10/11/11]

Penington, A (2010) [online] New Media Age available at: http://www.nma.co.uk/features/transmedia/3017944.article accessed on [10/11/11]

Shirky, C. (2008) Here comes everybody, London Alan Lane, p51 the inside experiance (2011) [online] availble from

http://www.facebook.com/TheInsideExperience/posts/163054407104608 accessed on [10/11/11]

Vimeo [online] (2010) avaiable at: http://vimeo.com/groups/beyondthesti l l accessed on: 10/11/11.

Wikipedia (2010) [online] available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_movie accessed on [10/11/11

BIBLIOGRAPHY